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1519330_2 | Is Buddhism Good for Your Health? | -- was the most intense seen in about 175 experimental subjects. In the years since Davidson's fax from the Dalai Lama, the neuroscientific study of Buddhist practices has crossed a threshold of acceptability as a topic worthy of scientific attention. Part of the reason for this lies in new, more powerful brain-scanning technologies that not only can reveal a mind in the midst of meditation but also can detect enduring changes in brain activity months after a prolonged course of meditation. And it hasn't hurt that some well-known mainstream neuroscientists are now intrigued by preliminary reports of exceptional Buddhist mental skills. Paul Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco and Stephen Kosslyn of Harvard have begun their own studies of the mental capabilities of monks. In addition, a few rigorous, controlled studies have suggested that Buddhist-style meditation in Western patients may cause physiological changes in the brain and the immune system. This growing, if sometimes grudging, respect for the biology of meditation is achieving a milestone of sorts this weekend, when some of the country's leading neuroscientists and behavioral scientists are meeting with Tibetan Buddhists, including the Dalai Lama himself, at a symposium held at M.I.T. ''You can think of the monks as cases that show what the potential is here,'' Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who has pioneered work in the health benefits of meditation, says. ''But you don't have to be weird or a Buddhist or sitting on top of a mountain in India to derive benefits from this. This kind of study is in its infancy, but we're on the verge of discovering hugely fascinating things.'' In the 2,500-year history of Buddhism, the religion has directed its energy inward in an attempt to train the mind to understand the mental state of happiness, to identify and defuse sources of negative emotion and to cultivate emotional states like compassion to improve personal and societal well-being. For decades, scientific research in this country has focused on the short-term effects of meditation on the nervous system, finding that meditation reduces markers of stress like heart rate and perspiration. This research became the basis for the ''relaxation response'' popularized by Prof. Herbert Benson of Harvard in the 1970's. Buddhist practice, however, emphasizes enduring changes in mental activity, not just short-term results. And it is the neural and physical impact |
1519510_0 | Personal Business; The Unemployed Lose More Than a Paycheck | JEFF HALPERN had changed jobs a half-dozen times since receiving his M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1991, but the latest change was different. His position at a start-up energy trading company disappeared in the wake of Enron's collapse, and it took almost seven months for him to land a new position as marketing manager of TheraSense, a company in Alameda, Calif., that develops products for people with diabetes. While he was out of work, Mr. Halpern, 39, became increasingly aware of what he was missing: not just a regular salary, but also the networking opportunities and the experience and knowledge that people accrue in their jobs. ''It's very easy to allow your skills to stagnate and not stay up on what's going on in the world,'' said Mr. Halpern, who joined TheraSense in late April. Corporate recruiters and career coaches agree. The so-called opportunity costs of unemployment are often hidden and are harder to quantify than lost salary or benefits. But they are nonetheless a burden that can have lasting effects on a career. The longer people are out of work, it seems, the harder it can be to find employment. In August, 1.9 million Americans had been looking for work for 27 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure accounts for about 22 percent of the unemployed and does not include 503,000 eligible workers whom government economists classify as ''discouraged.'' These are people who have lost their jobs but are not currently looking for work specifically because they believe that no jobs are available for them. And many recent college graduates have decided to ride out the tight job market by enrolling in graduate or law schools instead of looking for permanent employment, while others have chosen volunteer work. Mr. Halpern, who has been diabetic for 10 years, decided that he wanted his next job to be in the area of diabetes care. He worked to keep his business skills fresh and to stay on top of medical research and trends. He did volunteer work for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and helped a fund-raising event generate about four times as much money as it had in the past. He also attended a career-coaching seminar. And, by each Monday, he made sure that he had something on his calendar for every day of the week ahead. ''It was better than |
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1519291_13 | A FLoating Home In The Florida Keys | only a few hundred yards offshore, its pale, lemony sides looking as cozy as a sun-faded beach towel. We couldn't wait to get back on board, where Dave flipped our lone tape into the boombox: Patsy Cline's greatest hits backed by Jimmy Buffett's ''A1A,'' an album that already sounded nostalgic in 1974, the year of its release. When Robert Allen became ''the Hermit of Bottlepoint Key,'' his wife and two young children kept house in Tavernier. While Audubon cruised to the Dry Tortugas aboard the United States revenue cutter Marion, Lucy and their two sons lodged with her brother in Louisville, Ky. We are an emigrant foursome, a product of our times and personalities, no doubt, but also of our travels together -- in Borneo and Thailand and Nepal. We have settled in Montana because both Sarah and I enjoy the indeterminacy that comes from seeing far off but not far ahead. Ordinarily we all look forward to going home, no matter how extraordinary the voyage. But not this time. Back at the dock, we watched as the Wahoo was scrubbed for its next tenants, reluctant to vacate the premises, to admit that -- in fewer than 24 hours -- we would find ourselves flying rather than floating. Warm salt air is such a savory obsession. That night, the street lights outside our Miami hotel radiated an endless false dawn, urging my eyes open to check the trap, the anchor, the sky. HOWS AND WHERES IN THE KEYS The Wahoo and three other houseboats are available from Houseboat Vacations of the Florida Keys, 85944 Overseas Highway, Islamorada, Fla. 33036 (305-664-4009; www.thefloridakeys.com/houseboats). The Wahoo has several double beds, a fully equipped kitchen and a bathroom (sheets and bath towels are supplied). The owner, Mary Clynes, is a Miami native with management experience as far north as New Jersey. She introduces herself as Houseboat Mary. Her own boat is the Irish Rover. Rates vary by season. We went in late April, when a full week runs $1,540, plus taxes and fuel. Kayak rentals are $125 a week. Some familiarity with boats is helpful though not required. Mary provides a brief orientation. A few miles nearer Key Largo, Barefoot Houseboat Rentals offers two boats, including a 43-foot Myacht for $1,800 for six days. 195 Plantation Avenue, Tavernier, Fla. 33070 (305-942-0045; www.barefoothouseboatrentals.com). We outfitted ourselves at the Islamorada Fish Company, 81532 Overseas Highway, next |
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1522511_1 | Suburban Bears Should Be Sterilized, Not Shot, Animal-Rights Advocate Says | sharpshooters to tranquilize the bears so the chemical could be administered is almost certainly a long shot. But the bear hunt has created enough turmoil in the state that even Gov. James E. McGreevey took pains not to appear too dismissive. ''It's truly a new age for wildlife management,'' Mr. Chaifetz said. ''People now have an alternative to killing. Let's end the hunt and move into the 21st century.'' He proposed that 100 bears be inoculated immediately and 300 to 400 later this fall. Three years ago, before he was elected, Mr. McGreevey publicly opposed a bear hunt proposed then. His spokesman, Micah Rasmussen, said Mr. McGreevey still prefers not to have a hunt, but he considers a hunt the only solution to reducing the bear population in the northwestern corner of the state. ''He hates the idea of a bear hunt,'' Mr. Rasmussen said. ''He has asked for viable alternatives to control the population. We don't have another way to protect the public safety.'' Mr. Rasmussen said the governor appreciated Mr. Chaifetz's proposal and had instructed the state's environmental commissioner, Bradley M. Campbell, to determine if the sterilization chemical was a ''safe, humane and effective'' way to control the bear population. But, Mr. Rasmussen said, the governor had no plans to halt December's hunt. In a statement, Mr. Campbell questioned if the sterilization process was humane. But he said his staff would review the idea along with a study on the use of an immuno-contraceptive for female bears. The sterilization chemical, Neutersol, was approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration in May for use on male puppies 3 to 10 months old. The chemical is injected into animals' testicles, causing them to shrink and stop producing sperm in about two months. Neutersol is produced only for licensed veterinarians by a Missouri company, Addison Biological Laboratory Inc. Addison's product director, Cord Harper, said the company can sell Neutersol only for use on puppies. But he said federal law gives veterinarians discretion to use it on other animals. He also said the company plans to start testing the chemical for use on cats and older dogs. Theoretically, he said, the chemical should work on any male mammal. ''It's the same tissue,'' he said. Mr. Chaifetz said the injections would cost about $80 to $100 a bear and could be carried out by volunteer teams of veterinarians, sharpshooters and wildlife biologists. |
1522434_3 | 36 Hours | Coral Gables, Fla. | and filigreed peak roofs. 11 a.m. 4. Make a Splash Time for a swim. The Venetian Pool (2701 De Soto Boulevard, 305-460-5356; adult admission $9 April to October, $6 the rest of the year) is a popular site for fashion photographs and films as well as the favorite swimming hole for Gables residents. This inspiration of Denman Fink, Mr. Merrick's uncle, and the city art director, Phineas Paist, is a stylish salvaging of a huge hole left after limestone was extracted for construction elsewhere in town. It has Venetian-style bridges and striped lampposts, coral rock caves and diving cliffs, and two waterfalls, as well as prosaic stuff like changing rooms. 12:30 p.m. 5. Cuban Picnic To avoid the long lines of locals who pack Havana Harry's (4612 Le Jeune Road, 305-661-2622) for some of South Florida's tastiest traditional bargain-priced Cuban food, pick up a picnic -- the mojito pork subs (garlic-citrus pulled pork, $5.50) rule -- and head for Matheson Hammock Park (9610 Old Cutler Road) on Biscayne Bay. Gondolas no longer navigate the canals between inland Coral Gables and the town's limited waterfront as they did in Mr. Merrick's day, but the park is still a festive site for al fresco feasts. The free picnic area has expansive lawns with picnic tables, a freshwater pond where alligators may be spotted, two nature trails and a coral-rock shelter with grills. Alternatively, spring for the $4 parking fee and drive half a mile to the ''atoll,'' a saltwater swimming hole surrounded by a palm-planted beach and more picnic tables. Taking Gables exclusivity to its ultimate depth, the sandy-bottomed lagoon's inlet from the bay is gated to control water and sea life entering the lagoon while keeping it from becoming stagnant. 3 p.m. 6. Rain Forest Visit Conveniently bordering Matheson Hammock Park, Fairchild Tropical Garden (10901 Old Cutler Road, 305-667-1651), founded in 1938, has a two-acre rain forest; the world's largest palm collection (more than 400 of the known 2,600 species); extensive bamboo, cactuses, flowering trees and cycad gardens; bird and butterfly refuges; and a huge new gift shop. A tram tour is included in the $10 admission. A schedule of special weekend events like this fall's first International Bamboo Festival (Oct. 16 to 19) is at www.fairchildgarden.org. 7 p.m. 7. Norman's New World The décor is elegantly Old World Spain, but the internationally famed chef and cookbook author Norman Van Aken |
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1520753_3 | Yale in Deal With 2 Unions, Ending Strike | year after 20 years or more was just $621 a month. The agreement does not affect the Graduate Employees Student Organization, which has sought to unionize more than 2,000 graduate teaching and research assistants. When the two main unions and the graduates' organization staged a one-week strike last March, they insisted that Yale agree to streamline procedures to allow the graduate students to unionize -- something Yale refused to do. Under the accord, the clerical workers are to receive raises of 4 percent the first year, 5 percent the second, 4 percent in years three and four, then 5 percent in each of the next four years, with 2.5 percent given each January and each July. With their annual pay now averaging $33,000, this will increase their pay by 44 percent. Yale originally proposed wage increases of 4 percent a year for the clerical workers, while the union originally demanded 10 percent a year, lowering that to 6 percent a year on the eve of the strike. The dining hall and maintenance workers are to receive raises of 3 percent in the first year, 3.5 percent the second, 3 percent in years three and four. In each of the next four years, they are to receive raises of 4 percent, with 2 percent given each January and each July. With these workers averaging $30,000 year in pay, the contract would increase their wages by 32 percent over eight years. The previous contracts expired in January 2002. One of the major issues was whether the workers would receive full retroactive pay for the wage increases. Under the agreement, workers are to receive two-thirds of the retroactive wage increases due them, with a minimum retroactive payment of $1,500. The dispute over pensions centered on the formula under which years of service would translate into pension payments. On the eve of the strike, Yale was offering a pension multiplier of 1.25 percent times the number of years served, while the union sought a 1.95 percent multiplier, far more than the old 1.1 percent. The new contract includes a 1.5 percent multiplier on the first $30,000 of salary, 1.4 percent on the next $25,000 and 1.3 percent on salary above $55,000. To help increase productivity, the university achieved its goal of creating a bonus program -- the contract gives it the right to award $500 bonuses for outstanding performance. The two unions opposed bonuses. |
1520752_1 | Bears Root Through Garbage, Then Roil Politics | home twice, and was shot and killed by a police officer as it emerged from its second visit. In May, in neighboring West Milford Township, a bear attacked and injured a man who had tackled the bear as it fought with his dog. Another West Milford man shot a large male bear moments after it stood, growling, at his door. Until now, in towns like this one the bears have largely been a public safety issue. Now, because of a decision made in Newark, a place where the only bears play minor league baseball, the issue is a political one. Newark, which owns 35,000 acres of watershed in the heart of bear terrain, has said it will allow hunting only on the watershed lands in towns that endorse the hunt. So residents and politicians are noisily debating whether to allow the hunt, on Dec. 8 to 13. Political pressures are intensifying and the rift between supporters and opponents of the hunt is deepening inside and beyond the hunt zone, bounded by Interstate 287 in the east, Interstate 78 in the south, the Delaware River in the west and New York in the north. State officials contend that some of the area's most troublesome bears live in the watershed's deep woods. They say hunting in the watershed is critical to their goal of reducing the number of bears in it. Earlier this month, state officials say, they were told that Newark might bar bear hunting in the watershed. That set off some political maneuvering that has rippled out to Jefferson and the five other towns in the watershed. In a Sept. 4 letter to the watershed agency, Larry Herrighty, chief of the state's Bureau of Wildlife Management, said homeowners in the six watershed towns made 838 nuisance complaints about bears from January 2001 to May 2003. ''If the watershed is not open for bear hunting, it essentially will become a sanctuary, severely restricting our ability to harvest bears that utilize the watershed as part of their home range,'' Mr. Herrighty wrote. In response to the letter, Zinnerford Smith, executive director of the watershed agency, the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation, wrote to officials in Jefferson, Vernon, West Milford, and three other watershed towns, Hardyston Township, Kinnelon and Rockaway Township, saying Newark would permit the hunt in the watershed, except in any of the six towns that opposed the hunt on |
1519189_0 | Stating the case for why the Vatican ought to consider an exit plan for old and infirm popes. | The Roman Catholic Church has detailed provisions, honed by centuries of sometimes painful experience, that regulate the election of popes. It has virtually no provisions for the very modern problem of aging and physically or mentally declining popes. That point is raised every time Pope John Paul II, who is 83, shows new signs of the degenerative Parkinson's disease that afflicts him or of the other ailments bestowed on him by age and an attempted assassination. Arriving in Slovakia on Thursday, he could not continue delivering his talk at the airport, and again yesterday another Vatican official had to read the homily the pope meant to deliver at an open-air Mass. Some Catholics take exception to any discussion of papal infirmities as though it were an attack on the pope's leadership. But in a world where the blessings of medicine are often shadowed by prolonged mental as well as physical incapacitation -- including senility, Alzheimer's or coma -- it seems that the church has to address the question, not as a comment on this papacy but as an institutional reform for future ones. Indeed, there are two questions: What to do in the emergency case of a pope so incapacitated he could not carry out his duties? And how to make such an emergency much more unlikely? Popes can, of course, resign if they recognize their debilitation. As recently as 1996, Pope John Paul II issued a document largely dealing with papal elections that also specified some conditions for a valid resignation. There have been rumors that he has himself secretly readied a document to be issued when he no longer feels capable of his work. But every time the possibility of a health-related resignation is raised publicly, whether for this pope or any other, it is swatted down by Vatican officials. Such a precedent, they believe, would encourage a papacy's critics to press for a resignation less on grounds of health than opposition to the pope's policies. In any case, resignation is no solution to the problem of mental incapacity, whether that developed gradually or suddenly through injury or stroke. Mental incapacity or intimidation would render any resignation invalid or, in a borderline case, suspect in a way that could create a crisis in the church. Church law indicates that special rules should apply in the case of the papal office being ''impeded.'' But no such special rules have |
1535175_0 | Dean Proposes $7.1 Billion To Help Cover College Costs | Taking a page from philanthropists who adopt elementary school classes and promise to pay tuition for those who make it to college, Howard Dean proposed a $7.1 billion program on Thursday to guarantee eighth graders who commit to higher education $10,000 a year in grants and loans. Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said he would also use tax credits so college graduates would never owe more than 10 percent of their annual income in loan payments and would retire their debt within 10 years. For students who become nurses, teachers, police officers or firefighters or otherwise pursue public service, the loan repayments would be capped at 7 percent of annual income. In addition, Dr. Dean said he would quadruple AmeriCorps, the program that enlists young people for two years of domestic service, to 250,000 slots a year. ''This is about more than money,'' Dr. Dean said. ''When a student enters high school, they need to know that the door to college is potentially open for them, that all they have to do is work hard and plan ahead and the path will be there.'' As Dr. Dean ascended the stage at Dartmouth College in Hanover to unveil his plan, several students waved large Confederate battle flags they had bought over the Internet, a reminder of a controversy that had dogged him for more than a week. The students said they were offended by Dr. Dean's promise to be ''the candidate for guys with Confederate flag decals on their pickup trucks,'' as well as by his eventual apology. ''Not only is it demeaning and is it degrading, he's stereotyping the people,'' said Xi Huang, 19, a Dartmouth sophomore from Boston. ''What's the difference about stereotyping the Southerners and stereotyping Asians and other minorities? We're all people.'' Jonathan Beilin, a freshman who described himself as a libertarian, said that Dr. Dean's apology was ''insufficient'' and that he ''should at least stick to his positions,'' noting that the candidate had used the Confederate flag line for several months and ''apologized for it only when it became a P.R. problem.'' Dr. Dean declined to comment beyond saying, ''Things happen on college campuses.'' On the higher education front, Dr. Dean and his aides said they were unsure how many additional students would be helped by their plan, which would determine eligibility based on existing income guidelines for federal |
