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1582868_1 | Big Project Moves Forward on One-Acre Site | the stick in order to get this done,'' Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said yesterday in a telephone interview. ''It's a very complicated deal,'' Mr. Doctoroff said, ''but it seemed to us to make such sense to have Pace and Forest City Ratner and NYU Downtown Hospital as partners. Everybody compromised.'' A key stumbling block was a kind of paradox involving Pace and NYU Downtown. On one hand, to ensure its economic health, the hospital needed to get a good price for the parking lot on which the new tower is to be built. (One bond application form put the acquisition cost at $42 million.) But the higher the development cost, the harder it became for Pace, a nonprofit institution, to afford to be a part of the project. ''While the developer was open to discussions with Pace about its tenancy, it also has an alternative, high-value development strategy involving a fully residential building,'' according to a memorandum from Charles A. Gargano, the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, to the directors of the Liberty Development Corporation. ''After protracted negotiations,'' the memo continued, ''both sides had essentially walked away from the table and the developer was prepared to proceed with a residential deal. It was only significant pressure from the city that got the sides talking again.'' What justified the effort, said Andrew M. Alper, the president of the City Economic Development Corporation, was that ''you have, in one project, an awful lot of elements that all add to the recovery of Lower Manhattan.'' That includes 600 students in the Pace dormitory, who will ''provide traffic for retailers downtown and enliven the streets.'' Officials said the project would provide the equivalent of 1,546 full-time jobs in construction and development. They emphasized that no final actions had been taken yet on any of the applications. A similar point was made by David A. Caputo, the president of Pace, who said the deal awaited the approval of the university board. In addition to the dormitory, Pace would use its space to house the Lubin School of Business, other classrooms, an art gallery, the admissions office and dining areas. ''We see this as a major reaffirmation of our investment and commitment to Lower Manhattan and also to the business and corporate community,'' Dr. Caputo said. ''It gives a sense of an urban campus.'' Forest City Ratner, which is the development partner of |
1582832_0 | A Bridge to Sicily, or a Castle in the Air? | To hear Domenico Giorgianni gush about the bridge between Calabria and Sicily, its construction is assured. ''This will be the greatest achievement of modern technology for all time,'' Mr. Giorgianni, an executive with the Strait of Messina Association, said on a recent day. Undaunted by the fact that after 30 years of planning the future foothold of the bridge remains a small beach strewn with tires, milk crates, rusting cans and sea debris, Mr. Giorgianni, whose group will oversee the project, went on proudly: ''It will be like the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco! It will be like the Eiffel Tower!'' For millenniums Italians have been dreaming of a bridge across the Strait of Messina, the narrow neck of water that prevents the backside of Sicily from getting a swift kick from the mainland's boot. The itch to walk -- not float -- across the channel runs so deep in the local nervous system even Julius Caesar planned to build a bridge, to march his elephants across to war. The present plan calls for the longest suspension bridge on record to be built between Messina, on the island, and Reggio di Calabria. The central span is to run nearly 10,000 feet, supporting a 12-lane highway and a two-way railroad track. It will have a pair of anchoring towers, each taller than the Eiffel Tower. What it may not have is a future. ''It is only a voice in the wind,'' said Palma-Anna Salvo, 65, the owner of Ritrovo Natasha, a bar on the Messina side that will have to be destroyed when, or rather if, the bridge is built. Ms. Salvo, a spry old woman who calls herself ''a small but wise one,'' does not seem to think the wrecking balls are coming any time soon. ''I've owned this bar for 30 years,'' she said, as seawater slapped the beach outside her window. ''They've been talking about this bridge for 50 years. Even my mother was talking about this bridge.'' Mr. Giorgianni's group has been talking about the bridge for almost 30 years, though it is sometimes difficult to tell how seriously or intently. ''The association was started in 1975,'' he said, then added quickly, ''We started really working on it in 1985.'' At first, he said, his members considered digging a tunnel, but that was deemed impossible. Another thought was to suspend a metal tube above the seabed |
1581506_0 | China's Economy Continues to Race Ahead | China's economy continued to barrel ahead in April despite a series of measures by Beijing to slow growth, a raft of statistics showed on Thursday. Industrial production, bank lending, foreign investment, imports and the money supply all roughly maintained in April the breathless pace they had set in March, three government agencies announced. The only appreciable slowing came in the growth rate for exports, which caused the trade deficit to widen. Beijing has been trying to slow investment in apartment buildings, factories and other fixed assets, which rose 43 percent in the first quarter. Officials have expressed concern that the construction-led boom may kindle inflation in the short run, as buyers bid up raw material prices, and result later in a glut of goods that could cause deflation accompanied by large-scale loan defaults, hurting an already weak banking system. The robust performance in April was partly because Chinese leaders had taken few meaningful actions before the month began. But the strong growth in April also underlines the difficulty of slowing the economy in China, where an unusual combination of capitalism and economic planning means that policy makers are limited to fairly blunt tools, said Li Kui-wai, who teaches economics at the City University of Hong Kong. ''In China, it's difficult to slow down the economy -- you have to stop it,'' he said. Chinese leaders began issuing fairly strong warnings in March about excessive growth, especially encouraging banks to slow their rate of new loans. But most of the policy-tightening measures have had little time to take effect, economists said, adding that the recent moves might yet put a brake on the economic expansion. In two heavily publicized actions in late March and early April, the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, raised reserve requirements by a full percentage point for financially weak banks and by half a percentage point for stronger banks, including the so-called Big Four national banks. But the higher requirements, which forced banks to set aside money that otherwise would be available for lending, went into force only on April 25 and are unlikely to have had much effect. But another measure should have had some effect: a warning to banks by the China Bank Regulatory Commission on April 27, ordering them to limit their commitments to new loans for the next four days before weeklong May Day holidays began. Despite that order, the |
1581599_5 | FIRST FRIENDS: A Governor's Benefactor; With Help From a College Pal, The Patakis' Wealth Increases | fully furnished with antiques, for $725,000 in 1986, when he was a state assemblyman after his two terms as mayor of Peekskill (before that, he was a real estate lawyer). Today, the mansion is worth $2.2 million, his aides say. The buying and selling, however, left Mr. Pataki land rich but cash poor when he came into office in 1995. His real estate holdings were worth at least $1.66 million, but he had mortgages of at least $826,000, documents released in 1994 showed. His adjusted gross family income in 1993 was $76,405. His financial situation was so tight he had to take out a second mortgage on the Garrison house to make ends meet during his first year in office. With a fixed government salary and four children approaching college age -- Emily, their oldest, would be off to Yale in 1997 -- it was clear the Patakis were going to need more than the governor's salary to achieve the lifestyle they wanted. The Haydens had an idea: Libby Pataki could go to work for Premier Heart, the heart-testing device company financed by Mr. Hayden and founded by Mrs. Hayden's youngest brother, Dr. Joseph T. Shen. The company specialized in an unusual use of a computer-interpreted electrocardiogram to detect heart blockages, instead of the more common arrhythmia test that EKG's are used for. The last time Mrs. Pataki had formally worked was in the early 1970's, after graduating with a political science and French degree from Clark University in Worcester, Mass. She had spent a year in the personnel department at Warner Communications in Manhattan and five years at the international trading department of Paine Webber. She also had dedicated herself to volunteer work promoting breast cancer research. Heart disease, the Haydens figured, could be her next cause. ''It is one disease that kills more women than anything else,'' Mrs. Hayden said, explaining why Mrs. Pataki was hired as a $90,000-a-year consultant. ''We thought Libby would be great.'' A friend of the Patakis, who asked not to be identified, said the family had been searching for ways to make money without generating conflicts of interest, and welcomed the Haydens' offer because Mr. Hayden had no obvious state business. At a recent news conference, Mr. Pataki said his wife's success was due to good timing rather than his influence. She could have had a lucrative career, he said, but chose instead |
1581565_0 | France and Germany Jointly Criticize Abuse of Iraqis and Express Horror at Beheading | President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany on Thursday criticized the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers and expressed horror over the beheading of an American civilian. Their comments, made to reporters after a meeting at Élysée Palace, coincided with a statement by France's new foreign minister, Michel Barnier, that France would never send troops to Iraq, not even as part of a peacekeeping force. ''It is out of the question,'' Mr. Barnier said in an interview published Thursday in Le Monde. ''There will be no French soldiers in Iraq, not now and not later.'' A senior aide to Mr. Chirac, asked about Mr. Barnier's declaration, said Mr. Chirac did not want the United States to think there was any possibility French troops would go to Iraq, even if the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution endorsing the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30. Both France and Germany opposed the United States-led war in Iraq and refused to contribute troops to the multinational occupation force there. Mr. Bernier's statement was the clearest articulation of France's opposition as well to providing troops to any peacekeeping force after the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty. Although Mr. Barnier did not directly blame the United States for the violence raging throughout the Middle East, he described it in stark language unusual in diplomacy and in contradiction to optimistic predictions by the Bush administration that eventually the situation will improve. ''We must get out of this black hole that is sucking up the Middle East and, beyond that, the world,'' Mr. Barnier said in the interview in Le Monde. ''What shocks me is the spiral of horror, the blood, the inhumanity that we see now on all fronts, from Falluja to Gaza, and in the terrible images of the assassination of this unfortunate American hostage. All of this gives the impression of a total loss of balance.'' The deterioration in occupied Iraq combined with President Bush's support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel's plans for a withdrawal from Gaza, has frustrated some European governments and made them less inclined than they might have been to help the United States in its efforts to stabilize Iraq. The revelations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers have worsened the atmosphere. Asked about the photographs and stories of abuse by Americans against Iraqis, Mr. Chirac said: ''We |
1584632_1 | Architect Starts Study of Failure In Paris Airport | next month. Mr. Andreu, 65, did not speak to reporters. But as attention focused on the columns that supported the elliptical concrete shell of the terminal, experts suggested that the collapse was more likely caused by construction errors than by the design. Hubert Fontanel, the airport's director of operations, confirmed earlier reports that cracks several millimeters wide had appeared in some columns during the early stages of construction. Engineers reinforced those columns with carbon fiber, he said, and the placement of the columns was revised to try to fix the problem. He said those columns were in a different section of the terminal than the one that collapsed. But Mr. Fontanel said temporary props would be installed on a section of the building that is the mirror image of the section that collapsed. The supports are intended to protect the intact section so investigators can study it safely, he said. Both areas differ from the rest of the terminal because they were built with access points to three boarding walkways. Several engineers familiar with the building say investigators are likely to consider whether the additional load of those walkways could have played a role in the collapse or whether the tendency of the base of the concrete shell to spread as it settled during the past year could have affected the shell's connection to the supporting columns. ''It's at points of contact where two systems are fitting together that human error occurs,'' said Henry Bardsley, a structural engineer in Paris. ''That's one of the consequences of specialization in collaborating teams of the work of a large project.'' Engineers said mistakes are more likely when different construction companies are responsible for different parts of the building. GTM Construction was responsible for the concrete shell and another company, Hervé, for the columns. Several experts argue that Mr. Andreu's design, while visually unusual, depended on known engineering concepts and applications, and was probably not to blame. The main architectural innovations of the terminal, 2E, Mr. Bardsley said, involved the efficiency with which airplanes could load and unload passengers, and the roof's ability to allow in natural light while dissipating heat to keep air conditioning costs low. Chinese officials expressed confidence in Mr. Andreu, who has designed what will become Beijing's most striking building: a huge, elliptical national theater surrounded by +water, just west of the Great Hall of the People, China's parliament building. |
1584573_0 | Enduring Themes | To the Editor: Re ''Hollywood Help Wanted: Classicists With Style'' (Week in Review, May 23), about ''Troy'' and other movies based on classics: If a classic is a work that is as relevant today as it was when it was written, that would explain why ''The Iliad'' and ''The Odyssey'' rank as two of the greatest pieces of timeless literature. Two themes -- the enthusiasm for war, and the horror and barbarity of war -- are as contemporary now as they were when Homer wrote about them more than 2,700 years ago. BRAD BRADFORD Upper Arlington, Ohio, May 23, 2004 |
1584702_0 | Energy Department Plans a Push to Retrieve Nuclear Materials | In an effort to keep the raw materials for nuclear bombs out of the hands of terrorists, the Energy Department will undertake a $450 million campaign to retrieve nuclear materials that the United States and the Soviet Union originally sent around the world for research purposes, the energy secretary will announce on Wednesday in Vienna. The department has been trying for years, with limited success, to recover unused uranium fuel at research reactors. An audit, announced in February, found that the department was likely to recover only about half of the 5,200 kilograms of uranium it was seeking and that no effort had been made to recover an additional 12,300 kilograms. Depending on the skill of the designers and builders, it takes as little as 5 kilograms to make a bomb the size of the one that destroyed Hiroshima, experts say. The energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, plans to announce Wednesday in a speech to the International Atomic Energy Agency that the effort will be accelerated and will expand to include used Soviet-era fuel from research reactors, as well as unused fuel, from research reactors that the United States has long been seeking to collect. The used fuel typically contains large amounts of unused uranium of the type suitable for bombs, which can be extracted and purified with techniques that are 60 years old and widely known. In addition, Mr. Abraham will report that the United States has drafted a global list of material that could be used to make bombs, ranked by risk factors, including the volume of material, the political stability of the area where it is located and the way it is guarded. In the past, American officials have looked at the materials by type or by region, but not on an integrated basis. Officials say the list is near completion. In a telephone interview on Monday, Mr. Abraham said, ''We've had these programs on the books, but the programs haven't been formalized and there hasn't been a specific budget commitment to it.'' The American fuel was sent overseas under an Atoms for Peace program, starting in the 1960's and was lent or given to countries that promised not to develop nuclear weapons. The Soviets sent fuel to areas that became independent with the breakup of the Soviet Union and to other former Eastern Bloc countries. In remarks prepared for delivery in Vienna, Mr. Abraham said that as |
1584576_4 | In Latin America, a Cellular Need | now, the best alternative is to have the newest mobile phone clipped to your belt.'' Venezuelans have become increasingly creative in getting more bang for their mobile buck. Text messaging allows virtual conversations that cost much less than a call. The average Venezuelan cellular user sends 113 text messages a month, many between teenagers with too little money for calls. Providers sometimes face losses from text messaging, which can eat into profits by replacing calls. ''We have a phone in the house, but I'd rather send text messages to my friends,'' said Andreína Valerio, 13, who lives in the 23 de Enero neighborhood, a poor part of Caracas. She said this saves her money, but sheepishly admitted that her text messaging cost her parents more than $45 last month. Dozens of Venezuelan radio and television programs allow users to participate in surveys or send in their opinions through text messages. The Miss Venezuela pageant, for example, allowed viewers (for 50 cents a message) to send suggestions for new beauty queen categories last year. Cellphones have also been a boon to thousands of enterprising Venezuelans who buy prepaid phone time in bulk, then rent their cellphones by the minute, charging only 20 percent of what most users pay for a minute of service. Gregorio Mayta, 33, who shut his carpentry business last year for lack of work, now sells calls on the Sábana Grande Boulevard in Caracas from seven cellphones displayed on a plastic picnic table. ''When business slowed down, I started selling the extra minutes on my calling plan,'' he said. ''These days it makes more than carpentry.'' Mr. Mayta spends over $200 a month to buy the cheapest prepaid minutes in bulk, then resells them in the form of one- or two-minute conversations purchased by an average of 500 customers a day. But these alternatives have not damped Venezuelans' craving to have a mobile in hand -- even in areas of severe poverty like Nueva Tacagua, where cellular service is more consistent than running water. For Yobran Nieves, the husband of Ms. Zambrano from Nueva Tacagua, cellular service is worth the sacrifice it entails. ''I feel like I'm getting robbed every time I put money into this thing,'' said Mr. Nieves, 25, scrolling through color pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge on the screen of his $375 mobile phone. ''But I still like having it.'' |
1584655_0 | Land Quarrels Unsettle Ivory Coast's Cocoa Belt | In the fertile heart of the world's largest cocoa-producing country, a 20-month-long civil war has spawned an ugly ethnic feud over cocoa land. The largely northern and immigrant workers who cultivate cocoa in Ivory Coast have been expelled from plantations, and deadly reprisal attacks have followed. Not by coincidence, much of the violence has erupted at the lucrative cocoa harvest time, which ended last month. How many lives have been lost, it is impossible to say, only that fear and hatred have been sown across the lush Ivoirian countryside. The violence has begun to overturn land laws and open-border policies that have made Ivory Coast the producer of 40 percent of the world's cocoa and turned it into an economic magnet. Whether Ivory Coast can maintain its standing as the world's largest cocoa producer is anyone's guess: the northerners being expelled are the backbone of plantation labor force. Remarkably, the violence so far has hardly touched the global cocoa trade: As one London-based cocoa analyst put it, ''the market is actually numb to that sort of thing.'' In fact, buoyed by record-high wartime prices, Ivory Coast produced a bumper crop of 1.36 million tons during this year's harvest. Save those expelled from the land, almost everyone in the cocoa sector has benefited, not least the government of President Laurent Gbagbo, which controls virtually all of Ivory Coast's cocoa territory. In addition to export taxes, a host of quasi-private agencies levied an estimated $350 million in fees on cocoa exports last year. It is impossible to tell precisely how those funds are spent, and some Western diplomats in Abidjan privately say they worry that the money has been diverted to the government's war chest. That war, which broke out in September 2002, is officially over. Yet peace is as elusive as ever. The country remains partitioned between rebel-held north and government-held south. Neither side has kept its promise to disarm its forces. Lately the rebels have blustered about secession, and a power-sharing government has unraveled. [President Gbagbo dismissed three cabinet ministers from rebel factions on May 19, more evidence of the dissolution of the unity government.] In Abidjan, the country's largest city and its commercial center, a government crackdown on an opposition demonstration in late March left 120 people dead, according to a United Nations inquiry. In the countryside, particularly across the southern and western cocoa belt, massacres and expulsions continue. |
