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539750_0 | To the Editor: Anna Quindlen got it right in "Zero Population Talk" (column, June 10): discussion of population growth became taboo at the Earth Summit largely owing to Vatican pressure to keep it off the agenda. Seeking the moral high ground, Vatican officials claim that admitting population growth is a problem will legitimize coercive use of family planning and abortion, unethically using people as a means to an end. Despite such high-sounding ideals, churchmen have been talking about the relationship of population size and fertility for more than 1,000 years. As long ago as the fourth century, despite the superior valuation of virginity in the early church, St. Ambrose said the church should celebrate procreation because "the number of the devout people is increased." After Prussia defeated the French in 1870-71, Roman Catholic moralists blamed waning fertility for the military loss and predicted the decline and fall of an underpopulated France. "You have, by hideous calculation, made tombs instead of filling cradles with children; therefore you have wanted for soldiers," a Swiss cardinal told a French audience on Bastille Day in 1872. "Casti Connubii" (Of Chaste Spouses), the 1930 papal encyclical banning contraception, spoke of a Christian couple's duty to "raise up . . . members of God's household, that the worshipers of God and Our Savior may daily increase." But population growth helped modify church teaching. In 1951, when Pius XII announced it was permissible for a couple with "serious motives" to use natural family planning to limit births, social conditions (implying population pressures) were cited as a permissible rationale. Liberalization went only so far, however, and the 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae" (Of Human Life) reaffirmed the ban on artificial birth control, cutting off all further conversation on contraception. Yet Catholic couples have almost universally accepted artificial birth control. Many priests and some bishops have called for a change. Church officials have increasingly turned to international policy forums to make birth control unavailable. For example, in 1984, Vatican diplomats persuaded the United States to cut off further funds for two of the world's largest family planning organizations -- the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The Vatican's blind spot on reproductive issues precludes the church's valuable contribution to the conversation on population. Its attention to human rights and social justice, as well as its capacity to see the world as an interdependent community, | Third World Women Aren't the Big Polluters; Vatican's Blind Spot |
539750_1 | it off the agenda. Seeking the moral high ground, Vatican officials claim that admitting population growth is a problem will legitimize coercive use of family planning and abortion, unethically using people as a means to an end. Despite such high-sounding ideals, churchmen have been talking about the relationship of population size and fertility for more than 1,000 years. As long ago as the fourth century, despite the superior valuation of virginity in the early church, St. Ambrose said the church should celebrate procreation because "the number of the devout people is increased." After Prussia defeated the French in 1870-71, Roman Catholic moralists blamed waning fertility for the military loss and predicted the decline and fall of an underpopulated France. "You have, by hideous calculation, made tombs instead of filling cradles with children; therefore you have wanted for soldiers," a Swiss cardinal told a French audience on Bastille Day in 1872. "Casti Connubii" (Of Chaste Spouses), the 1930 papal encyclical banning contraception, spoke of a Christian couple's duty to "raise up . . . members of God's household, that the worshipers of God and Our Savior may daily increase." But population growth helped modify church teaching. In 1951, when Pius XII announced it was permissible for a couple with "serious motives" to use natural family planning to limit births, social conditions (implying population pressures) were cited as a permissible rationale. Liberalization went only so far, however, and the 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae" (Of Human Life) reaffirmed the ban on artificial birth control, cutting off all further conversation on contraception. Yet Catholic couples have almost universally accepted artificial birth control. Many priests and some bishops have called for a change. Church officials have increasingly turned to international policy forums to make birth control unavailable. For example, in 1984, Vatican diplomats persuaded the United States to cut off further funds for two of the world's largest family planning organizations -- the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The Vatican's blind spot on reproductive issues precludes the church's valuable contribution to the conversation on population. Its attention to human rights and social justice, as well as its capacity to see the world as an interdependent community, instead of a competing throng, could amplify the voices of others who seek a population policy within a moral framework. FRANCES KISSLING President Catholics for a Free Choice Washington, June 10, 1992 | Third World Women Aren't the Big Polluters; Vatican's Blind Spot |
539751_0 | To the Editor: Anna Quindlen states that in the next century the population may double "on what already seems to be a 'No Vacancy' planet" (column, June 10). What planet is she referring to? It can't be Earth. If the world's population of more than five billion were put in Jacksonville, Fla., every person would have about 4 square feet of standing space. If that were too crowded, we could all move over to Texas and each have about 1,400 square feet, the area of a good-sized two-bedroom apartment. The world is just not very crowded. The population density of China (288 people per square mile) is less than that of West Germany (626), Switzerland (406), Denmark (305) and New Jersey (1,034). In the United States, there are a mere 68 people per square mile. Crowded cities result from free choice or government policies. There is no natural population problem. Neither is there evidence that population growth impedes economic growth. On the contrary, places Ms. Quindlen might regard as crowded, Hong Kong and Singapore, say, have demonstrated that vigorous growth is perfectly compatible with, even attributable to, population growth. Yes, the world's population increases -- and every resource gets cheaper every year. After all, people are the source of intelligence, which the economist Julian Simon calls the "ultimate resource." Isn't it time wealthy white people stopped telling third world peasants who aspire to a better life how many children and what kind of economies to have? SHELDON L. RICHMAN Senior Editor, Cato Institute Washington, June 10, 1992 | Third World Women Aren't the Big Polluters; There's Plenty of Room |
533931_0 | To the Editor: The love affair of Eamonn Casey, who resigned as Roman Catholic Bishop of Galway, Ireland (news article, May 7), would not be such an uncomfortable situation for Annie Murphy and her son if we returned to the sources of life in the apostolic church. The Bishop would not have to live out his years as a "fallen priest." When Jesus healed the mother-in-law of Peter, the apostle chosen to be the first successor, the clear implication is that Peter, the pope, had a wife. When St. Paul gave instructions to the early church, he wrote in a pastoral letter to his trusted associate Timothy that "Bishops should be married only once" (I Timothy 3). The laws on celibacy in the church were established in the 12th century to prevent children of priests from laying claim to church properties. The motive was materialistic, not for the reign of God in history. In the last 25 years, 100,000 priests have left the priesthood to marry. In the United States, more than half the priests younger than 60 have married and consequently cannot function. The eucharist is the focal point of any faith community in Catholicism. If the eucharist is to be celebrated only by unmarried males, this sacred banquet will vanish along with the diminishing number of priests. Because the Vatican continues to cauterize the feminine dimension by refusing women in the fullness of ministry or by granting optional celibacy, the church is suffering. With a flick of someone's wrist in Rome, outmoded and inhumane legislation on mandatory celibacy could be set aside. We could return to the reality of life when Jesus Himself was intimately linked with a family until His brief three-year ministry. Thereafter, Peter and his wife assumed responsibility along with the other apostles who were married. Had we not strayed so far from the early dynamic church, Bishop Casey, other church leaders and their wives could have gathered to consider how to move into the 21st century. (Rev.) VIC HUMMERT Dallas, May 15, 1992 The writer is with the Maryknoll Education Center. | Jesus and Peter Never Sought Priestly Celibacy |
533964_0 | Bolivia's President, Jaime Paz Zamora, announced yesterday that J. P. Morgan & Company had agreed to donate $11.5 million in Bolivian debt for the benefit of environmental conservation. Under the "debt for nature" swap -- the largest private bank debt donation ever made to a single country -- the Bolivian Government will commit $2.8 million in local currency to support the efforts of the Fundacion Amigos de la Naturaleza, a private conservation group, and its two American partners, the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund. The Nature Conservancy plans to train and pay the salaries of workers in the Amboro and Noel Kempff Mercado National Parks, home to a variety of rare animal species. The World Wildlife Fund will organize workshops in forestry management, and provide direct support for forest preservation in ecologically stressed headwaters of the Amazon River. The idea of debt-for-nature swaps was conceived in 1984 by Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist at the Smithsonian Institution. Under the procedure, donor banks earn good will and get to clear their books of defaulted debt that might never be repaid. The debtors, in turn, agree to finance conservation projects that would otherwise not rate a high priority in third world economies. | Bolivia Grant By Morgan |
533965_0 | President Bush today defended William K. Reilly, the head of the American delegation to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and attacked an unidentified member of his Administration who made public a confidential memorandum in an attempt to embarrass Mr. Reilly. "Mr. Reilly, a top environmentalist, has my full support," Mr. Bush said at a White House news conference this morning. "He conducts himself the way he should, with great dignity and great decency. That a document that he prepared properly was leaked, I find terribly offensive." But even as the President called the leak "an insidious practice," a struggle over the Administration's environmental policy grew sharper as Mr. Reilly fought back. In Rio, he and his aides blamed staff members of the President's Council on Competitiveness, a group led by Vice President Dan Quayle, for the leak. Jeffrey Nesbit, a spokesman for the Vice President, denied the accusation, saying that "the assertion that the Competitiveness Council leaked a confidential memo is totally false." Appeal to Bush Fails The newest conflict between Mr. Reilly, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Vice President began on Wednesday night when Mr. Reilly made a last-minute appeal to the White House to reverse its position and approve an international treaty to protect the earth's plants and animals. The appeal was rejected, but in Rio today the treaty was signed by delegates of 16 other countries. Mr. Reilly's confidential memorandum was sent to Clayton K. Yeutter, the President's domestic policy chief, and included a passage that described how the Administration's refusal to sign the treaty was "the major subject of press and delegate concern here." The memorandum said that Brazil had offered to "fix" the treaty to gain the United States' approval. An Administration official, concerned that Mr. Reilly might persuade the White House to sign the treaty, gave a copy of the the memorandum to The New York Times. The conflict between Mr. Reilly and Mr. Quayle was joined last summer when the Vice President overcame Mr. Reilly's strong opposition and issued a proposed policy that would open 50 million acres of wetlands to development. Since then, the Council on Competitiveness has become one of the Administration's most influential bodies in deciding environmental policy. The council has been intimately involved in developing the regulatory moratorium and review that the President announced last January. It has also delayed new rules under | PRESIDENT DEFENDS U.S. ENVOY IN RIO |
533990_0 | Sam Gershowitz warns visitors to his recycling center to park their cars outside the gates. Otherwise, their cars could end up in the shredder. "Believe me, it's happened," said Mr. Gershowitz, who is 52 years old and has been recycling abandoned American dream machines for almost 30 years. He grinds them into metal chunks about the size of a coffee can and feeds them back into a growing world market that regards the United States as the Saudi Arabia of scrap. "We've had people pull up to the office up in an old car looking for a used tire or headlight," he said. "And when they turn around, they see their car heading up the conveyor belt to the shredder. We had to buy one guy a new car." A Long Idle Stretch For Mr. Gershowitz and others in the scrap-metal business, the recession has brought hard times, with the supply of junk cars down along with the demand for scrap metal. "No one has to be a brain surgeon to know that car sales have been off for two and a half years," he said. "And people get rid of their old clunkers only when they buy new cars." But Mr. Gershowitz believes the economy has bottomed out. He has seen a slight upturn in business in recent months and expects the autumn to bring a wave of junk cars as new-car sales continue to improve. His optimism was echoed by Robert J. Garino, director of commodities for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries in Washington. He said the recycling industry suffered along with the rest of the country during the recession but said recent indications showed that the economy "looks more and more positive." Last year, United States automakers produced 8 million shiny new cars for American consumers, who discarded just as many and more. The discards average one ton and 6.7 years on the road. They did not just disappear, but were chewed up by some 200 giant shredders across the country. The $7 million shredder at the Gershow Recycling yard here did its part last year by processing more than 100,000 cars; enough to fill the Long Island Expressway for 70 miles from the Riverhead exit to Manhattan, bumper to bumper, all six lanes, said Kevin Gershowitz. Kevin, 24, who with his twin brother, Elliot, joined their father to help run the family business after graduation | Comes a Hunk of Junk, Goes a Chunk of Steel |
538867_4 | communities have moved to the cities. Venice is locked in a perennial battle with the waters on which it rests and promised Government money has not arrived for conservation projects, which have been criticized as measures that will only make matters worse. Help for Pisa's Tower In Florence, the 15th-century dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore is freckled with some 600 slowly widening cracks. In Padua, the steeple of the church of Santa Giustina is threatening to fall in the same way as the 900-year-old civic tower of Pavia did three years ago. On May 18, after much debate, workers began clamping plastic-sheathed steel rings around the 187-foot-high Tower of Pisa after scientists and custodians said it might fall without warning. A lead counterweight weighing 600 to 800 tons is to be placed at the base of the tower to offset the tilt, which measures about five feet off the vertical at its apex. The tower has been closed to the public since January 1990. The scale of the antiquities problem is as daunting as the historical significance of individual sites: the monuments of Assisi, birthplace of St. Francis, are cracked; conservationists in Pompeii threw up their arms in horror the other day when McDonald's opened a restaurant at the entrance to the excavation, which is decaying anyhow. In the absence of Government money, some conservationists have sought corporate financing. An Italian insurance company paid for the restoration of the Trevi fountain in Rome, where far more than three coins had chipped and stained the stonework. The results were ambiguous: a few weeks after the reopening in June, green slime began to form on the marble, so chlorine had to be added to the water to clean it. Some institutions have also sought international aid. Nippon Television Network Corporation of Japan paid $4.2 million to pay for the cleaning of Michelangelo's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel -- a price that included exclusive film rights. Such financing, though, offends many art experts. "Asking for private contributions for this type of intervention is really begging; moreover, it's humiliating for the very image of the state," a prominent art historian, Federico Zeri, wrote recently in the newspaper La Repubblica. "Emergencies like that of the Coliseum number thousands in Italy, but the state moves only when a monument falls to pieces. And the money, when it is spent, is spent badly." | Rome Journal; Who Will Save Italy's Ragged Past? |
536302_1 | of environmental and social-action groups in many other developing countries have drawn official ire by challenging government excuses for environmental failures. They rarely get an international hearing. World Bank's Role Opposed These dissident environmentalists say, for example, that poverty is frequently not the main cause of the degradation of forests and waters, or the explanation for overpopulation. They doubt that more money in the hands of their governments will solve environmental problems as long as politicians are not held accountable by the people and corruption erodes enforcement of laws protecting nature. They oppose the global environmental policy role being assumed by the World Bank. "There continues to be a significant gap between ecological priorities perceived by these environmental and social-action groups and the ecological priorities of governments and global organizations," said Smitu Kothari, who leads protests in India against the dislocations caused by a huge hydroelectric and irrigation project in the Narmada River valley. The project, supported by the World Bank, has drawn criticism from human rights and environmental groups in Japan, the United States and Europe as well as in India. "The World Bank is one of the most unaccountable institutions on the planet," Mr. Kothari said in an interview. "It doesn't consult local people. Unless local communities really come into their own and are given control, you are not going to be able to save land and recover our ecosystems." Government pressure on environmentalists has been most intense in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, in northern Borneo, where loggers with political connections are razing tropical rain forests and displacing thousands of indigenous people. Earth torn from hillsides once covered with jungle tumbles into Borneo's powerful rivers, which run brown as chocolate, discharging streams of mud into the turquoise waters of the South China Sea. Two organizations, Friends of the Earth Malaysia and the World Rain Forest Movement, have been under official scrutiny and criticism for years. Another Malaysian group, the Environmental Protection Society, has been called "a thorn in the flesh of the nation" by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. In 1987, five environmentalists were imprisoned as "security risks" for opposing a proposed dump for radioactive waste. Malaysia, now Japan's largest supplier of tropical timber from Southeast Asia, is among those nations most opposed to an international treaty that would monitor forest use. Even in the Philippines, where President Corazon C. Aquino has encouraged the growth of environmental groups | What Some Preach in Rio Is Not What They Practice at Home |
536256_0 | The Earth Summit, which wound up with predictable fanfare today, has given the world its first real glimpse of the kind of global diplomacy that is becoming possible now that the the cold war is over. But the conference has also shown how difficult negotiating worldwide solutions to worldwide problems is likely to be. For decades East-West tensions made it hard to take joint approaches to challenges affecting all the world's nations, including environmental problems like threats to the atmosphere, population growth, and international migration. Yet over the last 10 days, the Earth Summit brought together the greatest number of world leaders that have ever assembled with a single aim -- in this case to seek a global agreement that shifts mankind's search for economic betterment onto a more environmentally sound plane by asking developing countries to industrialize in environmentally sustainable ways. A Time of Promise They came together at a time of extraordinary promise in world affairs, after the demise of Communism, which has reordered priorities not only in the industrialized world but also in the developing world. The summit agreement that was approved today has already been denounced by some groups as weak -- as "business as usual" and "a failure to set a new direction for life on earth," as Friends of the Earth called it today. And countries of the developing South have expressed disappointment that the industrialized North was not more generous. But for many, the accord is important mainly as the start of a process that could eventually change the way the world approaches the challenge of fostering economic growth in the Southern Hemisphere, shifting the basis of all new aid and investment toward environmental responsibility. A Watchdog Group Just as the world has set up international agencies to insure respect for human rights and to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, so the Earth Summit created a new Sustainable Development Commission to monitor the world's compliance with the promises it made at Rio. "The Rio Conference does not end at Rio," the Brazilian President, Fernando Collor de Mello, said today. The strength of public interest in the meeting -- 10,000 private environmentalists and 8,000 journalists attended -- suggests that governments will not be allowed to forget what they have begun. But the Earth Summit also showed that tackling global challenges in today's world means forging agreement among some 180 countries that are no | Battle in Rio: The Day After Friends and Foes Agree On a Sharper Sentinel |
536206_0 | World Economies | |
535399_0 | The United States is prepared to send troops to help supply and safeguard humanitarian aid to Bosnia and Herzegovina but has ruled out using troops in combat, officials said today. While President Bush said "there's no commitment" on sending troops, other officials said troops might go, but only in humanitarian roles. "We will do what we should do, but I'm not going to go into the fact of using United States troops," Mr. Bush said today before leaving for Panama and Brazil. "We're not the world's policemen." Administration officials have said in recent days that Washington was willing to assist the relief effort led by the United Nations. Statements today by officials at the Pentagon and the State Department brought into sharper focus the preparations being made and the conditions under which assistance would be sent. The Pentagon's View The Defense Department spokesman, Pete Williams, said United States military assistance hinged on securing a cease-fire at the airport in Sarajevo and on receiving a specific request from the United Nations. "There has been no request from the United Nations for United States support," Mr. Williams told reporters today. "Even so, we're actively looking at how best we could support the United Nations effort to get the humanitarian aid to Bosnia. I would say the United States is prepared to help the United Nations provide humanitarian relief." Mr. Williams said the United States had already provided aid to other former Yugoslav republics. Two United States Air Force C-5 cargo planes had delivered 40 tons of food to Zagreb, the Croatian capital, on May 16 for delivery to Sarajevo. Because of the fighting, the delivery has been redirected to the area around Split, Croatia, he said. More Food to Be Shipped Later this month, Mr. Williams said, 155 bulk containers of food are to be shipped to Zagreb for distribution by the Red Cross and the United Nations; the food is being sent from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Pisa, Italy. Senior United States policymakers and military officials have expressed deep reservations about the risks and prospects of military involvement in the Balkans. "Any action we'd take would be coordinated within the United Nations effort," said one general. Two senior Pentagon officials said there had been no discussions of deploying troops in combat roles. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are said to | U.S. Would Send Troops Only in a Relief Role |
535478_2 | ahead offers extraordinary promise in bringing better family health, including fertility management, to substantially greater numbers of the world's families," Ms. Catley-Carlson said in an interview at the council's offices. "We now have the biggest-ever crop of teen-agers on the planet, and it will be their decisions about the size of families that will help determine whether the population doubles in size again, as it has done since 1950. "Teen-agers are anything but stupid," she added. "They look around and understand that smaller families can mean a better life. They recognize they have access to contraceptives their parents did not." She said the council, through its partner agencies in Asia, Africa and Latin America, is discovering what is safe and effective in those parts of the world. "That's why we have research programs," she said. "We cannot, sitting in our New York headquarters, decide what will work for a teen-ager in Zimbabwe." Concerns of New President The council's $40 million annual budget comes from various governments, the United Nations, foundations and individual donors, with the largest share from Washington. The choice of a president from outside this country was not seen as threatening American financial suppport. The council's governing board of 20 people is drawn from 16 countries. Although the council's biomedical research laboratories are in New York, at Rockefeller University, it maintains 16 overseas offices and a staff of 310 from 59 countries. The United Nations Population Fund awarded the council its 1992 Population Award for its "most outstanding contribution to the awareness of population questions and to their solution." In part through the council's activities, new contraceptive technology has been developed, including Norplant, a device inserted under the skin that was approved for use in the United States in 1990, and also a copper intrauterine device. The council has also pioneered research in male fertility, with the aim of developing a contraceptive for men. Ms. Catley-Carlson, who has been a member of the council's board since 1990, said she was concerned that interest in population issues focused mainly on areas of disagreement -- differences about ethical and religious questions, abortion and the fear in developing countries that the industrialized world was trying to impose its views. "A lot of good things are happening and a lot of building blocks are now in place," she said. "The stone is beginning to run downhill. We can push it a little." | Canadian Official to Lead Population Council |
