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499629_4 | children who need them, some educators say. "Westchester parents confuse smart kids with gifted kids," Mrs. Sternberg said. Some districts, like Scarsdale, don't offer any differentiated programs for gifted and talented youngsters. Some communities are suspicious of special programs for the intellectually gifted, viewing them as elitist frills that can be dropped in economic hard times. And many districts that do provide some special instruction in the lower grades drop such programs by the time students enter middle school, arguing that honors classes and advanced-placement courses meet the needs of intellectual youngsters. Program Expanded in Ardsley Debate within the educational community on how to deliver education for the gifted or, indeed, whether there should be differentiated programming for intellectual high achievers also complicates the issue of gifted education in the county. In districts like Greenburgh, Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry and Irvington, gifted and talented children leave their homerooms to meet in small groups for special programming once or twice a week. Teachers refer to this practice as a pull-out program. "Our philosophy is that children who have exceptional abilities need an opportunity to work with others of exceptional abilities," said Laurel Woolf, resource teacher and teacher of the gifted at the Concord Road School in Ardsley, which recently expanded its gifted program to the middle school. "Very bright children need each other. They need to work in areas above and beyond the regular classroom curriculum." For example, second graders study endangered species, while third graders investigate architecture and fourth graders study communication and pursue independent-study projects. Then there are districtwide magnet programs, like Yonkers's Pearls -- the acronym stands for Program for Early and Rapid Learners -- which offers a challenging educational program to talented youngsters who are clustered together in a particular school. Instead of simply offering fourth-grade math to third graders, for example, the curriculum is designed to meet the relentless curiosity of its gifted students. Not Faster, but More "It's not just accelerating the curriculum but enriching it to give them more," said Lillian Mein, the Pearls program director and magnet supervisor for the Yonkers school system. "We encourage kids to be creative and productive thinkers. They can get facts anywhere." Some districts also offer students who aren't selected for their school's on-site gifted education the opportunity to participate in a before- or after-school enrichment program sponsored by Boces. Southern Westchester Boces offers an after-school enrichment program in | Responding to Academic Achievers as School Budgets Tighten |
501853_0 | Chinese prisons tend to be short of food and long on lice, beatings, and coffin-sized punishment cells. Felons can be executed immediately after the most perfunctory of trials, even for nonviolent offenses like embezzlement, and criminals' families are sometimes billed a few cents for the cost of the bullet used to execute their loved ones. In China many people have strong feelings about these conditions. They complain that the authorities coddle criminals. "Most folks would like to see harsher punishments," a young, college-educated Chinese business executive said the other day. "We despise those criminals. They might as well shoot them all, or at least lock them up for a long, long time." This anger at common criminals -- which does not extend to political prisoners who now endure sentences in the same horrific prisons -- seems to reflect a deep frustration with rising crime rates and the increasing brazenness of China's thieves. Frightening Crime Wave By American or European standards, China seems a remarkably safe place. But for some Chinese, particularly older people who remember the 1950's when "New China" seemed to have largely triumphed over ordinary crime, the nation is in the midst of a frightening crime wave. Guns and drugs, rarely used in the past, are now making a comeback. And criminals are also forming gangs that increasingly turn to violence. In some parts of China, highway robbers have made a comeback and occasionally prey on trains and buses in remote areas. These robbers, typically armed with knives and occasionally guns, steal money from passengers and then disappear into the countryside. In 1990, the last year for which figures are available, 7,579 cases of highway robbery were reported. Wang Yuhai and 11 others from a village in coastal Fujian Province armed themselves with explosives and knives and last year operated as a gang of pirates. They robbed four boats and killed 12 fishermen before being caught. A few weeks ago, a court sentenced Mr. Wang and six others in the gang to death. 1,000 a Year Executed More than 1,000 people are believed to be executed each year -- with a bullet in the back of the head -- for crimes that include murder, rape, and embezzlement. Virtually no one in China seems to be against capital punishment. "Ordinary people think that the courts aren't strict enough with those criminals," said a young woman who is normally outspoken | Beijing Journal; Crime Is Up in China, and So Is the Public's Rage |
501937_0 | World Economies | |
501807_0 | Angry about regulations that control the use of their land, mining and timber companies, developers, farmers and other rural landowners have organized a movement that represents the strongest challenge to date to the nation's principal environmental laws. In the most successful tactic they have discovered so far, the movement's lawyers have been filing lawsuits for the last two years in a little-known Federal court in Washington, the United States Claims Court. Arguing that the rapid increase of environmental regulations in the last 20 years has restricted their right to use their own property, the landowners say such restrictions are tantamount to a "taking" of land. They argue that just like landowners whose property is seized for roads, bridges, parks or other public purposes, they are entitled to just compensation as provided by the Fifth Amendment. Backing in Congress The Supreme Court is considering one such case from South Carolina, and a proposal to require the Government to compensate landowners affected by environmental regulations was approved by the Senate last summer and is pending in the House. That proposal has vigorous support in the White House, which has also proposed legislation to make Federal agencies pay judgments in such cases from their own budgets, making officials accountable for the effect of the regulations. The nation's troubled economy and broad job losses across rural America in the timber industry, mining and agriculture are souring the mood for environmental restrictions and adding fuel to the movement behind the lawsuits. "Congress never envisioned that the Endangered Species Act would be used by the preservationists to eliminate jobs and people's homes, and push people around the way it has," said Charles Cushman, the executive director of the National Inholders Association, a group based in Battle Ground, Wash., that represents owners of private property in Federal parks and preserves. Raising Cost of Enforcement David Howard, a resident of Bleecker, N.Y., who is chairman of the Alliance for America, a national coalition of property owner groups in 44 states, agreed. "What you're seeing is people all over the country that are reaching the point of desperation," he said. "The Government issues more and more regulations, and we're losing local control over our land." But environmental leaders say the lawsuits could cripple the Government's ability to enforce its basic environmental laws by making them too expensive to enforce. They say the real intention of the movement is to | ENVIRONMENT LAWS FACE A STIFF TEST FROM LANDOWNERS |
503694_0 | World Economies | |
503556_0 | Half a year after a flood devastated parts of central China, at least two million people are still shivering in crude temporary shelters and may not be able to rebuild their lives for years to come. The flood victims are now enduring the coldest winter in many years, without heat or enough blankets, and they are likely to depend on Government handouts of rice for many months more. Foreign relief experts who have been allowed to visit the area say the peasants have replanted their fields but expect a poor harvest because the area is in the grip of a drought that quickly followed the floods. The waters have receded, and millions of peasants are no longer huddled on dikes and other high ground. But since returning to the villages that have been their home for hundreds of generations, the peasants in many cases no longer have farm animals, farming tools, homes or much hope of any improvement any time soon. 'As If Bombed Out' "The landscape in some areas is still as if it were bombed out," said Luc Nicolas, the China coordinator of the Belgian chapter of Doctors Without Borders. The group has been providing assistance since July to flood victims in Anhui Province, one of China's poorest and also the worst hit by the flooding last year. "People have moved back to their home villages, but in some cases the villages have almost disappeared," Mr. Nicolas said. "So they build shelters on the site of the original villages. It's very cold, and there's been snow, but they've been trying to plant their fields again." While some 220 million Chinese -- one-fifth of the population -- were affected by the floods, they got relatively little attention in the West because China restricted access to the hard-hit areas. Anhui Province, with a population of 56 million, still refuses to admit any foreign journalists. Under Chinese law, foreign journalists are barred from traveling without permission, and Anhui officials refuse to say when they may grant permission. Chinese officials seem torn by competing emotions. On the one hand, they desperately need foreign assistance for the flood victims; on the other, they are reluctant to admit publicly that conditions are that bad or that they need assistance. Press Makes Propaganda In the official Chinese press, the floods are mentioned primarily as a propaganda tool. The newspapers carry articles saying the Communist Party | China's Floods of July: Misery Lingers |
500402_0 | For years people regarded raccoons as cute and furry black-masked creatures that roved by moonlight across suburbia's lawns and wooded hills. Their greatest offense was ripping into bags of trash. Now, as rabies outbreaks sweep the metropolitan region, raccoons have replaced pit bulls as four-legged objects of public fear. "People never even called about raccoons previously unless they were in their garbage cans, banging around," said Lieut. James Ernst of the Trumbull, Conn., Police Department, which now fields a raccoon call at least every other day. In the last month, he said, his officers have shot and killed four raccoons, one of which turned out to be rabid. The fear is not unwarranted. Raccoons have been identified as principal carriers of rabies, the sometimes fatal disease that has moved up the Eastern Seaboard from West Virginia since the 1970's. But the raccoon panic has caused something of an ethical crisis for many people. While they want to protect their children and pets, they are uncomfortable with what has become the most common response to the problem -- killing the raccoons. "Human welfare is the overriding concern," said Richard Johnston, president of the Connecticut Humane Society, "but I can't help but think that there are some animal lives unnecessarily vanishing in the process." In the nine months since the first rabid raccoon was found in Connecticut, a child, a bicyclist and an airport worker have been attacked by raccoons. In New Jersey, an elderly woman was bitten by a raccoon that fell down the chimney and tumbled into her living room. People tell of being pursued by raccoons acting irrationally, and one biologist insists he saw a raccoon try to take a bite out of a car's tire while the car was at a traffic light. At the same time, hundreds of raccoons have died at the hands of human beings, either by drowning, lethal injection, gunfire or bludgeoning. Statistics in Connecticut suggest that the slaughter may be largely unnecessary. A state lab has found that about one in six raccoons tested actually has rabies. Of an estimated 1,200 raccoons analyzed since last April, 192 had rabies, said Mary Ann Markowski, the supervising biologist for the Department of Health's virology lab. Only raccoons thought to have had contact with a person or a pet are tested, she said; many more than that are killed. Testing can be done only on dead | Rabies and Raccoons' Sorry Image |
498454_0 | World Economies | |
498882_5 | planted more than 1,000 trees on 81 acres near Healdsburg in Sonoma County and has another 1,600 waiting to go in the ground. He has estimated his investment at around $15 a tree. "We could plant prime chardonnay on this land and get $1,600 a ton for it," he said. "But I like doing something different." That his company is called Toscano Sonoma will give you some idea of where his tastes lie. "The Spanish varieties like manzanillo and mission are not primarily for making oil," he said. He is planting varieties like leccino and pendolino and expects to harvest his first commercial crop in about three years. As for who will press the olives for oil, the main commercial pressers are Sciabica and Orland. The oils they produce vary enormously in color and flavor. Sciabica labels its oils according to olive type, and these are different from the fairly delicate oil it produces for Mrs. Jaeger. Among Orland's oils, the one it sells to Zabar's is deep green and light tasting, whereas others, like that sold under Williams-Sonoma's label, has a more herbal, grassy taste. Mr. Chiarello said he thought Americans prefer a fruity oil that is not too heavy. That describes his oil, also made by Orland. Some day he hopes to have his own trees and press. Along with the variety of olives, some of the variables that affect the color, flavor and texture of olive oil, as many of the newcomers in the business are discovering, are the soil, climate, pruning and especially the ripeness of the olives at harvest. Greener olives tend to produce more herbaceous, peppery oils; riper olives make a mellower oil. The producers are also learning about labeling. The Federal Food and Drug Administration is concerned mostly with seeing to it that products labeled 100 percent olive oil are not diluted with any other kind of oil; the agency is not an arbiter of the "extra-virgin" designation. And American producers are not members of the International Olive Oil Council, which has established the rules of what's virgin and what's not. Extra-virgin oil is not supposed to have been treated with heat or chemicals; it is the oil produced from the first pressing of the olives and it has the most intense flavor. It's not just the extra-virgin designation that deserves scrutiny. "There are people whose labels say Napa Valley on them when | California Olive Oil May Follow Wine In Upward Mobility |