1535136_0 | Cabinet Shake-Up Spoils Colombia's Effort to Cast Stable Image | After taking office 15 months ago, President Álvaro Uribe said his ministers would remain with him throughout his four-year term, a pledge aimed at casting an image of stability and purpose in a nation where governments are usually scorned. But in the last seven days, Mr. Uribe's reputation has been tarnished with the resignations, in quick succession, of three cabinet ministers, the armed forces commander and the chief of the Colombian National Police. Cabinet shake-ups are common here and elsewhere in Latin America after political setbacks, and Mr. Uribe's first political defeat came last month when voters rejected a referendum that would have handed him new powers over state spending. But the resignations here, announced one day after the other in dour news conferences without explanation, have led many in Colombia to question Mr. Uribe's right-leaning administration. ''The change in ministers, little by little, leaves the image that fires are being put out in an improvised manner,'' Rodrigo Pardo said in his column on Thursday in El Tiempo, the nation's top newspaper. Fernando Cepeda, a former interior minister, said the changes will rejuvenate the cabinet and clear out government officials who had become a liability. But Mr. Cepeda said Mr. Uribe should have accepted all the resignations the same day, a tradition that sits well with voters, and offered an explanation. ''It's not a crisis, but the way this is happening -- instead of coming naturally in a way that strengthens the government -- gives the sensation of crisis,'' he said. Officials in Mr. Uribe's administration, which enjoys strong backing from the Bush administration in its war against three insurgencies, said that Mr. Uribe, in his drive to break with the past, did not want to carry out the traditional one-day house cleaning of the cabinet. They said that the departure of Interior and Justice Minister Fernando Londoño on Nov. 6 was necessary because he failed to win approval of the referendum in an Oct. 25 election. Mr. Londoño's relationship with Congress was also dismal. The loss of the referendum means Mr. Uribe must try to obtain the fiscal controls he seeks by pushing legislation through Congress, which has been emboldened by the failure of the referendum and is now more likely to challenge his policies. Mr. Uribe also welcomed the resignation of Defense Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez, whose clashes with several generals and outspoken manner were seen as counterproductive, |
1535120_11 | Cuba: You Can't Get There From Here . . . | a whisper -- bitter complaints about Mr. Castro and urgent desires to emigrate at all costs. Veronica said that she had seen poverty before, in Puerto Rico, where her family is from, but when a worker at the Tropicana, where she and her husband were staying, invited them to his home, his family's circumstances took her by surprise. ''It was him and his wife and baby and his 39-year-old mother-in-law. They didn't have a stove, just a two-burner thing; they had a sofa and chair and a real old TV and tape player. He makes good money, he makes tips -- but it just didn't look that way. I've never seen people so frustrated.'' Even more surprising to some Americans who make the trip is just how much company they have, from Europeans and especially Canadians, many of whom see Cuba as little more than a cheap way to get out of the cold. ''We have a harsh winter up here,'' said Virgil Palermo, sales director for the Toronto office of Sol y Son Vacations, a Canadian tour operator specializing in Cuba. ''The beach is the main thing. It's a sun destination.'' Perhaps that says it all. Americans see Cuba as forbidden fruit, one of the world's few remaining Communist countries, a place of mystery and danger, going back to the days of the Cuban missile crisis. To Canadians, it is just another Cancún. THE LAW Forbidden Island: At What Price? THE government grants two kinds of licenses to travelers who want to visit Cuba legally. General licenses are for some journalists and other researchers and Americans with close relatives in Cuba. Such travel does not require prior approval, though travelers may be asked to prove that they qualify for it. The other type of permission, called a specific license, requires an application and can be granted for things like formal study, religious activities and humanitarian purposes. The Foreign Assets Control Office of the Treasury Department is responsible for enforcing the ban on spending money in Cuba by Americans, and a typical penalty for tourist travel without a license is $7,500; the government often reaches settlements with travelers for less than that, though it can seek higher penalties. Those caught can also request hearings, a common tactic because for years no judges were assigned to conduct them. On Wednesday, leaders of a Congressional conference committee removed a provision from an |
1535126_0 | Sterilization in India | To the Editor: Re ''States in India Take New Steps to Limit Births'' (front page, Nov. 7): In India, the dominance of female sterilization among contraceptive options is not only unfairly burdening women. With a rapidly escalating epidemic of H.I.V. and AIDS -- at least 4.6 million people in India are already infected -- the method of choice should be condoms, including for those who have been sterilized. One hundred percent condom use (except when pregnancy is desired) will both slow the spread of H.I.V. and AIDS and allow couples to have the number of children they want, when they want to have them. Without condoms, deaths will become a powerful and dreadful check on economic and population growth, as we are beginning to see in southern Africa. ADRIENNE GERMAIN President, International Women's Health Coalition New York, Nov. 7, 2003 |
1538400_1 | 20 Airport Workers Held in Smuggling Of Drugs for Decade | of them from Guyana and Jamaica, officials said. One shipment, a 185-kilogram package of cocaine worth $23 million found in the cargo section of a passenger flight in September, is the largest ever intercepted at Kennedy, officials said. Yesterday, federal agents conducted additional searches in the area and seized about $500,000 in cash, five handguns and four vehicles, including a Mercedes-Benz and two late-model BMW's. The baggage handlers and their supervisors, who had unrestricted access to the tarmac and airplanes, worked together to unload the drug shipments, which were marked for the purpose, prosecutors said. They would then move them to safe areas for pickup and distribution, carefully avoiding surveillance cameras and all forms of border inspection and security, prosecutors said. The drugs were hidden in luggage and cargo boxes, and in at least one instance were buried under bags of ice in the galley of a passenger flight, said Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the United States attorney for the Eastern District, whose office worked with customs officials and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on the case. ''This was a classic inside job,'' Ms. Mauskopf added. The conspiracy came to light in late 2002, Ms. Mauskopf said, after customs officials intercepted several shipments of cocaine on Universal Airlines flights from Guyana. Agents began doing surveillance of the airline, and soon arrested an airport employee diverting a suitcase containing 17 kilograms of cocaine. The employee began cooperating with investigators, who recorded him discussing drug shipments with a number of the principals in the smuggling operation. At that point, the employee stopped cooperating, but agents were able to secure a judge's order for wiretaps to continue recording the baggage handlers' conversations, one law enforcement official said. After working undetected for years, the baggage handlers seemed to think they were invincible, the law enforcement official said. ''This was a joke to them,'' he said. Of the 20 baggage and cargo handlers arrested yesterday, 19 worked at Kennedy, officials said, and one worked at Miami International Airport. Five others were arrested along with them, including one former airport employee at Kennedy. Prosecutors declined to comment yesterday on who supplied and distributed the drugs, saying their investigation was continuing. All of the baggage handlers and supervisors arrested in the smuggling operation had passed standard background checks, officials said yesterday. Starting last year, airport employees throughout the country became subject to more rigorous |
1538486_0 | World Briefing | Europe: Northern Ireland: To the Polls | Voters will select their representatives for the province's legislature today for the first time since 1998, when a landmark peace accord established a local government to share power between Protestant and Roman Catholic parties. The 108-seat assembly has been suspended for a year. Opinion polls have shown no clear front-runners on either side of sectarian divide, but the balance of power is expected to shift away from mainstream and moderate parties. More than 2,000 extra police officers are being deployed at polling places. Brian Lavery (NYT) |
1538385_1 | Spread of AIDS Fast Outpacing Response | way behind in tackling AIDS -- though not, in every case, by name. ''Many countries do not take AIDS seriously, and that is particularly the case of Russia, all the countries of the former Soviet Union, and several Asian countries,'' Dr. Piot said in a teleconference. An estimated million Russians are infected and ''the epidemic is growing at a fearsome rate,'' the report said. Russia did not make the political commitment other countries have made against the disease, Dr. Piot said, noting that it budgets ''only a few million dollars for AIDS and still deals with it at the level of a deputy minister of health.'' The spread of AIDS to about 4.5 million people in India is ''the biggest concern in Asia,'' he said. Although India's overall infection rate is small, it has reached a worrying 5 percent in some districts, he said. The United Nations is encouraging health officials in India to improve their methods to monitor H.I.V. infection rates so they can focus on prevention efforts. The report describes serious outbreaks in China, and Dr. Piot noted that the shock of the SARS epidemic had encouraged China to monitor the virus more closely. Among other concerns, Dr. Piot said, is that in many countries, ''the people providing the services are dying while the demand for services is increasing because of AIDS.'' He warned that ''the most devastating social and economic impacts of AIDS are still to come'' and said the focus on treatment could cause prevention efforts to be overlooked. The report also said only 1 percent of pregnant women in heavily infected countries had access to the testing and counseling services needed to protect them and to prevent mother-to-child transmission. But there was some positive news. ''For the 12th consecutive year, in Uganda H.I.V. prevalence was lower than the preceding year,'' he said. Another favorable sign was the stabilization of the prevalence of infection in Cambodia, at 3 percent. Thailand's push for condom use has made the sex industry safer and reduced the incidence of new infections by 85 percent. But there is an increase in virus transmission among young people and drug addicts who use needles. ''So it shows the fantasy of thinking that one can control the AIDS epidemic by just focusing on so-called high-risk groups,'' Dr. Piot said. ''We need to do both.'' Dr. Piot said he was encouraged by the increased spending |
1533427_0 | World Briefing | United Nations: Vote On Cloning Ban Delayed For 2 Years | The General Assembly voted to postpone for two years consideration of a ban on human cloning. The General Assembly's legal committee, which comprises all the members, voted 80 to 79 in favor of a deferral motion introduced by Iran on behalf of Islamic countries. Fifteen members abstained. The vote suspended a contentious debate over two resolutions. One, backed by the United States, called for a ban on all forms of human cloning. The other, supported by a smaller group led by Belgium, called for a more limited ban that would prohibit the development of cloned embryos to produce a human being but would permit the use of such embryos for medical experiments. Kirk Semple (NYT) |
1533298_1 | Las Vegas Auto Couture: A Fashion Show for Cars | billion in 1998. This week, more than 100,000 people gathered to get their first glance at the Next Big Thing at the annual SEMA show, which closes today. And if there's any sign that the world of car racing and car tuning (think the ''Fast and Furious'' movies) is going mainstream, it's the Recaro booster seat. The company's racing seats have long been considered a must-have among real racers and street racers alike. Now the company is turning its attention to the mainstream market -- including toddlers -- as more people warm to a racing-inspired look and feel in their cars. Recaro isn't alone. If there's one thing that defines this sprawling convention, it's the mainstreaming of what might be called the ''car as fashion statement,'' a trend that's spreading quickly across the country. Strewn across two million square feet of the Las Vegas Convention Center are thousands of ideas for turning cars from plain-vanilla transportation into dream machines. Here's a look at what is getting some of the attention at the convention, which has everything from new engines that crank out 500 horsepower to real wood strips that can turn any car into a modern version of the old woody wagon. Tires and wheels are one of the easiest ways to overhaul a car's look. In recent years bigger was considered better, with 20-inch wheels, called ''dubs'' on the street, becoming the norm among customizers. This year, the look is even larger. Consider the tires displayed by Kumho, the Korean tiremaker. At 28 inches, they hit most adults about midthigh. But somehow the Hummer H2 they were mounted on made them seem almost normal. But when you consider that most cars roll along on 15-inch or 16-inch tires, then 28 inches seems like overkill. But even the smallest of cars were trying out the ''big tire'' idea. Someone else on the show floor had taken a tiny Mini Cooper and put 20-inch dubs on it. Standard issue for the Mini is 15-inch tires. ''Most of the people who put those kind of tires on their car never go further than the coffee shop to show them off,'' said Matt Edmonds, the director of marketing for the Tire Rack, a South Bend, Ind., company that sells tires and wheels. ''It's all about show.'' But if you're not just about show, other companies are creating suspension packages that can take your |
1533340_0 | States in India Take New Steps To Limit Births | A new reckoning is under way in India over how best to stabilize a population that is set to surpass China's as the world's biggest by midcentury. Indian women currently bear an average of just under three children -- a steep drop from the six of 50 years ago, but still above the 2.1 that would stabilize a population that already exceeds a billion people. The burden on development and the growing competition for resources like water and land are prompting a reassessment in which India is struggling to balance its democratic impulses with its demographic pressures. Nearly a decade ago, India embraced the conclusions of a 1994 United Nations conference on population in Cairo, which called for abandoning contraceptive targets, improving education and health for women and children, and offering multiple voluntary contraceptive choices. India itself had recoiled against coercive policies -- like China's -- after the ruthless sterilization campaign under Indira Gandhi in the late 1970's. But today, the national mood increasingly favors a tougher approach, and states, free to adopt their own policies, are experimenting. At least six have laws mandating a two-child norm for members of village councils, and some are extending it to civil servants as well. Some states have considered denying educational benefits to third children. States are also increasingly turning to incentives -- pay raises, or access to land or housing -- for government servants who choose sterilization after one or two children. Across some states in North India, local elected officials are increasingly obliged to mount explicit defenses of their decisions to procreate. The reason: laws limiting members of village councils, or panchayats, to two children, on the notion that they should provide models of restraint. Pardeshi Yadav, head of the Kayathpalli village council, recently found himself defending the birth of his last child: The government-provided condom he had used had failed, he said. This was not his fault. Ratan Lal Banjare, a member of the Basna local council, could not be held responsible for his latest offspring, either, and he had a doctor's note to prove it. His wife was not menstruating regularly. Who knew, he argued, that she could get pregnant nonetheless? Despite such arguments, a move is gaining steam to revive a national bill limiting members of Parliament and state legislatures to two children. ''Politicians should set an example,'' the minister of health and family welfare, Sushma Swaraj, told |
1533267_0 | Finding the Beast Within, And Portraying It Without | The image of a creature that is part human and part something else has been around for a long time. It's still with us, though the something else now tends to be mechanical rather than living. In premodern times, the other part was usually animal: horse, bull, bird, goat, lion, fish; the list goes on. The ancient Greeks, like other ancient people, had an interest in such composite beings. ''The Centaur's Smile: The Human Animal in Early Greek Art,'' an exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum that is fascinating on many levels, invites us to contemplate the forms that interest took and the meanings it had for the people who made and lived with such imagery. The beautifully installed exhibition of about 100 objects (21 from the museum's own collection), including painted ceramic vases, jewelry and sculpture in stone, clay and bronze, was organized by J. Michael Padgett, the museum's curator of ancient art. The centaur, the mythic being with the body of a horse and the head and torso of a man, is the star, but satyrs (part horse, rather than goat, in early Greek art), sphinxes (winged lions with human heads), sirens (half bird) and gorgons (who had serpentine hair) also have leading roles. Those we know by their proper names also have cameo parts, like the bull-headed Minotaur, the goat-man Pan and Typhon, the embodiment of wind and fire, who had wings and a serpent's lower body. Given how vividly composite beings have been represented in art and literature over the centuries and how they continue to thrive in our imaginations, some viewers may be disappointed at first by how fragmentary and modest much of the material here is. The exhibition focuses on the years 750 to 450 B.C., centuries in which art evolved from a primitive geometric style to representations anticipating the heroic human image-making of the Classical era. It was a richly flourishing period for art and craft, but what is left of it remains in pieces -- literally, in a great many cases -- and art historians and archaeologists spend lifetimes trying to puzzle them back together. There are many intact painted vases bearing black, red, white and yellow decorative and narrative designs of extraordinary complexity, elegance and vitality. But there are lots of items that seem at first unprepossessing: creature-shaped handles from jars or caldrons; tiny perfume bottles; small, broken elements of |
1537193_1 | 'Picasso: The Classical Period' | Modern Art's ''Three Musicians'' of 1921. And he was not exactly taking it easy, much less moving backward, even when working in a Classical mode. The 19 drawings and paintings in this extraordinary show reveal that mode to be bracingly energetic and nearly as multisourced and distortion-prone as Picasso's Cubist phase. His close study of things like drapery, bridgeless noses and small, full lips -- which was facilitated by a trip to Italy in 1917 -- is underscored by the inclusion of two Greek heads and the torso from a Roman copy of a caryatid from the Erechtheum. In a brilliant catalog essay that bodes well for the third installment of his monumental Picasso study, John Richardson details the course of Picasso's friendships and his love life (his marriage to Olga Khokhlova, a dancer with the Ballets Russes). He also writes of his assimilation of Ingres and Renoir; Greek, Roman and Greco-Roman art; and the Michelangelesque reliefs by Jean Gujon, a 16th-century French sculptor, in Fontainebleau. Picasso's Classical images tend to be peopled by rooted, sausage-fingered women in Grecian coifs and white gowns. Rendered in a subdued, implicitly sculptural palette of pale tans and grisailles, some of these figures hint at a comic lightness, not only in their mismatched proportions but also in the incisive economy with which they are painted. An example is a small, cryptic profile of a woman delineated in a few fat, accurate strokes. Two small studies for ''Three Women at the Spring'' make a stronger impression than the final version, which the Modern has lent to this show. Another delight is a silvery portrait of a woman with her arms raised, which may be related to the painting ''Woman in White,'' also lent by the Modern. The smaller painting inculcates Classical form with modern pensiveness, but its grisaille tones are rendered in careful scudding brushstrokes that loosely mimic chisel marks. Picasso puts some space between himself and Classicism in a tough little drawing of a woman in an armchair, probably based on Olga, wrapped in a robe as if resting between sittings. She cups her cheek in one monstrous hand, and crosses her legs so that one big foot dangles toward us. Impatience reigns; something like Surrealism threatens, and you know that Picasso will find many uses for the clumsy proportions, unflattering likenesses and dark feelings lurking beneath the surface. ROBERTA SMITH ART IN REVIEW |
1537106_1 | In the Balance: Attacks on Turkey Aim to Sever a Bridge Between Islam and the West | to finesse its identity by paying lip service to the Islamic world while defining its future among the dynamic economies of the West. Turkey was the first among Muslim nations to recognize Israel and has developed extensive ties with it since then. It has been a model NATO member and has tried hard in recent years to win the favor of the European Union, which Turkey wants to join. All of this has made the country suspect among Muslim countries, particularly in the Arab world. Meanwhile, decades of economic malaise have haunted a generation of frustrated, underemployed youth and turned many toward conservative Islam. An often brutal effort to force the assimilation of the country's restive Kurdish minority into the larger Turkish population also fed passions among Kurdish youth and spawned a generation of closet separatists with a hardened fringe of fighters. The religion-inspired wars of the 1990's drew some young Turks north into Bosnia or across Iran to Chechnya and Afghanistan. In those places, terrorism experts say, the young men were vulnerable to the ideological zeal and global designs then coalescing into Al Qaeda. The war in Iraq may have tipped the balance toward actual terrorism. ''Before, the threat was more or less theoretical,'' said Rifat Bali, a writer in Istanbul. The Turkish government has been a reluctant player in America's Iraqi adventure, which most of the country's 66 million people opposed. Many politicians made strong statements against the prospect of an invasion, and Turkey refused to allow American soldiers to enter Iraq from Turkey. Turkey later offered troops to help stabilize the country, then rescinded that offer in the face of stiff opposition at home and in Iraq. The main concern of Turks opposed to the war was that it would re-ignite a Kurdish separatist movement near the border with Iraq. Government officials say that, in fact, violence has increased in that part of the country. This week, the government said it had recently arrested Kurdish rebels in possession of explosives and plans of Turkish police stations. On Tuesday, unarmed Kurds briefly took hostages at Istanbul's main courthouse before being overcome by the police. Despite the waffling, though, Turkey appears committed to the American program, something that makes it a prime target for terrorists wishing to punish Muslim states that lean too closely toward the West. In fact, this week's bombings could threaten the stability of the government, |