535409_0 | A multibillion-dollar aid package to help save the developing world's environmental resources took shape here today as national leaders began to arrive for the Earth Summit's concluding phase. After working through the night, negotiators were said to have agreed on almost all aspects of an ambitious package of measures to promote environmentally sustainable development in the poorer south, but officials said the United States contribution was likely to be small. Negotiators still struggled to resolve their differences over the aid that the wealthier industrial nations of the North would offer the poor nations of the South to offset the extra cost that the latter face for safeguarding the environment and preserving disappearing forests. Talks Through the Weekend As a result of the standoff, the Earth Summit's chief organizer, Maurice Strong of Canada, announced today that negotiations would continue into the weekend so President Bush and other leaders can help shape the final compromise. "Involving the heads of state and government personally will give us a better result," Mr. Strong told a news conference today. "By Sunday we hope they will have produced a full agreement for approval by the summit's final plenary session." But diplomats said the decision to involve heads of state and government in the final talks reflected the intractable difficulties that had arisen and that could now be resolved only by compromises at the highest political level. As their price for agreeing to Agenda 21, the plan for making economic development environmentally sustainable, developing countries want the industrialized world to meet a 20-year-old commitment to raise its aid to seven-tenths of 1 percent of economic output by 2000, from four-tenths of 1 percent at present. How Much Is Wanted They also want donors to enlarge the size of the $1.3 billion Global Environmental Facility that they set up three years ago in the World Bank and to add a special "earth increment" to the World Bank agency that supplies loans on easier terms so it can provide virtually free environmental aid to the very poorest nations. The United States, which has contributed $50 million to the Global Environmental Facility so far, is prepared to consider an increase and is ready to study an "earth increment," officials say. Washington is also offering $150 million in new aid to help developing countries safeguard their forests. But today the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Michael Young, reiterated | Pact on Environment Near, But Hurdles on Aid Remain |
535481_3 | roundabout as the method sounds on first hearing, its success in the laboratory has been dramatic. In one experiment, when researchers injected altered mouse cells into 14 rats afflicted with brain cancer, the brain tumors vanished completely in 11 animals and regressed significantly in the other three. "When my student first starting working on this, he couldn't believe the way the tumors would just disappear," said Dr. Culver, who conceived the scheme two years ago. "I was overjoyed to see it myself." Radical Departure But his colleague, Dr. Ram, is more reserved in his appraisal of the technique. "We can predict nothing about it for humans," he said. "We'll be satisfied to show it's feasible to get any biological effect at all." In most of the other gene therapy experiments tried so far, researchers have treated hereditary disorders and cancer by removing cells from the body, installing new genes into those cells and then reintroducing the altered cells into the patient. Dr. Culver collaborated on the most well-known gene therapy experiment, an effort to treat children suffering from a severe inherited immune disorder by manipulating their blood cells. But the new method for brain cancer departs radically from previous efforts. Rather than altering and returning a patient's own cells into the bloodstream, mouse skin cells will be used as the genetic factories because the viruses that carry the critical herpes gene grow extremely well in the rodent cells. Scientists do not anticipate that the patients will react badly to the presence of the rodent cells in their brains. For the most part, the brain is shielded from the warrior immune cells that would expel inserted mouse tissue from other spots in the body. Nevertheless, the mouse cells are expected to be eliminated from the body over time, but not before their effectiveness has been demonstrated or disproved. Most encouraging to the scientists, the evidence from the animal experiments indicates that the ganciclovir treatment kills many more tumor cells than are infected by the viruses bearing the herpes gene. For unknown reasons, the treatment has a so-called bystander effect, in which cancer cells surrounding the infected cells respond to the herpes drug, perhaps because as they proliferate wildly, they take up toxins from the infected cells and then die themselves. "We may not understand it, but the bystander effect is one of the unexpected beauties of the therapy," Dr. Broder said. | Scientists Report Novel Therapy for Brain Tumors |
536768_0 | The Government said today that for the first time since 1973, its representatives will meet on Friday with officials of both Catholic and Protestant political parties from Northern Ireland. The meeting, to be held in London, will be the first between the Protestant-dominated parties, who insist that the province remain united to Britain, and the Irish Government since talks by moderate Unionists and Dublin at Sunningdale, England, in 1973. The meeting will also mark the first time since Ireland became independent in 1922 that hard-line Unionists, who did not attend the 1973 talks, have met Irish officials. A Government official said today that while there were many uncertainties about how the talks might proceed, the fact they are being held is a "hopeful development." The British minister for the province, Sir Patrick Mayhew, who has been chairman of the talks, said they were part of a three-phase process that would cover the proposed structure of a new government for Northern Ireland and other issues. Britain took direct control of the province in 1972 in an attempt to control the rising violence between the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority; 2,990 people have been killed in 23 years. In addition to the the British and Irish Governments and the three Protestant-dominated parties, the talks will be attended by the Social Democratic and Labor Party, which is predominantly Catholic and seeks a gradual increase in Dublin's influence in Northern Ireland but not immediate union with the Irish Republic. The party also denounces the violent campaign of the predominantly Catholic Irish Republican Army, which wants to unite the province with Ireland. The I.R.A.'s political wing, Sinn Fein, has been excluded from the talks because it refuses to denounce violence. The policy of both Ireland and Britain, established by the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, is that no change will be made in the status of the province without the consent of the majority; there are 950,000 Protestants and 650,000 Catholics in Northern Ireland. | Ulster Protestants and Dublin Aides Plan First Talks Since '73 |
537366_0 | A panel of experts on obstetrics and gynecology recommended today that the Food and Drug Administration reverse itself and approve the injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera for use in the United States. The contraceptive is approved for use in about 90 countries but has been blocked from the United States market because of concerns that it may cause breast cancer in a small percentage of women. It was not immediately clear whether the F.D.A. would accept the panel's recommendation. In the 1970's, panels of experts twice recommended that the drug be approved as a contraceptive; though the agency usually accepts such advice, each time it overruled the panels. Debate in today's meeting echoed other recent discussions at the Food and Drug Administration -- choice for women versus safety of product for women. Those opposed to its approval, including the National Women's Health Network, said not enough data had been collected to determine just what rate of breast cancer may be caused by the drug. Suppresses Ovulation The chemical involved, depo-medroxy progesterone acetate, a steroid that mimics the natural hormone progesterone, is similar to the progestin that is now used in a variety of birth control pills. It has several contraceptive qualities but works chiefly by suppressing ovulation. The drug is produced as tiny crystals suspended in a water-based solution. When it is injected, the drug slowly leaches from the crystals into the body. Cindy Pearson of the National Women's Health Network said in her testimony before the F.D.A. advisory panel that three major international studies published in the last eight years have shown that women who use Depo-Provera have a somewhat higher risk of breast cancer. But the leader of an international study by the World Health Organization, Dr. David Thomas of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, reported to the meeting that if women were counted overall, there was no additional breast cancer in Depo-Provera users. But for women under 35 years old, the rate of breast cancer increases somewhat. At the same time, he noted that Depo-Provera protects women against endometrial cancer. In a "worst-case" estimate, he said it might result in an additional six cancer cases per 100,000 users. He said the use of Depo-Provera would prevent about 19 endometrial cancer cases per 100,000 users. Although breast cancer is far more common than endometrial cancer, he said that overall the drug might slightly reduce a woman's cancer | Panel Urges Contraceptive's Approval |
537258_0 | To the Editor: An Associated Press article from New Haven June 6 gave a misleading impression of a report by a Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering panel investigating links between health and the magnetic waves sent out by highpower electrical lines. The panel's three-page summary states and restates that the findings were inconclusive: "Absolute proof of the occurence of adverse effects of E.L.F." - extremely low frequency - "fields at pervading magnitudes cannot be found in the available evidence, and the same evidence does not permit a judgment that adverse effects could not occur." Electromagnetic radiation has an undisputed physical effect on people. It may be true that no one study has yet proved that electromagnetic fields are carcinogens. However, thousands of studies have shown strong links, and more conclusive evidence is emerging. More is known today of the adverse effects of electromagnetic fields than was known 20 years ago about asbestos. Electromagnetic fields are a huge and pervasive issue. When their danger is admitted,there will be financial ramifications of a magnitude that will make the savings and loan institutions bailout seem small potatoes. Note that utility companies have financed much of the research on the subject. Alan Herman New York, June 7, 1992. | Panel Didn't Rule Out Power-Line Health Risk |
537259_0 | To the Editor: An Associated Press article from New Haven June 6 gave a misleading impression of a report by a Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering panel investigating links between health and the magnetic waves sent out by highpower electrical lines. The panel's three-page summary states and restates that the findings were inconclusive: "Absolute proof of the occurence of adverse effects of E.L.F." - extremely low frequency - "fields at pervading magnitudes cannot be found in the available evidence, and the same evidence does not permit a judgment that adverse effects could not occur." Electromagnetic radiation has an undisputed physical effect on people. It may be true that no one study has yet proved that electromagnetic fields are carcinogens. However, thousands of studies have shown strong links, and more conclusive evidence is emerging. More is known today of the adverse effects of electromagnetic fields than was known 20 years ago about asbestos. Electromagnetic fields are a huge and pervasive issue. When their danger is admitted,there will be financial ramifications of a magnitude that will make the savings and loan institutions bailout seem small potatoes. Note that utility companies have financed much of the research on the subject. Alan Herman New York, June 7, 1992. | Panel Didn't Rule Out Power-Line Health Risk |
533028_2 | Museum, who came here to serve on the show's inter-American jury. On Tuesday, Mr. Bozano, president of Banco Bozano, Simonsen, is to distribute $600,000 in awards to the 12 prize winners, representing eight nations of the Americas. New Means of Protest Luiz Fernando Freire, the show's curator, said he sensed that some Latin American painters were adopting environmental themes as a new vehicle for social protest. Occupying the museum's second floor is "Arte Amazonas," an exhibition organized by Germany's Goethe Institute. In February, the show's curators brought 25 sculptors from around the world to work in three Amazon cities: Belem, Manaus and Porto Velho. The sole artistic restriction was a requirement to work only with local materials. "The materials make the pieces quite earthy, quite evocative of the Amazon environment," said Mr. Messer, who had special praise for a school of preserved piranha fish by Maria Fernando Cardosa of Colombia, and for a floor dominated by a circle of clay figures, the work of Antony Gormley of Britain. Last February in Manaus, El Anatsui, a Ghanaian sculptor, talked about the tree trunk that he was marking with cuts and brands. "This kind of wood suits my purpose well," he said. "When you cut deeper, it gets redder. I am talking about cutting the flesh of the earth." Symbols of Destruction In the museum's foyer, Mr. Krajcberg has mounted his largest sculpture show to date: transforming charred tree trunks into graphic symbols of forest destruction. Mr. Krajcberg, a Pole, immigrated to Brazil in 1947 after losing most of his family in World War II. Here, he says, he saw humanity's same destructive impulse take a new course. In one of his pieces on display, the sap from a dead tree runs blood red. "This is my great cry of revolt," said the sculptor, who divides his time between a tree house in Bahia and scavenging trips to the ever-changing frontier between farmers and the Amazon forest. Also at the museum will be work by Margaret Mee, a British botanical painter who made 12 trips to the Amazon in the 1960's and 70's, and an exhibition called "Design and Environment," featuring posters by 30 graphic artists from many countries, including Hungary and Zimbabwe. Italy's Contribution "Reperti" ("Archeological Findings"), a show sponsored by the Italian Government at the National Museum of Fine Arts, is subtitled "The Environment Seen by 20 Renowned International Artists." | Arts Invade Rio for Earth Summit |
532869_2 | that many of the city's repaved arteries will be closed off to become temporary V.I.P. expressways. "Cariocas fear transit chaos more than ecological future," read a headline today in O Globo, Rio's largest selling newspaper. Other groups were disgruntled to learn that they will not profit from the ecological bonanza. "Eco-92 breaks the law," Brazil's film makers' union said, objecting to an invasion of foreign television crews operating without Brazilian technicians, a violation of local labor law. More irreverance was on display on Saturday afternoon when music fans loudly booed Rio's Mayor, Marcello Alencar, at a free beach-front concert called "Earth Show." In contrast, Maurice Strong, the United Nations organizer of the Earth Summit, was wildly applauded, even though he spoke in English, a language undoubtedly understood by only a few concertgoers. Several visiting American and European journalists were dismayed to learn today that Brazil's Foreign Ministry had billeted them in a hotel overlooking the nation's largest slum, Rocinha, home to 350,000 people. In the last five years, Rio's tourist revenues dropped in half. Tourism officials largely attributed the fall to foreign reporters writing about the city's crime and poverty. Over the weekend, several warm-up events gave participants an advance taste of the summit meeting. "The First Planetary Green Meeting" drew representatives of green parties from 30 nations. "In the Sahel, all our problems are essentially ecological -- desertification, the weakening of soils," said Ibrahim Traore, a founder of Mali's Ecology Party For Integration. Crisply dressed in a khaki safari suit, Mr. Traore said he was unfazed by Rio's heat wave. At the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples, where the red-and-blue-suited Laplanders gathered in the shade, Oren R. Lyons, a clan chief of the Onondaga Nation, explained why he left New York State for the long trip to Rio. A Message From the U.S. "We have longer experience with the white man than our Amazon brothers, and we came to tell them not to take everything they offer you," said Chief Lyons, who wore a T- shirt depicting a Dakota ghost dance and carried in his gray felt hat an eagle feather blessed by Pueblo Indians for protection. Cutting through a clutter of languages, Leon Shenandoah Todadaho, the Onondaga's 77-year-old chief, met with Amazon Indians in their thatched long house on Thursday night. "Chief Shenandoah burned tobacco, we gave them corn from our country, and we shared a spritual prayer | Rio's New Day in Sun Leaves Laplander Limp |
533128_0 | World Economies | |
532969_3 | greatest polluters on the planet," Greenpeace said in a statement released to hundreds of reporters who have gathered here. "The Greenpeace Book of Greenwash," released here on Tuesday, accused Aracruz of "promoting the idea that land must be used for economic function." "Local people cannot eat pulp -- Aracruz's huge monoculture plantations exist to supply northern markets," the book said. The book also accused Du Pont, General Motors, Mitsubishi and Royal Dutch/Shell of "painting themselves green." Greenpeace said Aracruz had cut native forests and forced tenant farmers and Indians off some land it had acquired in the late 1960's for tree farms. The company says virtually all the 726 square miles of land it purchased had been severely degraded through a succession of predatory uses: logging, charcoal burning, coffee growing and ranching. Mr. Lorentzen said today that the company had negotiated a settlement in the late 1970's with a group of 250 Indians, the only indigenous community that had claims in the area. "These areas were just about abandoned," Mr. Lorentzen said, referring to the degraded ecology of the area. "The forests had been cut. There wasn't much to destroy." Native Forest and Cloned Trees On a recent day in mid-May, the Aracruz plantations appeared as patchworks: fingers of dark green native forest separated the regimented lines of lighter-green eucalyptus trees. Native forest accounts for 28 percent of the land and helps protect the eucalyptus trees from disease. Through cloning, company scientists have reduced the average time it takes a tree to grow to maturity from 12 years to 7 years. Backed by some of the world's fastest growing eucalyptus stands, Aracruz expects to produce one million tons of bleached eucalyptus pulp this year, twice as much as two years ago. "Before, this was one of the poorest areas of Brazil," said Lineu Siqueira Jr., the company's environmental resources manager. "Now you have paved roads, schools, sewers and hospitals." In Rio, Mr. Lorentzen also emphasized the development part of "sustainable development." He said: "We need development. We cannot accept that one billion people in the Third World live in poverty." With the Rainbow Warrior II anchored off the Aracruz dock, some of Mr. Lorentzen's business colleagues are saying he entered a no-win game when he adopted a high profile on environmental issues. "As we say in Norway, it's the spouting whale that gets harpooned," one partner of Norwegian origin said. | High Profile on Environment For Brazilian Pulp Company |
533200_0 | To the Editor: I have just finished "Aging Baby Boomers Take Fresh Look at a Milestone" (front page, May 17), the first of your two articles on menopause, and I am disturbed by its tone. Menopause is not something women need be afraid of. It is a perfectly normal and natural part of life: like puberty, like childbirth. Are women afraid of those? No, generally they look forward to them. The vast majority of women have moderate physical symptoms during menopause that are not particularly unsettling. There is much social science research on menopause: it shows most women don't have a great deal of psychological difficulty with it. Many have a lot of vigor and energy as it wanes. Margaret Mead called it PMZ: post-menopausal zest. It's one's attitude toward menopause that counts. Women fear it because this society fears aging and, with sexism added in, says women are over the hill when they're menopausal. That view represents cultural psychopathology: it has nothing to do with reality. The comments in the article about hysterical outbursts at work and fears about being unable to handle one's job simply do not apply to most women. They remind me of the widely publicized comment years ago about how a woman couldn't be President because of menopause. Haven't we gotten further than that by now? I've known a few men who have acted rather hysterical in mid-life as well. Were they menopausal? I am almost 53 and have finished menopause. I had moderate symptoms. I am glad not to have menstrual cramps and bleeding anymore. I have two wonderful children: I don't want any more. I feel I am in my prime. I am. PHYLLIS J. STURGES Menlo Park, Calif., May 17, 1992 The writer, associate professor of social work at San Jose State University, heads the College of Social Work's Specialization in Aging program. | Menopause: A Normal, Natural Part of Life |
534894_0 | The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company said yesterday that it had recalled 840 workers who were laid off at tire plants in Gadsden, Ala.; Union City, Tenn., and Valleyfield, Quebec, and at a hose and belt plant in Lincoln, Neb. It also said 230 new workers had been hired or would begin work soon at plants in Napanee, Ontario; Cartersville, Ga.; St. Marys, Ohio; Beaumont, Tex., and Houston. The company said it expected to complete the hiring by fall, when the Napanee plant will add 130 workers to increase production to 14,000 tires a day from 8,000 currently. The tire cord and conveyor-belt fabric plant in Cartersville will also hire new workers later this year to cover a $5.3 million modernization and expansion. COMPANY NEWS | WORKERS ARE RECALLED BY GOODYEAR IN U.S. AND CANADA |
534868_3 | clear-cut failure, he answered, "Yes." Both delegates and observers said that time was rapidly running out. Negotiations must be completed by Wednesday night, and the European delegate said that while there had been some progress, the two major questions of the call for a treaty and trade in forest products had not yet even been addressed. The negotiators, he said, had already declared an impasse on another major issue: Whether to call for international guidelines for the management of forests, a point favored by the industrialized countries but rejected by the developing nations. As for the $150 million in aid for forest preservation proposed by Mr. Bush, this official said that some developing countries had expressed interest in receiving the money. An American official said that those countries that supported the United States in pushing for a full declaration of principles on forests at the Rio conference would receive special consideration in the distribution of the American aid. 'It's a Toughie' While there was some movement on these steps, Maurice Strong, secretary general of the summit meeting, was less than optimistic about the outcome. "It's a toughie," he said. Compounding the impasse, environmentalists charged that the forest talks were being used as a political football to gain leverage in negotiations on a comprehensive blueprint to guide nations in pursuing economic development while protecting the environment. As a result, they said, proposals were being watered down to the point of worthlessness. "They're in real serious trouble," William Mankin of the Sierra Club, a forest specialist, said of the talks. And if they succeed in producing a statement of principles, he said, "they're just not going to do anything wonderful." He and other environmentalists charge that even if there is agreement on a draft statement on forests, it will probably fall far short of forestry measures already taken. Among such measures are the World Bank's prohibition adopted in 1991 on financing for logging in primary tropical rain forests, and other international rules confining trade in tropical timber to materials gained from sustainable forest management. The environmentalits also said that the proposed forestry statement being discussed in Rio would not adequately address the root causes of forest destruction, like clearing land for agriculture and cutting trees for fuel and timber sales. Reserving Veto Power On the biodiversity treaty, some European Governments, including the British, were said to be preparing to sign the treaty | BUSH PLAN TO SAVE FORESTS IS BLOCKED BY POOR COUNTRIES |
534957_0 | By the thousands, Americans are signing up to preserve the environment by pledging "to make the earth a secure and hospitable place for present and future generations." The pledges are to be presented to Maurice Strong, the secretary general of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro today. The problem is, the pledges are on paper. Lots of different kinds of paper. Fax paper, magazine paper, color copier paper, all of which is hard to process in conventional recycling processes. But this is the Earth Summit, with 160 nations gathered to work out agreements to ease the burdens on the planet. It would not do to just truck the crates of pledges to a landfill, adding to the trash disposal problem and conspicuously consuming scarce resources. So, as a means of demonstrating the recycling capabilities of a French subsidiary, the Thermo Electron Corporation of Waltham, Mass., will collect the discarded pledges, fly them across the Atlantic and ship them to a plant about 100 miles east of Paris for recycling. The subsidiary, E.& M. Lamort S.A., has a multistage process that Thermo Electron executives say can remove ink and other coatings from fax and color photocopy papers. The end product is a high-quality pulp that can be made into paper. Although Thermo Electron executives are not saying that it makes economic sense to ship wastepaper by air across oceans for recycling, they do say that it is important to demonstrate that it is technically feasible to treat grades of paper now kept out of recycling programs. "Emerging technologies allow us to re-use an increasing portion of our valuable resources," said George N. Hatsopoulos, chairman of Thermo Electron. "In doing so, we can help assure development without destroying the environment." | COMPANY NEWS: Long-Distance Recycling; Earth Summit Petitions Are Being Put to a Test |
533445_0 | Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. signed legislation today making Connecticut the first state in the nation to ban the use of hand-held radar guns, which police unions believe can cause cancer after long-term use. Radar guns, a familiar fixture since the 1950's on rural back roads and super highway speed traps, will still be allowed if mounted outside police cars, and Mr. Weicker said other speed-detecting technologies, using lasers, would also be substituted to enforce speed limits. The ban, which takes effect on July 1, passed the House and Senate unanimously, under heavy lobbying pressure by police unions, which led what became something of a crusade against the guns after several officers with years of traffic enforcement were diagnosed with cancer. The state police stopped using the devices last year, and some municipal police departments in Connecticut and Florida have also halted their use. The Seattle Mariners baseball team no longer uses radar to track the speed of pitchers' fast balls. Manufacturers say that the guns are safe, and that Connecticut's ban was more political than medical. In Connecticut, the unions began pressing the administration for the ban while negotiations were under way with the state for large benefit concessions to reduce the state budget. Mr. Weicker said in signing the bill at a ceremony in his office that the law would protect police officers, and that was all that mattered. "You've got a difficult enough life to lead without having what you hold in your own hands be a threat to your life," the Governor told a group of state and local police officers at the ceremony. Despite such remarks, a study commissioned by Connecticut State Police and conducted by a New York testing laboratory failed to conclude that the use of the devices caused cancer. The results were released in March. And last year, Eleanor R. Adair, a Yale University expert on radio frequency and microwave field exposure, said there was absolutely no evidence that the radar guns posed a hazard. She likened the strength of radar guns' output to a nursery monitor, a child's walkie-talkie, or "a jar of 30 fireflies, if you could train them to all go off at once." Manufacturers echoed that view. "All of the tests have found that the units are safe," said John M. Kusek, a senior vice president at Kustom Signals Inc. He estimated that about 75,000 to 100,000 devices | Connecticut Is First State to Bar Hand-Held Radar Guns |