498907_0 | Just as cellular telephone technology vaulted car telephones from rare curiosities to mass-market products, a new generation of nationwide data networks is making it possible for both large and small companies to extend their office computer systems to employees on the road. Mastercard International plans to use such a network for wireless credit-card verification terminals at county fairs or merchants' sidewalk kiosks. Otis Elevator uses a mobile data network to dispatch repair technicians around the country from a single office in Connecticut and to receive back their reports. Another emerging group of converts to the mobile office: insurance claims adjusters, who shuttle between the scenes of accidents and disasters, trying to estimate the costs of repairing a car or replacing a roof. Some of the nation's biggest insurers, including Prudential Insurance and American Family Insurance, are experimenting with a new nationwide data network, linked by radio, that allows adjusters at the site of an auto accident to get up-to-the-minute parts prices without even using a telephone. The service, developed for the insurance industry by Automatic Data Processing Inc., lets adjusters in the field use a briefcase-sized computer equipped with a radio modem to tap into a national data base of price quotes from auto-parts suppliers and, in coming months, from about 1,700 salvage yards as well. The adjuster can then plug those prices into computer programs running on the laptop computer and produce an estimate within minutes. "We're looking at it potentially in catastrophe situations," like the site of a tornado or flood, said Richard F. Harkins, a physical damage specialist for American Family. "The potential of going in and setting up a claim office, without having to order up any telephone lines, would be so much more immediate." Until recently, mobile data communication has been limited to private networks, which were built at great expense by individual companies, like the Federal Express Corporation. The companies would acquire licenses for the radio frequencies, build networks of antennas and relay stations and operate the networks themselves. By contrast, the new networks act more like telephone companies and are available to thousands of subscribers who are billed a few cents for each "packet" of information they send or receive. Because these shared networks have sharply lowered the cost of mobile communications, electronics manufacturers are now rigging radio modems into laptop computers, hand-held bar code readers and other equipment. And the big long-distance | Serving Workers on the Road With Data to Go |
498832_0 | A THREE-YEAR study of nonsmoking women in five metropolitan areas has fortified earlier conclusions that secondhand smoke increases a spouse's risk of lung cancer. Taking into account other possible influences on a woman's cancer risk, the study, the largest of its kind, found a 30 percent higher risk of lung cancer if the women's husbands smoked, a risk that rose with the number of cigarettes and years of exposure. The study also revealed a similar increase in cancer risk associated with other sources of passive smoking in adult life, like work and social settings. That finding runs counter to long-standing contentions of the tobacco industry that the hazards of secondhand smoke outside the home are greatly exaggerated. It suggests that frequent exposure to cigarette smoke from sources other than one's spouse is at least as dangerous as having a spouse who smokes. While smoking cigarettes oneself presents by far the greatest risk of cancer, the Environmental Protection Agency and other researchers have estimated that 7 percent of lung cancers may result solely from passive smoking. It has also been linked to heart disease in nonsmoking adults and respiratory disorders like asthma and pneumonia in children. The new study, published in the first issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, is considered more definitive than previous investigations because it involved more cases and considered more factors that might have confounded previous analyses. "We took great pains to minimize the potential sources of error and bias," said Dr. Elizabeth T. H. Fontham, director of the study. A total of 420 cases of lung cancer among women who had never smoked were analyzed. Their exposures were compared with those for 351 women with colon cancer and 780 women in the general population. Unlike the last major report on the hazards of passive smoking, published in September 1990 in The New England Journal of Medicine, the new study found no increased cancer risk from exposure to household smoke in childhood. The previous study, conducted in upstate New York, described a doubling of lung cancer rates among nonsmokers who had lived with parents who smoked. The authors of the new report said that their primary risk might result from prenatal exposure to their mothers' smoke, a factor not taken into account in the New York study. The new report was prepared by Dr. Fontham of the department of pathology at Louisiana State University | New Study Strongly Links Passive Smoking and Cancer |
498833_1 | nausea, mood disturbance and ultrasensitivity to light and noise that often accompany them stem from an abrupt drop in previously high levels of estrogen. Women who suffer from the syndrome, called menstrual migraine, also often complain of suchmenstrual discomforts as fluid retention and breast tenderness. "Women are not imagining these headaches, and they are not a psychiatric or psychosomatic phenomenon," said Dr. Stephen D. Silberstein, a neurologist at the Comprehensive Headache Center at Germantown Hospital in Philadelphia. "The headaches result from real biochemical changes in the brain." Unfortunately, he added, "most physicians and even most neurologists are not aware of menstrual migraine and what can be done to prevent or treat it." Hormonal Headaches Women are most likely to begin having migraine headaches in their teen-age years, and fully one-third of women with menstrual migraine got their first headaches with their first menstrual periods. For approximately one woman in seven with migraine, the headaches occur only in relation to their menstrual cycles or treatment with sex hormones. They may not always get a migraine at the time of menstruation, but when they do, it is always set off by a shift in hormone levels. But in the majority of women with menstrual migraine, the headaches can also be caused by other factors, like a food, alcohol, irregular eating or sleeping habits or excessive stress. A particular trigger, like alcohol, may not always result in a migraine, Dr. Silberstein said, but when it is combined with the normal premenstrual or mid-cycle hormonal shift, migraine is a common result in susceptible women. In most women with menstrual migraine, the headaches disappear in pregnancy, when blood levels of estrogen are continuously high until the baby is born. Menopause can bring an end to the headaches, though they sometimes get worse after a woman stops menstruating. The use of oral contraceptives containing estrogens taken for only part of the month can set off or aggravate menstrual migraine. Postmenopausal treatment with replacement hormones may also make the headaches worse. Why They Happen Estrogens affect the action of serotonin, an important neurochemical that affects moods, acts on cells in the brain's vomiting center and can cause inflammation of blood vessels and membranes in the skull. During a migraine headache, Dr. Silberstein said, cell receptors for serotonin are turned on, allowing this neurochemical to work overtime. Serotonin also affects the production of endorphins, which are natural narcotics. | Personal Health |
504240_4 | likely to alienate large numbers of voters. As expected, he proposes to increase spending for Head Start, child nutrition, preventive health programs, biomedical research and Pell grants, the major source of Federal aid to college students from low-income families. Those proposals are all intended to reinforce the message Mr. Bush carried this month to New Hampshire, where the people have been battered by the recession and where there is a primary election on Feb. 18. "I care," he said on his trip to New Hampshire, where he acknowledged that "this economy is in a free fall." In the Fine Print But for each increase in politically popular programs, the fine print of the President's budget shows proposed cuts in other areas, not highlighted by the Administration: cuts in home heating assistance, housing for the elderly and the disabled, Amtrak, operating subsidies for urban mass transit, the Tennessee Valley Authority and aid to Appalachia. Increases and decreases in these programs more or less offset each other. Mr. Bush would freeze this type of "domestic discretionary" spending, which is subject to annual appropriations by Congress. The driving force in the budget, surging beyond any such constraint, is benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Taken together, such benefit programs account for more than half of all Federal spending, but they are "largely exempt from budgetary discipline," Mr. Darman said in his introduction. Under these programs, the Government is required to pay benefits to any applicant who meets eligibility criteria. Disappointed with the results of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law and other measures intended to balance the budget, Mr. Bush and Mr. Darman urge Congress to establish a new procedure to curb the growth of benefit programs. They would set an overall ceiling on such spending, allowing increases for inflation and population growth, but not for high unemployment or recession. Laying a Foundation Under this proposal, some benefits could be automatically cut if total spending on such programs would otherwise exceed the limit. The proposal, though unlikely to be adopted in the exact form suggested by Mr. Bush, lays a foundation for future efforts to control benefit programs, usually treated as untouchable in election years. Mr. Darman said Congress should impose "an enforceable cap" on the growth of spending for these programs. Otherwise, he said, "they just keep on going and growing automatically." Without waiting for Congress to act, President Bush today proposed cutbacks | The Federal Budget: The Overview; PRESIDENT OFFERS CAUTIOUS CHANGES IN SPENDING PLAN |
499386_2 | in Vienna on Thursday, and John H. Lichtblau of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation said the meeting represented a step forward in that "it wasn't negative." If Iraqi exports are allowed to resume, they could reach a million barrels a day within weeks, Mr. Licht blau said. Iraq's prewar OPEC quota was 3.14 million barrels. In Mr. Lichtblau's view, Iraq may be becoming more flexible in its negotiations with the United Nations. "Iraq has seen they no longer have a bargaining position," he said. "The world doesn't need the oil." If the United Nations stands firm on precisely how it wants the oil exported and Iraq does not go along, "all of OPEC will say thank you very much to the U.N.," he added. The Oil Daily Energy Compass, a London-based faxed newsletter, said earlier this week that it had surveyed members of the Security Council and found the basis for a compromise with Iraq over exports. Issues include whether the oil would be exported to the Persian Gulf as well as to the Mediterranean, and who will control the distribution of food that is bought with the oil money. New Iraqi exports would add pressure on OPEC to cut back, but the war changed the political alignment within the organization. Mr. Lichtblau suggested that the Saudis would be willing to cut production, but probably only for commercial reasons, and not because of an OPEC agreement. -------------------- COCOA RISES SHARPLY By The Associated Press Cocoa futures were sharply higher yesterday, grains and soybean futures were mostly lower, and livestock and pork futures gained. Cocoa futures rose sharply on New York's Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange. The gain was a response to data that indicate an increase in demand. The fourth-quarter grind report was released yesterday by the Chocolate Manufacturers Institute. Cocoa for delivery in March was $22 higher at $1,205 a ton. Grain and soybean futures were mostly lower on the Chicago Board of Trade as dealers squared positions in advance of quarterly crop reports. After the close of trading, the Agriculture Department released data showing winter wheat seedings totaled 50.2 million acres, much lower than traders' estimates of 54.05 million acres. On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, cattle futures advanced on strong cash prices, while pork futures were under pressure as a result of steep cash hog prices. Pork futures received some support from forecasts of severe winter weather. FUTURES/OPTIONS | Venezuela in Step to Raise Oil Price |
