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1504700_1 | Question for 'David' at 500: Is He Ready for Makeover? | begin in September, with a new restorer already named to replace Ms. Parronchi. On the other hand, 15 months ago, Mr. Paolucci canceled plans to restore Leonardo's ''Adoration of the Magi'' in face of international protests. And he is known to dislike scandal. For the moment, with ''David,'' Mr. Paolucci is playing down the dispute between the ''wet'' method proposed by the Accademia's director, Franca Falletti, and the ''dry'' method favored by Ms. Parronchi. ''Both are gentle methods, both are very light,'' he explained. ''We don't have a very serious problem of conservation. There are little problems of superficial cleaning. Nothing dramatic.'' But there is no shortage of passion in the arguments brandished by Ms. Parronchi and Ms. Falletti and their respective supporters, arguments in which science and experience have been marshaled for partisan purposes. When Ms. Parronchi was named last September, she seemed perfect for the job, having won acclaim for her cleaning of Michelangelo's tombs of the Medicis in the Medici Chapel behind the Basilica of San Lorenzo and of his two reliefs, ''Madonna of the Stairs'' and ''Battle of the Centaurs,'' in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence. Once installed at the Accademia, working from a mobile ladder in full view of visitors, she spent three months making 360 digital graphics of ''David.'' Her conclusion: the statue should be cleaned using a minimally invasive ''dry'' method involving soft brushes, cotton swabs, an eraser and a chamois cloth. ''Because 'David' stood outside for so long, its pores are open and a lot of dust accumulated,'' Ms. Parronchi said. ''But this can be easily removed. The issue is not one of recovering the sculpture's original look because there is not one millimeter of its original surface left.'' Here she was backed by James H. Beck, a Columbia University art historian and president of ArtWatch International, who has now organized the petition urging Mr. Paolucci to halt the cleaning. ''There was no reason to clean 'David,' '' said Mr. Beck, who has frequently campaigned against what he considers unnecessary restorations. ''But if it had to be done, it should be done in the gentlest possible way. Agnese's approach was merely heavy-duty dusting.'' In contrast, Ms. Falletti's case for wet cleaning is based on a report prepared by a committee of scientists from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, a government art-restoration department. After months of testing, they concluded that the greatest threat |
1504619_1 | A Holiday To Keep Under Wraps | have come to view with anger, suspicion, scorn and even, at its most virulent, hatred. What finer moment than Bastille Day to check out how the French are faring? After the bashing of their country for opposing the Iraq war, after the headlines calling them ''weasels'' and ''cheese-eating surrender monkeys,'' after the vows to boycott wine and other things French, after the chest-thumping about how true American patriots clog their arteries with ''freedom fries'' instead of French fries, has the climate improved for the French in New York, at least un peu? ''It seems to have calmed down a bit,'' said Jean Lachaud, a translator who sits on a council that advises the French government on expatriate matters. The recent meeting between President Bush and President Jacques Chirac, though hardly warm, has helped improve the mood. So have the questions about whether Mr. Bush bent certain facts about Mr. Hussein's pursuit of nuclear weapons. ''That might make some of the more extremist members of the press be a little calmer, right?'' Mr. Lachaud said. Even so, he acknowledged, some of his compatriots remain self-conscious. It does not mean they are hiding the Château Margaux in brown paper bags. But ''some people did say they were worried about showing their French accent in public,'' Mr. Lachaud said. David Black, executive director of the French Institute Alliance Française on East 60th Street, also detects skittishness among French expatriates. ''I don't think they're used to being cast in a negative light as they have been,'' Mr. Black said. Still, his institute held its annual Bastille Day fair along 60th Street on Sunday, and by his count some 10,000 people turned out, all friendly. ''There could have been demonstrators,'' Mr. Black said. ''There could have been bad feelings. There was none of that -- absolutely nothing.'' Another fair was held yesterday on Macdougal Street outside the restaurant Provence, at SoHo's northern edge. Men and women played pétanque, a French version of lawn bowling comparable to the Italians' boccie. To the inexpert eye, it seemed a game best enjoyed in the absence of complete sobriety. INSIDE, the restaurant manager, Marc Minet, acknowledged that business was down this year, by perhaps 20 percent. The war and the anti-French mood have hardly helped, he said. Then, too, neither have the limping economy and the city's new smoking ban. ''It can only get better now,'' Mr. Minet said. |
1504610_0 | MEMO PAD | More news about shoes: The Transportation Security Administration issued a statement seeking to clarify its policy on screening shoes at airport checkpoints. The agency said it wanted to ensure that its policy on shoes was consistently interpreted. Travelers have been complaining that screeners apply different rules on requiring removal of footwear -- including sneakers, moccasins, sandals and other shoes without metal supports that frequent fliers long ago adopted to avoid setting off metal detectors and prompting a personal search. Starting in June, screeners at many airports began insisting that all shoes had to be removed. Here's the new policy: ''Screeners are being instructed to encourage passengers to remove their shoes and submit them for X-ray examination. Passengers will not be required to take off their shoes before going through metal detectors, but should understand that their chances of being selected for a more thorough, secondary screening will be lower if they do. In most airports, T.S.A. has found checkpoint lines move faster if people remove their shoes for screening.'' There was no sign in June of the summer travel spurt that airlines had hoped for. The industry's Air Transport Association said yesterday that domestic airlines reported 4 percent fewer passengers and 8.7 percent fewer departures last month, compared with June 2002. Capacity was down 6.9 percent. JOE SHARKEY BUSINESS TRAVEL |
1504576_5 | An Era Ends, Many Missions Accomplished | of Dr. Brundtland's staff, will face when he succeeds her on Monday. Dr. Brundtland quickly became involved in international politics to push health issues higher on the political agenda. ''There's no way to make a difference in health without getting issues before those who are going to make political decisions,'' Dr. Brundtland said. One aim was to improve the understanding among political leaders about the links between poverty and diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. A second was to convince leaders that ''a healthy population is as much a prerequisite for growth as a result of it'' and that ''the health of a population is closely linked to sustainable economic development,'' Dr. Brundtland said. The agency also pushed to create new partnerships between the public and private sectors to make drugs for common diseases more affordable in poor countries and to provide incentives for industry to develop new drugs, she said. Many people, she added, including infectious-disease experts, ''were quite pessimistic'' when she began efforts to eradicate polio. Despite some setbacks last year, Dr. Brundtland said the organization had played a major role in reducing the number of countries where polio is still spread. Now just 7 nations continue to have polio outbreaks, down from 50, she said. Eradication, she added, remains a realistic goal. In the SARS epidemic this year, the agency issued what it said were its first ever advisories against travel to areas seriously affected by the disease. The agency also backed quarantines and other infection control measures that crippled the economies of affected countries. Some business leaders accused the organization of overreacting to SARS. But Dr. Brundtland defended the steps, saying the economic consequences would have been even more severe if the agency had not put control measures into effect. Dr. Brundtland also stood up to China when the agency learned that officials there had suppressed information or lied about early cases of SARS. After becoming the focus of severe international criticism, China yielded and began reporting the information to the W.H.O. The agency has credited these and other measures with stopping the international spread of SARS, at least temporarily. Would Dr. Brundtland have taken the same action if she had not been leaving office? Yes, she said. ''I've been used to making tough political decisions in my political life,'' she said, ''and risking that people may not like the decisions I make.'' THE DOCTOR'S WORLD |
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1507544_5 | Word for Word/Revisiting 9/11; The Warnings Were There. But Who Was Listening? | largely without the benefit of what some would call its most potent weapon in that effort: an alert and committed American public. . . . Information that was shared with senior U.S. government officials, but was not made available to the American public because of its national security classification, was explicit about the gravity and immediacy of the threat posed by bin Laden. For example: * In December 1998, as noted earlier, the D.C.I. wrote: ''We must now enter a new phase in our effort against bin Laden. . . . We are at war. . . . I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside [the] C.I.A. or the community. * A classified document signed by the president in December 1998 read in part: ''The intelligence community has strong indications that bin Laden intends to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the United States; and * A classified document signed by the president in July 1999 characterized a February 1998 statement by bin Laden as a de facto declaration of war on the United States. In addition, numerous classified intelligence reports were produced and disseminated by the intelligence community prior to Sept. 11, based upon information obtained from a variety of sources, about possible terrorist attacks. . . . There is little indication of any sustained and successful national effort to mobilize public awareness about the gravity and immediacy of the threat prior to Sept. 11, however. . . . Kristen Breitweiser, speaking on behalf of the families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, reminded the Joint Inquiry of the importance of an alert and involved American public in the war against terrorism. In her testimony, she emphasized the potential importance of information that was not shared with the public before Sept. 11, 2001: ''One thing remains clear from history. Our intelligence agencies were acutely aware of an impending domestic risk posed by Al Qaeda. A question that remains unclear is how many lives could have been saved had this information been made more public. . . . How many victims may have taken notice of these Middle Eastern men while they were boarding their plane? Could these men have been stopped? . . . Could the devastation of Sept. 11 been diminished in any degree had the government's information been made public in the summer of 2001?'' Word for Word | Revisiting 9/11 |
1507467_2 | Long After Graduation, Business School Alumni Return for Job Help | graduate school.) The schools say the alumni programs have become increasingly popular. It's difficult, though, to gauge these programs' success, because many schools have not kept track of the people using them. Among the services for alumni are online resources, networking events and job-search seminars offered around the country, and one-on-one career coaching. As word has spread about the offerings, they have also become popular among people who already have jobs but are contemplating their next career move. Helping alumni ''has become a major issue of concern that schools need to respond to,'' said Sheila Steiner, director of M.B.A. career services at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. ''A lot of schools are saying, 'I just finished putting away their résumés after they graduated, and now they're back.' They have seen a crush of alumni.'' Ms. Steiner is also on the board of the M.B.A. Career Services Council, an association of career services directors. At Stanford's Graduate School of Business, a full-time position was created last spring to deal exclusively with the employment needs of alumni. In May, the Stern School of Business at New York University opened its Career Center for Working Professionals, with a staff of five, to work with alumni as well as the school's part-time and executive M.B.A. students. ''The typical recruiting that goes on at an M.B.A. program is by companies looking for entry-level M.B.A. positions,'' said Gary Fraser, assistant dean of career development at Stern. Now the school hopes to make inroads among recruiters who specialize in more experienced people as well, he said. The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern employs five part-time consultants (three near Chicago, one in Los Angeles and one in Atlanta) to work free with its alumni. At the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., the number of alumni seeking career development support has risen 25 percent in the last year. M.B.A. graduates now make up 40 percent of the people served by the business school's career resources office. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania now provides alumni with free access to otherwise costly online resources, like the business news service Factiva and the executive-level job search site ExecuNet. (ExecuNet, for instance, charges members $399 for 360 days of service.) ''We all got a little bit lazy during the boom years; we didn't have to get |
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1507636_3 | A Feeding Frenzy on the Web Shoves Sanity Right Out the Door | but its message board isn't bound to the same standard. ''There is an association of integrity,'' said Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in the Internet. ''Money used to be the currency, but there has been a 180-degree change.'' The new currency for the establishment is entertainment and information -- or the ''eyeballs,'' as Moglen put it. The more Web site hits the better. ''To gather the eyeballs, news organizations have to offer a full range'' of links, Moglen said. Those links often include message boards. So, if you've got a little revenge in your heart, there's a place for it on the World Wide Web. Some folks have tried to counter the viciousness with their own Web sites. The sister-in-law of Mike Price, Joan Rice, hatched FriendsofMikePrice.com. The site is designed as an image-repair stop on the Internet, put in place to help end the unflattering online descriptions of Price as a boozer on his way to divorce court with his wife, Joyce. ''They've got the best marriage I've ever seen,'' Joan Rice told The Associated Press. On the pro-Price Web site, there are dozens of testimonials in support of the fallen coach, as well as this message: ''Mike did not have time to party or binge drink. He was working 12-15 hours every day, meeting with players and coaches, recruiting, speaking at events on behalf of U. of A. and going to other functions representing the football department.'' Somewhere, there is someone sitting in the glow of a computer screen -- perhaps in Auburn, Ala. -- thinking up a nasty rumor to be posted on another message board about Price. ''The line between what's fact and fiction on the Internet is blurred,'' said Foley, the Florida athletic director. ''People tend to see it and believe some of it.'' Not that long ago, as in the 90's, fans' voices didn't carry much farther than their seats at the stadium. There was talk radio, but venom tends to evaporate through the airwaves. The chat rooms provide some permanence because the messages are in writing. Given the power of the word, the Internet is a tool of technology the overzealous fans have longed for: finally, they have a way to manipulate their teams, their heroes and their enemies. Why sit in the stands when you can take part in the game through cyberspace? Sports of The Times |
1507463_2 | If You Choose To Be Bumped | Elders include a Christmas trip to Nassau, returning home in January the day before most people needed to start work; coming back from Las Vegas the Sunday after Valentine's Day; flying back from Denver after a ski trip on President's Day weekend; and several trips to Orlando. He also recommends that hopeful ''bumpees'' check whether their flight is oversold before going to the airport, and offer to give up their seat when checking in rather than waiting for the airline to solicit passengers willing to take a later flight. ''When I go to check in, Ill say, 'Do you need any volunteers for this flight?' ''Mr. Elder said. ''Eight times out of 10 theyll say, 'Yeah, we might.' '' Finally, he said, make yourself an easy candidate to reschedule by traveling with carry-on luggage (so the airline does not have to remove checked bags from the plane) and don't pester the gate agents. Mr. Elder said he and his family members generally received vouchers good for $300 to $400 a person toward a future trip as compensation for agreeing to take a later flight, though some airlines offer volunteers willing to be bumped a free round-trip domestic ticket instead. That is a description Bob Cowen, who posts travel advice on Internet TravelTips.com, finds rather misleading. When he hears gate agents offer passengers a ''free round-trip ticket,'' he said, ''I almost want to pick up the P.A. and say, 'Hey, folks, ask for a dollar voucher instead, because your chances of redeeming the ''free ticket'' are extremely slim.' '' Mr. Cowen pointed out that with some of the free tickets airlines offer bumped customers, the free flight must be booked in the same class as seats reserved for frequent flier awards -- in other words, limited inventory. ''They should disclose that, but most gate agents do not,'' he warned. Forms of Compensation The airlines are a bit guarded about disclosing how they compensate passengers who agree to be bumped, in part because gate agents typically have some flexibility to negotiate with passengers who volunteer to take a later flight. But a few airlines did discuss their general policy. Mary Stanik, a spokeswoman for Northwest, said it offered volunteers a choice between a voucher good for up to $300 on a future flight (for passengers bumped from a domestic flight; international compensation can be as high as $750) or a free round-trip |
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1507376_0 | Why People Still Starve | Population control -- a responsible birthing program -- is the rational answer to world hunger. Fertilizer, rains, decent government programs and the like are certainly a factor, but try dividing 65 cents a day among 12 children as in the case of the Malawi family. If money is the answer to hunger, try the inverse proportion. And show me a prosperous country with the high birthrate of the third-world nations. How obvious and how sad. Edith Ostern Santa Barbara, Calif. |
1507659_2 | THE VIEW/From Mystic; Deep-Sea Exploration Where No Oxygen Is Needed | said about the Hercules, which weighs two and a half tons. Video from the ocean bottom will be sent back to the ship, beamed up to satellite and then to a receiving station in Maine. From there it will be transmitted by cable to Electronic Data Systems in Texas and sent via Internet 2 technology, an advanced form of the Internet that is being used for educational and research purposes at 200 universities and other institutions, to the aquarium where visitors will be able to watch the expedition through Aug. 24. The broadcasts will also be sent to the universities, including the University of Rhode Island, where Dr. Ballard's new Institute for Archeological Oceanography is situated. At the university, Dr. Dwight F. Coleman, director of research at the Institute for Exploration, will direct the second half of the expedition using the transmissions from the ship just as if he were standing watch on the Knorr. This capability, along with the ability to have experts view the broadcasts on Internet 2 and be able to immediately offer their opinions on what Dr. Ballard has found, is what makes the expedition special to him from a scientific and technological standpoint. In the past, Dr. Ballard had to wait to bring scientists with him on future trips or have them look at photographs or videotape after he had returned to land. Now their instant input will help direct his expeditions. The broadcasts will also go to Boys and Girls Clubs around the country as well as sites that broadcast Dr. Ballard's yearly Jason expeditions, a project in which interactive science explorations are beamed by satellite to students at sites across North America. ''This will be a new paradigm for education and new paradigm for research,'' he said. Dr. Ballard said the broadcasts will not only show the team as it make discoveries but also disclose the ''bumps and warts'' of the work such as when the equipment breaks or when he becomes impatient with the engineers trying to fix it. What visitors to the aquarium and others watching the expedition via Internet 2 will see is Dr. Ballard excavating underwater sites that he and other scientists have identified as containing evidence of human habitation before the flood of Noah inundated a freshwater lake 7,500 years ago and created the Black Sea. The places where people lived are now thought to be along an |
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1505829_1 | It's a Fat World, After All | powerful weapon: regulations. For food companies, the stakes could be large. Last year, American companies exported 11.8 billion euros ($13.22 billion at current exchange rates) of agricultural products to the European Union, everything from cranberries and candy bars to cereals and sodas. It's not at all certain that corporations can satisfy shareholder hunger for growth and still fulfill demands by regulators to sell smaller portions and healthier foods. The message to consume less is hardly a capitalist notion. Food companies grow by selling to more people, or convincing existing customers to eat more. ''They don't have a lot of potential for expansion left in the United States,'' said Marion Nestle, chairwoman of the nutrition and food studies department at New York University and author of ''Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health'' (University of California Press, 2002). Because of that, she said, American companies have been exporting the salty, sugary foods they are known for and undermining the generally healthier eating habits of other countries. Unlike the United States, Europe has a tradition of regulating problems away. Chances are small that the Bush administration will threaten food companies with more regulations. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration recently made it easier for companies to make health and nutrition claims on food. The European Union, on the other hand, proposed a directive last week that would make it much tougher for companies to make such claims. DAVID BYRNE, the health commissioner for the European Union, seemed to catch the food industry by surprise on Wednesday when he proposed the regulations, which would prevent companies from marketing a food as having a health or nutrition benefit if it was also high in salt, sugar or fat. Mr. Byrne has not yet completed the profile of what foods would be affected, so executives say it is too early to panic. The rules, if passed by the European Parliament, would go into effect in 2005. Still, if Mr. Byrne has his way, the makers of most processed foods, from snacks to soups, may be barred from saying the products are nutritious. Later this year, Mr. Byrne plans to propose changes in the way nutrition labels are written, to make them more comprehensible to consumers and to allow only products that are low in salt, sugar and fat to be fortified with vitamins and minerals. Food that did not meet certain |