1537075_3 | Brazil's Environmentalists Crying Foul | business groups by supporting the paving of highways in the Amazon, encouraging more agriculture there and resurrecting a regional development agency that the previous government had abolished for corruption and inefficiency. ''The Amazon is not untouchable,'' he said during a visit to the region in June. Environmental groups say they do not oppose Amazon development. But they want the government to follow the model that the Workers' Party itself installed in Ms. Silva's home state of Acre, which emphasizes forest management and renewable resources, rather than indiscriminate cutting and cattle ranching. However, to spur a lackluster economy, Mr. da Silva has embarked on a campaign to increase Brazil's food exports, which implies expanding the agricultural frontier. His proclaimed intent is to improve conditions for poor peasants, but environmentalists say that agribusiness is the primary beneficiary. Environmentalist say they have also been disappointed by the government's reluctance to approve demarcation of Indian reservation borders, which often serve as buffers to predatory development in the Amazon. One case in the northern Amazon state of Roraima has been especially criticized, with news media suggesting that the government has stalled in exchange for the political allegiance of the state governor, Francisco Flamarion Portela, who opposes additional reservations. In addition, in early October Roberto Amaral, the minister of science and technology, announced that the country would begin enriching uranium and intended to become an exporter within a decade, immediately reviving debate about Brazil's nuclear energy program. Some groups and editorial writers have even urged Ms. Silva, a former rubber tapper, to resign in protest. They say she is being used as window dressing, and has failed to make the government take environmental factors into account in its decision-making. There is a growing feeling that ''if someone with Marina Silva's charisma and history in the Workers' Party isn't capable of convincing the government to have a consistent environmental policy, then no one can,'' Mr. Santilli said. Ms. Silva acknowledged in an interview that there was ''a dispute between the environment and development within the government.'' But she said that even with the reverses she had suffered, she had succeeded in getting environmental issues debated publicly. ''Everyone knows that I would never remain as minister just to be some sort of a decorative piece,'' she said. After a 22-year struggle to reach power, she said, ''I'm going to stay and continue fighting for what I believe in.'' |
1536686_0 | Metro Briefing | New York: Manhattan: More Oversight Urged For Cell Towers | City and state officials called yesterday for more government oversight of cellphone transmission towers. They cited concerns that the proliferation of such antennas on residential buildings might lead to harmful electromagnetic fields. Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. has called for a public hearing and has proposed legislation requiring better tracking of such equipment, as well as a health study. In addition, Assemblyman Michael Gianaris said he was planning legislation that would, among other things, establish a board to regulate the placement of future cell towers and a four-month moratorium on new construction. ''The placement of cellphone towers has become like the Wild West,'' said Mr. Gianaris. ''Residents have almost nothing to say about these towers being placed over their homes.'' Winnie Hu (NYT) |
1536601_0 | Government Mapping Out A Strategy to Fight Autism | Propelled by the skyrocketing number of diagnoses of the perplexing brain disorder autism in children, federal officials have for the first time mapped out a long-term, interagency plan to deal with the problem. The plan includes objectives like the development of teaching methods that will allow 90 percent of autistic children to speak; the identification of genetic and nongenetic causes of the condition; and adequate services for all afflicted children in the next 7 to 10 years. The plan, which is to be unveiled at a major autism conference in Washington that begins today, signals the start of the push-pull process over financing. Such a plan was required by the Congressional appropriations committee that controls the budget for scientific and medical research and education programs of all kinds. Few of the nearly 150,000 autistic children and young adults now getting special education services under federal law will benefit significantly, experts say, since the most effective treatment involves early, intensive behavior therapy, which is poorly understood and in limited supply. Autism is a disorder with a wide range of symptoms sometimes so mild as to let a child function in a regular classroom with special services and at other times so severe that a child is mute and institutionalized. The three-pronged plan sets goals for more coordinated biomedical research, earlier screening and diagnosis, and effective therapy. The plan demands, for the first time, collaboration between scientists, clinicians, educators and policymakers in an array of federal agencies. ''Millions of people need help,'' said Robert L. Beck, president of the Autism Society of America, the nation's oldest and largest autism advocacy group. ''And this is a new opportunity and a very exciting one.'' The need is enormous. According to federal education officials, in 1992-93, fewer than 20,000 of the nation's nearly five million special-education students, ages 6 to 21, were considered autistic. Ten years later, nearly 120,000 of six million special-education students had autism. That does not count the 19,000 children 3 to 5 receiving autism services under federal law, or those younger whose numbers have not been tallied. Nobody knows the cause of the surge, although epidemiologists suspect it is largely a result of refined diagnosis and public awareness. That does not change the dimensions of a problem that strains schools, medical services and families. Nor does it affect forecasts of growing caseloads for decades to come. Dr. Fred R. Volkmar of |
1534911_1 | The Testosterone Gamble | the same reckless use of hormones that brought grief and anxiety to so many unsuspecting women? That disquieting possibility is raised by a new report that laments a huge upsurge in testosterone replacement therapy for men despite a paucity of evidence that it is safe or beneficial. One wonders whether another medical debacle is in the making. Although hormone therapy is unquestionably effective for counteracting the symptoms of menopause, millions of American women also used it as an anti-aging elixir or to enhance their sexual pleasure, general appearance and sense of well-being. That course of action was shown to be sadly misguided last year when a large clinical trial found that estrogen and progestin, a popular regimen, actually did more harm than good by causing a slight increase in breast cancer, heart attacks, strokes and blood clots. To make matters worse, the presumed benefits soon began to look illusory. Now it looks as if men could be making a similar mistake. An expert panel assembled by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, warned in a report yesterday that the rapidly growing use of testosterone therapy has outpaced the meager scientific evidence about its benefits and risks. Testosterone therapy has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration only for treating a narrow group of clinical conditions marked by very low testosterone levels, yet doctors have been prescribing it much more widely. Last year more than 800,000 patients, mostly middle-aged men, were treated with testosterone. There is preliminary evidence from small studies, but nothing close to proof, that testosterone therapy may improve men's sex drive, strength, cognitive function and sense of well-being. There is no compelling evidence of harm, but there are worries that testosterone may increase prostate cancer or cardiovascular problems. Clearly more studies are needed. The institute's panel urged the government to sponsor small clinical trials with elderly men, the group most likely to benefit, to determine whether testosterone therapy can counteract frailty, weakness, failing memories or the loss of sexual function. Only if testosterone is beneficial in that group would the panel recommend a large-scale trial, which could take many years. Our feeling is that the government should sponsor immediate small trials in middle-aged men as well because they are the primary users. Meanwhile, any baby boomers planning to embark on testosterone therapy to rejuvenate themselves should be aware of the potential pitfalls. |
1534886_1 | Panel Recommends Studies On Testosterone Therapy | memory and increase sexual drive. The Institute of Medicine report says that more than 1.75 million prescriptions were written in 2002, up from 648,000 in 1999. Researchers at the National Institute on Aging were concerned that the testosterone boom was a public health issue and wanted a large clinical trial. Those at the National Cancer Institute worried about giving healthy men testosterone in such a study when it might fuel the growth of prostate cancer. Last year, the heads of the two institutes asked the Institute of Medicine for help. ''They felt like they were in a quandary, and they were not certain what steps should be taken,'' said Dr. Dan G. Blazer, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University and chairman of the Institute of Medicine's committee. As Dr. Blazer's committee set to work, the nation's experience with hormone therapy for menopausal women was on the minds of the members. Millions of women had taken estrogen and progestin for years, even decades, believing that it would protect against heart disease, osteoporosis, maybe even Alzheimer's disease. Many felt it kept them youthful and vigorous. But when the National Institutes of Health did a large study of the hormones in healthy women, it found that the drugs had risks, of heart disease and breast cancer, that were not outweighed by their benefits. No one wanted to repeat that experience with testosterone, Dr. Blazer said. The committee searched for evidence that testosterone helped aging men. Many symptoms of aging -- weakness, diminished sex drive, osteoporosis and a sense of malaise -- occur in young men who do not make testosterone. The symptoms are reversed with testosterone therapy. Testosterone levels gradually fall as men grow older. But published studies were dismaying. ''We were struck by the real paucity of studies and the relatively small number of subjects in them,'' Dr. Blazer said. On the other hand, he said, testosterone may well be effective and the published studies do not show it is harmful. Still, the harms like an increased risk of prostate cancer or heart attack would emerge only from large studies, for example the federal study of estrogen in women, which followed thousands of participants for years. Some are impatient for such studies and think the new report calls for too slow a pace. ''Essentially what this means is we won't know for a long time,'' said Dr. Alvin |
1534869_1 | A New Democracy, Enshrined in Faith | Its first three articles declare Afghanistan an Islamic Republic, make Islam the official religion, and announce that ''no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam and the values of this constitution.'' The new Supreme Court, which is given the power to interpret the constitution, is to be composed of a mix of judges trained either in secular law or in Islamic jurisprudence. The new flag features a prayer niche and pulpit, and is emblazoned with two Islamic credos: ''There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet'' and ''Allah Akbar'' (''God is Great''). The government is charged with developing a unified school curriculum ''based on the provisions of the sacred religion of Islam, national culture, and in accordance with academic principles.'' The provision requiring the state to ensure the physical and psychological well-being of the family calls, in the same breath, for ''elimination of traditions contrary to the principles of the sacred religion of Islam.'' And yet, the draft constitution is also thoroughly democratic, promising government ''based on the people's will and democracy'' and guaranteeing citizens fundamental rights. One essential provision mandates that the state shall abide by the United Nations Charter, international treaties, all international conventions that Afghanistan has signed and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Because Afghanistan acceded in March to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women -- a treaty the United States Senate has never ratified -- the draft constitution guarantees women far-ranging rights against discrimination. It also ensures that women will make up at least 16.5 percent of the membership of the upper legislative house (only 14 of 100 United States senators are women.) In addition, the provision that makes Islam the nation's official religion also recognizes the right of non-Muslims ''to perform their religious ceremonies within the limits of the provisions of law.'' This carefully chosen language might arguably leave room to restrict proselytizing -- as, for example, do similar laws in India and Israel -- but it nonetheless guarantees individual expression as an inviolable right. (It's worth noting that the right to change one's religion is enshrined in the human rights declaration.) Yes, if the draft is ratified by the grand assembly, or loya jirga, tensions in the constitutional structure will have to be resolved later by the Supreme Court. According to the draft, for instance, political parties must not be organized |
1536076_1 | Selling to Nonprofits Proves Not That Easy | advises cut across all nonprofit institutions, like policies for directors and conflicts of interest, Mr. Leavy said. But, for example, when Grant Thornton is working for a college or other nonprofit higher education client, many accounting and tax questions grow out of the relationship between schools and students, which is particular to that corner of the nonprofit world. The biggest piece of this pie is made up of hospitals, 90 percent of which operate as nonprofit groups, and other health-service providers. Such nonprofits account for just under 50 percent of all nonprofit revenues. But the health sector bears little resemblance to the rest of that world. Perhaps the main barrier to selling supplies or products to nonprofit groups in fields like social services and religious, arts and environmental activities is that so many have so little money. Such groups sometimes receive goods that others must routinely pay for through donations. Some financial-service institutions have separate units that specialize in helping nonprofits manage what money they have. The Merrill Lynch Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Management, for example, has 34,000 nonprofits as clients, said David Ratcliffe, its director. Clients also receive advice on fund-raising, board organization and management issues. The unit was formed in 2000, as an outgrowth of its traditional business of serving rich people, many of whom traditionally turn to brokerages for advice in managing their donations to nonprofit groups. In the field of technology, there is a growing network of suppliers, many of them also nonprofit groups, that compete with mainstream businesses. TechRocks, for example, is a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that provides other such groups with free software called ebase for managing their e-mail messages, donor lists and data about volunteers, among other things. CompuMentor, another San Francisco nonprofit group, operates a consulting service and DiscounTech, a Web-based marketplace for donated and discounted software and hardware available to nonprofits from companies like Microsoft, Cisco and Intuit. TechFoundation, in Cambridge, Mass., provides a similar service with TechMarketplace. CompuMentor has joined NPower, a new Microsoft-backed nonprofit in Seattle that is setting up affiliates in numerous cities to help nonprofits use and manage technology better. But most of these efforts, as well as many direct corporate discount programs, are restricted to nonprofits that are eligible to receive deductible donations under Section 501(c)3 of the tax code. Those excluded include AARP, the National Rifle Association and environmental groups that lobby |
1536054_3 | Nonprofits Chase Dean's Example | and push for increased law enforcement. Like the Dean campaign, MADD sent e-mail messages to supporters and allowed them to track the progress of the drive on its Web page. The Dean campaign uses a baseball graphic known as the bat, which shows how much money has been brought in. MADD used a pumpkin, which gradually filled as the petition grew. In 15 days, it gathered roughly 10,500 supporters. Although that amount was short of the goal of 17,419 -- the number of alcohol-related auto deaths in the United States last year -- at least 9,000 were people new to the organization. ''We see a model in the Dean approach to engaging people online,'' Mr. Wilkerson said, adding that the same strategy can be used to lobby on legislation or raise money. Solicitations during Mother's Day and the Fourth of July both beat the totals raised in 2002. ''What we are creating gives us a fund-raising opportunity, while sending the message out and asking for action,'' he said. ''We can grow those numbers substantially.'' The A.S.P.C.A. has also taken notice of the Dean campaign, said Jo Sullivan, the senior vice president for development. The organization has already done well raising money online, collecting $600,000 through September, triple the amount raised last year. Now Ms. Sullivan would like to see supporters interacting, with animal shelter operators and schoolteachers, both prime constituencies, chatting online regularly. ''One thing we can take away from the Dean campaign is the level of engagement,'' she said. ''I want to build a community for our donors.'' She also wants to do more with the organization's 14,000 sustaining contributors, called ''guardians,'' who pledge to contribute at least $10 a month. The group represents less than 1 percent of the organization's donor file but accounts for 10 percent of its net income, she said. ''We can ask them to help us by recruiting more guardians,'' she said. ''I want to put them to work for me next year the way Howard Dean has done.'' Naturally, not every charity or advocacy group is suited to make heavy use of online fund-raising. And not all attract supporters like Dr. Dean's, many of whom are in the education and age brackets that provide prime online backing. ''There are some charities that will take note and have the resources and vision to do something with it,'' Mr. Wilkerson said, ''but the nonprofit world |
1536045_3 | The Tarps of Kilimanjaro | in 1976, would be easily long enough to girdle the two main ice fields. Given that the cliffs are 60 to 150 feet high, their covering would have to be taller than ''Running Fence''; but the total amount of fabric required would probably be no greater than that used for the bright pink skirts Christo spread out around the islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay in 1983. Indeed, Christo and his wife and partner, Jeanne-Claude, would make good consultants for the project; the team that convinced German parliamentarians to let them wrap the Reichstag might well persuade the Tanzanian government to allow the same thing to be done to the country's best-known feature. Getting hundreds of thousands of square yards of fabric to the mountain top would be fairly easy -- pack it up tightly and throw it out the back of a transport plane. Hanging it off the ice cliffs would be tricky, and require a lot of help. But it is hard to imagine that, if the money for such a project were to be found, the volunteers would not come running from around the world. And once the hanging is done, the main job would be over. The rest of the preservation effort might just consist of a few snow machines to keep the top surface fresh and white in the months when no snow falls. The fresher the ice the more sunlight it reflects; the less light absorbed, the less the ice will melt. The effort to preserve a square mile of ice in the equatorial sky could become a powerful local and universal symbol. Cloaking the ice cliffs of Kilimanjaro would not just borrow the techniques of an art installation -- it would be a work of art in itself. Done properly, it would be a preservation of beauty that is itself, beautiful. What's more, preserving the ice would be a way of saying that we do not have to accept environmental change, even when it looks inevitable. The white tarps would float above the clouds a tentative hope: the hope that human will and ingenuity just might be able to meet the challenges of a century in which more change will be faced, and more protection needed, than at any other time in human history -- or Kilimanjaro's. Op-Ed Contributor Oliver Morton is author of ''Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World.'' |
1536182_2 | They Bring Them Back Alive, Quite Often, From Niagara | the river. ''So anything on the outside of the water gets shot out and doesn't hit the rocks.'' Mr. Hill said he had retrieved two living deer and a dog that witnesses saw swept over the falls near the bank. Two daredevils, Karel Soucek and Dave Munday, each made a successful journey in the same area. But, Mr. Hill said, ''If you go over in the middle, you've got tons of water coming on top of you.'' The Hill family's working relationship with the Niagara River began with Mr. Hill's grandfather, a gardener with the Niagara Parks Commission, a Canadian organization. ''He used to hunt and fish along the river all the time, so when somebody drowned, the Parks Police would come to him and ask where he thought the current was going to throw the body up, or how long it would take for it to come up,'' Mr. Hill said. ''When it came up, they'd ask my dad, and then my brothers and myself, to go get the body out.'' The family's work along the river earned it a place in the history of Niagara Falls. ''You might attach the word 'legendary' to them,'' said the city historian of Niagara Falls, Sherman Zavitz. ''That word gets overused, but in this case, it's appropriate. Their exploits were the stuff of legends and in many ways rather unique, especially the rescue aspect of their work.'' Mr. Hill's father, William Hill Sr., known as Red Hill, became a local hero by rescuing 28 people, often from the half mile or so of rapids above the falls. He was even busier in the lower rapids, pulling 177 corpses out of the gorge. Red Hill also grabbed the spotlight by making it through the rapids below the falls in a barrel three times, including a 1930 trip that drew 25,000 spectators to the Niagara Gorge. After his death in 1942, family financial troubles led Red Hill Jr. and another brother, Major Hill, to duplicate their father's feat. The brothers' highly publicized trips through the rapids -- which are more than 10 feet more shallow and considerably less violent today, due to the diversion of the river by hydroelectric projects on both sides of the United States-Canadian border -- did not earn enough to pay off the family's debts. In an attempt to one-up his famous father, Red Hill Jr. tried to master the |