499488_0 | An Irish Republican Army bomb, the latest in a wave that has undermined public confidence in the effectiveness of anti-terrorist measures in England and Northern Ireland, blew up in the heart of the British Government quarter today, disrupting traffic but causing no injuries. The explosion caused outrage, in part because it exposed the Government's inability, even in central London, to suppress the I.R.A. after more than 20 years of military and police measures that have cost billions of dollars. The bomb contained five pounds of explosive hidden in a brown leather briefcase between two parked cars. It went off just down the street from the Defense Ministry, and came on top of six weeks of incendiary bombings and other blasts that have disrupted the routines of hundreds of thousands of shoppers, commuters and office workers as subway stations have been closed, trains canceled and stores closed by bomb scares from the small but militant group opposed to the British presence in Northern Ireland. Sectarian Killings Rise The situation is far worse in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, where five I.R.A. car bombs, the last two involving an estimated 500 pounds of high explosive each, have devastated the city center over the last six weeks, leaving many high-rise offices unoccupiable, with their windows blown out and replaced by temporary plywood patches. Another car bomb heavily damaged a police headquarters in Londonderry early today. The I.R.A.'s latest bombing campaign follows a surge in sectarian killings in Northern Ireland last summer and fall by both Protestant- and Catholic-affiliated groups. The I.R.A., which has vowed to step up its campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland, draws its support mainly from a disaffected minority in working-class Catholic areas that has suffered for years from discrimination at the hands of the Protestant majority, The I.R.A. telephoned a warning to the London bureau of CBS News at 8:38 A.M., half an hour before the bomb went off on Whitehall Place, only 200 feet away from where the same group had staged a mortar attack against Prime Minister John Major's offices at 10 Downing Street on Feb. 7, 1991. The desk editor who took the call, Adrian Monck, reported it to Scotland Yard. The police had evacuated most of the office buildings and the nearby Royal Horseguards Hotel, and had located the bomb and were preparing to try to defuse it when it exploded | I.R.A. BOMB SET OFF IN CENTRAL LONDON |
502571_3 | the minute. The price is determined only by Pacific Telephone with oversight by California regulators. MCI, U S Sprint and others are now banned from competing in such a lucrative market. The last decade has seen how competition has already transfigured what was once called Plain Old Telephone Service. A.T.& T. enjoyed a near-monopoly in long-distance service, a total monopoly in local calls and high prices. Now it is out of short-haul calls altogether and has lost a third of its long-distance market to competitors, a market that last year was worth $61 billion, more than the annual revenue of Mobil. MCI, which had about 1 percent of the long-distance market in 1982, had about 19 percent last year, or about 62 billion minutes of telephone use, according to Robert B. Morris, a telecommunications analyst at Goldman, Sachs. In 1991, it earned some $528 million on revenue of more than $8.5 billion. MCI has been helped especially by its Friends and Family Progam, which offers 20 percent discounts to customers for, in effect, recruiting their friends to MCI. Competition has also changed how consumers think about long-distance calls. Where once they put egg timers near the phones to remind chatty teen-agers to cut short their annual Thanksgiving talks with grandmother, long-distance calls, at least in the United States, now lack the glamour of extravagance. Spurred by competition from MCI and U S Sprint, A.T.& T. has cut the cost of a 10-minute call from New York to Los Angeles by about 40 percent, or more than 60 percent adjusted for inflation. And new technology like digital switching and fiber-optic cables has made possible not only lower prices but also everything from the operation of office fax machines to the quick transfer of complex medical images between hospitals. Origins of MCI All this hubbub in what was one of the most humdrum of utility services began in 1968 when William G. McGowan, an entrepreneur and the son of an Appalachian union organizer, helped found MCI, a microwave radio service that saved 80 percent on long-distance phone bills for truck drivers. Although aimed at a limited market, microwave transmission from tower to tower made possible a cheaper form of long-distance communication that was a clear threat to the 100-year-old A.T.& T. The Justice Department suit against A.T.& T. followed shortly after a 1974 civil suit by MCI challenging the Bell monopoly. In | MCI, Grown Big, Looks Abroad |
502664_1 | said today: "The documents the F.D.A. has demanded that Dow make public are only the tip of the iceberg. I am very pleased that some of these documents will soon be made public, but the F.D.A. must require Dow to make all the relevant information available to doctors, patients and the general public." The company said it would probably make the material available in 10 days but accompany each memorandum or document critical of the company with an explanation of why the criticism was unimportant or how it had been acted upon. Even critics of the implants concede that most women who have silicone gel implants are satisfied with them. The drug agency recommends that women with the implants leave them in place unless they are causing problems. A significant number of women have developed hard, painful fibrous tissue around the implants, and some experts have linked silicone to autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. The implants also obscure mammograms intended to detect breast cancer. Robert T. Rylee 2d, the chief of health businesses for Dow Corning, said at a news conference today that the F.D.A. should reconsider its decision on the safety of the implants and should consult with the company to create two new expert panels to reconsider the matter. "We do not believe memos provide answers to questions women have today about the safety of silicone breast implants," Mr. Rylee said. "However, much has been said about these memos, and we want to put to rest, once and for all, allegations made by others that we are in any way failing to make a full disclosure of all documents requested by the F.D.A." Silicone gel breast implants have been on the market for 30 years, but until 1976 the manufacturers were not required to show that they were safe. And it was not until 1988 that the F.D.A. demanded data from the manufacturers to determine if the implants were safe. A panel of experts for the Government reviewed the data and reported in November that company studies did not show how often the implants break, to what degree silicone migrates through a woman's body or what the health consequences of silicone in the body are, one top F.D.A. official said. Instead, the company had reviewed the records of about 1,000 patients in the files of a handful of plastic surgeons and submitted a summary to the F.D.A. The | Company to Release Data Questioning Implant Safety |
504127_0 | To the Editor: "Graduates March Down the Aisle Into Job Nightmare" (news article, Jan. 9), on the growing number of well educated young professionals in volunteer work or internships, hits the nail right on the head. I am a recent graduate of Catholic University of America, who like many of my fellow graduates, saw graduation as a step toward an exciting and challenging future. I was under the impression that if I worked hard during college and received good grades, a career, or a job for that matter, would follow. Well, that impression was surely a farce. All my life I followed the advice of professionals who instructed me to work at nonpaying internships during my summer vacation, arguing that it would pay off in the end. I turned down moneymaking summer jobs just to polish my resume. Well, my resume is polished, but my bank account is empty. I am discouraged and disturbed by the lack of opportunity for young ambitious graduates. My only solace is that I am not alone in this job nightmare. On second thought, maybe it isn't so bad, I can always be a professional intern. KERI ANN DRISCOLL Washington, Jan. 9, 1992 | The Once and Future Intern's Lament |
504103_0 | A campaign of a different sort has been started to help save a rain forest in Tanzania. On Thursday night, 200 guests at a party at the Yale Club will bid on chances to choose the common and scientific names for a butterfly, a beetle, a frog and a flower found in the Eastern Arc. The arc encompasses seven mountain ranges that have the oldest rain forest in Africa. The prime mover of the benefit, sponsored by the Tanzania Wildlife Fund, is CARTER COLEMAN, who became a witness to the decimation of the forest in an unusual way -- from the air. Mr. Coleman is writing a book for Random House about becoming a bird. To learn about flying firsthand, he said, "I moved to a mountaintop in the Usambara Mountains in the Eastern Arc about three years ago and trained falcons to accompany me on hundred-mile flights in my hang glider. The falcons help to find the thermal updrafts I need to sustain altitude. Hang gliding is the closest that a human can come to flying like a bird." On his flights, Mr. Coleman said, "I became shocked over the destruction of the rain forest and especially worried about the future of the crowned eagles there. In Kenya, there are only 20 breeding pair left, and I didn't want the same thing to happen to them in Tanzania." He started a project in May, and "so far we have saved 200 acres of thousand-year-old camphor trees," he said. | CHRONICLE |
504034_0 | THE rush to create low-fat foods has sent food scientists scurrying to their beakers and Bunsen burners in search of fat substitutes. One method for creating fake fat that mimics the taste and texture of the real thing is to rearrange ordinary components of foods into something entirely new. Caprenin (pronounced ka-PREE-nin) is the most recent fat substitute to be heralded as the laboratory's answer to the battle of the bulge. And the patent holders, the Procter & Gamble Company, want you to know that because it is made up of ordinary food components, it is, unquestionably, safe. Others say more testing should be required. The company has already sold this new fat substitute to the M&M/Mars Company, which is using it in a Milky Way II, a candy bar that has fewer calories and less fat than the regular Milky Way. It will be on the market in the Western states by April and is expected to be available nationwide at the end of the year. That is just the beginning: Procter & Gamble said it expected to sell caprenin to many other companies for use in soft candies and confectionery coatings. When a new food substance is created, there is more than one way to have it recognized as safe so that the Food and Drug Administration will not come along and remove it from the market. First, the creators can petition the agency to determine the safety of a food additive, setting in motion a process that can take years. Or the creators can make the judgment that the substance is safe and put it on the market. Then, if they wish, they can go to the F.D.A. and ask that the substance be declared "generally recognized as safe" -- or in the agency's parlance, GRAS. If the F.D.A. determines that the substance has not met its criteria for safety, the agency can remove it from the market. In the meantime, people will be eating it. Procter & Gamble chose to go the second route and have a panel of outside experts determine the safety of caprenin. But the company also filed a petition with the F.D.A. asking that the fat substitute be declared generally safe. Earlier, it took the first route with Olestra, another fat substitute, and has been waiting five years for the agency to rule. "Clearly, this company knows it takes a long time | Eating Well |
502900_1 | challenges in our own interest." The 47 nations attending the Washington aid conference, assembled by the United States, fell well short of that objective. Economic policy makers, Dr. Schlesinger said, would have to cope with "a huge problem for years to come -- namely a worldwide capital shortage." Demands for capital are rising in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, the third world and the industrial countries as well, at a time when capital is being choked off by the decline in national savings, high budget deficits, and the weakneses of the world banking system. The sluggish growth of the world economy is both a consequence and a cause of the global capital shortage. Germany itself is short of capital to help other countries. Dr. Schlesinger said public transfers from western to eastern Germany last year amounted to 140 billion marks ($87.5 billion at the current rate of exchange), or more than 5 percent of western German gross domestic product, and this year would exceed 170 billion marks. By comparison, the aid proposed for the Commonwealth countries looks very small. Champions of Western aid are calling for total amounts ranging up to $30 billion a year. For the Commonwealth, with a population 15 times as large as eastern Germany's, that translates into less than $100 per capita, versus $5,000 in eastern Germany. But capital transfers alone will not be enough to rescue the republics; they will also need technical help and organizational support from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Dr. Schlesinger said. He singled out the I.M.F. for praise, saying it had been more "neutral" than national governments, "which always tend to couple their own assistance with internal economic problems." At a time when growth is crucial to both East and West, as well as the third world, is not Germany doing just that -- focusing on its own problems to the neglect of those of its European partners, the United States and the world economy? On Dec. 19, the Bundesbank raised its discount rate and Lombard rate one-half of 1 percent to curb inflation as the Federal Reserve was moving to cut its discount rate by a full 1 percent to spur economic growth. Dr. Schlesinger said in an interview that he had not opposed the half-point rise in the discount rate but had favored only a quarter-point | Economic Scene; Conservative Plea To Aid Ex-Soviets |