1505829_6 | It's a Fat World, After All | LC1 (a name derived from an active ingredient) that took 30 years to create. In 1964, Nestlé microbiologists identified a bacterium, known as La1, that colonizes the digestive system and stimulates immune response. By 1990, Nestlé had built up a strong dossier for a novel product with a proven health benefit. In 1994, it rolled out its first LC1 products in France with the claim that they reinforced natural defenses. They are now available throughout Europe, Australia and Brazil. Under the proposed European Union guidelines, LC1 would be allowed to claim a health benefit. At the same seminar, Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe acknowledged that the nutrient profile of a diet is only one factor in a consumer's food choices. And he assured investors that Nestlé had not forgotten that people also eat food for pleasure. THE pressure for regulation, in light of the medical costs of obesity, had raised questions about whether Nestlé would stick to its confectionery business, he said. ''Let me assure you,'' he said, ''this will not change Nestlé's commitment to the confectionery business.'' Some companies are already reacting to the threat of lawsuits and more regulations. In early July, Kraft said it would stop promoting its products in schools and make smaller portions. It made the announcement after it was the target of a lawsuit in May by a San Francisco lawyer who wanted to block Kraft from selling Oreos to children because the cookies contain trans fats, which exist in hydrogenated oil. He soon dropped the suit, reportedly because he felt that the publicity from the action had raised awareness about trans fats. Last September, McDonald's, based in Oak Brook, Ill., announced that it would seek a healthier alternative to the oil with trans fats that it uses to cook French fries. Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe pledged in May that Nestlé would stop marketing jumbo candy bars to children and would be clearer in its labeling. In Britain, it is removing hydrogenated vegetable fat from some confectionery. That, in turn, prompted Cadbury Schweppes to announce a review of its use of hydrogenated fats in confectionery and and other products. Executives say they believe measures to fight obesity should be voluntary, and they point to these initiatives as proof that the industry can police itself. But some are skeptical that companies will make real changes. Prof. Nestle from New York University noted that McDonald's said last year that it would |
1506068_0 | A Party for Mr. Flynn, The Fearless Bear Hunter | Angela Davis. The Chicago Seven. Bill Clinton. Patrick Flynn. Patrick Flynn? It's not everybody who inspires legal-defense fund-raising events. But Patrick Flynn, the West Milford resident who shot a 400-pound black bear in his own yard on June 5, is the newest legal martyr on the scene. Mr. Flynn was charged by the Department of Environmental Protection with unlawfully injuring the bear, which was drawn to his house by the smell of pork chops. For that he faces a $300 fine from the environmental agency and a $500 from the town of West Milford. Last Saturday, the North Jersey chapter of the Ted Nugent United Sportsmen of America and the West Milford Hunters Alliance sponsored a barbecue and concert to raise money for Mr. Flynn and for another cause, Hunters for the Hungry, which distributes venison to needy people in the state. The event, which featured hamburgers, potato salad, beer and two live bands, took place in West Milford, attracted about 150 hunters and symphathizers -- many of them sporting the latest fashions in camouflage -- and raised more than $800, enough to cover Mr. Flynn's fines. Billows of barbecue smoke did not attract any black bears, or Mr. Flynn, to the event. Although the fines are small by legal defense fund standards, his case has stirred strong feelings in the hunting community, particularly in the rural northwest region of the state, where black bears have been ambling into yards and hunters have been pushing for a state-sanctioned black bear hunt to help remove the surplus. The hunters got their wish last week, when the Division of Fish and Wildlife authorized a six-day bear hunt for December. It will be the first legal black bear hunt in the state in 30 years. Eric Bunk of West Milford, who organized last Saturday's event, is the North New Jersey director of the Ted Nugent group and a guitarist for Slush, a classic rock band that played at the barbecue. He is active in hunting causes and wants to organize a major concert to raise money to preserve New Jersey wilderness. As for Mr. Flynn, his Milford neighbor, Mr. Bunk said: ''I don't even know the man. I just heard about his plight and decided to help the guy out.'' Debra Galant UP FRONT: WORTH NOTING |
1505644_5 | A Man, a Plan, a Canal | barring all passage through the Chalufa hills, in the very south of the project, and it was not until the last moment that the khedive gave his permission for hundreds of tons of gunpowder to be brought in to blow it up, and so allow the waters of the Red Sea fully to mingle with those of the Mediterranean for the first time. An immense flotilla then passed through, with wild celebrations -- not the least of them the inaugural performance of Verdi's specially written ''Aida'' at the Cairo Opera House. (Verdi chose to stay away.) Suez lasted without controversy for the better part of the following 90 years, making modest money for its owners, providing a metaphor for the globe-girdling fragility of empire and providing an excuse for Britain's long and inexcusable quasi occupation of Egypt. However, and as might have been anticipated, the sheer effrontery of the notion that a waterway passing through Egypt might always be controlled by two foreign imperial powers meant that Britain and France eventually came into conflict with the increasingly nationalistic mood of the Egyptians, as well as with the generally anti-imperial mood of the postwar world. When Gamal Abdel Nasser suddenly took over the canal in 1956 (his use of the name ''Ferdinand de Lesseps'' in his speech being the prearranged signal for his troops to move in and seize it), even America bowed to what London and Paris still, myopically and stubbornly, refused to believe was the new realpolitik: Washington declined to support their imperially motivated (as well as cunning and underhanded) attack on Egypt, with the result that the Europeans had to withdraw their soldiers and accept humiliation, and along with it the figurative end of their colonial histories. Britain even now finds it a little hard to believe: ''Suez'' is still a word full of melancholy associations for Britons of a certain age. AS it happens, the canal, since the events of 1956, has quite frankly faded in importance too. It is badly run, many modern ships are too broad of beam and have to go around the Cape as before and the cities on the canal's banks -- Port Said, Ismailia, Suez City -- are foul sinks that no one much wants to visit. Such exoticism as Suez once enjoyed has now all but evaporated, and such economic importance as it was once thought to possess has long |
1506005_0 | A 'David' for Our Time, or for All Time? | To the Editor: Re ''Question for 'David' at 500: Is He Ready for Makeover?'' (front page, July 15): If it ain't broke, don't fix it. What do we mean to accomplish in an attempt to restore, conserve or arrest the inevitable ravages of time? Michelangelo's ''David'' has survived five centuries. Will it be irreparably damaged before the end of the next five centuries? Antique statues have been with us even longer. Weathering, like aging, is a natural process and a part of history. What would a historic city be like if all the buildings from different centuries all looked new? Conservationists and restorers seem a bit overzealous to flaunt their latest science, whether prophylactic or prosthetic, or too deeply immersed in the contemporary youth culture. Efforts and funds are better directed toward removing the pollutants in the air where the work is displayed. T. KAORI KITAO Swarthmore, Pa., July 17, 2003 The writer is emerita professor of art history, Swarthmore College. |
1503859_0 | Monsanto Sues Dairy in Maine Over Label's Remarks on Hormones | In another sign of how contentious food labeling issues have become in recent years, the Monsanto Company has sued a small milk producer in Portland, Me., over the labeling of its dairy products. Monsanto has accused Oakhurst Dairy Inc. of engaging in misleading and deceptive marketing practices by carrying labels that seem to disparage the use of artificial growth hormones in cows. Monsanto is the maker of the only major artificial growth hormone, Posilac. It has been on the market since 1994 and is used in about a third of the nation's nine million dairy cows. The company, which also pioneered the development of genetically modified crops, says its product was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. It also says that the Oakhurst labels suggest that milk that comes from cows treated with artificial growth hormones is somehow unsafe or lower in quality. Since they were introduced nearly a decade ago, artificial growth hormones have come under vigorous attack from some consumer groups, organic farmers and other critics because of concerns that they are harmful to cows, that they make cows produce milk that is chemically and nutritionally different from natural milk and that they could induce higher rates of cancer in humans. Many scientists, however, say those claims are largely fabricated and fictional. And Monsanto says its product, which is intended to bolster milk production, is derived from a natural protein produced in cattle. Still, consumers have grown concerned about the use of the artificial hormones, which are banned from the market in Canada and the European Union. Oakhurst Dairy and other New England dairy producers say that years ago they responded to consumer concerns by labeling their dairy products free of artificial growth hormones. Indeed, the state of Maine says that for dairy producers to use the state's quality seal of approval on their packages, the dairy processors must receive signed affidavits from dairy farmers who have pledged not to use artificial growth hormones on their cows. Oakhurst's products carry the state's quality seal, and the company's milk cartons say, ''Our farmers' pledge: no artificial growth hormones.'' Stanley T. Bennett II, the president of Oakhurst Dairy, a family-owned company with sales of about $85 million a year, said today, in a telephone interview: ''We don't feel we need to remove that label. We ought to have the right to let people know what is and |
1503857_0 | Recycling Comes Back | New Yorkers are an adaptable bunch. Just since last year, they have adjusted to traffic-flow changes in Midtown, noise crackdowns in neighborhoods and smoking bans in restaurants and bars. Keeping up with the rules on recycling, however, may prove a singular challenge. Recycling is back, but in a way that will require some real sorting out. For the last year, city residents have been told to throw away their plastics and glass as the Bloomberg administration temporarily suspended that recycling in a bid to save money. Like adolescents told that they no longer have to eat vegetables, people rather easily kicked the habits formed over a decade of sorting and binning. In fact, even the recycling of newspapers and metal -- which was not suspended -- suffered as some residents treated recycling as an all-or-nothing venture. This month, as promised, Mayor Michael Bloomberg reinstated the recycling of plastics -- essentially bottles and jugs. Collections will be weekly, but don't get too used to that idea for now. In a compromise worked out with the City Council in the budget deal, at the end of July pickups will change to once every other week, but only until April 1 next year, when collections will again revert to weekly. On that date, glass recycling is also to be reinstated, bringing the whole recycling program -- metal, plastics, glass and paper -- back to where it was before last summer. Got that? The Department of Sanitation says it will explain the new policy on July 27 in an eight-page pamphlet -- printed on recycled paper -- that will be distributed in Sunday newspapers. Obviously, a more robust effort is needed if the public is to be effectively re-educated. Bringing back recycling was not just the right thing to do environmentally -- it was best for the city economically. The suspension saved nowhere near the $40 million projected, and it bloated the tonnage and handling costs for the regular trash. Now, under a new contract with a New Jersey company, the city will be paid for its recycled plastics and metals. Without a deal like this, the city would have had to pay to have the plastics taken away. The realization that there are buyers and markets for recycled products should spur the administration into aggressively seeking out more good deals for New York. Now that city leaders are back on the right track, |
1503890_0 | World Briefing | Europe: Britain: Marriage For Transsexuals | The government published a bill that would allow transsexuals to marry under their adopted sex, ending a 30-year-struggle for a change in the law, which involves an estimated 5,000 people. Legal status and new birth certificates, if necessary, would be given to Britons who can demonstrate to a panel of doctors and lawyers that they have taken ''decisive steps'' to live permanently in their acquired sex. In Europe, only Britain, Ireland, Albania and Andorra do not legally recognize sex changes. Warren Hoge (NYT) |
1505283_6 | Watching a Queen Make an Exit | tide. When the ship entered the current after leaving the pier, it really flew downstream. On this morning, as the ship returned from a cruise to Bermuda, the docking went smoothly. The Sandy Hook harbor pilot met the ship outside the harbor at Ambrose Light, which is about 14 miles from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and guided it through the Lower and Upper Bays of the harbor to the Hudson, where the docking pilot, who climbed aboard from a tug, took over, directing the ship a few degrees this way and a few degrees that way in consultation with the captain. Once the liner reached the West Side piers, which run between 48th and 52nd Streets, three tugs guided it on the turn in to the right, toward Manhattan. Here was a tricky moment: the captain, the pilot and the ship's officers directed the docking from the bridge wing on the right side, looking down as they cleared Pier 90's northwest corner by just inches. Then they bolted through the wheelhouse to the left -- or port -- bridge wing as the ship glided into its berth at the next pier, Pier 92, on its left side. As Captain McNaught recounts the morning's drama, it's about 3:30 p.m. The ship sails at 4:45; the public address system is already warning those who are not sailing to go ashore. He excuses himself for a cup of tea. An hour later you can see the captain up on the left bridge wing with his officers. The two gangplanks to the pier had been pulled up, and a pair of longshoremen wait on the pier at each of the bollards, the posts to which one of the QE2's massive mooring lines is lashed. I'm watching from the concrete railing on the top level of the pier's parking garage, just feet from the tip of the bow. There are a few ocean-liner buffs around with cameras; they happily discuss the most minute details of the ship and its history. Pushing and Pulling Two tugs pull up. One, the green-and-red Miriam Moran, nuzzles up just below the bow. A tug crewman takes a rope tossed down from an opening just below the QE2's forecastle. Farther away, near the stern, a white tug, the Condor, nudges up to the hull and ties up. At 5 p.m. the liner's whistle blows: three short, vibrating, ear-splitting booms and one |
1501238_1 | A Test of Paying Attention Behind the Wheel | for Traffic Safety of Spain and the Complutense University in Madrid. Twelve young adults with good driving records were sent on a four-hour highway trip in a Citroën fitted with a camera that tracked their eye movements to gauge how much attention they were paying to how much of the visual field. The dashboard was also equipped with lights that would turn on periodically; the drivers could turn them off by pressing buttons near the steering wheel. The researchers divided the mental tasks into two categories: receptive, meaning passively absorbing information, and productive, in which the drivers were asked to give answers to defined requests. The drivers' performance in between these tasks was measured for purposes of comparison. For the receptive tasks, the drivers listened to two-minute taped messages and were told to pay close attention, as they would be asked about them later. Some of the messages related concrete information, including descriptions of objects, while others concerned more abstract data, like a narrative. The researchers found that this kind of intent listening had almost no effect on how closely the drivers paid attention to the road and the dashboard. But when the drivers were asked to talk about what they had heard, their ability to pay attention dropped by as much as a third. Even relatively simple production tasks, like relating where they were and what they were doing, had about as big an effect as requests that the researchers considered more complicated. The study found that the distraction levels were equally high when the driver was talking to a passenger or into a hands-free cellphone. One of the researchers, Dr. Luis M. Nuñes of the traffic agency, said the findings should not be seen as an endorsement of using hands-free phones while driving. For one thing, he noted, most conversations involve talking as well as listening. For another, he said, the use of cellphones of any kind involves movements that are less likely to be automatic than features that have long been designed for easy access in cars, like turning on radios. An earlier study by the same researchers found that visual tasks produced high levels of distraction for drivers. Putting the two together suggests that a high-risk activity may be trying to remember the landmark that tells you where to exit for a particular restaurant while telling someone what you had the last time you ate there. |
1501234_2 | Few Habitats, Many Species And a Debate on Preservation | organizations and international agencies have been seduced by the simplicity of the hot spot idea,'' they go on. ''We worry that the initially appealing idea of getting the most species per unit area is, in fact, a thoroughly misleading strategy.'' Other prominent ecologists have grown critical of hot spots. ''Focusing all of our attention on hot spots is just nuts,'' said Dr. Paul Ehrlich, president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. ''The hot-spot approach was a good one when it was proposed by Myers way back when,'' Dr. Ehrlich said. ''It attracted important attention to the distribution of species diversity. Now it's clear that saving a few percent of the earth's surface to preserve species will not accomplish what needs to be accomplished.'' Even if people succeeded in preserving a single viable population of every species on earth, he said, the human race would die out unless it managed to protect the ecosystems that support broader populations of plants, animals and people too. ''One has to balance the necessary attempts to preserve species diversity with what may be much more important,'' he said of ''the preserving of population diversity and in the process the preserving of ecosystem services.'' But hot spots have their ardent defenders, notably Dr. Myers, a fellow at Oxford University, and Dr. Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International, a nonprofit organization that has made hot spots the centerpiece of its global strategy. Dr. Mittermeier says hot spots have been successful at attracting attention and financing for conservation in tropical countries. ''And that has been good,'' he said. ''No one is suggesting that one invest solely in hot spots, but if you want to avoid extinctions, you have to invest in them.'' By definition, hot spots contain many species that exist nowhere else on earth and that are under threat because more than 70 percent of their habitat has been destroyed. Conservation International is still working on expanding the hot spots list, Dr. Mittermeier said, with 10 new ones to be announced later this year. And the organization puts a high priority on protecting five vast wilderness areas that have many unique species and are still relatively intact. They include the world's largest tropical rain forests, the Amazon, the Congo forests of central Africa and the island of New Guinea, as well as the Miombo-Mopane grasslands and woodlands of southern Africa, and the deserts of |
1501248_3 | Critics, Reasons and Results for Airport Security | Turmail, said. Not that the agency is taking a dismissive attitude toward passengers, Mr. Turmail said; it understands that some of them are upset at having to ''walk around barefoot in a public airport'' and is exploring options for providing them with paper foot slippers. It is also moving to address concerns about the way checked bags are processed through security. Since Jan. 1, all checked bags have been subject to some kind of inspection, mostly by machines that detect explosives and, for about 10 percent of randomly chosen bags, by hand. Locked bags are forced opened, and many passengers worry about theft or damage to their possessions either while the agency has custody of the bag or afterward, when it is returned to the airline baggage-handling system. Now, Mr. Turmail said, ''If we have to open your bag for security reasons and have to reseal it, we'll place a blue tamper-evidence seal, coded specifically to an airport, on it'' to alert a passenger that it has been opened and examined. More broadly defending his agency, Mr. Turmail said that some complaints about it derive from its very success in improving service. ''In the early days, people were surprised to find screeners saying hello and thank you,'' he said. As a result, ''there is a higher expectation going through the checkpoint.'' Customer service initiatives aside, many private security experts have long questioned the central thrust of the new security agency. That is, the agency's main efforts are devoted to examining all passengers, more or less equally, for contraband, and subjecting large numbers of passengers, including children and old people in wheelchairs, to humiliating pat-downs and body searches with electronic wands. Critics have derided these efforts as window dressing intended to convince the public that security is intense, when, they say, it is inadequate and focused on the wrong things. ''Airport security may be a little better after the T.S.A. took over, but not to the degree that it should be for what taxpayers are spending for smoke and mirrors, which don't fool the terrorists,'' said Douglas R. Laird, a former Secret Service agent who is president of Laird and Associates, an aviation security company in Reno, Nev. Defenders of the security agency say it is doing a good job, often shifting tactics in ways that may seem capricious to passengers but that are aimed at throwing potential terrorists off-guard. ''We |