533490_0 | Some 20 top New York chefs yesterday called for an international boycott of genetically engineered foods. They were responding to the announcement last week by Vice President Dan Quayle that such foods could be marketed without prior approval of the Federal Food and Drug Administration and without special labeling. "My gut reaction is that I don't want a biotechnician in a lab coat telling me it's a better tomato," Richard Moonen, executive chef at the Water Club, said at a news conference at his restaurant. "I don't know where he is coming from. I think mother nature does a great job on her own. These people are tampering with the ecosystem and will cause problems. But what is most disturbing to me is the idea of selling the food without a label." The chefs were invited to speak by Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Pure Food Campaign, a coalition of farmers, consumers and environmentalists that wants the Government to test and label genetically engineered foods. Mr. Rifkin said his organization has filed a petition with the F.D.A. to require producers to test genetically engineered foods and to label them. "If the F.D.A. does not do what we ask," he said, "we will bring suit on every single genetically engingeered food that comes on the market." The chefs supporting the boycott also include Richard D'Orazi of An American Place and Alan Harding of Nosmo King, who attended the news conference and several who did not, among them Francesco Antonucci of Remi, Don Pintabona of TriBeCa Grill, Thomas Valenti of Alison on Dominick, Michael Romano of Union Square Cafe and Alfred Portale of Gotham Bar and Grill. | Chefs Urge Boycotting New Foods |
535158_2 | family planning, and that leadership made a difference; because of American aid, the numbers of people in developing countries who use birth control has soared. But in 1984 we enforced the first gag rule, the one that said we would end aid to any international agency that mentioned abortion, the one that sent a signal about what kind of nation we'd become. And when preparations were under way for Rio, we were so obdurate about maintaining our old life styles that we were in no position to persuade other nations to change their own. Mr. Bush, whose idea of the long view is always November, was not the man to break a deadlock on what George Zeidenstein, the president of the Population Council, described as "overpopulation versus overconsumption." We're not simply talking about too many people here, the fact that some estimates have world population doubling in the next century on what already seems to be a "No Vacancy" planet. And we're not talking population control, the forced limitation of family size. Family size should be a matter of informed choice. In many nations, it's not -- not informed, and not a choice. In some countries, women sneak off for contraception because their husbands still consider family size a measure of their manhood. In others, contraceptives are just a rumor, a diaphragm a dream, and abortion the primary method of birth control. All over the world there are women who want to space and limit their child-bearing, not because of the global environment but because of their own environment -- the contents of their cupboards, the limits of their stamina. Their governments have been either indifferent to those needs or, influenced by religious leaders, hostile to them. At the Earth Summit those needs are barely acknowledged, except for a clause that urges countries to adopt "appropriate demographic policies." Yet one doomsday prediction after another says that in the centuries to come untenable levels of population will be staved off only by famine, disease or wars. How can anyone think those preferable to the condom, the intrauterine device or the birth control pill? "There are too many of us," a nurse in a clinic in Africa said last month of the malnourished children of her country. There is no strong voice to speak for her, and so many others like her, at the Earth Summit. Because of that, we all lose. | Public & Private; Zero Population Talk |
537888_0 | World Economies | |
537933_0 | A British scientist has predicted that because of the AIDS epidemic, populations in the worst-afflicted African countries will within 20 years switch over from their present high rate of increase to an actual decrease in numbers. In Uganda, where 1.5 million people out of a population of 16 million are thought to be infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, the current 3 percent population growth rate is likely to fall to below zero after 2002, with more people dying than being born, the projections say. In 15 years, Uganda would have 20 percent fewer people than if the AIDS epidemic had not occurred. The population would be 20.28 million, instead of 24 million. Tanzania, Malawi and Rwanda, all in the central and east African belt where AIDS has hit hardest, would be similarly affected, the results show. The projections have been made by Roy M. Anderson, head of the department of biology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, who is a leader in the growing field of mathematical modeling that is used for predicting the demographic consequences of AIDS. The results of his predictions, done with Robert M. May of Oxford University, have been presented in medical and scientific journals in the last year and were expanded on by Professor Anderson at an international conference on infectious diseases in Nairobi last week. Pessimistic Projection Professor Anderson's results are far gloomier than those of other mathematical modelers at the World Bank, the World Health Organization of the United Nations and the Population Council in New York. They have all concluded that population growth in Africa would be curbed by AIDS but would not turn negative. The discussion of the impact of AIDS on Africa's population comes in the wake of an assertion this month by a leading AIDS research group, headed by Dr. Jonathan Mann of the Harvard School of Public Health, that the number of people infected with H.I.V. by the year 2000 would be far higher than the 40 million predicted by the World Health Organization. There are already 6 million Africans infected with H.I.V., and according to what are generally considered the conservative estimates of W.H.O., 10 million will be infected by 1995. In making his predictions, Professor Anderson said he has assumed that the prevailing patterns of sexual activity with multiple partners will continue in Africa. In contrast with the pattern | Briton Sees AIDS Cutting Population in Parts of Africa |
537960_0 | More than 200 French intellectuals and artists have called on President Francois Mitterrand to recognize and officially proclaim that France's collaborationist Vichy Government was responsible for crimes against Jews in World War II. They urged the President to make such a statement to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first major roundup of 13,000 French and foreign Jews on July 16 and 17, 1942. Of some 76,000 Jews deported to death camps from France under the Nazi occupation, only 2,500 survived. The appeal came amid growing awareness in France of the Vichy Government's anti-Semitic policies as well as of the decision by successive postwar French governments to blame only German occupation forces for the wartime persecution of Jews. After the war, the leaders of the Vichy Government, including its head, Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, and its Prime Minister, Pierre Laval, were tried and condemned for collaboration, but their anti-Jewish measures were barely mentioned. Even in the 1980's, when charges of crimes against humanity were brought against four former Vichy officials for organizing deportation of Jews, the French state seemed reluctant to reopen the past. One of the four has since died, but none of the others has yet been tried. Charges Are Dropped The entire issue burst to the surface late April, however, when a Paris court dropped charges of crimes against humanity against one of the accused, Paul Touvier, on the ground that while he executed seven Jews he was working for a regime that had no policy of persecuting Jews. The ruling caused outrage, with Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy saying it had "wounded" France and Mr. Mitterrand expressing his surprise. As disturbing to many as the court's apparent effort to clear Mr. Touvier was its attempt to exonerate the entire Vichy Government. The result has been the most soul-searching debate ever in France about Vichy's policy toward the Jews, including the fact that Vichy voluntarily began adopting discriminatory measures against Jews as early as October 1940, barely three months after the fall of France. Since the ruling in the Touvier case has now been appealed, Government officials have said Mr. Mitterrand cannot comment further without appearing to challenge the independence of the judiciary. A decision on whether the case against Mr. Touvier will proceed is expected in the fall. He had been freed before the ruling in April for reasons of health. The signers of the appeal | Paris Asked to Admit Vichy's Crimes Against Jews |
537971_3 | like the Senate hearings on Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination would be in the insert, which will be called "Extra." And another poll, this one on women and pornography, will run in the August issue. The responses will be sent to every member of Congress three weeks before a scheduled vote on a proposed antipornography bill. None of this means that The Journal will abandon the kinds of stories that it claims give it 17 million readers. The July issue, for instance, has Christie Brinkley on the cover ("This Is It! I Never Want to Pose in a Swimsuit Again!") and includes feature stories like "You Can Look Years Younger" and "It Was Good For Me, Too -- and Other Lies You Tell Your Husband," as well as articles on summer food and hot movies and television shows. But when Ms. Blyth introduced a new column, "Women to Women," in the February issue, which discussed a woman whose husband was HIV positive, the magazine received 50 letters a day from readers who wanted to share their own experiences. "I wanted a woman's magazine column that didn't have a happy ending," Ms. Blyth said. "It's unusual in the women's service field." Advertising Slips Like most other magazines, The Journal has seen its advertising pages decline in the last two years. They have dropped 3.8 percent, to 1,485 pages, in 1991, according to Media Industry Newsletter. For the first six months of 1992, The Journal was down 78 ad pages, or 10.5 percent, from a year earlier. This was the largest percentage decline of any of the seven women's service magazines. "For the last couple of years, they were on a bit of a roll and doing some interesting things, but then things started to tumble," said Martin S. Walker, president of Periodical Studies Service, a magazine consultant. "The real problem with these magazines is that years and years ago, advertisers would go into all of them, but now they only buy two or three," he said. "Now there is also more rate pressure and more wheeling and dealing than in other magazines." THE MEDIA BUSINESS Correction: June 23, 1992, Tuesday A picture caption on the Media Business page yesterday with an article about The Ladies' Home Journal reversed the identities of two women. Donna Galotti, the magazine's publisher, was on the right, and Myrna Blyth, editor in chief, on the left. | Women Now Talk Back To Ladies' Home Journal |
537939_2 | factions. In a surprise development this morning, the nominal leader of the Khmer Rouge, Khieu Sampan, attended in the conference. Urged to attend by the Japanese, he sat expressionless as Mr. Akashi, using words that were somewhat toned down from his prepared text, accused the Khmer Rouge of undercutting the peace process. Assurances Are Sought Mr. Khieu Sampan has insisted that the Khmer Rouge will not abide by the peace treaty, which they signed, until they receive guarantees that Vietnam has withdrawn all of its troops from Cambodia. Vietnam, which ousted the Khmer Rouge in 1979 and installed the current Government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, says the last of its troops left in 1989. Most diplomats in Cambodia agree that there is no trace of the Vietnamese Army. For Japan, the long-scheduled conference comes at a crucial time. Last week, the Japanese Parliament passed a bill that will allow its military to join United Nations peacekeeping forces in noncombat roles. This morning, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa told the conference that "we will hereafter strive to dispact our personnel" to Cambodia" but said that the country must also take a lead in the humanitarian and diplomatic sides of the dispute. An unresolved question about the conference is how much pressure Japan, the United States and Mr. Akashi will be able to place on the Khmer Rouge to relent. Although the United States forbids direct contact between American officials and Khmer Rouge leaders, senior Japanese officials spent the weekend meeting with Mr. Khieu Samphan and Son Sen, the Khmer Rouge military leader, in an effort to bring them back in line with the treaty. Mr. Khieu Samphan said nothing when he left the morning session of the talks. "The fact that the Khmer Rouge felt it was necessary to come to Tokyo rather than boycott this conference is a sign that they are fearful of being cut out," a Japanese diplomat said. "They don't have the kind of power they once did." Japanese officials suspect that the refusal to disarm is a bluff by the Khmer Rouge to win concessions, especially part of the international funds. Countries like China, which have surreptiously helped supply the rebels in the past, have greatly reduced their support for the group. Eventually, Japanese officials say, the Khmer Rouge leadership will understand that they have no choice but to follow the terms of the Paris treaty. | U.N. Official for Cambodia Pressures the Khmer Rouge |
539144_1 | at noon on Friday, the captain of the crew of about 60, Lieut. Comdr. Santiago Bolivar Pineiro of the Spanish Navy, called his vessels a "cultural museum" bringing "the friendship of the Spanish people." The ships were welcomed by a crowd of public officials as well as tourists and financial-district workers. A handful of protesters, who denounced Columbus as a symbol of Western imperialism and genocide, were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and assembly without a permit. Mayor David N. Dinkins side-stepped any hint of controversy, saying: ,'We can sometimes get so caught up with what's behind us that we fail to look ahead." Yesterday, thousands of visitors paid the $5 admission to climb aboard the ships, buy souvenirs like a $9 reproduction of a page of Columbus's log and marvel at how such tiny vessels could traverse the Atlantic. "They were so small," said Carolyn Galati, of Staten Island. "I was really impressed that they could come across the ocean in them." This year's long voyage was marred by a mutiny of sorts, as some sailors unhappy with the ships' cramped quarters had to be replaced. But, Gonzalo Pascual, a 24-year-old member of the Santa Maria's crew from Huelva, Spain, said that he never felt claustrophobic despite months of sleeping with two dozen others in very close proximity on canvas cots, beneath nets holding food. "The trip was a little rough because these boats were built as they would have been 500 years ago," he added. In New York, the highlight of the quincentenary celebration of Columbus's first voyage will be the procession of tall ships, which has been organized by a private, nonprofit group, Operation Sail. The ships, which range in length from 30 feet to 400 feet, are expected to be visible on Thursday and Friday near Atlantic Highlands, N.J., as they sail north along the New Jersey coastline. The 11-mile parade of ships on Saturday begins at 9 A.M., and can be viewed from Battery Park, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and from Riverside Park and other points along the Hudson River shoreline. On Saturday evening, a free concert by Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops is scheduled at the South Street Seaport at 7:30 P.M., with a fireworks display at 9:20 P.M. On July 7, the celebrations will conclude with a dry-land parade of 1,700 cadets from the tall ships, from Battery Park to | In 1992, America Discovers Columbus |
539132_2 | food producers are experimenting with frost resistance and with genetically increasing crop yields. But therein lies the marketing problem. "The public is scared of the word genetic," said Dr. Jean-Marc Pernet, a biotechnologist for the Rouquette Corporation, a carbohydrate maker in Gurnee, Ill. "We are working on a number of products, but we know very well that developing the technology will be easier than marketing the technology." A Sense of Menace Shortly after the Vice President's announcement, a cartoon in The New Yorker pictured a mad scientist rubbing his hands near his crop of leafy plants. The plants had menacing, feral faces on spindly stems. "That's splendid news from the F.D.A., my pretties," read the caption. In a letter to the editor of The New York Times, Paul Lewis of Newton Center, Mass., called genetically altered food "Frankenfood." It is not only the public that is uneasy. After a seminar on the use of plant culture in genetic engineering at the New Orleans meeting, one food technologist dubbed such products "sci-fi food." Coinages like these resonate a distrust of more than Chy-max or of the genetically engineered Flavor Saver, a tomato with an extended shelf life that Calgene Inc. of Davis, Calif., expects to introduce next year. Worrying About Safety Indeed, the deconstruction and re-construction of DNA chains in edible plants and animals seem to tap a wellspring of modern misgiving. "There's a distrust of technology, distrust of corporate profits, distrust of Government regulatory agencies and general fears about the safety of the food supply," said Dr. Susan K. Harlander, a leading researcher who is a professor of food science and nutrition at the University of Minnesota. In January, the Food Marketing Institute, a trade group in Washington, found that consumer confidence in the safety of the national food supply had dipped 10 percent in the previous 12 months, the largest slide in nearly a decade. Memories of Chernobyl Dr. Marshall Martin, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said that the growing public distrust was not unfounded. "After World War II, the public was told that DDT was safe," he said. "The same thing with nuclear power. It was supposed to solve all our problems and be safe. And then we have Chernobyl and Three Mile Island." Add the recent outbreaks of food-borne illness and the increasing evidence of the carcinogenic effects of a | Geneticists' Latest Discovery: Public Fear of 'Frankenfood' |
539019_0 | RECENT months have been filled with sour news for Fidel Castro. First came the sudden dissolution of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the billions in aid it had furnished. Then came a near disastrous harvest of sugar, Cuba's main product. Finally, even as supplies of oil and consumer goods from flour to bath soap began drying up, the leadership watched in scarcely disguised horror as an exile-led campaign to tighten the noose of a 31-year United States embargo seemed to gain serious momentum in Congress. In the past, Havana responded to almost every adversity with a single reflex: blaming the United States with torrents of overcharged rhetoric. But this time the leadership has begun showing the kind of flexibility that may yet shorten the prohibitive odds against its long-term survival. Since Havana's special relationship with the Soviet Union began to seriously wane two years ago, Cuban officials have made a high priority of building new economic and political ties with Western Europe and Latin America. Under this program, much of the economy, which was once entirely state controlled, has been rapidly opened up to private investment from abroad in the form of joint ventures, some with majority foreign ownership. Under pressure from these new partners and growing disgruntlement at home, Cuba has also begun introducing political reforms such as multi-candidate elections to the National Assembly. Some experts see such changes as the beginnings of an effort at gradual reform in order to avoid an accumulation of explosive pressures for change. Already, with the loss of trade ties with the former East Bloc, which represented more than 80 percent of Cuba's external commerce, the island is undergoing as jolting a transition as it had during the nationalizations of the early 1960's, when Washington, its overwhelmingly dominant foreign partner, imposed an embargo. Courting Americans Recently, even as conservative Cuban-American groups in the United States were urging United States officials to do more to cut off the island from the outside world, Havana began a sophisticated campaign to court American businessmen in the hope that their thirst for opportunities would bring them to lobby in Washington for a change in relations. This month, in the most spectacular recent effort, 100 American business executives, many from large companies like Phillip Morris, Squibb, Kodak and Boeing, were flown to Havana to assess the opportunities. Although few of them wished to be quoted, many | Cuba Seeks Pain Relief: Shot of Western Capital |
539381_0 | Conserving Open Space in New York State, a plan released last week, is an effort by state officials to define which unprotected parcels should be preserved for future generations. But the state has no money to buy land, and lawmakers are deadlocked over how to finance a trust fund that would do so. All told, the plan includes 75 separate sites, including these: Robins Island A 460-acre island in the Great Peconic Bay on Long Island, one of the last undeveloped islands along the East Coast. Both the state and Suffolk County have been unable to work out a deal with the private owner aimed at turning the island into a nature sanctuary and forest preserve. Long Island Pine Barrens The forest that once covered great parts of Long Island has dwindled to a several thousand acres. Situated atop the state's aquifer, the pine barrens are considered critical for protecting the region's water supply. While some parts are publicly owned, others have been proposed for private development. State officials want to acquire land or have private owners agree to conservation easements. Manhattan Circumferential Trail Perhaps the most ambitious project on the list, this would entail constructing a hiking and bicycle trail that would stretch around the island. Much of the land along the Hudson, Harlem and East Rivers is already publicly owned, so the chief expense would be the construction, other money would be used to acquire access rights from private owners. Bronx River Trailway The plan is to create a greenway trail all the way along the Bronx River, from where it empties into the East River, up to East 180th Street in the Bronx. It would connect to an existing 17-mile trail leading to the Kensico Reservoir in Westchester County. Neversink Gorge This stretch of forest in the southern Catskills is home to one of the finest trout streams in North America, the Neversink River. The state has been negotiating for years to expand public ownership and access. Catskills Watershed With many experts arguing that the best way to safeguard New York City's water supply is to protect the mountainous areas where most of it comes from, the state wants to acquire land or conservation easements in the Catskills watershed. Sterling Forest This 18,000-acre forest along the New York-New Jersey border is by far the largest stretch of woodlands left in the New York metropolitan region. A subdivision | A Plan to Conserve New York's Wilderness |
539380_0 | Conserving Open Space in New York State, a plan released last week, is an effort by state officials to define which unprotected parcels should be preserved for future generations. But the state has no money to buy land, and lawmakers are deadlocked over how to finance a trust fund that would do so. All told, the plan includes 75 separate sites, including these: Robins Island A 460-acre island in the Great Peconic Bay on Long Island, one of the last undeveloped islands along the East Coast. Both the state and Suffolk County have been unable to work out a deal with the private owner aimed at turning the island into a nature sanctuary and forest preserve. Long Island Pine Barrens The forest that once covered great parts of Long Island has dwindled to a several thousand acres. Situated atop the state's aquifer, the pine barrens are considered critical for protecting the region's water supply. While some parts are publicly owned, others have been proposed for private development. State officials want to acquire land or have private owners agree to conservation easements. Manhattan Circumferential Trail Perhaps the most ambitious project on the list, this would entail constructing a hiking and bicycle trail that would stretch around the island. Much of the land along the Hudson, Harlem and East Rivers is already publicly owned, so the chief expense would be the construction, other money would be used to acquire access rights from private owners. Bronx River Trailway The plan is to create a greenway trail all the way along the Bronx River, from where it empties into the East River, up to East 180th Street in the Bronx. It would connect to an existing 17-mile trail leading to the Kensico Reservoir in Westchester County. Neversink Gorge This stretch of forest in the southern Catskills is home to one of the finest trout streams in North America, the Neversink River. The state has been negotiating for years to expand public ownership and access. Catskills Watershed With many experts arguing that the best way to safeguard New York City's water supply is to protect the mountainous areas where most of it comes from, the state wants to acquire land or conservation easements in the Catskills watershed. Sterling Forest This 18,000-acre forest along the New York-New Jersey border is by far the largest stretch of woodlands left in the New York metropolitan region. A subdivision | A Plan to Conserve New York's Wilderness |
538397_0 | Mention alternative trade to most business executives and they assume you are talking about one of those complicated deals in which Russia or some other cash-short nation is trying to convince them to take 10,000 army boots or 500,000 goblets instead of money for their products. But for Equal Exchange Inc. and some 200 other small companies gathering for a convention next week in San Francisco, alternative trade means paying high prices to small farmers and artisans in developing countries to help them prosper and adopt environmentally sound practices. "We sometimes call it fair trade," said Rink Dickinson, the 34-year-old president of Equal Exchange, a specialty coffee distributor that pays growers a guaranteed minimum of $1.26 a pound for their beans, more than double the current market price. Mr. Dickinson says that most of the businesses coming to San Francisco sell handicrafts but that his company's concentration on food represents the segment likely to grow fastest if European trends are duplicated. Equal Exchange, which is based in Stoughton, Mass., grew 25 percent last year to top $1 million in sales for the first time. Mr. Dickinson said that standard profit margins were so high in the coffee business that Equal Exchange was able to give growers whopping premiums, charge gourmet coffee enthusiasts prices close or equal to other specialty coffees and still make money. "We aren't competing with Maxwell House or Chock Full o'Nuts," he said. "But we would like to see even the biggest companies in the business try to create at least one brand based on alternative trade practices." | COMPANY NEWS: For-Profit Foreign Aid; Seed Money With a Conscience |