500695_2 | like a candidate. A1 A new Bob Kerrey is struggling with the old one. A16 A TV station calls its own shots -- and the candidates'. A16 THE WAR, A YEAR LATER On its first anniversary, the Persian Gulf war has receded in American consciousness to an extent that few people expected, replaced by fears about the economy and doubts about the country's ability to handle problems at home. A1 MAJOR PROPOSAL ON FREQUENCIES Hoping to speed the development of new mobile communications, the F.C.C. will propose opening up a big swath of radio frequencies now used by railroads, electric utilities and police and fire departments. Public safety agencies are alarmed. A1 RULING ON CONSENT DECREES The Supreme Court issued a decision making it easier for state and local officials to obtain changes in the Federal court decrees that now govern the operations of prisons, hospitals and other public institutions. A14 ROUTINE CONTAMINATION OF FISH In the largest study ever performed on the safety of food in retail fish markets, Consumers Union found widespread contamination and mislabeling of fish and clams. A21 NEW OUTLOOK ON DYSLEXIA A large study of Connecticut schoolchildren found that dyslexia was not an unalterable disability. A18 Scientists identified a gene that causes a form of hypertension. A18 RELEASE OF IMPLANT DATA URGED The president of a leading association of plastic surgeons said the F.D.A.'s call for a moratorium on the sale of silicone gel breast implants had "created hysteria, anxiety and panic. " He called on the agency to release the information that prompted the moratorium. B9 Standard & Poor's lowered its rating on bonds of implants' maker. B9 RETRACTION ON A DISCOVERY Astronomers were stunned to learn that the reported discovery of a planet around a neutron star, announced last July and considered the first strong evidence for the existence of other planetary systems in the universe, was all a mistake. A19 The latest act in Arizona's political theater. A12 Metropolitan Digest, B1 REPORT ON CITY COLLEGE CALAMITY The Dinkins administration's review of the deadly crush at a City College gymnasium last month blames virtually all parties that arranged and oversaw the celebrity basketball game -- student organizers, college officials, a rap promoter, the police and the spectators themselves. A1 EX-I.R.A. FIGHTER LOSES CASE The United States Supreme Court cleared away the last apparent legal obstacle to the deportation of Joseph Doherty, a former | NEWS SUMMARY |
500582_1 | $7 gloves from Agway? Fashion, that's what, growing greener than a sugar snap pea. The new catalogues are not just talking fashionable perennials and old roses and heirloom seeds. They're talking "the look." The look says you are a 90's person with an eye to what is durable and functional and comfortable. The look says you are an active, hands-on kind of person who loves the earth and the rain forest and the poor laborers who make your beautiful cotton clothes. L. L. Bean sells Earthworks T-shirts of "untreated, unbleached pure 100 percent cotton," which are "as natural as a fabric can be." You can get one with either a bluebell or a hyacinth on the pocket, with short sleeves ($19) or long sleeves ($20). This fall, Smith & Hawken will offer a line of cotton clothing that is unpolluted by pesticides or processing chemicals. "The cotton is organically grown in Texas, and we're working with people in Oaxaca, Mexico, to fix natural dyes to clothing using iron oxide instead of heavy metals," said Paul Hawken, who founded Smith & Hawken with David Smith 12 years ago. The company, in Mill Valley, Calif., has grown from a $40,000-a-year business to a $60-million-a-year business; this year it will send out 20 million or so copies of 19 different catalogues. Mr. Hawken, 45 years old, has made money naturally since 1966, when he started a natural foods business called Erewhon Trading Company in Boston. Natural clothing was just the next step. "Clothing is our most polluting crop," Mr. Hawken said. "Cotton, hemp, silk, linen all come from plant materials that are sprayed with pesticides and herbicides and then processed and dyed, which adds to pollution." And what eco-gardener can do without Smith & Hawken's storm-green farmer's style canvas jacket with buttons made from tagua nuts? The tagua palm grows in the Ecuadorean rain forest. And as the company's new spring clothing catalogue says, "The harvesting of tagua nuts by indigenous tribespeople contributes to Ecuador's social and ecological development -- and gives us a way to do more than just wear a button that says, 'Save the Environment,' because wearing tagua buttons actually helps us to do just that." Wonderful. But who's going to wear the $89 tagua-nut farmer's jacket slopping the hogs? "Gardening attire around here is ratty jeans and old shirts," said Paul Conrad of Gardener's Supply Company in Burlington, Vt. | For Some Gardeners, Sartorial Weeds Just Won't Do |
500826_0 | Emily Lloyd, who will become New York City's Sanitation Commissioner next month, said yesterday that she hoped to develop new recycling markets that would attract new businesses and jobs to New York City and to encourage communities and businesses to share in keeping the city's streets and sidewalks clean. Ms. Lloyd, the chief business strategist for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, will be inheriting an agency racked by budget cuts that have savaged the city's recycling, street cleaning and dumping enforcement programs. But Ms. Lloyd, 46 years old, who is also an expert on transportation and environmental issues, expressed optimism yesterday that the sanitation agency would find new ways to manage the city's mounting waste problems in the wake of growing fiscal restraints. "It's obviously more fun to do this type of work when you can throw a lot of money at the problem," Ms. Lloyd said, but the Sanitation Department staff has hard-working people who can make a difference. At a City Hall news conference in which Mayor David N. Dinkins announced her appointment yesterday , Ms. Lloyd said the city, a large supplier and user of recyclable materials like newsprint, office paper, tires and corrugated boxes, could work to get more businesses to participate in the recycling program. In addition, she said, neighborhood clean-up programs sponsored by businesses and community groups have been very successful and that she planned to encourage more of them. "We tend to be a little cynical in New York about people pitching in," Ms. Lloyd said. "But it really does work." Ms. Lloyd said she was still studying the the city's decision to build huge garbage-burning incinerators to dispose of trash as remaining landfills reach capacity. Ms. Lloyd, a former Boston Transportation Commissioner, currently heads the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's Office of Business Development. Environmental advocacy groups praised Ms. Lloyd's appointment yesterday. James T. B. Tripp, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund and chairman of the Citywide Recycling Board, said: "To have someone at the Sanitation Department who is both familiar with waste management and economic development is very exciting." Eric A. Goldstein, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Ms. Lloyd has "an interesting mix of talents and we are keeping our fingers crossed that she will be able to make a breakthrough on recycling." When not working, Ms. Lloyd, who | New Sanitation Chief Hopes To Push Recycling Business |
500829_4 | public safety agencies, "there is no place else to go" if they lose their frequencies, said Robert Gurss, a lawyer in Washington representing the Public Safety Microwave Committee, an association that lobbies on communications issues for police and rescue agencies, highway and tunnel authorities and other users. Mr. Gurss contended that moving to higher frequencies, which are the only ones likely to be available, would be much more expensive than using those assigned today. It would be even more expensive, he continued, to replace the wireless communications network with one based on fiber optics or dedicated telephone lines. Police and other agencies use the microwave frequencies to link relay transmitters scattered around a city or a state, making it possible to have mobile voice and data communications. Typically, for example, a state trooper in a squad car speaks over a radio that communicates with a nearby microwave transmitter. The microwave units are then linked in a broader network. Reliability Is an Issue Though it is technically possible for such agencies to link their networks over ordinary telephone lines, most argue that the telephone networks are simply not reliable enough for their life-and-death missions. Advocates of new communications services said the proposal would be a crucial first step toward making new technologies available. "Getting the process started is a victory in itself," said Mark Golden, vice president for Telocate, a trade association in Washington representing companies in the paging and mobile communications industry. "Until some hard choices are made on what spectrum is available, none of these services will get off the drawing board." In addition to being concerned about the cost of changing communications systems, some public safety agencies are worried about safety issues. If a police department chose to refuse a buyout and stay put, while an adjacent microwave user decided to sell to a new telephone service, some officials worry that the new services might create dangerous technical interference. "It can be very serious," said Mr. Gurss, the lawyer representing public safety agencies. "If they're roaming around on the same frequencies, there's no question there's a real danger. There are some experiments being conducted where they claim various technologies can coexist, but there hasn't been any proof we've been satisfied with." Advocates of new communications services said the proposal was a crucial first step, though they warned that their reaction would depend on the details of the plan. | Plan Would Give New Phones Big Swath of the Radio Band |
498378_3 | symbols of home. For scholars these stories are also artifacts. While many times I crossed snaky fields in high boots and crept gingerly across rotting porches to inspect old structures, the entrance to the home place, I found, was through these oral narratives. The Natural Theater of the New The art critic Robert Hughes, using Zurich's Cafe Odeon as an example, asserts that European cafes were the nurseries in which many of the most provocative, persistent elements of modern culture first emerged. This is from "The Shock of the New" (Knopf, paper). Today, the phrase "cafe intellectual" is a mild, obsolete insult. Then, places like the Odeon were a medium of intellectual life, quite as much as the literary magazines. People separated from the social order, by choice or not, needed the cafe as their study and opera house: a place to meet, work, argue, and display themselves. It was a place for little groups, for specialists, where one met one's intellectual peers -- the essence of metropolitanism, and therefore of modernism, which in its self-referring ironies and sense of civilization was an urban sensibility, born in the cities, petering out in the country. The cafes of Zurich, Berlin, Barcelona, Vienna, Milan and Paris were the natural home of exiles, and modernism was largely the creation of exiles and polyglots, from Picasso the Spaniard to Beckett the Irishman. The Odeons, in short, were the natural theater of the new. In them, the intellectuals, writers and artists could feel and behave like a class, the mandarins of change. The Art of Asking Questions The ornithologist Robert W. McFarlane reminds us that every advance in science begins with an exactly phrased question. This is from "A Stillness in the Pines: The Ecology of the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker" (Norton). Science, from one perspective, is the art of phrasing questions and identifying their attendant assumptions. Its basic tenet is that nature has no secrets. The obstacles to furthering knowledge lie in formulating the right questions and in circumventing ambiguous answers, never an easy task. The best practitioners know that incisive questions and skillful analysis will ultimately yield their reward. Artful questions may require new technology, often from unrelated disciplines. New questions may require fresh insight, unencumbered by the baggage of past experience, and a probing mind to test old concepts. The importance of the proper question is often overlooked, by experienced observer and novice alike. | Noted With Pleasure |
498352_3 | More than 100 employees, or about 10 percent of the work force, have signed the so-called Ignition Initiative contract, and about 60 are now enrolled in classes. Employees hired before the program began can remain at the company as long as they want, but they are limited to earning $9 an hour. In the few management slots in the Vancouver operation, turnover is also encouraged. "It's like a graduate school," said Mr. Forster. "They move up and out." Some have turned their Vancouver experience into a graduate school for running Canadian Tire franchies. "Six of our managers are now managers of larger Canadian Tire stores elsewhere in the country," he said. Management specialists here and in Toronto describe the concept as both innovative and intriguing. "What's intriguing," said Peter J. Frost, associate dean of the faculty of commerce and business administration at the University of British Columbia, "is that they have combined cost saving with developing people. This has become an important investment in the community." Roger N. Wolff, dean of the faculty of management at the University of Toronto, added that it's "a really good program for kids who drop out of school early and are trying to sort things out." He said it could probably be applied to other large retailers like McDonald's or Hudson's Bay. "It really looks like a win-win situation," added Mr. Wolff. TAKING THE PLUNGE ON CAMPUS One former Canadian Tire worker is getting a master's degree in business administration at Simon Fraser University. Another has gone to medical school at the University of British Columbia. Still others are studying marine biology, aircraft maintenance, baking and psychology. "The program has really given me a push," said Richie Bellinger, 20, a stock clerk who, with Canadian Tire's help, is studying to be an aircraft technician at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. "I changed my life style completely." Cynthia Lowe, 19, a cashier who over the past two years has checked out $1.6 million on her cash register without an error, said she is planning to enter the British Columbia Institute of Technology in 1992 to study medical radiography. Angus McDonald, 27, who manages three of the 21 Vancouver stores, said high turnover means a lot more training, which can be time-consuming and "somewhat aggravating." But, he said, the program "means you don't have deadwood, people locked into jobs. It creates a lot of excitement." | Managing; Nice Degree - Go Away and Use It |