1582012_3 | Hardest Part of the Job? Finding It | Northeastern University in Boston, predicts that this summer's youth labor market will be as bad as last year's, when fewer teenagers worked during the summer than in any other summer since 1948. In July 2003, only 36.1 percent of the country's 16- to 19-year-olds were employed. ''The overall job market has picked up, but it hasn't shown any improved rates for teenagers this far,'' he said. ''How well kids will do in the summer can be projected pretty well. The rates have fallen tremendously ever since we left 2000. Even if jobs continue to grow nationally, it takes a long time to turn the teen labor market around.'' Mr. Sum said teenagers are usually the last in the queue to be hired. Young people face increased competition for jobs from immigrants as well as from unemployed older people. He said that fast-food establishments, landscapers and restaurants prefer and can get more mature employees who are available year round. He also noted that recent college graduates are taking jobs that once were filled by younger teenagers. ''We find an increase of college kids who are working outside the normal college market, as sales clerks, in construction labor, department stores, landscaping,'' he said. ''So the next group that gets bumped out is high school.'' Enormous gaps for those who will find work still exist across income and race groups, Mr. Sum said. African-Americans with the lowest family incomes were the least likely to have summer jobs last year. Of African-American teenagers 16 to 19 years old with family incomes of $20,000 or lower, only one in five found work. When family income was $65,00 to $75,000, 38 out of every 100 African-American teenagers were employed for the summer; while in the same income bracket, 58 out of 100 white teenagers secured jobs, he said. Ms. Oliver, of the youth employment office in Mamaroneck, said she saw racism playing a part in some job selections. ''We haven't come very far, even in baby-sitting,'' she said. ''The kids who need things the most are the kids who have the least chance of getting it, and it all just sort of stacks up.'' Don Cirulli, who works with many Latino families in job development at Student and Family Support at Port Chester High School, said he has adults coming in asking for jobs, and willing to take positions paying $10 or $12 per hour. He |
1582179_0 | Special Needs, Served With the Familiar Pleasures of Camp | As a single parent, Rosa Fabian can barely afford the rent on her Bronx apartment, where nearby radios are always blasting and drugs, she says, are sold right outside her door. ''I have to try and keep my children inside as much as possible,'' she explained. But Mother's Day arrived early this year for Ms. Fabian, who, on a Saturday this month, found herself among oaks and pines at Camp Hidden Valley, a Fresh Air Fund camp in Fishkill, N.Y. Standing barefoot in a grassy field, she watched her children fly kites against a backdrop of green mountains. ''I've hit the lottery here,'' she said. Ms. Fabian's four children, ages 8 to 13, all have special needs. One daughter is learning disabled, another has post-traumatic stress disorder, a third is mildly speech delayed, and her son has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and suffers from depression. Like the nine other families around them, Ms. Fabian and her children were enjoying the annual weekend retreat at Hidden Valley, a camp for disabled and able-bodied children ages 8 to 12. Disabilities among the campers range from learning difficulties to physical infirmities like cerebral palsy, spina bifida, congenital heart defects, visual impairment, muscular dystrophy and sickle cell anemia. At the camp, all the children live and play together, finding out how much they all have in common. The Fresh Air Fund, which provides city children from low-income families with free vacations in the country, created the weekend respite to help the parents of children with special needs acquaint themselves with the camp and determine if their children are ready for a 12-day getaway later in the summer. Ms. Fabian's youngest child, Jeannie, 8, who is speech delayed, will be attending Hidden Valley this year, but Ms. Fabian said that in the few hours her family had been at camp, she had noticed a difference in all of her children, and even in herself. She said the country air was able to do what prescription medication has not: lift their spirits. ''Look, I'm just here today,'' she said, ''and you can see a difference with these kids. All these kids over here are smiling.'' Ms. Fabian was impressed by the simplicity of the weekend, which included activities like baking cookies and fishing, not watching television, the usual diversion at home. ''Everything depends on environment,'' Ms. Fabian said, rubbing the soles of her feet on the |
1582048_1 | For Graduates, Getting a Job Is Work | security at home, a politically polarized electorate, international isolation, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and against terror. So many reasons for pessimism. There are some glimmers of good news in all the gloom that is the evening news, the newspaper headlines and the daily business reports. In March, more than 300,000 new jobs were created nationally, challenging the notion that our country was bogged down in a ''jobless recovery.'' In a recent ''Job Outlook'' survey, the National Association of Colleges and Employers reported that 11 percent of employers expected to hire more college graduates than last year. And at Rutgers, we expect 175 employers at our New Jersey Collegiate Career Day on May 26, up from only 145 a year ago. There is one more positive factor. Unlike their recent predecessors, 2004's seniors generally seem to ''get it.'' They are more realistic and focused. With help from college career centers, they have recalibrated their and their parents' expectations. They have started the job search earlier. At Rutgers Career Services, we have seen a sharp increase in career counseling appointments and résumé critiques, and visits to our Web site will set a yearly record -- more than half a million. Our basic message to seniors goes like this: Get an early start. Be flexible in terms of location and type of work. Consider part-time or even volunteer work to get your foot in the door. Maintain the proper balance between ''high tech'' and ''high touch'' in your job search. And, perhaps most important, network like crazy -- with relatives, alumni, neighbors, parents of friends, professors and local merchants. Ask them how they got their jobs, what they like and dislike about their jobs and who else you can contact.'' Most seniors seem to have accepted this message and are acting upon it. They understand that it will take a lot of work to get work, but they are rolling up their sleeves. In the spring of 2002, I was asked to grade the job market. I gave it a C. It slipped a little more last year, but now it is back to a C+. We're still a long way from the A job market of the late 90's, but I believe that most members of Class of 2004 will land solidly on their feet, as they toss their caps and their dreams into the air. SOAPBOX Richard L. White |
1581872_3 | Waterworld | United States entered World War II, it began reflagging many of its merchant vessels as Panamanian in hopes of providing Britain with goods and materials without dragging America into war. This ruse has mutated into a system known today as ''flags of convenience.'' Many countries offer their own registries, making it possible for ship owners to avoid taxes, labor laws and anything else that hurts profitability. In Langewiesche's view, it is an international form of free enterprise run amok. Sailors work in prisonlike conditions on ships that are suffering from years of neglect. In an early chapter he describes the case of the Kristal, a 560-foot tanker. In the winter of 2001, it was flying the flag of Malta and was owned by an Italian family. It had a largely Pakistani crew and a Croatian captain and was 27 years old -- five years past a ship's usual retirement age. According to Langewiesche, the captain refused to compromise his schedule and steamed into a brutal storm that eventually broke the ship in half off the coast of Spain, releasing 28,000 tons of molasses into the Bay of Biscay and killing 11, almost a third of the Kristal's crew. The sea has also become a petri dish for piracy. Between 1998 and 2002, there were 1,228 pirate attacks reported worldwide. Langewiesche provides a harrowing account of the taking of the Alondra Rainbow and its cargo of aluminum ingots in the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Indonesia. Despite being 370 feet long, the ship -- quickly renamed, repainted and reflagged -- appeared to vanish off the face of the earth before eventually being nabbed by Indian authorities. Even more troubling is the notion that terrorists are learning to exploit the opportunities offered by the sea. The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and the possibility that some involved in the attack on the World Trade Center entered the United States by ship, are just two examples. It has even been alleged, Langewiesche reports, that Osama bin Laden has his own fleet of freighters that authorities have so far been powerless to track down. In 2001, intelligence sources indicated that a ship containing a large chemical bomb was on its way to London. The threat never materialized, but the potential for an oceanic equivalent of 9/11 certainly exists. As Langewiesche reminds us, Halifax, Nova Scotia, came close to being obliterated back in 1917 |
1581910_7 | A Glorious Survivor | buildings, restored the gardens, although with a British touch, and got the canals working again. It is easy to revile the British treatment of the Taj, but the Indians haven't always done much better. As Agra grew, little effort was made to spare the Taj the ravages of pollution, which began to discolor the white marble. In the late 1990's, as the monument's future began to seem deeply imperiled, the Supreme Court ordered the shifting of some industries farther away. Today, only electric-powered vehicles (or bicycle rickshaws) are allowed near the Taj, and under a public-private partnership between the government and the Taj Group of hotels, a major conservation effort is under way. Moving slowly, thanks to unwieldy bureaucracy, but steadily, a group of global experts has spent more than two years researching and documenting the monument. Soon the real work on the ground will begin. First the visitor facilities -- toilets, drinking water and the like -- will be improved, and security made less obtrusive. Then will come questions like how to improve the visitor flow through the site and whether to restore the gardens to their original state or preserve the lawns that were installed by Lord Curzon. A persistent conservation effort seems essential, given the continuing threats to the monument. A scandal erupted after the government of Uttar Pradesh, the state where the Taj sits, allowed construction to start on a Taj Heritage Corridor, which included a shopping mall between the Taj and Agra Fort, without securing the permission of the central government. The project was scrapped amid fears that it could damage the Taj, not to mention its ambience, and the state's former chief minister, Mayawati, is being investigated for corruption in connection with the project. For now, the Taj endures, its elegance in contrast to the slums that house nearly half of Agra's 1.5 million people. In the words of the Indian publication Outlook Traveller, ''Whatever mileage the city gets out of the country's most celebrated building, it loses in the fact that you step out of it into filth.'' You can avoid some of the unpleasantness by taking an air-conditioned bus tour, as my friend Christine and I did recently. Most tours also stop at Akbar's tomb and Agra Fort, both definitely worth seeing. A tour will spare you much harassment, but is expensive, and subject to the whim of a guide; the one |
1582080_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
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1584253_3 | Where Progress Is Being Made In Albany; At the Landmark Capitol, Repairs Are on Track | also restore more of the building's skylights, and ultimately rehabilitate the huge staircase on the eastern approach, removing it stone by stone and rebuilding the underlying support masonry. Edmund J. McMahon, a fiscal analyst with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative policy group, mused about whether the Capitol's new good looks will translate into more efficient government. ''You have a dilapidated, dysfunctional government, particularly the Legislature, but the surroundings are looking better,'' he said. ''The only hope we can have is that maybe it will inspire them to do better.'' Mr. McMahon even raised a question, heard in some quarters, with delicious irony: that the Capitol is sinking into the soft clay ground. But James A. Jamieson Jr., the Capitol architect, insisted that the building ''isn't moving and it is stable.'' He said that because the Capitol took more than three decades to build, the excavation site was open so long that the clay dried out. ''If the Capitol was settling at any kind of alarming rate, that would preclude all this restoration work, the doors in the Capitol would stick, the elevators would not work, you'd see cracks everywhere, windows wouldn't open,'' said Mr. Jamieson, who is overseeing the restoration. A font of historical knowledge, Mr. Jamieson bounds around the Capitol's roof, up ladders, down and across scaffolding, giving orders while walking about in his hard hat, beige Lands' End jacket, corduroys and boots. Already, his workers have reconstructed the skylight over the Great Western Staircase. During World War II, the staircase's huge interior sky window were covered with fabric and painted gold to keep enemy bombers from using it as a landmark to find the Watervliet Arsenal. Then, the skylight was removed in the 1960's and replaced with a plywood and slate roof. Now it is back, said Mr. Jamieson. ''We have put back a flood of light,'' he said. Next will be work on the south and east sides of the Capitol. For now, the crew members are rehabilitating the roof, replacing the tiles and refurbishing the giant marble gutter stones. It is hard work. They have to lift the stones and use a giant crane to lower them to the street where they are numbered and cleaned. And there are mental challenges, too. The workers have to keep track of the different architectural patterns. Through 1912, at least seven architects had a hand in designing the building. |
1584213_0 | A Call for a Gene Revolution | Few scientific developments have provoked more shouting than genetically modified foods. Plenty of people, especially in Europe, call them Frankenfoods and argue that we do not know if they cause cancer or fatal allergy. Genetically modified crops, which carry transplanted genes from other species to make them easier to grow or more nutritious, should indeed be the subject of intense debate -- just not this debate. Are these foods safe to eat? The evidence is overwhelming that they are, a conclusion endorsed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization last week in its 2004 annual report. The report's main contribution is that it focuses on the real problem with genetically modified crops: they are not aimed at helping the world's hungry. The F.A.O.'s laudable message is that farmers in Africa struggling with a patch of millet, cowpeas or cassava -- armed only with a hoe and a prayer -- need crops engineered to resist drought or local pests. Agriculture is the livelihood of 70 percent of the world's poor, a population that is growing considerably, even as soil and water are becoming depleted. Billions are already malnourished because their staple crops supply few nutrients. Genetic engineering can help on both counts. The poor need a ''gene revolution'' to follow the 1960's ''green revolution,'' which helped hundreds of millions by increasing the yields of wheat, rice and other crops. But so far, there's only been a gene revolution for agribusiness. The genetically engineered food industry is controlled by a few corporations, such as Monsanto and DuPont. They have little incentive to work on crops poor people grow, or to share their licensed technology. To allow widespread research on poor-country crops, these companies must release the technology for humanitarian use. Many poor countries, in addition, are suspicious of genetic engineering. The F.A.O. urges them to realize its potential and welcome engineered products. Wealthy countries must sponsor research, while critics of modified foods, especially in Europe, need to realize that their opposition is harming the developing world. They should be working not to ban these foods, but to put them in the mouths of the world's hungry. |
1579385_0 | Deepening Poverty Breeds Anger and Desperation in Haiti | The pile of garbage behind the spot where Marie Joseph sells tins of tomato paste started out small, the usual primordial goo that coats this grimy capital's streets, binding a putrid mélange. But in the two months since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected leader, was forced from power by an armed rebellion, the pile has swelled like a rapacious tumor. ''I have never seen anything like this,'' Ms. Joseph said last week, squatting near the 12-foot-high pile, wrinkling her nose at the stench beneath a pair of gold-rimmed bifocals. ''How can we live like this?'' Difficult as it may be to believe, people here say, life in the poorest nation in the hemisphere has gotten worse in the past two months. Mounds of garbage choke the streets. Electricity in the capital has been scarce for weeks. The police force has fallen deeper into disarray, and crime has spiked, including a rash of kidnappings aimed at wealthy businesspeople. The price of rice, the Haitian staple, has doubled in some parts of the country. A senior Western diplomat said the biggest concern was that the interim government, led by Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, will face mass unrest over the deteriorating conditions, which could reignite violent clashes between Aristide supporters and rebels, who still occupy large swaths of the country despite the presence of 3,600 foreign troops. Other than small, symbolic transfers, supporters of the former president and the rebels have both clung steadfastly to their weapons. If violence flares, the diplomat said, the government might not survive the next two or three months. ''The international community needs to help this government, we need to get monetary support to them yesterday,'' the diplomat said. If this government does not survive, it is not clear what comes after.'' But international help has been slow to arrive. The United States-led force here is to hand over the job of stabilizing Haiti in June to a United Nations force of about 8,000 troops led by Brazil. The brevity of the United States military commitment and the molasses-slow trickle of aid have led many people here to conclude that this decade's effort to rebuild Haiti will be even less successful than the United States effort in the 1990's. Skeptical Haitians view the unelected government and its foreign backers with a suspicion as brittle as the clay biscuits they now eat. ''No one has ever done |
1585711_2 | Ethiopia's Bold Plan to Improve Life Makes It Worse | questioning how it is being carried out. Dessalegn Rahmato, director of a local research institute, Forum for Social Studies, said the extensive government plan was proceeding too quickly and with too little planning for so ambitious a project, repeating the calamitous mistakes of previous resettlement programs. Ethiopia's woes have no one answer. Economic development is considered the key to improving the lives of poor Ethiopians. Improved farming methods also are important, and the country's rapid population growth is causing more congestion. To act, the government has begun rolling out trucks and buses, and loading them with willing farmers. Most of the farmers relocated so far in the latest effort were moved to land within Oromia, an area hard hit by previous droughts but with pockets of relative prosperity. But things have not gone well. The United Nations was recently forced to start a relief effort in the region to prevent those who had moved there from starving in their new homes. The World Food Program has begun food deliveries to the settlers in Oromia, supplementing government rations. Unicef is distributing medicine and mosquito nets. ''There could have been significant levels of mortality and morbidity, and we may still have that,'' said Paul Hebert, who leads the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia. Already, some settlers have died. Thirty children were reported dead in one area of Oromia, and Doctors Without Borders has found 40 cases of kala azar, a rare and potentially fatal disease caused by the sand fly, in two resettlement sites in North Gonder. In other resettlement areas, people are staying put but they are in such dire shape that aid workers are providing emergency assistance to keep them alive. It is in areas where regional authorities have moved more slowly and methodically, as in the northern Tigray region, that the settlers seem to be taking root. But there thousands of people have been relocated instead of hundreds of thousands. When it comes to government-organized resettlement, Ethiopia has an ominous history. In the mid-1980's, the military dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam forced 600,000 people to leave their land. Some 33,000 of those settlers lost their lives to disease, hunger and exhaustion, and thousands of families were separated. The effects of past resettlements can still be felt in many Ethiopian communities. Ethnic conflicts between indigenous populations and settlers moved onto their land continue, most |
1585689_6 | '04 Graduates Learned Lesson In Practicality | three internships doubled from 2003. Prepared as they are, students also exhibit the caution and need for security that experts say are characteristic of this generation. In the most recent survey of students by the college and employers association, job stability was the second most important reason for choosing an employer, up from eighth two years ago. An item that two years ago ranked seventh -- ''integrity of organization in its dealings with employees'' -- now tops the list. ''They are making more educated decisions,'' said Rosemary Hill, director for career services at Ohio State's college of engineering. ''They are still thinking 'what's in it for me?,' but they have a more mature concept of this.'' And they are demanding a payoff. As the cost of a college education rises, many of this year's graduates have had to work at least part time while in school and will still have loans to repay. ''I would not have been able to get through school without having a job,'' said Mandy Bischel, who has graduated as a pre-med student at the University of California, Berkeley and is applying to medical schools. While attending classes she worked as a chemistry lab assistant. As an in-state student, she paid about $6,000 a year in tuition, plus room, board and expenses, and she says she owes less than $10,000 in loans. At Ohio State, where tuition is about $6,650 a year for in-state students and $16,640 for non-Ohioans, cost can also be a factor. ''College is an investment,'' said Dennis Di Tullio, the 22-year-old son of a firefighter from Youngstown, in northeastern Ohio. He started college with the class of 2004 but will take one more year to graduate because he has worked part time to pay his tuition. Mr. Di Tullio already has his career mapped out, though. He says he would like to spend two years after graduation working for the international organization of his fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, teaching in its leadership program at fraternity chapters in this country and Canada. After that, he would get both a law degree and an M.B.A. If all goes to plan, he would then spend a couple of years working as a trader on Wall Street, before starting a family -- assuming he has time to find a wife. ''I need an overall direction, a framework,'' said Mr. Di Tullio. ''But I can also roll |