1501317_0 | Court Halts a Bid by Intel to Stop E-Mail | The California Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a former employee of Intel was free to send e-mail messages to current company employees, overturning a lower court's injunction. The court rejected Intel's argument that the messages represented illegal trespassing to its computer systems. That argument is increasingly used by companies and Internet service providers in the fight against spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail. ''Everyone is trying to figure out ways to solve the spam problem, and this ruling doesn't help,'' said Jeffrey D. Neuburger, a technology lawyer with Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner in New York. ''This is going to require lawyers to come up with other ways to deal with the issue.'' The case also attracted the attention of those interested in free-speech rights of current and former corporate employees. But the California court ultimately ruled only on the trespass issue. The case involved Kenneth Hamidi, a former Intel engineer, who had been fired after a dispute related to workers' compensation. He sent six e-mail messages from 1996 to 1998 to a list of Intel employees, criticizing the company and encouraging the employees to visit a Web site he created (faceintel.com) with information critical of Intel. In 1998, Intel received an injunction barring Mr. Hamidi, who now works for the State of California, from sending more messages to Intel employees. The injunction was upheld by an appeals court in 2001. Intel's argument rests on a little used doctrine of common law called trespass to chattels, which allows someone to sue for damages resulting from the inappropriate use of personal property, as distinct from the more common case of trespass to real estate. The doctrine was applied to e-mail messages in a landmark federal ruling in 1977, CompuServe Inc. v. Cyber Promotions, which held that spam could be considered trespass because it misappropriated the company's computer system. In a 4-to-3 ruling, the California Supreme Court said that doctrine did not apply to Mr. Hamidi's e-mail messages because they did not damage its computers or impose a significant cost on the company. Mr. Hamidi ''no more invaded Intel's property than does a protester holding a sign or shouting through a bullhorn outside corporate headquarters, posting a letter through the mail, or telephoning to complain of a corporate practice,'' wrote Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, in the majority opinion. In a dissent, Justice Janice Rogers Brown wrote that ''Intel suffered not merely an |
1501222_2 | Under the Arctic Ice, a Seabed Yields Some Fiery Secrets | more than 80 percent of the instrument deployments detected such emissions over the 600-mile portion of the ridge that was surveyed. ''We were expecting it to be practically dead,'' said Dr. Peter J. Michael, the lead author of one of the new Nature papers and a geologist at the University of Tulsa. ''Instead we got so many readings that we thought the equipment was not working right.'' By chance, that summer the polar ice pack was exceptionally thin and widely dispersed, so the ships -- the American Coast Guard vessel Healy and the German Polarstern -- were able to collect far more data than had been expected. Until this expedition, the only surveys of the ridge had been done sporadically by Navy submarines that, while submerged, cannot maintain precise coordinates on their positions. ''I think we know the topography of Mars and the Moon better than that area of the Arctic,'' said Dr. Wilfried Jokat, a lead author of one of the Nature papers and a senior scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar Research in Bremerhaven, Germany. Some of the volcanic domes that the survey detected rise more than a mile from the three-mile-deep bottom of the rift valley running down the center of the Gakkel Ridge. The hot spots found along the ridge appear to have existed fairly consistently for up to 25 million years in some cases, according to the papers. It may be that the composition of the underlying rock, or other factors besides the rate at which the seafloor is spreading, determine whether there is volcanic activity or the kind of cracking and heat that can result in hydrothermal vents, Dr. Michael said. The findings also raise the tantalizing prospect that the vents nourish novel ecosystems in the Arctic, Dr. Edmonds and other marine scientists said. The Gakkel's hydrothermal vents, which spew torrents of water heated by magma welling from the planet's fiery depths, are similar to others found elsewhere in the world's oceans, most of them nourishing specialized ecosystems. But because the Arctic Ocean is connected to the Pacific and Atlantic by relatively shallow passages, it is possible that vents there -- isolated for millions of years -- might support species not seen anywhere else, the scientists said. One of the deepest connections is the strait running from the Arctic Ocean past Greenland to the North Atlantic, Dr. Edmonds said. But even there, |
1501235_0 | OBSERVATORY | Mac 'n' Cheese 'n' Bixin Macaroni and cheese -- the kind made from a box -- is a favorite of young people everywhere. It's hard to say why they love it so, though flavor probably has little to do with it, since by most accounts it has none. No, it must be the otherworldly orange glow that emanates from a heap of mac'n'cheese as it sits there on the plate. That color, dedicated readers of food labels know, comes from annatto, an ingredient in the cheese. And annatto, really dedicated readers of food labels know, comes only from the seeds of a small tropical evergreen tree, Bixa orellana. That may change, with the development reported in the current issue of the journal Science. Researchers from France and the Ivory Coast have isolated the tree's genes that are responsible for creating annatto (which to scientists is more commonly known as bixin). What's more, they've inserted those genes into bacteria to make a bixin-producing bug. The researchers discovered that three genes are involved in bixin production. But more important, they discovered that the process required a precursor compound, lycopene. So in order to modify a strain of bacteria to produce bixin, they also had to re-engineer it to produce lycopene. Now it happens that tomatoes produce a lot of lycopene naturally (it's what makes them red). So the researchers suggest that it may be possible to genetically modify a tomato species so that it produces bixin. That would mean a new source of annatto. And with all the uses for it -- in addition to coloring cheese, it is added to margarine and other foods, cosmetics, shampoos and soaps -- you can't really have too much. Nanomedicine True believers in nanotechnology have made many claims about its future, not the least of which is that some day it will help cure what ails you. One idea is that tiny particles will be able to deliver minute amounts of a drug directly to a target -- a diseased cell, say -- within the body. Now, scientists from several Japanese universities have taken steps toward doing just that. They have created hollow ''nanocages'' of proteins that can hold a few molecules of a drug (or a gene, for use in gene therapy) and bring them straight to the liver. The scientists, who report on their work in the journal Nature Biotechnology, used a protein |
1523523_1 | Taking the Oceans' Pulse, With Help From Robot Subs | institutions included the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Princeton, Harvard, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The Office of Naval Research financed the project. ''It's a fascinating coming together of people who do their science in very different ways,'' said Dr. Russ E. Davis of Scripps, which is in San Diego. ''We realize the problems are all interconnected, so no one person, group or even institution can see enough of the parts to make sense of them.'' Until now, oceanographers have been at a severe disadvantage in their efforts to gather data. Satellites look at oceans globally, but detect conditions at the surface only. To look farther down, ships tow underwater platforms of instruments -- but that tends to occur only every few months or years, and only in small swaths of the ocean. In some places, instruments tied to the ocean floor monitor continuously, but those tell what is going on only at those few locations. ''Ocean weather'' is important for several major ecological issues. The flows of nutrients and microscopic plants and animals play a large role in the health of fishing grounds. For example, a report in the journal Science in January argued that the collapse of the sardine industry in Monterey Bay in the 1950's was primarily caused by cooling waters of a natural 50-year ocean cycle that drove the fish away, not overfishing as previously believed. Oceans also currently absorb about half the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is the ''greenhouse gas'' blamed by most scientists for most of the global warming observed in the past century. Without a better understanding of ocean currents, scientists cannot say whether the oceans can continue to absorb that much carbon dioxide or whether they will start belching it back into the air, accelerating the warming. Monterey Bay, 60 miles south of San Francisco, is an unusual environment. Unlike the shallow continental shelf off most coasts, the Monterey Bay sea floor drops sharply not far offshore to depths of two miles, resembling a submerged Grand Canyon. The dynamics of the oceans are more complex than those of the weather. A weather system in the atmosphere spans hundreds or thousands of miles wide; the equivalent in the ocean can be only tens of miles wide. A wider range of chemical reactions occurs in the oceans, and the dense menagerie of life |
1523526_0 | Logging in the Amazon | To the Editor: Re ''A Swirl of Foreboding in Mahogany's Grain'' (news article, Sept. 28): The real environmental tragedy of illegal mahogany trading lies not in the impending presence of ''slash and burn'' agriculturalists in the Amazon rain forest. Such people have lived in the rain forest for centuries and at low population densities pose little or no problem. There is a much bigger and more immediate problem. Overhunting of animals by loggers disrupts the tropical ecosystem by removing seed dispersers, predators and competitors. This affects the ability of trees to disperse and regenerate. Only 60 percent of mammals that are hunted in the Amazon are done so at a rate that allows for replenishment. Those interested in working toward a sustainable tropical timber industry need to take into account the full spectrum of effects of logging activities in the rain forest. DANI SIMONS New Haven, Sept. 28, 2003 |
1516456_1 | To Get the Phone, Drivers Are Willing to Risk Getting a Ticket | were issued in the state. About 100,500 citations were issued between December 2001 and February 2003, accounting for about 2 percent of all traffic citations, Ms. McCartt said. ''When you pass a highway safety law you generally get a lot of compliance because of the publicity with the passage of the law,'' Ms. McCartt said. ''But unless the publicity is sustained and the public perceives a high risk of enforcement, that compliance will decline over time.'' Wilbur Moore, a commercial painter who lives in the Bronx, said that he used his hands-free device most of time while driving from job to job around the city, but had never been ticketed for failing to use it. ''I use the headset because it is more convenient,'' Mr. Moore said as he sat parked in his sport utility vehicle on 42nd Street near Times Square yesterday. ''But it doesn't seem like they are out there ticketing people if they don't use them. I see people talking all the time without a headset.'' Drivers have little reason to obey the law when they have little fear of being caught. Ms. McCartt compared the cellular phone ban to laws requiring people to use seat belts. It took sustained and highly visible enforcement efforts over several years to get large numbers of people to change their attitudes and behavior about seat belts, she said. About 73 percent of adults use seat belts today, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. But despite overwhelming evidence that seat belts could help prevent serious injury in accidents, only a small percentage of people used them when they first became standard equipment in cars in the 1960's. It took high-profile enforcement efforts -- like setting up checkpoints on busy roads and ticketing those not wearing their seat belts -- to persuade people to buckle up regularly, Ms. McCartt said. Links between the use of cellular phones and bodily harm are less clear. While most researchers agree that the distraction of cellphone use can play a role in causing accidents, studies have come to different conclusions about how significant that role is and whether the use of hands-free devices reduces the risks. The insurance institute study did not address the question of whether cellphones play a role in accidents. Ms. McCartt said the study's findings could be useful to other states considering bans similar to New York's. ''The study reinforces |
1516458_1 | Surfers' Paradise Lost to the Great White Hungry Shark | that the sharks, none of which appear to be more than about eight feet long, are attracted by the smell of a 40-foot gray whale that was buried on the beach two years ago. Effluence from the decomposed animal is thought to be leaching into the ocean. The increasing frequency of great whites off the California coast has been of particular concern since a fatal attack on a 50-year-old woman on Aug. 19 at Avila Beach, 200 miles north of Los Angeles. Witnesses said that the woman, Deborah Franzman, had joined some seals for a swim when she was bitten. The authorities in Avila Beach closed the beaches there for several days, and closed them again this weekend after a sea lion washed ashore on Thursday with marks of a great white attack. Here at San Onofre State Beach, a couple miles south of San Clemente, lifeguards kept swimmers and surfers from entering a mile-long stretch of water on Saturday and today. ''I was actually going to take surfing lessons this year, but there's no way now,'' said Kristen Ross, 28, a teacher who was watching from the safety of the bluff. To Sam Pettit, 7, who came from Santa Barbara to see the sharks here with his family, there was a straightforward solution for those who were spending hours hoping for a glimpse of the great whites. ''It would be easier to know when they're coming if they just played the music,'' he said, referring to the ominous, thudding theme from ''Jaws.'' Reports of large sharks have been documented at San Onofre for about 18 months, but their frequency and proximity seem to have increased in the last few weeks. ''These things are more unpredictable than a grizzly bear,'' T. R. Bancroft, a lifeguard who has worked the San Onofre surf for 22 years, said from the bluff. ''They appear to be docile, but they're not.'' Last Sunday, Mr. Bancroft said, a great surf drew dozens of surfers. ''A shark was right there, bumping into some of them,'' he said. ''All the surfers suddenly had their hands and feet out of the water.'' Carrie Wilson, a shark expert for the California Department of Fish and Game, said that since 1950 there had been 93 white shark attacks on humans in California waters. Of those, 10 were fatal. The last one before the killing of Ms. Franzman was an attack |
1516398_4 | Talking Is Better Than Fighting | however, are far greater. Under such a policy, tension on the Korean Peninsula could reach a point where America is drawn into another confrontation -- one with potentially more severe consequences than either Iraq or Afghanistan. Failing to make any decision at all is also dangerous. Abstaining is essentially a vote in favor of the hard-liners (which may be their goal). The clock is ticking. Delaying a decision would probably take the president past the 2004 election, but the North Koreans are unlikely to cooperate with such political concerns. They will -- as one would expect -- continue with their nuclear program, including not only a nuclear test but also the reprocessing of spent fuel rods capable of yielding enough plutonium for five or six nuclear weapons in addition to the one or two the C.I.A. claims they already have. If the president waits until next year's election to make his decision, a policy of engagement may no longer be possible. To be sure, engaging the North is not palatable. However, political cover may be found in a reality, or dynamic, that did not exist in 1994. For starters, Russia and China, Pyongyang's two most important allies, are now sitting with the Americans at the table. Today's negotiations could therefore result in a more comprehensive, realistic deal than the 1994 accord; one which can be carried out more fully by all sides. Washington must recognize, however, that a comprehensive deal requires putting something meaningful to the North Koreans on the table. The United States and North Korea are now at a critical point. A policy of engagement is the only sensible approach for Washington -- not only to avoid a military confrontation, but also to prevent serious and lasting damage to our relationships with our Pacific allies at a time when our Atlantic alliances are badly frayed. Even if the North refuses to respond, the United States will be better positioned to win the support of its partners for a hard-line approach. If there is one thing all parties can agree upon it is that future talks will not be easy. The United States will demand that Pyongyang make difficult concessions. It must be willing to provide something in return. James Laney was United States ambassador to South Korea from 1993 to 1997. Jason T. Shaplen was an adviser to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization from 1995 to 1999. |
1516482_0 | Birth Control in Russia | For 50 years, Russian women relied on state-financed abortions as their main form of birth control. With pills, condoms and other contraceptives often in short supply, most women in Russia expected to face at least one and sometimes more than a dozen trips to the abortion clinic over their childbearing years. Now the Russian government is attempting to slow the abortion rate. It is an admirable goal, given the toll that multiple abortions have taken on the health and fertility of Russia's women. Unfortunately, the Health Ministry has gone about it in the wrong way. It has decided to limit Russian women's access to abortion rather than expanding their ability to get effective contraception and better family planning. Russia's abortion rate, among the highest in the world during the last decades of the Soviet era, has already begun to drop as more effective contraceptives have finally become available, especially in urban areas. In 1988, as the Soviet years were ending, there were 4.6 million abortions, compared with 1.7 million last year. But conservative lawmakers and Orthodox leaders have begun pushing to cut those numbers even further. Many of these same leaders and their friends in the Russian Duma have helped end federal financing for family-planning clinics, which dispense vital information on abortions and alternatives like contraception, as well as on safe sex. Experts on women's health understandably see a dangerous combination. Without enough information on birth control or access to abortions, Russian women could return to back-street charlatans for the kind of botched, unsanitary procedures that once killed many. More troubling is the widespread suspicion that this decree is another attempt at Soviet-style population manipulation. In 1936, Stalin banned abortion to stimulate the birth rate. In a widely resented decree that was dropped after his death, Stalin made it clear that the nation's couples should produce workers and soldiers as vigorously as new Soviet industries were turning out trucks and steel beams. Russia today is facing a real population crisis as young people emigrate, those who stay have fewer children and the life expectancy of men is falling. Russia's population, now 145 million, is shrinking by almost 700,000 annually -- a predicament that President Vladimir Putin has called a ''creeping catastrophe.'' The answer to a declining population is not curbs on abortions. As Dr. Lyudmila Timofeyeva, a prominent Moscow gynecologist, told The Christian Science Monitor, ''Once a woman has made |
1518134_1 | Clouds In Silicon Valley | be ruined by even a speck of dust. At the same time, the hazardous chemicals used in the process are capable of doing devastating physical damage to the workers. No one has a clear understanding of the extent of the danger to workers over the past few decades. It's indisputable that large numbers of men and women who worked with these chemicals, some of them known to be carcinogens, have come down with cancer and other serious diseases. But no one knows whether there is a real causal connection. Many loud warnings have been issued since at least the late-1970's, but the proper studies have not been done. Mrs. Rubio learned she had cancer in 1987 and underwent a modified radical mastectomy, on her right breast. Soon after surgery she was put back to work in the same environment, working with the same toxic chemicals. Still experiencing discomfort from the surgery, Mrs. Rubio complained to her bosses that her right arm had begun to hurt. An I.B.M. medical history sheet dated Nov. 16, 1987, said she was ''advised to move her trays to the left side'' and continue doing her work with her left arm. Lawyers for the Rubio family said she continued working in clean rooms throughout 1988 and 1989. During that time, they said, she was exposed to a ''witches' brew'' of foul chemicals. In 1990 cancer was again diagnosed, and this time it spread through much of her body. She died on Jan. 19, 1991. She was 36. The semiconductor industry has reacted with near paranoia to any suggestion that anyone has gotten sick or died from working with these chemicals. The manufacturing processes have improved and safety is less of a problem now than in years past. The last thing the industry wants to hear about is the possibility that large numbers of workers have already died and many others are desperately sick from chemicals in the semiconductor workplace. But there is a compelling need to know whether some of the men and women who did the grunt work in the creation of a fantastic new industry sacrificed their health and their lives in the process. The absence of definitive studies left a vacuum that all but assured the matter would end up in the courts. More than 200 plaintiffs in California, New York and Minnesota have sued I.B.M. and some of its chemical suppliers for |
1523388_1 | Chile Inches Toward a Law That Would Make Divorce Legal | the church hierarchy has been conducting an intense campaign that includes lobbying members of Congress, especially those from the centrist Christian Democratic Party, and hinting about excommunication. ''What should not be done is to opt for solutions that imply the destruction of the notion of the family,'' Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz, the archbishop of Santiago, wrote in a pastoral letter called ''Let No Man Tear Asunder,'' issued in June. ''Many countries have done precisely that,'' he added, but ''their experience demonstrates that introducing divorce is not the right road.'' After Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship ended in 1990, four unsuccessful attempts were made in this socially conservative nation to give the Civil Marriage Code its first major overhaul since the 1880's. The lower house of Congress finally approved a divorce bill in 1997, and after more than five years of hesitation, the Senate voted last month, 33 to 13, to take up a committee's recommendation in favor of the bill. In an interview here, a legal adviser to the national conference of Catholic bishops, Jorge Morales Retamal, said church leaders were resigned to losing the battle. Their focus now, he said, is to mitigate the damage and to ensure that the law incorporates provisions that they want, like civil recognition of religious weddings and the ''no divorce'' option, which the law's authors strongly oppose. ''If you say you respect freedom of religion, why shouldn't the law let us marry for life if that is what we desire?'' Mr. Morales said. ''It's an insurmountable contradiction.'' In the absence of divorce, Chileans have traditionally resorted to subterfuge to get out of unhappy marriages, including women who seek to be declared widows after their husbands leave them. The most popular tool, though, is civil annulment, which requires a couple to go to a court and say their marriage violated the law -- for instance, that neither of them lived in the jurisdiction where they wed. Witnesses to a wedding have also been known to misspell their names or give an incorrect address so that the couple will have grounds for an annulment. While some judges refuse to hear such cases out of religious convictions, most rule that the marriage never formally existed. More than 5,000 annulments are granted annually. Beneficiaries include President Ricardo Lagos and even some legislators who have expressed doubts about the divorce bill. Some supporters of divorce contend that annulment discriminates |