498292_0 | CHAMBER OPERA Tiny Operas," three short chamber operas adapted by Susan O. Bingham from stories by O. Henry, will be presented by the Chancel Opera Company of Connecticut today at 4 and 7:30 P.M. in Christ Church, 84 Broadway, New Haven. "The Gift of the Magi," "The Last Leaf" and "Makes the Whole World Kin," were first presented as "Tiny Operas" in 1987 at Lincoln Center by the After Dinner Opera Company of Manhattan. Featured in today's performances are Judith Caldwell and Barbara Yeichner, sopranos; Kyle Pruett, tenor, and Timothy Bingham, baritone. "Daniel's Gift," a children's opera based on the book by M. C. Helldorfer, is also on the program. Ms. Bingham has composed several works for her company, mostly liturgical in nature. "Old Befana," an opera about the Italian Christmas figure, was performed at Christ Church in January of last year, and "The Goose Girl" had its premiere last spring at the Worthington-Hooker School. "The Wild Swans" was presented at Sprague Hall on the Yale campus in 1988, and at the Annual Kodaly Convention in Boston in 1989. Admission is $10 and a can of soup. Proceeds will benefit the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen. SIGN LAQNGUAGE Sign language is enlarging its sphere as a means of communication, no longer solely for deaf people. Its use among hostages in the Middle East is an example. The National Theater of the Deaf in Chester has been in the forefront of the movement designed to bring hearing-impaired people into the mainstream through the universal language of drama and through workshops worldwide. Now it is offering courses in sign language for everyone, starting tomorrow with Beginning Sign Language. Conversational Sign Language I begins Tuesday, Conversational Sign Language II starts Wednesday. All classes will be held at the National Theater of the Deaf, 5 West Main Street, from 7 to 9 P.M. for six weeks. The fee for each class is $50. For more information or to register, call 526-4971 for normal voice communication or 526-4974 if hearing impaired. COPLAND BIOGRAPHY Vivian Perlis, music historian at Yale and collaborator with Aaron Copland on a two-volume biography of the composer, will talk about him and his work during a concert of his music Saturday in Simsbury. The books, titled "Copland: 1900 Through 1942" and "Copland: Since 1943" are considered to be the definitive works documenting his life and career as writer, lecturer, and conductor as | CONNECTICUT GUIDE |
498367_1 | and route the call to the nearest available telephone, whether it was in a car, a plane, a pocket, a home, an office or a hotel room. But the system would also give more control to the person on the receiving end of the call. Through more advanced versions of caller identification, call forwarding and digital passwords -- all methods in use today -- telephone customers could screen out all but the most urgent calls, giving special passwords and priorities to, for instance, family members, co-workers and the boss. Business associates, depending on who they were, could be given unlimited access to someone's number or only one-time access through a password that would expire once it was used. If a customer didn't want to be bothered at all, he could turn the phone off or instruct it to route all calls to an answering machine. If the system unfolds as planned, five or ten years from now, those old-fashioned calls that ring with no indication of who is calling or who is being called will seem, in retrospect, like "something akin to an electronic Scud missile, not well targeted and often unwelcome," W. Russell Neuman, a sociologist who teaches communications technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said at the hearing. A variation of the new technology might include personal diagnostic devices -- special earrings or neck patches connecting recovering heart patients to remote hospital monitors. If someone started to have a heart attack, the device would call an ambulance and alert the emergency room, perhaps before the victim even knew he was about to be ill. Crowded Spectrum Before this day dawns, several problems must be overcome. The F.C.C. called the hearing last month to consider whether the already crowded electromagnetic spectrum should be reassigned to make room for personal communications networks. Specifically, the hearing focused on certain frequencies of around two billion cycles per second. Technically known as the two-gigahertz range, these frequencies lie in the far reaches of the spectrum, beyond those used for radios, television sets and cellular telephones. The two-gigahertz range is already used by police departments and large corporations, like oil companies, who want a clear, interference-free channel to direct police cars, ambulances and the transportation of flammable materials. These users argue against the allocation of this part of the spectrum, partly on public safety grounds. If the F.C.C. decides to assign this or | Coming: Telephone Calls That Follow You Around |
498341_0 | A long-awaited breakthrough finally came late last month for 10-year-old Crop Genetics International and Joseph W. Kelly, its 47-year-old chairman and chief executive. On Dec. 27, Crop Genetics announced that it had formed an alliance with E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company to develop naturally occurring insect viruses into pesticides. Without financial and marketing support from large corporate partners, few startup biotechnology companies can hope to survive. And though Crop Genetics has a long way to go before it can compare its success in developing such alliances to companies like Mycogen and Calgene, even one such deal wins kudos on Wall Street. "We were always confident inside the company," said Mr. Kelly last week, basking in the leap in Crop Genetics' stock price in over-the-counter trading. It has doubled since the announcement, closing Friday at $9. The deal with Du Pont surprised Wall Street. Crop Genetics, which is based in Hanover, Md., had only acquired the technology that attracted Du Pont last summer when it bought Espro, an even younger biotech company set up across the street by a former employee. Mr. Kelly is still searching for corporate partners for the products that Crop Genetics has devoted most of its energy and resources to: Incide plant vaccines and X-tend bacterial herbicides. Incide is based on genetically altering microorganisms known as endophytes that live in plants so that they contain toxins that kill particular insect and fungal pests. X-tend consists of bacteria that help kill weeds when sprayed with diluted concentrations of chemical weed killers. Mr. Kelly said that Crop Genetics needs to demonstrate more consistent success with both products to attract a corporate partner, which he hopes to do during the 1992 growing season. "It's hard to sell the big companies on a theory," he said. In the meantime, he is keeping operating expenses down. A former partner at Deloitte Haskins & Sells who joined Crop Genetics in 1984 as chief financial officer, Mr. Kelly added the chief operating officer's job to his tasks in 1988, the chief executive's position in 1990 and the chairman's job last year without ever appointing a successor. | Making a Difference; A Big Break in Biotech |
498291_0 | CHAMBER OPERA Tiny Operas," three short chamber operas adapted by Susan O. Bingham from stories by O. Henry, will be presented by the Chancel Opera Company of Connecticut today at 4 and 7:30 P.M. in Christ Church, 84 Broadway, New Haven. "The Gift of the Magi," "The Last Leaf" and "Makes the Whole World Kin," were first presented as "Tiny Operas" in 1987 at Lincoln Center by the After Dinner Opera Company of Manhattan. Featured in today's performances are Judith Caldwell and Barbara Yeichner, sopranos; Kyle Pruett, tenor, and Timothy Bingham, baritone. "Daniel's Gift," a children's opera based on the book by M. C. Helldorfer, is also on the program. Ms. Bingham has composed several works for her company, mostly liturgical in nature. "Old Befana," an opera about the Italian Christmas figure, was performed at Christ Church in January of last year, and "The Goose Girl" had its premiere last spring at the Worthington-Hooker School. "The Wild Swans" was presented at Sprague Hall on the Yale campus in 1988, and at the Annual Kodaly Convention in Boston in 1989. Admission is $10 and a can of soup. Proceeds will benefit the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen. SIGN LAQNGUAGE Sign language is enlarging its sphere as a means of communication, no longer solely for deaf people. Its use among hostages in the Middle East is an example. The National Theater of the Deaf in Chester has been in the forefront of the movement designed to bring hearing-impaired people into the mainstream through the universal language of drama and through workshops worldwide. Now it is offering courses in sign language for everyone, starting tomorrow with Beginning Sign Language. Conversational Sign Language I begins Tuesday, Conversational Sign Language II starts Wednesday. All classes will be held at the National Theater of the Deaf, 5 West Main Street, from 7 to 9 P.M. for six weeks. The fee for each class is $50. For more information or to register, call 526-4971 for normal voice communication or 526-4974 if hearing impaired. COPLAND BIOGRAPHY Vivian Perlis, music historian at Yale and collaborator with Aaron Copland on a two-volume biography of the composer, will talk about him and his work during a concert of his music Saturday in Simsbury. The books, titled "Copland: 1900 Through 1942" and "Copland: Since 1943" are considered to be the definitive works documenting his life and career as writer, lecturer, and conductor as | CONNECTICUT GUIDE |
498358_4 | the lost information. Including shopping for the utility, the process took many hours. But once the compatibility barrier is surmounted, System 7 is worth the journey. Some of its strongest new features are subtle ones. An improved "find" feature, for example, can locate any file or program, then deliver it to the user, displaying it on screen. And Apple has largely erased the distinction between the small programs known as desk accessories and full applications. This is important because desk accessories had previously been accessible only from a pull-down menu. Now they can be opened either from the menu or by doubling-clicking on the on-screen symbol. The ability to run several programs simultaneously is now a standard part of System 7, and the Quicktime function creates standards for audio, video, text and graphics data. Other new features include simplified installation of fonts, sounds and small control programs known as extensions that manage functions not part of the standard operating system, like controlling printers and modems. Installation has always been the Macintosh's strongest selling point and Microsoft's Windows 3.0 and I.B.M.'s OS/2 are still struggling to catch up. With System 7, the extension programs are simply dragged with the mouse pointer to a folder known as the System Folder. System 7 then puts the programs in the correct spots. Another new feature is Alias, which allows the creation of an icon for an application or document that may be stored elsewhere. The real power of Alias is apparent when it is used with Remote Appletalk, which makes it possible to dial one Macintosh from another and use the files on the remote machine as if they were simply another disk drive. By combining the Alias and Remote Appletalk features, it is possible to create a small icon on one computer that represents the remote system. By double clicking on the Alias icon, the remote computer is called, and the disk directory window opens just as if it were directly connected to the user's portable machine. Apple intends for System 7.0, and its revisions to be available to Macintosh owners without charge. Some dealers will be happy to provide a copy to any customer who brings in eight blank, formatted diskettes. Others seem willing to help only those customers who buy an upgrade kit of software, manuals, documentation and telephone support for $99. This can provide an opportunity to evaluate local dealers. | The Executive Computer; Daunting Hurdles to Using System 7 on the Mac |
498209_0 | CHAMBER OPERA "Tiny Operas," three short chamber operas adapted by Susan O. Bingham from stories by O. Henry, will be presented by the Chancel Opera Company of Connecticut today at 4 and 7:30 P.M. in Christ Church, 84 Broadway, New Haven. "The Gift of the Magi," "The Last Leaf" and "Makes the Whole World Kin," were first presented as "Tiny Operas" in 1987 at Lincoln Center by the After Dinner Opera Company of Manhattan. Featured in today's performances are Judith Caldwell and Barbara Yeichner, sopranos; Kyle Pruett, tenor, and Timothy Bingham, baritone. "Daniel's Gift," a children's opera based on the book by M. C. Helldorfer, is also on the program. Ms. Bingham has composed several works for her company, mostly liturgical in nature. "Old Befana," an opera about the Italian Christmas figure, was performed at Christ Church in January of last year, and "The Goose Girl" had its premiere last spring at the Worthington-Hooker School. "The Wild Swans" was presented at Sprague Hall on the Yale campus in 1988, and at the Annual Kodaly Convention in Boston in 1989. Admission is $10 and a can of soup. Proceeds will benefit the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen. SIGN LAQNGUAGE Sign language is enlarging its sphere as a means of communication, no longer solely for deaf people. Its use among hostages in the Middle East is an example. The National Theater of the Deaf in Chester has been in the forefront of the movement designed to bring hearing-impaired people into the mainstream through the universal language of drama and through workshops worldwide. Now it is offering courses in sign language for everyone, starting tomorrow with Beginning Sign Language. Conversational Sign Language I begins Tuesday, Conversational Sign Language II starts Wednesday. All classes will be held at the National Theater of the Deaf, 5 West Main Street, from 7 to 9 P.M. for six weeks. The fee for each class is $50. For more information or to register, call 526-4971 for normal voice communication or 526-4974 if hearing impaired. COPLAND BIOGRAPHY Vivian Perlis, music historian at Yale and collaborator with Aaron Copland on a two-volume biography of the composer, will talk about him and his work during a concert of his music Saturday in Simsbury. The books, titled "Copland: 1900 Through 1942" and "Copland: Since 1943" are considered to be the definitive works documenting his life and career as writer, lecturer, and conductor as | CONNETICUT GUIDE |