1538141_0 | The Neediest Cases; A Young Man Gets a Future and His Mother Gets Rest | When he was a freshman at William E. Grady Vocational High School in Coney Island, James Manas rose at 6 a.m. to get ready and take a bus and a subway to make his first class at 8:30. The length of the trip did not bother him, but what did was the fear of what he might encounter along the way. Getting to and from the two-bedroom apartment he and his mother, Barbara Manas, shared in the Vanderveer Estates projects in Brooklyn could be complicated. One afternoon, carrying his new green and tan leather knapsack, he took a path that led him into precisely the kind of situation he had always tried to avoid. ''I walked past four guys going to the bus,'' said Mr. Manas, now 21. Within moments, they pounced. ''They were after my knapsack,'' he said. Defending his property and his pride, he fought until the thugs tired. After that day, he refused to go to school -- but this was not the first time. Since elementary school, he had alternated between mainstream classes and special education classes for his learning disability. In special ed, he excelled. But those high marks propelled him into the faster mainstream classes. Ultimately, he fell behind and began to skip class. After the fight, he stayed out of school for more than a month. Ms. Manas found a new school, Samuel J. Tilden High. It was a fresh start, and only a 20-minute trip from home. In his sophomore year, his mother learned that she had a heart ailment. She also had two operations, one for gallstones and one for bone spurs in her left foot. The family's meager means -- welfare, S.S.I. benefits, a subsidized apartment -- did not allow for private home care, Ms. Manas said, and Medicaid kept rejecting her request for a nurse. So, more burdens fell to Mr. Manas. Ms. Manas has two other children from two other relationships, and both have chromosome translocation disorder, a genetic condition that stunts mental development. Her son, Arthur Smith, 24, lives with his father, and her daughter, Cherina Wilson, 19, was sent to a group home in upstate New York at 12 after a suicide attempt, Ms. Manas said. Overwhelmed with worry, Mr. Manas said, he focused on her needs instead of his own. ''When I would go back to class after missing a few days, my teacher would |
1538108_0 | Fast-Food Nation Is Taking Its Toll on Black Bears, Too | It's no secret that America's adults are getting fat and sedentary. Its children are becoming couch mini-potatoes. Even its pets are overweight. Now the fast-food lifestyle is getting to the bears, too. A study of black bears in the Sierra Nevada has found that those animals that live in and around cities and towns are less active than those in wilderness, spending less of their time foraging for food and fewer days in their winter dens. These and other behavioral changes are making the bears heavier. The culprit, say the study's authors, Dr. Jon P. Beckmann and Dr. Joel Berger of the Wildlife Conservation Society, is the garbage found at fast-food restaurants and in residential neighborhoods. As many Westerners are all too aware, black bears are forsaking their wild stomping grounds to patrol backyards and parking lots for nutritious trash. ''For a bear, garbage is probably the ultimate food resource,'' said Dr. Beckmann, who works in the conservation group's field office in Rigby, Idaho. ''It's available year-round, it's in the same place week after week, and it's replenished after use.'' Nowhere is this more apparent than in the fast-growing Lake Tahoe basin on the California-Nevada border, which Dr. Beckmann and Dr. Berger chose for the study. The researchers, who also are affiliated with the University of Nevada at Reno, attached radio collars to 59 bears and tracked them from week to week. They found that the animals fell into two camps: country bears, which spent almost all of their time in wild lands, and city bears, which lived in residential areas, often right under people's noses. Some city bears denned beneath homeowners' decks or elsewhere in backyards in towns like Incline Village and Stateline, Nev. The researchers followed individual bears for 24 hours in the fall to study their foraging habits. In the case of the urban bears, Dr. Beckmann said, that often meant following them from parking lot to parking lot at night while they fished in Dumpsters and garbage cans for their dinner. A black bear fattening up for the winter is a glutton, eating upward of 20,000 calories a day. In the study, country bears, forced to roam over wild lands searching for pine cones, troves of berry bushes or the occasional prey, spent more than 13 hours a day foraging. City bears, with all that rich garbage for the taking, spent much less time, an average |
1538112_5 | A Course in Evolution, Taught by Chimps | other communities, as is the chimp custom, yet most managed somehow to avoid the risk of inbreeding. But Fifi, a Gombe-born female, was not so lucky. On her seventh conception her oldest son, Freud, was alpha male and, despite his namesake's suspicions, took no interest in her. But her second son, Frodo, a very large and aggressive male, showed no such inhibitions. He turned out to be the father of her son Fred. Perhaps in illustration of the dangers of in-breeding, Fred died as an infant during an epidemic of mange, Dr. Constable reports. An intriguing variation on the chimpanzee social system is that of bonobos, which split from chimps some 1.8 million years ago. With bonobos, who live in Congo south of the Congo River, the female hierarchy is dominant to that of males, and males do not patrol the borders to kill neighbors. Though bonobos are almost as aggressive as chimps, they have developed a potent reconciliation technique -- the use of sex on any and all occasions, between all ages and sexes, to abate tension and make nice. Assuming the common ancestor of people and chimps had social behavior that was essentially chimplike, how much of that behavior has been inherited by people? The unusual behavioral suite of male kin bonding and lethal territorial aggression may look as if it has been inherited with little change. Among the Yanomamo, a South American tribe, the number of males who die from aggression is about 30 percent, the identical rate found among Gombe chimps. Dr. Wrangham said the consistent pattern of aggression seen at all the chimp sites suggests that male chimps have ''a strong emotional disposition'' to be aroused by the sight of strange males, to form coalitions against enemies, to be sensitive to balances of power and to be attracted to hunting. The same disposition could have been inherited down the human lineage. ''But it's equally possible,'' he said, that territorial aggression becomes less advantageous at certain stages of human evolution, so that it died out and re-emerged in humans later. ''People hate the thought that we've had millions of years of a disposition to attack each other because that makes it seem harder to get away from,'' he said. Not everyone believes that chimp social behavior is a good guide to human evolution. ''All these things are suggestive and point tantalizingly to things we want to |
1538260_0 | COMPANY BRIEFS | SYNGENTA CROP PROTECTION INC., the United States unit of Syngenta, Basel, Switzerland, the world's largest crop-chemical maker, said it had asked a federal judge to rule that it was not infringing on three herbicide patents of Monsanto Co., St. Louis, and that the patents were not enforceable. PILGRIM'S PRIDE CORP., Pittsburg, Tex., said it had purchased the chicken business of ConAgra Foods Inc., Omaha, for $546.8 million in cash and stock. VIRBAC CORP., Fort Worth, a provider of health care products for pets, said it would restate its results for 2001, 2002 and the first two quarters of 2003, but it could not yet estimate the amount of the restatements. |
1538079_0 | Alzheimer's Risk Identified | Changes in the size of a small part of the brain can be used to predict mental decline in older people, a study being released today suggests. In the study, published in the journal Radiology, researchers from New York University measured the size of a brain region called the medial temporal lobe in 45 healthy people older than 60. They also gave the subjects a battery of tests that measured overall mental ability. The brain measurements and tests were repeated periodically over six years. The lead researcher, Dr. Henry Rusinek of New York University, said his team chose to focus on the medial temporal lobe because earlier research showed it to be affected early in the development of Alzheimer's disease. At the end of the six years, 13 of the 45 subjects had developed signs of mild mental impairment, a disorder that many researchers consider an early stage of Alzheimer's, the study said. Eleven of the 13 people who suffered mental impairment had been shown to have significant shrinking of the medial temporal lobe, while only 4 of the 32 people who remained healthy had comparable shrinking, the study said. Dr. Rusinek said the technique could be used to identify people at higher risk of Alzheimer's. ''The immediate benefit involves selecting patients and monitoring the response of people at risk'' in therapeutic trials, he said. ''The finding of an accelerated brain loss underscores the need for future therapy to be applied as early as possible.'' Some evidence, he added, suggests that mental activity, or ''exercising the brain,'' can slow progression. Knowing of a risk can also be an incentive for working to keep a sharp brain. VITAL SIGNS: AGING |
1532614_5 | Deep in the Amazon, Vast Questions About the Climate | rainfall systems, many forests are coming close to the limit where they shed their protective layer and become vulnerable to burning or slowed-down growth and die,'' said Dr. Dan Nepstad, an American scientist who works both with IPAM and the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. ''By replacing the forest with pasture, you will clearly exacerbate drought and contribute to lower levels of fixed carbon.'' Brazil has not put forth a consistent position on how to handle global warming, although both officials and the popular press criticize the United States as the principal culprit. Brazil is not a signer of the section of the Kyoto Protocol that promises reduced carbon emissions and has also opposed some important aspects of the ''clean development mechanism'' in the convention. ''As a developing country and in observance of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, Brazil is not obliged to reach targets in the reduction of greenhouse effect gases,'' the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said in a statement released in response to a request for comment on its position. But perhaps the aspect of government policy that scientists here and abroad find most puzzling is Brazil's two-pronged position on the issue of so-called carbon credits. Brazil supports the notion of awarding such payments for replanting in areas where forests have already been razed, but opposes the granting of such credits for ''avoided deforestation'' and in fact has itself passed up opportunities to take advantage of those credits itself. The Environmental Ministry is on record favoring such credits, but the Foreign Ministry is officially opposed for reasons that are not fully clear, and it is the Foreign Ministry that ultimately controls Brazilian policy on the issue. The issue of carbon emissions is a politically charged issue here. Brazil bristles at any suggestion by foreigners that its stewardship over the bulk of the world's largest remaining tropical forest is in any way deficient, and many Brazilians also believe that global efforts to monitor and limit deforestation are merely a smoke screen to bring about the ''internationalization'' of the Amazon, along the lines of Antarctica. Some government officials have gone so far as to argue that Brazil produces no emissions whatsoever from deforestation, maintaining that crops planted after deforestation absorb all of the carbon produced. But studies by the National Institute for Amazon Research indicate that only 7 percent of carbon emissions are reabsorbed by planted crops. ''The |
1533731_2 | Boots, Poles And Cellphone | albeit with communications more along the lines of ''Danny, it's Mom. If you're not at the car in five minutes, you're going to have to find your own way home.'' Although more channels may cut down on eavesdropping, there is one hitch: some of the additional channels are on the General Mobile Radio Service, which technically requires a license from the Federal Communications Commission (the license costs $75 for five years). Getting the F.C.C. license ''is recommended by Motorola,'' Ms. Fasano-Gray said, though anecdotal evidence suggests that some people don't bother. The two-way radios are sold in pairs for $29 to $129; pricier models have more channels, additional features (like access to weather broadcasts) and claim a longer range -- up to five miles under some conditions. ''That's flat land,'' Ms. Katagi cautioned. ''You get into the mountains and that's incredibly diminished. You may be a half-mile apart as the crow flies, but you're out of range because the peak blocks the signal.'' Although some ski resorts used to rent radios, many have stopped since it's so cheap to buy them. Another factor is the growing use of cellphones -- at elevations high and low. Cellphones While cell service at ski resorts has improved in recent years, it's still not necessarily a technology you can count on, either for casual communications or emergencies. ''Cell service in a mountainous area can be kind of spotty,'' said Kirt Zimmer, a spokesman for Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont. ''It really depends on your carrier whether you can pick up a signal.'' That's not necessarily something you can find out in advance, but the December issue of Ski magazine includes a chart that indicates how well various cell services work at about 20 resorts. ''Verizon was the hands-down winner that worked best at most mountains,'' Ms. Katagi said. But other services performed better at certain resorts. For instance, the magazine found Sprint has the best service at Vail, where a former chief executive at Sprint has a house. Jennifer Brown, a Vail spokeswoman, said Sprint had towers on the mountain and maintained a business partnership with the resort. While some people are annoyed by the influx of ring tones and phone conversations on the slopes -- not to mention the hazard presented by those who chat on the way downhill -- the phones do offer a benefit besides the convenience of keeping in touch. |
1534042_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1533905_6 | Spammers Can Run but They Can't Hide | there, an activist was born. Mr. Linford found the central meeting place for the anti-spam activists -- an Internet newsgroup that is called Nanae, for news.admin.net-abuse.email. Like many other news groups, Nanae (pronounced nah-NAY) is a boisterous place, where information about fighting spam is interposed with rather pointed insults of spammers and their allies. ''Nanae is a very angry crowd,'' Mr. Linford said. ''They shout a lot because they feel powerless.'' Mr. Linford, however, felt anything but powerless. In 1997, he created a series of sophisticated Web sites with tools to help spam fighters, databases of people selling software for use in sending spam, and assistance for people who wanted to write to an Internet service provider to complain about spam. Because he owned an Internet company, Mr. Linford encouraged activists to use far more moderate language, without the typical threats and demands. In 1998, he started what would become his main site: Spamhaus.org, a clearinghouse for information on the organizations behind most of the spam. Meanwhile, Paul Vixie, the pioneering Internet software developer in Redwood City, Calif., had formed the Mail Abuse Prevention Service, creator of the Realtime Blackhole List. That was the first list to block Internet addresses known as sources of spam. But that effort became bogged down, both by lawsuits and internal bickering. So Mr. Linford created his own list, the Spamhaus Block List, devoted to addresses used by spammers. He says it is used by Internet providers that serve 160 million e-mail users. That count is impossible to verify. In the United States, the list is not used by the biggest providers, like America Online and Microsoft's Hotmail. But it is used by the next tier of providers, including the Road Runner high-speed service, from Time Warner, and the NetZero and Juno services, from United Online. Smaller organizations that cannot afford commercial anti-spam services also depend on the list. Spamhaus takes no money for its services, and the computers it uses to host the service are donated. So far, Mr. Linford has paid all of the direct costs, about $25,000 a year, using money from Ultradesign, the company he still owns and runs. That will have to change, he acknowledged. He and some of his volunteers have outstanding legal bills from defending a lawsuit, now dismissed, brought by a group of Florida e-mail marketers. He has asked the British government for a grant, but has |
1533742_4 | Reverse Mainstreaming; Very Special Ed | as language and behavioral models. Of course, the reality in reverse mainstreaming classrooms is blurrier than that. In (Miss Sue) Suzanne Piszar's class in the Brick school, one tall 4-year-old is the verbal star. The first to call out the answer to every question, he is also a ''bus rider,'' which is how teachers refer to the disabled children who get free yellow bus transportation. The typical children like Katya, who win places through a lottery, are called ''walkers'' because their parents must get them to school. More than half a million children ages 3 to 5 received special education services in 2002, and federal officials expect that number to grow as toddlers are diagnosed at an earlier age. School districts meet the requirements in many ways, including paying tuition for disabled children to attend private preschools and providing services at home. A federal count found fewer than 9,000 disabled young children to be in reverse mainstreaming classes in 2002 (though the number is probably more, as districts are not required to report that they use the method). Brick Township officials say they consider the approach to be both cost effective and educationally sound. In reverse mainstreaming classes, teachers point out that walkers have an opportunity to develop the social agility that is critical to later school success. ''When the typical children are trying to engage with some of the children with disabilities, they're thinking, 'How am I going to play with him, what would he like?''' says Maria Synodi, coordinator of preschool special education for Connecticut. But that is a minor factor in what makes these programs so popular among parents whose children have no diagnosed disabilities. In suburban Waterford, Conn., school officials post witnesses when toddlers' names are pulled from a paper bag, to provide assurance that no favors go to ''the child of a doctor or the mayor,'' says Rick DeMatto, Waterford's director of personnel and special services. In Kansas, according to Marnie Campbell, who coordinates preschool special education services for the state, some districts dangle slots in reverse mainstreaming preschools for the children of new teachers as a recruitment tool. ''The classroom is just so rich,'' says W. Steven Barnett, who directs the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. Mr. Barnett believes these classes can serve as models for states that are writing or refining guidelines for what, and how, young children should |
1533867_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1533753_6 | What a Deal! | wealthy, one poor -- a college that aspires to a higher place in the pecking order may offer merit aid to the wealthier student because it knows the poor student will get offers of aid from other, more prestigious colleges. The bet, officials say, is that the wealthier student will accept, improving the college's yield and, ultimately, its prestige. ''Economics prevails,'' says William F. Elliott, Carnegie Mellon's vice president for enrollment. ''Colleges will do what is necessary and appropriate for them to do to build their best class. Are some kids getting more money to enroll where they might anyway? Maybe, but that's the economics of it.'' The airplane analogy does not fit perfectly. Colleges argue that having higher-achieving students in the other seats improves the quality of the education. ''It's not an arithmetic process for us,'' Mr. Thompson says. ''It's about, 'What can they contribute?''' Colleges also point out that they have not abandoned needy students. Still, they acknowledge, there are only so many dollars to spend, and a dollar given in merit often means one not given for need. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 1999-2000, 51 percent of students in the highest income quartile got aid from private colleges, up 10 percentage points over four years, and 18 percent got aid from public colleges, up five points. By contrast, the percentage of middle- and low-income students getting aid from private colleges remained flat (at 63 percent and 56 percent). Similarly, a report in May from the Lumina Foundation found that in fall 1995, the lowest-income students received about 2 percent more money from private colleges than families with incomes between $60,000 and $80,000; four years later they received 29 percent less on average. And while families with incomes above $100,000 still get the smallest grants, the amount of those grants was growing faster than that given any other income group -- by almost 145 percent. Discounting is a delicate equation. Several years ago, for example, George Washington was particularly aggressive in courting National Merit Scholars. ''It took a few years to work that particular generosity through our system,'' says Mr. Trachtenberg. As other colleges often do, George Washington compensated by offering fewer deals the following year. When the University of Notre Dame fell short on its return on endowment investments last year, it had to raise tuition by 6.5 percent, compared with a more |