1585697_0 | Spanish Socialists' Proposals Opposed by Church | Spain's new Socialist government is clashing with the Roman Catholic Church over the administration's plans to allow gay marriages, speed up divorce and make abortion easier to obtain in this traditionally Catholic country. Like several other European countries, including Germany and France, some regions in Spain already allow ''registered cohabitation,'' which gives same-sex couples some of the same benefits under the law as marriage, according to the Gay and Lesbian Intergroup of the European Parliament. Belgium and the Netherlands allow gay couples to wed, and Finland and Sweden allow ''registered partnerships,'' which confer nearly the same rights as matrimony, the group said. With regard to abortion, a 1985 law allows women in Spain to seek an abortion in cases of rape or fetal deformity or if the pregnancy endangers the woman's health. A ban on divorce was lifted after the death of Franco in 1975. But Justice Minister Juan Fernando López Aguilar said Tuesday that he planned to push Spanish law much further. He told a parliamentary committee that the ministry would seek to make gay marriages legal, giving same-sex pairs ''the same rights and faculties,'' like pensions and inheritance, granted to heterosexual couples. The government appears to have the support in Parliament to pass the measures. Under the proposals, Mr. López Aguilar said, women would no longer need a doctor's certification that they had met one of the conditions for terminating a pregnancy in order to obtain a first-trimester abortion. Couples would no longer be required to seek a legal separation of up to one year before filing for divorce, ''a protracted agony,'' he said in a telephone interview. Gaspar Llamazares, leader of the United Left Party, an ally of the Socialists, said the government's plan did not go far enough. It should take a firmer stance, he said, on the right of gay couples to adopt children, an issue that is more divisive here than gay marriage. The government should also offer a solution for doctors and women awaiting trial on charges of performing, or undergoing, an illegal abortion, he said. But Spain's powerful Catholic church has already sounded the alarm. The Institute of Family Policy, a private group aligned with church positions, issued a statement calling the new measures ''family phobic.'' The archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, Julián Barrio, said that marriage should be ''formed by a man and a woman.'' The secretary general of the Spanish |
1585620_3 | The Air Travel Forecast: Brisk, With Frequent Squalls | its work force, which now totals about 45,000 at about 430 airports. ''With the volume probably coming back to pre-9/11 levels, this is going to be the summer that will tell us all how well'' the system will work in balancing effective security and efficient crowd flow, said Rick White, director of transportation security at Ingersoll-Rand, a maker of security, climate control and other products. The Transportation Security Administration has said domestic airlines expect to handle 65 million passengers a month in the United States this summer, up 12 percent from last summer. ''It is my expectation that the T.S.A. will show it has become more efficient,'' Mr. White said. ''But I think also the passengers can become more efficient, too. I'm sure you've stood behind somebody at an airport who walked up to the magnetometer and acted shocked that somebody wanted to check to see if he had any metal objects on him. ''Being familiar with the process will make you more efficient,'' he added. ''Know where your boarding pass and ID are, because you're going to have to show them more than once. Know you're going to have to put all of your bags on the X-ray conveyor belt, so carry on a manageable load. How many times have you seen people leaving, say, Florida with grocery sacks full of grapefruit that topple and roll all over the place? If you can manage what you carry on, it's easier to keep that line moving.'' And stay calm, Mr. White suggested. Going through a checkpoint ''is high anxiety for a lot of people,'' he said, and ''better understanding the procedures goes a long way to lowering that anxiety.'' For those who haven't flown much in recent years, there is another potential hurdle. Domestic airlines have cracked down on the weight and number of allowed checked bags, charging extra if they exceed limits. Airlines call it a security measure; analysts suggest that it is a way for the carriers to raise a few dollars. Policies vary and are often spelled out on airline Web sites. Generally, major airlines restrict passengers to two checked bags, each 50 pounds or less; some discount airlines allow up to 70 pounds a bag. Penalties for an overweight bag can be $50 or more. MICHAEL SOMMER, a frequent flier who is a technology consultant based in Jacksonville, Fla., noted that adhering to rules could be |
1585677_1 | The World: China's Time Bomb; The Most Populous Nation Faces a Population Crisis | sociologist at the China Population Development Research Center in Beijing. ''The burden of our population is too large.'' Demography may be no surer predictor of destiny than trade data. But of the two momentous changes championed by Deng Xiaoping a quarter-century ago, coercive population controls and experiments with market economics, the jury is still out on which will do more to shape China's long-term potential. At least in terms of its original mission, limiting the runaway growth of China's population through the one-child policy instituted by the government in 1979 has been a success. Without it, China today would have a population of 1.6 billion instead of 1.3 billion. But rising longevity and falling fertility have created a new demographic time bomb. China's baby boomers are producing children at well below the rate needed to maintain the country's population, somewhere from 1.3 children to 1.8 children on average per mother. The so-called replacement rate, or the birthrate needed to keep the population steady, is on average 2.1 children per mother. Moreover, a traditional preference for male offspring, especially in the countryside, appears to have intensified as parents have fewer children over all. Selective-sex abortions are illegal but widespread. China today has the most sexually skewed adolescent and young adult populations in the world; boys outnumber girls at birth by a ratio of 118 to 100, according to China's 2000 census. The normal rate is 103 to 105 males for every 100 females. The impact of these problems is only beginning to be understood, but many who have studied the data agree that China's aging will lop multiple percentage points off its growth rate, beginning in the middle of the next decade. Some demographers and political scientists have also speculated that China's growing surplus of men will produce severe social stress, creating an army of bachelors that some believe could be more inclined to commit crimes or even wage wars than men in more sexually balanced societies. Just 10 years from now, as China's baby boomers begin to retire, the working-age population will begin to shrink, according to ''The Graying of the Middle Kingdom,'' a study by Richard Jackson and Neil Howard, both at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. For a country struggling with high unemployment and underemployment, the prospect of some tightening in the labor market seems welcome. But the decline is expected to accelerate, posing |
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1585414_2 | When Screeners Open Your Bags | agency isn't likely to pay on every claim. Ann Davis, a T.S.A. spokeswoman, said she wasn't aware of the details of the government's negotiations with the airlines other than that ''discussions have been ongoing'' but did say the agency has begun processing claims. ''The ones we're paying are the ones we've investigated and determined that the T.S.A. was responsible for the loss or damage,'' Ms. Davis said. ''Like a screener dropped someone's laptop -- something that's pretty obvious.'' As of mid-May, she said, the agency had decided to pay 2,143 claims, with an average payment of $186.43. Another 100 or so proposed settlements were awaiting approval, 1,330 claims had been denied, and nearly 4,500 claims had been deemed ''legally insufficient,'' she said, explaining, ''There wasn't enough information provided by the claimant to begin the processing.'' About 4,700 claims were being investigated or reviewed. Although Ms. Davis said the number of claims filed with the T.S.A. was ''quite small,'' given the number of passengers who pass through U.S. airports, she acknowledged some instances of theft. ''There have been a handful of screeners across the country that have unfortunately taken advantage of their access to passengers' belongings,'' Ms. Davis said. ''Very often it's the members of our screening work force that identify rogue co-workers.'' A Number of Arrests Since last March, federal screeners have been arrested for theft from passengers' property at John F. Kennedy International Airport, as well as Miami International, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County and Denver International airports. A baggage handler at Long Beach Municipal Airport in California was arrested at the end of April, accused of stealing from passengers' bags. With the government continuing to recommend that passengers leave their luggage unlocked, travelers aren't exactly feeling secure when they part with their bags. ''I just hope for the best,'' said Susan Pierce, a student at New York University who has had items missing from her checked luggage twice in the past two years: first, a set of sheets and a teddy bear she'd had since she was six, and the second time, a watch and a Chanel handbag. She didn't file a claim in either case. ''Both times, the airlines said they couldn't do anything for me,'' Ms. Pierce said, adding that one airline employee told her, ''You can fill out a form if something is missing, but you'll never get it back and nothing will be done.'' As |
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1579986_0 | Blueprints for Healthier Oceans | On the surface, the oceans seem indestructible. Science tells a different story, a story of overfishing, pollution and biological degradation. A presidential commission has now provided further evidence of decline. It has also provided a plausible road map for the oceans' recovery -- and for the policy changes Congress and President Bush must make to turn things around. The report is the first major federal assessment of ocean health in a generation. Though it focuses largely on America's coastal waters, its 250 recommendations include proposals for cleaning up the Great Lakes, and a fervent appeal to the Senate to drop its ridiculous opposition to the Law of the Sea, an international treaty governing ocean use that the United States has refused to ratify for 22 years. Three major issues emerge from a long list of problems needing attention. One is the deterioration of coastal ecosystems, including wetlands and estuaries, partly caused by agricultural runoff but increasingly by relentless development. The report urges much stronger land-use controls and a much tougher application of current clean-water laws. A more familiar issue is the overfishing that had led to the collapse of several commercially valuable fish species and the decline of others. The commission would end subsidy programs that encourage overfishing. It would also overhaul the way fisheries were managed at the regional level, giving scientists a greater role (and the fishing industry a smaller role) in setting catch limits. A third issue is governance -- which means, in this instance, bureaucratic chaos. Dozens of different ocean-related programs are scattered throughout dozens of different federal agencies; the commission would establish a National Oceans Council in the White House to coordinate and consolidate them. This would also give the issue of ocean protection the prominence it deserves. The report now goes to state governors for comments, then to President Bush, and then Congress. It's time for everyone to pay attention. Less than a year ago, another report, from a private group called the Pew Oceans Commission, addressed many of the same problems, offered many of the same remedies and reached the same verdict: that the decline in oceanic health threatens not just the natural legacy we intend to leave future generations but our present-day food supply, jobs and public health. Together the two reports provide blueprints for action too long deferred on a problem too long ignored. |
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1578649_1 | Where Engineering Trumps Nature, Science Seeks a Balance | demand drops for hydroelectric power from Glen Canyon Dam. The river drops too, leaving splash marks high along the granite and lava walls. ''It is like a swimming pool,'' said Ted Melis, a scientist with the United States Geological Survey who is conducting experiments on the river's sparkling clarity, due to the loss of natural sediment at the dam. The subduing of the West's most magnificent desert river has created a lot of work for scientists like Dr. Melis, who are intent on keeping the Colorado more than just an engineering marvel. Dr. Melis spends his days looking for ways to muddy the waters so that native river fish like the endangered humpback chub are not such easy prey for the relative newcomers, like rainbow and brown trout. On some nights, other scientists from the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, a federal agency where Dr. Melis works, are also busy on behalf of the old river. They patrol the rapids in small motorboats with big spotlights. At quiet pools at the river's edge, they apply jolts of electricity to the water to temporarily stun the fish, which then float to the surface. The chub and other endangered fish are measured, marked and returned to the river. The others are killed and their stomach contents studied before they are ground up and given to the Hualapai Indians for fertilizer. Tens of thousands of trout have been removed from the river this way. ''There is a suggestion that the humpback chub is increasing in these removal areas,'' said Jeff Lovich, chief of the monitoring and research center. ''The results are tantalizing.'' Dr. Lovich spoke to a group of scientists, government and water officials, journalists and an environmentalist who took a recent raft trip downriver through the heart of the Grand Canyon. It took eight days to cover the 225 miles from Lees Ferry, Ariz., near the Utah border, to Diamond Creek in the Hualapai Indian reservation. The rafts were supplied by the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, which tracks the effects of the Glen Canyon Dam on the river. The journey was premised on the drought but it touched upon many other things. Mr. Raley, the assistant interior secretary, told of successes the Bush administration has claimed along the river. The biggest, he said, was a deal last year with California about how to divide surplus Colorado water -- though |
1578414_20 | Keeping the Forces of Decrepitude at Bay | certain point because you can't see what happens inside your body, and then one day you see signs of aging in your face. It's a sharp reminder of mortality.'' It all goes back to that, of course, as simple a fact of life as it is profound: the dying of the light that leads to the pitch-darkness at the end of the tunnel. Out, out, brief flame. ''Aging,'' declares Dr. Marianne Legato, a leading medical researcher who founded the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University, ''is nature's way of preparing us for death. That's why we hate old people.'' I suppose the one good thing to be said about having already aged is that it gives you the upper hand in a strange, secretive sort of way. I mean you can look at young girls in their barely-there whiffs of clothes -- their abbreviated tank tops or skirts that stop just below the pelvis, strutting their juicy stuff, and think: Just you wait, just you wait. Your spring-chicken days are numbered, all you fine-feathered chickadees. We may live in postfeminist times, but the unspoken cutoff point for women as far as their desirability as females goes still pretty much revolves around their reproductive capacity. ''In the mind of the public, we literally go overnight from being an object of desire to being discardable,'' observes Legato, a slim and elegantly dressed 68-year-old with a perfectly coifed grayish-blond pageboy and ramrod-straight posture. ''There's a switch that goes from 'on' to 'off.' 'On' is premenopausal and 'off' is postmenopausal.'' But then what solace, when you come right down to it, is there in the bitter irony that youth is fleeting, the average onset of menopause is 51 and life is becoming ever more prolonged -- the average life expectancy of an infant girl born today is 86 years, and estimates are that this number will reach 120 by the middle of the century -- other than the dubious one of Schadenfreude? I wish I were more like Marianne Legato, who identifies strongly with the physician father who nurtured her curiosity and is firmly convinced that women are ''a gift to man'' and refuses to have plastic surgery. In the end, though, I am only me, a 49-year-old mother of a 14-year-old daughter whose skin -- especially, as Nabokov wrote, ''that silky shimmer above her temple'' -- would make any ''Lolita'' lover weep. |
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1578430_2 | The Way We Live Now: 5-2-04: On Language; Cut and Run | by said Ship, but cut & run.'' The nautical metaphor was defined in the 1794 ''Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship'' as ''to cut the cable and make sail instantly, without waiting to weigh anchor.'' In those days, the anchor cable was made of hemp and could be cut, allowing an escaping vessel to run before the wind. Sailors extended the metaphor to fit other hasty, though not panicky, departures: Herman Melville, in his 1850 novel, ''White-Jacket,'' had a midshipman cry out, ''Jack Chase cut and run!'' about a buddy who ran away with a seductive lady. The poet Tennyson wrote to his wife, Emily, in 1864: ''I dined at Gladstone's yesterday -- Duke and Duchess there . . . but I can't abide the dinners. . . . I shall soon have to cut and run.'' That lighthearted sense has since disappeared. Like the word quagmire, the phrase has gained an accusatory edge in politics and war. Vogue Word Watch Some words move through the language like comets. Here are three spotted in the Vogue Word Watch: ''Ben Kingsley is an actor of immense, often ominous interiority,'' wrote Karen Durbin in The New York Times. The word is hot in criticism of poetry and art movies. It is ''the quality of being inward,'' defined back in 1803 as ''the attributes of an object as originally existing in itself.'' In today's usage, it is applied to people (or their work) who are not merely introspective but are also able to peel the onion of the self right down to where the tears are. Default, dear Brutus, long ago left the legal meaning of ''failure to perform an obligation'' to leap into computer lingo as ''the option selected by a computer when the user is too lazy to choose.'' Now it has hopped into the fashion world: ''Do you have a default outfit?'' asked Kate Novack of Sarah Jessica Parker in Time magazine. (Answer: a T-shirt or a black shift.) The phrase became the name of a musical group whose latest album provides ''a straight ahead, take only the clothes on your back'' journey, in which you presumably pack only default outfits. Phishing made the front page of The Times recently. ''Phishing got its name a decade ago when America Online charged users by the hour,'' Saul Hansell wrote. ''Teenagers sent e-mail and instant messages pretending to be AOL customer |
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1578670_4 | China Races to Reverse Its Falling Production of Grain | With spring planting under way, the official New China News Agency announced in March that the government had issued an ''emergency circular'' establishing tax breaks, direct subsidies and other incentives for farmers to grow grain. A production goal of 455 million tons was set for 2004 and a ceiling was placed on cotton production. The Ministry of Agriculture has sent regional monitoring teams to execute the new grain policy and is handing out awards for record yields. A top government researcher announced a new super hybrid strain of rice to increase production. Most of all, leaders hope rising prices will lure farmers back to grain. Wholesale prices have risen 28 percent during the past year, helping farmers but fueling concerns about inflation. ''Grain security concerns the nation's livelihood and social stability,'' Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was quoted as saying by Farmers' Daily. President Hu Jintao, quoted in People's Daily, focused on reversing the loss of farmland, imploring local officials to protect and ''decisively arrest the reckless occupation of farmland.'' In response, the reforestation program, instituted partly to reverse environmentally damaging farming on steep mountain slopes, has been halted. Officials also say they are moving against illegal development projects. Last year alone, the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources found 178,000 cases of illegal land seizure. The agency announced that it was shutting down 3,763 industrial parks formed from illegally seized farmland by officials trying to lure factories and investment. Land cases such as the golf course development have outraged farmers, hundreds of whom have gone to Beijing to file complaints about illegal seizures and unpaid compensation. A report by a Shandong agricultural official found that the province had lost more than 4,000 square miles of farmland since 1999. In November, the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources cited the golf project as one of the five most egregious examples of illegal land seizures in China, noting that nearly a third of the land was taken improperly and that compensation had not been paid. The investigation and news coverage won farmers their payment; Mr. Meng now gets about $90 a year. But the project was not halted. The mixed-use project is still under construction and a sales agent said the two-story villas were selling quickly. The developer has even mounted a statue of a Roman gladiator riding a chariot atop the entrance gate. ''There is a lot of development that is |