1521726_0 | Of Menopause and Memory | Several years ago, Dr. Peter M. Meyer and his colleagues asked a large group of menopausal women how many of them were bothered by forgetfulness. ''Every hand in the room went up,'' he recalled. But tests conducted over several years turned up no evidence to support the idea that menopause actually interfered with memory, according to an article released yesterday. The study, which was published in the journal Neurology, involved 803 women who had not yet reached menopause or were in early stages when the research began. Once a year, the women were tested on their ability to repeat long strings of numbers backward and to identify pairs of symbols and digits quickly. Dr. Meyer and his colleagues at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago expected to find the scores dropping. Instead, the scores rose slightly for all of the women in the group, menopausal or not. Dr. Meyer offered two explanations. He cited a study that used brain scanners to show that estrogen taken by menopausal women increased activity in the part of the brain devoted to verbal memory. The women's test scores were not higher, but changes in the pattern of activation could explain why they felt as if their memories were less efficient. Another explanation is that menopause often coincides with other circumstances that bring on stress, like children reaching adolescence and parents reaching old age. Since stress can lead to minor lapses in memory, women going through menopause may ''have a hard time determining whether it is a result of the transition or whether it is related to role stress,'' Dr. Meyer said. VITAL SIGNS: MENTAL ABILITIES |
1521830_2 | Countries Receive a Low Score From the U.N. in Its Worldwide Fight Against AIDS | prevention and care expected of them by 2005. One goal is to ensure that by 2005 at least 80 percent of pregnant women have access to information, counseling and treatment to prevent transmission of H.I.V., which causes AIDS. But such services remain virtually nonexistent in the countries that are most affected by AIDS, according to the report card that Dr. Piot's agency issued. According to the report, in 31 of 38 countries less than 30 percent of women age 15 to 24 could answer a set of standard questions on H.I.V. transmission. The questions included condom use, limiting the number of sexual partners and being faithful to one uninfected partner. Dr. Piot said the 2005 goals ''can still be met but only if significantly greater and sustained commitments to the global H.I.V./AIDS epidemic are realized.'' Representatives of 133 countries were expected to speak on AIDS at the United Nations into the early hours of Tuesday. Dr. Piot observed that the list included 20 heads of state, but none from Asia, where H.I.V. infections are rising. Yet, Dr. Piot said, ''this is the time to act because it is much cheaper'' to prevent an epidemic from exploding when health officials deal with a smaller than larger number of infected people. The report card found that 93 percent of the 103 countries that responded had established comprehensive national H.I.V./AIDS strategies and national groups to coordinate the battle against the disease. The report card also found that 88 percent of the countries had increased public awareness through the media, school-based AIDS education and peer education programs. A bright spot, Dr. Piot said, is that there is ''enormous global momentum to expand access to H.I.V./AIDS treatments in developing countries, a prospect that not many would have predicted only a few years ago.'' Yet despite a wealth of information on proven interventions like condom use, only a fraction of people at risk of developing AIDS have meaningful access to basic prevention services. Only one-quarter of sub-Saharan countries say that the condition of at least half of patients with sexually transmitted infections is appropriately diagnosed. Although migration increases the risk of becoming infected with H.I.V., fewer than half the countries have adopted strategies to promote effective H.I.V. prevention measures across their borders. AIDS has also left an estimated 15 million orphans. But more than one-third of heavily affected countries have no strategies to deal with them. |
1521734_0 | For Billions of Birds, an Endangered Haven | It's autumn, and the vast boreal forest of Canada is spilling birds. Ducks and geese are pouring out of it, and songbirds in the billions. Some will winter in Westchester, some in Costa Rica. Some will stop at bird feeders, some will fly directly over hidden hunters. In all, three billion to five billion birds leave the Canadian boreal forest each fall, headed for warmer weather. As the birds fly south, many of the people most involved with the Canadian boreal, which makes up 10 percent of all the earth's forests and 25 percent of the intact, original forests, are heading for Quebec City. The 12th World Forestry Congress is convening there this week, and preservation of the boreal forest is a major subject of discussion. Conservationists hope to reach agreement with industry now on how to set aside some parts of the forest and agree on management policies for other areas. Three environmental groups -- Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Forest Ethics -- joined together last week to release a brief report on threats to the forest and to demand a moratorium on logging and development in the most endangered parts of the boreal forest until a conservation plan is developed. It is not that the forest is in immediate danger of disappearing. Just the opposite. But change is occurring fast because of industrial development like logging, mining and drilling for gas and oil. Farming also contributes to forest loss, particularly in western Canada. A study published in Conservation Biology in December 2002, by Keith A. Hobson of the Canadian Wildlife Service calculated that on the southern edge of the boreal in Saskatchewan, the amount of forested land was declining at 0.87 per cent per year, similar to some estimates for loss of tropical rain forest. Boreal simply means northern -- as in the aurora borealis, the northern lights. The great northern forest, as it is sometimes called, circles the globe, below the polar regions and above the temperate hardwood forests. It is not as familiar as the tropical rain forests, particularly the Amazon and the Congo forest of Central Africa, which includes seven different countries. But the boreal belongs in the same category. These three areas are the last places on earth where vast stretches of intact original forest remain. Marilyn Heiman, director of the Boreal Songbird Initiative, said the decline of songbirds had been a |
1521864_0 | The JetBlue Files And Big Brother | To the Editor: If an airline supplies passenger names and addresses to help in antiterrorism efforts (front page, Sept. 20), that's no more an invasion of privacy than the government's examining the passports of international arrivals, and much less an intrusion than the airlines' own personal and baggage searches of passengers now routine everywhere. The self-appointed ''civil liberties groups'' that are complaining of JetBlue Airways' disclosures don't speak for me, nor do they, I suspect, speak for the vast majority of American air travelers. ANDREW C. HARTZELL JR. Scarsdale, N.Y., Sept. 20, 2003 |
1518749_0 | Air Travelers Adjust To a Vigilant Process | Airports, where the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were launched, are where most Americans have seen security changes up close. Some of those changes are big and obvious: the 49,600 federal security agents in crisp white shirts, the mammoth bag-screening machines, the hundreds of pilots carrying guns. Others are smaller and less obvious. Travelers have bought post-9/11 shoes (slip-ons, no metal), bags (bigger, more compartments), even bras (no underwire) to smooth the ride through security. PAGE A19 CALCULATING THE TOLL -- A statistical snapshot of New York City two years after the attacks shows that economically, the city continues to suffer reverberations. But there are signs of hope: unemployment is beginning to drop, subway ridership is up, and apartments are once again hard to find near ground zero. PAGE A21 |
1518772_1 | Cellphones That Reach Alter Egos | and expectant fathers. You pick up a sound-quality benefit, too. For example, a Cingular representative admitted that Cingular coverage in his own home was, as he bravely put it, ''not swell.'' But now he doesn't care. Whenever he's at home (and therefore out of prime cell range), his FastForward gizmo shunts incoming calls away from his cellphone and onto the perfect clarity of his land line. Finally, when you're upstairs, you no longer have to run all the way downstairs just to answer your cellphone. All right, having to run to find a ringing cellphone may not rank right up there as the most sympathy-worthy complaint of the new millennium. (Heck, it's the only exercise some people get.) But the point is that the FastForward makes every phone extension in your home ring simultaneously. If you're upstairs, you answer the call upstairs. This gadget is no low-tech A-B box. It doesn't even connect to a phone jack (only to a power outlet, because it also recharges your cellphone). When you insert your cellphone, it transmits a short text command to the cellular network itself that says, in effect, ''Begin diverting calls now.'' In other words, the call switching doesn't take place in your home. It happens much farther upstream, which is why incoming calls don't eat into your monthly minutes. You can redirect your cellphone's calls to any local number, not just your home phone. In fact, you can create up to three different entries in your cellphone's phonebook -- labeled CF1, CF2, and CF3 (for call forwarding) -- that correspond to the land line numbers where you spend the most time. Then, a switch on the cradle lets you specify which number you want to ring: CF1 for your home, CF2 for your office, and CF3 for your secret apartment, for example. (You can change any of these numbers at any time.) To turn off the call forwarding -- when you're leaving home, for example -- you're supposed to press a Cancel button on the cradle and wait four seconds. During this time, the cellphone sends a ''Cancel'' text message to the Cingular network. Incoming calls will once again ring your cellphone (and use up your minutes). If you just yank the phone out of the cradle without pressing the Cancel button, though, you hear an alarm that seems to say, ''Hope you know what you're doing, Bub.'' You've |
1518789_2 | Gas Project In Peru Gets Crucial Loan | United States government officials, who say the development endangers the rain forest, native indigenous communities and the Paracas reserve. The Inter-American Development Bank's 14-member board, which represents 46 countries, had already delayed a vote on the loan twice. And today's vote did not come without a setback for the developers of Camisea. The American representative, Jose Fourquet, abstained largely because of concern over the adequacy of an environmental evaluation of the project, people with knowledge of the vote said. On Aug. 28, the Export-Import Bank, a United States government credit agency that had also raised concerns, rejected a $214 million loan. Officials at the Inter-American Development Bank said the loan was approved after Camisea's developers agreed to give the bank broader powers to monitor environmental issues over the entire length of the project. This is significant because the bank's loan is for the pipeline construction, not for development of the gas fields or of two gas-processing plants. Bank officials were also swayed by President Alejandro Toledo's proposal, made on Monday, to create a commission to oversee the protection and cleanup of the coastal waters off Paracas where a fractionation plant to separate gas liquids is being built, and where fishmeal plants have been fouling the waters. The energy companies developing Camisea will spend $23.8 million on the bay-protection plan, the Peruvian government said. Environmental groups, however, said the steps being taken were half-hearted. They charged that the Inter-American Development Bank had caved in to pressure and failed to uphold environmental standards before issuing a large multilateral loan. ''The I.D.B. just committed American taxpayers' money to a project that threatens the natural and cultural environment in Peru,'' said Aaron Goldzimer, who has closely tracked the Camisea project for Environmental Defense, a environmental group based in New York. Kathryn S. Fuller, president of the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, said that rejection of the loan would have forced the project to ''fix the plan's serious ecological flaws.'' Ms. Fuller said that, instead, the bank had ''wrapped the plan in a cloak of vague promises, ignored the serious risks and declared it worthy of taxpayer funding.'' The new loans mean that the project will probably move on to its next phase, the construction of a $2 billion plant to liquefy natural gas. By 2007, that facility, under development by Hunt Oil, will provide the United States with an important source of natural gas. |
1518811_0 | National Briefing | Religion: Bishops Turn To Constitution To Bar Gay Marriage | Leaders of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops, meeting on Tuesday in Washington, endorsed an amendment to the United States Constitution to effectively bar gay marriages by defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The bishops said they would oppose legal or judicial efforts ''to grant same-sex unions the equivalent status and rights of marriage.'' The Vatican issued a denunciation of gay marriages in July. Bishops in Canada on Tuesday said they would fight measures by Canada's government to expand the definition of marriage. Laurie Goodstein (NYT) |
1518746_3 | Slip-On Shoes, Long Waits: Airline Passengers Are Still Adjusting | anymore. It could result in your life. It requires a lot more thought.'' At O'Hare airport in Chicago on Monday, Susane Vitale, 36, looked perplexed as a screener sifted through her toiletry bag looking for the thing that had appeared as a knife on the X-ray. ''But I hardly carry any toiletries any more,'' Ms. Vitale insisted. Two minutes later, the screener's sternness melted to a smile. ''This is our culprit,'' he said, fishing out a silver barrette. ''The barrette,'' Ms. Vitale said, ''I hadn't even thought about the barrette.'' Like most other business travelers, she has adapted: She bought a bigger tote to accommodate her purse when airlines began restricting passengers to two carry-ons. No more heels, trench coats or jean jackets -- belts and buttons only mean hassle. ''It's changed how I am as a woman,'' she said. ''Minimal jewelry. No razor, no tweezers. Now the barrette. It's a no-win game. What do you bring as a woman anymore?'' Indeed, women seem more likely to say they have made adjustments to packing and dressing. But men and women alike complain that security can be inconsistent, or seem silly: when a pen could be a weapon, why bother taking away nail files? Why do shoes that saunter through four airport screenings not make it through the fifth? Randomness, of course, is part of the plan: the Sept. 11 hijackers practiced their methods well in advance to see what they could get away with. Still, said Brad Handler, 35, flying from New York to Boston, ''I know if I buy a one-way ticket, I'm going to get that 'S','' the mark of those chosen for special screening. ''It's pretty obvious it's totally not random.'' Security is not the only complaint. Fewer flights have made planning harder, flying more cramped. Cookie Grandmaison, a management consultant, had planned to live half the year with her husband, who is retired in Northern Maine. Her job, however, demands weekly travel, and with the cuts in flights from Maine, it makes more sense to spend about eight months at their home in Virginia. There are some ways in which flying feels normal again. Immediately after the attacks, pilots were making announcements advising passengers to watch their seatmates for suspicious behavior, and be ready to stop anyone from storming the cabin. This week, on a United flight to Chicago, the pilot was back to announcing the |
1518682_3 | Two Years Later, a Thousand Years Ago | transportation or communication. The collapse of 1200 B.C. seems to have been abetted by raiders who exploited shipping lanes. In the Middle Ages, the bubonic plague moved from city to city along avenues of commerce. Today a bioweapon could spread death globally the same way. And support for terrorism proliferates via the very satellites that convey stock prices, as appeals from Osama bin Laden, or images of civilian casualties in Iraq or Gaza, are beamed around the world. One way to protect an expanding realm of interdependence is through expanded governance. The Roman Empire, in its heyday, kept vast trade routes secure. But governance needn't come in the form of a full-fledged state. In the late Middle Ages, merchants in German cities formed the Hanseatic League to repel pirates and brigands. Today the globalization of commerce, and of threats to it, has created the rudiments of international governance, from the World Health Organization to arrangements for policing nuclear weapons. Global governance sounds radical, but it's just history marching on -- commerce making the world safe for itself. In light of 9/11, there is room for improvement. For starters, we need more routine and forceful means of policing the world's nuclear materials and, more challenging still, its biotechnology infrastructure. This will involve rethinking national sovereignty -- for example, accepting visits from international inspectors in exchange for the reassuring knowledge that they visit other countries, too. But we have little choice. The aftermath of the Iraq war suggests that even a superpower can't afford to invade every country that may have illicit weapons. History's expansion of commerce has entailed the growth not just of governance, but of morality. Doing business with people, even at a distance, usually involves acknowledging their humanity. This may not sound like a major moral breakthrough. But prehistoric life seems to have featured frequent hostility among groups, with violence justified by the moral devaluation, even dehumanization, of the victims. And recorded history is replete with such bigotry. The modern idea that people of all races and religions are morally equal is often taken for granted, but viewed against the human past, it is almost bizarre. Can moral enlightenment really be rooted in crass self-interest as mediated by the nonzero-sum logic of expanding economic interdependence? Certainly that would explain why an ethos of ethnic and religious tolerance is most common in highly globalized nations like the United States. And |
1518767_5 | From the Torch To the Toes, Digital Insurance | are still manipulating data. They attribute the delays to their teaching schedules, a lack of money to pay graduate students, and software limitations. The first task after returning from New York was to merge the 13 sets of raw three-dimensional digital data, known as point clouds, by identifying where they overlapped. The computer helped, but ''we had to point it in the right direction,'' Mr. Hill said. The next step, he said, was to proceed from points to surfaces, literally connecting the dots to turn each cloud into millions of triangles in a process known as tessellation. Then software called Geomagic was used to ''draw'' a smooth surface over the triangles. But tessellated surfaces are a far cry from the elevations and sections that architects depend on. The team had selected a computer-assisted design program to create the drawings, but importing the data created a bottleneck. ''We were are trying to stream 94 megabytes, and the computer kept freezing,'' she said. ''We spent months trying to figure out how to avoid crashing the computer.'' Eventually, Mr. Hill said, the team created smaller, more manageable files corresponding to sections of the statue. That was last spring. But the graduate students doing most of the work need to be paid, and the HABS grant has been spent. ''We finally have a plan that works,'' Mr. Hill said, ''and we're out of money.'' Another challenge is to map the 30 percent of the statue's surface that Ms. Louden missed on her last trip to New York. Capturing the statue's feet will require placing the Cyrax on a platform. Meanwhile, she is working on obtaining data on the statue's pate from digital photographs. With the adoption of new technologies, Mr. Hill said, plans and elevations might not be needed to reconstruct the statue. Computer-controlled three-dimensional ''printers'' could potentially generate sections of the statue directly from the point clouds. But the team still plans to give HABS the documents. Ms. Louden explained: ''HABS is looking for materials with a 500-year shelf life. Even though we hope that the digital file will be readable far into the future, we are relying on a traditional method of communication, which is the hard copy.'' Typically HABS drawings are available to the public through the Library of Congress. ''We'll finish during this academic year,'' Ms. Louden said. Even if no money comes in, she said, ''we'll find a way.'' |
1520094_5 | Luring Customers Back to the Water | them to be handled easily by two people. Mr. Franchini, 50, recently opened offices in Chicago and plans a big push on the American market starting in 2005. ''We have some contacts with individuals,'' he said, ''but you must have a sales and service structure that is adequate.'' Of course, the need to pack modern technology into today's boats has set off a boom among seaborne-electronics companies, and they were out in force. Clive Widdowson, technical director of AGC Marine Telecom in Antibes, France, which markets the telecommunications equipment of Sea Tel of Concord, Calif., in Europe, said that while satellite television was common on expensive yachts, Internet and telephone connections were becoming equally indispensable. ''The equipment is common on cruise ships, though yachts usually didn't have room,'' he said. Now, new miniaturized systems ranging in price from $9,000 to $37,000 that permit Internet, television and phone connections are fast becoming standard equipment even on small boats, he said. European yacht builders have traditionally been small, family-owned yards, but as the industry expands and goes global, consolidation is setting in. ''It's incredibly fragmented,'' said Paolo Colonna, the president for Italy of the buyout firm Permira, who attended the fair. ''There are thousands of little properties.'' In the 1990's, Permira helped Ferretti with a series of acquisitions, then took a stake in the company before Ferretti made an initial public offering in 2000. Earlier this year, Permira acquired Ferretti and began a three-year, $200 million investment program to upgrade boat yards at four sites in Italy. Roberto Odierna, an analyst at Citigroup Smith Barney in London, said: ''The cost of capital was low and business was quite bad. It was the ideal time for a venture capital buyout.'' The American market for small powerboats was hit by the stock market slowdown, Mr. Colonna said, while sales of the big expensive yachts that Ferretti builds suffered after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. ''It precipitated a crisis,'' he said. ''No one wanted to think about that kind of having fun.'' Since May, he said, signs of revival in the United States, where Ferretti generates almost 20 percent of its revenue, have been multiplying. As visitors to the fair scrambled over the boats, Mr. Colonna said he remained bullish on big boats. ''The average ticket is $2 million,'' he said. ''We say it's a luxury toy.'' ''It's the maximum of luxury,'' he said. |