1533748_0 | One Classroom, Many Minds; A Paddle for the Mainstream | SOME fourth graders at the Rand School read at second-grade level; some have already finished ''Lord of the Rings.'' So Cheryl Caggiano organizes her class into clusters based on proficiency, each with a different book and assignment. At any given time, four things are going on at once in Ms. Caggiano's classroom. Students who struggle with comprehension might be working on questions about their book, while others do an activity that helps them analyze characters and themes. One group might be drilling vocabulary, while another practices sentence structure. In social studies and science, Ms. Caggiano likes to ''mix it up.'' She may put a strong reader with a poor one ''so they can teach each other,'' or put students who think abstractly with ones who only get the point if they actually see it. If this sounds like a lot of work for the teacher, it is. ''It's crazy, insane, and I don't get paid enough,'' Ms. Caggiano says. Still, she prefers this approach. ''When you teach the same lesson to the whole class, you'll see it in their faces: some kids are completely lost, others are bored,'' she says. ''This way I know the students better, and they're more involved in the process, too.'' Ms. Caggiano is a practitioner of differentiated instruction, a method of teaching students of different abilities in a single classroom. The approach was popularized in the late 1990's by Carol Ann Tomlinson, a professor of education at the University of Virginia. Dr. Tomlinson did not invent the concept, or even coin the phrase, but she laid out a how-to strategy for the ''inclusive'' classroom in her book ''Differentiated Classroom,'' which many regard as the bible of differentiation. Instead of ''What am I supposed to teach now?'' the differentiated teacher asks, ''What does this student need to learn next and what is the most effective way for me to teach it?'' To answer those questions, Dr. Tomlinson adapted a number of progressive strategies already in use, including group learning, peer collaboration and teaching to different learning styles. Given the increasing number of learning-disabled students and children who speak English as a second language who show up in the same class with gifted students, it's not surprising that the idea has become so pervasive. ''It's the No. 1 topic of interest for professional development among our members,'' says Leslie J. Kiernan, a producer at the Association for |
1534149_1 | Classical Education | art and literature, as well as traditions of history, philosophy, science and ways of war. But this shared culture was distinctively modern, and while it may be seen to be descending from the ancients, it certainly did not derive from them in any clear and simple sense. The issue is time. Upheavals of history cut the thread between Greece and the modern world, remaking beliefs and institutions in forms virtually unrecognizable to their supposed inventors. The process goes at least as far back as the Romans, when the reading preferences of their aristocracy began to create what we now call Greek culture, and when their conquering legions built the roads that spread this version of Greece to most of Europe and North Africa, to be reinvented a score of times more. The second answer is politics: that the founders saw in Greece and Rome key concepts on which to base the new government, and they evolved a system that (they hoped) borrowed the best of each tradition. Even here, Rome is much the stronger flavor in the final mix: Americans have an elected, representative Congress, with an upper house named after the executive body of the Roman state, not a council chosen by lot that carries out laws directly voted by the citizens. In Athens the referendum was standard operating procedure. No wonder Athenian democracy was deeply feared by the founders. Thomas Cahill's ''Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea'' is the fourth book in a best-selling series that treats Western history as a long chain of gift-giving to the world, where the gifts are art, literature, political and moral values, science and philosophy. He is a talented writer, and his tour of Greek culture is a triumph of popularization: extraordinarily knowledgeable, informal in tone, amusing, wide-ranging, smartly paced. We learn much from him about Greek achievements, from Homer's epic vision to the importance of free speech, from the development of the disciplined war machine the Greeks called the phalanx to Plato's love of reason. Cahill has produced an updated version of Edith Hamilton's beloved ''Greek Way'' of 75+years ago, one that is much more sensitive to the Greeks' oppression of women and uncritical endorsement of slavery, their tinges of xenophobia and the fearsome nature of their war making. But -- and this is a significant exception -- to point out that good and important things were achieved in the past doesn't show |
1534149_2 | Classical Education | council chosen by lot that carries out laws directly voted by the citizens. In Athens the referendum was standard operating procedure. No wonder Athenian democracy was deeply feared by the founders. Thomas Cahill's ''Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea'' is the fourth book in a best-selling series that treats Western history as a long chain of gift-giving to the world, where the gifts are art, literature, political and moral values, science and philosophy. He is a talented writer, and his tour of Greek culture is a triumph of popularization: extraordinarily knowledgeable, informal in tone, amusing, wide-ranging, smartly paced. We learn much from him about Greek achievements, from Homer's epic vision to the importance of free speech, from the development of the disciplined war machine the Greeks called the phalanx to Plato's love of reason. Cahill has produced an updated version of Edith Hamilton's beloved ''Greek Way'' of 75+years ago, one that is much more sensitive to the Greeks' oppression of women and uncritical endorsement of slavery, their tinges of xenophobia and the fearsome nature of their war making. But -- and this is a significant exception -- to point out that good and important things were achieved in the past doesn't show why they matter now. This may seem an ungenerous reaction to a book that does great service to classical culture and those who teach it. But right here, right now in American history, the promise of his subtitle, ''Why the Greeks Matter,'' carries a heavier burden than Cahill is willing to acknowledge. The anti-classicists of the 18th century won: departments of classical studies still flourish, fortunately, and the vice president reads about Greek warfare, but modern literature, history and science dominate our culture and its educational system. And this makes a certain sense, since Western societies cannot pretend to the relative homogeneity of 200 years ago. We talk much less today of shared civic culture than we do of diverse, fractured cultural heritages, symbolized by the hyphens that style us African-American or Irish-American. What do the Greeks mean to modern women, when women shared not one bit in Athenian democracy, or to believers who base their values on the Bible? Cahill's book points the way to an answer. What we must appreciate about the Greeks, he says, is ''their careering variety of human responses -- the lightning-quick transmutations, the Odyssean resourcefulness, the inexhaustible creativity. . . . There was nothing |
1534034_11 | When Campus Violence Flares | charged with aggravated assault. The two victims, John P. Morin, 20, of Cliffside Park, and Robert Morgan, 20, of Pine Beach, were reportedly beaten over the head with a baseball bat. Both are still hospitalized and Mr. Morin's condition was improving last week, although Mr. Morgan remained listed in critical condition. In reflecting on the fight, JoAnn M. Arnholt, dean of fraternity and sorority affairs at Rutgers, said that she had sensed a development not in keeping with past social scuffles, to something more ominious: ''For one, we have not seen weapons before -- bats or any other kind of weapons. That's a new kind of thing.'' Ms. Arnholt paused before continuing: ''This is a group of students who have seen a lot of violence on television and in the movies. Even listening to the way they talk, they seem to make a fast leap from arguing to a physical altercation.'' One faculty member, Dr. Lionel Tiger, an anthropologist who studies male behavior, presented another explanation. Dr. Tiger believes that an imbalance has emerged between the sexes at Rutgers and other American universities so that the traditional roles of young men have become confused. He cited national statistics suggesting that women now make up 57 percent of college populations, with a corresponding decline in male students to about 43 percent. ''Obviously, these crimes of violence are not inevitable,'' he said. ''Universities are creating a crucible of competitiveness for young males, and it often goes wrong. For the past 30 years, affirmative action has not simply been for equity in colleges, but is perceived as anti-male.'' Dr. Tiger, who wrote ''Men In Groups'' (Marion Boyars, 1999), a study of male bonding, also said that crowding, pressures for academic performance and growing costs of education had probably contributed to a frustration that could find its outlet as outrageous or violent behavior. He concluded: ''Is the problem the young men or the system in which they find themselves? Every guy is viewed as a potential rapist, and every woman is a potential victim. I'm very concerned with the enrollment situation, because universities are not serving half the population.'' The freshest crime statistics for the New Brunswick-Piscataway campus actually mark a decrease in violent crimes. In the last three years, there have been no homicides, and the number of aggravated assaults fell significantly, to a total of 4 in 2002 from 9 reported in |
1533751_1 | It's a Multi-Multimedia World | reads the legend in the original Greek. Almost all the elements are interlaced so viewers can test the conclusions and conjectures in a highly personal, intuitive way. Through text and graphics, the students address key details of Homer's story, siding with those who conclude that while the war took place, the giant wooden horse -- a gift in which Greek soldiers hid to gain entry to the walled city -- may have been more allegory than actuality. ''I guarantee you that it was lots more work, by far, than doing a term paper,'' Mr. Muirhead, a pre-med student, said. ''At the same time, it was rewarding to get to see something you don't see or benefit from with a traditional paper.'' The university agreed. Mr. Muirhead and Mr. Vidar are continuing their work on Troy this year with a special scholarship. The project can be viewed at www.iml.annenberg.edu/projects. Under the auspices of the university's Institute for Multimedia Literacy, more than 60 academic courses, including religion, philosophy and most recently medicine, now require their students to ''write'' such multimedia term papers. The institute has helped some 2,500 students realize their reports. As electronic communication grows by way of desktop computers, camcorders, the Internet and more, the way people express, educate and entertain themselves is fast evolving. The institute approaches the demystifying of the language of graphics, images, music, sound, words and color with an almost missionary zeal. ''We believe a shift is under way in which text, the prime communications medium for centuries, is giving way to a new mode of expression, one that fuses sound, moving and still images, databases and interactivity, to create a 'language of screens,''' said Stephanie Barish, the institute's executive director. It was a question posed by the filmmaker George Lucas that led to the creation of the institute in 1997. During a conversation with Elizabeth M. Daley, dean of the School of Cinema-Television, he asked: If students aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write? Mr. Lucas, who graduated from Southern California's film school in 1966, acts as a sounding board and high-profile inspiration for the institute. ''I tell you, modern corporations are using these forms of communication,'' said Mr. Lucas, whose Lucasfilm Ltd. has spawned a number of leading entertainment and entertainment-technology businesses. ''To function in |
1532447_1 | Icelandic Company Says It Has Found Osteoporosis Gene | in the United States from osteoporosis. The new finding comes at a time of particular difficulty for doctors trying to treat the disease. Supplements of estrogen, a hormone that dwindles at menopause, prevent bone loss effectively, but a group of researchers recommended last month that estrogen not be prescribed solely to treat or prevent osteoporosis because of the slightly increased risk of breast cancer for those who take it. The Food and Drug Administration has not yet issued an opinion on the issue. None of the available alternatives to estrogen is ideal, and the new gene found by Decode may help the search for better drugs. The Decode team, led by Dr. Unnur Styrkarsdottir, scanned the genomes of 207 Icelandic families with at least one member who had both low bone-mineral density and bone fractures. Searching for stretches of DNA that the patients might have inherited in common, the Decode team identified a gene on Chromosome 20 called BMP-2, for bone morphogenetic protein-2. The BMP-2 gene exists in several versions that differ very slightly in their sequence of DNA units. The Decode team found that three of these versions presented a particular risk for osteoporosis, since 30 percent of their patients had one or another of them. Carrying one of these versions does not guarantee that a person will develop osteoporosis, but it does make the risk three times as great, Dr. Stefansson said. A major question is how far the Icelandic findings will prove true in other populations. Iceland was populated from the 10th century onward by vikings from Norway who had picked up several wives apiece from Ireland. Though disease genes found in Iceland are always relevant elsewhere, Dr. Stefansson said, the population tends to have fewer variants of each gene. To capture all such variants with a diagnostic test, the gene needs to be studied elsewhere. Dr. Stefansson said the link between the BMP-2 variants and osteoporosis had been confirmed in a Danish population and was in the process of being validated in the United States in a group of women who have been studied for many years at the University of California at San Francisco. Experts in bone loss tend to be skeptical of claims that specific genes are involved in osteoporosis, because several past claims have proved exaggerated. ''So this is one more of a long list,'' said Dr. Lawrence G. Raisz, chairman of the |
1537331_1 | Congress Set to Pass Bill That Restrains Unsolicited E-Mail | some e-mail experts cautioned that it includes many concessions to the marketing industry and may have a limited impact. The bill would not allow people to sue a company that deluges them with unwanted messages, reserving that right for the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general and Internet service providers. Deferring to industry pressure, lawmakers also refused to require that commercial e-mailers include words or indicators like ''ADV,'' for advertisement, that would readily identify their messages and make them easy to filter out automatically. Perhaps the industry's biggest victory, however, is a provision in the bill that would override state laws that impose tougher restrictions on junk e-mail. California passed a highly restrictive law, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, that would have prohibited any commercial marketer from sending messages without getting approval in advance from recipients. ''We are comfortable with the agreement,'' said Gerald E. Cerasale, a top lobbyist for the Direct Marketing Association, an industry trade organization that had fought against many proposed restrictions. ''We want a bill that gives us a single federal standard so we don't have 50 separate state standards.'' Despite the many compromises, lawmakers who have been pushing for anti-spamming legislation said they supported the final compromise. ''This bill keeps getting better as it moves through the legislative process,'' said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. Mr. Schumer had been the strongest proponent of the ''do not e-mail'' registry, which is the one provision that marketing companies still oppose vehemently. In response to industry concerns, the bill merely authorizes the Federal Trade Commission to set up a national registry but does not require it. Timothy J. Muris, the commission's chairman, has already said he is skeptical of the value of such a list. If the bill becomes law, the commission would be given six months to present plans for a ''do not e-mail'' list to Congress; the legislation also instructs the commission to address the technical and practical problems such a list might create. Supporters of tougher anti-spam restrictions complained on Friday that the law could actually encourage junk e-mailers. ''The legislation legitimizes spam and will increase the volume,'' said David E. Sorkin, a law professor at the John Marshall School of Law in Chicago. ''The only saving grace is the do-not-spam registry.'' Indeed, one large bulk e-mailer said on Friday that he was relieved and enthusiastic because the bill would invalidate |
1538815_1 | Hard-Liners Gain in Northern Ireland Voting | Ian Paisley, and the Irish Republican Army's political wing, Sinn Fein. If the two groups do end up as the dominant representatives of Protestant and Catholic communities, they will be unlikely to work together in a legislative chamber. While Sinn Fein exploited the benefits of the fledgling government over the last five years, Mr. Paisley has promised to expel any of his party colleagues who deal with Sinn Fein, and is demanding that the peace deal be scrapped. Unionists are predominantly Protestant and want Northern Ireland to remain part of Great Britain. Nationalists and republicans are mostly Catholic and want Ulster to join the Republic of Ireland. Voter turnout was relatively low, at 64 percent, due to bad weather and darkness. When election officials stopped manually counting ballot papers after 12 hours on Thursday night, 43 of the Assembly's 108 seats had been allocated. With 18 seats, the Democratic Unionists swept past the 11 held by the Ulster Unionists, the province's largest party for generations, currently under the leadership of the Assembly's former first minister, David Trimble. Sinn Fein had 11 seats compared with two for the Social Democratic and Labor Party, which kick-started Northern Ireland's peace process a decade ago and was previously the largest Irish nationalist group. The Alliance Party and the Women's Coalition, small cross-community parties, may be wiped out entirely. Britain suspended the Northern Ireland Assembly and restored direct rule from London more than a year ago in response to alleged spying by the Irish Republican Army. The 108-seat body was the centerpiece of the 1998 Belfast peace accord. Prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Bertie Ahern of Ireland had hoped that the election might breathe life into the faltering political process. But a last-minute attempt to restore the Assembly in October failed, so successful candidates in the poll will take up positions that, for the moment, do not exist. The results indicate how much damage has been done over the last year to cross-community relations, and how Protestants have lost faith in the Belfast agreement that they endorsed in a 1998 referendum. Mr. Blair and Mr. Ahern are unlikely to accede to Mr. Paisley's demand for a renegotiation, but a formal review of the agreement is due to begin next month. Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy, said he would hold talks with all the parties as soon as this weekend. |
1538891_4 | The U.S. And China Test Bounds Of Trade | the current backlash against Chinese exports has taken as long as it has to develop. China's exports have nearly quintupled in the last 10 years. During the 1980's, when Japan and South Korea were similarly criticized in the United States and Europe, Japan's exports doubled and South Korea's nearly quadrupled. China's reliance on joint ventures by state-owned enterprises with multinational companies seems to have moderated the international reaction. Businesses like Dell, Nike and Wal-Mart are pulling China into the global economy, in contrast to home-grown companies like Toyota, Sony and Hyundai, which lifted Japan and South Korea out of poverty. So while corporations like Chrysler and Ford were willing to rally opposition to imports from Japan in the 1980's, using their formidable lobbying machines and union links, most big companies today are already in China and are reluctant to insult its leaders or endanger their own footholds in a fast-growing market. Without money or lobbyists from multinationals, critics of China have been slow to coalesce or gain influence. ''There hasn't been a really heavy hitter, a large company or companies, that has been able to be the bulldog against them,'' said Joan Claybrook, the president of Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group. No industry comes close to the auto industry in influence in Washington, she said, and though Detroit was active in seeking limits on Japanese imports in the 1980's, the big domestic automakers have shown little interest in China because China still exports few cars and has become an attractive auto market in its own right. Together, Japan and South Korea were able to lift nearly 180 million people out of poverty through export-led growth, before that growth slowed considerably as their financial weaknesses caught up with them. Along the way, the integration of those workers into the global economy pulled down wages and increased unemployment in some industries in the West, notably auto and steel manufacturing and shipbuilding. China presents a much greater challenge to the global economy: how to bring prosperity to 1.3 billion people without resulting in excessive dislocations in other countries. Add India's rapid growth, and economists say that it would be a real strain on the global trading system to enrich two-fifths of the world's population through strategies heavily dependent on exporting to the richest tenth of the world, the United States and Western Europe. Yet if China fails -- if the bicycle does |