498655_4 | are resolved. But on Monday the Administration switched from the stick to the carrot, saying that if the inspections occurred, and quickly, they would cancel the annual "Team Spirit" exercises that the North often criticizes as a practice for a nuclear attack. Thousands of soldiers normally would have arrived here later this month for the South Korean-American exercises. In talks Monday at Blue House, the South Korean presidential mansion, the North Korean threat served a useful purpose for both Presidents: It gave them something to agree about. On the stickier issues of trade, Mr. Bush and Mr. Roh committed themselves to working together but sidestepped the politically volatile issue of opening up the South Korean agricultural markets. South Korea is the United States' seventh-largest trading partner, and Mr. Roh said he wanted to see the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, which are now in danger of foundering, come "to a successful conclusion." But in the next breath he added that in agriculture, "it will be exceedingly difficult to fully open our markets in the immediate future," a fairly direct rebuff to Mr. Bush. Farmers Protesting Agricultural questions, particularly concerning rice, strike a sensitive nerve here, as Mr. Bush was reminded through the day on Monday. A hundred or so farmers staged a street protest, and 37 opposition-party members of the National Assembly boycotted Mr. Bush's speech to protest what they view as heavy-handed American pressure. The President particularly mentioned South Korea's "frugality campaign" to curb spending, saying it often appeared directed at imports, which at times have been taken off display at Seoul department stores. The two sides did sign an agreement on patent protection, however, and agreed to set up regular economic consulations. Mr. Bush spent much of Monday reaffirming America's commitment to South Korea's defense, at a time that American military presence is being scaled back in the Pacific. He took a helicopter Monday to a United States Army base 10 miles from the Demilitarized Zone, where 1.5 million men still face each other in one of the most heavily armed corners of the earth, and told soldiers that on the other side of the no man's land lies "a failed regime that produces only misery and want." Dressed in an army fatigue jacket, Mr. Bush plunged into the crowd of soldiers, posing for pictures and shaking hands in a giant aircraft hangar in a bleak mountain valley. | In Nuclear Deal, Seoul Halts War Game With U.S. |
498698_0 | Dr. Robert Gordis, an author, rabbi and biblical scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 83 years old. He died of complications after a stroke, his family said. Dr. Gordis, who was ordained at the seminary in 1932, taught Bible and Jewish philosophy there from 1937 until a few years ago, when illness forced him to quit. At his death, he held the title of professor emeritus of Bible and philosophy. In 1985, Dr. Gordis became the chairman of the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism, a group of 35 scholars and lay people who spent three years producing "Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism." For the first time in more than 100 years, the commission tried to put into words what it means to be Conservative, a movement often defined by what it is not: not Orthodoxy to the right nor Reform to the left. The document, which has been studied by Conservative congregations nationwide, said that the movement, with two million members, "articulates a vital, meaningful vision of Judaism for our day" by "retaining most of the tradition" while confronting a vast array of contemporary issues, from the role of women to faith after the Holocaust. Interfaith Relations Dr. Gordis was also a pioneer in the area of interfaith relations, a theme reflected in the document. "Theological humility requires us to recognize that although we have but one God, God has more than one nation," it states. The scope of Dr. Gordis's interests and the variety of his students were reflected in a special issue of the quarterly journal "Judaism," published by the American Jewish Congress in the fall of 1991. The issue, a "Festschrift" dedicated to Dr. Gordis, dealt with biblical scholarship, anti-Semitism, the role of the rabbi, concepts of God, messianism and conversion. The articles were written by scholars from around the country and from Israel. Among Dr. Gordis's books on biblical scholarship were "The Biblical Text in the Making," "Koheleth: The Man and His World," "Song of Songs," and "The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job." His books about Judaism and its role in the modern world included "Judaism for the Modern Age" and "The Dynamics of Jewish Law." For more than three decades, ending with his retirement in 1968, Dr. Gordis also served as the rabbi of Temple Beth | Rabbi Robert Gordis, 83, Dies; Defined Conservative Judaism |
503219_5 | States began to run a serious trade deficit for the first time in more than a century. Trade restrictions here exploded. When the dollar is strong, imports are less costly and American exports are more expensive, which meant that important domestic industries like copper, steel and autos found themselves unable to compete. The trade deficit peaked in 1987, at $152 billion. Then, the value of the dollar fell. The deficit was only $65 billion last year. Exports led the comeback. The politicians rarely mention it, but the market in Japan for American manufactured goods grew faster than any other big market except Mexico, nearly doubling to $31 billion last year from $16 billion in 1987. But imports from Japan also expanded, so the United States trade deficit with Japan shrank slowly. It was about $40 billion last year, down from $56 billion in 1987. By contrast, the United States has turned around its trade deficit with Europe. Last year, the United States sold about $17 billion more in goods and services to the 12 nations of the European Community than it imported from those countries. And American trade barriers have also been relaxed slightly. The share of United States imports subject to some kind of protection rose to 21 percent in 1984 from 8 percent in 1975, according to Gary C. Hufbauer, an economist at the Institute for International Economists. Now, he said, the figure is only 16 percent to 18 percent. The World Bank calculates that the European Community restricts a slightly larger proportion of imports than the United States, while Japan protects about one-quarter of its imports. Trading Countries Use Many Types of Protection The United States has been the international leader in promoting free trade for more than 50 years. The Reagan and Bush Administrations struck free trade agreements with Canada and Israel, began negotiating a pact with Mexico and led the push for a reduction in trade barriers worldwide. But the United States protects some of its own industries, especially agriculture. Ice cream imports, for example, are limited to less than one teaspoon per person each year. Sugar imports are capped at about a quarter of the nation's annual consumption, and grain and tobacco farmers are subsidized. The result is not only to keep out foreign agricultural products but to increase markedly what consumers pay for food. Pressure to "Buy American" also seems to be growing. | Candidates Playing to Mood of Protectionism |
503356_0 | Since a terrorist bomb weighing less than a pound destroyed Pan American flight 103 over Scotland in 1988 and caused 270 deaths, the Federal Aviation Administration and research firms have been trying to figure out how to make planes immune to such explosives. One answer might be to harden a plane's removable luggage containers so they could absorb a portion of a blast. "It appears that this offers the near-term solution," said Paul A. Polski, director of the F.A.A.'s Aviation Security Research and Development Service in Atlantic City. "Our major concern in making the luggage containers stronger was that we'd increase the weight of the aircraft," said Mr. Polski. "But we're finding out with the use of new materials we can substantially increase the strength of the containers without substantially increasing the weight." Mr. Polski said the luggage containers now used on airlines -- which sit on runways in all sorts of weather and repeatedly get picked up and dropped by airport forklifts -- wear out in two to four years. "The newer, stronger containers can last longer," said Mr. Polski. Moreover, "Since these containers are replaced anyway, the F.A.A. could work a plan to accommodate the attrition rate." The effectiveness of new containers "is still being determined, which is the major factor in recommending the project to the airlines," Mr. Polski added. Of course, the best way to eliminate the problem of a terrorist bomb is to keep explosives from getting aboard the plane. Currently, airports' devices can generally detect explosives weighing about three pounds or more. A search of personal belongings is geared to catch anything that weighs less. But as shown in the Pan Am Lockerbie case and several others, this method is not infallible. The hardened containers will ultimately be tested with explosives weighing up to three pounds. "If the airports can detect over three pounds of explosives and we can contain under three pounds, we're looking at bombproof skies," said Len Filppu, corporate communications spokesman at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., a research firm that is developing bomb-resistant luggage containers. Officials at the F.A.A. said that for practicality, hardened luggage containers should be lightweight, inexpensive to buy and maintain, and convenient for routine handling. Central to the SRI International design is a half-inch-thick blanket made of a composite of high-strength nylon, glass or Kevlar fibers. A luggage container would be built with a lining | Technology; Bombproofing the Skies |
503536_0 | THE little Catskills town of Hurley, N.Y., in Ulster County, has the largest concentration of antique stone houses in the country. Built between 1684 and the early 1800's, the 25 houses line both sides of Main Street, leading to the town's 19th-century Dutch Reformed Church. All were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1963 and last September Hurley rewrote its zoning to create a historic district that encompasses all 25 houses, now privately owned and occupied. Previously, only about half the houses were within a historic district created in 1967. "Probably because some homeowner objected to being part of the district, they left out one side of the street," said Town Councilman Fred C. Doty. "It was high time we treated these houses as a whole." This means that any external changes to the houses that may be seen from a public street would have to be approved by the town. With this latest action, Hurley joins a growing list of communities in the New York region that are re-evaluating the way they handle their historic properties. Since last summer, several either passed legislation or rewrote zoning to protect individual properties and, in some cases, whole neighborhoods. This preservation fervor has taken hold in communites ranging from small towns, like Hurley, to large cities, like Yonkers in Westchester County. In August, Yonkers passed its first landmarks preservation ordinance, designed to control "the negative aspects of over-development while at the same time preserving buildings and districts with historic significance," according to City Councilman Thomas A. Dickerson, a Republican who sponsored the legislation. The city appointed a preservation board of architects, art historians and preservationists to determine what buildings, districts or sites should be given landmark status. The board's role will be mostly advisory, although it will be empowered to generate some rules, according to Mr. Dickerson. With a population of 188,000 spread out over 21 square miles, Yonkers has been a built-out area for some time. Nevertheless, it retains important historic properties, several on the National Register. It also has whole neighborhoods with predominantly turn-of-the-century housing. The city's most significant historic property is Philipse's Manor Hall, built in 1693. It was the home of Frederick Philipse, who at one time owned one-third of Westchester County. Last March, the state threatened to cut of funds for the manor, opening next month for tours by appointment, because of budget cuts. | The Preservation Movement Is Making Headway |