1519938_2 | Exercise Is a Habit; Here's Why to Pick It Up | for me on the corner, not to mention the magnificent sunrises, birds, blooms and bunnies we often encounter. I often remark, ''Look at what the stay-a-beds are missing!'' New Findings Two studies published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association may provide the motivation many women need to get moving and stay moving. One study, directed by Dr. Anne McTiernan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, examined the risk of breast cancer among 74,171 postmenopausal women enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative study. Although a number of previous studies found that physically active women had a decreased risk for breast cancer, little was known about what kinds of activity and how much was needed to be protective. The new study, which followed the women for an average of nearly five years, found that those who engaged in the equivalent of 75 to 180 minutes a week of brisk walking had 18 percent less risk of developing breast cancer than inactive women. The risk continued to decline, but only slightly, for women who did up to 10 hours of brisk walking or its equivalent, although other studies have suggested that the degree of protection is directly related to the amount of activity. Not only was current physical activity protective. Women in the study who had been physically active at ages 35 and 50 also experienced a reduced cancer risk, the authors noted. Furthermore, those who were using postmenopausal hormones, which increase breast cancer risk, were less likely to get breast cancer if they were physically active. The authors wrote: ''For those women who choose to continue taking hormone therapy for control of menopausal symptoms or for prevention of osteoporosis, it will be welcome information that a simple modification of lifestyle to increase physical activity can reduce their risk of breast cancer.'' In concert with other findings about the role body fat plays in increasing the risk of breast cancer, the greatest reduction in breast cancer risk associated with regular exercise was seen in lean women. And that brings me to the second new study, directed by Dr. John M. Jakicic of the University of Pittsburgh's Physical Activity and Weight Management Research Center. This was a yearlong randomized trial, the gold standard of research, conducted among 201 seriously overweight sedentary women. All participants were instructed to reduce their caloric intake by an average of 31 percent |
1522005_4 | Forbidden Fruit: Something About A Mangosteen | mangosteens might be completed. Equipment to carry out irradiation, manufactured by the SureBeam Corporation of San Diego, is already in operation in Hawaii and Brazil, and a system has recently been sold to Vietnam. Mark Stephenson, a SureBeam vice president, said that fruits (or meats, on which it is already widely used) are briefly bombarded with a stream of electrons similar to X-rays. The electron beams are generated by electrical power, he said, and no nuclear materials are used. The process raises the temperature of the material being irradiated by only one degree, causing no change in the taste or the texture. It eliminates pests and retards spoilage by destroying harmful food-borne bacteria. But it has generated controversy. Although approved by the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, the World Health Organization and other bodies, irradiation has long been opposed by a few activist groups. The most prominent of these is Public Citizen, founded by Ralph Nader, which has contended that more detailed research is needed on the long-term results of irradiation before it can be considered safe. ''Exposing food to ionizing radiation results in the formation of potentially carcinogenic compounds,'' Wenonah Hauter, a Public Citizen official, told a Congressional committee in 2001. She also asserted that the process destroys crucial vitamins. Christine M. Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California at Davis, dismissed such criticisms out of hand. ''There is no indication whatsoever of any ill effects,'' she said, arguing that Public Citizen's views were based on outdated and irrelevant data. ''Any worries about irradiation are very small,'' said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, based in Washington. ''I would welcome more research, but I haven't been exercised about this, and I'm still not.'' Still, consumer resistance to irradiated foods has been high, and some supermarkets do not stock them. James Parker, director of the northern Pacific region for Whole Foods, a Texas-based chain, told The San Francisco Chronicle that he welcomed the phase-out of methyl bromide disinfestation that irradiation might help make possible, but would not carry irradiated produce. ''We don't want the cure to be worse than the disease,'' Mr. Parker said. ''We still don't know the long-term effects.'' THE mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana) originated, most botanists believe, in Malaysia or the Sunda Islands of Indonesia. Fruits are borne on very slow-growing evergreen |
1522061_3 | California Acts to Ban Junk E-Mail | Network Advertising Initiative, a group of technology companies that send e-mail for marketers. ''Instead of trying to segregate the California e-mail addresses, many of our members are going to make the California standard the lowest common denominator.'' Until now, state laws against spam have largely tried to ban deceptive practices in commercial e-mail, like fake return addresses. Many require that spam be identified with the phrase ''ADV'' in the subject line. Only Delaware has also banned sending unsolicited e-mail. But that law can be enforced only by the state attorney general, who has not taken any action under the statute. Action under the California law, by contrast, can be brought by the state, by e-mail providers that have to handle spam, and by the recipients themselves. At a news conference yesterday in Sacramento, Kathleen Hamilton, the director of the state's Department of Consumer Affairs, promised to enforce the law when it goes into effect on Jan. 1. The law's proponents argue that the right of individuals to sue represents the most important form of enforcement. ''A few well-placed pieces of litigation can do wonders,'' said Debra Bowen, a California state senator from Redondo Beach, who had proposed legislation similar to the new law. But e-mail companies are already preparing for an onslaught of lawsuits they say will be frivolous. ''Small claims court will be filled with people suing legitimate marketers saying they don't remember signing up for this list,'' said Kenneth Hirschman, general counsel for Digital Impact, a big e-mail marketing company in San Mateo, Calif. ''The companies will have to trudge down to the court and say here is the evidence that this person has opted in.'' The law allows companies to send commercial e-mail messages to their customers, to those who have inquired about products or services, and those that have ''expressly consented to receive e-mail advertisements from the advertiser.'' In what appears to be a concession to Microsoft, the bill exempts some e-mail advertising sent by the provider of a free e-mail service to its users. Microsoft runs Hotmail, the largest free e-mail service, in part from computers in California. Microsoft, which had opposed similar legislation proposed in California earlier this year, says it now supports the current law. Senator Murray argued that the new law would have more impact than earlier efforts because it applies to a company whose product is advertised, not just the company |
1522033_0 | Goodbye to Gallant Galileo | Space engineers called it ''the little engine that could.'' The spacecraft Galileo, which ended its 14-year mission on Sunday when it was sent on a suicidal plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere, overcame daunting obstacles to produce some of the most important planetary observations ever made. Its odyssey was a tribute to human ingenuity in the face of potentially disabling failures, its discoveries testimony to unmanned spaceflights. After a series of setbacks, including the Challenger accident, Galileo was launched in 1989 with a a booster rocket too weak to get it to Jupiter. The mission was saved by an engineer who realized that Galileo could reach Jupiter by heading toward the inner-planet Venus, then looping twice around Earth, using gravity for momentum. Two years after its launching, a near crippling malfunction made it impossible to unfurl the main antenna for transmitting data. Ground experts pulled off a spectacular rescue by reprogramming the computers, compressing the data and transmitting it through a slow, secondary antenna. And so it went throughout the trip. Galileo achieved 70 percent of its scientific goals. Galileo gave us spectacular pictures of a comet's remnants smashing into Jupiter and the first close-ups of an asteroid. It dropped a probe into Jupiter's atmosphere that measured thunderstorms with lightning 1,000 times more powerful than on Earth. Most important were its observations of Jupiter's moons. Galileo captured images of active volcanic eruptions on Io and found evidence that a liquid ocean may exist under the icy crust of Europa, raising the possibility of life. Galileo's discoveries effectively sealed its doom. As the spacecraft ran short of fuel, its managers sent it plunging into Jupiter rather than risk contaminating Europa with any bacteria it might be carrying. Up until the very end, the spacecraft kept sending back data. |
1517112_0 | The End of Chocolate (as a Chocolatier Knows It) | First, Christian Constant created a towering sculpture in solid chocolate, dozens of stylized chocolate bars soaring in a turbulent column skyward, out of an immense cracked chocolate egg. The Renaissance of Chocolate, he called it. Next, he draped the doorposts of his store, along Rue d'Assas in Paris, in black as a sign of mourning. The symbols reflected the mix of emotions these days among French lovers of chocolate who know their criollo from their gianduja, and relish the difference. The symbolism became ever more complex after the monument to rebirth, softened by Paris's withering heat, slowly leaned, like some Hershey's Tower of Pisa. In August, French connoisseurs of chocolate definitively lost a battle against the bureaucrats of the European Union. Up to 5 percent of the cocoa butter in chocolate may be replaced by other vegetable fats -- Mr. Constant refers to them as ''bad margarine'' -- and still be called chocolate. ''Chocolate is no longer chocolate,'' said Mr. Constant, perched in the tiny coffee bar next to his store. The struggle began in the 1970's, after Britain sought entry into the European Union and set as a condition the acceptance by the rest of Europe of a law that would permit the addition of vegetable fat, a customary practice in British chocolate. For the French, it was an assault on the world's finest cocoa-based products, which for them meant French chocolate. Indeed, the French love of chocolate is such that it has even become an affair of state. This week, the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, referred disparagingly to four European countries, including France, that met earlier this year for what he described as a little bitty summit to discuss defense policies more independent of the United States. Mr. Boucher dismissed them as ''the chocolate makers.'' In France, that is a proud thing to be. Chocolatiers like Mr. Constant picketed European institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg. They argued from taste; they argued from global economics. If less chocolate were used, the economies of cocoa-producing countries like Ivory Coast would be ruined. Their efforts, hélas, were ultimately undermined by a fifth column: France's own industrial chocolate makers. Pure chocolate, Mr. Constant explained, consists essentially of cocoa, sugar and cocoa butter, which is extracted from cocoa beans and is very expensive. ''Vegetable fats are 10 time cheaper,'' he said. The big chocolate industrialists, he complained, like Nestlé, Kraft Foods, |
1517104_0 | Mentally Ill Children | To the Editor: ''Mental Care Poor for Some Children in State Custody'' (front page, Sept. 1) is the latest installment in a familiar if horrifying story. Mentally ill children are neglected, physically mistreated and without access to needed therapies, locked up in ugly facilities in the care of a poorly paid and poorly trained staff. Without help, what future do these children have? This is the scandal that never goes away. Good treatment would, of course, be more costly, but still a tiny fraction of the country's health care budget. GEORGE H. NORTHRUP New Hyde Park, N.Y., Sept. 1, 2003 |
1517080_0 | If the Actual Amazon Is Far Away, Invent One Nearby | You probably won't need 98 minutes to get the point of ''The Origin of the Night: Amazon Cosmos,'' a film by the German Conceptualist Lothar Baumgarten. A beautiful, elegiac but largely unsuspenseful meditation on the Brazilian rain forest and the creation stories of the Tupi Indians, this rarely seen movie was made between 1973 and 1977. It is being shown in New York for the first time, in continuous screenings at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The film is an evocative and affecting work, even if you're not familiar with its arcane narrative about an ancestral fall from grace that cast the world, until then sunny around the clock, into darkness for half of each day. (Mr. Baumgarten took the story from Claude Lévi-Strauss's book ''From Honey to Ashes.'') Centering exclusively on a damp swamp setting, the film intimates a geographical location with an opening massing of the names of Amazon Indian tribes and indigenous plants and animals. It proceeds to examine the terrain, mostly at close range, as time cycles from darkness to light and back to darkness -- coming noisily to life and then closing down for the night. But long before the end of ''The Origin of the Night,'' you'll probably figure out that it was shot not in the Amazon at all, but somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. At that point you will either walk out or await official confirmation in the closing credits: these specify the Rhein-Wälder, forests along the Rhine near the artist's home in Düsseldorf, Germany. (He also has a home in New York.) This film offers an important piece of the expanding puzzle of 70's art, but it also tries your patience. After all, it harks back to a time when artists were looking at the natural world with a new directness and taking their time about it. Testing your patience was part of it; the only good time was real time, or something close. Mr. Baumgarten, who is nearly 60, is a former student of Joseph Beuys and represented Germany at the 1984 Venice Biennale. He has been known since the late 1970's for scattering the names of vanished or vanishing North and South American Indian tribes across the walls, and occasionally the floors, of museums and galleries. His primary subject is the passage of time and the changes it brings: in nature, human knowledge, economics and power. The most |
1517087_1 | Relics of Childhood From an Antique World | rather than as miniature adults -- were well attuned to youthful emotions and body language. Exhibitions on the theme have been rare, but ''Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood From the Classic Past,'' on view at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College here, is a wonderful show that more than makes up for past neglect. Said to be the first major one to explore the subject, it includes 120 objects borrowed from American, Canadian and European collections -- from sculptures and painted vases to jewelry and toys like animal knucklebones and hoops, and even a reconstruction of a potty chair. Originated by the Hood Museum, ''Coming of Age'' (the title refers deliberately to Margaret Mead's seminal study ''Coming of Age in Samoa'') was organized by Jennifer Neals, professor of art history and art at Case Western Reserve University, and John Oakley, chairman of the department of classical studies at the College of William and Mary. The scholarly but very readable catalog delves into the profound differences between ancient views of childhood and those of today. The show covers 1,600 years of Greek art, from around 1500 B.C. through the first century A.D. The focus is on five areas: the households in which children were reared (the Greeks had no word for family), consisting of parents, paternal grandparents, children and slaves; the education of children; their play; their portrayal in mythology; and the many rituals that involved children from birth to adolescence. The display begins with a group of touching images: sculptures of children at various stages of their lives. A well-fed little boy, maybe 3 or 4, is depicted in a lifesize marble statue from the late period. Despite his age, he wears an adult cloak and a serious expression, indicative of the elite male path it was hoped he would take in the future. Also from the late period is the beautifully wrought tombstone of a prepubescent girl, Apollonia, with a braid running back along the middle of her head in a girl's hairstyle common at the time. In one hand she reaches up to pet a dove, perched on a pedestal, in the other she holds a pomegranate, both symbols associated with Persephone, queen of the Underworld. Near her, by contrast very much alive, is a lifesize nude statue of an ideal adolescent male. A Roman copy of a Greek original, it lacks |
1516385_0 | Paid Notice: Deaths SOGG, BARBARA (NEE LAVIGNE) | SOGG--Barbara (nee Lavigne). Suddenly on August 29, 2003. Beloved wife of Jonathan S. Sogg. Sister of Allan and Paul Lavigne. Devoted to Jonny's children, Cathy (Christopher) Lawrence and Julie Seymour and their children Alexander, Zoe and Charles Lawrence and Annabel Seymour. A woman of strength and dignity. Services will be held at Riverside Memorial Chapel, Monday, September 1, 2003, at 1 PM. SOGG--Barbara. The Semel Society records with sorrow the loss of our esteemed member, Barbara Sogg. We extend our sincerest condolences to her husband Jonathan Sogg. Martin I. Semel, President |
1520879_4 | Cameras Shoot Where Uzis Can't | this cacophony of voices,'' Mr. Czitrom said. ''After the sinking of the Titanic, when rescue efforts were hampered by wireless operators clogging the air waves, they passed the Radio Act of 1912.'' But it wasn't until the 1920's, when large national broadcasting companies like CBS and NBC emerged, that government took firm control of radio and issued licenses to private companies. In 1927 Congress created the Federal Radio Commission, and part of its intent, Mr. Czitrom said, was to limit the political use of radio. ''It gave preference to commercial stations while discouraging what it termed propaganda stations, particularly those run by labor and educational organizations,'' Mr. Czitrom writes in ''Media and the American Mind.'' By 1937, 210 of a total of 685 stations and 88 percent of the wattage power were in the hands of NBC and CBS, his book notes. In Europe, most radio was strictly controlled by government. Despite all this, radio did give a boost to some marginal political movements. ''In the 1920's, there is a tension or dialectical relationship between the powerful modernizing forces of new technology and the rise of a kind of fundamentalist reaction to it,'' Mr. Czitrom said. ''On the one hand, you have radio, Hollywood, the mass production of cars, the creation of national consumer markets, and on the other hand, the growth of fundamentalist Christianity, the Scopes trial, Prohibition, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the anti-immigrant movement, all of which are a kind of backlash to modernity, but which use, often very skillfully, the new media to promote their causes. In many ways, you see the same phenomenon at work now, with Khomeini and Osama bin Laden being deeply antimodern movements, using new technology.'' Although regulation blunted much of the subversive potential of radio, it did not entirely kill it. In the 1960's, pirate radio stations, operating from boats off the shores of Britain, helped to promote the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Eluding the control of the BBC, they helped introduce a social and musical revolution, Mr. Czitrom said. In Italy, where television was also a state monopoly, pirate radio stations were used by far-left revolutionary groups to create a counterculture and even to help organize political violence. Curiously, their challenge to the state broadcasting system paved the way for the emergence of the private television empire of Silvio Berlusconi, now the country's prime minister. Indeed, Western |
1518979_4 | In Public and in Private, A Nation Pays Tribute | of respect than anything else.'' Although many churches scheduled prayer services, especially for this evening when people left work, attendance tended to be light compared with Sept. 11, 2002. A memorial service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Mayor Shirley Franklin, Gov. Sonny Perdue and members of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian clergy spoke, had empty seats even in the front pews. North Decatur United Methodist Church in Decatur, Ga., had an interfaith prayer service on the anniversary last year but did nothing today. ''We just got busy,'' the Rev. Jody Altman said. Some cities asked residents to remember the anniversary by donating blood, which New Yorkers lined up to do on the day of the attacks in the hope that there would be scores of survivors. Sandy Conklin, manager of the Lake County Blood Bank in Leesburg, Fla., said that she normally got about 25 donors a day but that more came today. ''People are realizing there are not a lot of things you can do,'' Ms. Conklin said, ''but giving blood to save someone else's life is a good way to honor the people that died.'' Some people said they were angry about how the United States had acted since the attacks. Haley Mayclin, a student at Florida International University in Miami, said her feelings about the anniversary were complicated by the war in Iraq. ''I think the whole world felt sympathy toward America and its loss,'' Ms. Mayclin, 23, said. But this year, she added, ''the fact that we're in war -- with no backing or approval from the U.N. -- might make other countries think that we deserved to be the victims for once.'' Mona Cohen, 93, was not thinking about politics or attack victims or even New York City, where she spent most of her life, as she sat in the air-conditioned lobby of the Haddon Hall Hotel here, enjoying another day of retirement. She was reminded of the anniversary on television this morning, she said, but had quickly turned off her set after allowing a moment of outrage toward the terrorists. ''You've got to think only positive thoughts to live as long as I have,'' Mrs. Cohen said. ''When something is negative, you have to keep away from it and say, 'I come first.' I feel very bad about it, but what can you do? What's gone is gone.'' TWO YEARS LATER: COMMEMORATIONS |
1519043_0 | Galen and Barr Make Deal on Drug Rights and Patents | Galen Holdings P.L.C., a pharmaceutical company in Northern Ireland that specializes in health care products for women, will sell the rights in the United States and Canada for Loestrin, an oral contraceptive, to Barr Laboratories of Pomona, N.Y., for $45 million, the companies announced today. Galen will also settle Barr's legal challenge to the patents on two other drugs by giving Barr a nonexclusive license to make generic versions of them six months before their patents expire. In addition, Galen will pay Barr $1 million for the option to acquire a five-year exclusive license for Ovcon, another oral contraceptive, for $19 million, if the drug's application, which is pending, receives the approval of the Food and Drug Administration. The complicated deal resolves the outstanding issues between two companies that broke off merger negotiations two months ago, and highlights the complicated risks of Galen's acquisition-led strategy. While the tactic is relatively common in the United States, Galen is unusual among Irish drug companies for its strategy of buying products cheaply when their patents are about to expire, and then trying to achieve a line extension from regulatory authorities by developing a new use or delivery method for the drugs. Galen, which saw turnover of £201.5 million ($321 million) in its last fiscal year, has spent almost $1.3 billion on acquisitions since 2000. That figure includes a landmark purchase of three drugs from Pfizer last March for $359 million, with an additional $125 million if the drugs maintained market dominance. But that purchase seemed questionable in light of today's deal, since Galen sold Loestrin, one of the Pfizer drugs, to Barr, and gave Barr the right to eventually produce generic versions of the others, the oral contraceptive Estrostep and a hormone replacement therapy, femhrt. A Galen spokesman did not return calls seeking comment. In a statement, the chief executive, Roger Boissonneault, said: ''This is a good deal for both companies. We would exchange a noncore asset for significant value and for a fair resolution of outstanding patent issues.'' ''While we remain confident in the strength of the Estrostep and femhrt patents,'' Mr. Boissonneault said, ''this transaction would allow us to remove the uncertainties inherent in any litigation.'' Investors in London, where its shares are primarily traded, bid Galen's stock up 8 percent, to 657.5 pence. Shares in Barr dropped 1.35 percent, to $73.00 in New York. ''Galen has always been a company |