1534240_2 | Superfund Job, Not Quite Finished, Frustrates a Town | slag heaps sit between the creek and a main road. ''I feel abandoned,'' said Carolyn Kauble, who lives in a modest house one block away from the site. Her husband, Phillip, died this year of cancer, having lived 60 years in the neighborhood. Before his death, Mr. Kauble, who had worked at Continental Steel, helped galvanize local and federal governments to begin cleaning up the site. ''It's been 14 years, and we haven't given up,'' Ms. Kauble said. ''It's not completed. It's not done. It's not safe.'' She still keeps blue crates, stacked four and five high, with reams of her husband's documents on the Continental Steel site. Kokomo's cleanup is delayed because federal officials do not consider pollution here severe enough to deserve high priority. ''They feel like they've taken care of the imminent threat,'' said Jolene Rule, a local environmental leader. E.P.A. officials say that the lower numbers of cleanups reflect the complexity of Superfund operations. Cleanups have become more difficult, time consuming and expensive, leaving less money for the remaining cleanups to enter the final stage. Eight large sites are taking up 40 percent of the budget devoted to final cleanup. ''We just have fewer dollars to start new projects,'' said Marianne Horinko, an associate administrator of the E.P.A. who oversees toxic cleanup. But money for cleanups may be tighter now that the industry-supported portion of Superfund, a trust created to clean up ''orphaned'' toxic sites, will essentially be depleted this year after hitting a high of almost $4.6 billion in 1996, according to recent projections by the General Accounting Office. Now cleanup funds must come from general Congressional appropriations, competing with other domestic needs. Environmental groups and Democratic senators have called for the reinstatement of the original corporate taxes that filled the Superfund coffers, which expired in 1995. But the Bush administration and industry have resisted, saying the taxes burden companies that do not pollute. To clear the backlog, the administration has asked Congress for $150 million in additional funds -- enough to jump-start 10 to 15 new cleanups. However, the Senate and the House have each appropriated only $30 million to $40 million of that request. In the four generations that the hulking Continental Steel buildings stood out against Kokomo's skyline, people coped with the red soot that snowed down regularly on their houses and cars. At one point Continental Steel, founded in 1914, employed |
1534251_2 | U.S. and Brazil Meet in Effort To Ease Coming Trade Talks | property rights, government procurement and foreign investment for the hemisphere. ''We know the limitations that exist to having an elimination of subsidies in agriculture,'' said Mr. Amorim. ''We've heard it one hundred times, and finally we understand.'' If Brazil made such a major concession, he said, then the United States would have to allow countries to opt out of new rules for intellectual property rights and the other American concerns. ''Those are global issues, too, and it may be more practical to discuss them at the World Trade Organization,'' he said. ''There must be flexibility for our areas, too.'' The two men met with 12 other North and South American ministers in informal talks setting the stage for the 34-member summit meeting. ''I think we now have a good basis for a successful meeting in Miami,'' said Mr. Amorim at a news conference after two days of meetings. While Mr. Zoellick declined to comment, one of his senior trade officials did speak to the news media after the meetings. He said the sessions had been positive and useful. Working out a temporary agreement with Brazil is a marked change in tactics for Mr. Zoellick. The American trade representative had blamed Brazil, along with other developing countries, for the breakdown of talks in Cancún, accusing them of being ''won't do'' nations that were good at making demands but poor at crafting compromises. Mr. Amorim met privately not only with Mr. Zoellick but also with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Without cooperation from Brazil, South America's largest economy, it is doubtful that the Bush administration could achieve its goal of extending the North American Free Trade Agreement to the entire hemisphere, especially with the growing protests against the agreement in the United States. Labor leaders, environmentalists and trade activists are planning to demonstrate by the tens of thousands at the Miami meeting against the current rules for free trade. A major complaint of the critics is the absence of rules in the heart of these agreements to protect the right of workers to bargain collectively and to prohibit child labor and discrimination by employers. The Bush administration asked many of the ministers visiting Washington over the weekend to call on lawmakers in Congress and express their support for free trade. ''All the ministers recognized that trade is a very sensitive issue here generally and in Congress,'' said the senior trade official. |
1534334_1 | For Colombia's Ascetic Leader, Signs That Violence Is Easing | referendum defeat denied him the greater control over state spending that he had sought. Last week, his interior minister, Fernando Londoño, blamed by some for having failed to garner enough support for the referendum, resigned. Then on Sunday night, the government announced that the defense minister, Martha Lucía Ramírez, had stepped down. The right-leaning president must now find new sources of revenue for his security program through taxes and cost-cutting measures while dealing with a redrawn political landscape that includes a more assertive Congress and a leftist mayor of the Colombian capital, Luis Eduardo Garzón. ''He has to adapt to the other reality,'' said Fernando Cepeda, a former government minister and political expert. ''He has to show flexibility. If not, he could crash.'' Colombia is far from resolving a 39-year-long conflict that is estimated to have taken 200,000 lives. Mr. Uribe is criticized by some human rights groups, foreign diplomats and members of the United States Congress, who say that his program has led to a spike in arbitrary detentions and that a proposed antiterrorism law will curb freedoms. A proposed law that would effectively grant impunity for right-wing militia members, his critics say, could be seen as rewarding rights abuses, though the government portrays it as the first step toward disarming the 13,000-member force. Mr. Uribe, who is regarded by many Bush administration officials as a dependable caretaker of United States interests, can point to some success in pacifying the country. Homicides, which topped 32,000 in the last year of the previous government, have fallen 16 percent, and kidnappings are down 22 percent. Mass killings of villagers -- what Colombia's government calls massacres -- have also dropped. The United States has spent $2.5 billion since 2000 to help Colombia combat drugs and rebels. For some time, it seemed the return on that money was slight. Now, it appears, the investment is helping to bring some results. ''President Uribe is an exceptional leader,'' said Roger F. Noriega, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. ''Our policy is working. Coca production, violence, guerrilla attacks are all down across the board over the past year, and that's a remarkable achievement.'' Colombia has pulled itself from a long recession, exceeding predictions and posting a 3 percent economic growth rate last year. Economists say that the country is beginning to restore investor confidence, largely because of Mr. Uribe's image as a prudent |
1534281_0 | Study Raises Doubt About Allergy to Genetic Corn | Remember StarLink corn? Three years ago this genetically engineered corn was found in taco shells and other foods, even though it had not been approved for human consumption. The discovery prompted food recalls and disrupted farm exports. Dozens of consumers claimed they had suffered potentially dangerous allergic reactions after eating food thought to contain the corn. But a paper appearing today in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reports that one vocal consumer who complained about allergic reactions turns out not to have been allergic to StarLink corn after all. The report casts further doubt on whether StarLink caused allergies, and it is likely to buttress contentions long made by biotechnology supporters that the dangers of StarLink were overblown. The journal article discusses the allergy testing of a 58-year-old man at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center who had complained of at least three allergic reactions to StarLink. The paper does not identify the man, and the authors declined to comment, citing medical confidentiality. But Keith A. Finger, a Florida optometrist, said in an interview that he was the subject and that he had asked to be tested. Dr. Finger, along with two others, sued the developer of StarLink and some food companies, winning a settlement in which the companies pledged to provide $6 million worth of food discount coupons. Dr. Finger said he received $10,000 because of the suit. In the test, the subject was given StarLink corn, other corn and a placebo on different days, without him or the doctors knowing which was which. There was no sign of an allergic reaction on any day. The test is the ''gold standard'' of food allergy testing, said Dr. Marc E. Rothenberg, a professor and allergy expert at the medical center and an author of the report. The new evidence, he said, ''supports the view that there was no problem in terms of allergy,'' although he said it would be better to test more people. StarLink, developed by Aventis CropScience, contained a bacterial gene to make the plant pest-resistant. It was withdrawn from the market, even for its previously approved use as animal feed. StarLink Logistics, a company Aventis set up to handle legal claims, had no comment Friday. But even the new results are not likely to lay the issue completely to rest. Scientists still cannot predict in many cases whether a genetically modified food will cause allergies. And |
1536318_0 | Political Will Can Stop the Plant | More than a year ago, this page urged Gov. George Pataki and his environmental conservation commissioner, Erin Crotty, to put an end to plans to build an enormous new cement plant on the east bank of the Hudson River just south of Hudson, N.Y. Since then, the mills of bureaucratic procedure have continued to grind exceedingly fine, as they have since the construction of this plant was first proposed. It has been some two and a half years since St. Lawrence Cement completed its application to the Department of Environmental Conservation. Nearly every significant aspect of the plant's impact must be adjudicated before a final decision can be reached. The bureaucratic landscape changes slowly, but it does change. But certain basic facts about the proposed plant and its majority shareholder, Holcim, have not changed, and as a result, the opposition to it only grows as time passes. The new plant would be an enormous eyesore -- an industrial city -- in a region increasingly dependent on cultural tourism and in a county that is prospering compared with counties where cement plants already exist. The St. Lawrence cement plant would unleash a plume of pollutants endangering everyone downwind, including residents of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine. And it would yield, by St. Lawrence Cement's own assessment, only one new job because its Catskill plant would close. To those basic facts, we would also add the fact that Holcim, a Swiss company, has been repeatedly fined for safety and environmental violations at its North American plants. What has prevented the construction of this plant so far is the orderly operation of state environmental laws and determined resistance from residents and from government officials in states that lie downwind. But to kill this plant dead will take political will. Governor Pataki has taken the environmental preservation of the Hudson River to heart. And he has taken the initiative of intervening directly on behalf of the environment. It is time for him to intervene directly again. |
1536323_5 | Fewer Airline Passengers, But More-Crowded Planes | travel agency All About Travel, says she has stopped putting on makeup on board because there is not enough room to maneuver. And Alin Boswell, a flight attendant for 15 years with US Airways, has noticed a lot more silent jousting among passengers. ''The fight over the armrest between two grown adults is hysterical,'' he said. And he has had to increase his vigilance at the bathroom in the first-class compartment to enforce a ban on lines that run back to the cockpit. He says he gets lots of dirty looks and even unpleasant comments from passengers he orders back to their seats. Mr. Boswell says he has also witnessed the evaporation of the good will that flourished right after the terrorist attacks. ''That lasted for about three weeks,'' he said. ''It used to be, 'God bless you.' Now it's, 'Why did it take you so long?''' The problem is not just full planes, it is also thin staffs, said Dawn Deeks, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, which represents 40,000 employees at 26 airlines. ''Domestic flights that used to be staffed by 8 are now staffed by 5,'' she said. ''International flights that used to be staffed by 11 or 12 flight attendants are now down to 7 or 8.'' Consequently, she said, ''Safety and security come first and the little niceties aren't there.'' Planes are bursting with luggage as well -- to the consternation of frequent fliers who reminisce about the abundance of storage space in the good old days of just a few months ago. ''When a plane is 100 percent full, if I'm in the fifth or sixth row and everyone starts to put their baggage on board wherever, I have to put my stuff all the way in the back,'' complained Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition. ''Then I have to wait until everyone gets off and walk to the back -- then I'm the last to get off. The system wasn't designed to support this kind of load factor.'' The overhead-bin issue can only get worse, as passengers trundle on with heavy coats, hats and scarves. ''I've definitely seen people fight over overhead space,'' Mr. Boswell, the flight attendant, said. ''It's the end of the world for some people not getting a space above their seat.'' Readers are invited to send stories about business travel experiences to businesstravel@nytimes.com. BUSINESS TRAVEL |
1531785_3 | Union Raises Questions After Collapse | Resort project said that the focus of the investigation was on the support system used to keep the concrete stable at the 10-story garage while it was hardening. Wood or steel shoring must be installed to hold the wet concrete until it initially dries. Parts of these support materials used to form the shape of the concrete must then be left in place for 14 to 28 days, a period during which the concrete ''cures'' and gains a much greater capacity to hold weight. Engineering laboratories are used to test the concrete that is poured at a site. A spokesman for the laboratory on the Tropicana job, Site-Blauvelt of Mount Laurel, N.J., said only that the company was cooperating with the investigation. The collapse on Thursday had some similarities to an accident at the Tropicana site in October 2002; three laborers were injured as they installed a batch of wet concrete. A prefabricated piece of concrete that was installed as part of the floor cracked under the weight of the fresh concrete, and the three fell to the ground as if a trap door had opened. Because the structure was just getting under way, the fall was not far. Fabi Construction was fined by the federal government for a series of safety violations related to the accident, including insufficient rigging equipment and fall safety protection, and the company is challenging those fines. But a spokeswoman for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a branch of the federal Labor Department, said she was unaware if the investigators had sought to determine exactly why the floor had collapsed as they focused instead on safety rules that might have been broken. ''Our mission is not necessarily to find the cause,'' said Kate Dugan, a spokeswoman for OSHA. ''We find any violations of OSHA law on site.'' Ms. Daley, the Fabi contract administrator, said she believed the two accidents were not related. Friday night, little of the focus was on these kinds of questions, as the urgent matter was removing the free-standing wall. Buses were lined up outside the Brighton Towers apartment building, where about 160 residents live, so they could be moved to a nearby casino hotel while the wall was demolished. The residents, a mixture of retirees and casino workers, were resigned to the move. ''You do what you got to do,'' said Nina Tyler, sitting in the lobby in a wheelchair. |
1533043_0 | Free Trade Won't Free Cuba | According to our state television, the Castro regime was pleased that the United States Senate passed an amendment easing restrictions on American citizens traveling to Cuba. This was no surprise. Just days before the vote, Fidel Castro met here with a group of American travel agents. Both sides are impatient to make business deals in tourism on our island. But how much this would really benefit Cubans outside the top Communist Party leadership remains to be seen. Democratic dissidents here are divided on the travel ban and the American trade embargo. But there is unanimity that the Cuban government does not deserve any sort of reward now, just half a year after it carried out the worst crackdown on the opposition in decades -- the arrest of 75 dissidents, who were quickly given prison terms of up to 28 years. Of course, American lawmakers have the right to defend the freedom of movement for their citizens, and American farmers understandably want to sell agricultural products to whomever they wish. But the assertion by lawmakers that they want to lift the obstacles to travel and trade for the good of average Cubans rings false. ''Unilateral sanctions stop not just the flow of goods, but the flow of ideas,'' said Senator Michael Enzi of Wyoming, a sponsor of the bill. ''Ideas of freedom and democracy are the keys to positive change in any nation.'' The problem is that when it comes to Cuba, the flow of ideas, not to mention people, is hardly free. Sharing ideas can land you in jail, and one has to ask the government for a permit to travel abroad -- and if you are a dissident, the chances of getting one are almost zero. My husband, Osvaldo Alfonso Valdes, has always been denied travel because he has headed the Democratic Liberal Party of Cuba. In addition, freedom to trade with the United States is a privilege reserved for those who belong to the Communist Party nomenklatura. Merely selling newspapers in the streets or refilling cigarette lighters without a permit can get you arrested and fined. My husband's party's platform calls for freedom of movement and free markets. For the next 18 years, however, my husband's movement will be reduced to the two square yards of his cell in the high-security prison at Guanajay. He was one of the first of the 75 dissidents detained in March, just |
1533077_0 | Terrorists in Kenya Killings Posed as Fishermen, a Report Says | The terrorists who attacked an Israeli resort and an airliner along the Kenyan coast last November posed as lobstermen while they smuggled missiles and other weapons from Somalia aboard a wooden boat, according to a United Nations report. The report, a detailed study of the arms flow into Somalia, was delivered to the United Nations Sanctions Committee this week, but has not yet been made public. It provides the most comprehensive look to date at the attacks, linked to Al Qaeda, that killed 12 Kenyans, 3 Israelis and at least 2 suicide bombers at a hotel full of Israeli tourists in Mombasa, Kenya. An attack against an airliner carrying Israelis home failed when the missiles missed their target. The study describes how the terrorists prepared for more than a year for the Nov. 28, 2002, attacks. In their pose as fishermen, they conducted surveillance for months along the coastline, becoming familiar figures who raised no suspicions when they later turned to weapons smuggling. The SA-7B missiles used in the Mombasa attack came either from Yemen, a major source of smuggled arms in Somalia, or Eritrea, which had made an arms shipment to one of the major Somali warlords in 1998, according to the study. The experts who compiled the report concluded that the missiles, the launchers and probably the explosives used all entered Somalia in violation of an arms embargo imposed by the Security Council in 1992. Somalia, which has a long, largely unpatrolled coastline, has been without a central government since 1991. ''Due to violations of the arms embargo, transnational terrorists have been able to obtain not only small arms but also man-portable air defense systems, light antitank weapons and explosives,'' the report said. ''The panel has determined that it remains relatively easy to obtain surface-to-air missiles and import them to Somalia.'' According to the report, the Mombasa terrorists smuggled the missiles and the launchers by boat from Somalia to Kenya in August 2002, several months before the attack. The missiles had been manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1978 and sold to Yemen in 1994. The launchers originated in Bulgaria in 1993 and were sold to Yemen that year. Four separate groups took part in the Mombasa attack, the experts found. One cell remained in Mogadishu, Somalia, another attacked the hotel while a third went to the Mombasa airport. A fourth group went to Lamu, an island off |
1535425_0 | Miller Denies Aide's Claim Of a Bid For City Hall | As e-mail messages go, it sounded innocent enough: Council Speaker Gifford Miller was looking to hire a communications director, and possibly a press secretary, as he prepared to make a run for mayor in 2005. The only problem was that Mr. Miller has always been coy about any mayoral intentions. And yesterday he promptly issued a denial of the message, which had been sent out by an aide -- without actually denying anything. In a written statement, prefaced by the line ''Re: E-mail Gate,'' Mr. Miller wrote: ''I am focused on my job as speaker. I have made no decisions on my future. It was an unauthorized e-mail from a staffer whose judgment is so poor he wouldn't go on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy when he had the opportunity to, and he clearly needs to.'' The staffer in question was Fred Baldassaro, 29, the speaker's deputy director of communications. A few months back, Mr. Baldassaro had earned a mention in the Page Six column in The New York Post after Mr. Miller tried to get him on the ''Queer Eye'' show, which has five gay men giving fashion and household makeovers to straight men. (Mr. Baldassaro later declined to fill out the show's questionnaire.) During his lunch hour on Thursday, Mr. Baldassaro wrote an e-mail message from a personal account. It began: ''Hey everybody, My boss, New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, is looking for a communications director and possibly a press secretary. The Speaker is preparing to make a run for Mayor in 2005 and we're revamping and reorganizing the office to get ready.'' Mr. Baldassaro, who previously worked on Al Gore's 2000 campaign, then sent the message to a Yahoo newsgroup for other Gore alumni, which lists more than 200 people. But an hour and a half later, he apparently changed his mind and sent out another message asking people to disregard the first one. ''I've taken a vow of silence,'' Mr. Baldassaro said yesterday. His e-mail message, though, was the talk of City Hall as it was circulated among reporters, council members, lobbyists and others in the insular world of New York City politics. Even though the election is still two years away, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said that he will seek re-election, and Fernando Ferrer, who made unsuccessful runs in 1997 and 2001, has also expressed interest. ''It's November, but it feels |