503218_5 | States began to run a serious trade deficit for the first time in more than a century. Trade restrictions here exploded. When the dollar is strong, imports are less costly and American exports are more expensive, which meant that important domestic industries like copper, steel and autos found themselves unable to compete. The trade deficit peaked in 1987, at $152 billion. Then, the value of the dollar fell. The deficit was only $65 billion last year. Exports led the comeback. The politicians rarely mention it, but the market in Japan for American manufactured goods grew faster than any other big market except Mexico, nearly doubling to $31 billion last year from $16 billion in 1987. But imports from Japan also expanded, so the United States trade deficit with Japan shrank slowly. It was about $40 billion last year, down from $56 billion in 1987. By contrast, the United States has turned around its trade deficit with Europe. Last year, the United States sold about $17 billion more in goods and services to the 12 nations of the European Community than it imported from those countries. And American trade barriers have also been relaxed slightly. The share of United States imports subject to some kind of protection rose to 21 percent in 1984 from 8 percent in 1975, according to Gary C. Hufbauer, an economist at the Institute for International Economists. Now, he said, the figure is only 16 percent to 18 percent. The World Bank calculates that the European Community restricts a slightly larger proportion of imports than the United States, while Japan protects about one-quarter of its imports. Trading Countries Use Many Types of Protection The United States has been the international leader in promoting free trade for more than 50 years. The Reagan and Bush Administrations struck free trade agreements with Canada and Israel, began negotiating a pact with Mexico and led the push for a reduction in trade barriers worldwide. But the United States protects some of its own industries, especially agriculture. Ice cream imports, for example, are limited to less than one teaspoon per person each year. Sugar imports are capped at about a quarter of the nation's annual consumption, and grain and tobacco farmers are subsidized. The result is not only to keep out foreign agricultural products but to increase markedly what consumers pay for food. Pressure to "Buy American" also seems to be growing. | Candidates Playing to Mood of Protectionism |
500212_0 | The bomb that exploded in central London last week was not meant to kill but to serve as a calling card for the Irish Republican Army. The blast near the Defense Ministry followed weeks of incendiary bombing in Britain and Northern Ireland designed to cause maximum disruption with minimum loss of life. The relative lack of bloodshed is a minimal concession to public relations for which minimal thanks are owed. But the real aim of the attacks is malign: to provoke reprisals that will undermine attempts to deal rationally with one of Europe's most intractable quarrels. Prime Minister John Major's Conservative Government faces a close election in coming months. His party needs the support of Unionists from British-ruled Northern Ireland, who speak for the province's Protestant majority and who have been Conservative allies. Most of the Unionists oppose a British initiative intended to protect the rights of the Catholic minority in a new provincial government. So does the I.R.A. The goal of bitter-enders, Protestant and Catholic alike, is to poison the air with tit-for-tat killings. The toll last year in Northern Ireland was 94 fatalities, including 19 members of the security police -- considerably less than the recent peak of 467 fatalities in 1972, but appalling enough. Thus much depends on Mr. Major's backbone. If he yields too much to Unionists, he risks dishonoring the landmark Anglo-Irish agreement negotiated by his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, which opened a political track for nonviolent change in Northern Ireland. His Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, has called for a fresh round of talks between the key parties to jump-start the stalled initiative. The aim of the I.R.A. is to make a settlement impossible by provoking a frustrated British Government to respond repressively. Americans can best help by urging Mr. Major to stay a difficult course while making plain their contempt for all sectarian killers and an "army" that plants bombs in shops, subways and hospitals. | The 'Logic' in I.R.A. Zealotry |
500227_1 | breast implants. The data Mr. Rylee discussed were reviewed last year by the F.D.A. and were rejected as inadequate, although the agency allowed implants to remain on the market, citing a "public health need." Some of the new information came from rheumatologists and related to the possibility that silicone in the body may cause severe reactions that cause the body's defenses to attack the body's own tissues over a period of years. Also among the new information were many internal memorandums among company officials casting doubt on the credibility of the company's studies. Some of the company's memorandums were made available to The New York Times, and those, along with the company's implant studies and numerous interviews, were reported today. Mr. Rylee took sharp exception to the the New York Times report, which also quoted internal documents in which company researchers called for more tests. The documents show that safety studies considered critical by company scientists were put off for more than a decade, that the company had implants inserted in experiments on women before they had tested them in animals, and may have never tested its breast implants in animal breasts for safety, but instead used other sites in animals. Mr. Rylee called the article "a total mischaracterization of the facts." Mr. Rylee did not deny the authenticity of the documents. But he said, "internal memos are not science." He added: "They are a printed record of one side of a two-way conversation. The real question is, what does the science say?" He said such articles distracted from the real issues, the safety of the implants and the scientific evidence for or against them. The Wall Street Journal also published an article on the matter. Implants Linked to Illness Critics of implants say they can rupture or slowly leak their silicone filling into the body. The new data suggest a possible association between silicone, which can migrate from the breast to other areas and auto-immune diseases. Today, Mr. Rylee said the company knew in 1975 that silicone bled from the implants into women's bodies and that silicone would migrate through the body. But he said company scientists believed that the silicone would not have serious health effects. Mr. Rylee also released today a summary of a report by Dr. Albert Kolbye, a scientist Dow Corning hired to review its data. Dr. Kolbye, a former official in the Bureau of | Maker of Silicone Breast Implants Says Data Show Them to Be Safe |
500295_1 | the news, as has often been the case in the past. Three Exiles Captured Rather than simply condemning the flight of its citizens, however, the Government has woven the incidents into a campaign already well under way to attack dissidents, warn of a predatory United States and urge greater unity in the face of economic hardships. On Dec. 29 three Cuban exiles were captured while trying to invade the island carrying small arms and equipment the Government said was intended for economic sabotage. The three were convicted Saturday and sentenced to death by firing squad. Experts in Cuban affairs say that while the capture of the exiles may have provided a welcome leap in morale for the Government and lent some credibility to its fever-pitch campaign warning of an increasingly hostile United States, Havana's greatest worry is an economy in near free fall whose continued deterioration will only increase emigration pressure and political discontent. Until recently, economists say, the Soviet Union and its Communist allies of Eastern Europe provided Cuba with over 85 percent of its imports. By some estimates, about 40 percent of the island's gross domestic product was generated by these imports, many of which were obtained through subsidized barter arrangements and outright aid. With the generous arrangements severed, however, even common goods like soap, rum and cooking oil have become rare luxuries. Meat has disappeared from most diets. Other sources of protein, like fish, which was once plentiful on the island, have also become extremely scarce, and rations of chicken, long a staple of the diet, have been repeatedly cut. Cubans must wait in long lines for virtually all consumer goods, and the supply and variety, never rich, have become scanty. Television and movie theater programming has been cut back to save electricity. Newspapers have been forced to publish fewer pages on reduced schedules for lack of newsprint and public transportation has become all but unavailable because oil supplies have been interrupted. "In 1989 Cuba imported just over $5.5 billion of goods from the Soviet Union," said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College in Massachusetts who travels frequently to Cuba. "We are looking at a falloff to about $1.74 billion in 1991, and even worse for Eastern Europe. With a drop like that you are no longer talking about economic performance, you are talking about staying alive and feeding people." In interviews last year, many mid-level | Castro Cracking Down As the Hardships Grow |
500094_1 | Sachs; Salomon; First Boston; J. P. Morgan, and Equitable Life. This is the 12th year of this type of recruiting for the school. As might be expected at a school named for a financier, many of the students like the idea of taking jobs with financial and other well-known companies in the New York metropolitan area, and they have been trained for the relatively conservative corporate culture of most of the financial companies that interview them Mr. Mayer discussed the possible glut of new M.B.A. degree holders in an interview at the luncheon meeting. In fact, William J. Morin, chairman of Drake Beam Morin Inc., the large nationwide outplacement firm, has pointed out that financial companies are "hiring aggressively" this year. But he warns that many are rehiring M.B.A.'s dismissed in recent years because they have the needed experience with the companies. This, he said, can make it harder for the 1992 crop of M.B.A.'s. Business schools have been trying to adapt curriculums to the new managerial needs -- global perspectives, ability to work with a team, skills that can motivate and manage people, negotiating skills, selling skills and ethics. One group, the Japanese M.B.A. holders, who are often financed by their companies because Japan has few graduate business schools, go back to the same jobs they held before at the same salary. Americans typically expect higher salaries after they have earned their master's degree in business. One trend influenced by the recession is for M.B.A.'s to take jobs with smaller companies. With this in mind, Duke University began in 1990 a center for mid-size company education and research -- an indication of where it thinks jobs for many of its M.B.A.'s will be in the future. Even with the dearth of jobs, some universities report that their applications for M.B.A. programs have increased sharply. For example, Anne Sandoe-Thorp, director of admissions at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, said applications had increased by a startling 83 percent this year compared with this time a year ago. "The jump in applications is evidence of the ongoing strong interest in M.B.A. programs in general and the Fuqua school in particular," she said. She attributed the increase to people planning career changes and to those who want to strengthen their professional background "at a time of corporate layoffs and a sluggish ecnonomy." John Reddy, who heads the business department and | Careers; For M.B.A.'s, Dim Outlook This Spring |
500123_7 | was cleaned in the mid-1980's with water dripped gently from hoses strung along its roof. As the water flowed over the surface, natural iron pigments deep in the marble began migrating outward, turning the huge white cathedral a rusty brown. Eventually, further water applications washed the iron away and restored St. Patrick to its creamy sheen. At Trinity Church, a building of sandstone, which is naturally porous, conservators in the 1920's decided they would try to waterproof the masonry by coating it in paraffin, as one might wax a car. But the clever notion proved disastrous. The paraffin immediately absorbed far more soot, coal dust and grime than the building would have otherwise, until New Yorkers came to believe that any church so thoroughly black must have been designed to be funereal. When decomposition of parts of the tower forced preservationists to clean the church recently, the paraffin was stripped off with a mild solvent revealing a shockingly rosy stone beneath. "None of us expected that the stone would be so pink," said Alex Herrera, director of the Landmarks Preservation Society in New York. "The coating of paraffin had been a really bad idea, and now the architect's orginal intentions come through more clearly." Conservationists complain that rotten cleaning jobs are still commonplace, usually as a result of ignorance. Mr. Veloz said that he was recently out on a job attempting to remove lewd graffiti from a public statue. He and other workers applied a combination of mild chemicals, but the best the team could manage was to lighten the graffiti, not erase it altogether. One member of the team suggested sandblasting. "I told him, I can show you four instances of graffiti in Washington where the graffiti is absolutely permanent and indelible, because it was sandblasted," Mr. Veloz said. "Instead of having painted letters that are half an inch wide, you get sandblasted outlines that are two inches wide, and that will never weather off." Case Histories Moving Ahead One Stone at Time Leery of quick solutions, most conservationists today begin by asking what the dirt on a building is, and how it is bonding with the architectural material. Sometimes the dirt turns out to be beneficial to the stone, and restorationists may recommend leaving it alone. The wall surrounding Central Park in New York, for example, is covered with dirt that extensive tests have shown is able to | Debate on Buildings: To Scrub Or Not |