1584002_4 | U.S. Military Disputed Protected Status of Prisoners Held in Iraq | state or an occupying power. In testimony last week on Capitol Hill, Col. Marc Warren, a top American military lawyer in Iraq, defended harsh techniques available to American interrogators there as not being in violation of the Geneva Conventions. He said the conventions should be read in light of ''various legal treatises and interpretations of coercion as applied to security internees.'' Exactly how the treatment of security prisoners would differ from others under the military's approach was not spelled out in detail, but clearly it would allow their segregation into a separate part of the prison for interrogation, where some of them could be held incommunicado. The military's letter promised to try to improve prisoners' treatment in some respects cited by the Red Cross, promising, for example, to provide shelters against mortar and rocket attacks ''in due course'' but noting that the shelters are in short supply for American and allied soldiers. It also said ''improvement can be made'' to provide adequate clothing and water, and promised speedier judgments and discharges of innocent prisoners. The letter is addressed to Eva Svoboda of the Red Cross committee, who is identified as the agency's ''protection coordinator.'' It asserts that the prisoners at Camp Cropper ''have been assessed to be of significant ongoing intelligence value to current and future military operations in Iraq.'' ''Their detention condition is in the context of ongoing strategic interrogation,'' it said, and ''under the circumstances, we consider their detention to be humane.'' The Red Cross report said that at the time of the October visits to Abu Ghraib, ''a total of 601 detainees were held as security detainees.'' ''Many were unaware of any charges against them or what legal process might be ahead of them,'' the undated report said. Professor Silliman, a former Air Force lawyer who heads the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke, said the response of authorities at Abu Ghraib to the Red Cross appeared to be part of a larger pattern in which the administration and the military devote great energy to find ways to avoid the jurisdiction of the Geneva Conventions. ''If you look at this in connection with other things that are coming out, it doesn't seem like a snap decision but part of an across-the-board pattern of decision-making to create another category outside the conventions.'' He cited a memorandum written in January 2002 by Albert R. Gonzales, the |
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1583941_2 | Ideas & Trends; Hollywood Help Wanted: Classicists With Style | had ''Gladiator,'' a television remake of ''Spartacus'' and that Mel Gibson movie in the original Aramaic. Both Oliver Stone and Baz Luhrmann are directing movies about Alexander the Great. Of course, you can't really call the new works a trend; the movies have been making tales of togas and chariots for decades, from ''Ben-Hur'' to ''Animal House.'' But it is gladdening in more ways than one. At least some of the source material remains beyond reproach. Better ''The Aeneid'' than ''The Flintstones,'' after all. And it keeps words like coliseum and Caesar from recalling only auto shows and anchovies. Finally, if the movies and television are going to be mining the great works of antiquity and antiquity itself for story ideas, someone's got to translate them for the consumers of popular culture. The point is, people who go to movies may be too young or indifferent to be familiar with the classics, but the people who make the movies can't be. They need to know their stuff. They need to know Latin and Greek as well as how to talk to Valley girls. They need to know, for example, that ''Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles '' is the opening of ''The Iliad,'' even if they choose to reject it for being too poetic and oblique. In ''Troy,'' the line the screenwriter David Benioff came up with instead -- Odysseus, speaking in voice-over: ''Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity'' -- is an exquisite specimen of contemporary popspeak, so overpowering in its empty profundity that virtually everyone can pretend to understand it. Actually, pop culture offers other opportunities as well, namely for critics; we need writers who can make clear and entertaining the links between these two disparate eras in which the word Trojan has such different connotations. We would benefit from a scholar's take, for example, on those Sunday night HBO series. What is ''Six Feet Under'' if not a contemporary study of funerary ritual -- an exhumation of the issue that consumed the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, the passage between life and afterlife. And ''Sex and the City''? Surely, the decadence in dress and behavior recall Rome under Caligula. Granted, ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' has no classical antecedent. But ''The Sopranos'' is rooted in ''The Oresteia,'' the progenitor of all family tragedies. Uncle Junior is Nestor-like, the very embodiment of wisdom, no? The two Tonys have that Agamemnon |
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1583910_0 | Colleges Struggle to Attract Job Recruiters to Campuses | Four years ago, it did not take much to lure corporate recruiters from cities like New York and Boston to Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., to interview the latest crop of students at the graduate business school. Now it takes free rides on a corporate jet that is paid for by alumni. ''When the job market isn't great, not all recruiters are willing to go out of their way to get to us,'' said Karin Ash, director of the Career Management Center at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell. Only one airline serves Ithaca, Ms. Ash said, and recruiters who come to the school must often spend the night, taking two days out of their schedules. ''Not everyone's going to take the time, especially in a weaker job market,'' she said. With a job market that has been tight for several years, many colleges and universities are going to great lengths to help their students catch the eyes of recruiters.Since the fall 2001 recruiting season, the number of visits to college campuses has declined as much as 50 percent, said Steven Rothberg, president and founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, a Web site for college students and recent graduates. Ms. Ash said that career development officers at 25 other top business schools had told her that recruiting visits were 25 to 40 percent below the 2000-1 level. In addition, while recruiters are still visiting most of the nation's top schools, the second-tier universities and the schools that are far from urban centers ''have been largely ignored'' by some companies, Mr. Rothberg said. This year's job prospects seem more promising for recent college and business school graduates. Employers plan to hire 11.2 percent more college graduates from the class of 2004 than from the class of 2003, according to an April report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. And business schools report moderate increases in the number of offers their students have received by this point in the year. Nonetheless, corporate recruiters are still being highly selective about the campuses they visit. To combat that trend, some schools have set up Web conferencing rooms where potential employers can interview students without setting foot on campus; others have started busing students to major cities to meet recruiters. At Cornell, a group of business school alumni is underwriting the airlifting of recruiters who have at least one job to fill. Since the |
1583964_1 | BackTalk; The New Minstrel Show: Black Vaudeville With Statistics | folks are still cuttin' up for the white man. Any ethnic group that ever found itself on the periphery of equality and acceptance has had to create coping mechanisms. Some who were victimized by bigotry secretly mimicked the prejudicial perceptions of their oppressor with exaggerated, self-deprecating depictions of their behavior, their very private burlesque that gave them brief respites from their marginalization. For African-Americans, burlesque as healing balm became the essential comedic ingredient of black vaudeville. Comics would strut and cakewalk through now classic routines that savagely lampooned minstrel shows, popular staples of mainstream vaudeville in which white performers in blackface and coily-haired wigs further dehumanized their own creation, the darkie prototype. Black vaudeville would become a casualty of expanding educational opportunities that created an evolving black middle class with deep concerns that minstrel-like characterizations were degrading and would only perpetuate the accepted attitude that the Negro was the slap-happy court jester for whites. But a variety of factors, in particular the canonizing of youth culture, the de-emphasizing of wisdom and the glorification of the boorishness inherent in America's look-at-me culture, has played a major role in putting black vaudeville back on the boards. The featured attraction? A number of black athletes. When we see a wide receiver strut and cakewalk to the end zone, then join teammates in the catalog of celebratory rituals, which now feature props, or hear a cackling, bug-eyed commentator speaking Slanglish (''Give up the props, dog, they be flossin' now!''), we are seeing our private burlesque, out of context, without its knowing wink and satiric spine. Minus these elements, what remains is minstrel template made ubiquitous by Stepin Fetchit and the handful of black actors who worked in the early motion pictures. But unlike the Stepin Fetchits, left with no alternative but to mortgage their dignity for a paycheck, who often suffered tremendously under the weight of tremendous guilt and shame, some of today's black athletes have unwittingly packaged and sold this nouveau minstrel to Madison Avenue's highest bidders, selling it as our ''culturally authentic'' behavior, ''keepin' it real,'' as they say. Nothing could be less real or more inauthentic. Or condescending. How can 38 million people possibly have a single view of reality or authenticity? But the athletes who have exhumed the minstrel's grave keep alive these shopworn condescensions. ''The danger of the domination of these one-dimensional images is that they deny the humanity |
1585261_1 | Brazil Resolves Complaint On Florida Juice-Import Tax | to finance advertising campaigns for Florida juice. In its W.T.O. complaint, Brazil, the world's No.1 citrus grower and exporter of frozen concentrated orange juice, charged that the tax was discriminatory and protectionist. Juice importers in Florida also criticized the tax and challenged it in court. Nearly two years of bilateral talks between government officials and industry representatives from both countries ensued, culminating in a vote in the Florida Legislature in March that amended the orange juice tax. Now juice importers will be required to pay only one-third as mcuh and can demand that their tax money go to the Florida Department of Citrus to finance research projects instead of advertising campaigns. Gov. Jeb Bush ratified the changes on May 12. ''We're ending the case in the W.T.O. because there's no need for it now,'' Clodoaldo Hugueney, the under secretary for economic affairs at Brazil's foreign ministry, said in a telephone interview from Brasília. ''We achieved our goals through dialogue, and we're very pleased with the outcome,'' he said, adding that he hoped Friday's agreement would help put an end to years of bitter finger-pointing between the countries' orange industries. The deal removes a major sticking point from efforts to forge a Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement by next January's target date. Florida's orange juice tariffs have long bogged down the hemispheric trade talks. ''It seems that good will and common sense are prevailing, and that should allow us to move on to an agenda that's less conflictive,'' said Adermerval Garcia, president of Abecitrus, the trade association representing Brazil's orange juice exporters. Mr. Garcia, whose group lobbied the Brazilian government to challenge Florida's orange juice tariffs at the W.T.O. in the first place, said that he did not expect the agreement to translate into an immediate jump in juice exports to Florida, but rather into an increase in revenue. Last year, Brazil exported 1.1 million tons of frozen orange juice, bringing in $1.3 billion in revenues, according to industry data. About 70 percent of those exports went to Europe, while only 15 percent were shipped to the United States. The decision to withdraw the orange juice complaint comes just one month after Brazil won a huge victory at the W.T.O. over American cotton subsidies. The preliminary ruling, which is expected to be upheld in June, was the first successful challenge of a wealthy nation's domestic agricultural subsidies. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS |
1585284_1 | What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up in Cyberspace | same challenge today, however, I would probably pass on meeting the girl's father -- and outflank him on the Internet. Thanks to e-mail, online chat rooms and instant messages -- which permit private, real-time conversations -- adolescents have at last succeeded in shielding their social lives from adult scrutiny. But this comes at a cost: teenagers nowadays are both more connected to the world at large than ever, and more cut off from the social encounters that have historically prepared young people for the move into adulthood. The Internet was billed as a revolutionary way to enrich our social lives and expand our civic connections. This seems to have worked well for elderly people and others who were isolated before they got access to the World Wide Web. But a growing body of research is showing that heavy use of the Net can actually isolate younger socially connected people who unwittingly allow time online to replace face-to-face interactions with their families and friends. Online shopping, checking e-mail and Web surfing -- mainly solitary activities -- have turned out to be more isolating than watching television, which friends and family often do in groups. Researchers have found that the time spent in direct contact with family members drops by as much as half for every hour we use the Net at home. This should come as no surprise to the two-career couples who have seen their domestic lives taken over by e-mail and wireless tethers that keep people working around the clock. But a startling body of research from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon has shown that heavy Internet use can have a stunting effect outside the home as well. Studies show that gregarious, well-connected people actually lost friends, and experienced symptoms of loneliness and depression, after joining discussion groups and other activities. People who communicated with disembodied strangers online found the experience empty and emotionally frustrating but were nonetheless seduced by the novelty of the new medium. As Prof. Robert Kraut, a Carnegie Mellon researcher, told me recently, such people allowed low-quality relationships developed in virtual reality to replace higher-quality relationships in the real world. No group has embraced this socially impoverishing trade-off more enthusiastically than adolescents, many of whom spend most of their free hours cruising the Net in sunless rooms. This hermetic existence has left many of these teenagers with nonexistent social skills -- a point |
1580826_0 | MEMO PAD | US AIRWAYS EMPHASIZES GLOBAL NETWORKS -- As it battles Southwest Airlines in Philadelphia, US Airways has begun emphasizing the value of its international routes. As part of that effort, US Air said it joined the worldwide Star Alliance last week. Partner carriers in alliances cooperate to sell tickets on one another's flights, while customers are able to book tickets and redeem frequent-flier miles on one carrier for trips that may be flown by a partner. Besides US Airways, Star's 14 other members include United Airlines and Air Canada, and international powerhouses like Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa. DELTA DROPS SOME NEW YORK FARES -- While the battle for market share rages in Philadelphia, Delta Air Lines yesterday announced a fare sale from Kennedy International Airport in New York. One-way fares are $99 (excluding taxes and fees) to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Denver. Sale fares on those routes, available through May 19 for travel that must be completed by July 31, require a round-trip purchase at least 14 days in advance. BUSINESS JETS REBOUND -- Worldwide shipments of business jets jumped 13.9 percent in the first quarter compared with last year's first quarter, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. Especially notable was the renewed strength in shipments of so-called heavy-metal jets, many of them capable of long-range nonstop domestic and international flights. First-quarter shipments included two Boeing Business Jets (compared with none in the first quarter of 2003); nine Bombardier Global Express jets (compared with six in the 2003 quarter); eight Falcon 900EX EASy or 2000EX models (compared with two); and 13 Gulfstream 300/400/500 and 550 models (compared with 11 in the first quarter of 2003). BUSINESS-CLASS IMPROVEMENTS -- Lufthansa is the latest foreign carrier to spend big money -- $350 million in this case -- on improved business-class cabins as intense competition grows over the trans-Atlantic premium-class market. Since February, the German carrier has rolled out its new business-class service on these routes: Vancouver-Frankfurt; Toronto-Frankfurt; Los Angeles-Munich; San Francisco-Munich and New York-Frankfurt. The new cabins feature seats that convert to 61/2- foot flat beds. Next Monday, Lufthansa will introduce an in-flight Internet service on the Los Angeles-Munich route. JOE SHARKEY BUSINESS TRAVEL |
1580866_0 | Monsanto Shelves Plan For Modified Wheat | Monsanto said yesterday that it had halted its effort to introduce the world's first genetically engineered wheat, bowing to the concerns of American farmers that the crop would endanger billions of dollars of exports. The announcement indicates how difficult it is becoming to introduce genetic engineering into new crops beyond the four that have been genetically engineered for years -- canola, corn, cotton and soybeans. Monsanto has already largely dropped efforts to develop genetically modified potatoes and vegetables and, while it is not giving up on wheat, its efforts over the next few years will be even more focused on corn, cotton and soybeans. Genetic engineering of those crops is somewhat less controversial because they are used largely for animal feed, clothing or food oils, while wheat is more likely to be used directly in food. ''Consumer acceptance and the readiness of the commercial markets are as important as food and environmental safety for biotech crops these days,'' said Gregory Jaffe, director of biotechnology programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group. He added, ''It will be difficult to market biotech crops designed primarily for human consumption in the near future.'' The wheat was genetically engineered to be resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, which would allow farmers to spray their fields to kill weeds while leaving the crop intact. While Roundup Ready wheat attracted the expected opposition from consumer groups and environmental advocates, what was unusual in this case was the opposition of many American and Canadian farmers, who have eagerly adopted other biotechnology crops. These farmers say that wheat buyers in Europe, Japan and some other countries had told them they would not buy genetically modified wheat because they thought consumers did not want it. Moreover, some buyers threatened not to buy any American wheat because it would be impossible to keep the modified and nonmodified wheat from intermingling. ''Farmers are not opposed to planting a genetically modified crop as long as they could find someone to buy it,'' said Robert Carlson, the president of the North Dakota Farmers Union, who farms near Minot, N.D. In this case he said, the overseas customers ''have indicated they will not accept any genetically modified wheat.'' Monsanto said in a statement yesterday that it made its decision after ''extensive consultation with customers in the wheat industry.'' But it said another reason was that the acreage being planted |
1580788_2 | The Risks and Demands of Pregnancy After 20 | is only one factor -- and perhaps not the most important one -- influencing the ability of a woman to conceive and deliver a healthy child in her waning reproductive years. Writing in the current issue of the journal Contemporary Ob/Gyn, Dr. Shirley Fong and Dr. Peter McGovern review what recent studies have revealed to explain why a woman's fertility declines steadily after age 20 and precipitously after age 35. Dr. Fong is a fellow and Dr. McGovern is director of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women's Health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark. Even if a woman turns out to be capable of producing new eggs throughout her reproductive life span, older eggs remain a factor, the experts stated. An older egg is readily fertilized, but the resulting embryo has a harder time implanting in the uterus, where a placenta must form to provide a circulatory connection to the mother that nourishes and supports the fetus during its development. The placenta also produces hormones necessary for a successful pregnancy. Older women have a higher incidence of uterine fibroids, benign tumors that can interfere with the attachment of the embryo to the uterine lining. Also, the lining of the uterus in older women appears to be less receptive to an embryo, possibly because their fertilized eggs produce an insufficient amount of the hormone progesterone, needed to maintain an early pregnancy until placenta production of progesterone takes over at about eight weeks. Implantation rates decline at age 30, and by age 40 are half that of a young woman. Older women receiving donor eggs are commonly treated with progesterone to improve implantation rates. Older eggs, once fertilized, also are more likely to divide abnormally, resulting in a genetically damaged embryo. Studies of embryos formed through in vitro fertilization showed that those of older women are five times more likely to have chromosomal disorders. The overwhelming problem is errors made when the chromosomes in the egg fail to separate properly during cell division. Higher Miscarriage Rates A result of all these problems is a dramatic rise in miscarriage rates in older women. Miscarriage occurs in 10 percent of women under 30 but in a third of women in their early 40's, with the greatest increase occurring after 35. To reduce the rate of pregnancy loss among women undergoing I.V.F., preimplantation |