1535358_0 | Fidel's Triumph on Capitol Hill | In the debate over how to export American values to Cuba, Congressional leaders have managed to import some of Fidel Castro's values. That old tyrant in Havana is the prime beneficiary of the decision this week to drop a measure that would have effectively lifted the ban on travel to Cuba. He can now go on railing against Yankee imperialism, trying to pin the blame for all of his regime's shortcomings and brutality on American sanctions. The measure to lift the travel ban was dropped as House and Senate conferees met to reconcile their spending bills for the Transportation and Treasury Departments. On Cuba, however, there was nothing to reconcile: both chambers' provisions were identical. A Congressional staff member explained the maneuver as a way to spare the White House an embarrassment. President Bush did not want to have to veto the legislation in order to woo Cuban-American voters in Florida, subverting foreign policy principles applied to much of the rest of the world. Perhaps Congressman Jeff Flake, a conservative Republican from Arizona who has been a leader in the fight to lift the travel ban, best explained the lamentable politics behind the week's antics: ''For the same reason we will never have a rational farm policy as long as presidential campaigns begin in Iowa, we will never have a rational Cuba policy as long as presidential campaigns are perceived to end in Florida.'' |
1538628_0 | Hearing Aid and Cellphone Call a Truce | Wireless technology has not been kind to most people who wear hearing aids: because the older models lack internal shields to segregate digital frequencies, the devices are vulnerable to interference from cellphones. As a result, some 12 million people around the world are said to hear a buzz or static during cellphone conversations. Myers Johnson, a San Francisco company focusing on products that give the hearing-impaired better access to telecommunications, has developed an antenna to banish the annoying garble. The Vortis antenna clips onto the phone and reduces the amount of energy the phone emits laterally toward the user's head, reducing interference and improving clarity. The antenna also increases the phone's signal strength by redirecting the energy toward the front and rear of the user, the company says. The antenna, which is expected to reach stores by the end of the year at a suggested price of $79.95, will work with a variety of Nokia phones, and Myers Johnson says it is working with other cellphone manufacturers on potential compatibility. More information on the antenna is available at www.thevortis.com. Myers Johnson says it is preparing a special service package that will include a free phone. For more details, send a message to info@thevortis.com. Marc Weingarten NEWS WATCH: COMMUNICATION |
1538697_0 | World Briefing | Europe: Choice Of France For Reactor Draws Anger | Experimental physics does not usually rouse passions, but the European Union's decision to back a French site as the European candidate for a $5 billion nuclear fusion reactor has left Spanish opposition leaders fuming. Socialist Party leaders cast the decision, which passed over a less costly Spanish proposal, as punishment for Prime Minister José María Aznar's support of the American-led war in Iraq. France, Spain, Japan and Canada have proposed sites for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which would produce the first sustained fusion reactions. The plant would generate thousands of jobs. An international consortium that includes China, the United States, Russia, South Korea and Japan, is expected to decide next month which country will build the reactor. Dale Fuchs (NYT) |
1538997_1 | America's Sugar Daddies | is equally energetic in backing Republicans, so all bases are covered. The Fanjuls harvest 180,000 acres in South Florida that send polluted water into the Everglades. (A crucial part of their business over the years has been to lobby not just against liberalization of the sugar trade, but against plans to have the sugar industry pay its fair share of the ambitious $8 billion Everglades restoration project.) The Fanjuls had been Cuba's leading sugar family for decades before Fidel Castro's takeover. Crossing the Straits of Florida, they bought land in the vicinity of Lake Okeechobee, which feeds the Everglades, and imported platoons of poorly paid Caribbean migrant workers. Their business was aided by the embargo on Cuban sugar. The crop is protected from other competition by an intricate system of import quotas that dates back to 1981. The government does not pay sugar producers income supports as it does many other kinds of farmers. Instead, it guarantees growers like the Fanjuls an inflated price by restricting supply. Only about 15 percent of American sugar is imported under the quota rules, and while the world price is about 7 cents a pound, American businesses that need sugar to make their products must pay close to 21 cents. Preserving this spread between domestic and world sugar prices costs consumers an estimated $2 billion a year, and nets the Fanjuls -- who have been called the first family of corporate welfare -- tens of millions annually. The sugar exporters who are able to sell to the United States also benefit from those astronomical prices. The Dominican Republic is the largest quota holder, and one of the big plantation owners there is -- surprise -- the Fanjul family. The sugar situation hurts American businesses and consumers, but its worst impact is on the poor countries that try to compete in the global agricultural markets. Their farmers might never be able to compete with corn or wheat farmers in the United States, even if the playing field were leveled. But they can grow cotton and sugar at lower prices than we can, no matter how advanced our technology. Our poorer trading partners bitterly resent the way this country feels entitled to suspend market-driven rules whenever it appears they will place American producers at a disadvantage. In fairness, the United States is not alone in distorting the sugar trade, and the European Union's massively subsidized exports |
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1537773_6 | A Struggle to Keep the Recycling Bin Full | as easy as possible for people to do the right thing.'' In the towns of Southampton, Southold and Shelter Island, residents are given a choice about what to do with their garbage; hire a private carter or dispose of it themselves at pay-as-you-throw waste and recycling centers. In Southampton, about half the residents use carters and half bring their trash and recyclables to the town's four centers, according to Judith McCleery, Southampton's recycling coordinator. ''It's a free market system,'' Ms. McCleery said. ''They can get the best price from the carters. If they don't like those prices, they can do it themselves.'' After a 25 percent bump in recyclables collected in 1995, the first year of the program, the town's recycling rate has remained about the same, Ms. McCleery said. Southampton also offers its residents a do-it-yourself composting device for about $40, to reduce yard waste, the single largest component in Long Island's recycled garbage. The Town of North Hempstead recovered nearly 24,000 tons of yard waste last year, more than double the amount of newspaper, bottles and cans combined. In 1994, the Town of East Hampton built an indoor composting plant to process its yard waste. ''It doesn't make any sense to landfill yard waste when you've got thousands of gardeners who can never get enough compost,'' said Peter Garnham, a former recycling information officer for the Town of East Hampton. But who needs old tires, leaky batteries or oil-soaked rags? These items are not as easily recycled as yard waste, and it costs money to collect, sort and transport them as well. ''We spend millions of dollars a year on solid waste management,'' said Phil Nolan, director of environmental waste for the Town of Huntington. ''We get about $370 per year from each property to pay for all this.'' Dr. Swanson said that over the long term, recycling will have a positive effect by not depleting natural resources. But he said the idea that recycling can turn garbage into gold is unrealistic, given the costs of collection and the volatility of markets. ''The economic argument for recycling has been very detrimental to the cause,'' Dr. Swanson said. ''I don't think it will ever be a money maker, but it might offset the cost of disposal.'' Ms. McCleery agreed. ''Recycling is still a cost avoidance for us,'' she said. ''Even when the markets are down, we think it pays.'' |
1537701_0 | A Canadian Drama: Exit Bears, Pursued by Humans | A hiker came face to face with a grizzly bear in August while walking on the wooded trail to Crowfoot Glacier. Tiptoeing backward in a cautious retreat, the young man tripped on a tree root, and the bear pounced. But it was the hiker who showed the most ferocity. He growled and punched the bear in the nose, forcing the confused creature into retreat, recalled a senior park warden who investigated the case. Banff National Park is normally a tranquil tableau of soaring mountains, shimmering glacier lakes and spectacular hiking trails through white spruce and pine forests. But this can also quickly become a wild place -- even in Banff, where one grizzly bear walked through the shopping district last year and another ate an elk calf on the edge of town a few months ago. Every year hikers and mountain bikers bump into grizzly bears in the woods or find one of the potentially ferocious creatures going after the leftovers of a barbecue dinner at their campsite. While wildlife and humans increasingly come in contact as the human habitat expands farther into the wilderness, experts say it is a particular problem here. No one has died from an encounter with a grizzly in the park since 1980, according to Parks Canada, and the last serious episode was in 1995 when a bear mauled four campers, sending them to the hospital. But with five million people visiting the park every year and highway traffic increasing by 40 percent on the Trans-Canada Highway alone over the last decade, and still growing, this marquee animal of Canada's marquee national park is the creature in the most trouble. All too often bears are being crushed by vehicles and trains, and the busier and noisier the roads and railway tracks through the park become, the greater the disruption of the bears' habitat as they search for berries and other food and pursue their mating habits. Increasing contact with humans makes bears more dangerous to people, but it also puts them in more danger, experts note. Bears who lose their wariness are three times as likely to be hit by a car or otherwise die from causes related to humans. ''We're sitting on an edge,'' said Ed Abbott, resource conservation manager of the Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay National Parks, referring to the survival of the grizzlies here. ''When you are on an edge it |
1537799_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1537806_1 | Let's Flag Modified Food | about when shopping at the green market. No, I'm not talking about just a gentle probing touch aimed at steering clear of a mealy bruised apple or a rock-hard arid-fleshed pear (although there are plenty of those), I'm referring to the need for an informed watchfulness to avoid I the supermarket shelf's latest triumph of science: genetically modified organisms. As a parent I am worried that genetically modified organisms or G.M.O.'s may find their way into my son's tomato sandwich or his vegetable sticks at lunch, and that they could prove harmful in the long run. After all, the idea of forcing a fish gene into a vegetable, as has recently been done, raises some concerns with even the least squeamish of us. There seems to be no reliable information available about whether these genetically engineered species are truly safe and, except for the extra pricey G.M.O.-free organic items, there is no way for me to know whether the potatoes in my shopping cart are products of a farm or a laboratory somewhere. The other morning, however, a small green flag popping up among the fallen leaves on my neighbor's lawn may just have presented an answer to this problem. Thanks to a recent law passed in Albany and here in Westchester County, when residents have pesticides applied to their lawns they have to notify their neighbors, and as such put up small warning flags (like the green one in my neighbor's lawn) to notify dog walkers, children playing and other visitors that potentially dangerous chemicals are present. Rather than banning the use of pesticides, which most homeowners with lawns find beneficial, if not indispensable, the law makes sure everyone has the information they need to take whatever precautions they see fit. The manufacturers of the pesticides must also disclose information to the public about the chemicals through a state agency. Why not ensure that consumers choosing produce and farmers choosing which crops to grow have the information they need to make an informed decision about whether to buy or grow genetically modified organisms? By making objective, scientifically sound information available, the guesswork and fear can be taken off the shelves and out of the farm. It sure would make the transition from summer markets to winter aisles much easier and just might put some parents' worried minds, like mine, to rest. SOAPBOX Luke Brussel, a lawyer, lives in Larchmont. |
1537510_3 | Visions of Dollars Dance Before Cuban Artists' Eyes | the United States, exhibitions in American galleries, gallery representation and cash from collectors. Meanwhile, American tour groups have been coming to Cuba to visit the homes of artists and buy their work. These artists have cachet in Cuba, and they also have financial clout as important attractions at a time when Cuba has come to rely on tourism as its primary industry. Some people attending the biennial lament such commercialization. Teresa Iturralde represents several Cuban artists at her Los Angeles space, the Iturralde Gallery. ''Young artists here are creating art to sell,'' she said. ''They saw what happened at the last biennials, and they are making what they think people want to buy, and it's a little disappointing.'' Among the Cuban artists Ms. Iturralde represents are Raúl Cordero, Fernando Rodríguez and Juan Carlos Alon, whose works command prices from $1,000 to $10,000. In a country where surgeons earn approximately $20 a month, this is an enormous amount of money. To get these prices, an artist must have a name, an individuality that is in opposition to the values of socialism. After the revolution of 1959, artists in Cuba like the painter Raúl Martínez or the multimedia artist Alberto Blanco contributed their talents to community projects. They designed posters and billboards to be disseminated around Cuba advertising Cuban films, giving health advice and encouraging the sugar cane harvest. At the last biennial (which in Cuba does not occur every two years as the name implies; the last one was in 2000), groups of Cuban artists, brought together by René Francisco Rodríguez, collaborated on installations at El Morro, a 16th-century fort. This year, no such collaboration took place. Mr. Francisco, whose biennial exhibition is at the Museo de Bellas Artes, has been invited to the United States several times for shows and to colleges as a visiting artist. He believes that for the Cuban artists the motivation is not just money but also international recognition. ''When the U.S. says 'yes' to your art, it matters,'' he said. ''But it's too bad in a way. The work here used to be radical and more in the streets for the Cuban people. Now, the art is made more for New York City.'' Because of his success as an artist, Mr. Francisco could live anywhere he wants in the world, but he stays in Havana because, he says, he has a much higher standard of |
1537441_6 | What the Dreadnoughts Did | on Jellicoe's cautious approach, which Massie argues was unfair. If anyone messed up at Jutland, it was Beatty, who suffered heavy losses against an inferior enemy. This was to be the only full-scale clash between the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet. For most of the war, the two armadas, afraid of mines, submarines and each other, stayed in port. Britain carried on the naval war with a small number of ships that maintained a North Sea blockade designed to starve Germany into submission. The Kaiser finally decided to return the favor in 1917 by unleashing unrestricted submarine warfare to strangle Britain. The effort almost succeeded. But in the end, the entry of America into the war and the use of simple U-boat countermeasures like convoys turned the tide. After a last-gasp offensive on the Western Front in 1918, Germany collapsed. Naval power did not prove decisive to the outcome, in part because both sides were constrained, until late in the war, by a relatively traditional view of how war at sea should be fought. Massie's concluding chapters can be read as the story of how that traditional view was discarded in favor of a more brutal -- and more modern -- perspective. In the early days, when U-boats spotted a merchant ship, they would surface, inspect its papers and, if it was found to be carrying Allied supplies, blow it up -- though only after making sure that the passengers had safely debarked into lifeboats. This approach may have been morally laudable, but it was militarily ineffective: surfaced U-boats were highly vulnerable to attack. The British even exploited German chivalry by building Q-ships, antisubmarine vessels disguised as innocent merchant ships. The German resolve to abide by international law had begun to crack as early as 1915, when a U-boat sank the Lusitania with 1,265 passengers aboard. By 1917 all scruples had been cast aside: U-boats started sinking civilian ships with no warning, and some even opened fire on survivors in the water. The gallantry of the war's early years had died. As the historian Michael Roberts once wrote in another context, ''The road lay open, broad and straight, to the abyss of the 20th century.'' Max Boot, the Olin senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of ''The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.'' |
1537805_0 | Winning's Not No. 1 to This Team | MAX MAKSIMYADIS stands at the ice hockey net with the confident air of a 16-year-old who is cool and able on the rink. Forget the fact that he can't hold a stick and wears a splint on one leg. He's a good enough goalie, one of his coaches contends, that he could play high school junior varsity. Many of his teammates handle the puck and shoot with ease, while others teeter, fight to stand or move with the unfocused look of young people in an unfamiliar setting. It's a typical Sunday afternoon at the Westchester Skating Academy here, which means a team that is far from typical is on the ice. They're called the Raptors. They're a squad for people with special needs. With them, hockey is about a lot of things, but probably last is the scoreboard. ''When they walk off the ice, win, lose or draw, they feel like they've accomplished something,'' said Patty Nadolske of Mamaroneck, club co-president and mother of Brian, who has Down syndrome. Brian, 20, is an original member of the team, which was founded seven years ago and has grown to include 30 players (four female), ages 7 to 27. Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder are among the players' disabilities. ''The behavior range is from stem to stern,'' said Esther Gueft of Ossining, Max Maksimyadis's mother. ''For us, it's normal.'' The Raptors don't offer a cure for disabilities. But they do offer a refuge where progress isn't just possible but it's the norm. Disabled people often have trouble with social interaction and self-esteem and can be helped through sports, said Dr. Stephen Cowan, a doctor in Croton-on-Hudson, who has a subspecialty in developmental pediatrics. ''It's very, very important to participate, not just win,'' he said. ''Any program that enhances self-esteem in a child with disabilities is bound to be of long-term benefit.'' Julie Knitter, the director of occupational therapy at the Blythedale Children's Hospital in Valhalla, agreed. The goals of the program are social and recreational, she said, adding: ''It has also served a very therapeutic function. It has done phenomenal things.'' Ms. Knitter became involved with Max's therapy when he was about 6 months old. He has cerebral palsy and hemi paresis, making movement on his right side abnormal. In fact, his blocker, the flat glove goalies wear, has to be taped to his right arm. Unlike |
1537470_14 | The Disability Gulag | gulag. As age brought disabilities, she got my cousin Mary Neil to move in. Grandmother had enough money to see her through, but not if it had to purchase lots of long-term care. The state's only solution was to make her poor and then foot the big bill for lockup in a nursing home. The nursing home is the gulag's face for people like Dave, me and Grandmother. That is where the imperatives of Medicaid financing drive us, sometimes facilitated by hospital discharge planners, ''continuum of care'' contracts or social-service workers whose job is to ''protect vulnerable adults.'' Pushed by other financing mechanisms, people with cognitive disabilities land in ''state schools,'' and the psychiatrically uncured and chronic are Ping-Ponged in and out of hospitals or mired in board-and-care homes. For all these groups, the disability rights critique identified a common structure that needlessly steals away liberty as the price of care. In 1984, the general thinking couldn't go beyond nicer, smaller, ''homier'' institutions. With my experience as a high-maintenance, low-budget crip surviving outside the gulag, I offered myself in local meetings, hearings and informal discussions as an independent living poster girl. I explained that certain states, like New York, Massachusetts, Colorado and California, offer in-home services. But, people said, South Carolina is a conservative state. I talked up the need for comprehensive civil rights legislation. Extend Section 504's principles to all levels of government and the private sector. It'll never happen, people said. The civil rights era has passed. We got civil rights legislation -- the Americans With Disabilities Act -- in 1990. It's a fluke, people said. It won't be enforced. In 1995, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the A.D.A. bans segregation. Needless isolation of people with disabilities in institutions is segregation. That's a liberal circuit, people said. The Supreme Court will reverse. In 1999, the Supreme Court, in Olmstead v. L.C., affirmed that needless institutional confinement violates the A.D.A. Fine, but it's just words on paper, people said. The financing still drives us into institutions. That's very true. But the movement has been treating Olmstead rights as if they're real, using the court's legitimacy to demand a wide variety of programs, like in-home care, on-call and backup help, phone monitoring, noninstitutional housing options, independent-living-skills training and assistive technology. We're also going after red tape, legal restrictions and the mind-set that says |