536654_3 | "by writing letters to the editor and articles that will put the regulation in better perspective." In addition, the agency is planning at least two public meetings with industry representatives and consumers this summer to discuss the issues. Details of themeetings have not been completed. The F.D.A. has its work cut out for it. Many scientists do not believe that gene splicing is an extension of the kind of breeding that has gone on for the last century, and they do not approve of the proposed regulations. "There is no form of crossbreeding that allows the placing of human genes into a tomato," said Dr. Margaret Mellon, the director of the biotechnology policy center of the National Wildlife Federation in Washington. "This is radically new. To say that it is a minor extension of older technology flies in the face of scientific truth." Dr. Mellon was referring to the implanting of animal and human genes into plants, and vice versa. For example, a firefly gene can be planted in corn, and a trout gene in celery. A new designer tomato, FlavrSavr, made by Calgene Inc. in Davis, Calif., which will last for 20 days on the shelf, contains a bacterial gene that confers a resistance to antibiotics. Asked if people might build up a resistance to antibiotics by eating these tomatoes and other foods that could contain the same gene, the chairman of the company, Roger Salquist, said, "It is simply not an issue." The gene, known as a marker gene, is used by the manufacturer to identify a successful splicing. The F.D.A., however, said it was concerned about the safety of such a marker gene and was evaluating it. In the Federal Register, the agency said that it "believes that it will be important to evaluate such concerns with respect to commercial use of antibiotic resistance marker genes in food, especially those that will be widely used." Other critics of the regulations have expressed concerns that a food with an unnaturally long shelf life would lose its nutrients. Mr. Salquist said he was not sure whether this subject had been studied, but he added, "I don't believe there is any decline over time." Critics also worry about unknown hazards. "In the past we have been able to know what was dangerous over a long period of trial and error," said Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the Foundation on Economic | Eating WellGene-Spliced Foods: Is It Safe Soup Yet? |
536579_2 | is no consensus on which has the advantage. Campus insiders, promoted to the presidency from administrative or faculty positions, can have a calming effect on a rambunctious faculty, and can get to work immediately, already knowing the campus and the issues. Some Advantages There are times when an outsider has the edge, however. Earlier this year Stanford University selected Gerhard Casper, provost at the University of Chicago, to help the university make a clean break with the controversy over billing the Government for research costs. Each search committee -- mostly trustees, sometimes helped by faculty members and students -- will review hundreds of names, many of them people already at the nation's top-rated universities. Women and minority candidates will be included, although educators say they are not sure either of the two Ivy League universities, Columbia and Yale, is ready to go that route. Chicago's outgoing president is a woman, Hanna H. Gray. The new presidents will be expected to have more administrative experience than before, with experience now often defined as a prior presidency. As many as one third of all the university presidents appointed in recent years have already served as presidents of other institutions, according to the American Association of Higher Education. James O. Freedman, president of Dartmouth College and former president of the University of Iowa, suggested two reasons for the rise in the number of job-hopping presidents. Presidents, he said, tend to be appointed at younger ages now, often in their mid-40's, and it is not reasonable to expect them to stay at one place for an entire career. The other reason has to do with the emotions spawned by the current academics of scarcity, where departments are more often cut than expanded. "You basically wear out your welcome after five, six or seven years," Mr. Freedman said, "but you're too young to retire." Looking for Different Virtues Each search committee will stress a different virtue. Some will focus on the ability to raise money, others on the need to get along with the faculty or make tough decisions. All will insist that candidates have solid scholarly backgrounds, which gains faculty respect but, educators concede, does not always make for strong university leaders. Smaller universities have started shifting to presidents with stronger, nonacademic skills, primarily fund-raising, but that is not likely to happen any time soon at the elite institutions. Nor do the top universities | Hard Sell for Top Universities: Finding New Chiefs |
533538_0 | A Federal plan to make room on the nation's airwaves for pocket telephones and other new mobile communication technologies is running into roadblocks from powerful senators, as well as from industries that would have to give up radio frequencies they are now using. The high-stakes battle for the right to use a scarce resource is reminiscent of the 19th-century land fights between cattlemen and sheepmen. In this case, the battle over the use of the airwaves is part of a broader effort by the Federal Communications Commission and Congress to encourage new communication technologies. Two Sides of the Fight On one side are railroads, electric utilities and other groups that use microwave radio frequencies to link their communication networks. On the other side are companies that want to provide "personal communication services" -- a vague term used to describe a broad family of low-cost wireless telephones, laptop computers and even electronic pocket-organizers that can send and receive data over the air. In January, the F.C.C. proposed gradually reassigning these microwave frequencies to make way for a new "emerging technologies band." As envisioned, the new companies would be allowed to negotiate with utilities and railroads to buy up their licenses over the next 15 years. After that, the existing users would be forced to sell or at least to share their frequencies with the new services. The F.C.C. plan is separate from a similar plan now making its way through Congress, which would reassign a big block of frequencies now being used by the Federal Government for new commercial uses. New F.C.C. Licenses Advocates of the new wireless services say the F.C.C. plan is crucial to their ability to move forward, because the F.C.C. could begin handing out new licenses as early as next year. Under the legislation in Congress, most of the Government frequencies would not become available for at least three years. In the last several weeks, however, railroads and utilities have waged an intense and increasingly effective lobbying campaign against the F.C.C. in the Senate, arguing that they are being forced to use frequencies that are less reliable and that any changeover would cost them millions of dollars. Now, opponents of the F.C.C. plan are trying to persuade the Senate Commerce Committee to insert language in the agency's annual budget authorization that would slow down or even derail the proposal. In early May, the National Rural Electric Cooperative | F.C.C. Radio Plan Draws Opposition |
533685_1 | to intervene and make the disability go away, and wanting to accept the person as he or she is," said Dr. Ruth Kaminer, a professor of pediatrics and the associate director for medical services at the Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "A focus by parents, educators and physicians on trying to fix the disability runs the risk of interfering with the child's striving for independence." Preparing a child with a disability for independence often begins in infancy, with teaching the child to feed himself, or at least to be a part of family meals. The matter often becomes a crisis during early adolescence, when children want to be autonomous. Children with disabilities may feel awkward dealing with issues like dating. "They're less inclined than other adolescents to talk about sexuality with their parents or their peers," said Dr. Kaminer. Although parents often try to encourage independence by relying on equipment like specially designed computers, many experts emphasize that developing social skills is just as important. Strong interpersonal skills can help break through prejudices and false assumptions. "The biggest barriers to independence aren't architectural, they're the attitudes of nondisabled people," said Barbara Aiello, president of Barbara Aiello & Associates in Westminster, Md., which has created school programs featuring puppets who have physical and mental disabilities. "Children need to understand that very well-meaning, loving people can have some fantastic misconceptions about them." Ms. Aiello, a former special-education teacher, tells parents that working with their children on developing good communication skills can help them overcome many barriers. She added that adults should look at their own words as well, to see how they may be inadvertently concentrating on a child's disabilities instead of what he or she can do well. "There's much in our language that inhibits independence," Ms. Aiello said. "Like when people describe a child with a disability who's on a winning sports team as 'a crippled victim of cerebral palsy confined to a wheelchair.' When a person with a disability isn't perceived as an individual, but as a member of a highly stereotyped minority group, the opportunity for independence is stifled." HELPING A DISABLED CHILD TO SELF-RELIANCE PSYCHOLOGISTS and physicians who work with families of children who have disabilities offer several suggestions for helping those children become as independent as possible by the time they reach adulthood. Get your child involved | PARENT & CHILD |
533515_0 | The new group home for the mentally ill at 100 Broadway will have a look all its own. Instead of the drab furniture typical of such places, this one will be filled with whimsical tables, chairs and dressers painted by artists from all over the state. Chairs that were once rusty and tired-looking are now fuchsia with orange swirls or light purple and covered in crushed potpourri spotted in black like a Dalmatian. But the decorating may be the least unusual thing about 100 Broadway. It is a place created by parents of people who are mentally ill, a place that found an "angel" in a Stamford architect who donated $100,000 and helped find the building and the other financing. Group Home for 14 The residence -- which will house 14 people in a group home and 12 to 14 people in adjacent apartments -- was the inspiration of a group called the Parents Foundation for Transitional Living. "There were a group of us whose grown children were at the Yale Psychiatric Institute, and we'd get together and talk about how we stayed awake nights wondering what was ahead for our children," said Robert Correll of Trumbull, whose daughter Anne, 25 years old, will have her own apartment at the residence. "The problem with this population is they're recycled all over the place," he said. "They leave a private hospital with no place to go, so they may move home or into an apartment because the waiting lists are so long at halfway houses, and almost all the spots are filled directly by people coming out of state hospitals. But what they need in the beginning is some supervision." The parents brought their concerns to Gretchen Law, then the senior social worker at the Yale Institute. They decided to find their own building, raise their own funds and open a nonprofit residence themselves. In Heart of Yale Campus Then, along came Alvan Lampke, a Stamford-based architect and developer, who donated the $100,000 in seed money and found the 17,000-square-foot building in the heart of the Yale University campus. He also did the preliminary design and talked the Union Trust Company in Stamford into providing a $1.5 million loan for the purchase and renovation costs. "There's been a crying need for something like this for many, many years," Mr. Lampke said. "Seeing it happen is the most thrilling moment in my | Parents Bring a Home For Mentally Ill to Life |
533575_0 | To the Editor: As a devoted reader, I am always distressed when you obscure the historical record. You report May 8 on the disappearance of Sidney J. Reso, an Exxon official who was possibly kidnapped by a group calling itself the Rainbow Warriors. The article explains: "The name Rainbow Warrior belonged to a ship owned by the environmental group Greenpeace that was sabotaged and sunk in 1985." "Sabotaged and sunk" by whom? The rest of the sentence should have read "by the French Government." Not only did the French Government blow up the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor on July 10, 1985, when the vessel was about to sail to Mururoa atoll to monitor a French nuclear test in the South Pacific, but it also murdered Fernando Pereira, a Greenpeace photographer who was aboard. The French secret service frogmen who affixed magnetic mines to the hull were later convicted by a New Zealand court. Your Jan. 19, 1990, obituary of Charles Hernu, the French Minister of Defense who had to resign over the scandal, makes this act of French Government terrorism abundantly clear. "Eventually," you report, "after two months of repeated denials, the French Government admitted that its agents had carried out the sinking under orders." In July 1986, France paid New Zealand a $7 million settlement negotiated by Javier Perez de Cuellar, the United Nations Secretary General. In October 1987, an international tribunal in Geneva ordered France to pay Greenpeace more than $8.1 million in damages. MARY PEROT NICHOLS New York, May 16, 1992 The writer teaches journalism at New York University and is former president of New York City's public broadcasting stations. | Let's Not Forget France Sank Rainbow Warrior |
533540_0 | What makes a product environmentally friendly? The answer is easy for supermarkets, where goods that are biodegradable or made from recycled materials usually carry special labels. But Mike Eisen learned that the question, when asked of the hardware business, can create a logistical headache. As manager of environmental marketing for the Home Depot Inc., a chain of home improvement centers based in Atlanta, Mr. Eisen was assigned 18 months ago to develop a "green" program for the company's 183 stores. To coincide with the Earth Summit in Rio, his handiwork will be shown this weekend with the "Environmental Greenprint," a series of posters and fliers that suggest about 70 products that can save energy and protect the environment. Choosing the products was not easy. Fluorescent bulbs, for example, are more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs. But they also contain mercury, which can leak into landfills when they are discarded. And mercury is also sent into the air by power plants, which have to work harder to light the less-efficient bulbs. "There's constant contradictions in the environmental area," Mr. Eisen said. What about tropical woods? Home Depot sells them even though some may say that contributes to the destruction of forests. But, Mr. Eisen reasoned, a boycott could kill the market for the woods, and farmers might then clear forests to plant crops. "There are a lot of thinking-man's issues," he said. Mr. Eisen concedes that shopping for environmentally safe hardware may not be simple. By highlighting certain products, he said, Home Depot has tried to remove some of the guesswork. | COMPANY NEWS: The Green Wave; Making Hardware Environmentally Friendly |
533716_0 | After three years of studying alternate methods of cutting trees, the United States Forest Service said today that it was directing its foresters to reduce substantially the amount of timberland harvested by clear cutting. The order, to be issued on Thursday by F. Dale Robertson, chief of the Forest Service, is meant to increase protective management of the 191 million acres of national forests. But critics said it would make almost no difference in how Federal forests were managed because the practices that would replace clear cutting were just as destructive. In an interview today, Mr. Robertson said the policy would leave some trees after land was cleared for timber, in the same way that naturally occurring forest fires leave a few trees to regenerate the woods. "Our job is to manage the national forests in an environmentally sensitive way," Mr. Robertson said. "That means we must get away from practices that make our forests look like tree farms." Infighting and Conflicts The new policy comes after a month of infighting in the White House and several Federal agencies that has produced conflicting decisions by the Administration about environmental policy in general and forests in particular. Last month, the Administration voted to exempt itself from the Endangered Species Act and to allow clear cutting on 1,700 acres of Oregon forests that are home to the threatened northern spotted owl. Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. then proposed legislation approved by President Bush to allow clear cutting of four million acres of Federal forests in the Pacific Northwest. And earlier this week, Mr. Bush proposed spending $150 million a year to preserve forests in the United States and around the world threatened with development. But the President's announcement came three days after he decided not to sign a global treaty meant to save hundreds of millions of acres of forests in North American, South America, Africa and Asia. Mr. Robertson acknowledged today that the Administration's political posture toward forest protection appeared to be inconsistent. He also said he was not given the opportunity to comment on Mr. Lujan's proposal to open 4 million acres of Federal timberland to development, even though much of the land was in national forests. Mr. Robertson said the new approach he was proposing would raise timber harvesting costs by 10 to 15 percent. He said that Agriculture Secretary Edward Madigan had approved the plan but that it | U.S. Forest Service Increases Protection of Public Timber |
537107_0 | The chairman of the committee of Roman Catholic bishops that has worked for nine years to draft a pastoral letter on women said after a divisive debate among the bishops today that it would take a miracle to pass the letter when it came up for a final vote in November. "We're going to give it a try, but that's going to be a miracle," said the chairman, Bishop Joseph L. Imesch of Joliet, Ill. Pastoral letters, which require a two-thirds' majority of the country's 286 active bishops, are formal teaching documents that in recent years have dealt with how to apply the doctrines of the church to current issues. In recent years, the American bishops have adopted letters on war and peace and on the economy. The effort to draft a letter on women has proved to be the longest and most difficult of these exercises. Other letters have been passed usually with only a few negative votes, and no one here could remember a case where a letter had to be abandoned. Bishop Imesch's pessimistic assessment of the letter's chances of passage was reinforced at the end of the debate when the president of the body, Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk of Cincinnati, asked for an informal vote to determine whether to continue the discussion on the document when the bishops meet in Washington in November. While a majority of the bishops stood as a sign they were in favor, Bishop Imesch said it was clearly less than the two-thirds' majority that will be needed to adopt the document. The third draft of the 81-page letter on women, which Bishop Imesch said was going to be the last, has tried to steer a moderate course between the demands of the Vatican and the voices of American Catholic women pressing for change. The document condemns sexism as "a moral and social evil," but follows Vatican dictates denying women ordination to the priesthood and condemning abortion and contraception. An earlier draft, calling for a discussion on whether women can serve as priests, was rewritten after objections from the Vatican, which refuses to entertain the question. The revised draft allows for dialogue only on including women in lesser ministerial roles like deacon and acolyte. Sentiment Against Letter Today was the first time in the process that the full conference of bishops had an open debate on the draft. In introducing the third | As Bishops Meet, Catholics Voice Differences With Church's Doctrine; Little Hope Seen for Letter on Women |
537051_0 | The world has barely absorbed the stirring summit news that the superpowers have agreed to drastic cuts in their fearsome nuclear arsenals. The West can now truly look to the ex-Evil Empire with hope instead of horror. So what are America's allies France and Britain doing? Increasing their nuclear arsenals. With U.S. help. The British and French decided to modernize their nuclear weapons starting years ago, long before Mikhail Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union dissolved. Unless both countries now move quickly to reconsider and retrench, they'll remain the captives of dangerous, mindless momentum. To be sure, both countries have recently made modest gestures in the direction of reducing the nuclear shadow over the world. Britain announced this week that it was removing all the tactical nuclear warheads aboard its ships and aircraft -- fewer than 100. President Mitterrand declared a one-year moratorium on French nuclear testing, and canceled the Hades missile, designed to reach targets in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. These are no longer imaginable targets now that the Red Army is pulling out. But despite these gestures to disarmament, both countries are continuing a big buildup in undersea nuclear weapons. The British are replacing Polaris missiles on their submarines with more accurate multi-warhead Trident II missiles purchased from the U.S. If armed with eight warheads each, the Tridents would double Britain's nuclear force. And the French are building five submarines armed with new M-5 multi-warhead missiles -- 960 warheads in all -- that would double the size of their force. The French have long prided themselves on developing an independent deterrent force, but they've had help from the U.S. with their warhead designs. A decade ago Britain and France set conditions for reducing their nuclear forces. There would have to be further substantial cuts in U.S. and Russian arms, correction of imbalances in conventional and chemical weapons and no significant improvements in defensive capabilities. Only the last condition raises the shadow of a doubt, but this week's summit meeting showed that Moscow has no appetite for ABM's. Now that their conditions have been met they can fairly be asked to respond promptly, and in kind. Simply removing some warheads from each missile would be a fitting response to U.S.-Russian reductions. The world would even more warmly welcome Britain and France reducing their nuclear-armed submarine fleets. France has been offering to discuss a shared nuclear doctrine for Europe's defense. | Look Who's Adding Missiles |
537077_0 | A Gallup poll released here today finds that two-thirds of Roman Catholics in the United States favor opening the priesthood to women, an increase of 20 percentage points over just seven years ago. The poll, conducted in May by the Gallup Organization and commissioned by a coalition of groups seeking fundamental changes in the structure and policy of the church, was released as the nation's bishops gathered at the University of Notre Dame for their first open debate on a pastoral letter on the role of women in church and society. The letter, crafted over a period of nine years, deplores "the sin of sexism" but affirms Vatican positions against female priests, artificial birth control and abortion. The poll shows that lay Catholics are at odds with their bishops and the Vatican on these and other issues. Sixty-seven percent of Catholics agreed with the statement, "It would be a good thing if women were allowed to be ordained as priests," up from 47 percent in 1985. The poll also found that 70 percent favored allowing priests to marry, up from 49 percent in 1971. Ruth McDonough Fitzpatrick of the Women's Ordination Conference, a sponsor of the poll, said it demonstrated that the bishops were "clearly not in touch with the pulse of the people." But the poll also found that Pope John Paul II was overwhelmingly popular: 84 percent agreed with the statement that he was "doing a good job in leading the church," and only 10 percent disagreed. Differences by Age The poll also showed that Catholics under the age of 35 were more likely to favor change, a finding that the sponsors said signaled that the problems were not going to go away. The poll, conducted by telephone in English and Spanish among 802 Catholics nationwide from May 5 to 17, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. Sister Maureen Fiedler, co-director of one of the sponsoring groups, Catholics Speak Out, said the poll demonstrated "nothing less than a quiet but massive grass-roots revolution" in the American church. She added, "The people have developed a whole new consensus of opinion and behavior different from that of the bishops, but which they believe is morally acceptable to their consciences and faithful to the Catholic tradition." Bishop Raymond J. Boland, chairman of the bishops' communication committee, said today that he had not had time | As Bishops Meet, Catholics Voice Differences With Church's Doctrine; Poll Finds Backing Of Female Priests |
535614_1 | to adopt a voluntary set of principles in favor of preserving the world's forests, which had been a goal of the United States and other wealthier countries. But the agreement omitted a call for a treaty to be negotiated that would make such principles binding. [ Page 4. ] Global-Warming Treaty Other negotiators were still in session this evening, racing a Sunday deadline to try to come up with an accord on a multibillion-dollar aid package that would enable the third-world countries to preserve their environmental resources. In another arena of activities, Mr. Bush and other leaders signed the treaty intended to reduce the threat of global warming by limiting emissions of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. The treaty had long been viewed as a centerpiece of the summit talks, despite widespread criticism for its lack of specific timetables for emission curbs. In contrast to other Western leaders speaking here today, Mr. Bush did not make public any major financial initiatives, although the United States called for creation of a long-term $1.4 billion fund to monitor climate change, and for other money to help poor countries pay for preservation of their forests. Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany, a nation widely seen to have assumed a major leadership role here, promised to increase Germany's aid for development of poor countries to 0.7 percent of its gross national product, nearly double its current level, and promised accelerated reduction of its carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent to 30 percent by the year 2,005. In another move seen as upstaging President Bush, Prime Minister John Major of Britain called for the World Bank fund that provides environmental aid to be increased from the current level of $1.3 billion to at least $3.3 billion in the next several years. In yet another pledge for aid that contrasted with the American caution on financing, the 12-nation European Community also promised $4 billion to further the Earth Summit's goals. It was unclear how much of the European money was new money or money that had already been appropriated. Mr. Bush, trying to mend fences with environmentalists, met in the morning with a delegation of American leaders of environmental groups and in the afternoon posed for photographers in a rain forest near Rio. It was unclear whether his efforts would succeed, since the many private environmental groups gathered in Rio continued to excoriate what they characterized | PRESIDENT, IN RIO, DEFENDS HIS STAND ON ENVIRONMENT |