1581739_1 | Europeans Appear Ready To Approve a Biotech Corn | lifting the moratorium.'' The corn, known as Bt-11, will be approved only for consumption, meaning Europeans will be able to eat the corn after it is imported from other countries but European farmers will still not be able to grow it themselves. The corn contains a bacterial gene that produces a toxin making the corn resistant to the corn borer and the corn earworm. The corn is also resistant to glufosinate, an herbicide. The approval is not expected to have much of an effect on American food and farm business. That is in part because under European rules, the corn would have to be labeled as genetically modified, which would discourage consumers from buying it and food companies from even offering it for sale. ''There is simply no market for G.M. foods in Europe as consumers have overwhelmingly rejected them,'' Friends of the Earth, a group opposed to crop biotechnology, said in a statement. Indeed, Monsanto dropped plans on Monday to introduce what would have been the world's first genetically engineered wheat in large measure because of opposition from food companies in Europe, which threatened not to import the wheat from American farmers. In addition, sweet corn, the type that is eaten on the cob or canned or frozen, accounts for only about 1 percent of the American corn crop. The vast bulk of corn is field corn, the more starchy type fed to animals or processed to make corn oil, corn syrup and other food ingredients. And Bt-11, the only biotech sweet corn on the market, accounts for only about 1 percent of the sweet corn planted in the United States, Syngenta has said. After approving some genetically modified crops, the European Union essentially stopped doing so in 1998 as opposition to biotech foods mounted. The United States, Canada and Argentina, all major growers of genetically modified crops, challenged Europe at the W.T.O., saying the de facto ban violates trading rules because it is not based on any scientific evidence that the crops are harmful. The W.T.O. hearing on the complaint is expected in June, putting some pressure on the European Commission to lift the embargo before then. Bt-11 sweet corn seemed an easy test case because Bt-11 field corn, with the same foreign genes, had already been approved for use in food and animal feed by the European Union before the moratorium began. A European scientific panel also |
1581734_1 | Forget Lonely. Life Is Healthy At the Top. | for the general public, in which he pulls together 25 years of research, declaring that status is more important than genetics, supersize fast food or even smoking. But figuring out that status matters is one thing; figuring out why is another. How does status get under the skin? There are now tens of thousands of papers and research projects offering theories. But the answers are as tantalizing, and controversial, as they are elusive. After all, why should the ability to get a reservation tonight at the exclusive Per Se restaurant instead of Red Lobster or playing golf at Augusta instead of Van Cortlandt Park prolong one's life? Why, as Sir Michael writes in ''The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity'' (Times Books), ''should educated people with good stable jobs have a higher risk of dropping dead than people with a bit more education or slightly higher status jobs? Is living in a five-bedroom house with three bathrooms better for your health than 'crowding' the spouse and two children into a four-bedroom house with only two?'' The answer, Sir Michael said in an interview from London, lies in the psychological effects of inequality: ''Your position in the hierarchy very much relates to how much control you have over your life and your opportunities for full social engagement.'' Those feelings, he and others argue, profoundly affect one's health. What transformed the health establishment's thinking about the link between status and health was the Whitehall Studies, long-term research projects that have tracked the health of thousands of British civil servants since 1967. Whitehall provides something pretty close to an ideal real-world laboratory. After all, it is not the gap between the haves and have-nots where one might find the most compelling evidence for the status syndrome, but between the have-a-lots and the have-the-mosts. Civil servants all have office jobs, health care and high job security, but they are sharply classified according to rank. What researchers found is that those in the lowest grade were three times more likely to die at any given age as those in the highest. One explanation might be that people on the lowest rung have unhealthier habits -- smoking, not exercising, bulking up on fast food. But researchers who looked more closely at coronary heart disease concluded that risk factors accounted for only one-third of the differences between those at the top of the |
1581724_0 | Vatican Discourages Marriage With Muslims for Catholic Women | In an official church document released Friday, the Vatican discouraged marriage between Catholics and Muslims, especially Catholic women and Muslim men. When ''a Catholic woman and a Muslim wish to marry,'' the document says, ''bitter experience teaches us that a particularly careful and in-depth preparation is called for.'' It also says ''profound cultural and religious differences'' exist between the two faiths, particularly concerning the rights of women, who are referred to as ''the least protected member of the Muslim family.'' The document, written by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, sets these issues in a context of globalism and easy travel that encourages the mixing of religions. Although it makes no mention of the conflicts in the Middle East, its release comes during a time of heightened anger in the Muslim world. The document indicates several points of commonality between Roman Catholicism and Islam, like a belief in God, daily prayer, fasting, charity, pilgrimage and ''the fight against injustice.'' At the same time, it gently chides Muslims for faltering on the issue of human rights. ''We hope there will be, on the part of our Muslim brothers and sisters,'' its authors write, ''a growing awareness that fundamental liberties, the inviolable rights of the person, the equal dignity of man and woman, the democratic principle of government and the healthy lay character of the state are principles that cannot be surrendered.'' The Vatican has long encouraged Catholics to marry within the faith, and the current document -- an 80-page booklet titled ''The Love of Christ Towards Migrants'' -- makes that point again. It says marriage between Catholics and all non-Christians ''should be discouraged,'' mainly for the sake of children. Earlier this week, the Roman Catholic Church released a similar document expressing its disdain for same-sex unions. In a pointed reference to Islam, the document released Friday said, ''It is well known that the norms of the two religions are in stark contrast.'' If Catholics do choose to marry Muslims, the document says, they must be sure to baptize their children and avoid signing Islamic documents or swearing oaths, including the ''shahada,'' Islam's profession of faith. All Catholics, it warns, ''must take a firm stand on what the church requires.'' |
1584786_3 | Measuring the Season in Generations . . . | Mr. Olson designs in and around Seattle, where he lives with his wife in a top-floor apartment downtown. (They spend several weekends a month at the cabin, and longer stretches during the summer.) Many of his clients are art collectors whose houses, while hardly gargantuan, are meant for showing off artworks and for entertaining, and suffer no shortage of travertine and stainless steel. He also recently designed Ocean House, nearly 10,000 square feet, for a private owner on the Big Island of Hawaii. It has an elaborate pool and is built atop a bluff of hardened lava, some of it exposed inside the house. Mr. Olson, on the other hand, seems proud to follow the many well-known architects who have designed simple, even claustrophobic, living spaces for themselves -- Le Corbusier, with his tiny weekend cabin overlooking the Mediterranean, for example, or Alvar Aalto, who built a charmingly modest home and office on a quiet street in Helsinki. ''Architects get used to very high quality, but often can't afford as much space as their clients,'' Mr. Olson said. ''I remember reading once that the architects in ancient Egypt had tombs for themselves that were just like the pharaohs' -- except in miniature.'' On top of that, Ms. Olson said, ''the site itself is the drama.'' Mr. Olson nodded. ''This is prettier than any site I've ever worked on,'' he said. ''You've got this great southern exposure, the view of Mount Rainier. It's right on the water, and it's perfectly remote. The land is the treasure, more than the architecture. So you hold back.'' Mr. Olson's parents began bringing him here soon after he was born, in 1940. As a child, he said, he liked camping out on the edges of the property, even though wild animals sometimes tramp through the woods. He and his cousins used to lie in their tents clutching hammers, he said. ''If we heard a sound in the middle of the night we'd always yell: 'Aahhh! Maybe it's a bear!' '' Mr. Olson has tried to preserve that sense of adventurous informality. He refuses to install a television bigger than 12 inches. ''The kids are always bored when they first get here,'' he said. ''But pretty soon they're down on the beach looking for crabs or running around. I think you use your imagination differently in these quiet places.'' It was no coincidence, he said, that |
1584792_4 | The Architectural Blame Game | collapse have nothing to do with how innovative the architecture is, said Leslie Robertson, who was a chief engineer of the World Trade Center towers. ''When problems occur, it's usually in the interface'' between architects, engineers and contractors, he said. In other words, it is in translating the design from one office to the next that mistakes are amplified and become deadly. ''Seldom can one say with any certainty, 'That's it, that right there is where the trouble happened,' '' he added. No matter what the investigation into the collapse ultimately reveals, said Jon Magnusson, chairman and chief executive of Magnusson Klemencic Associates, a structural engineering firm in Seattle, ''It can't solely be the architecture.'' ''Every structural engineer has a duty,'' he said. ''If the architecture doesn't allow you to do something that needs to be done to keep the building up, you must stop.'' Mr. Andreu is one of the world's most prominent airport designers, having worked on dozens of such projects. He has also designed a new Chinese national theater in Beijing. Chinese officials said the Paris collapse would not affect plans for the theater. If they had decided to scale back the project, though, it probably would not have come as a shock. We have always asked architects to help push the boundaries of art and science but turned on them, even when they were not fully, or even partly, to blame, when we feel buildings have put us at risk. The most telling case is probably that of the 13th-century Gothic cathedral in the French city of Beauvais. Anyone who has taken an architectural history course will recall the story of that cathedral, whose highest vault fell in 1284. Plenty of historians have blamed the collapse on overly bold design, peppering their accounts with architects who ''rushed'' into the sky. But Marvin Trachtenberg, a professor at New York University, said the evidence actually suggests a more mundane problem. The vaults fell, he said, ''because there was a miscalculation in the buttressing, an eccentric placement of key supports.'' In other words, the cathedral gave way not because the architects tried to go too high or because they were experimenting with new forms, but because they failed to properly apply structural knowledge they had used before, with predictable success. Perhaps this will turn out to be what happened in the same country exactly 720 years later. DESIGN NOTEBOOK |
1584876_3 | Controlling Energy Costs On the Factory Floor | in energy management. ''I am the third or fourth person in this job, but I am not really the energy czar; I have energy czars working with me and for me,'' he said. Fuel switching plays an important role. Goodyear's nine factories in the United States consume large amounts of oil and natural gas to generate steam, which in turn is used to cure rubber and keep it warm while it is being shaped into tires. ''We primarily use No.6 fuel oil now,'' Mr. Rickman said. ''That is a fuel refined from waste fuel oils. It is a very heavy, dark, sludgy oil, but the price of No. 6 has not risen as fast as natural gas or other refined fuels.'' Like many manufacturers, Goodyear recycles spent steam as it condenses back into water. This water, which is still very hot, is then recycled for other uses -- to heat rooms, for example. Winter heating is a big target for conservation in corporate America and Mr. Rickman is testing a solar wall recently installed at a factory. ''It works well so far,'' he said. Cogeneration is a growing practice. 3M, for example, generates its own electricity for an administrative operation in Austin, Tex. The waste heat given off by the gas-fired generator is captured and used to run boilers that heat the building. ''There are literally a thousand or more conservation projects around the company,'' said Steven Schultz, 3M's energy program manager. Many are small items, like installing variable speed controls on fans used in a ventilation system at the Scotch tape factory in Hutchinson, Minn. Until the controls were installed, the fans ran at a constant speed regardless of the need. 3M makes Scotch tape, industrial tape and bandages in many varieties. The adhesive on these tapes is spread across the surface through the use of a solvent that had oil as an ingredient. In most cases, it is now water-based, which is better for the environment, said John R. Cornwell, a company spokesman. It is also less costly, particularly when energy prices surge. The company has pursued energy efficiency since the 1973 oil embargo, the first of the energy price shocks. 3M's stated goal is to increase energy efficiency by 4 percent a year at its more than 40 factories and office facilities. It did not quite reach that goal last year, Mr. Cornwell said, although ''energy use |
1579477_2 | Cordless Phones as Cellular Look-Alikes | highway. The 2.4-gigahertz phones are newer, so they have a newer problem: the frequency is shared with Wi-Fi wireless networks, wireless Xbox game controllers and some microwave ovens. Many recent 2.4-gigahertz phones and most Wi-Fi hubs automatically switch channels within their frequency if they are stepping on each other's turf. I encountered no obvious warfare between my Apple AirPort Wi-Fi network and several 2.4-gigahertz phones, including the exceptionally compact Uniden DCT6485-2. But every phone maker I spoke with said the only reliable way for Wi-Fi users to avoid problems was to stick with 900-megahertz or 5.8-gigahertz phones. If 900-megahertz is the crowded old highway, Mr. Palmer said, 5.8 gigahertz is the new expressway that most commuters have yet to discover. But both Mr. Palmer and Mr. Silverberg said that while people who live in densely crowded urban areas might need higher frequencies, interference was unlikely to be a problem for many residential users, even those with 900-megahertz phones. On the other hand, the industry reserves its most advanced features for the higher-priced, higher-frequency models. Among those features is digital transmission. Digital models are more expensive, and the advertising indicates that digital transmission affords better sound quality. Mr. Palmer said that digital systems offer more protection against eavesdropping (although not as good as that of phone plugged into a jack) and are less subject to interference. But he conceded that in terms of sound quality, a variant of the old CD-versus-vinyl debate comes into play. ''The analog telephone is probably the clearest signal,'' he said, an opinion that Mr. Silverberg seconded. Of the cordless phones I tried, the best sound quality came from the long-since-discontinued 900-megahertz Panasonic phone that has been in our kitchen for several years. The runners-up were two current 900-megahertz models: the GE Spacemaker Speakerphone, a $130 under-cabinet model that will reach stores later this month, and VTech's 9127, which has a suggested price of just $20. By contrast, several 5.8-gigahertz digital phones, particularly Uniden's TRU 8885-2, prompted some people whom I spoke with to ask if I was using a cellphone. Like cellphones, those models sometimes clipped words from both incoming and outgoing calls and introduced an unwanted robotic sound to the conversation. The best of the digital models was one offered by a long-established brand name in phones: Panasonic's 5.8-gigahertz KX-TG5240, which sells for $150. The Uniden DCT6485-2 2.4 Gigahertz ($120) digital cordless phone and the |
1578206_4 | Another Leap by China, With Steel Leading Again | a long, tall shed, where they are pounded into shape and sprayed with jets of water to smooth their finish. Though some of the buildings are nearly half a century old, the plant was and remains one of China's more sensibly planned steel mills, with its own small mine nearby for low-grade iron ore and its own dock on the Yangtze River for bringing in high-grade iron ore by barge and for shipping out finished steel. Frontage on the seacoast or a navigable river is crucial to controlling costs at a steel mill, yet relatively few mills in China are put in such locations. Many more, including those being expanded now, are deep in the interior of the country, partly to keep them safe in case of invasion. Iron ore for these mills must be delivered from distant mines by the country's overstretched rail system, which is prone to delays measured in weeks, or by truck, which is much more expensive. By contrast, the Nanjing mill has invested in new barges that can travel both in rivers and in the open sea, saving the time and expense of transferring cargoes of imported ore from Australia or Brazil from one type of vessel at an ocean port. Nicholas Tolerico, the president of ThyssenKrupp Steel Services, the trading and distribution arm of the German steel giant, said that compared with moving iron ore by water, rail is twice as expensive, and trucks cost eight times as much. Over the last quarter-century, almost every American steel mill without access to a navigable waterway has closed, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs, because of shipping costs. Inland mills in China are able to operate and even expand in part because of generous bank loans, but also because they are close to a booming market: local construction. Nanjing is enjoying a building boom, too: on a 40-minute drive from downtown to the airport on a recent Saturday afternoon, 282 tall cranes could be seen working on large structures, mostly apartment towers. As in other Chinese cities, feverish speculation has sent apartment prices in Nanjing skyrocketing. At $24,000 to $30,000, the price of a 540-square-foot downtown apartment is now roughly eight years' salary for a typical engineer in Nanjing, or 20 years' pay for a skilled factory worker, according to local residents. The boom has enriched Nanjing Steel, which now mostly makes the steel rods and |
1583106_6 | Narrow Path for New Biotech Food Crops | potatoes were taken off the market by Monsanto after big potato processors and fast-food companies told growers that they did not want them. Lettuce growers in California balked at the introduction of Roundup Ready lettuce, said Kent J. Bradford, a professor of vegetable crops and director of the seed biotechnology center at Davis. For smaller crops, the economic barriers now loom as large as customer resistance. Keith Redenbaugh, associate director for regulatory affairs at Seminis Vegetable Seeds, and Alan McHughen, a plant biotechnologist at the University of California at Riverside, wrote in California Agriculture magazine that some companies budget $50 million above what they spend on a conventional crop to bring a biotech seed to market, given the health and environmental tests required. The entire market for iceberg lettuce seeds is $27 million a year, they said, which is why it might be difficult to develop transgenic lettuce. Some experts say the biotechnology companies must develop crops that offer more for the consumer or the food companies, not just the farmer. And, even with the cutbacks, there are still many crops in development. Syngenta is developing the StayRipe banana, which would remain edible up to five days longer than a conventional banana. It hopes to introduce the product around 2007. Monsanto says it is working on soybeans that would produce healthier oils, either reducing harmful transfats or increasing the levels of the omega fatty acids that are good for the heart. But the company says its first such product, not expected for a few years, will be developed by conventional breeding. ''The whole area is being held hostage until we get a great consumer trait that can pull these things through the market,'' Dr. Bradford said. And even consumer traits do not guarantee success. That first biotechnology crop, the 1994 Flavr Savr tomato, had a consumer-friendly trait: delayed rotting. But it failed in the United States for various reasons, like the problems growing, breeding and distributing it at low enough cost. Consumer opposition was not that big a factor, although some people thought that the tomato did not taste any better than conventional ones. Correction: May 24, 2004, Monday An article in Business Day on Thursday about obstacles to the development of genetically modified crops referred incorrectly to a potato taken off the market by Monsanto. It was insect-resistant, not virus-resistant, though one version did include resistance to a virus. |
1583140_2 | I.O.C. Enters A New World And Stumbles | ''The judge was saying that I was 41, old enough to be the mother of the women I was competing with.'' If Richards had been 25? ''It would have been totally different,'' she said. But in the eyes of I.O.C. members -- perhaps worried about future lawsuits, perhaps hoping to make a social statement -- steroids are fine as long as they are disguised as estrogen, as in therapy for male-to-female athletes. Several doping officials who were reached yesterday were confounded by the I.O.C.'s decision, privately questioning how they will verify operations, apply tests to what are essentially unnatural levels of hormones and interpret results. As Richards noted, hormone treatments for transgender athletes might diminish muscle mass differences between a man and woman, but the skeletal advantages -- and possibly lung and heart capacities -- are left unchanged. In synchronized swimming, it may be a nonissue. But in track and field, or in any event where physical superiority is crucial, a transgender athlete could succeed with artificial alterations. Isn't the purity of sport essential? Isn't that what Balco is all about? Asking questions is not meant to diminish the agony of men and women who feel imprisoned by their given gender, but to point out the Pandora's box the I.O.C. has opened for future abuse by those frantic to do anything to gain an edge. Think a sex-change operation is too radical to contemplate? As late as the 1980's, East Germany had a state-sponsored system that left female athletes with masculine features. In some underdeveloped nation, officials may wonder if surgery could reap the glory of gold. Who would know, anyway? Think unscrupulous athletes wouldn't go that far? In recent years, athletes have been known to inject bovine-based cocktails that could cause death, human-growth hormones that distort jaw lines and untested concoctions borne from a bubbling beaker. With gold medals so lucrative in some poor nations, a sex-change decision may not be that far-fetched. If the I.O.C. considered any of this, it was not disclosed in its decision. As the I.O.C. medical director, Patrick Schamasch, told reporters: ''Until now, we didn't have any regulations. We needed to establish some sort of policy.'' The Olympic policy on integrity is at stake. If the I.O.C. wanted to look magnanimous, it could have established a transgender Olympics, just as it did for Paralympic athletes. Anti-doping officials have enough to handle in their efforts |