1518941_2 | The Cancún Delusion | rare in Thailand as they are in the United States. Technological displacement has the potential to produce social disasters. Many of the inner-city poor of the United States descend from farm laborers and tenant farmers displaced by the mechanization of agriculture in the South a few generations ago. Those who joined the middle class did so because they were able to find work in the expanding industrial and service sectors. But such opportunities are scarce in the developing world. For better or worse, the anti-subsidy movement, if it succeeds, is more likely to eliminate developing world farmers than to enrich them. The desire of many on the left to preserve traditional small-scale agriculture in the third world is also on a collision course with the goal of preserving the last remnants of global wilderness. High-tech agriculture wastes fossil fuels -- but it spares land, by growing more food on less acreage. Genetically modified crops promise to do the same. Premodern third world agriculture doesn't rely on chemicals or genetically modified crops. But it takes far more land to grow the same crop by traditional methods than it does by means of industrial farming. The earth's remaining wilderness would be in even greater danger if the opening of northern markets were to create a financial incentive for developing nations to replace forests, savannas and wetlands with land-wasting peasant farms. These are the alternatives, then. If third world agriculture is industrialized, then much third world wilderness will be saved from the plow. But most farmers will be forced off the farm, and therefore may not profit from the access of southern agricultural exporters to northern markets. If, on the other hand, third world agriculture is not industrialized, then the effort to enrich developing countries by means of exports from labor-intensive farms will inspire a vast expansion of peasant farm acreage -- at the expense of the environment. What looked like a sweet deal that could satisfy everybody except for subsidized special interests, then, seems destined to fall apart on inspection. First world consumers and third world agribusiness (much of it foreign-owned) may profit from the opening of the agricultural markets of the United States and other rich nations. But the activist left is unlikely to get what it wants: an Arcadia of prosperous village farmers living in harmony with the land. Michael Lind is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. |
1520545_2 | Disputes Erupt Over Service For Poor Internet Typists | and that users would like more than just an error message as help in getting to their desired destination. One of the biggest complaints about Site Finder is that it cripples the ability of some Internet service providers to filter out junk e-mail, also known as spam, that is sent with false return addresses. When some spam detectors try to determine a message's validity, they no longer receive an error message; instead, the message is returned to Site Finder. That makes it appear that the message was sent from a valid domain name. More broadly, Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, said that the diversion of queries compromised Internet privacy. He criticized VeriSign on the grounds that turning ''unused names -- many of which are trademarks, of course -- into a profit center shows a gross abuse.'' He is among those saying that VeriSign occupies a status somewhat similar to that of a public utility because it has ultimate control over .com and .net names. Critics say that by starting a new business venture without consulting the Internet community, VeriSign abused its role as the quasi-official administrator of the registry of the most commonly used roots for Internet addresses. ''You don't make changes that fundamental on the Internet without consulting with those who are running it,'' said David Farber, professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. ''This is not any old company, but one that has been given a privileged position, although they are not behaving that way,'' he said. ''I think what they've done is hijacking.'' Professor Farber said VeriSign's service was akin to running a dead- letter office for profit. ''This can be compared to giving the post office the right to readdress the letter, and to sell all the information from handling it,'' like names and addresses. He called for VeriSign's franchise to be revoked because ''if you let them get away with this, there will be chaos on the Net, with anyone getting away with anything.'' The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, a private company that regulates the domain name system through contracts with private registries, did not return telephone calls for comment. A spokesman for the Commerce Department, which regulates the domain name system with Icann, said the agency was studying the VeriSign service, and would not comment until a later date. TECHNOLOGY |
1519869_4 | Trying to Reshape Tibet, China Sends In the Masses | population, according to statistics, is at least 40 percent Chinese. Last year, a local official told Western reporters that urban Lhasa was almost half Chinese. No project better illustrates the Chinese strategy, and the uneven benefits, than the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad. Set to be finished by 2007 at a cost of $3 billion, the railroad will tether Tibet more tightly to inland China, traversing an alpine landscape so rugged that skeptics still question the feasibility of the project. Chinese officials predict the line will become a vital trade route and transportation corridor for tourists. Huang Difu, 41, an official overseeing the western half of the railroad, said the construction would ultimately employ about 38,000 people. But, he said, Tibetans could get as few as 4,000 or 5,000 of the jobs, and most would be for unskilled laborers who would earn about $8 a day, plus lunch. He said not a single Tibetan had been hired for skilled positions, which pay up to $2,500 a month. The same cold economic reality could be found at the foot of Potala Palace. One afternoon, a Western reporter hailed cabs in search of a Tibetan driver. It took 14 tries. The driver said most Tibetans could not afford the roughly $20,000 needed to buy a cab and pay for licenses. Not far away at the Barkhor, the ancient market surrounding Jokhang Temple in the old Tibetan section of Lhasa, shopkeepers say that Chinese merchants now run a majority of the stores that sell Tibetan trinkets, carpets and religious items to tourists and Buddhist pilgrims. Kesang Takla, the Dalai Lama's representative for northern Europe, said such inequalities proved that the flood of Chinese investment and people into Tibet would ultimately harm, not help, Tibetans. ''It is very dangerous for the Tibetan people,'' she said. ''Their very survival is threatened with the influx of the Chinese people.'' Yet some Tibetan workers on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder say their lives are improving. One night in the dark slums of the city of Tsetang, three teenage girls invited three Western reporters inside the room, 8 feet by 8 feet, where they live. They had no electricity and cooked on a small fire just outside the blanket they used for a door. Laba, 16, and Lamu, 17, said they earned about $2.50 a day at construction sites, shoveling and carrying cement, working seven days a week, 12 |
1522759_2 | U.S. Prods Airlines for Data To Check on Their Travelers | the middle of the bonfire.'' He said he was asking the big airlines' trade group, the Air Transport Association, to step forward with the data instead. The security agency is still working on the details of Capps II. Currently it is considering a system in which the airlines would provide it each passenger's name, home address, phone number and date of birth. A contractor for the agency would seek to match that information against commercial databases, to ''authenticate'' it, though credit and medical records would not be sought, the agency says. The contractor would then give the agency a ''score,'' somewhat like a score on a mortgage application, indicating the degree of confidence in a given traveler's identity. Officials say that the contractor would not be allowed to store or use the passenger records for commercial purposes and that the agency would discard all data within days after the passenger's trip. The security agency hopes to have the proposed program in place by next summer, but first it must respond to public comments on that proposal, of which more than 8,000 have already been submitted. Capps II, married to a computer program that matches passenger names against a list of suspected terrorists or people with outstanding warrants for violent crimes, would be used to classify travelers into green, yellow and red categories. Those on the yellow list would receive closer scrutiny at the airport, and those on the red list would be forbidden to fly. Admiral Loy said he hoped the yellow category would amount to no more than 3 percent or 4 percent of air travelers, and the red category ''an infinitesimally small level.'' A spokesman for the Air Transport Association, Doug Wills, said the industry favored having the government run the program directly, without a contractor, because, he said, the information would be more secure in government hands. But he said the industry favored a ''robust prescreening system to identify terrorist threats.'' Admiral Loy said his agency was also making progress in other areas of aviation security. It has completed criminal background checks on its screeners, for example. He said the agency had also cut the number of screeners by the equivalent of 6,000 full-time employees, to meet Congressional mandates. The creation of his agency, six weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, followed a Washington pattern, he said, of ''emotional legislation'' and then ''sticker shock.'' |
1522721_0 | Studio Anti-Piracy Drive Could Alter Oscar Race | The race for this year's Academy Awards has been thrown off stride by a move by the major Hollywood studios to curb movie piracy. The studios hope to halt the distribution of thousands of DVD and VHS copies of Oscar-contending films to those whose votes decide the winners. Such a move may hurt the Oscar chances of smaller, independent studios, which have come to rely on the videos as a means of getting their films seen by Academy Award voters. The effort is being led by the Warner Brothers chairman, Barry Meyer, and Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. The video versions of the films, known as Oscar screeners, have frequently been found for sale on Internet sites like eBay, Mr. Valenti said. ''Anything across the board that will reduce piracy by one-half of 1 percent I am anxious to do,'' he said. ''Anything that gets movies in the hands of people before they go to home video is an invitation to piracy. I'm trying to close every loophole I can, and this is one of them.'' Mr. Valenti said he expected to have a signed agreement from the Academy's seven member studios by early next week. By late today, Mr. Valenti had also signed up two nonmember studios -- DreamWorks and New Line Cinema, a Warner Brothers executive said. ''We're almost there,'' Mr. Valenti said. ''I have to get everybody on board.'' The major studios are united in their determination to fight the proliferation of illegal copies of their movies over the Internet and overseas. Mr. Meyer has been pushing hard behind the scenes to stop the mailing of Oscar screeners to the roughly 6,000 members of the Academy as well as to the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which sponsors the Golden Globe Awards; the Screen Actors Guild, which presents the SAG Awards; and the 28,000-member British Academy, which awards the Baftas. These award shows, all of them televised, have enormous impact on Academy voters. Because the studios are so concerned about lost revenues through piracy, it was not hard for Mr. Meyer and Mr. Valenti to convince the studios to sign on, several executives said. Besides, the major studios can afford to spend freely to advertise and screen their few Oscar contenders in theaters. But Mr. Meyer and Mr. Valenti have had a more difficult time convincing the studios' |
1522705_4 | Developers Urge Support of Water Transfer to Populous South Florida | another, but it requires a region to take every measure possible to find water nearby first. The report recommended eliminating that requirement, saying, ''Developing a system that enables water distribution from water-rich areas to water-poor areas seems to make good environmental and economic sense.'' Such a system would also allow water-rich communities to profit from selling some of their supply, the report said. Most of the report's recommendations would require the Legislature's approval as well as Mr. Bush's. But while many lawmakers from North Florida will resist endorsing the plan, South Florida, with its bigger population, has far more votes in the Legislature. David B. Struhs, commissioner of the state's Department of Environmental Protection, told Governor Bush in a memorandum last month that the water-use strategies that the five regional water districts had devised were sufficient. Most notably, the South Florida Water Management District is pursuing an $8.4 billion plan both to restore the Everglades and to conserve enough water to meet South Florida's needs for the foreseeable future. But Lee Arnold, the council member who headed the panel, echoed many skeptics when he said on Thursday that the expensive plan might not provide much potable water. Mr. Arnold is a developer in the state's increasingly populous southwestern region. Other members of the panel include Alfonso Fanjul, chairman of the Florida Crystals sugar company; Ben Hill Griffin III, chairman of Alico, a major citrus company; and Bill Graham, a developer who is the nephew of Senator Bob Graham, a Democratic presidential candidate. A coalition of environmental groups, including the Florida Wildlife Federation, Audubon of Florida and the Clean Water Network, said on Thursday that the council should focus on curbing development, not accommodating it. ''The problem is population growth,'' said Eric Draper, a lobbyist for Audubon of Florida. ''Figure out how to grow population in a way that you don't have to have these excessive uses.'' Asked on Thursday why the council had not taken on the question of population growth, Mr. Arnold said, ''That isn't for us to decide.'' Correction: October 2, 2003, Thursday An article on Saturday about a proposed regional water transfer in Florida misattributed a report of a comment from State Senator James E. King, who said, ''This is as close to North vs. South as you're going to get since the Civil War.'' It appeared in The Palm Beach Post, not The St. Petersburg Times. |
1517300_3 | Academic Industrial Complex | a Corporate Culture'' (Yale University Press), he argues that the dichotomy between the academy and the market is false. He points to two recent surveys (one by The Chronicle of Higher Education, one by the Educational Testing Service) that show that Americans are overwhelmingly confident in their colleges and universities. They are confident, he says, because the American university has been the primary engine for economic development in the last hundred years, its growth paralleling the growth of liberal capitalism. Colleges, after all, train people for the marketplace, offer courses in response to that market and help people advance socially and economically. A degree from a college or university, Mr. Gould contends, is a market-driven commodity. In other words, degrees are valuable because they translate into good jobs and good money. That doesn't mean, he added, that universities have to let go of the notion that there is an intrinsic value in enhancing creativity, pursuing knowledge and encouraging qualities, like curiosity and openness to new ideas, that cannot be easily quantified. ''There are deep cultural contradictions in the way universities have developed in the last 100 years,'' Mr. Gould explained. They ''want to teach ethics and educate more Americans,'' he said, but at the same time, they also want to provide the practical know-how that corporations need. Christopher Newfield, an English professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, also points to the close connection that has always existed between the business world and the academy. In his forthcoming book, ''Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980'' (Duke University Press), Mr. Newfield explores the heyday of industrial capitalism, when the university became central to economic production. In this period of economic uncertainty, he says, there is a deepening fear that the country will not be able to produce a long period of stable affluence like the one that followed World War II. Like Mr. Gould, he calls for a better balance between the two historical objectives of the university: economic development and human development. He said that as a discipline, the humanities has always understood ''the difference between art and work.'' ''What a lot of higher education is doing is selling a trade education that is part of an old economy,'' he added. The new economy, he says, demands creativity. Other scholars have a different concern: that the narrow focus on the commercial is |
1516863_3 | Donald Davidson, 86, Philosopher With Linguistic Focus | a scholarship to Harvard, where the philosopher A. N. Whitehead regularly invited him to tea and took him under his wing. He began as an English major, then switched to comparative literature, and, finally, to classics and philosophy. He persuaded Harvard to let him put on ''The Birds'' by Aristophanes and played the lead, Peisthetairos, which meant memorizing 700 lines of Greek. His friend and classmate Leonard Bernstein, with whom he played four-handed piano, wrote an original score for the production. Having graduated from Harvard in 1939, Mr. Davidson drove to California with a girlfriend. He wrote some radio scripts for ''Big Town,'' starring Edward G. Robinson. Harvard wrote to offer him a graduate scholarship in philosophy. After two years of philosophy study, he was also accepted by Harvard Business School for simultaneous study there; he bought a bicycle to commute between the schools. He explained in an interview with Ernest Lepore, director of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science and author of more than 60 articles on Dr. Davidson, that he decided to study business despite being a ''fellow traveler'' with Communist friends. He joined the Navy and trained pilots to recognize enemy planes. After three and a half years in the Navy, he tried unsuccessfully to write a novel before returning to his philosophy studies and earning his doctorate in philosophy in 1949. He left business school. Dr. Davidson wrote his dissertation on Plato's ''Philebus,'' a dialogue between Socrates and Philebus, one of his many foils, a lengthy defense of the superiority of intellectual activity over physical pleasure. Dr. Davidson told Mr. Lepore that he thought Quine was perplexed over why he chose such an antiquated topic, but kept it to himself. Dr. Davidson's first teaching position was at Queens College, followed by permanent ones at Stanford, Princeton, Rockefeller University, the University of Chicago and Berkeley. His many honors included being elected president of the American Philosophical Association in 1985. He is survived by his third wife, Marcia Cavell, also a philosopher; his daughter, Elizabeth Davidson of Albany, Calif.; his sister, Jean Baldwin of Guilford, Conn.; and two grandchildren. Dr. Davidson climbed mountains, surfed and flew gliders, but his wife said his greatest adventure was chasing an idea. ''He didn't give a damn what other people thought about him,'' she said. ''He just took a problem that interested him. Each problem led into a large number of problems.'' |
1520214_0 | Police Fatally Shoot Home Intruder (a Large, Furry, 4-Legged One) | In northwestern New Jersey, where encounters between people and bears have become increasingly frequent, a black bear broke into the same house twice yesterday, terrifying the occupants, before it was shot and killed by the police. Roy Wherry, the police chief in Vernon, N.J., said the animal had been classified as a nuisance bear because in recent days it had twice wandered into the fenced playground of a preschool near the house. It was chased away on both occasions, and the second time it was shot with rubber shotgun pellets in the hope of discouraging it from coming around people, he said. After yesterday's home invasions, the police reclassified the bear as a threat to human life, allowing them to kill it under state regulations, the chief said. He said the authorities were satisfied that the bear was involved in both incidents because of white metal tags on its ears like those that had been spotted on the bear in the playground. The first invasion occurred early yesterday morning while a woman and her two children, 13 and 8, were asleep in the house. A neighbor saw the bear first try to enter the woman's car and then walk around to the rear of the house and break through a glass door that led to the basement, Chief Wherry said. The neighbor called the woman, told her about the bear's invasion and urged her to leave the house with the children. After the occupants left, the neighbor ran to the rear of the house with an air horn and sounded several blasts from it, the chief said. He said the noise apparently frightened the bear and it ran from the house through the broken glass door. The first incident was not reported to the police. About 1 p.m., the bear returned to the house and re-entered it through the broken door, the chief said. The woman heard the animal in the basement and called the police, he said. Officer John Boenitz was sent to the house and killed the bear with a slug fired from a shotgun after it emerged from the house. The home invasion by a bear was the second this summer in Vernon, a rural community in Sussex County near the border with Orange County, in New York State. On June 11, another bear broke into a kitchen and ransacked it while a terrified mother and her |
1520277_1 | Relentless Foe of the Amazon Jungle: Soybeans | also appears to have figured in the surge in deforestation from August 2001 to July 2002, according to the country's National Institute for Space Research. So did a certain laxness in law enforcement, traditional during an election year, and a weak currency that made farming for export especially attractive, analysts have suggested. But experts are unanimous in warning that as soybean farming continues to spread through the adjacent southern Amazon states of Mato Grosso and Pará, the threat to the Amazon ecological system is likely to worsen in the next few years. Environmental groups had hoped that Brazil's left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, would take steps to combat deforestation. But Mr. da Silva has instead emphasized increasing agricultural production to swell exports and feed the urban poor, a position that has earned him criticism even from allies. ''The Amazon is not untouchable,'' Mr. da Silva said during a visit to the region in July. That view is strongly supported by Blairo Maggi, the new governor here in the state of Mato Grosso, who has repeatedly dismissed any concerns about deforestation. Mr. Maggi, elected last year as the candidate of the Popular Socialist Party, and his family own one of Brazil's largest soy producers, transporters and exporters. The Soybean King, as the Brazilian press is fond of calling him, advocates soybeans as an engine of growth and development in the Amazon. In fact, Mr. Maggi has called for nearly tripling the area planted with soybeans during the next decade in Mato Grosso, whose name means dense jungle. His own company, Grupo Maggi, announced early this year that it intended to double the area it has in production. ''To me, a 40 percent increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here,'' Mr. Maggi said in an interview at his office here in Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso. ''We're talking about an area larger than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is nothing at all to get worried about.'' Economists say that the main spur to the soybean boom is the emergence of a middle class in China, much of whose newly disposable income has been spent on a richer, more varied diet. During the past decade, China has been transformed from a net exporter of soybeans to the world's largest importer in some years |