535612_0 | Remember "Let Your Fingers Do The Walking"? A researcher at the Florida Institute of Technology is running 10 telephone company trucks on a chemical that can be made from wastepaper like that used in telephone books. "Now, we've got the directory doing the driving," said Jan Rickey, a spokeswoman for the Florida Energy Office, which is sponsoring the research along with the BellSouth Corporation. BellSouth collected 58,000 tons of old phone books in its nine-state service territory last year. That is enough to make 2.9 million gallons of fuel, according to the researcher, John J. Thomas. Five pounds of wastepaper yields about a pint of the fuel, so one copy of the Manhattan Yellow Pages -- at about four and a quarter pounds -- would yield about a tenth of a gallon, which would take a panel truck about a mile and a half. The chemical is methyltetrahydrofuran, known as MTHF, which is made by treating wastepaper with acid and steam, and then adding hydrogen. The chemical has occasional commercial uses, and researchers tried it in fuel tanks in the early 1980's, when gasoline prices peaked, but they dropped the idea when prices fell. Now there is increased concern about recycling and clean air. The trucks running on mixtures of up to 24 percent MTHF have lower tailpipe emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. MTHF resists evaporation, and evaporation is another major source of pollution. No engine modifications are needed. Dr. Thomas plans to increase the mixture gradually to 80 percent MTHF, measuring mileage, performance and pollution at each step. So far, the Florida energy agency says his results look promising. A spokesman for BellSouth, Larry Stevens, said the company had used old directories as mulch for seedlings, as bedding for chickens and as feedstock for factories that make egg cartons and toilet paper, but it is looking for new uses. Producing MTHF reduces the volume of waste by 80 percent. Dr. Thomas said that in a commercial-scale plant, assuming that the paper was delivered free, the fuel would cost about 60 cents a gallon. The process can handle mixed papers and impurities like staples and glue, and is more economical than burning the waste for electricity, he said. P.S., publishers: It works on old newspapers, too. | COMPANY NEWS: Directory Assistance; Fill It With Yellow Pages And Please Check the Oil |
535667_1 | an effort to prove that a peaceful settlement involving Protestant and Catholic politicians and officials from both parts of Ireland is still feasible. The agreement on a committee, after more than 12 hours of negotiation, was a compromise that kept the talks alive when they seemed to be foundering. The Protestant parties, which insist on continued union with Britain, wanted to settle the form of the new government before agreeing to meet with Irish officials. The Catholic parties, which insist on union with Ireland, wanted to lay aside the question of the new government and move directly to the talks with Irish Government officials. Under the compromise, the Protestants and Catholics agreed to have representatives meet next week with Irish Government officials and an Australian mediator, Ninian Stephen, to discuss the possibility of higher-level meetings. Participants in the current talks, which began a year ago as a major British initiative, then were suspended and resumed seven weeks ago, did not comment immediately. Major Political Step But one northern Irish analyst said, "It may be historic, perhaps the biggest political step since Northern Ireland was established" as part of Britain after the south became independent in 1922. In the second round of talks, the participants would be the Democratic Unionist Party and the Official Ulster Unionist Party, the two largest Protestant parties; the moderate, religiously mixed Alliance party and the Social Democratic and Labor Party, a mostly Catholic party that opposes the guerrilla tactics of the predominantly Catholic Irish Republican Army and is committed to giving the Irish Republic more influence in northern affairs. Sinn Fein, the party that is the political wing of the I.R.A., was excluded from the talks because it refuses to denounce the I.R.A.'s use of violence. A third phase proposed by Mr. Mayhew on Friday night would involve meetings between the Governments of Ireland and Britain with the Northern Ireland parties as observers. This phase would deal with the future of the province. In the final phase, tentatively envisioned for July, there would be direct talks between Prime Ministers Albert J. Reynolds of Ireland and John Major of Britain. One of the major problems to be worked out is the status of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which gives the Dublin Government a consultative role in the affairs of the north. The unionists insist that the agreement be replaced. Moderate Catholic nationalists and Dublin oppose this. | Pact for Northern Ireland Is Seen as Progress |
535664_0 | Environment ministers at the Earth Summit finally wrapped up a set of voluntary principles aimed at preserving the world's dwindling forests, a goal that was a United States priority at the conference, and were working feverishly tonight on a global cleanup plan. The Administration did not obtain a commitment to turn the forest preservation principles into a binding international convention, but the document, approved early today, leaves open the possibility of a new forest treaty in the future. The document describes the forest principles as an "authoritative" statement insuring that all countries have a right to use their forests to advance their economic development, but that they should do so only "on a sustainable basis." The principles thus chart a tortuous middle course between the desire of countries with tropical forests, like Malaysia, India and Brazil, to assert theirsovereignty over a valuable natural resource and the wish of most Northern countries to define forests as a global asset. William K. Reilly, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, expressed some disappointment with the outcome today, saying the principles were "not as strong as we would have liked." But some other Western officials said the principles went further than they had expected at the start of the summit talks. "They don't close off the possibility of a convention, and closing it off was the objective of Malaysia," an official said. It was also suggested that the proposed new Sustainable Development Commission, which will monitor compliance with commitments made at the Earth Summit, could call for negotiations on a binding treaty when it reviews the way the world's forests are being managed. "The talk around the ministers' meeting last night, though it couldn't be said in there, was that this should be a priority for the Commission on Sustainable Development," another Western official said. In negotiations, many developing countries said the industrial world only values tropical forests for the carbon dioxide they absorb because this reduces the sacrifices the North must make to avert global warming. The principles call for "environmentally sound national guidelines" for development and recognize that while forests meet many economic, social and cultural needs, they also act as "carbon sinks and reservoirs" that slow climate change. These same representatives of the world's rich and poor countries worked tonight to resolve outstanding issues over aid and atmospheric pollution that are blocking completion of the new global cleanup plan, known as | Talks in Rio Wrap Up Principles For Preserving the World's Forests |
535680_2 | worth an estimated $1.6 trillion, tropical hardwoods valued an estimated $1.7 trillion, huge deposits of natural gas, and fertile areas that would allow Brazil to increase its farmland by 70 percent. Development advocates assert that environmentalists seek to preserve the Amazon as a vast park, ignoring the lot of Amazonians, who are among the poorest of Brazilians. The Brazilian Amazon's 1.3 million square mile area accounts for 40 percent of Brazil's landmass, but contains only 7 percent of the nation's population, and accounts for about 5 percent of the nation's gross national product. In May, a retired officers group unsuccessfully sought to overturn a Government decision to demarcate a 37,000 square mile stretch of Amazonas and Roraima states for the Yanomami tribe. To Indian defenders, the park insures the cultural and physical survival of the last major Stone Age tribe in the Americas. To miners and military nationalists, the park reserves for the exclusive use of 10,000 Indians a mineral-rich area the size of Portugal. With proven deposits of gold, tin and diamonds, the park is part of the northern Amazon's mineral belt, an area described by geologists as one of the world's last great, unexploited mineral provinces. "Caboclo -- defend this endangered species," billboards in Manaus proclaimed recently, referring to the native Amazon inhabitants who eke subsistence livings by fishing, farming, and, on the sly, hunting wild game. For caboclos like Mrs. Ramos and her neighbors, one of the most incomprehensible environmental laws is the ban on hunting jacares. Battling nature for physical survival is the rule for Mrs. Ramos and her six surviving children, a dirt poor family whose main diversion is sitting on a plank bench watching river traffic, and whose only home decoration is a dugout canoe turned into an herb planter. "We are surrounded on all sides by jacares," complained Eloi Soares de Oliveira, a neighbor. "They are always grabbing our ducks, our chickens, our dogs. Almost every day they ruin somebody's fishing net." Black caimans like the one that killed Gilson are listed as an endangered species by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Reptile Population Explosion Mr. Oliveira, who is 53 years old, believes that since the hunting ban was imposed in 1967, there has been a reptile population explosion. Now he believes that caiman and people are competing for the Amazon's fish. "A jacare lays 30, 40, even 50 eggs | On Amazon, Foes Are Reptiles and Environmentalists |
535711_1 | Cinnaminson, N.J., has used genetic engineering to duplicate an "antifreeze" protein that winter flounder produce to block ice crystals from forming. Company officials say the protein could help extend the shelf life of ice creams, as well as improve the quality of frozen fruits, vegetables and other food. Specializing in Food The new invention is the latest of roughly 40 patents granted to DNA Plant Technology, an 11-year-old biotechnology company that specializes in trying to develop foods that taste better or stay fresh longer. While the company's creative output is beyond dispute, and some of its products are already on the market, profits have yet to show up. Indeed, in a testimony to the uncertainty with which commercial success flows from innovation, the company lost $15.7 million last year on product sales of just $3.6 million. While several of its products have reached the market and the company has joint ventures with a number of big corporations, officials say they do not expect to see their first profit until at least late 1994. Antifreeze proteins are produced naturally by fish that live in extremely cold water; the proteins block ice crystals by fouling up the orderly geometry of what are known as ice seeds. John Bedbrook, executive vice president of DNA Plant Technology, said the crystals develop when water molecules accumulate and freeze on a tiny particle that serves as a seed for the ice. Disrupting the Pattern But the molecules settle down only if they can accumulate on one another in neat lines and rows. The antifreeze proteins prevent that by attaching to a first layer of water molecules and creating a surface that is too irregular for other molecules to accumulate. Dr. Bedbrook said that scientists had known about antifreeze proteins for years, but that the proteins had remained little more than a curiosity because extracting commercial quantities from Arctic fish would be prohibitively expensive. The new protein, by contrast, can be produced by splicing the gene into yeast, bacteria or plants. Dr. Bedbrook said it could be used as an additive for ice creams and other desserts, or the gene that produces it could be spliced into fruit and vegetable varieties, enabling them to develop their own antifreeze capability. Federal regulatory approval would be necessary for any use as a food additive. Patent 5,118,792 was issued to three company researchers, Gareth Warren, Robert McKown and Gunhild Mueller. | Patents; Keeping Ice Out of Food That's Frozen |
535696_1 | still unfinished but now impressive enough to be seen from miles around, an extraordinary monument to individualism and ingenuity mobilized by religious inspiration. Its walls and windows are in place and 14 towers are near completion, although the two tallest will rise another 90 feet, to 180 feet. Two cloisters are under construction, a chapel stands in the south transept and a zinc roof covers most of the building. A 90-foot-high cupola is the next big project. Yet it is only from close up that the uniqueness of the work can be gauged. Its walls, for example, are made of twisted and bent bricks donated by factories that had no market for them. Its columns were formed by pouring concrete into round tins and barrels, which were cut away after the concrete dried. Its arches were built with improvised supports. But it is "strong as a castle," Mr. Gallego said, taking a break from driving a small tractor along the nave in preparation for clearing earth from the crypt. "Lots of engineers have come to visit and have said they couldn't build anything stronger. Never has one bit of it fallen." Experts sent by the diocese of Alcala de Henares, which embraces this town, reached the same conclusion. "They said that where one sack of cement was needed, he would use three," said the Rev. Juan Sanchez, vicar general of Alcala. "It's an admirable work -- all due to the vision and effort of one man." In practice, Mr. Gallego has had modest help. One recent afternoon, three young men were digging for a symbolic wage. On weekends, groups of Boy Scouts frequently work as volunteers. Occasionally an architect stops by with some tips. Mr. Gallego also accepts donations, although most of the $160,000 spent so far came from the sale of other land he inherited. Certainly, nothing happens without him, not least because he carries the plans for the cathedral in his head and because, at the age of 66, he still insists on doing all the dangerous work. "I take many risks," he said, "but when I work, I pray. That's why nothing has ever happened to me." A small wiry man with an ever-present blue beret and a rough blue overcoat, Mr. Gallego is so given to looking forward that he seems barely able to remember the eight years he spent in a monastery before suspected tuberculosis | Mejorada del Campo Journal; Raising a Temple to God, Brick by Crooked Brick |
535665_0 | Priests as Husbands Faced with a serious shortage of Roman Catholic priests, three-quarters of American Catholics favor allowing priests to marry, according to a nationwide survey conducted in May by the Gallup Organization. The survey, commissioned by a coalition of Catholic groups pressing for major changes in the church, found that 75 percent of American Catholics supported a married priesthood as one solution to the shortage, 23 percent were opposed and 2 percent had no opinion. The Vatican is firmly opposed to allowing priests to marry, and Pope John Paul II has made it clear that he does not even want the issue discussed. The nation's Catholic bishops responded to the survey by raising questions about the methodology used. And Richard W. Daw, a spokesman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, "The Church's disciplines and teachings are not based on polls nor opinions or votes, but on foundations of Gospel values not subject to transitory influences." In releasing the poll data yesterday, Anthony T. Padovana, the head of one of the sponsoring groups, Corpus, said: "We are approaching a virtual consensus on the issue of a married priesthood among American Catholics. The growing shortage of priests appears to be making an impact on the people in the pews who don't want an outdated celibacy requirement to keep them from full sacramental ministry in their parishes." The survey, conducted by telephone on May 5 to 17, is based on interviews with 800 Catholics. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. The results on three questions regarding priestly celibacy were released yesterday in Chicago at the annual meeting of Corpus, which is largely made up of men who left the priesthood to marry. Additional results from the same survey concerning Catholic attitudes about women, abortion, homosexuality, AIDS prevention and church governance are to be released next Thursday on the eve of a meeting of American bishops at the University of Notre Dame. The priest shortage and celibacy were connected in a question for the first time in this survey, so there are no earlier figures with which to compare the results. But the results of two other questions indicated that support for a married priesthood is growing. When asked if priests should be allowed to marry (without reference to the shortage), 70 percent said yes, 26 percent said no and 4 percent had no opinion. | Religion Notes |
537792_0 | THE tale told about the city's Emergency Repair Program by John M. Reilly, executive director of the Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation in the Bronx, would ring true to managers and owners of multifamily buildings in lower-income neighborhoods generally. "Several times crews came in to do work that we had completed," said Mr. Reilly, whose nonprofit corporation runs 29 buildings with 700 apartments. "We wound up paying for the visits because the charges for them, plus administrative charges, were on our tax bill." Over the last year or so this and other vexing problems in the repair program have been reported in volume by owners who, like Mr. Reilly, have a reputation for attention to building services. Claiming prior notice never arrived, owners say that even when they are billed they often cannot tell what work was done or why. One Bronx property owner has filed a lawsuit. The Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 owners, has moved to intervene. Well before the legal action started, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development itself had set in motion a re-vamping of the program. Its main elements are a big push to get owners themselves to correct emergency conditions once they are confirmed by city inspectors. The intent is to have city crews, rather than private contractors, do the work that owners fail to do. "My goal is to be able to reach the owner, to alert the owner, and have the owner do the work," said Felice Michetti, the city's housing commissioner. "The Emergency Repair Program should be the last resort." If the approach succeeds repair work should come about more efficiently in a system less vulnerable to abuse. Owner cooperation is needed, but for those who do not cooperate, costs will probably be higher. The new system will be implemented over the summer, housing officials said, beginning with a rapid phase-out of direct assignment of private contractors next month. Over the last few months, 32,000 pieces of mail have gone out to owners seeking updated information on how to reach them or the individuals responsible for management of their properties, Ms. Michetti said. These registrations are required every three years. A total of 18,000 replies have been received, although 8,000 had incomplete or incorrect information and had to be returned. From 14,000 buildings there have been no replies so far. In addition, the Rent Stabilization Association did a mailing of | Perspectives: Emergency Repairs; Change Is Afoot in a System Under Fire |
537503_3 | what their medical problems were -- had a relatively uneventful course in the nursery and now have cerebral palsy or maybe some motor deficit or cognitive deficit or some form a mental retardation. That's also a shock." The families who attended Sunday's reunion seemed to run the gamut from those with children who live with serious problems to those with children who escaped their precarious start in life relatively unscathed. Susanne Calvello of Somers was there with her two daughters. Mrs. Calvello has given birth to three premature children. Her first died shortly after birth. Her younger daughter, Danielle, who weighed 4 pounds 12 ounces, seems to have experienced no long-term repercussions. But her sister, Natalie, now 9 years old, weighed only 2 pounds and at one point dropped to 1 pound 11 ounces while in the unit. She also experienced cerebral bleeding. 600 Therapy Sessions Today, Natalie suffers from several physical and developmental disabilities, including chronic lung disease, seizure disorders, an attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity. She also has a cyst on her brain and scoliosis. Her mother says that Natalie has undergone 600 sessions of physical, speech and occupational therapy and that for the first time this year will move from special education to a regular classroom. "This is a celebration of survival, though I don't say life," said Mrs. Calvello, referring to the reunion. "Natalie's life has been a series of roller coasters. How I feel about it depends on where we are on the ride. "I fluctuate between wondering whether I was selfish in stressing such aggressive treatment for her -- she's paying the price and always will. On the other hand, I'm looking at a 9-year-old girl who horseback rides and is going into fourth grade." Mrs. Calvello interrupted her description of Natalie's problems when she spotted 3-year-old Shawna White, another former patient of the unit. "I can't believe she's walking!" Mrs. Calvello said as she hugged Shawna's mother, Kathy. Shawna White weighed only 1 pound 4 1/2 ounces when she was born at 23 weeks. Neither her parents nor the medical staff expected her to survive. Shawna, too, has an array of medical conditions. She wears a body brace for scoliosis and braces to help her walk. Splints are needed for her hands, which suffer from paralysis. Still, the small fingernails that peek out from the splints were painted with pink polish ("She insisted," her | Tears and Awe as Patients Return |
537731_4 | of male gynecologists' sexism, insensitivity and assembly-line approach. The most offensive cases he has witnessed include male gynecologists who called their male colleagues into an examination simply to admire a patient's body. "No man can understand the experience of being a woman," Dr. Smith said in an interview. Female physicians also are more willing to discuss their patients' non-gynecological concerns. "Two-thirds of all women use their gynecologist as their primary-care physician," he said. "They may not be seeing any other sort of doctor, so they need a person who will listen to them." Some physicians have praised Dr. Smith for his blunt position. "I'm sure he's getting hell for his stand, because that's what happens to anybody who vocalizes a need for change in the medical world," said Dr. Vicki Hufnagel, a gynecologist in Los Angeles who is the author of "No More Hysterectomies," (New American Library, 1988) a book about alternatives to hysterectomies. Yet the idea that only women should be gynecologists is dismissed by many as an act of reverse discrimination. More Natural? "I feel this is a terrible insult to the women on my service to say that only women can be good gynecologists," said Dr. Isaac Schiff, a gynecologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "The doctors who are really outstanding are outstanding because they work at it." But Dr. Smith and others said despite what doctors may believe, this specialty may have to bend to women's wishes. "Over 80 percent of all women say they would prefer a woman gynecologist," he said. Dr. Florence Haseltine of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., an outspoken advocate for women's health issues, said many feminists predicted women would be less interventionist and more "natural," yet no study of numbers of surgical procedures performed or drugs prescribed has shown any significant sexual difference. However, Dr. Schiff found in a survey of doctors in several Boston hospitals that females were 20 times more likely than males to prescribe estrogen replacement therapy for menopausal patients. That discrepancy can be attributed to female physicians' greater understanding of the female body in transition; nonetheless it means women are perfectly willing to take an aggressive approach to treatment. "It was a mistake to assume that women would be more homeopathic," said Dr. Haseltine, who is herself a gynecologist. "Once they get ahold of a technology, they use it very aggressively." THE NATION | Bedside Manners Improve as More Women Enter Medicine |
537615_1 | half white. Angkor Wat -- the largest religious monument on earth, the grandest architectural achievement of an empire that once stretched across Indochina, the most important symbol of unity in a nation that has known nothing but war or genocide for a generation -- is being scrubbed down and partly rebuilt by a team of Indian archeologists and engineers. Armed with hard brushes and buckets of a solution of ammonia and water, hundreds of unskilled Khmer laborers, working at the Indians' direction, vigorously rub over the delicate stonework as if it were a dirty kitchen floor. Other Cambodian workers empty trowels of cement into cracks, large and small, in the ancient sandstone. Small knots of Khmer laborers use steel hoists to reassemble stone entryways that began to tumble down centuries ago. The Indian team's restoration work, begun in 1986 and scheduled to go on for at least two years more, has sparked one of the angriest debates of modern art conservation. Depending on the expert asked the question, Angkor Wat is either being restored to a lost glory or is being irreversibly damaged. The Indians insist they are removing vegetation that is slowly eating away at the monument, while carefully rebuilding collapsed stone structures. Their critics say that the Indians are using outdated cleaning techniques and dangerous, abrasive chemicals to scrub away detail on some of the best-preserved statuary of the ancient world, while pouring cement with reckless abandon on a structure that was originally built without mortar. The furious dispute over the restoration of Angkor Wat is part of a larger argument among scholars and diplomats over how, and whether, outside nations should cooperate in preserving the complex of more than 70 major temples spread across 25 square miles of the ancient Khmer capital. The United Nations -- through its Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco -- is trying to come up with a blueprint for conserving all of the great stone monuments of Angkor. Unesco's hope is to save the temples from the ravages of nature, of looting and of unrestrained tourism. But its work has been hampered by shortage of money and by bickering among outside experts over who should do the work and who should serve on an international advisory panel that is being formed to counsel the Cambodian Government on the restoration. Unesco's immediate goal is to secure for Angkor Wat and the other | Washing Buddha's Face |