1582984_0 | ONLINE DIARY | Buried Treasure Grandparents, take note: Alan and Nancy Bixby just raised the bar. The Bixbys, a semiretired couple in Whidbey Island, Wash., have come up with a unique legacy by melding a new fad, geocaching, with an old one, time capsules. Their site, www.timeinacapsule.com, details their efforts to bury 10 time capsules containing memorabilia intended for their grandsons (Jake, 11, and Luke, 3) in remote wilderness areas of the western United States. They imagine that decades from now, their grandchildren will venture forth to find the capsules with the aid of Global Positioning System devices, just as people do in geocaching, a kind of outdoor treasure hunt. To that end, they are preparing ''retrieval folders'' for each capsule with G.P.S. data, photos of the drop site, topographic maps and other notes. Perhaps more important than the contents of the capsules are the locations. ''Our grandsons are growing up in an urban environment, and we want to ensure that at some point in their lives they experience the wilderness,'' Mr. Bixby said. So far the Bixbys have buried capsules in the Idaho mountains, on a beach in Washington State and near a Montana ghost town. The site provides step-by-step instructions for other grandparents who want to follow their lead. The attention to detail is impressive: for example, copies of the retrieval folders will be left with a ''fail-safe'' younger relative as well as with the boys' parents. The Bixbys do not seem troubled by the possibility that their grandsons might resist retrieving their far-flung capsules. For one thing, Mr. Bixby explained, some valuables were included in each capsule ''just in case the boys are not as excited as we are.'' An Island Reunited The remote Greek island of Cythera (also spelled Kythera) has been inhabited since at least 1700 B.C. but is now home to a mere 2,500 after a long period of depopulation. Luckily, among the more than 100,000 descendants of Cytherians now living primarily in Australia are some Web developers who have built a sophisticated site devoted to the preservation of the island's endangered culture. Kythera-Family.net contains a trove of data, images and records related to Cytherian life -- almost all of it contributed electronically by members of its diaspora, including many who have rarely visited the island. ''This site is one way we are trying to ensure that our heritage is not lost,'' said George Poulos, the site's |
1582978_1 | Humiliating Photographs As Trophies Of War | of the most wrenching pictures are like the ones people pose for as they pretend to hold up the leaning tower of Pisa or point to the penis on Michelangelo's ''David.'' The picture of Pfc. Lynndie England with a naked prisoner on a leash is a version of the classic ''I caught this big fish'' photo. Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits, the first to be court-martialed, said he shot some pictures, including one which he said his colleague, Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr., asked him to take with his knees planted on a pile of detainees. He also said he remembered Specialist Sabrina Harman and Private England posing, thumbs up, for the camera. As for the picture of the pyramid of naked prisoners looking like a cheerleading squad, he said, he found the ''tower thing'' funny. The oral-sex photograph was posed, he said, by Specialist Graner, so ''it would look like the detainee kneeling had the penis of the detainee standing in his mouth.'' It, too, was done for appearances. Not every shot was posed. The photograph of the iced corpse certainly was not. And at least one published photograph appears to have been intended as whistle-blowing evidence. It shows military men, including Specialist Graner and some of his superiors, milling around a tangle of naked bodies shackled together. It seems to have been taken without any of the subjects being aware of the camera. And like the photograph of the corpse it was shot from above: from the high ground, literally and figuratively. (It is telling that the lawyer for Specialist Graner plans to use this in his defense.) This is not the first war in which bodies and people answered to the dictates of the camera. Alexander Gardner reportedly posed Civil War corpses at Gettysburg to enhance their pathos. And the killers of Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg made sure to capture the beheadings of those Americans on videotape. But these pictures from Abu Ghraib are something different: war photography as tourist snapshots. Soldiers are cheerfully tormenting their captives for the camera. Of course, as always, the photographs are now serving as evidence. But this time there are two kinds of evidence in play, and they are difficult to tease apart: the kind that tells you what was going on anyway and the kind that tells you what was being done for the sake of a photograph. CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK |
1582546_1 | Getting There and Back by the Book | human being, in person or on the phone.'' As someone who racks up a few miles himself each year, I welcomed Mr. Greenberg's insights on the wide-ranging topic of domestic and international hotels. There's practical information (how hotel room designers think about space; what the markup is on a glass of cola at the bar); good advice (don't order eggs Benedict from room service; eggs with thick sauces don't travel well). He also offers safety and security wisdom (hotel room key-cards are often encoded with a guest's personal information, including credit card numbers and expiration dates, so don't leave them in your room or return them to the front desk when you check out). The next book is sharply different in tone from Mr. Greenberg's breezy insider's stroll through the world of hotels. It's ''Never Again: A Self-Defense Guide for the Flying Public'' (Brown Books, $15.95), by Mark H. Bogosian, Tommy L. Hamilton and Michael K. Regan. This is tough stuff. The authors, led by Mr. Bogosian, a pilot for a major airline, have compiled a no-nonsense guide to instruct airline passengers on how to handle themselves and how to assist flight crews in the event of another terrorist attack on a plane. With pilots now locked behind fortified cockpit doors, and instructed to stay there and just try to get the plane down safely during any terrorist incident, ''the flight attendants and passengers are our first line of defense,'' Mr. Bogosian, a 1983 graduate of the Air Force Academy, said. The book started out as a manual to improve flight crews' understanding of self-defense and offense techniques in the face of a serious onboard incident. The authors later decided to expand the book into a treatise on self-defense and survival tactics for passengers as well. Predicated on the assertion that airline passengers have a responsibility to be alert and to physically assist flight crews when requested during a threatening incident, the book offers practical advice on ''de-escalating'' minor incidents as well as physically intervening in major ones. It stresses that in close-quarter situations ''Rambo-like'' responses don't work, but coordinated well-planned ones, under the level-headed direction of flight crews, can. ''Not every incident is going to require you to go and whack somebody,'' Mr. Bogosian said in an interview. ''We don't advocate vigilante force. We tell passengers they must obey the directions of the flight crew. What we do tell |
1582586_1 | U.N. Unit Sees Great Promise In Biotech Research on Crops | next 30 years. The issue has been caught up in the larger polarized debate over biotechnology foods. Proponents argue that the technology is essential to helping feed the world -- with the implication that biotechnology's opponents are against the poor. Opponents say that there are better ways to end hunger, or that biotechnology might make matters worse by making farmers dependent on high-price seeds from big companies. The Food and Agriculture Organization, in a 106-page report, came down on the side of biotechnology. It said genetic engineering, as part of a broader program, could help farmers increase their output and, by lowering food prices, help consumers in developing nations. The report said that achieving such gains required that the proper crops be developed and the seeds made available on terms allowing the farmers to profit. ''Thus far, these conditions are only being met in a handful of developing countries,'' the report said. Prabhu Pingali, director of agricultural and development economics at the agency, which is based in Rome, said that most work on biotech crops was done by big companies and aimed at the needs of the developed countries. ''The real areas where biotechnology could help poor farmers have generated very little interest through private-sector investments,'' he said in a telephone interview. Public-sector agricultural research, which gave the world the Green Revolution three decades ago, now pales in size compared with private biotechnology research, he said. The biotech crops available are primarily canola, corn, cotton and soybeans that have been made either insect-resistant or herbicide-resistant. While some of the crops and traits are useful in developing countries, Dr. Pingali said, there is a need for biotech potatoes, cassava, rice, wheat, millet and sorghum. And there is a need for crops that can tolerate droughts or the poor soils often found in developing countries. Even now, the report said that some biotech crops, particularly insect-resistant cotton, ''are yielding significant economic gains to small farmers.'' And, despite concerns that farmers would become beholden to big biotech companies, ''farmers and consumers so far are reaping a larger share of the economic benefits of transgenic crops than the companies that develop and market them.'' Reaction to the report tended to follow ideological lines. The Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group, hailed it. But Anuradha Mittal, a critic of such crops at the Oakland Institute in Oakland, Calif., said the report followed the ''corporate agenda.'' |
1582576_3 | Hospitals Say City Schools Use Them as a Cure-All | to be identified because she works in the city schools, said her son, an 8-year-old second-grader at a Queens school, was taken to the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital Center in March after school officials said he cried uncontrollably when another child pushed him. ''They called the ambulance and everything,'' the mother said of her son's hospital visit. ''He was very upset, he was scared, he didn't want to go back to school.'' The Department of Education said in a statement that principals are not supposed to send children to the emergency room without parental consent. ''In extreme cases the procedure is to attempt to calm the student, call school safety, the child's parent and E.M.S.,'' the statement read. ''The parent and E.M.S. decide whether the child should be taken to a local hospital's emergency room.'' Dr. Stacey Suecoff, director of the pediatric emergency department at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, said she was studying school referrals to the emergency room in an effort to get a handle on the numbers. According to preliminary information, she said, of the 168 children who were referred to the hospital's emergency room in the last school year and given a psychiatric diagnosis, only six were admitted. In the rest, problems like attention deficit and mood disorders were diagnosed, she said. ''So many of the school referrals are 'dumps' of misbehaving children,'' Dr. Suecoff said. ''There are kids who are disruptive in class, kids who probably do have a psychiatric history, who do have some sort of behavioral disorder. But there are also kids whom the school officials smell pot on their clothes and put them in an ambulance.'' Dr. Sandra Runes, the director of child and adolescent outpatient psychiatric services at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx, said the number of people under 18 arriving at the hospital's emergency room for psychiatric or behavioral issues had skyrocketed in the past decade, to about 65 a month last year from about 20 a month in the mid-1990's. Dr. Runes said she was trying to track how many of these children are sent by their families and how many are sent by their schools. ''A significant percentage of the kids sent from schools are sent for reasons that could be managed elsewhere than an emergency room,'' she said. ''All the hospitals from the Bronx are saying this has happened to them.'' |
1561395_1 | MEMO PAD | screeners discovered nearly 2 million knives or blades of less than 3 inches, and 3.3 million other ''sharp objects'' in passenger bags, the T.S.A. said. The new guidelines spell out various levels of fines for prohibited items discovered at checkpoints, within secure airport areas, or on board aircraft. Loaded firearms, or those with ammunition accessible, warrant fines of $3,000 to $7,500, as well as criminal referral. For unloaded firearms, fines are $1,500 to $3,000, plus criminal referral. For other ''weapons,'' which the T.S.A. says include ''sharp objects, club-like items and other prohibited items'' that could be used as weapons, fines are $250 to $1,500. The guidelines chiefly ''send a message that it's no longer O.K. to say, 'I'm sorry, I forgot I had my gun in my bag,''' said Ann Davis, a T.S.A. spokeswoman. The guidelines list ''aggravating factors and mitigating factors'' in giving authorities discretion in levying fines, she said. Among those factors are a suspected violator's attitude, past violation history and level of traveling experience. The guidelines also set fines of $1,500 to $5,000 for ''interfering with screening'' through ''physical contact,'' and fines of $500 to $1,500 for ''nonphysical'' interference. Anyone making ''false threats,'' like joking about a bomb or a weapon, can be fined $1,000 to $2,000. The tightened procedures are meant to ''encourage travelers to be a little more aware of what they're traveling with,'' Ms. Davis said. Since the T.S.A. assumed responsibility for airport security in 2002, there have been 4,568 civil penalties assessed against passengers for prohibited items, she added. Test of Iris ID System Under Way in Germany A test of a biometric identification system based on iris patterns is under way at Frankfurt Airport. Passengers stand at an electronic device that checks their iris patterns against iris patterns previously registered on their passports. Seven of the devices, developed by Byometric Systems and Oki Electric Industry, are in place at the airport. They are part of a pilot project that ultimately is expected to lead to use of iris-identification technology at airports in 18 European nations. While the technology has not been proved a foolproof way to ensure identify, proponents say it has great promise. ''It must be guaranteed that the registered biometric characteristic can be matched absolutely correctly,'' Otto Schily, the German interior minister, said. ''The iris recognition is currently considered to be the most secure biometric system.'' JOE SHARKEY BUSINESS TRAVEL |
1561324_0 | Age-Fighting Hormones Put Men at Risk, Too | Hormone replacement for women past their childbearing years was originally popularized with the promise that taking estrogen could keep women ''feminine forever'' -- preserving their health, skin, bones, muscles, brains and, especially, their sexual pleasure. Now our youth-oriented culture has spawned another rush to fountain of youth drugs, this time testosterone for men. As with estrogen, testosterone -- the hormone that surges in puberty to turn boys into men -- is known to act on myriad tissues in the body, either directly or through its derivatives. Various studies have documented the influences of testosterone on bones, muscles, strength, stamina, abdominal fat, hair, mood, cognitive functions like memory and, of course, libido and potency. Also documented is the gradual decline in testosterone production that occurs as men age. After 30, blood levels of both total testosterone and biologically active free testosterone decline by 1 to 2 percent a year, so that by 70 a man's testosterone production may have dropped by a third. These facts have generated a soaring demand for the drug, especially when coupled with the development of new ways to deliver the hormone and with the publicity surrounding them. In 2002, nearly two million prescriptions for testosterone were written, up from 648,000 three years earlier, according to a committee of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, which in November urged a go-slow approach to testosterone replacement. Given the shocking recent discovery of potentially serious ill effects of hormone replacement for women, it is hardly surprising that many experts are warning against assuming that supplemental testosterone is safe and effective for men experiencing the normal effects of aging. The Issue of Safety A major problem is that most studies of testosterone replacement have been too small and too short to demonstrate long-term safety and health benefits. It was not until thousands of women had been randomly assigned to take hormone replacement or a placebo that serious risks became apparent and the belief that the hormones benefited the heart was shown to be unfounded. No one denies the value of countering encroaching frailty, weakness, failing memories and loss of sexual function in aging men. But the institute's committee recommended that even before a large long-term clinical trial is started to explore the safety and effectiveness of testosterone replacement, smaller studies should be conducted to see whether the hormone can treat age-related problems. Only then can a lengthy preventive |
1561403_0 | Modified Seeds Found Amid Unmodified Crops | Seeds that are supposed to be free of genetic engineering routinely contain biotechnology traits anyway, a public interest group said yesterday. The group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, said it had detected tiny quantities of genetically modified seeds in most of the bags of unmodified corn, soybean and canola seeds it tested. If seeds do contain the traits, the group said, it would be virtually impossible for farmers to grow crops that are completely free of genetic modification. That could mean disruption of crop exports to countries that do not allow genetically engineered foods. It also makes it harder for organic farmers to supply customers who will not accept even tiny degrees of genetic engineering. ''The door to seed contamination is wide open,'' said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who added that her group's study was the first to systematically look at the issue. In a conference call with reporters, she said the genetically engineered seeds might have come from a mixing of seeds by farmers or seed companies or from pollination of seed crops by genetically engineered crops. Representatives of the seed and biotechnology industries said the findings were not surprising and did not pose any health risk because the genetically modified seeds detected are approved and widely grown already. ''Low levels of biotech traits present in conventional seed is not new and is something that has been around for eight years or so now,'' the president of the American Seed Trade Association, Richard Crowder, said. Mr. Crowder said it was not possible to ensure that a bag of seeds was completely pure. Regulations allow a bag of corn seed to contain, in some cases, up to 5 percent of varieties different from the one on the label. So it is not surprising to find some outside presence of genetically altered seeds in bags meant to contain nonengineered varieties. The Union of Concerned Scientists bought six varieties each of corn, soybean and canola seeds and sent samples to two commercial laboratories for testing. One laboratory detected genetically engineered seeds in three of six varieties of the corn and soy samples and some in all six canola varieties. The other laboratory found genetically engineered traits in five of the six varieties of each crop. The genetically modified seeds were found in low levels, ranging from 0.05 percent to 1 percent. |
1561310_2 | A Debate on Radiation in Breast Cancer | cells can, with time, spread to other parts of the body. The use of postsurgical radiation began to surge after the results of two large medical trials appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997. One study from Denmark involved 1,708 premenopausal women who received surgery and chemotherapy, with or without radiation, for their Stage 2 and 3 cancers. Those who received radiation reduced by two-thirds their risk of a cancer recurring locally over 10 years. More important, they had a 10 percent improvement in survival. The 10-year survival increased to 54 percent from 45 percent. A smaller trial from Canada with 318 women found similar results. In 1999, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology published a consensus statement, and in 2001, the American Society of Clinical Oncology published guidelines. Each recommended postmastectomy radiation to women with four or more positive lymph nodes. ''Almost overnight, following these consensus conferences, the majority of the country switched to radiating women with four or more positive nodes,'' Dr. Borgen said. That led to a drastic increase in postmastectomy radiation. Previously, only women with 10 or more positive nodes, a very advanced cancer, were routinely given radiation, he said. The guidelines did not affect women who were found to have one to three positive lymph nodes. Experts in the United States believed that radiation treatment might not be as effective here. The studies done elsewhere showed higher recurrence rates for women in that category who did not receive radiation than for American women in similar circumstances. Some experts say the differences emerged because of less aggressive surgical techniques in Europe. In the Danish study, surgeons removed an average of 7 lymph nodes; in the United States, they removed an average of 15 to 17 nodes. Because American women have had a lower local recurrence rate, the value of radiation therapy is less clear, Dr. Borgen explained. ''What's clear is that women with a 25 to 30 percent risk of local recurrence can improve their chance of being cured by 10 percent,'' said Dr. Thomas A. Buchholz, program director of breast radiation oncology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. ''The controversy is, Who has that risk?'' Not, he said, the women with the fewest number of positive lymph nodes. There is no question that if given radiation, these women would further reduce the rate of |