1520252_0 | New Federal Battle Over Disciplining Students | When Nancy Davenport, a retired teacher in Dallas, thinks about discipline and special education, she thinks of the times her mentally retarded son got involved in some ''pushing and shoving.'' ''He was not a discipline problem, but it would have been pretty easy if somebody had wanted to kick him out,'' she said -- except for provisions in federal law that offer greater protection to students whose behavior problems are considered a result of their disability. When Dr. Gayden Carruth, the superintendent of the Park Hill school district in Kansas City, Mo., thinks about discipline and special education, she thinks of the long, costly court struggle that resulted when the district transferred an autistic 14-year-old who hit a teacher in the face with a textbook. ''All we wanted was to find a place where he could be safe and his teachers could do their job,'' Dr. Carruth said. Congress's fall agenda is dominated by issues like Iraq, Medicare and energy. But one of the year's most bitter legislative struggles is being waged by school administrators and parent groups over a bill passed by the House that would remove virtually all the protections for special-education students that Mrs. Davenport found so important and Dr. Carruth found such a burden. The bill has raised fears among parents that recent progress in moving disabled students into mainstream classes will be rolled back, especially as schools feel increased pressure to raise test scores. Under the bill, any infraction of school rules, they say, no matter how minor, could lead to a transfer to a segregated setting. Other advocates worry that minority students, who are already put in special-education classes and suspended in disproportionate numbers, would be most affected. Groups representing school boards and administrators say the current rules have forced teachers to tolerate disruptions by students whose presence in their classroom is protected precisely because they cannot control their behavior. Bruce Hunter, associate executive director for public policy at the American Association of School Administrators, said the rules also clashed with more recent zero-tolerance laws, creating an untenable double standard. ''We've created a situation where -- and it's common enough -- a disabled child and a nondisabled child have been part of the same behavior, and you've had to discipline the children in quite distinct ways,'' Mr. Hunter said. ''And you cannot explain that to the parent of the nondisabled child.'' Advocates for special |
1522363_0 | Studios Moving To Block Piracy Of Films Online | If Hollywood executives have learned anything watching their peers in the music business grapple with online file sharing, it is how not to handle a technological revolution. While the major labels in the music industry squabbled among themselves about how best to deal with Internet piracy and failed to develop consumer-friendly ways to buy music online, the movie industry has gone on a coordinated offensive to thwart the free downloading of films before it spins out of control. This summer, night-vision goggles became a familiar fashion accessory for security guards at movie premieres as they searched for people in the audience carrying banned video recorders. The industry's trade association began a nationwide piracy awareness campaign in movie theaters and on television. Studios are aggressively putting electronic watermarks on movie prints so they can determine who is abetting the file sharing. And some movie executives are considering whether to send out early DVD's to Academy Award voters, fearing the films will be distributed online. Also, as early as next month the industry will begin promoting a ''stealing is bad'' message in schools, teaming up with Junior Achievement on an hourlong class for fifth through ninth graders on the history of copyright law and the evils of online file sharing. The effort includes games like Starving Artist, in which students pretend to be musicians whose work is downloaded free from the Internet, and a crossword puzzle called Surfing for Trouble. ''There is no issue in my life I take as seriously as this,'' said Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, which owns 20th Century Fox. ''This is going to be with us for the rest of our careers. But if we remain focused on it, maybe it won't kill us and we won't have to panic.'' This is not the first time the studios have battled technological advances they worried they could not control. Back in 1982, Jack Valenti, then as now the head of the movie industry's trade association, said the threat of videocassette recorders to the film industry was like that posed by the Boston Strangler to a woman alone. The studios hope they can find a way to co-opt online movie swapping as profitably as they did the VCR and now the DVD player. Still, many in Hollywood fear that online movie sharing could be the most serious menace to profits so far. The |
1522316_3 | Office Buzz: Check The E-Mail | So if Word, Excel and PowerPoint are essentially unchanged, what the heck have the 2,500 members of Microsoft's Office team been doing for the past two years? Apparently, they've been working on Outlook. Over the years, Microsoft's flagship e-mail-calendar program had become the well-deserved butt of jokes, frustration and spite. Because it is ubiquitous in the corporate world, Outlook became a helpless, football-field-size target for virus writers. And because it offered no protection against junk mail, it invited more spam than a canned-meats convention. Maybe Bill Gates grew weary of reading the snarky comments in PC magazines, or maybe the program's clunkiness began to annoy even him. In any case, the 2003 rewrite will come as a gift from the gods to the mere mortals who have to use it eight hours a day. The first thing you'll notice is that Outlook now appears as three, not two, columns down your screen. At far left: your list of mail folders, as usual. Next to it, a new strip called the Navigation pane lists the subjects and first lines of the messages (neatly grouped by headings like ''Today,'' ''Yesterday,'' and ''Two Weeks Ago''). Finally, the right half of the screen displays the message itself, filling the full height of the screen, with its subject, sender and recipient auto-formatted with attractive type. Every message looks less like a telegram and more like a handsome business document. This new layout exploits a nearly forgotten quirk of today's computer screens: they're wider than they are tall. Stacking window panes side-by-side makes infinitely more sense than the old vertical arrangement. Outlook now comes with excellent automatic spam filtering. In my two-week test, it nabbed about 95 percent of junk mail as spam yet never flagged a legitimate message as spam. It makes a huge difference. Furthermore, Outlook now lets you build a blacklist (people or companies whose e-mail you always want treated as spam) or a whitelist (people whose e-mail you want to let through; everything else goes to the Junk folder). Finally, Outlook thwarts a common spammer tactic by blocking graphics that appear to be embedded into a message but in fact get fed to you from a Web site somewhere. You see only the text of such messages. (Outlook doesn't block traditional attached images, so you won't miss out on your second cousin's latest baby pictures. Furthermore, if you do want to see |
1521610_2 | White House Steps Up Bid To Justify Iraq Spending | think we have to.'' He said, however, that the total reconstruction cost was estimated at $50 billion to $75 billion over several years, far more than the administration's request for $20.3 billion in the coming year. ''It's going to cost a lot more,'' Mr. Biden said, adding later: ''Somewhere you've got to get another, you know, 35, 40, 55, 60 billion dollars, and we either pay or someone else helps us pay it. Or we don't do it.'' A Republican who appeared on the same program, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, harshly criticized the Bush administration and the Pentagon for misjudging ''what it was going to take to govern Iraq.'' ''That is just but one of the examples of how this administration did not do a very good job of planning,'' Mr. Hagel said. But he then added: ''We are where we are. We can't lose. We now must move forward. We must be successful in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and bringing peace to the Middle East. All are connected, and you can't deal with any of them in a vacuum.'' A senior Pentagon official rejected criticism that the administration underestimated what would be required to stabilize and rebuild Iraq, saying today: ''Anybody that would have predicted in March what the needs were going to be in September would have been guessing. We have a much better feel now for the nature of challenges in front of us.'' The supplemental request includes $51 billion for military operations in Iraq, $11 billion for military operations in Afghanistan and $4 billion to the Pentagon for domestic security and to support allied efforts. The $20.3 billion for the provisional authority includes $5.1 billion to enhance security in Iraq, $5.7 for electricity services, $3.7 billion for water and sewer and $2.1 billion to rehabilitate Iraq's oil industry. One official of the provisional authority said today that Mr. Bremer, in his testimony, would highlight three main areas: why the security issue remained such a high priority, the plans for political and economic transition in Iraq and how the Bush administration planned to expand the contributions of allies, especially at a scheduled conference in Madrid. As part of the effort, two members of the new Iraqi cabinet, the minister of municipalities and public works and the minister of electricity, are expected to meet with members of Congress this week in Washington. THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: THE COST |
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1522830_5 | War Is Hell. Get Used to It. | and Xenophon. Indeed, the most important portrait of him that existed at the time was Aristophanes' mean-spirited attack in ''The Clouds.'' Hanson writes that ''a dead Socrates at Delium might mean today there would not be a book in any library or bookstore on Socrates. Plato himself might be as little known to the general reader as a Zeno or Epicurus.'' In his introduction and epilogue, Hanson speaks of the 9/11 attack, which he treats as another ''battle.'' It's an imperfect use of the word, but it allows him to take up themes that run through his other books. One of these is the irresponsibility of the country's ''elite,'' elsewhere called the ''influential'' and the ''sophisticated,'' also the ''leisured class'' (there are times when Hanson gives the impression that the professors, editors and lawyers he disapproves of don't really work, that only physical labor is truly productive and virtuous). The subject elicits some of his most laughable generalizations: ''The American intelligentsia has always wished foremost to be liked, envied and courted.'' In this book, he also sets his sights on the ''clever but empty games'' of the modern visual arts. Hanson has never given any indication that he cares about contemporary art, or even cares to experience it for himself. He knows what he doesn't like, and he is confident that most of his countrymen don't like it either. Such populist bullying is unbecoming in someone so learned. Finally, Hanson returns to his most profound theme, the necessity of war. After a long slumber, the country awakened on 9/11 to the age-old truth that blood must sometimes be shed. Peace, not war, is the historical aberration. Hanson is more unflinching than most writers -- it's this that gets him inside the White House. He understands that the present administration (or any administration) is in a race against time to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction, before they end up in the hands of terrorists; he understands, too, that military threats or action may prove at least as crucial as diplomacy in achieving this goal. The objection that can be raised against him is not that he is too bellicose -- his straight talking has a refreshing clarity -- but that he offers no end to our predicament. If warfare is mankind's natural and unchanging condition, then proliferation is inevitable, and just as inevitably we |
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1523076_1 | From the Highlands to Your Grocer | niche markets. This page has assailed the enormous farm subsidies in the world's richest nations, and their devastating impact on the efforts of other nations to compete in a fair global marketplace. But we recognize that even if the United States and Europe gave up their subsidies and tariffs on agricultural products, not all poor farmers in places like Guatemala would benefit. No matter how little a Guatemalan farmer makes, or pays his laborers, it will be difficult for him to sell corn more cheaply than his American competitors. The efficiencies of scale, soil differences, the gap in technology and transport systems are all just too powerful. But there are other crops for which that is not the case. Guatemalans could compete with American sugar farmers, for instance, if American sugar weren't so heavily protected. The picture is a complex one, and if farmers from all parts of the globe are going to benefit from free trade, both the poor nations and the rich ones will have to make changes. The Central American nations, for instance, want a free trade agreement with the United States that resembles Nafta. But the poor campesinos who grow crops like corn would be devastated if American products flooded the local marketplace. They need to be protected for a transitional period, and given the kind of assistance Mr. Maldonado provides to the members of Opción. That is what the European Union wisely did with poorer members like Spain, Portugal and Greece when they joined. A free trade agreement between the United States and Central America is indeed scheduled to be completed by year's end, but there is little sign that the deal will reflect the disparity between the farmers on each side. If anything, the domestic sugar lobby, which is quite fearful of Guatemalan competition, is leaning on Washington to make the agreement onerously one-sided by denying Central American exporters full access to our markets. That a united front of developing nations, a powerful bloc including Brazil, China and India, was unable at this month's World Trade Organization meeting in Cancún to get the industrialized nations to give up their farm subsidies augurs poorly for Central America's fledgling democracies. If the rest of the world couldn't manage it, what hope do these small countries alone have of getting a fair trade deal out of Washington? Harvesting Poverty: Editorials in this series remain online at nytimes.com/harvestingpoverty. |
1523105_2 | Hard Realities: Brazil Drops Resistance to Genetically Altered Crops | meeting. ''The next time, I'm going to be the one who travels,'' Mr. Alencar said Thursday night, after backing off and finally signing the decree. The ''provisional decree'' that the government announced applies only until the end of next year and contains several other restrictions. Farmers cannot plant genetically modified soybeans near nature reserves and watersheds or transport seeds across state lines and must also sign a document agreeing to pay an indemnity for any damage to the environment or consumers' health. Nevertheless, the decision is a significant victory for large biotechnology companies like Monsanto, which stands to gain the most from the policy change. Since the mid-1990's, Greenpeace and other international and local consumer and environmental groups have been battling in Brazilian courts and the corridors of Congress to prevent Brazil from following the path of Argentina and other large agricultural producers that have already legalized the genetically modified crops. In addition, Brazil, which in years when it has bumper crops often ranks as the largest exporter of agricultural products after the United States, has traditionally banned genetically modified foodstuffs from the shelves of grocery stores here and prohibited the use of genetically modified animal feed and grain. That has given it a certain commercial advantage over its rivals in markets like Europe, where opposition to such products remains strong. On Thursday, the Brazilian chapter of Greenpeace accused the government of betraying its principles, selling out to big business and ''disrespecting a commitment'' made during last year's presidential campaign. The group vowed to challenge the decree in court and was joined in its criticisms by the national association of judges, which said the measure was ''juridically absurd and flagrantly unconstitutional.'' The government's about-face is also likely to provoke tensions in the warm relations between Mr. da Silva and his allies and admirers in the Green movement in Europe. His Workers' Party has been the main sponsor of the annual World Social Forum in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, which has emerged as a magnet for antiglobalization groups, whose agenda includes strong opposition to the genetically modified foods. But many small farmers affiliated with the landless movement have also been clandestinely planting their own fields with genetically modified soy seeds smuggled across the border from Argentina. They justify that contradiction by arguing that they have lower production costs with these seeds and have complained that they will |
1523134_0 | Where Security at the Airport Is Up to You | At airports across the country, travelers are frisked and X-rayed, nail clippers are seized and shoes are subject to swabbing. But increasingly, security precautions seem to end just before the last stop for many travelers -- the baggage claim area. Where guards once policed baggage areas at most major airports around the country, checking that numbers on claim tickets matched those on suitcase tags, travelers now are often free to come and go as they please. Mark Hatfield, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency that oversees airport security, said that because the baggage carousels serving domestic flights were outside airports' secure areas, they were the responsibility of individual airports and airlines. Those policies, he said, often differ. In airports where carriers have their own terminals, the airlines are responsible for providing baggage claim security if they wish to do so, he said. In airports where carriers share terminals and baggage claim areas, the decision whether to check baggage tags is made jointly. The security administration keeps no statistics about how many airports and airlines police their baggage claim areas, Mr. Hatfield said, adding, ''If you travel around the country, you will find a wide disparity among airports.'' At McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, where airlines share terminals, bags are still randomly matched against claim tickets. ''After 9/11, when we stopped doing bag checks because airlines didn't feel like they had the resources to allocate for that with so many other concerns, we noticed an increase in bag theft,'' said Hilarie S. Grey, the airport's public affairs manager. ''We decided to reinstitute the checks with the participation of the airlines.'' But in interviews, airline and airport officials around the country reported minimal problems with bag theft. David Castelveter, a spokesman at US Airways who has worked at the airline for 25 years, said the airline began to move away from baggage claim inspections more than a decade ago. ''The number of bags we are talking about was so small, we decided it wasn't worth the expense,'' he said. ''Less than one-tenth of one percent of all our bags do not make it to the customer.'' Mr. Castelveter said customer surveys showed that people are happy to avoid the extra stop. To keep luggage from being stolen or taken by mistake, he advised travelers to ''go to the baggage claim area right away. Don't detour, don't meander.'' |
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1523209_3 | Bone Diagnosis Gives New Data But No Answers | that are below average but not below normal. ''Only in Lake Wobegon is everyone above average,'' he said. While some women may need treatment, many more do not, he added. Dr. James Simon, president of the North American Menopause Society, begs to differ. Once bone starts being lost, it is time to think about taking action, he said, with the only question being how low should bone density go before consideration of treatment begins. He added that, in his opinion, if the drugs were free, ''the argument would largely go away.'' ''Fractures don't wait until you are osteoporotic or barely osteoporotic or osteopenic or barely osteopenic,'' Dr. Simon said. ''Fractures increase with decreases in bone density and once you fracture, you put yourself at a dramatically increased risk of a future fracture.'' Complicating the situation is the fall from grace of hormone therapy for menopause. Last year, when a large federal study indicated that the drugs were riskier than many had realized, many women stopped taking them. Doctors are now advising these women to have a bone density test. ''Women going off their hormones has re-upped the ante about whether some alternative treatment should be started,'' Dr. Simon said. ''It really is an issue now.'' Drugs to prevent or treat osteoporosis include bisphosphonates like Merck's Fosamax, which permanently bind to bone; parathyroid hormone, which is generally reserved for severe osteoporosis; Eli Lilly's Evista, which acts like estrogen on bone but also can cause hot flashes and blood clots; and calcitonin, a less effective treatment that is administered as a nasal spray. Worldwide sales of osteoporosis drugs reached $3.98 billion last year. There are no national data on the number of people with osteopenia who are treated. But Merck estimates, from its own market research, that about 8 million women have been found to have osteopenia and about a third of them are taking an osteoporosis drug. Osteopenia was defined in June 1992 at a World Health Organization meeting in order to prompt governments to pay attention to the problem of bone loss. Dr. L. Joseph Melton, an osteoporosis epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic who attended the meeting, said the group decided to identify a new condition, osteopenia, for people 50 and older with lower than average bone density who did not have osteoporosis. It would encompass a bone density that was one standard deviation below that of a normal young |
1523132_6 | A Swirl of Foreboding In Mahogany's Grain | agency's forestry service. The corruption runs so deep, he said, that even confiscated wood is often sold back to the same logging companies. ''It has been legalized through the auction system,'' he said. The Brazilian government tried to address similar problems by requesting the help of inspectors from the United States Department of Agriculture, who verify export documents at their end. But Peru's government has not requested such a crackdown. Nor has it issued a moratorium on mahogany logging, as Brazil has. Without it, environmentalists warn, mahogany -- exact origin unknown -- will continue entering the United States. There, it winds up in lumber yards like the 10-acre lot of a 26-year-old company in Evergreen, Ala., called South American Lumber Imports. For the last three years, the company has been contracted exclusively to store, dry and sell wood logged by Bozovich Lumber, the largest exporter of mahogany in Peru. Last year alone, Bozovich, a Peruvian-owned company, shipped nearly $20 million in wood to the United States, according to Peruvian export data. The operations manager at South American Lumber Imports, Leonard W. Price III, said Bozovich's managers were ''the most honest people I had ever met in South America.'' On its Web site, Bozovich hails its ''new selective logging techniques'' that allow ''for natural and spontaneous reforestation.'' But Peruvian officials, the police and environmental groups say the company has generated much of Peru's illegal logging, relying on middlemen who contract freelance loggers. Its president, Drago Bozovich, did not return half a dozen calls to his Lima office seeking comment. But Alfredo Biasevich, the company's Lima-based partner in Forestal Riopiedras, dismissed the charges. Peruvian government officials and documents identified Mr. Biasevich as an associate of Mr. Bozovich. ''We want an eternal forest; that's our business,'' Mr. Biasevich said. ''We are conscious that each day, the mahogany is farther away, that each day it's under tighter control. We are investors, not opportunists.'' Environmental groups like World Wildlife and Greenpeace have leveled similar charges at many other logging companies and importers. Brigid Shea, spokeswoman for the International Wood Products Association, representing American importers, said the onus was on Peru. ''It's really incumbent upon them to make sure before the product leaves Peru that they're comfortable with its legality,'' she said. Once in the United States, no more certification is required, and demand for the wood does not encourage scrutiny. Ken Fuhrmann, customer service representative |