1537770_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1534391_0 | How Much Nature Is Enough? | Even some ardent conservationists acknowledge that the diversity of life on Earth cannot be fully sustained as human populations expand, use more resources, nudge the climate and move weedlike pests and predators from place to place. Given that some losses are inevitable, the debate among many experts has shifted to an uncomfortable subject: what level of loss is acceptable. The discussion is taking place at both the local and global levels: How small can a fragment of an ecosystem be and still function in all its richness, and thus be considered preserved? And as global biodiversity diminishes, is it a valid fallback strategy to bank organisms and genes in zoos, DNA banks or the like, or does this simply justify more habitat destruction? Is nature on ice a sufficient substitute for the real thing? Some conservation groups have strenuously avoided or even attacked such calculations and strategies. They say there is no safe diminution of habitat as long as human understanding of ecology is as sketchy as it is; a fallback strategy is unthinkable. Furthermore, banking nature in a deep freeze or database of gene sequences cannot capture context. For instance, even if a vanished bird was someday reconstituted from its genes, would it warble with the same fluency as its ancestors? On the other side of the debate, those considering what the smallest viable habitats are or how to expand archives as an insurance policy say that recent trends have proved that old conservation strategies are no longer sufficient. A few decades ago, the issue seemed fairly uncomplicated: identify biological ''hot spots'' or species of concern and establish as many reserves as possible. But the picture has grown murky. Twenty-four years ago, Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy and other biologists began a remarkable experiment on the fast-eroding fringe of rain forest near the Brazilian city of Manaus. They established 11 forest tracts, ranging from 2.5 to 250 acres, each surrounded by an isolating sea of pasture similar to what is advancing around most other tropical forests. Among the many findings, an analysis published last week on birds in the lower layers of greenery found that it would take a fragment measuring at least 2,500 acres -- 10 times as large as the biggest one in the experiment -- to prevent a decline of 50 percent in those bird varieties in just 15 years or so. In the understated language of |
1534501_0 | A Baggage Lock for You And the Federal Screeners | AIRLINE passengers will be able to lock checked bags confidently again starting tomorrow, thanks to a new customer-service initiative between private enterprise and the Transportation Security Administration. Here's how the plan will work: Several major luggage and lock retailers in the United States will announce tomorrow the availability of new locks, made by various manufacturers, that T.S.A. inspectors will be able to readily identify and open on checked bags selected for hand searches at airports. T.S.A. screeners in airports around the country have already been trained in using secure procedures to open the new certified locks when necessary, and relock them after inspecting bags. ''Literally since we began the process of screening every checked bag for explosives in December, one of the challenges has been the ability to get into bags without doing damage to them,'' said Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the T.S.A. The system, developed in cooperation with the T.S.A. and the Travel Goods Association, a trade group, was designed around ''a common set of standards that any company that manufactures, or is interested in manufacturing, luggage or luggage locks could follow that would allow T.S.A. screeners to open the bag without doing damage to the bag, in a manner that would allow the bag to stay secured afterwards,'' Mr. Turmail said. ''In other words, we can open it, but no one else can.'' The locks will be available in various manufacturers' designs. All will be geared around a uniform technology allowing them to be opened by T.S.A. inspectors using a combination of secure codes and special tools, according to John W. Vermilye, a former airline baggage-systems executive who developed the system through Travel Sentry, a company he set up for that purpose. All the locks will carry a red diamond-shaped logo to certify to screeners that they meet the Travel Sentry standards. Mr. Vermilye said his company would receive royalties from manufacturers. The system will ensure that passengers using the locks will not have to worry about a lock being broken or a locked bag being damaged if it is selected for hand inspection. It will also mean more peace of mind for passengers worried about reports of increased pilferage from unlocked bags. ''The general feeling of airline passengers is, 'I don't like to have to keep my bags unlocked,''' added Mr. Vermilye, who once worked as a baggage handler. ''As somebody in the business for 30 |
1539390_0 | Scotland Takes Action To Halt Drop In Population | Scotland's baby bust is echoing noisily in the political system. For five years running, Scotland has recorded more deaths than births and now has the lowest birthrate in Britain. Figures released this summer showed that Scotland experienced its lowest birthrate since it began keeping records 150 years ago. In 1971, 86,728 babies were born in Scotland; in 2002, the number fell to 51,270. Over that time the fertility rate fell to 1.49 from 2.53. At the same time, people in Scotland -- once booming with gritty, industrial, life-shortening jobs -- are living much longer. Just 13 years ago, a man could expect to live to be 61.1. Today, the figure is 72.3. The long-term consequences of a baby bust are well known: a bankrupt pension system; sky-high health care costs, especially in Scotland, where the elderly receive free nursing-home care; a shortage of skilled workers; and a diminished pool of brainpower. In some cases, the effects of the population downturn are immediate, especially after so many years of emigration. Glasgow, for example, is closing 25 primary schools in the next two years, and only partly because of a population shift to the suburbs. ''The falling birthrate is a challenge to the country of Scotland,'' said Charles Gordon, the leader of the Glasgow City Council. ''It has to be offset or it's a bit of a demographic time bomb.'' Spain and Italy also have very low birthrates, but Scotland stands apart because it is not a magnet for immigrants and has suffered from a faltering economy. Experts are not quite certain why Scotland's birthrate has fallen so drastically, but they speculate that the same reasons apply here as they do in other countries: more women entering the work force and postponing motherhood, more young people attending universities, and contraception. The slumping economy may also be discouraging couples from having children, they said. Jack McConnell, who is Scotland's first minister, has announced a series of initiatives aimed at luring back Scottish expatriates and increasing the population. The initiatives focus on promoting Scotland abroad, persuading graduating foreign university students to stay in Scotland and courting immigrants, though that may be risky politically. He is in discussions with the British Home Office in London to steer legal immigrants to Britain up north to Scotland and away from the already glutted sections of England, where they often settle as they congregate with relatives, friends and |
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1539342_1 | Ideas & Trends; Well, It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time | was monumental. It radically expanded the ability of Homo sapiens to think about what is true and not true. If the criterion is magnitude of impact, the addition of logic to the human cognitive repertoire has few rivals. But logic was too dazzlingly compelling for its own good. After Aristotle, the Greek natural philosophers (''natural'' referring to what we think of as science) fell in love with the idea that a few elegantly simple premises, combined with deductive logic, could reveal the truths of the universe. Empiricism, which previously had maintained a rough balance with theory, lost ground. Natural philosophy became a smaller part of the total intellectual enterprise, overshadowed by moral philosophy. We can't be sure of the full magnitude of the loss, but it can be argued that the Greeks at the time of Aristotle were on the edge of producing the Scientific Revolution then and there. So the possibility arises that Aristotle, the same man who did so much to bring science to that edge, also supplied the tool that distracted his successors from taking the last little step and deflected science into a 2,000-year cul-de-sac. Isaac Newton's discovery of the laws of motion and of universal gravity is another candidate for a supremely wonderful achievement with consequences run amok. When Newton published the ''Principia'' in 1687, the scientific community was still small, despite the pioneering work that had already been done. In the broader society, science was not yet held in especially high regard. The idea that science might have a role in guiding everyday human affairs was barely a topic of conversation. The ''Principia'' dramatically changed all that. It explained how nature worked on a universal scale, linking terrestrial and celestial physics under one set of laws with a precision that seemed almost magical. Over the next 50 years, reason -- meaning scientific reason as we know it today, in which logic and empirical evidence are joined -- became the reigning intellectual paradigm. Reason's potential to allow humans to understand the workings of nature and the cosmos was seen as unlimited. So far, so good. But the Newton worshipers -- it is hard to exaggerate the incandescence of his reputation on the Continent as well as in Britain -- decided that what could be known of the motion of bodies could be known as well of humans. Man could remake the world from scratch by |
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1539133_3 | To Draw a Bridge | and thin but stable enough to hold the curvy deck of the bridge together. Unlike most bridges, Calatrava's well-regarded Alamillo Bridge in Seville has just one supporting tower. The mast is angled, leaning back from the water and, with visible tension, carrying the roadway by its cables. Building on this idea, early studies for the Jerusalem bridge suggested a straight incline, sticking up like a hand on a clock. This, he realized, would create too much pull on the pylon. A second incarnation featured a curved mast resting on two legs. Soon, however, Calatrava figured out that he could add more cables and get rid of one of the legs altogether, resulting in an even more slender, streamlined form -- a single, sloping mast at the center of the S-shape. ''It's very powerful, but it has the ability to disappear,'' Calatrava says of his solution. ''There were three different versions, though each one built on the other. You calculate, you make the model, you leave it for a while, then you come back. Each one tries to be better than the one before. They make a kind of city.'' Santiago Calatrava is a modern architect. His large staff uses computers to help him analyze his models. Calatrava guesses that even Antonio Gaudí -- Spain's singular surrealist Catalan architect who at the turn of the last century was testing structural models with strings and weights -- would use computers if he were designing today. But a couple of factors distinguish Calatrava from the current crop of star architects. First, he has a second profession. He is an engineer. Most architects are not engineers, and most engineers do not design buildings. They graduate from different schools, and though they must collaborate on the same projects, they eye each other with the mutually dependent suspicions of the sausagemaker and the health inspector. After completing his years of architecture training, Calatrava decided that he needed to know more about how things are constructed. He took a Ph.D. in civil engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The important thing for Calatrava isn't just that he learned about building but also that he learned to ignore the traditional divide between his two vocations. ''Many architects say that they will never do a bridge,'' Calatrava says. ''But I think they will discover that just as Fallingwater is a piece of art, so Golden Gate |
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1539113_4 | The Best and the Brightest | chooses, on the whole, not to follow the example of, say, Harold Bloom, who tallied geniuses (in his book ''Genius'') by presenting brilliant or contrarian but nonetheless qualitative arguments (as opposed to quantitative ones) for why someone or something is greater than someone or something else, Murray has to hold our attention by other means. He does this by championing his method as the definitive answer to postmodernism and the erosion of belief in the eternal verities of beauty and truth. There's more bluster than rigor to this strategy, which readers will sense from the large number of asides Murray directs at potential critics, dismissing them in advance as politically correct or trendily relativist. This is disingenuous of him, since there's no logical reason someone can't believe in the durability of scientific truth and in hierarchies of artistic or literary or musical value without agreeing that Murray has found a meaningful way to talk about those things, or that his graphs and charts and curves and correlation coefficients prove anything worth knowing. There are three basic objections to his methodology, all of which he acknowledges and none of which he successfully refutes: first, that it is biased toward present-day perspectives on the past; second, that it is Eurocentric; and third, that it is circular. It might seem remarkable that only three of the 167 encyclopedias from which Murray compiles his data set predate World War II, but Murray says he has discounted for the single worst effect of relying on contemporary publications -- epochcentric bias,'' or the tendency to overvalue the present and the recent past -- by cutting off his research at people who were living and working in 1950. After 50 years, he says, educated opinions about who's great and who isn't become impervious to faddishness; they may vary slightly, but not enough to matter. This claim seems plausible at first, but on the slightest reflection becomes unconvincing. Fifty years after Shakespeare's death the English had barely begun to dredge him out of the oblivion to which the English Puritans had consigned him and his plays. It took a millennium for Europeans to rediscover the philosophical and scientific insights of the Greeks. The non-Jewish world is only now freeing itself from the anti-Semitism that led Christian intellectuals to undervalue the importance of rabbinical contributions to philosophy, law and literary criticism, some of them made more than two millenniums |
1531859_1 | On The Terrace | you are running unroped.'' Which is to say a perfect daiquiri is deceptively smooth. So why mess with a good thing? Just as the traditional martini has undergone an extreme makeover, so the daiquiri and mojito, two of Cuba's most endearing exports, are wearing fancier clothes. Newfangled variations of the rum-based drinks are popping up all over New York, from Latin-inspired restaurants like Son Cubano, LQ and Ola to happening hangouts like Soho House, PM and Hue. It's a far cry from El Floridita, the Old Havana drinking haunt of Hemingway, but at the raucous Son Cubano, the rum flows all night. The biggest crowd pleaser is the mojito, said Frank Castro, the general manager. Castro (no relation to that other guy) has introduced a mélange of fruity mojitos, including a zesty mango one that would make a purist scratch his head -- and beg for more. At the members-only Soho House, regulars who want a little jolt of Cuba can sit at the U-shaped bar and choose between two offerings that pack a wallop: an apple mojito (''I go through tons of it,'' said Efrain Quiles, the operations and purchasing manager) and a pomegranate daiquiri. Ah, I wonder what Hemingway would say if he had six or eight of those. John Hyland POMEGRANATE DAIQUIRI Adapted from Soho House 1 teaspoon pomegranate syrup or molasses 2 ounces Montecristo rum (or other dark rum) 2 ounces orange juice. Pour the ingredients into a shaker filled partly with ice, shake and pour the contents, unstrained, into a rocks glass. Garnish with pomegranate seeds (optional). Yield: 1 cocktail. MANGO MOJITO Adapted from Son Cubano For the mojito: 1 tablespoon mango purée (recipe follows) 1 tablespoon sugar 1/2 lime 4 fresh mint leaves 3 ounces light rum 1 1/2 ounces mango rum (or substitute with 1 tablespoon mango purée and 1 ounce light rum) 1 slice ripe mango, skin on, for garnish. For the mango purée: 1 ripe mango, peeled and cut into small chunks 6 ounces canned or bottled mango juice. 1. For the mango purée: combine the mango chunks and mango juice in a blender and purée. 2. In a shaker, combine 1 tablespoon purée with the sugar, lime and mint and mash with a muddler or wooden spoon. Add ice and the rums. Cover and shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with the mango slice. Yield: 1 cocktail. |
1532250_8 | Amid Images of Love and Starvation, A More Nuanced Picture Emerges | to see doctors again. The caseworker did note during a June visit that Bruce suffered from ''depression and never fully developed physically and mentally.'' At some point, the caseworker, who has been subpoenaed in connection with the investigation, will have to explain why she did not act further at this point to at least get him treatment or to report the family for suspicion of abuse. Officials from the division say, however, that she saw no reason to doubt the family's explanation that the child had an eating disorder. Other caseworkers say that this is entirely believable and point out that she would not have had the boys' files to double-check whether this was true or not. The boys, after all, had been legally adopted and were therefore beyond the scrutiny of child welfare officials, as the couple's biological children were. Under New Jersey law, the schools were not in a position to help either. When the Jacksons first took Bruce in, for example, he was enrolled in special education classes. Soon after he was adopted in 1995, and legally theirs free of state supervision, the Jacksons began saying they were home-schooling him, though it remains unclear what kind of education, if any, he received at home. It was a pattern repeated with each boy but not with the girls. As it turns out, New Jersey is one of 23 states requiring parents who wish to home-school to do no more than send letters of intent to their local school boards or do nothing at all. Beyond this letter, New Jersey does not require parents to file curriculum or to do follow-up testing to make sure their children are keeping pace with their peers as many states, including New York, do. ''If someone wants to home-school a child, they can just home-school them,'' said Richard Vespucci, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Education. ''It is a matter between the family and the local school board.'' The same hands-off policies apply for children with learning disabilities and handicaps, even if parents have no training for dealing with students with special needs. ''In this case it is a shame,'' said Jess McDonald, co-director of Fostering Results, a nonprofit advocacy group for foster children, and former director of the Illinois Department of Children of Family Services. ''Education is the one universal system that could have been a check on these kids.'' |
1532114_0 | E-Mail and Opposition Rise | Just as pressure is mounting in Congress and elsewhere to reduce unsolicited commercial e-mail, so, too, is the amount of e-mail being sent. Last year alone, people and businesses around the world created five billion gigabytes of data, according to a study by the University of California at Berkeley. That is a 30 percent increase in stored information from 1999, the last time the study was conducted. That's also enough new e-mail -- junk or otherwise -- to fill 500,000 Libraries of Congress, the study said. It works out to about 800 megabytes a person, or the equivalent of a stack of books 30 feet high, according to the study, by the university's School of Information Management and Systems. PERSONAL BUSINESS: DIARY |
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1531832_1 | FOOTNOTES | Buying Cuban cigars may be illegal in this country, but you can smell like one without risking jail time. Havana tobacco is the top note in Santa Maria Novella's Acqua di Cuba eau de cologne. A 3.3-ounce bottle is $65 at Aedes de Venustas, 9 Christopher Street. Rodriguez's own new fragrance, For Her (pictured), doesn't have any tobacco, but it's pretty addictive nonetheless. The blend of Egyptian musk, orange blossoms, vanilla and vetiver is $84 for a 3.3-ounce bottle at Saks Fifth Avenue. 5. An avid devotee of Brazilian percussion, Rodriguez was bowled over this past summer by Hip Hop Roots, a young inner-city band from the province Bahía, and used its music in his runway show. They play around with traditional drums, adding rap, violin, electric violin, guitar and other instruments, he says. ''It's something you haven't heard before.'' The band's mentor and founder, respectively, are the Brazilian superstars Felipe de Souza and Carlinhos Brown, and its only recording to date has been for Rodriguez's show. But if you want to sample other inspired Brazilian beats, two CD's that the designer listens to ''constantly'' are ''Tribalistas,'' by Brown, Marisa Monte and Arnaldo Antunes ($15 at Tower Records), and ''Tanto Tempo,'' by Bebel Gilberto ($14 at www.amazon.com). Of course, Rodriguez loves Cuban music, too, especially that of the late, great Celia Cruz. A great source for all things Celia, as well as more cutting-edge Cuban and Latin sounds, is www.descarga.com. 6. The fashion designer is currently re-reading ''Old Rosa,'' by the Cuban poet, novelist and playwright Reinaldo Arenas, who achieved posthumous fame in this country with his autobiography ''Before Night Falls.'' Another who may be destined for fame is the playwright Nilo Cruz (pictured), who was spirited away from Cuba by his parents when he was 9 and is the first Cuban-American (in fact, the first Hispanic) to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, for ''Anna in the Tropics.'' The lushly written play, set in a cigar-rolling factory in Tampa and directed by Emily Mann, opens on Broadway at the Royale Theater later this month. 7. Ben Watts, the English-born, Australian-schooled and New York-based photographer who shot the Rodriguez dinner party, has a new book, ''Big Up'' ($60 at www.barnesandnoble.com), a scrapbook-style compilation of his large-format photographs of urban youth and hip-hop culture. Images from it will be featured in an exhibition at the Scout Gallery in London from Dec. 5 |
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