1561334_4 | Lifting the Veils of Autism, One by One by One | less frequently, and, unlike most 1-year-olds, do not point at objects or people. Autism's hallmarks are a delay in language development, an inability to relate to other people and stereotyped or rigid behavior. But researchers have found that children vary greatly in the nature and the severity of their disabilities. ''If you put 100 people with autism in a room, the first thing that would strike you is how different they are,'' said Dr. Fred Volkmar, a professor of child psychiatry at Yale and an expert on autism. ''The next thing that would strike you is the similarity.'' Some children attend regular schools, others are so disabled they require institutional care. Some children speak fluently, others are mute. Some are completely withdrawn; others successfully navigate a path through the outer world. In fact, studies show that many children with autism can improve with treatment, and some -- from 15 to 20 percent, experts say -- recover completely, holding jobs and living independent lives. Yet the realization that autism takes many forms has also made its diagnosis more complicated. In 1994, psychiatrists added a new diagnostic category -- Asperger's syndrome -- to the psychiatric nomenclature, to take account of children who displayed some features of autism but did not meet the full diagnostic criteria. Many researchers view Asperger's as distinct from autism. But the differences become blurred in cases where children have normal or above normal I.Q.'s. In such instances, experts say, whether Asperger's or autism is diagnosed is often arbitrary. ''I don't think anyone's got good evidence for a clear distinction between people with high-functioning autism and Asperger's,'' said Dr. Tony Charman, a researcher in neurodevelopmental disorders at University College London. The Disconnect Calculations, Yes; Eye Contact, No As a child, Donald Jensen lay in bed at night, tracing numbers in the air with his finger. He memorized lottery numbers. He was riveted by the pages of the calendar. Now 19, his facility with mathematical calculation seems magical. Given any date -- Jan. 7, 1988, for example -- he can, in an instant, identify the day of the week it fell on. (It was a Thursday.) He virtually never makes mistakes. Yet even in childhood, there were signs that Donald was exceptional in other ways. He was mesmerized by the washing machine, becoming upset if the laundry was finished before he got up in the morning. He started talking late. |
1561333_1 | Intricate European Mission Goes Hunting for a Comet | an orbit 15 miles from the nucleus of the two-and-a-half-mile-wide comet. Three months later -- after surveying the chunk of ice, dust and other debris for suitable sites -- the Rosetta will move within a couple of miles of the surface and release a 270-pound craft, Philae, that will try to make the first landing on a comet. Because the comet is so small and its gravity extremely weak, the lander has to drift down and touch the surface at a speed of no more than three feet a second or it could bounce away, researchers said. To hold it down, Philae's three legs have special shock absorbers to cushion its touch. Each is fitted with ice pitons that quickly bore into the surface. The lander will immediately fire a harpoon into the ground to anchor it. ''This is certainly one of the most difficult interplanetary missions ever attempted, one full of many things that could go wrong,'' Dr. Gerhard Schwehm, project scientist for the European Space Agency, said in an interview. ''However, if it is successful, we will obtain an unprecedented amount of information about comets.'' The project draws its name from the Rosetta Stone, the slab of rock whose carved inscriptions in three languages finally allowed scholars to decipher hieroglyphics, the pictorial language of ancient Egypt. Philae is named after an Egyptian obelisk that provided clues for translating the stone. All the European agency's 15 member states have contributed experiments, equipment and other support to the Rosetta project, which is projected to cost $1.25 billion. Scientists will use a suite of 21 instruments, some never flown on a deep-space mission. The instruments, 11 on the orbiter and 10 on the lander, will seek to measure the comet's composition, age, temperatures, interaction with solar radiation and other characteristics as it approaches the Sun. The United States has contributed three instruments and critical components of a fourth, representing a $35 million investment, said Dr. Claudia Alexander, project scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The instruments include a microwave device to measure temperatures on and near the comet that was supplied by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. This is the first time such a device has been used on an interplanetary mission. ''This gives us a great opportunity for international collaboration on a subject we have a lot of interest in,'' Dr. Alexander said. ''We really know |
1556389_0 | A Filter for Your In-Box Sets Passwords for Friends | Spam-fighting experts have long advised having multiple e-mail accounts: one for personal correspondence and at least one for activities like online shopping that can be abandoned when junk e-mail starts piling up. But this is likely to become unnecessary with ZoEmail, a new Web-based e-mail service that incorporates patented technology from AT&T Labs to block unsolicited mail from your in-box. The user compiles a special ZoEmail address book in which each correspondent is assigned a unique ''key'' consisting of a customizable series of words or numbers. For example, instead of an address that looks like homer@simpson.com, a keyed address would look something like homer.snackfood@simpson.com. Messages with the special keyed addresses are allowed to pass through the system and land in your in-box, whereas mail without the address keys is blocked. ZoEmail can import existing e-mail address books and send a change-of-address message, complete with key, to each person. Recipients need only save your new address in their e-mail address books to keep a personal key to your mailbox. The address keys are flexible and can easily be modified, given expiration dates or discarded if a junk mailer gets hold of a address. The Web-based ZoEmail service (www.zoemail.com) works on Internet-connected computers regardless of the operating system and costs $12 a year for 12 megabytes of mail storage and 10 megabytes of attachments. And what of those who wish to contact you but lack a key? A directory page on the ZoEmail site dispenses a temporary key to any would-be correspondent willing to type in a name and address to prove they are human -- and not a spammer. J.D. Biersdorfer NEWS WATCH: E-MAIL |
1556385_2 | E-Mailing a Cellphone by the Numbers | recognize their area codes.'' Not surprisingly, Teleflip's rapid growth has attracted the attention of cellular companies, which say their main concern at this point is that the service will be used to send unwanted messages to their subscribers. ''There obviously are some concerns with how this is used, because one of the things everyone is trying to guard against is spam,'' said Ritch Blasi, a spokesman for AT&T Wireless. Mr. Botham, while acknowledging that no e-mail service is spam-proof, insists that he will do everything he can to prevent Teleflip from being used to send spam. ''We use many antispam measures,'' he said. ''We've just placed a limit on the number of e-mail addresses you can send to in a single message, and we've also limited the number of messages coming from any given e-mail server or I.P. address in a single day.'' Mr. Botham said he was currently seeking financial backing to expand Teleflip, although he said that such talks were at an early stage. He expects the service to make money by selling short advertisements that would be attached to e-mail messages using the Short Code standard. Under this system, which is widely used in Europe and Asia, where cellphone text messaging has been popular for years, a five-digit ''sponsor's number'' is appended to each message. The recipient can dial the number to receive, say, a free coupon for a product or service. Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, said the company expects substantial growth in text messaging. ''We're starting to see a huge uptake in text use, especially in the late teens, early 20's demographic, which is not a surprise,'' Mr. Nelson said. He said Verizon and other companies were working on their own Short Code applications. ''With a code,'' he explained, ''users can vote somebody off an island, drive a plotline on a TV show, or vote for N.B.A. All-Stars.'' Mr. Nelson noted that cellphone e-mail has been slower to catch on in the United States than it has in the rest of the world. ''There's a very different way of communicating in the U.S. than in Europe and Asia,'' he said. ''We are much more a voice-centered, voice-telephone-using society.'' But Howard Rheingold, whose book ''Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution'' (Perseus Publishing, 2002) examines how people are using wireless technologies, discounts that explanation. ''In America, from the beginning, cellular voice calls were cheaper than |
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1557431_0 | In Meeting Special Needs, Consider Mainstreaming | To the Editor: It was encouraging to read about the religious education geared to children with severe learning or developmental disabilities (In the Schools column: ''Religious Instruction Meeting Special Needs,'' Feb. 1). Many parents whose children are in my pediatric occupational therapy practice often express concerns about meeting this need. However, what was not mentioned in this article is the manner in which the Solomon Schecter School in White Plains goes about meeting the needs of children with much less severe learning or other developmental disabilities, whose parents want their children to attend Solomon Schecter rather than public school on a daily basis. I know these children well, having seen many of them in therapy for extended periods of time, in addition to visiting their classrooms and maintaining regular contact with their teachers. Many of these children are appropriate candidates for mainstream education. While providing alternative education for those children who cannot function at their optimal level in a mainstream class is admirable, it is but a first step. We must encourage schools like Schecter to take the next step, full inclusion for children who may need some ''special'' help, but who belong in the mainstream despite some learning or social ''differences.'' It is one thing to teach kindness and acceptance of differences, but if we continue to segregate these children from the classrooms of their typical peers these lessons become empty words. Phyllis Finkelstein Scarsdale |
1557030_2 | Street News | -- on a curving side road above one of the valleys surrounding Jerusalem, a girl stepped off a bus, a small, delicate girl.'' As readers, we are being toyed with. There is something disingenuous in an aside like ''31 days before, to be precise,'' that suggests narrative intimacy and, above all, precision, even as the narrator denies us the facts we need in order to comprehend fully the scenes that proceed to unfold. Grossman is a highly intelligent writer, and this decision to reveal information progressively, while attempting to suggest that information is not being withheld, is surely taken for a purpose. That purpose coincides, perhaps, with his apparent wish to tell a story that is at once universal and specific, a classical fable of love brought to contemporary Israel. This is nowhere clearer than when we are following Assaf's trail, at the end of Dinka's leash, through the various compartmentalized arenas of Tamar's former life. While some stops seem less than freighted with meaning, others -- like the mysterious retreat of an aged nun named Theodora -- are heavy with fairy-tale significance. Theodora, we learn, is the last survivor of the Greek island of Lyxos, sent to live alone in a convent in Jerusalem 50 years earlier. In all the intervening years, she has never been outside; instead, she has studied life through books and correspondence. Assaf realizes that ''her world was made entirely of words, descriptions, written characters, dry facts. His mouth opened a bit, with a wondering smile: why, this is exactly what his mother had warned him would happen if he spent all his time in front of the computer.'' Yet it is Theodora who can teach Assaf that ''no such thing as a silly story exists. . . . Every story is connected, somewhere, in the depths, to some greater meaning. Even if it is not revealed to us.'' The novel is replete with stories, from Theodora's colorful history to that of Victorious (another apparently symbolic friend of Tamar's, his face covered by a huge burn) to Sheli, Tamar's companion in the hostel, who comes to a sad end. The stories that might be central, however -- those of Assaf and Tamar -- remain oddly oblique. Assaf's problems with his childhood friend Roi and his sister's ex-boyfriend, Rhino, seem banal and insufficient, while Tamar's ultimate motivation in casting off her known life in favor of |
1557332_0 | A Surge in Autism, but Why? | WHEN Dawn Geannette, a special education teacher, looks through her scrapbooks from the 1970's and 80's, she sees photographs of many students who were be labeled ''neurologically impaired'' or ''communications disabled.'' Today, they would be identified differently. ''There are more children being classified as autistic,'' said Ms. Geannette, who has seen the number of students characterized as autistic soar from only one or two to 35 a year in her South Orange/Maplewood district in the last 25 years. In 1991, when the state first introduced autism as a classification, 234 public school students were identified that way. By 2002-2003, the latest year for which figures are available, the number had soared to 4,607, according to Barbara Gantwerk, director of the Office of Special Education Programs for the state Department of Education. For school districts throughout New Jersey -- already struggling financially because of a rising number of students and an increasing number of state and federal mandates -- the distinction has become enormously challenging for teachers and costly for taxpayers. In an era when school districts are already beset with additional costs for special education, like the rising number of students classified with attention deficit disorders, plans for autistic children -- with an emphasis on individual instruction -- are generally more expensive than those for any other mental or physical disability. The cost of schooling an autistic child ranges from $30,000 to $150,000 a year compared with $10,000 for educating a normal student. As the state's 610 districts prepare their budgets, with new programs and more specialists focused on autism, doctors and educators are trying to answer a vexing question: Is autism more prevalent, or are children just being classified with greater frequency? ''We do not know the answer to if there is an increase in the actual numbers or just in the numbers we are identifying,'' Ms. Gantwerk said. ''We are including a larger group in the autism umbrella.'' Indeed, a federal study encompassing a dozen states is looking for answers. In New Jersey, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conducting studies in Essex, Union, Hudson and Ocean Counties to try to establish an accurate census. ''There has never been a baseline prevalence investigation for autism,'' said Walter Zahorodny, principal investigator for the study, which was begun two years ago. ''There is a great dispute if the increase is a real increase or whether it reflects changing |
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1557246_0 | Armed for Terrorists, in Case Kindness Doesn't Work | The two German-made machine guns on the newest boat patrolling here in San Francisco Bay are not yet operational. There is no ammunition, and some of the sheriff's deputies are still learning how to shoot them. The important thing, though, is that they are obvious -- mounted high on the bow and stern, visibly deadly. Sheriff Charles C. Plummer of Alameda County, the man behind the boat, wants terrorists to know that he is dead set on using his guns, and all 800 rounds they fire per minute, if he has to. ''We will kill them with kindness,'' Sheriff Plummer said. ''And if that doesn't work, then blow them out of the water.'' The sheriff gave a satisfied harrumph after delivering the threat, a favorite expression of his in the days since the gunboat, the August Vollmer, was christened here on Jan. 28. The 31-foot vessel is named for a former police chief in neighboring Berkeley, who espoused the ''kill them with kindness'' motto. As the sheriff's new marine unit finds its sea legs, it has a certain ''McHale's Navy'' feel. The machine-gun mounts are homemade and must still be modified so the barrels do not swing toward the cabin. The crew is so green -- some members have been on the water only for fishing and sailing -- that heads bump against the low door frames. But there is nothing amateurish about the marine unit's mission and aspirations. Despite his showy one-liners, Sheriff Plummer is serious about thwarting terrorists in his section of the nation's security underbelly: Alameda County's 26 miles of coastline, which include some of the West Coast's busiest shipping lanes, and the Port of Oakland, the fourth-busiest container port in the country. Largely through the sheer force of personality and 51 years in law enforcement, Sheriff Plummer, 73, has thrust his 1,000-member department into the war's front lines, with a one-boat flotilla that federal and state authorities praise as an example of what is going right in the domestic security effort. ''Yes, it is one boat, but if one more person had been out there to intercept information about the terrorist attack on 9/11, then we might have been able to stop it,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Raimer, the Coast Guard's operations officer for the San Francisco area. ''That might be the one boat that counts.'' About 300 ships, ferries and other commercial vessels move through |
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1555772_0 | Seeking Help for Autistic Children | To the Editor: Re ''Autism Cases Up; Cause Is Unclear'' (front page, Jan. 26): The federal government, in concert with groups advocating for autistic children, has created a 10-year plan to examine the causes, diagnosis and treatment of autism. While a good foundation, this is an unfinanced plan at the beginning of a political process. Moreover, the road map does not address the critical shortage of intervention services for the thousands of autistic children and adults living today. Access to these services depends on eligibility formulas that vary from state to state, school district to school district and agency to agency. Until equal access to the best programs is ensured, the quality of life for children and adults with autism will continue to be substandard. LYNDA GELLER Stony Brook, N.Y., Jan. 29, 2004 The writer is director of community services and education, Cody Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Stony Brook University. |
1555746_0 | Speech by GatesLends Visibility To E-Mail Stamp In War on Spam | Should people have to buy electronic stamps to send e-mail? Some Internet experts have long suggested that the rising tide of junk e-mail, or spam, would turn into a trickle if senders had to pay even as little as a penny for each message they sent. Such an amount might be minor for legitimate commerce and communications, but it could destroy businesses that send a million offers in hopes that 10 people will respond. The idea has been dismissed both as impractical and against the free spirit of the Internet. Now, though, the idea of e-mail postage is getting a second look from the owners of the two largest e-mail systems in the world, Microsoft and Yahoo. Ten days ago, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that spam would not be a problem in two years, in part because of systems that would require people to pay money to send e-mail. Yahoo, meanwhile, is quietly evaluating an e-mail postage plan being developed by Goodmail, a Silicon Valley start-up company. ''The fundamental problem with spam is there is not enough friction in sending e-mail,'' said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's manager for communications products. The company is intrigued by the idea of postage, Mr. Garlinghouse said, because it would force mailers to send only those offers a significant number of people might accept. ''All of a sudden, spammers can't behave without regard for the Internet providers' or end users' interests, '' he said. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft have made any commitment to charging postage, in part because the idea still faces substantial opposition among Internet users. ''Damn if I will pay postage for my nice list,'' said David Farber, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, who runs a mailing list on technology and policy with 30,000 recipients. He said electronic postage systems are likely to be too complex and would charge noncommercial users who should be able to send e-mail free. ''I suspect the cost of postage will start out small and it will rapidly escalate,'' he added. In the meantime, the big Internet providers, including Microsoft and Yahoo, in recent weeks have renewed talks that stalled last year about creating technological standards to help identify the senders of legitimate e-mail. That way, spammers would either have to identify themselves or risk that users would discard all anonymous mail. But for the big Internet access |
1561162_0 | AUTOS ON MONDAY/Technology; Beaming TV to Cars, via Satellite | VIDEO systems in today's minivans and sport utility vehicles help to keep the peace in millions of back seats, entertaining young passengers with the huge selection of movies available on DVD and videocassette. But what the video systems rarely show are television programs. Reception of local TV broadcasts is marginal even when parked, and there are definite limits to how far you can stretch the cable TV connection you have at home. But the prospects for mobile TV are looking up -- about 25,000 miles up, in fact -- to where the satellites are. Newly developed rooftop mobile antennas are designed to pull in signals better from direct broadcast satellite systems like the Dish Network and DirecTV, and at the same time cut a lower profile on the vehicle's roof. Simpler and less costly methods of bringing TV to the car are coming, too, from Sirius and XM, two satellite radio companies that currently offer dozens of audio channels to mobile customers. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, both companies demonstrated how TV could be integrated into their existing systems using small antennas like the ones now used to receive radio signals. With the addition of a video data stream to today's audio service, the amount of entertainment available to subscribers of satellite services will certainly increase. But more practical uses of the satellite's capacity are coming, too: delivery of traffic and weather data. Sirius is working with Delphi, a supplier of automotive electronics, to develop a system that will display the location of accidents and road construction on the car's in-dash G.P.S. navigation screen, alerting the driver to possible delays and offering alternate routes. The new services mean an increased workload for satellites, which are ideal for transmitting mobile programming: they are high enough for their signals to clear earthly obstructions and their coverage is broad enough that even fast-moving cars will not drive out of range in mid-program. The shortcoming, until now, has been the receiving antenna. Satellites broadcast with far lower power than earthbound television stations, and if the antenna's base -- your vehicle -- is turning and jouncing around, it has to be constantly re-aimed to stay on target. Conventional TV dishes, though practical when parked, are too hard to keep aimed. Dome antennas bulge prominently from the roof. One possible solution is to use a phased-array design, in which the signals |