537615_2 | rebuilding collapsed stone structures. Their critics say that the Indians are using outdated cleaning techniques and dangerous, abrasive chemicals to scrub away detail on some of the best-preserved statuary of the ancient world, while pouring cement with reckless abandon on a structure that was originally built without mortar. The furious dispute over the restoration of Angkor Wat is part of a larger argument among scholars and diplomats over how, and whether, outside nations should cooperate in preserving the complex of more than 70 major temples spread across 25 square miles of the ancient Khmer capital. The United Nations -- through its Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco -- is trying to come up with a blueprint for conserving all of the great stone monuments of Angkor. Unesco's hope is to save the temples from the ravages of nature, of looting and of unrestrained tourism. But its work has been hampered by shortage of money and by bickering among outside experts over who should do the work and who should serve on an international advisory panel that is being formed to counsel the Cambodian Government on the restoration. Unesco's immediate goal is to secure for Angkor Wat and the other Angkor temples a place on its World Heritage List, a designation that would allow the United Nations to assume a more formal role in overseeing -- and raising money for -- the restoration work. While the Angkor temples are indisputably worthy of inclusion on the list, they cannot be added unless the Cambodian Government offers up a formal, highly detailed plan for maintaining and policing Angkor. "This Government is in such chaos it's hard to imagine them coming up with a grocery list, let alone a detailed plan to restore an archeological wonder like Angkor," says a Western diplomat in Phnom Penh. Nevertheless, Unesco's local representative in Cambodia, Richard A. Engelhardt, an American archeologist, is patiently working with Cambodian Government officials in hopes of submitting the plan later this year. Pich Keo, the director of Cambodia's national museum, is one of the few Cambodian experts on Angkor -- the ancient capital of the Khmer empire and home to Angkor Wat -- to have survived the Khmer Rouge terror of the 1970's. Pich Keo says he appreciates the fact that in the early 1980's, when Phnom Penh made an international appeal for help in restoring the Angkor monuments after a decade | Washing Buddha's Face |
537567_0 | WORD -- "Paleoliberals": Old-fashioned Democrats (e.g., Walter Mondale). CARS -- Beyond the Benzi box: The stereo you can carry in your pocket. SPORTSWEAR -- Recycled sneakers: Nike is testing cross-training shoes with soles made from ground-up sneakers. THEATER -- Recycled sitcoms: First there was "The Real Live Brady Bunch" Off Broadway. Now, a North Carolina theater company has staged "Gilligan's Island: The Musical." SOUVENIR -- Femidom: A condom for women to wear; not yet sold in the United States but available over the counter in Switzerland. | SURFACING |
538781_0 | Historical uncertainty sails into New York Harbor today in the form of replicas of Christopher Columbus's Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. "Replicas" is an overstatement. Although these models pay meticulous attention to detail, facts about the original caravels are sparse. The same holds true for Columbus. Perceptions of the man have ranged from heroic to villainous, depending on the era doing the perceiving. As for the ships, the first documentation came only 15 years ago when Eugene Lyon, an American scholar, discovered some of Nina's details in a Seville archive. As The New York Times's John Noble Wilford points out in his book, "The Mysterious History of Columbus," caravels were "the major advance in seafaring technology that launched the Age of Discovery." They combined square-rigged and lateen sails, for sailing with and against the wind. But no one has yet identified a caravel wreck. Columbus's ships were nothing special. They just happened to be in port when a royal decree ordered that he be provisioned. Crews were raised locally, with crucial help from the seafaring Pinzon brothers, Martin Alonso and Vicente, who captained Nina and Pinta and later fueled some of the earliest controversy. The Pinzon family sued Columbus's heirs, claiming Martin Alonso deserved more credit and money. In the world at large, Columbus stirred little interest for more than a hundred years. Not until the 1700's did Americans adopt him as their hero, symbolizing the nation's bold spirit. And only in the late 1800's did a few historians acknowledge his flaws. One of them wrote: "He talked a great deal about making converts of the poor souls" -- the Indians -- but was quick to "consign them to the slave mart." That same view echoes today in Native-American protests against oppression. As always, one can only see past events through present eyes. Even so, while some people blame Columbus's trailblazing for most of modern society's problems, nothing dims his achievement. He changed the world. | Projecting the Present Onto Columbus |
535988_0 | FOR years, environmental groups have been trying to get politicians up in the air to take a look at logging in national forests in the Pacific Northwest. The view from an airplane, they argue, gives a true sense of how much of the publicly owned forests have been cut. Last week, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., went them one better. They released photos of the forests from space. These pictures, taken from 700 miles above the Earth, show a pattern of clearcutting throughout the entire rain forest of the Northwest that is so extensive that the land looks perforated by a giant blast of buckshot. In stunning contrast were acccompanying pictures of logging in Brazil's rain forest. The Amazon is more than 10 times as large as the Northwest's old-growth forest. But it appears to be in far better shape, said Dr. Compton J. Tucker, who heads the Goddard mapping team. Only about 10 percent of the Amazon jungle has been logged, but nearly 90 percent of the original Northwest forest is gone. These pictures arrive in time to influence two major debates on forestry practices. At the Earth Summit in Rio, developing nations have been arguing that it is hypocritical for the United States to condemn tropical countries while it cuts trees on such a scale on its own taxpayer-owned land. The second debate will be next month in the House of Representatives, which is considering a bill that would preserve five million acres in the Montana Rockies as wilderness, but open one million acres to logging, mining and oil drilling. The Senate passed the bill in March. Forest Service Objects Forest Service officials object to the satellite photo comparisons, noting that national forest land is replanted while the jungle is burned. But environmentalists say that the erosion that follows mountain logging does permanent damage, and that many animals who live in old forests cannot survive in a scalped landscape of juvenile tree farms. Perhaps the most cut-over forest in the NASA pictures is the Gifford Pinchot in southwest Washington state, named for one of the founding fathers of the Forest Service. The forest contains Mount St. Helens and its blast zone of scarred land to the north. But what is most startling is the land south of the volcano, where decades of intense logging have left very little | Satellite View; Forest Damage, North and South |
535996_1 | treaties at the Earth Summit, saying Americans are "the leaders, not the followers," on environmental issues and will be "pre-eminent" in carrying out accords signed at the conference. [ Page 10. ] Japan Vows Leading Role Japan, too, made a promise today to "play a leading role" in future world pollution control. Japan's Prime Minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, in a speech circulated here, promised to increase foreign aid for environmental projects and embrace pollution control as a scientific challenge. He did not join the other leaders gathered here because of debates in Japan's Parliament. Japan's environmental aid will average $1.45 billion a year, compared with the $1 billion level of the last three years. Japan now contributes 0.3 percent of its gross domestic product. In today's unusual North-South exchange, one of the rare occasions on which the third world enjoyed genuine leverage, the industrialized Northern countries committed themselves to reach the 0.7 percent target "as soon as possible" and pledged to see that the environmental goals in the plan, known as Agenda 21, are fully met. Implicit in the compromise is that the North must find more money for the third world. The agreement notes that the planned Commission on Sustainable Development will monitor progress toward the aid target. And it says that a "review process" should "systematically combine the monitoring of implementation of Agenda 21 with the review of the financial resources available for such implementation." Although the third-world countries accepted the compromise, they have serious reservations about the success of Agenda 21 without specific commitments of money. On Sunday, during the concluding session, Pakistan, the current chairman of the Group of 77, as the third-world countries are known at United Nations meetings, will express the bloc's disappointment at the financial offers the North has made so far. A Warning on Financing And Pakistan will implicitly remind the North that it cannot significantly improve the environment without Southern cooperation. The statement will warn that without the additional assistance, the developing South will be unable to develop in an environmentally sound manner. "We are saying we cannot generate the new resources needed to start up Agenda 21 without new help, so if the North wants us to meet those goals they must treat us more generously," Pakistan's United Nations representative, Jamsheed A. Marker said. Third-world countries say they are owed that assistance because the developed Northern nations are responsible for most | NEGOTIATORS IN RIO AGREE TO INCREASE AID TO THIRD WORLD |
536022_2 | harassment, the Navy has been singled out because of its deeply rooted image of adventure-seeking and promiscuity. When, in the last year, it was reported that a ship captain had been accused of performing oral sex with a prostitute in front of his crew, some Naval officers said it was not a remarkable incident. Women in the Navy say most forms of sexual harassment are less violent and more subtle than the incidents that have made headlines. To combat the old attitude, everything from casual remarks to debauched activity at the extreme edge of sailor traditions is now being questioned. But the ultimate success or failure of the Navy's new policy will depend in large part on how it translates into day-to-day life in the close quarters of Navy ships. As a ship with one of the highest complements of women in the Navy, the Samuel Gompers is a case study in the changes under way. The ship, 645 feet long, is essentially a floating shipyard that services Navy combat vessels. About 30 percent of her crew of 1,500 are women, compared to an overall average of 10 percent among the Navy's 576,000 active-duty members. The Gompers goes to sea for six months at a time and last year served in the Persian Gulf war. Rules on Sex and Dating "Some people think the training is a joke," Ms. Coughlin said, as she tied down the lines of the ship. "But the guys are on notice; they have to behave or they are out." In ordering last week that all Navy personnel undergo training, Adm. Frank B. Kelso Jr., chief of naval operations, acknowledged that it might take a long time to change attitudes. But in a memo sent out last week to all Navy commanders, he said, "The time for mixed signals is passed." Navy officials say they can't change human nature, but they can try to control it. The rules say that two people who are seriously dating must report their romantic involvement to their superiors -- something the sailors say is rarely done. The service prohibits sex on its ships and does not let married couples serve on the same vessel. Aboard the Samuel Gompers, men and women sat together in small groups to view videotapes, provided by the Navy, on dos and don'ts of sexual behavior. After the session some of the leering continued, Navy women | Female Sailors Talk of Slow but Certain Change |
536112_0 | RIO DE JANEIRO, June 13 -- In the parade of world leaders speaking at the Earth Summit, the voices of the great powers won the greatest attention, largely because of the dollar signs nestled in their texts. But it was the smaller nations that often cast diplomacy aside to raise troubling questions about overpopulation, the flow of aid, and the inequity between rich and poor. Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, one of only a handful of women to address the plenary, raised an environmental issue that has been largely invisible during the Earth Summit: population growth. "We must curb population growth by more effective means than we were able to agree upon here and which recognize and and reinforce the links to poverty and the rights of women," Mrs. Brundtland said. Unexpected support came from Pakistan, this year's chairman the Group of 77, through which third world countries work collectively at United Nations forums. 'Share of Responsibility' "Developing countries must assume their full share of responsibility in limiting population growth to manageable levels," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan said. "Although overpopulation is a symptom and not the root cause of poverty, a meaningful effort must be made to control it." A similar plea for universal access to family planning was raised by one voice with particular resonance in Latin America, that of Felipe Gonzalez, Prime Minister of Spain. "The reduction of demographic growth is a key element to make environmental protection compatible with development," Mr. Gonzalez said. "On the contrary, problems of food, health, water, and urban planning will dramatically sharpen." Clauses in documents concerning population growth were watered down after closed-door lobbying by delegates from the Vatican and Saudi Arabia, both for religious reasons. Today, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State, warned against wealthy nations' turning to poor nations and "deciding in a devastating tyranny how many children they can have, and threatening to link aid for development to that dictate." While leaders of the industrialized nations congratulated themselves on progress made in Rio, Ketumile Masire, President of Botswana, said: "Africa is seriously concerned about the unfortunate lack of progress on the issues of technology transfer, resource flows, debt relief and trade imbalances." In a day marked by flowery speeches hailing everything green and the future of the planet, some of the bluntest language came from Malaysia's prime minister, Mohamad Mahathir. "We hear from | Rich Nations Offer Money, But Small Ones Raise Issues |
536095_3 | and sometimes United States Customs officials stationed at airports. The woman is pulled out of line and arrested as a mule, a drug-carrier. She can be sentenced to seven years in prison. Her boyfriend, meanwhile, is long gone -- and out of the reach of the law. Of course, most of the millions of tourists who roam the world each year never run into any trouble. Yet there are occasional muggings or thefts, and now and then a tragic death. In many such cases, especially in developing countries, the most frustrating experience for the visitor comes from the widespread incompetence of local police in investigating crime. The Bureau of Consular Affairs has various pieces of advice aimed at avoiding problems. Not being certain to rent a car from a company protected by insurance, for example, can lead to personal liability in an accident -- and a jail without bail while the case is heard or bribes are negotiated. In countries where the exporting of antiques and artifacts is forbidden or strictly controlled -- Thailand, India and most Latin American countries with pre-Columbian art are examples -- travelers have bought good reproductions only to find that untutored officials have seized the art work and/or arrested owners. A bill of sale with detailed description of the object in the local language may help avoid trouble. Incidentally, carrying art from one country to another outside the United States can pose problems, too. Customs officers in Bangkok once charged me more than $100 in "duty" on wood carvings from Papua New Guinea that I had bought for less than half that amount. I swallowed hard and paid. It was straightforward extortion. Recently, local officials in many countries have become jittery over the widespread use of videorecorders by tourists. It is not always wise, however tempting, to try to film disturbances, the insides of sacred shrines or many public buildings. Always take a few minutes to size up the situation and ask someone if you are in any doubt. When visiting countries that do not require a passport or visa for American citizens, tourists should be aware that there have been problems on leaving if the traveler's identification and proof of citizenship is questioned. The State Department says that airlines have refused to board returning Americans in Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados and the Dominican Republic, among other places, because they did not have proof of citizenship. | Tough Times In Foreign Jails |
536113_0 | RIO DE JANEIRO, June 13 -- In the parade of world leaders speaking at the Earth Summit, the voices of the great powers won the greatest attention, largely because of the dollar signs nestled in their texts. But it was the smaller nations that often cast diplomacy aside to raise troubling questions about overpopulation, the flow of aid, and the inequity between rich and poor. Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, one of only a handful of women to address the plenary, raised an environmental issue that has been largely invisible during the Earth Summit: population growth. "We must curb population growth by more effective means than we were able to agree upon here and which recognize and and reinforce the links to poverty and the rights of women," Mrs. Brundtland said. Unexpected support came from Pakistan, this year's chairman the Group of 77, through which third world countries work collectively at United Nations forums. 'Share of Responsibility' "Developing countries must assume their full share of responsibility in limiting population growth to manageable levels," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan said. "Although overpopulation is a symptom and not the root cause of poverty, a meaningful effort must be made to control it." A similar plea for universal access to family planning was raised by one voice with particular resonance in Latin America, that of Felipe Gonzalez, Prime Minister of Spain. "The reduction of demographic growth is a key element to make environmental protection compatible with development," Mr. Gonzalez said. "On the contrary, problems of food, health, water, and urban planning will dramatically sharpen." Clauses in documents concerning population growth were watered down after closed-door lobbying by delegates from the Vatican and Saudi Arabia, both for religious reasons. Today, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State, warned against wealthy nations' turning to poor nations and "deciding in a devastating tyranny how many children they can have, and threatening to link aid for development to that dictate." While leaders of the industrialized nations congratulated themselves on progress made in Rio, Ketumile Masire, President of Botswana, said: "Africa is seriously concerned about the unfortunate lack of progress on the issues of technology transfer, resource flows, debt relief and trade imbalances." In a day marked by flowery speeches hailing everything green and the future of the planet, some of the bluntest language came from Malaysia's prime minister, Mohamad Mahathir. "We hear from | Rich Nations Offer Money, But Small Ones Raise Issues |
536029_2 | widely seen as a promising start to the arduous task of curbing the heat-trapping gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, that threaten to disrupt the earth's climate. Most countries, the United States being the chief exception, also signed a treaty aimed at better conserving the world's dwindling inventory of living species. The two treaties are far from perfect, but between them they set in motion a long-term process for dealing with the two most pressing environmental concerns. Guide for Issues By the end of the conference, despite early pessimism, an agreement emerged on basic principles for managing and conserving the world's forests. Of all the issues that divided north and south, haves and have-not countries, that was among the most contentious. The new accord enables the United Nations to start negotiations on an international forest treaty, a result fervently sought by the United States but flatly resisted by certain third-world countries jealous to preserve sovereignty over their forests. Environmentalists attacked the pact as hopelessly weak, even a step backward, but it appears to have put forest management firmly on the international agenda for the first time. Another important product of the Rio deliberations is a general statement of principles for sustainable development, along with a voluminous compendium of rather general recommendations, called Agenda 21, for nations to follow as a guide on virtually every known environmental issue. Probably no one has yet read or digested it all. On the debit side, the agreements all tend to run toward the lowest common denominator, perhaps an inevitable result when an entire planet's welter of interests clash on matters involving economics. Attention to Population Population, while it is addressed in Agenda 21, clearly received less attention than deserved even though, along with rich countries' wasteful consumption patterns, it lies at the root of the global environmental problem. A major world conference on population is scheduled for 1994. Still unsettled was the crucial question of mechanisms and commitments for transferring money from rich countries to poor ones to promote economic development compatible with protecting the environment. The delegates had also not agreed on the establishment of institutions to carry out the summit meeting's recommendations. On the scorecard of north versus south, the developing countries clearly succeeded in their goal of making economic development as important as environmental protection. While almost everyone agrees that economics and environment must go hand in hand, some environmentalists were disturbed that | Lessons of Rio: A New Prominence and an Effective Blandness |
535742_5 | priest has my personal signature -- for example, my deep belief in openness and inclusiveness. Some of my important concerns have to be put on the back burner, like inclusive language, language that does not exclude women. A lot of church language uses male language. It takes a lot of work to change that, and because I work so hard at the bilingual service, delivering the sermon in English and Spanish, I don't have the energy to clean up the language of its male domination. Q. Are female priests any less accepted than their male counterparts? A. There are many more female priests today than there were 10 years ago. When I was first ordained in 1974, people would stop and ask me whether I was really a priest. When I moved to Hudson County from Kansas City in 1977, people here really seemed to accept me, to take me for granted. I didn't get many questions. Interestingly enough, the questions are beginning to start again. I don't whether it's due to some sort of antiwoman backlash. It seems the women's movement is not as well accepted as it was four or five years ago, that women are having a tougher time. Q. Does being a man rather than a woman cast a different slant on being a priest? A. Normally I like to avoid that question. Being a priest is an individual thing. I liken it to a snowflake image; each priest has his or her own imprint, his or her own answer to God's call. But male priests are a little more corporate minded, a little bit more ambitious. Women priests are more mission and pastorally oriented. Q. What's it like being married to a priest? A. There are pluses and minuses. You really understand one another's life. Having gone from clergy wife to priest partner, though, gave me a much deeper understanding about the priesthood even though I'm fourth generation of a clergy family. The negative side is that we both have tough schedules. Q. How do you and your husband influence each other? A. George and I have worked at not competing; rather, we work as partners. We're more apt to seek out each other's ideas. For example, I learned through him that it was inappropriate for a priest to be authoritarian. Now I value the idea of shared ministry. From me, George has borrowed a | Trying to Preserve an Inner-City Parish |
534481_0 | It's illegal for an employer to listen in on a person's telephone conversations even if those conversations take place on a company-owned phone. But there are no such clear privacy rules for the electronic mail that moves on a company's computer network. If fact, most legal experts in the field are concerned by just how far the law trails the technology. "I don't think that employees should have any expectations of privacy," said Mark Mahoney, co-chairman of the Committee on Technology for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Dealing with the legal and ethical questions of privacy will have to be addressed sooner or later as the use of E-mail, both inside and outside company computers, is only going to grow. The failure of companies to develop clear policies on the issue and communicate those rules to employees will only lead to confusion and litigation. The major problem with offering privacy on a computer network is that a network administrator needs to have total access in order to properly maintain it. For example, when a network disk drive begins to fill up, material must be erased. An administrator must decide what -- including E-mail -- to delete. Given that reality, should a person expect E-mail to be private? "The benchmark seems to be whether or not the employee has a 'reasonable expectation' of privacy when he or she sends the message," according to James P. Beggans Jr., a principal attorney with Butler Fitzgerald & Potter in New York. "If so, then an invasion of that privacy by the employer is wrongful. But if the nature of the system is such that a reasonable person looking at it from the outside would conclude that there was no expectation of privacy, then the employee is out of luck.". While the legal issues are murky, there is little disagreement among network professionals on who owns or should own E-mail. John Campbell, a network consultant, expresses the sentiment of most: "A user's data is that user's property." If some power-that-be wanted to read an employee's mail, Mr. Campbell said, he would have to be convinced that the violation of the user's privacy was required. "If I feel that the situation does not require the reading of an employee's E-mail, my employer has two options -- back down or fire me. I haven't been fired from a job yet," he said. As president of | Networking; Privacy in E-Mail? Better to Assume It Doesn't Exist |
534083_2 | 41, he finds himself at the center of a debate raging in editorial offices across the country over how far to push the edge of humor in the venerable American craft of cartooning. His 1989 autobiography, "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot," published by William Morrow, was a critical and commercial hit, introducing a voice that had rarely been heard among the volumes of stories about people overcoming physical disasters. It was inspirational, the critics said, but not in the traditional sense of such works. When the actor William Hurt purchased the rights to make a movie about Callahan's life, based on the book, the cartoonist had one reservation. "Just don't call it 'Children of a Lesser Quad,' " he said. Two books of cartoons, "Do Not Disturb Any Further" and "Digesting the Child Within," and weekly syndication in more than 40 newspapers have helped to establish Callahan among the new breed of quirky sketch-and-gag artists like Gary Larson, creator of the phenomenally popular "Far Side," and Berke Breathed, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for "Bloom County," a strip he has since discontinued in favor of a new cartoon. "Doonsbury" may trouble editors for its political satire, but Callahan is often accused of doing something that many readers consider more sinister: making fun of invalids and animals. CALLAHAN HAS YET TO achieve the sort of mass-market fame of his friend Larson, who lives in Seattle, or that of another cartoonist and former Portland resident, Matt Groening, the creator of "The Simpsons" on Fox television and "Life in Hell," a syndicated strip. In all likelihood, his drawings will never end up on every other coffee cup because they are so polarizing. He is either brilliant and savagely honest, as many fans, in and out of wheelchairs, have told him in letters and phone calls. Or he is sick, making fun of the most vulnerable people in society, as some organizations that represent the handicapped have told him. This year is a landmark for the 43 million Americans whom the Government classifies as physically or mentally impaired. The Americans with Disabilities Act, which went into effect in January, forbids bias in hiring and requires businesses and public offices to accomodate the disabled. It has been called the most sweeping anti-discrimination law since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For all the liberating intents of the new law, Callahan | Defiantly Incorrect |