1523086_3 | The World: Common Ground in Paris; 'This Is Not as Serious as People Think' | France since they failed to bridge their differences a year ago over whether to invade Iraq has persisted. Part of the problem is the personalities. Washington sees Mr. Chirac's trusted foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, as arrogant and impetuous. This month, for example, a detailed proposal from Mr. de Villepin for a timetable for self-rule in Iraq was put forward in an opinion essay in Le Monde instead of through private diplomatic channels. ''He reinforces the worst instincts in Chirac,'' said William Drozdiak, executive director of the German Marshall Fund in Brussels. ''He thinks his instincts are so finely honed, but he doesn't think through the consequences and how his actions and his mannerisms are perceived.'' Similarly, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is said to be so anti-French that he has declined several social invitations from Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador, who happens to be his neighbor. In the United States, France-bashing has traditionally been cost-free. In an interview with MSNBC last year, Dick Armey, the outgoing House majority leader, put the case bluntly: ''I learned real early on that if you're having a discussion about foreign policy, just say something disparaging about the French, and everybody will think you know what you're talking about.'' DESPITE the bitter break over Iraq, on many levels France and the United States have enjoyed excellent cooperation in the last year. Mr. Bush and Mr. Chirac are personally committed to working together and delivering more money to combat AIDS in Africa. An American-led initiative to search vessels at sea as part of an anti-proliferation campaign was negotiated and announced in Paris this month. The United States Navy is poised to work with a French task force in the Sea of Oman and the Gulf of Aden under American operational command. American and French troops serve together in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo. And France's intelligence assessment on how long it will take for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon is even more alarming than the American view. On Tuesday, Mr. Chirac told Mr. Bush that he agreed with the American position that if the Iranians did not comply with the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Security Council should decide the consequences. Even on Iraq, if the administration wanted to patch up its relations with France, it could call Mr. Chirac's bluff. Richard C. Holbrooke, the former ambassador to the United Nations |
1522935_7 | Leading Passengers to Water | put it at New London, Conn., an old seaport better known for its submarine base, as local merchants spruce up the harbor area and prep cabdrivers on the proper treatment of cruise visitors. Mr. Lafrenz said Liberty Travel was handling bookings this spring for an all-rock 'n' roll cruise on the Norwegian Dawn, departing from New York in November; an all-yoga cruise on the Costa Atlantica, leaving Fort Lauderdale for the Caribbean in March; and a July cruise, also on the Norwegian Dawn out of New York, done in association with R Family Vacations, for gays and lesbians and their families. Americans who are determined to break away from the North American mold will still have plenty of choices for foreign cruises in the Mediterranean, and along the rivers and coastlines of Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. EasyCruises, a new cut-rate cruiser founded by the owners of EasyJet, is emerging in Europe, offering trips of varying lengths for as little as $45 a day. But the discount ships are older and less luxurious than the new liners joining the major fleets, so Mr. Russo, for one, does not think the discount cruisers represent much of a threat. ''Europeans are much more tolerant of older ships, so the cruise lines have divisions that cater to them,'' he said. ''But if you have a first-class ship like the Noordam already selling for $50 or $75 a day, I don't have much faith in someone going up against her at $45.'' Keeping hands clean, stomachs calm and a virus at bay Cruise passengers this fall and winter may be particularly impressed by the dedication of the cleaning staff going around with alcohol disinfectant spray bottles and cloths, carefully spraying and wiping handrails, elevator buttons, bar ledges and any other place people put their hands. But the spraying is hardly routine. The disinfectant bottles usually mean that ship's doctor has reported a passenger or crew member suffering from gastroenteritis, with its typical symptoms of cramps, diarrhea and vomiting, usually lasting a day or two. The spraying and wiping is only the first of several measures ships are required to take to keep the bug from spreading. The norovirus, as the Norwalk virus has been renamed, has been making unwelcome headlines in the cruise industry for a decade or more, most recently when the Regal Princess, of Princess Cruises, tied up in New York |
1523116_0 | Trade in Mahogany Is Threat to Amazon | A murky multimillion-dollar trade in mahogany in Peru's rain forest is whittling away the Amazon, endangering isolated indigenous groups and threatening the commercial future of an ever scarce tree, officials and environmental groups say. Environmentalists' greatest fear is that the presence of loggers deep in the jungle could presage the arrival of settlers, who would bring the kind of slash-and-burn agriculture that already consumes a swath of the Amazon the size of Maryland each year. Article, Page 14. |
1518520_0 | Italy Loses Ruling on Modified Food | In a judgment that appeared to offer ammunition to both sides in the debate on genetically modified foods, the European Court of Justice ruled today that Italy's grounds for banning foods derived from certain genetically altered corn seeds were unjustified. Europe's highest court was asked to intervene by an Italian court, which was handling an appeal of a ban on foods containing four strains of genetically modified corn that had been submitted by the biotechnology companies Monsanto, Syngenta and Pioneer Hi-Bred International shortly after the ban was introduced in 2000. The Italian government imposed the ban because it feared that the presence of a synthetic protein in the foods might be a risk to human health. The biotechnology companies argued that the protein was so unimportant that the foods ultimately made from the corn would be virtually identical to foods made from conventional corn strains. The companies also argued that the Italian ban breached European Union laws, which permit the trade in foods containing genetically modified elements if the food is ''substantially equivalent'' to conventional foods. British food authorities had already decided that the strains of corn in question were safe well before Italy imposed its ban. And the European Union's executive branch, the European Commission, circulated the British position to all 15 member countries to use as grounds for appraising the corn. Today's judgment is not the final word on the matter. The case must now go back to Italian courts for a final ruling, but the European court's opinion will guide the Italian judges when they reassess the case. The European Court of Justice said that the risk Italy used to justify its ban ''must not be purely hypothetical or be founded on mere suppositions which are not yet verified,'' adding that Italy must base its action on specific data and not on reasons of a general nature. ''The mere presence of residues of transgenic protein in novel foods does not prevent their being placed on the market,'' the court said. However, the court did uphold the right of governments to impose a ban on substances that pose a threat to health. ''If a member state has detailed grounds to suspect such a risk,'' the court said in a statement, ''it may temporarily restrict or suspend the trade in and use of the food in question in its territory.'' The Italian government interpreted this as a victory. ''I |
1518197_2 | A Battle for Turf Where Threatened Grizzlies Still Roam | The bears' decline is caused by an increase in human population in the region, he said, which has two main effects. If the human population continues to grow at the rate it has, the number of bear deaths is expected to increase as a result, Dr. Mattson said. ''That means they won't be reproducing faster than they are dying, and they will disappear within 20 years,'' he added. These isolated bears are especially vulnerable for other reasons, Dr. Mattson said. Climate change may contribute to the decline of the white bark pine nut, a critical source of food, as it has for the Yellowstone grizzlies. If something similar happens in the Cabinet Mountains, the bears may need to move to find food. ''If there is an isolated population with a human fence around them and they can't move, they can't survive,'' Dr. Mattson said. Mortality among the Cabinet- Yaak bears has been unusually high in the past four years. Of 30 adult bears, 14 have died, 9 from natural causes, mostly in the Yaak. The other five were killed by humans under different circumstances. Although the Yaak bears may benefit from their connection to Canadian populations, Cabinet bears probably will not. The ranges are adjacent, but there has been no known movement between the groups, largely because of a highway, railroad and river separating them. Michael Proctor, a Canadian biologist, recently studied the DNA of bears in Canada and in the isolated populations in the United States and found little movement across Highway 3 and into the United States. A few do make the journey, however, and experts are working on ways to encourage more to do so. The other isolated populations are in the North Cascades in Washington with as few as half a dozen bears and in the Selkirk Mountains in the panhandle of Idaho. The two groups straddle the United States-Canadian border. The American side of the Selkirks has 15 to 30 bears, but the population is roughly doubled when Canada is included. While those numbers are still precarious, Wayne Wakkinen, senior wildlife research biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said the Selkirk population seemed to be expanding. ''They have been isolated for the short term,'' he said, ''but as we see an increase in population we might get over that'' as they seek new habitat and encounter bears from other ecosystems. Environmentalists say |
1518287_3 | Energy Project vs. Environmentalists in Peru | environmental devastation. And some of their concerns have been echoed by some officials at the Export-Import Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and by some members of Congress. The Camisea fields, discovered a generation ago by Shell, were envisioned as one of the largest energy developments in Latin America. Shell eventually dropped out, and the project has been developed by companies like Hunt Oil of Texas; Pluspetrol of Argentina; Techint, which owns TGP; the SK Corporation of South Korea; Sonatrach, an Algerian state-owned company, and Tractebel, the Belgian energy giant. The companies are developing gas fields thought to hold 13 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and condensate, including butane and propane, an enormous amount. Wells are being developed in the lower Urubamba region of the Peruvian Amazon, along with a gas- and-liquids separation plant and two pipelines stretching across the Andes. One pipeline, 445 miles long, is projected to transport gas to Lima by August, lowering electricity rates and improving air quality. The other, 335 miles long, leads to this 600-acre site. All this will cost $1.6 billion. Another $2 billion will be spent to build a plant to liquefy the natural gas and, by 2007, become a major supplier to the United States. A leading candidate for the job would be Halliburton, another Texas company, a Hunt Oil official said. Both companies have close ties to the Bush administration (Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton). The administration's energy policy calls for diversifying the sources of America's energy imports and reducing dependence on the Middle East. But the project cuts through some of the world's most pristine jungles, home not only to rare species of birds and animals but also to indigenous tribes. Wells are being developed in the Nahua Kugapakori Indigenous Reserve, a region established to protect three tribes living in virtual isolation from modern Peru. ''These populations depend exclusively on the territory where they live, the river, the woods,'' said Beatriz Huertas, adviser to a tropical forest Indian organization. ''But the new contacts cause sickness, transmission of disease and death.'' Environmentalists also say that the project has led to serious soil erosion, the contamination of rivers and the killing of fish and that developers have cut through communities without providing adequate reimbursement. Reports from the United States Agency for International Development and an environmental assessment memo from the Export-Import Bank show that the United States |
1518287_5 | Energy Project vs. Environmentalists in Peru | has had deep concerns about a lack of transparency, about environmental studies that are called shoddy or insufficient and a lack of knowledge of native groups in the region. An environmental assessment by the Export-Import Bank says access roads and other paths cut into the jungle ''have produced significant direct negative impacts.'' The report also says ''deforestation, human population growth and consequent losses of biodiversity'' are ''by far the most significant potential negative effects.'' Regarding the Paracas site, the Export-Import Bank report says that while oceanographic conditions were taken into account in choosing the site, no adequate assessments of the social or environmental impacts were conducted on five other alternative sites, contradicting government officials and project officials. A July memo from the United States Agency for International Development recommended that the Treasury Department, which determines the vote at the Inter-American Development Bank, withhold support for the loan. Environmentalists concede that much of the work on the Camisea project is complete. Indeed, Norberto Benito, general manager of Pluspetrol in Peru, said the well sites, the pipeline and the gas-and-liquids separation plant are largely done, with about $1.2 billion already spent. The hope now, environmentalists say, is to halt work on this project in Paracas, at a fractionation plant that would separate gas liquids and pipe them into a marine terminal. About 20 percent of the work is done, engineers here said during a tour. ''We're saying, 'You didn't go through the necessary requirements to make a sound decision on whether it should be in Paracas or not,''' said Greg Love, who closely follows the Camisea project for Conservation International. ''Our position has always been to do it over.'' Government officials and the project's sponsors say halting construction is unthinkable. Closing down here and moving to another site would cost an estimated $100 million. ''No way,'' said Roberto Dañino, the Peruvian ambassador in Washington, who has lobbied hard for the project. Mr. Dañino says the plant is exactly where it needs to be, in a region with a natural harbor and slight embankment that makes the plant safe from tidal waves. On first glance, the site does not look like much. The coastline around here is already polluted, thanks to a string of fish meal plants that spew waste into the ocean. And the bone-dry, dusty land around the plant is covered with mounds of empty shells of marine life discarded by |
1517794_1 | Aiming at Pornography to Hit Music Piracy | and logistical support to antipornography and child protection groups that are raising the issue. For example, Dan Klores Communications, which represents Sony Music and other music clients, has been promoting Parents for Megan's Law, a Long Island group involved with preventing child abuse that has been critical of child pornography available through file-sharing services, like KaZaA. Their efforts are having some result. A bill has been introduced into the House, with the endorsement of the recording industry, that would require children to get parental consent before using sharing software. And on Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to look into the connection between file-swapping services and pornography, called by its chairman, Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican of Utah. The labels, which blame online piracy for declining music sales, are fighting the downloading services on many fronts. They are trying to make paying for music more attractive through legal downloading services, and in the case of Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, slashing the price of most its CD's by 30 percent. They are also trying to turn up the heat on those who continue to download songs without paying for them. This week the Recording Industry Association of America said it was going to start filing hundreds of lawsuits against individuals accused of swapping large numbers of copyrighted songs. The association also is planning to offer an amnesty program that would exempt from prosecution people who destroy all their illegally downloaded songs. But in perhaps the most extreme sign of the industry's desperation, it is trying to focus the attention of lawmakers and others on how the peer-to-peer, or p2p, services can connect users with a range of ills including computer viruses, software that steals personal information and unwanted pornography. ''P2p stands for piracy to pornography,'' quipped Mr. Lack. The file-sharing companies respond that the risk of children seeing pornography inadvertently on their systems is being overstated and that their software is no different from Web browsers and e-mail programs that can be used to find all sorts of material. Mitch Glazier, the senior vice president for government affairs for the R.I.A.A., says the industry's current calls for parental controls on file-swapping services is not inconsistent with its longstanding defense of the artistic freedom of songwriters. ''We are not trying to stop people from expressing themselves,'' he said. ''We say you should do what we |
1517515_3 | Of Mythic Proportions | ''It had everything going against it. Only the power of the Rockefellers provided the fulcrum.'' Building the World Trade Center required what the film calls ''the greatest convergence of public and private power the city had ever seen,'' which included demolishing the old Radio Row business district. Once the Port Authority and its savvy director, Austin Tobin, took over, the building of the towers grew into one of the most complicated engineering feats of all time. Several people in the film compare it to the moon landing of 1969. Once completed, in 1972, the towers were denounced by architecture critics. Financially, they struggled for years. The public did warm up to them eventually, but more as a feature of the skyline than as successful architecture. ''By 2001, they are finally a financial success, and they have become the symbol of New York to the world,'' Mr. Burns said. ''And for that reason, they were murdered.'' One of the center's most memorable moments came in 1974, when a Frenchman named Philippe Petit walked across a high wire between the two 110-story towers. ''Philippe is the spiritual heart of the film,'' said Mr. Burns, who interviewed him for the documentary. ''His stunt began the poetic rehabilitation of the buildings. He gave them a human scale.'' The film includes 18 other interviews, with those who helped build the trade center as well as other commentators, but the real stars are the twin towers themselves. In doing research for the earlier episodes, Mr. Burns inadvertently preserved a crucial record when he ended up with the only extant copy of the Port Authority's short film documenting the center's construction. The original print was housed in the South Tower and was destroyed on 9/11. ''This extraordinary document happened to be sitting on our back shelf,'' said Mr. Burns, who used much of it in his own film and made sure it was given back to the Port Authority. Mr. Burns also had his own images of the towers, which he had filmed off and on for five years for use in the original episodes of the documentary series. ''We shot them in every conceivable light, at every time of day, in every season,'' he said. The sheer volume of film he had to choose from struck Mr. Burns as eerie, especially in light of the towers' destruction. ''I asked myself, 'What did I think I was |
1517602_0 | Public Building | In 1366, the wardens of the Opera del Duomo submitted to the citizens of Florence a referendum on the construction of the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. The wardens had chosen a design that would raise the widest and tallest dome ever constructed without recourse to the buttresses that typically supported great church buildings -- an act of boldness they decided required the stamp of public approval. The referendum passed, thus germinating a process that would flower half a century later with Filippo Brunelleschi's extraordinary design for a giant free-standing dome. The debate that has unfolded over the rebuilding of the World Trade Center for the last year has brought New Yorkers as close as they have ever come to the ancient Florentine conviction that the most profound questions of urban design demand a public voice. When city and state officials presented a plan consisting of a half-dozen unimaginative and practically indistinguishable proposals from two design firms, the sheer force of public scorn compelled them to throw open the process to the world's greatest architects. In February, in a fine triumph for democratic engagement (and inspired rhetoric), a master plan designed by the protean Daniel Libeskind was named the winner. Now, as the second anniversary of 9/11 approaches, that democratic moment seems to have passed. Larry Silverstein, the developer who holds the lease on the site, has become, with the clear support of Gov. George Pataki, the lead player in the rebuilding process. Silverstein had ridiculed Libeskind's master plan as impractical, and he recently named David Childs, a prominent corporate architect whose own plan was widely deemed the most pedestrian of the seven proposals, as the lead architect on Libeskind's signature 1,776-foot tower. Pataki has said that he wants construction on the tower to begin by next summer, conveniently timed for the Republican National Convention. It's beginning to look like a classic case of regression to the mean. But if the sense of civic purpose that drove the design process has ominously paused, it has not altogether petered out. The competition to design a memorial to those who died provoked an astonishing 5,200 proposals, the great majority from nonexperts who were plainly moved to use design to express their feelings about the catastrophe. The announcement of the finalists this fall will surely provoke another round of public introspection and debate. What is more, it's impossible to |
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