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1562462_6 | A Frenchman Or a Jew? | the rights of women, homosexuals, immigrants. In the 80's, we were at the forefront of the antiracist movement.'' In 1990, she noted, after the desecration of a Jewish cemetery at Carpentras -- presumed to have been the act of European-born neo-Nazis -- 100,000 people marched in protest in Paris, with the Socialist president François Mitterand leading the way. Yet today, when synagogues are firebombed, she complained, the left is silent because the anti-Jewish violence is perceived as coming from radical Muslims, whose cause the left has adopted as its own. With bitter humor, Stora summed up the generational shift in the French left, from the anticlericalism of Zola's time to today's sympathy for Islamists: ''The father and grandfather devoured priests, and the sons demonstrate in favor of head scarves!'' The rise of anti-semitic incidents in France began with the outbreak of the second intifada, and ever since the violence has closely followed world events. On Oct. 3, 2000, not long after Ariel Sharon's controversial visit to the Temple Mount, a synagogue in the Parisian suburb of Villepinte was set on fire. Within weeks, four more synagogues, mainly around Paris, were firebombed, and 19 more attacks on Jewish schools, houses, businesses and other institutions were reported. There was a sharp spike in violence after Sept. 11 and then again during the Israeli Army's assault on the West Bank town of Jenin in April 2002, when the Ministry of the Interior reported 395 anti-Jewish incidents around France. In the spring of that year in Perpignan, the southern town where I live, fear gripped what had been a rather laid-back provincial Sephardic community: cement barricades were raised around the synagogue; policemen body-searched anyone seeking admission; congregants who once gathered in the street after services disappeared quickly down alleys, thrusting telltale skullcaps into their jacket pockets. At first, the Socialist French government was painfully slow to react. Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and his colleagues appeared unable or unwilling to acknowledge either the systemic discrimination faced by North African immigrants and their children or the plight of Jews who, for the first time since Vichy, were being persecuted for their religion. When Jospin visited the West Bank, Palestinian students pelted him with stones for his perceived lack of sympathy for their cause. Many French Jews, too, were devastated when Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine dismissed the anti-Semitic violence in France as ''hooliganism'' and when a public |
1562523_0 | Manners Matter | To the Editor: Some of the hassle and stress of air travel is unavoidable, but one reform would make things much less difficult. Passengers should be strictly limited to one carry-on item no larger than a briefcase, including women's purses that are the size of a briefcase and large diaper bags. No roll-alongs, suit bags or large backpacks. Such carry-on limits would improve safety and facilitate security, boarding and debarking. But the airlines are afraid that such limits would aggravate business travelers. Well, I'm a business traveler, and I say we'll get over it. VERNON J. EDWARDS Lake Oswego, Ore. |
1562606_4 | A Bridge Over Troubled Water | who monitor pollution in local streams, arrange conservation easements to maintain open land and conduct seminars on the region's culture, history and environment. ''Really, putting a nonprofit together is putting one foot in front of another,'' she said. ''You learn how to gain members, do mailings. Things happen, and people pop up and offer to do things for you. There's a ripple effect within the watershed.'' Although the Great Swamp Watershed Association is rooted in its region, the group's elastic boundaries stretch even to Trenton, where Ms. Somers has consulted with the state's environmental commissioner, Bradley M. Campbell, on questions of broader policy. She has praise for the water-conservation measures advanced by the McGreevey administration, as well as an opinion about its Big Map plan to control growth. After protests from builders, who said the plan threatened to unsettle the state's construction industry, it was set aside last year. ''Whatever you think of Governor McGreevey,'' she said, ''he has been the best environmental governor since I have lived in New Jersey. His predecessor, Governor Whitman, was a very strong open-space advocate, but the policies she pursued here were the policies she took to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. There was a deliberate undoing of any enforcement. The state was open for business.'' Then, turning to the question of the Big Map, she said: ''It hasn't fallen. It has just gone underground. A lot of people don't understand that. The regulations that were to have implemented the Big Map are still happening, regulations that control the flow of stormwater and how near you are allowed to build to rivers and streams.'' Within the Great Swamp itself, William Koch, the federal refuge manager, said that such opinions and the vigilance of the association had been welcome, and brought a protective shield to the wildlife refuge. ''We've come to see that the refuge is very vulnerable to what is happening around it, and upstream of us,'' said Mr. Koch, who is employed by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service. ''The watershed association has been out there waving the banner, bringing problems to the attention of the decision-makers.'' Mr. Koch added: ''I was here in the years when there was no association. Julia Somers has been a smart and effective leader.'' In an example of recent influence, the watershed association joined with the National Park Service last year in criticizing a plan proposed by |
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1562678_3 | Is Biotechnology Losing Its Nerve? | a soup-to-nuts company anymore, or what we call molecule-to-market,'' Mr. Klausner said. A decade ago, for instance, his firm helped finance Trimeris, the company that tapped university research to develop Fuzeon, the first of a new class of AIDS drugs. Today, a more typical start-up backed by his firm is Somaxon Pharmaceuticals, a venture based in San Diego that hopes to market a sleeping pill that contains a low dose of an existing drug that has drowsiness as a side effect. ''I hope we do something as exciting as Trimeris today,'' Mr. Klausner said, ''but we do it on an exception basis.'' NO one disputes that licensing can save time and money. Drugs that have already gone through clinical trials have at least been shown to be basically safe, so the preliminary stages of formulating a drug or testing it in animals can be skipped. Consider Dr. Carson's company, Salmedix. Based in San Diego, it is less than three years old and has raised only $22 million, but it already has three drugs in clinical trials. One is a cancer drug, sold by a company in Germany, that must be tested before entering the United States market. Another, also a cancer drug, failed when tested by others -- but Salmedix has a diagnostic test that its executives say will pinpoint which patients the drug will benefit. The third is derived from an existing anti-inflammatory drug that company scientists discovered serendipitously had an effect against cancer. ''Studies of older drugs in patients can give you information you can't get from studies in the mouse,'' Dr. Carson said. But while retooling older drugs can result in useful products, some experts say the practice is not likely to produce home runs and could slow innovation. ''We're really doing therapeutics around the edges'' rather than attacking head on, said one venture capitalist, who spoke on condition he not be identified because he did not want to discourage entrepreneurs from approaching his firm. ''We're doing things like niche indications, new uses for old drugs, out-licensing of products,'' he said. ''There's a fair question: Where's all the new stuff going on?'' Indeed, university officials say it is becoming harder to license their discoveries to young companies, or for professors to get backing to start new companies. Stanford and the University of California campuses in San Francisco and San Diego -- which together gave birth to much |
1562900_9 | Commercial Property; Jamaica Seeks to Build on AirTrain | tenants is seen as a good idea, but, he added, ''Unfortunately, the airline industry is not flourishing now and they have placed expansion plans on hold.'' Development officials had hoped to sign up Jet Blue, a rapidly growing low-fare carrier, but Mr. Maltz said this seems unlikely. ''Jet Blue subleased some Con Ed space on Jamaica Avenue that is much less expensive than a new building,'' he said. Dealing With Autos Nonprofit Group Offers Parking Because many people still prefer to travel by car, the Jamaica development group, though a not-for-profit operation, has gotten into the parking business, acquiring some formerly city-owned garages and lots and building a 410-space garage convenient to the 180 units of market-rate housing under construction. Under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, ''the city wanted to get out of the municipal parking business, so we took over two city garages and renovated them and took two city lots and improved them,'' Mr. Towery said. He said the group pays taxes to the city out of income from the garages and tries to keep rates low to attract shoppers. The problem, he said, is that Jamaica developed around the elevated train and has streets that are crowded beyond capacity. His group has estimated that there is currently a deficit of 500 parking spaces in the downtown area and that proposed developments would require the construction of garages to accommodate 2,000 more cars at an estimated cost of $32 million. But part of smart growth is reducing automobile use and traffic on streets. If Jamaica is to develop in a smart fashion, the report says, ''a significant portion of residents will have to be weaned away from 50 years of automobile dependency.'' With the possible exception of the parking garages, Mr. Towery said most of what his development group has done or is proposing could be labeled as smart growth. He said the airport village would recycle urban land that already has a transportation infrastructure in place. New York State's passage of a brownfields remediation law last year will help with the land recycling by providing guidelines for cleanups of sites that currently have dirty uses, such a junkyards. Because of the contamination, Mr. Towery said, well located land parcels within a few blocks of the Air Train terminal can be acquired cheaply for redevelopment. ''We salivate at grunge,'' he said. ''Other people see blight, but we see sites.'' |
1562560_9 | Commercial Property; Jamaica Seeks to Build on AirTrain | is growing rapidly, but Mr. Maltz said this did not appear likely. ''Jet Blue subleased some Con Ed space on Jamaica Avenue that is much less expensive than a new building,'' he said. Dealing With Autos Nonprofit Group Offers Parking Because many people still prefer to travel by car, the Jamaica development group, though a not-for-profit operation, has gotten into the parking business, acquiring some formerly city-owned garages and lots and building a 410-space garage convenient to the 180 units of market-rate housing under construction. Under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, ''the city wanted to get out of the municipal parking business, so we took over two city garages and renovated them and took two city lots and improved them,'' Mr. Towery said. He said the group pays taxes to the city out of income from the garages and tries to keep rates low to attract shoppers to the area. ''Some of the parking around the courts is very expensive, so it is mostly used by lawyers,'' he said. The problem, he said, is that Jamaica developed around the elevated train and has streets that are crowded beyond capacity. His group has estimated that there is currently a deficit of 500 parking spaces in the downtown area and that proposed developments would require the construction of garages to accommodate 2,000 more cars at an estimated cost of $32 million. But part of smart growth is reducing automobile use and traffic on streets. If Jamaica is to develop in a smart fashion, the report says, ''a significant portion of residents will have to be weaned away from 50 years of automobile dependency.'' With the possible exception of the parking garages, Mr. Towery said most of what his development group has done or is proposing could be labeled as smart growth. He said the airport village would recycle urban land that already has a transportation infrastructure in place. New York State's passage of a brownfields remediation law last year will help with the land recycling by providing guidelines for cleanups of sites that currently have dirty uses, such a junkyards. A older law in New Jersey has permitted the development of shopping centers and golf courses on what were once municipal dumps. Because of the contamination, Mr. Towery said, well located land parcels can be acquired cheaply for redevelopment. ''We salivate at grunge,'' he said. ''Other people see blight, but we see sites.'' |
1562585_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1562615_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1558847_2 | Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat | night is also wrong. They were exhausted from being on round-the-clock alert for over a week. Finally, several historians, yours truly included, have described Washington's victory at Trenton as a merely symbolic or psychological triumph, akin to the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942. Wrong again. Fischer shows that Trenton altered the strategic chemistry of the war by eroding British troop strength, which was never fully replaced, and winning back the countryside in New Jersey, which was on the verge of capitulating to British control. Fischer actually begins his story in the spring and summer of 1776, as Washington watched the British unload 33,000 troops onto Staten Island in preparation for a massive blow against New York designed to crush the American rebellion at its inception. He spends over 200 pages describing the American debacle on Long Island and Manhattan, and then Washington's headlong dash across New Jersey with the surviving remnant of his army. Some readers might find this an excessively long windup to the pitch across the Delaware, but these chapters allow Fischer to assemble his cast of characters and to recreate the truly desperate situation facing the Continental Army on the eve of the crossing. As one of America's first embedded journalists, Tom Paine, so famously put it, these were ''the times that try men's souls.'' Fischer concurs with recent scholarship that the British commander, William Howe, could probably have won the war and ended the American Revolution in November of 1776 with more aggressive tactics. The Delaware crossing thus becomes a sudden reversal of fortune, as if an American mouse, chased hither and yon by a British cat, brazenly turns about and declares itself a lion. Fischer has devised a storytelling technique that combines old and new methods in a winning way. Old-fashioned military history featured the set-piece battle, viewed from headquarters, as a panoramic clash of generic markers on a map, moving bloodlessly across the contour lines like toy soldiers in a game. The more modern military history, pioneered by John Keegan in ''The Face of Battle,'' and before him by Tolstoy in ''War and Peace,'' aims at recovering the fog of war, the chaos and confusion on the ground experienced by ordinary soldiers in battle. Fischer has managed to combine the two approaches, providing an overarching picture of the way armies move, with a genuine sense of what it looks and feels like to |
1558896_4 | Turbulent Manners Unsettle Fliers | the screening process seems easier. ''If anything, I think since they put more security staff on, civility has risen,'' said Pauline Pastore of Liberty Corner, N.J., who flies from the Newark Liberty International Airport at least once a week on business. One telling pattern appears in the federal Department of Transportation's records of complaints from airline passengers, especially those classified as customer service complaints, which include rude or unhelpful employees, inadequate cabin service and treatment of delayed passengers. Customer service complaints about domestic carriers ran well into the hundreds each month before Sept. 11, 2001, and then plunged. The department received 306 complaints in July 2001, for example, and 62 in November 2001. Then the number climbed very quickly, reaching 179 in July 2002, before tapering to its lowest levels in years. In November 2003, the last month for which figures are available, customer service complaints numbered 39. But when industry experts note a decline in civility, among both service employees and passengers, it has paralleled an increase in airline passenger loads that began a decade or more ago with deregulation, fare wars and consolidation. ''On busy business flights, that means all the seats are full,'' said Kevin Mitchell, the chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, an advocacy group based in Radnor, Pa. ''The middle seat is always taken, and that means the overhead bins are full, and that means those checking you in are frustrated and flustered, because none of these airline systems put in place were ever designed with these kinds of load factors in mind.'' The squeeze apparently brings out the worst in travelers, too. While a large majority of respondents in the Travelocity survey said they were ''likely to be treated with courtesy and respect'' by travel-industry employees, just under half said the same for their fellow passengers. ''We're a lot more comfortable in public than the society of the 50's,'' said Amy Ziff, Travelocity's editor at large in New York. ''Along with that is a breaking down of certain boundaries.'' Many of those interviewed at airports mentioned tantrum throwers, line cutters and personal-space invaders in their midst. At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Luis Natal talked about passengers who insisted on dragging overnight bags aboard. ''It's very common for people to flat-out refuse to check these rollers, as if making a big-enough scene will cause additional space to appear,'' he said. Rupert Barkoff, also at Hartsfield, |
1559010_5 | For Schedule Changes, Parents Just Log On | are some questions about potential problems and downsides to these systems. ''We have been looking at and talking about a reverse 911 system for six months,'' Carole Andreasen, director of technology for the Rye City School District, said in a telephone interview. ''We want the right product on board. A prime issue for us is does everyone have an e-mail? You don't have everybody on computers. And if somebody fills out a form, there's no way of knowing if it's fictitious. The data is only as good as what you get. There's the potential of anyone signing up, and getting those e-mails.'' Another issue, Mrs. Andreasen said, has to do with the technology. ''Let's say there's an emergency in school, if the electricity is out. How do we alert people via e-mail?'' She also said that deciding who is responsible for posting the e-mail messages (school closings may come from the superintendent, but what about a canceled school trip or an athletic event that has been to another location?) can become complicated. ''Where do you draw the line?'' She said. ''You need to be very careful. This is a wonderful opportunity, and I'm very impressed. The question remains how to you minimize vulnerability, maximize productivity and get the best return on your investment.'' Then too, there are concerns about potential viruses, or spam, affecting the system. In an e-mail message, Mr. Bender said: ''Our systems are protected and closed and cannot send out viruses. Since our systems are closed, no spammer can use them to send or relay Spam Messaging. Our systems run on eight different types of servers, the servers are segmented and security protected with firewalls and run in a secure data center called the Bunker.'' Of course, not all families in all communities have e-mail. Nor are all those who have e-mail likely to log on to their computers before dawn to find out the snow status at their school. So schools can't abandon traditional forms of communicating with parents, like phone chains and printed newsletters. Dr. Maurer said: ''It'll never substitute for the print medium entirely. But parents don't want more junk mail coming into the home.'' Still, Mrs. Arena said: ''It's a lot easier than waiting for the radio. It's another way the district provides a service. People are so much more computer savvy. It's second nature to click on.'' IN THE SCHOOLS E-mail: wested@nytimes.com |
1558850_5 | When the Lights Went Out in Europe | the shape of what many now take as immutable holy writ. Freeman is judicious, too, on the origins of early Christian asceticism and abhorrence of sex. (St. Jerome's theory that the main purpose of marriage was to produce virgins sounds too funny to be true, but apparently is.) Yet the book does not make its case, and indeed barely tries to. Its catchy title, with its echo of Allan Bloom's ''Closing of the American Mind,'' is misleading, since it is only in the last couple of chapters that Freeman engages directly with his declared theme of the decline of reason. He is right to emphasize the colossal ignorance of the Christian West in the second half of the first millennium. By the year 1000, all branches of science, and indeed all kinds of theoretical knowledge except theology, had pretty much disintegrated. Most classical literature was largely unknown. The best-educated people (all of them monks) knew strikingly less than many Greeks 800 years earlier. And the few mathematical writings from the time were for the most part downright stupid. Freeman notes tellingly that the last recorded astronomical observation in the ancient Greek world was made by the Athenian philosopher Proclus in 475, and it was more than 1,000 years before the science made significant steps forward once more. But the Greek rationalist tradition was fading away of its own accord, and would probably have taken its long sleep even if Christianity had not come along. The religious and mystical strains in Greek and Roman thought had been growing ever stronger, and at the expense of the robust skepticism and empirical open-mindedness that mostly characterized Greek thinkers from Thales in the sixth century B.C. to Aristotle in the fourth. Freeman does not mention that Proclus himself, who was a pagan and uninfluenced by Christianity, was in fact just as interested in magic and oracles as he was in astronomy. Although the most important Christian thinkers, from St. Paul to Augustine, did everything they could to stifle the rationalist tradition they sought to displace, as Freeman effectively demonstrates, it is impossible to lay the aptly named Dark Ages entirely at their door. Just why the lights went out when they did remains something of a mystery. Anthony Gottlieb is the executive editor of The Economist and the author of ''The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance.'' |
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