534509_7 | that kept easterners from slipping into the river and over to the West remain. Behind that fencing is Babelsberg, the German Hollywood where Marlene Dietrich rose to fame, which after the war cranked out Communist propaganda films. Near the Glienicke Bridge passengers catch a glimpse, high on a wooded hill to the left, of Babelsberg Castle and park, the early 19th-century summer residence of the prince who became Kaiser Wilhelm I. Entering the Jungfernsee, passengers get a view of the Pfaueninsel, or Peacock Island, whose white fairy tale castle is a magnet for tourists. One can visit the island by disembarking at the Pfaueninsel stop and taking a small ferry across the channel. This is also a favorite disembarking point for passengers interested in a snack at a lakeside cafe. From here the boat re-enters the Grosser Wannsee, which on sunny, summer weekends draws hundreds of sailboats in scenes reminiscent of Friday rush-hour traffic on the autobahns. Friedrichshagen-Woltersdorf. For a deep look into old East Berlin, visitors can travel on the old East German Weisse Flotte (White Fleet) along countrified stretches of the Spree River, like those fin-de-siecle tourists who took steamboat rides into what were then far outlying suburbs of the city. This trip involves simple cafes, home-style meals and snacks, and little of the pizazz one tends to encounter in the western sections of the city. It is ideal for a day that requires a change of pace and perhaps a bit of birdsong. There's no narration on this one. From a small passenger dock in Friedrichshagen, passengers board for a 90-minute ride to Woltersdorf, an old-fashioned backwater with cafes and beer gardens. Swans and ducks may crowd around the boat hoping for bread before it steams out across the Grosser Muggelsee, the biggest lake in the eastern part of the city. The first stop is Muggelhort, at the entrance to the Kleiner Muggelsee, where local residents may disembark and head to the tiny cottages where they spend their summers. After passing through the village of Rahnsdorf, whose church steeple is visible from the water, the boat enters a narrow, tree-lined canal that gave its name to the area, Neu Venedig, or New Venice. All the paint one feels is lacking in the old eastern section seems to have been lavished on New Venice's dollhouse-like cottages. Many of the homes -- often owned by former East German TV | On Deck to Tour Berlin |
534503_2 | no violence would be done to molecular events if the response were described as "determined" and the signals were, say, "insistent" and "clear." Oddly enough, Ms. Sheehy presents evidence to support a far less alarmist view. In many societies -- especially those in which women gain freedom and status with age -- menopause is not regarded as a grave physiological challenge. She says, "The Japanese language does not even have a word for hot flashes." Then there is the respected Massachusetts Women's Health Study written in 1986 by the Harvard epidemiologists Sonja and John McKinlay. It found the overwhelming majority of American women sailing through middle age with little trauma or regret that could be traced to menopause itself. "Try out that line on a room full of menopausal-aged women," is Ms. Sheehy's dismissive response. But in the kind of room Ms. Sheehy is likely to enter, aging is, indeed, a female disaster. She goes, of all places, to Hollywood to convene a little soiree on the subject, and in the one truly comic passage of the book, a roomful of aerobicized, liposuctioned, acupunctured Hollywood women squeal about the horrors of menopause and clamor for a "holistic" cure. At least this scene would be funny if we didn't already know that in the movie industry, menopause is a virtual death sentence, the time when, as one of Ms. Sheehy's Hollywood women puts it, "You lose your value." In the end Ms. Sheehy discovers that menopause is -- guess what? -- a passage , and an occasion for spiritual growth. She rushes off to the mountains to commune with the moon, gets a "warm, whirling, giddy" feeling, a merging with the All, capped by an urgent desire to "get back to my laptop, my writing." One wishes she had had one prior epiphany before attacking the keyboard: that she had leaned into one of those hot flashes, those moments of "static," and realized, this too is me. For a more upbeat take on the female aging process, there is Lois W. Banner's highly literate and richly researched "In Full Flower: Aging Women, Power, and Sexuality," which focuses on lusty older women, like Chaucer's Wife of Bath, who consort with younger males. It's great fun to follow Ms. Banner, who teaches history at the University of Southern California, as she trawls through history for edifying older woman-younger man couples. In them, she | All Aboard the Raging Hormone Express |
534180_0 | The United States, under fire at the Earth Summit for perceived foot-dragging on treaties intended to protect the planet's climate and its biological diversity, is trying to restore its standing, at least partly, by leading a drive to save the world's forests. But opponents of the forests initiative are suspicious of the Bush Administration's motives, and the prospects that the initiative will advance at the summit, or that it will do much to repair Washington's environmental reputation, are in doubt. Coming into Rio, the Administration found itself at odds with much of the rest of the world over treaties to control global warming and preserve the world's plant, animal and microbial species. On forests, however, the Administration has taken the lead in pushing a position that is endorsed by many environmental groups and by other industrialized nations. But in doing so, it has fallen afoul of the vehement opposition of developing countries for which forests are a major economic asset. These countries assert that while they believe in protecting forests, they are theirs to do with as they please. They accuse the United States and other industrialized countries of attempting to coerce them on the issue for domestic political gain. And they bridle at what they see as an attempt to abridge their sovereignty by countries that long ago cut down their own trees for profit but now want to place the main burden of global forest conservation on countries struggling for economic survival. "We are certainly not holding our forests in custody for those who have destroyed their own forests and now try to claim ours as part of the heritage of mankind," Ting Wen Lian, a Malaysian diplomat who has emerged as the developing countries' chief spokeswoman on the issue, said as the forest negotiations began this week. Her country and the United States are the two largest timber-exporting nations in the world. Forests as Global Asset The United States argues that forests, especially tropical forests, are being destroyed at an alarming rate in the developing world and that the planet as a whole will be the loser. Forests, it argues, are a global asset that help regulate the climate by absorbing heat-trapping carbon dioxide and are the repository of a major portion of the world's living species. William K. Reilly, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and chief of the United States delegation to the Earth | U.S., Trying to Buff Its Image, Defends the Forests |
534081_19 | "Are you saying, Your Majesty, that they should use an atom bomb on Saddam Hussein?" "They should put a bomb under him," the King said. "And you trust the French to test their nuclear devices elsewhere in the world?" (Some time after this conversation with the King, I read that the new French Prime Minister announced the suspension of nuclear testing in the South Pacific until the end of this year. He declared that the ban might be extended next year if other nuclear powers followed suit.) "I don't trust the French at all!" he said, and saying so, he roared with laughter. The eruption was so unexpected I twitched with surprise. Intending to exploit this sudden emotion, I said, "The French are usually self-interested, so they are -- in foreign policy at any rate -- insincere, unprincipled and unreliable." "Totally unreliable!" he roared, and he laughed again. "I have been rereading the history of the Franco-Prussian War. Do you know how that war started?" He summarized for me the events of 120 years ago that led to the outbreak of that war. "The French make a detail into a principle," I said, "but they are just as likely to make a principle or a murderous event into a detail. Look at the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and the murder of the photographer on board by the French saboteurs in New Zealand. The French Government said it was nothing -- they regarded it as nothing. Yet if it had happened to them they might have used it as a pretext for a war." "But New Zealand can't go to war with France," the King said. "There was nothing that New Zealand could do." "No one went to bat for New Zealand, though," I said. "The British have a rather ambiguous attitude toward the French. They like the food, they feel somewhat intimidated by the French people." "The English overlook the French weaknesses," the King said, "and so do your people in the United States." "SINCE WE ARE GENERalizing about national characteristics, what about the Japanese, Your Highness?" "They are building a new terminal for us at the airport." "Do they mention wanting to buy islands from you?" "We will never give our land away," the King said. "That is the worst problem in Hawaii -- the loss of land. It now belongs to other people, and the Hawaiians have | In the Court of the King of Tonga |
534073_0 | ON the map it looks as though the lakes and rivers of eastern Ontario have been splattered there by a celestial Jackson Pollock. Some of the 60-odd lakes appear to have trickled together to form meandering ribbons. Others are blobs connected by fine threads. As I looked at the map, contemplating a one-week sailing trip in Canada, I could imagine poking around in this watery wilderness with my two teen-age sons and our dog, Birdie -- fishing for whoppers, camping under a full moon and generally washing away the cares of modern life. We would put our 17-foot boat on a trailer and drive to Kingston, Ontario. The area is nearby -- only 150 miles north of Albany -- but what especially intrigued me was that many of these lakes are connected by a navigable waterway called the Rideau Canal. This 123-mile passage, which includes 47 locks made of huge, hand-hewn limestone blocks that march up and down the hills between Kingston and Ottawa, was constructed in the 1820's when Britain feared war with the United States and sought an alternative east-west artery in case it was denied the use of the St. Lawrence River. I sent away for charts and brochures. What clinched my decision to cruise the Rideau last July was reading that the overhead clearance on the route was never less than 22 feet. The mast of Wind's Fool, our beautiful but leaky old Nathanial Herreschoff sloop, stands 21 feet from the waterline. She seemed made for the voyage. Our plan was to sail the lakes and motor the rivers, using our vintage Seagull outboard when necessary. There are, of course, many other ways to explore the Rideau. In fact, sailboats are a distinct rarity on the waterway. Throughout our trip, we saw more seaplanes (five) than sailboats (three), and most of the water traffic we encountered consisted of powerboats. You can charter a roomy 40-foot houseboat, or board an excursion steamer in Ottawa -- a real, wood-fired steam screw vessel built in 1903. Canoeing is possible, too, but frankly, after pounding through heavy seas on Big Rideau Lake I wouldn't take a canoe on these waters unless it were the only means I could find of escaping a pack of bloodthirsty wolves. Having stocked up on groceries at an A.&P. in Watertown, N.Y. (to avoid Canada's Goods and Services Tax), we were loaded to the gunwales | Under Sail Along Ontario's Rideau |
534252_0 | CRAFT collectors scour galleries, fairs and stores for well-designed, well-made contemporary pieces. Those in the know also go directly to the craft artists' studios. In New Jersey, connoisseurs and amateurs alike can find all these resources in one place: the Peters Valley Craft Center. The six studios at the center, which is actually a restored historic village, are open to the public from 2 to 4 P.M. daily through Aug. 31. Guided tours begin every Saturday and Sunday at 2 P.M. in front of the Craft Store porch. Free self-guided walking tour maps, which also are available there, include short histories of a Greek Revival house, a church, cottages and barns, all of which are more than 100 years old. A trip to the site, which is in the heart of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, can include more than a search for contemporary and traditional crafts. This is a good spot for a spring or summer outing. The hillside site of the Peters Valley Annual Craft Fair, which will be held July 25 and 25, offers a vista of the Kittatinny Mountains. The first stop should be the Doremus Gallery, on the second floor of the office building, to view the high-quality work by the 36 craft artists who will be leading 70 workshops at the center this summer. Many are well-known artists who come from other states. Their work includes ceramics, fibers, wood, iron, fine metals and photography. Each piece is accompanied by a label outlining the content of a course the artist plans to teach. These descriptions can inform even casual visitors about the artist's technique and creative philosophy. Despite the wide variety of media and styles, there are no garish conflicts in the show. Many of the hues are natural, which gives added emphasis to the materials. Some works are functional, others not, but it is evident that these artists are aware of the functional origins of their crafts. The most dramatic work is Robert Turner's "Form III." His mat-black stoneware cylinder has the awesome austerity of a medieval tower. Occasional dents, rough spots and scratches imply the slight flaws that might be imposed by time and nature. Mr. Turner, whose home base is Alfred, N. Y., says he tries to be true to the nature of his material, to stay within its limitations. Although his work has been termed "minimalist," his concepts are | Show of Creations by Artists Who Teach |
534335_3 | that year's Los Angeles Auto Show rolled around, the Viper was on the Dodge stand as a concept car. And the public's interest astounded the executives. Since then, the car has starred at all the major shows, and it has been no secret that Dodge was working furiously to make it a production model. "We collected people from around the company," Helbig said. "What we looked for were gear-heads, people who loved cars and had stuff like Porsches and other toys. It was risky, because the project could have been canceled at any point, and we were giving up our other jobs to build a hot-rod." Suppliers also were asked to take risks, and you get the feeling that favors were called in. The 8-liter V10 engine had been under development by Chrysler for installation in trucks, but the six-speed transmission was supplied by Borg-Warner, and Michelin designed new tires for the 17-inch wheels. The tires have directional tread and they are different sizes, front and rear. The back tires are gigantic. They are 13 inches wide, and they provide great traction on dry roads. But with a contact patch that big, the car's weight is dissipated, and that means the Viper will slither in the rain. Of course, with little in the way of roof or windows, the car is not meant to be out in the wet anyway. Whacky, right? Chrysler gave the team an unused warehouse, and the designers' desks were in the middle of the floor, hard by the men with air wrenches, hammers and all the rest. The budget was $50 million, a pittance when compared to automotive development costs that often have a billion-dollar bottom line, and the money was squeezed out in dribs and drabs, allowing cancellation at any time. "But we did it," Helbig said. "We got this thing into production in three years, and that is almost unheard of." What is also almost unheard of is the car's performance, and laps at the Lime Rock track proved it. For the record, though, the Viper accelerates from zero to 60 miles an hour in 4.5 seconds. It has a top speed of 165 m.p.h. (with a rev limiter to prevent it from going faster) and it is said to go from a standing stop to 100 m.p.h. and back to zero in 14.5 seconds. Actually, we tried that at the track and | Dodge Lets Loose an Old-Style Beast |
534157_0 | The saga of the wayward black bear that wandered into the heart of suburbia in Paramus, N.J., late last month ended Thursday night in a bumpy encounter with a car just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. The animal, a 190-pound, two-year old male, was hit at 11 P.M. as it ran across Closter Dock Road near the Palisades in Alpine, N.J. The bear suffered a dislocated right rear hip and torn tendons; the motorist was not hurt. Rich Goszka, a state wildlife control specialist, tranquilized the bear and took it to a veterinarian for treatment in western New Jersey. "It'll recover but have a limp," he said. After five days of observation at a state preserve, the animal will be released in the mountains of northwestern New Jersey, he said. Mr. Goszka and his partner, Bob Eriksen, a wildlife biologist, had trailed the bear on its eastward trek across Passaic and Bergen Counties from North Haledon on May 27, to Paramus on May 29, to the Flat Rock Brook nature preserve in Englewood last Wednesday, and finally Thursday night, to the doorstep of New York City. "It's pretty odd to see the World Trade Center when you pick up a bear," Mr. Goszka said. He said he was "99 percent certain" the injured bear was the same one he and Mr. Ericksen had been pursuing. "The likelihood of more than one bear in this urban-suburban environment is pretty slim," Mr. Eriksen said. | Update; Roaming Black Bear Almost Takes Manhattan |
534162_0 | Diplomats attending the Earth Summit said today that they had achieved a broad consensus in favor of setting up a high-level watchdog group to insure that governments respect the pledges they make here. The new international body, to be called the Sustainable Development Commission, would rely heavily on evidence gathered by private environmental groups. It would be modeled on the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva and like it would use peer pressure and public opinion to shame countries into following policies that are compatible with environmental preservation. It would not be empowered to impose fines or other sanctions against offenders. The commission would also seek to insure that industrial countries stand by the commitments they give here to supply developing nations with aid and technology to help them meet the costs of conservation measures. "There is growing acceptance that the follow-up to the Rio summit should be entrusted to a Sustainable Development Commission," said Britain's Environment Minister, David Maclean, a leader of the push for the new agency. "It will be a forum for peer pressure that will identify gaps and problems." Wide-Ranging Mandate According to a draft document drawn up for adoption by the United Nations General Assembly this fall, the commission will be charged with monitoring government compliance with Agenda 21, the ambitious plan the summit meeting is preparing for cleaning up the world in the coming century. It will also monitor compliance with the new conventions against global warming and on preserving the earth's biological resources. The commission is being given a wide-ranging mandate that allows it to check not only the environmental activities of governments but also those of international development agencies like the World Bank, to receive reports from United Nations bodies and to draw on the expertise of private environmental watchdog organizations as well as industry and science. "The commission will have a total picture of follow-up and implementation of Agenda 21," Mr. Maclean said. The General Assembly is to decide where the commission should be based and how often it should meet. The draft document stipulates that the commission will have delegates from 53 nations, like the Human Rights Commission. The document says the delegates should be high-level officials, and Western countries generally want the commission staffed by top Government officials who carry out environmental policies, rather than by regular United Nations diplomats. The document says that governments will be encouraged | Delegates at Earth Summit Plan a Watchdog Agency |
497540_0 | In agricultural biotechnology, the contrast between the American style of creating new businesses and the approach in Europe and Japan is especially stark. The difference has direct bearing on the way biotechnology companies tend to form their foreign alliances, with smaller American players teaming up with bigger overseas companies. Although some big American corporations like Monsanto have invested heavily in biotechnology, many of the most intriguing developments in the United States have been reported by entrepreneurial start-up concerns like Mycogen, Ecogen, Calgene, Crop Genetics, Biotechnica and DNA Plant Technologies. Granted, there are highly regarded start-up companies overseas, like Plant Genetic Systems of Belgium, but the research leaders seem to be the giant chemical and pharmaceutical multinationals like ICI of Britain, Rhone-Poulenc of France and Ciba-Geigy of Switzerland. Part of the difference is the unparalleled access that American entrepreneurs have to venture capital and subsequently, if their companies survive, to the stock market. Sooner or later, though, many start-ups decide they need bigger corporate partners for further financial support, marketing and production skills and other expertise. In agricultural biotechnology those alliances are typically forged with big foreign companies. The result: a largely one-way flow to foreign countries of research results and technology pioneered in the United States. So far, according to industry analysts, the real cost to American companies has been the surrender of potential foreign markets rather than the creation of potential domestic competitors. Take Mycogen, a San Diego-based concern that has focused most of its work on biopesticides. These are naturally occurring toxins that Mycogen isolates from microorganisms and mass-produces by genetically engineering bacteria to make them. The toxins are encapsulated so that they will not degrade too rapidly to be useful when sprayed onto fields. These "natural" poisons tend to kill only targeted pests, cause fewer pollution problems, and be harder for insects to develop a tolerance to than synthetic chemicals. Mycogen has various agreements with the Kubota Corporation of Japan, Japan Tobacco Inc., and a research subsidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell, the British-Dutch petrochemical giant. All of them leave Mycogen with North American marketing rights to the products covered by the agreements, while providing Mycogen with greater marketing resources and expertise. "We couldn't commercialize this stuff without them," Marie C. Burke, Mycogen's head of investor relations, said of the company's overseas allies. One result of so much collaborative work is that American agricultural biotechnology is probably closer to | BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY -- The Global Lab: Agriculture; U.S. Biotech Seeks Foreign Backers |
497476_1 | Mr. Springer said in an interview, are devices called fish ladders that would allow salmon and other species to spawn upstream. Some dams will be required to install barriers to protect fish from being chopped up by turbines. In addition, Mr. Springer said, dam owners could be called on to build boat ramps and other provisions for recreational river users. The agency could also require utilities to more carefully regulate the flow of water through dams. That wouldeliminate the sudden turbulent rush of water during periods of peak electricity demand, followed by a trickle as utilities store water in reservoirs to gain energy. The irregular flows, environmental scientists say, cause erosion of stream banks, ruin fish breeding grounds and make it dangerous to go canoeing or kayaking. In rare instances, the agency may even require owners to remove a dam because the amount of electricity it generates is far outweighed by the environmental harm it is causing. No Large Expenses Expected "Virtually every project we are reviewing will require changes to reduce their effect on the environment," Mr. Springer said. "Environmental standards are much different now than they were when these projects were first licensed." Utility executives said today that in most cases new construction and changes in the way the plants are managed were unlikely to be excessively expensive. The Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, which is seeking to relicense 30 of its 74 hydroelectric projects in New York, more than any other utility in the nation, said it planned to spend $100 million over the next eight years on improvements including new equipment to increase the amount of power generated by 8 percent. "We've already been working with canoeing groups, fishermen and cities where we operate hydroelectric power projects to prepare our application," said James M. Cosgrove, a spokesman for Niagara Mohawk Power in Syracuse. "We're trying to meet the concerns of the environmental people at the same time we're also meeting the demands of our customers." When they were built decades ago, virtually all the 237 dams that are coming up for review by the Government were seen as vibrant emblems of American industrial ingenuity and engineering prowess. Some were magnificent, like the Cushman Dam, built in 1924 by Tacoma City Light in Washington State. It snaked across the Skokomish River, a concrete drapery unfurled in a snow-peaked wilderness. More recently the reputation of the country's roughly 2,000 | U.S. Orders Assessment of Harm Caused by Dams |
497560_0 | A Los Angeles research team has shown that in addition to the established benefits of estrogen replacement after menopause, it also improves the mood and psychological functioning of well-adjusted, healthy women without any distressing menopausal symptoms. Estrogen hormones given to women to replace those the body stops making at menopause were already known to relieve menopausal symptoms like hot flushes, vaginal dryness and urinary tract irritability, and it was also known that replacement hormones slow the loss of bone with age and help lower cholesterol levels. While emotional benefits of estrogen therapy had long been assumed and in fact were suggested by previous studies, none had examined the question in a well-controlled fashion uncontaminated by the effects of relief of menopausal symptoms. In the new study, published in the December 1991 issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Edward C. Ditkoff and colleagues at the University of Southern California School of Medicine found that after three months of treatment with estrogens, test scores indicated that the women were more optimistic and confident and less depressed than a similar group of women who received a look-alike dummy medication. The study involved 36 postmenopausal women from the ages of 45 to 60; all had previously had a hysterectomy but were free of symptoms caused by estrogen deficiency. The women were randomly assigned to one of three groups: one received conjugated estrogens at a dose of 0.625 milligrams a day, another took 1.25 milligrams of estrogen daily and the third took the placebo drug. The women took two standard psychological tests and an intelligence test before and after the therapy. While there was no change in memory or other cognitive functions, there was a decided improvement in depression scores and in a measurement called income management. The income management scale reflects attitudes toward the ability to manage money, and the researchers said the improvement probably reflected increased optimism or confidence, when combined with the effects on depression. No difference was found between the women receiving the higher and lower doses, a finding consistent with other studies indicating that 0.625 milligrams of estrogen is adequate for most women. Over all, the team concluded, estrogen replacement seems to "improve the quality of life" in postmenopausal women not solely because it relieves symptoms but also because it probably reduces stress and enhances a sense of well-being. | Estrogen Is Found to Improve Mood, Not Just Menopause Symptoms |
501105_2 | a leg in Vietnam, can serve as a role model, no other Democrat has courted the disabled as vigorously as Mr. Harkin. He has hired a campaign staff member whose sole job is to organize disabled voters. He has insisted that all his main campaign offices be accessible to those with physical impairments. In addition, he has had special telephones installed in his offices so that people with speech or hearing difficulties may contact the campaign. On the stump he has a sign language interpreter close by, and he reminds audiences that he was the prime Senate sponsor of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a civil rights statute that became law in 1990. He peppers his stump speech with politically correct metaphors, referring to "ramps" as well as "ladders" of opportunity. "There is a tremendous amount of excitement about this candidate," said Paul Steven Miller, director of litigation for the Western Law Center for the Handicapped, a Los Angeles public interest law firm. Yet Mr. Harkin's effort to organize the disabled has been slow getting started. So far, there is only a small number of disabled volunteers in New Hampshire, which will hold the first primary election next month. Advocates for the disabled have been contacted in 40 states, but state committees have been established in only 19. Mary Johnson, editor of The Disability Rag, a newspaper published every two months, said she was "a little startled by the lack of attention to disability issues" in Mr. Harkin's campaign literature. But Jennifer Rigger, the campaign staff member responsible for organizing the disabled, said a new direct mail brochure was being prepared that would focus on disability issues. Mr. Harkin has often talked about the potential political power of the disabled, a group estimated by a 1982 Library of Congress study to number 43 million Americans. "The issue of accessiblity and mainstreaming is the single most important issue in their lives," Mr. Harkin said. "Now, every disabled person has a spouse, brothers and sisters; they have family members. That's why it's more than 43 million people." The civil rights law that Mr. Harkin fought for bars discrimination on the basis of physical and mental disability in employment, transportation, public accommodations and telecommunications services. Among its requirements are that lifts be installed in all new public and private buses and that businesses install wheelchair ramps and widen doors and aisles when feasible. | THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Voters; HARKIN COURTING DISABLED VOTERS |
499786_0 | When used with personal computers, compact disks can store vast amounts of information in very little space. But as more computer software is introduced on CD-ROM (compact disk read-only memory), regular updates of that software are sure to lead to a growing pile of disks that have outlived their usefulness. Before long, people are likely to be asking if they can recycle their outdated disks. A fledgling program to recycle compact disks is under way at the Digital Audio Disk Corporation in Terra Haute, Ind., a subsidiary of Sony U.S.A. Inc. that is the biggest manufacturer of CD's in the United States, supplying about a third of the market. Right now, Digital Audio is recycling metalized disks rejected at the factory and using some of them to make the trays that compact disks are packaged in. "It's an alternative" to disposing of the disks in a dump, said James M. Frische, chairman and chief executive of Digital Audio, but so far relatively few disks are rejected at the factory, meaning not much of a base for a recycling effort. Mr. Frische said that as compact disks for music and data multiply, the opportunity will grow for an "independent, entrepreneurial company" to enter the CD recycling business. In 1990, CD's accounted for roughly 33 percent of all recorded music units sold nationwide, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, a group representing music recording and distribution companies. CD-ROM is still a small factor in the computer software market. At least 300 million CD packages are sold each year in the United States, and 10 to 20 percent find their way back to the record companies, according to another industry trade association, the Jewel Box Advocates and Manufacturers. The group advocates a related effort: recycling the plastic cases in which CD's are packaged, known in the industry as jewel boxes. At the moment, in fact, jewel boxes are being recycled internally by the world's largest producer, the Atlanta Precision Molding Company. The Atlanta-based company makes 280 million jewel boxes a year and accounts for more than half of all jewel boxes sold in North America. By virtue of its huge output, it winds up with a large volume of scrap plastic -- "several thousand pounds per month," said David Stumpff, vice president for marketing and advanced product planning for the company. Atlanta Precision Molding's process turns the clear plastic outer shell | Tech Notes; Recycling the Proliferating Disk |
499563_0 | An anti-piracy program intended to protect Vietnamese refugees from brutal attacks in the Gulf of Thailand has been phased out by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees because the attacks have all but ceased in the last 18 months. Responsibility for policing the seas where, since 1975, thousands of Vietnamese refugees have been robbed, raped, killed or drowned when their boats were attacked, will now rest with the Thai Navy. Officials in the United States say that Washington will be watching the situation closely. The United States paid about $16 million of the $25 million needed to keep the program alive since its inception in 1982, following a year of extreme violence against refugees. In 1981, 1,444 attacks on refugee boats were reported in the Gulf of Thailand and nearby waters, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Of the 71,667 people known to have fled Vietnam that year, 961 were reported killed, 257 taken hostage and 857 women said they had been raped. As late as 1989, 762 Vietnamese or Cambodian refugees were reported killed or missing at sea, but American and United Nations officials say that a decision was made in November to end the program because there had been no reported attacks on Vietnamese refugee boats since July 1990. The program was ended with the new year. Officials say that fewer refugees are fleeing Vietnam by sea since legal departure programs are now functioning. -------------------- Hong Kong to Speed Ousters LONDON, Jan. 11 (AP) -- Hong Kong officials plan to increase flights taking Vietnamese boat people back to their homeland, the British Government said today. Vietnamese and British officials agreed to help speed the repatriation program during a meeting in Hanoi, the Foreign Office said. More than 20,000 Vietnamese in refugee camps in Hong Kong await deportation and more than 36,000 await screening to determine whether they are political refugees or economic migrants. Hong Kong is seeking to empty the camps in two or three years. So far 87 refugees in the former British colony have been forcibly returned to Vietnam on two flights, and Hong Kong officials say a third flight is scheduled this month. Several thousand Vietnamese have returned home voluntarily, officials have said. The Foreign Office said Britain and Vietnam had "agreed to do what they could to increase the rate of repatriation under existing schemes." | U.N. Ends Protection for Vietnamese at Sea |
499749_0 | Quicktime, one of Apple Computer Inc.'s most exciting recent innovations, holds the promise of making video, animation and sound almost as easy to use in computer programs as text and graphics. A flood of products designed to take advantage of Quicktime will be demonstrated at the Macworld Expo trade show, which begins today in San Francisco. Quicktime, which is invisible to the average user, is essentially a set of standards and tools for software developers who are expected to use it to make spreadsheets, data bases, graphics programs, word processors and other applications capable of working with sound and video along with text and standard graphics. It was sent to software developers last month as an extension of the Macintosh operating system. In a way, Quicktime follows the footsteps of Quickdraw, a set of system rules that allowed the integration of text and graphics on the Macintosh screen -- which made possible desktop publishing. Video clips, stereo sound and animated sequences can be stored on a floppy disk (in small snippets) or hard drive just as text and graphics can be stored -- except that video requires much more disk space than plain text or graphics. Quicktime enables the Macintosh user to "cut and paste" those new data forms in a document just as one would insert a paragraph of text or a scanned photograph. According to Apple's design, an executive using a Macintosh can paste a short video segment into a box in a Wordperfect or Microsoft Word word-processing document, create animated graphs and charts in an Aldus Persuasion slide show, add a company jingle and a soundtrack to a computer-based training document for new workers, and otherwise introduce "dynamic" elements to common business applications. "Apple's approach with Quicktime is to give people the opportunity to create multimedia on a human level," said Ray Kingman, president of Deltapoint Inc. of Monterey, Calif., which makes a Macintosh program for business graphics called Deltagraph Professional that can use Quicktime technology. (The program has a list price of $295.) Looking farther afield, Quicktime and similar technologies have the potential to affect consumer electronics, broadcasting, telephones and publishing, as well as computers. Imagine reading this newspaper on your home computer screen and being able to click on the illustration to the right, which comes to life as an animated cartoon. A photo accompanying a news story becomes a film clip. Clicking on a | The Executive Computer; Reports With Sound Effects and Video |
499779_1 | is precisely what it has become hundreds of miles away, in southern Quebec and in New York State's capital, Albany, where the central question about the Great Whale River basin is this: Should large parts of it be underwater? Hydro-Quebec, a utility owned by the province of Quebec, envisions flooding the Great Whale as the second of three phases in a planned hydroelectric power system of colossal proportions. To harness the kinetic energy in 20 wild rivers, Hydro-Quebec plans to erect three dozen huge dams and hundreds of dikes across the taiga, ultimately redrawing terrain in an area the size of France. Affecting the regions east of James Bay and southeast of Hudson Bay, the James Bay development project would be one of the largest hydroelectric complexes in the world, churning turbines with a dozen times the force of Niagara Falls. It would easily rank as one of the largest construction projects ever undertaken. The work already completed in the first phase of the project, south of the Great Whale basin and known as the LaGrande River complex, used enough fill to build the Great Pyramid of Cheops 80 times over. A feat like diverting the Caniapiscau River, so that it flowed west into James Bay, rather than northeast into Ungava Bay, as it had for eons, was considered a routine engineering matter, hardly worthy of comment -- until 1984, that is, when 10,000 migratory caribous died in its raging waters. In Phase 2, Hydro-Quebec intends to push north into the Great Whale area and, in Phase 3, plans to divert the Nottaway and the Rupert Rivers into the Broadback River, storing the water in seven new reservoirs, sending it through 11 powerhouses and transforming the lower parts of the diverted rivers into dry bedrock. With all phases completed, sometime after the turn of the century, the project would produce 26,400 megawatts of electrical power, of which 15 percent would be available for export. But Quebec's expansive plans are drawing bitter resistance from native Cree Indians, concerned about preserving the land and traditional Indian ways of life, as well as from environmentalists, who warn of impending ecological disaster. And, while the Quebecois tend to see hydropower as the province's pathway to economic, and possibly political, independence from the rest of Canada, there is a competing claim. The native people in the north -- there are about 12,000 Crees and 6,000 | Power Struggle |
499739_0 | The announcement this month that Eagle Snacks Inc. has begun selling Cape Cod potato chips made with a canola oil low in saturated fats was good news for Richard Laster. He heads the Intermountain Canola Company of Cinnaminson, N.J., a joint venture of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company and the DNA Plant Technology Corporation, a biotechnology concern that is also led by the 68-year-old Mr. Laster. The company has been long on promising projects and short on commercial success. DNAP (pronounced DEE-nap), as Mr. Laster's company is known on Wall Street, attracted an enthusiastic following in the mid-1980's for its goals of developing new strains of plants using a variety of breeding and biotechnology innovations. The company's advisory board includes two Nobel prize-winning scientists. And Mr. Laster, the former president of General Foods's Maxwell House coffee operations, has been successful in lining up a number of big-name corporate partners, including Du Pont, Kraft, Campbell Soup and Hershey, to support various research projects. By 1986, the company's stock had topped $21, and Mr. Laster was predicting that DNAP's revenues would reach $200 million by the early 1990's. DNAP has brought several products to market since then but has had trouble reaching even $20 million in revenues. "Business is developing consistent with the vision we had, but it's taken longer," Mr. Laster said. "Scaling up new varieties of plants to production levels has been a new, time-consuming experience. And distribution has been a problem." The Intermountain announcement may not have persuaded investors to forget all their disappointments, but it did nearly double DNAP's languishing share price in a single day last week, to $8.50. Intermountain is one of a number of companies trying to commercialize canola oil, a product of the rapeseed plant that is considered healthier than the other vegetable and plant oils used in food processing. Normally, canola is not stable enough to use in frying operations. But Intermountain appears to have developed a strain that overcomes that barrier. Intermountain is doubling its canola capacity this year. That is not enough to have a big impact in the $3 billion edible oils market any time soon, but it is the kind of growth rate Mr. Laster and investors have been looking for in DNAP's projects for a long time. MAKING A DIFFERENCE | Good News For Snackers And Venture |
499569_3 | military aid to Israel. Stop paying for the deportation of our people." This prompted boos and catcalls from the new Jewish feminist caucus, which was enraged that the Israeli speaker chosen by NOW, Tamara Gozansky, is a Communist and a member of the country's Peace Party and someone unlikely to express views in opposition to Ms. Ashrawi's. The disruption prompted Ms. Ireland to accept the Jewish feminists' insistence that Dr. Alice Shalvi, head of the Israeli Women's Network, be given the podium to rebut the views of Ms. Ashrawi. This was followed by hugs and a hands-joined-in-victory photograph opportunity. Earlier, the audience had been riveted by the tale of Aminata Diop, a woman from Mali, who fled her family and her country rather than undergo a ritual clitordectomy -- the removal of the clitoris and inner labia, usually with a razor blade -- and is seeking political asylum in France. 'Seeking Gender Balance' This morning, the political empowerment caucus voted overwhelmingly for one suggestion after another -- from "seeking gender balance" to the creation of an international woman's congress to exchange information and provide financial support for women candidates around the world to the creation of a third party -- without giving any emphasis to participation in traditional politics. The group's embrace of the nontraditional had a kind of apotheosis late last year when The Advocate, a California magazine on gay and lesbian issues, put Ms. Ireland on its cover indicating she was "coming out" as a lesbian. In the following month, Ms. Ireland has been interviewed about her sexual preferences and has persistently dodged any labels like "lesbian" or "bisexual," saying that she considers both her husband of 25 years, James, and an unidentified female companion in Washington "part of my family." "I have become increasingly and very personally aware now how obsessed our country is with defining women by their sexuality," Ms. Ireland said in an interview. "If they don't know what and how and how often and with whom they just don't know how to deal with you." But the group's conservative opponents, like the Concerned Women for America, have gleefully seized on the disclosure to argue that NOW is unrepresentative of American women. Indeed, in the caucus of young feminists on Friday, several people expressed concern that the word feminist had become a political epithet that hampers their ability to carry their message to students. "Do | NOW Reasserts Its Role as Outsider |
499761_0 | In the next phase of the Information Age, when business and scientific documents, photographic images and personal correspondence are all stored in computers as strings of 1's and 0's, digital forgery may become a significant threat. Because of that threat, a number of techniques are being developed by cryptographers trying to make it impossible to forge computer-based documents. For example, engineers are close to insuring that scientific laboratory data or digitized photographs can be stored in tamperproof form. Some researchers have even begun to discuss the possibility of digital money and computer networks that automatically protect privacy. Recently, a small group of researchers at Bell Communications Research, the research and engineering arm of the Bell telephone companies, usually referred to as Bellcore, has begun a test of a digital time-stamping service that relies on cryptographic techniques both to certify the time a document is submitted and to allow future users to verify that it has not been tampered with. The technology is being tested as a method for replacing handwritten hard-cover laboratory notebooks. Information on the timing of a particular scientific finding or engineering design is crucial for patent applications. The Bellcore researchers say their method can be used for any applications in which it is necessary to know the time a document was created or modified. In traditional research laboratories, scientific notebook entries must be seen and signed by a supervisor. The new Bellcore system, to be tested this year in a research trial at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, replaces handwritten entries with software that automatically proves the authorship and the time of creation of an electronic document. The time-stamping system creates an audit trail to track the intellectual contribution of each member of a collaborative research group, said Andrew Berger, the Baylor College electrical engineer who directs the project, called the virtual notebook system. Cryptography traces its roots back a few thousand years as the art of secret writing. It has traditionally been used extensively by military and intelligence services. More recently, however, cryptographic techniques have been applied to a variety of commercial problems. For example, cryptographic solutions now exist to code electronic transmission of commercial data like banking information. There are also digital signature systems that make it possible to authenticate the author of a document. One important new commercial application for digital signature techniques is to allow users to assure themselves that software | Technology; Experimenting With an Unbreachable Electronic Cipher |
499712_0 | THESE days, a journey of a thousand miles can begin with a single tap of the computer keyboard. The best way to get somewhere, some travelers assert, is through the personal computer. Using a computer and a modem, which allows two computers to exchange data over telephone lines, travelers can scan flight schedules and fares, check the weather at the destination, research restaurant reviews, uncover unadvertised bargains and in general tap into the knowledge of most of the world's travel providers and many veteran travelers. That's a lot of traveling without leaving home, and it is a clear trend in the business and leisure travel industry. The rise of personal computers and lightweight portable computers, as well as the growing sophistication of automated telephone services, have allowed tens of thousands of individual travelers to gain access to the same information used by professional travel agents. According to Steven Sieck, vice president for electronic services for the Link Resources Corporation, a market-research company in New York City, more than six million American households have modem-equipped computers capable of tapping into the various information and electronic mail services. Millions of business computers have modems, too. "Virtually every electronic mail service and on-line service has access to airline guides, typically O.A.G. or Eaasy Sabre," said Bill Howard, author of the "PC Magazine Guide to Notebook and Laptop Computers" (Ziff-Davis Press, Berkeley, Calif.). O.A.G. is the Official Airlines Guides Electronic Edition and Eaasy Sabre is the electronic information service owned by the parent of American Airlines. Another popular electronic airline guide is Worldspan Travelshopper, jointly operated by T.W.A., Northwest and Delta airlines. O.A.G., Eaasy Sabre and Travelshopper are, in essence, data bases that contain scheduling and fare information on tens of thousands of flights daily. Many business customers subscribe directly to O.A.G. or the other services. Others gain access to the services through such consumer information services as Compuserve, which says it has 903,000 subscribers; the Prodigy Services Company, which reports a million members; Dialog Information Systems Inc.; Delphi; Dow Jones News Retrieval, and M.C.I. Mail. But while on-line travel services are increasingly accessible, the people who might be expected to use them most -- frequent flyers in the computer industry -- say it is still faster, easier and cheaper to call a travel agent or the travel provider directly. "Yes, you can use a computer, and it's almost as good as the way | Booking With a Computer |
499836_0 | I REMEMBER, once, trying to rent a summer place in Nantasket, Mass. This was in the mid-60's, and the prospective landlord was a nasty guy. But I wanted the place, and my family was counting on me, no matter that this grouch thought us too inferior to spend a week in his rental house. He didn't like my name. Didn't like that I had two little kids. But, most of all, I remember that in the middle of my stammering interview, he asked imperiously what kind of car I drove "over the road." It was a test. His wife said, "Oh, Har- old ," or some such thing to indicate that she, too, thought the question a bit odd, that maybe he'd gone too far, and to hint that she was on my side. Even then, though, I thought his phrasing as weird as the timing of his question. I mean, how does a regular car differ from one that you use to go "over the road?" It happened that I owned an almost-new Cadillac, so he was mollified on that score at least, but the notion of a "road car" has puzzled me ever since. Not that it is something I dwell on, but it does come to mind now and then, as it did this week when I was driving Oldsmobile's new 98 "Touring Sedan." I mean, how does a touring sedan differ from a regular sedan? Is it a road car, or what? Surprisingly, Webster's New World Dictionary has a few thoughts on the matter, noting that "touring car" is an Americanism that refers to "an early type of open automobile, often with a folding top, seating five or more passengers." Other than the seating, though, those words seem to have little to do with 1992's Touring Sedan, a giant four-door Olds that possesses a supercharged V6 engine, gobs of leather and real wood trim, and a stiff suspension that is indeed fine for touring -- as long as you stay off potholed city streets. The tester was dark blue, almost black, with vinyl cladding on the lower body, gray pinstriping, a sleek profile, alloy wheels carrying fat 16-inch tires, and most of the comforts known to Detroit and points far east. Antilock brakes are standard, as is an automatic transmission with its shifter in the console. As befits its size, the car weighs in at 3,700 | On the Road With Oldsmobile's Tourer |
499795_0 | THESE days, a journey of a thousand miles can begin with a single tap of the computer keyboard. The best way to get somewhere, some travelers assert, is through the personal computer. Using a computer and a modem, which allows two computers to exchange data over telephone lines, travelers can scan flight schedules and fares, check the weather at the destination, research restaurant reviews, uncover unadvertised bargains and in general tap into the knowledge of most of the world's travel providers and many veteran travelers. That's a lot of traveling without leaving home, and it is a clear trend in the business and leisure travel industry. The rise of personal computers and lightweight portable computers, as well as the growing sophistication of automated telephone services, have allowed tens of thousands of individual travelers to gain access to the same information used by professional travel agents. According to Steven Sieck, vice president for electronic services for the Link Resources Corporation, a market-research company in New York City, more than six million American households have modem-equipped computers capable of tapping into the various information and electronic mail services. Millions of business computers have modems, too. "Virtually every electronic mail service and on-line service has access to airline guides, typically O.A.G. or Eaasy Sabre," said Bill Howard, author of the "PC Magazine Guide to Notebook and Laptop Computers" (Ziff-Davis Press, Berkeley, Calif.). O.A.G. is the Official Airlines Guides Electronic Edition and Eaasy Sabre is the electronic information service owned by the parent of American Airlines. Another popular electronic airline guide is Worldspan Travelshopper, jointly operated by T.W.A., Northwest and Delta airlines. O.A.G., Eaasy Sabre and Travelshopper are, in essence, data bases that contain scheduling and fare information on tens of thousands of flights daily. Many business customers subscribe directly to O.A.G. or the other services. Others gain access to the services through such consumer information services as Compuserve, which says it has 903,000 subscribers; the Prodigy Services Company, which reports a million members; Dialog Information Systems Inc.; Delphi; Dow Jones News Retrieval, and M.C.I. Mail. But while on-line travel services are increasingly accessible, the people who might be expected to use them most -- frequent flyers in the computer industry -- say it is still faster, easier and cheaper to call a travel agent or the travel provider directly. "Yes, you can use a computer, and it's almost as good as the way | Booking With a Computer |
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