499903_0 | Two years ago, the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute warned that the world had about 40 years in which to reverse environmental deterioration or face a long decline into economic and social ruin. But in its latest annual report, the institute asserts that the 1990's are the "decisive decade" for environmental change, declaring that nothing short of an "environmental revolution" will save the planet. This revolution will require radical changes, from a reduced reliance on fossil fuels to redistribution of resources and a rapid shift to smaller families, the report says. Lester R. Brown, president of the institute and director of the study, said that the world had "not succeeded in turning around a single major trend in environmental degradation" since environmental issues came to global prominence at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. The report lists several warning signs of potential environmental disaster, including continuing evidence of global warming, excessive population growth and deforestation. Environmental degradation has affected global food production, the report says, citing statistics indicating that temperature changes, soil erosion and air pollution have reduced crop yields by about 1 percent annually since 1984. As a consequence, it says, personal incomes have fallen in more than 40 countries with a total population of 800 million people, nearly one-sixth of the world's population. "We've underestimated what it will take" to reverse these trends, Mr. Brown said. "Stabilizing the climate depends on restructuring the world economy to phase out fossil fuels. Stabilizing the population will require a revolution in human reproductive behavior." The report emphasizes the "pivotal role" of governments and corporations in stopping environmental degradation, and points to some positive signs that people are responding to the crisis: the European Community's proposal to replace some of its existing taxes with an energy consumption tax; Germany's pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2005; the reduction of soil erosion on American croplands by a third in the last five years, and Denmark's ban on throwaway beverage containers. But these steps are "all too few," Mr. Brown said, adding that it may take a nuclear accident, catastrophic climate change or a food crisis to rally global support for drastic measures. If the world does not respond to environmental degradation, he said, it will lead to economic distress that is politically unmanageable. He said a look at many archeological sites provided hints of what might come. | Worldwatch Report Calls 1990's Decisive Decade for Environment |
499970_0 | World Economies | |
501346_3 | energies can be periodically renewed in a communion meal that commemorates and recalls its inception. Modern poets such as Wallace Stevens have inherited from the myth makers of old the disposition to supply the perennial human need for once-upon-a-time stories that also inform our own beginnings, but they realize that such stories must on the whole do without the gods and goddesses of old, about whom we have become skeptical. Our Restless Species Humans, the biologist John Janovy Jr. observes, are among the most footloose of species, relying in part on travel to help us define ourselves. This is from "Vermilion Sea: A Naturalist's Journey in Baja California" (Houghton Mifflin). Pilgrimages seem to be almost instinctive, or at least derived from behaviors now so ingrained in our species that it's difficult to distinguish between genetic and social origins. Of all the animals that migrate, we are surely among the most restless. But humans retain the influence of the geophysical habitat in which they pass their formative years. And often, it seems, we are drawn back to our childhood homes -- if not physically, then mentally; if not out of love, then out of curiosity; if not by necessity, then by desire. Through such returnings we find out who we are. The Decline of Artful Swearing We tend to believe that we live in the most enlightened of times, a view not borne out -- at least in the arena of frank language -- by a close study of history, as Geoffrey Hughes notes in "Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English" (Blackwell). Although the view that there has been considerable liberation in modern times has much truth in it, the interpretation of a steady advance to enlightenment is simplistic. Such a view would hold that the constraints of medieval times were overthrown in the Renaissance, that there was a steady liberalization through the Enlightenment, a Puritanical regression in Victorian times, and a final throwing off of the shackles in the postwar era. Curiously, nearly all of these generalizations are inaccurate. Chaucer and many medieval writers had more freedom than their Renaissance successors; the Enlightenment saw a steady clamping down on strong or risque language, while the Victorian era showed a remarkable efflorescence of strong and foul language, in some ways surpassing that of modern times. However, it took place out of earshot of "polite society." | Noted With Pleasure |
501755_4 | in the 18th century. "The Hutterites were a religious sect that fled to Canada and brought their seeds with them," Dr. Kapuler said. He got about 10 seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, and grew enough beans to make soup during a weeklong snowstorm. "You know how most beans have to cook all day?" he said. "Well, these made a delicious creamy soup in about two hours." Another favorite is the Double Rich Tomato, as it is called in the Seeds of Change catalogue. It has as much vitamin C as an orange and about twice as much as most other tomatoes. Dr. Kapuler has also developed some open-pollinated hybrids, such as the yellow sugar snap pea, that unlike the patented F-1 sugar snap can be handed over the garden fence, gratis. "I crossed a sugar snap with a yellow-podded pea I got from Seed Savers," he said. "Mendel used the yellow-podded pea in his experiments, and it's been held in India for the past 100 years. All I did was what any backyard gardener can do." If these growing adventures quicken your gardening soul, you should know about a handful of seed-saving pioneers. Their catalogues, which are often as full of growing tips and information as seed lists, will open a new world. Here are my own favorites: SEEDS OF CHANGE -- 621 Old Santa Fe Trail, No. 10, Santa Fe, N.M 87501; catalogue $3. PEACE SEEDS -- 2385 SE Thompson Street, Corvallis, Ore. 97333; catalogue $4. J. L. HUDSON, SEEDSMAN -- P.O. Box 1058, Redwood City, Calif. 94064; catalogue $1. SEEDS BLUM -- Idaho City Stage, Boise, Idaho 83706; catalogue, $3. REDWOOD CITY SEED COMPANY -- P.O. Box 361, Redwood City, Calif. 94064; catalogue $1. The SEED SAVERS EXCHANGE -- is devoted to maintaining rare varieties of food crops. It is best to join only if you intend to be an active member and add to the gene pool by growing and exchanging seeds. More information is available by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Seed Savers Exchange, Route 3, Box 239, Decorah, Iowa 52101. Correction: January 26, 1992, Sunday The Cuttings column on the Pastimes page last Sunday, about seeds of the past, misidentified the university from which Dr. Alan Kapuler, the founder of Peace Seeds in Corvallis, Ore., received his Ph.D. in molecular biology. It is Rockefeller University, not the University of Rochester. | Cuttings; So the Seeds of the Past Can Give Future Delight |
501178_0 | David V. Goeddel, the star gene cloner at Genentech Inc., is known as much for his high energy level and long work hours as for his brilliant science. He is famous for having slept in his laboratory when necessary to help Genentech win the race to isolate a new protein for use as a drug. Now Dr. Goeddel will stretch himself even thinner. While continuing to work full time at Genentech, he has become a co-founder and will be an acting head of research and development at Tularik Inc., a new Bay Area biotechnology company in which Genentech has an equity stake. Tularik, which as yet has no headquarters, will focus on developing drugs based on transcription factors. These are substances involved in the process by which genetic information is turned into ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which in turn serves as a template for the production of proteins in the body. Mark Levin, a venture capitalist at the Mayfield Fund in Menlo Park, Calif., will serve as the company's initial chief executive. Mayfield is the major investor in Tularik. Genentech, one of the largest biotechnology companies, has recently been trying to broaden its product portfolio by licensing products or technology from smaller companies, in exchange for investments. While Genentech will not be directly involved in Tularik's activities, Dr. Goeddel's presence will give Genentech a window on the new technology. Dr. Goeddel, 40, is director of molecular biology at Genentech and was the first scientist hired by the South San Francisco company when it was founded in 1976. He spearheaded the efforts to clone the genes used to produce most of Genentech's significant products. These include its TPA heart attack drug, growth hormone and human insulin, the first drug produced by genetic engineering, which Genentech licensed to another company. "He's been the force behind a lot of the success at Genentech," said Diane Pennica, another scientist at the company who was instrumental in the development of TPA. Dr. Goeddel, who was not available for an interview, holds the title of Genentech Fellow, the only employee so honored. | Making a Difference; Payoff for a Hard Worker: A Second Place to Work |
501581_2 | -- and are probably useful as check lists. Hoyte B. Decker Jr., assistant director for consumer affairs in the Transportation Department, a source of this column's sometimes discouraging data on consumer complaints and flight delays, said that the fact sheets were written to be understood by people who might not have taken a plane trip before. Two came out in 1990 and last fall, the department added three additional sheets. The sheet on public charters, a topic also omitted from "Fly Rights," is valuable for anyone not familiar with charter rules. For example, it points out that all arrangements for public charters are subject to change but a refund may be obtained without penalty in the event of a "major" change -- if the departure or return city is changed, if the date is changed by more than 48 hours, if a new hotel is substituted or if the price rises more than 10 percent. "Baggage Problems" contains much that seems obvious, but some travelers may not know that they must lodge a claim for lost or rifled bags before they leave the airport. "Defensive Flying" offers tips for the inexperienced traveler and is printed in large type. These may be obtained free by writing to the Consumer Affairs Office, Department of Transportation, I-25, Washington, D.C. 20590. The department's 32-page "Fly Rights," in the 1985 edition, is available for $1 from Consumer Information Center, Department 134Y, Pueblo, Colo. 81009. This contains information on the bumping process -- denied boarding, to give it its formal name. Mr. Decker said that "Fly Rights," which is out of date but not in error, was due for revision, although it is not imminent. A Ralph Nader group, the Aviation Consumer Action Project, publishes a similar book, "Facts and Advice for Airline Passengers," at $2; it was revised in 1991 and includes current information on smoking rules. It covers some topics such as health alerts that "Fly Rights" does not touch. Order from Aviation Consumer Action Project, Box 19029, Washington, D.C. 20036. Health -- The Government publication on travel health, "Health Information for International Travel 1991," is prepared by the Centers for Disease Control of the Public Health Service; this edition came out in June 1991. An invaluable compilation of current research, it covers vaccination requirements around the world, Public Health Service recommendations for travelers, in what areas various diseases are found and health hints. | Where to Find No-Frills Facts |
501187_1 | not always met. We have women whose reproductive organs were removed when they were barely past puberty because mothers took a synthetic estrogen during pregnancy that caused cancer in their daughters. We have women who were maimed by an intrauterine device. We have lived with a negative standard -- not unsafe -- instead of the affirmative standard we deserve. Some makers of diethylstilbestrol, or DES, still insist there is doubt about whether their miserable product caused cancer. The maker of the Dalkon Shield collapsed into the safe and sheltering arms of bankruptcy still insisting the device, which caused infection, infertility, even death, was safe and effective. Safe and effective: that's what Dow Corning says about silicone implants. But the Food and Drug Administration has declared a moratorium on their use amid reports of links to a variety of painful inflammatory diseases. Every day there are new allegations that for many years the company ignored compelling questions and did inadequate testing: in other words, that their primary concern was sales, not safety. Some plastic surgeons asked about research years ago. "I assured them, with crossed fingers, that Dow Corning too had an active study under way," a marketing executive wrote. That was part of a memo that was used when Mrs. Hopkins brought suit. She told her lawyers she would never settle out of court. She had spent years thinking that there was no link between her painful and debilitating connective tissue disease and the implants that she received after a mastectomy. And then she began to hear that there were documents that indicated otherwise, but that had been sealed as part of out-of-court settlements. And she got mad. And even. According to Mrs. Hopkins, Dow Corning's lawyers offered her almost $2 million just before closing arguments. She refused. The jury awarded her $7.3 million, most of it in punitive damages. Whenever she hears Dow Corning officials saying this is much ado about nothing, she remembers that six ordinary people sent the company a message: What you did was wrong. There are many women who have silicone implants and think they're terrific, although no one knows if they will have problems in years to come. Dow Corning likes to argue that women have a right to implants, a freedom of choice argument that is a good sell. I'm not buying. Women have a right to implants -- a right to safe | Public & Private; Not About Breasts |
501532_5 | potential use for the technology, Dr. Abuchowski said, is the production of hemoglobin -- the protein present in blood that is responsible for carrying oxygen. Quest Has Taken Years "This is probably one of the most unique pharmaceutical products ever created," Dr. Abuchowski said. "People have been trying to make artificial blood for years." The raw hemoglobin, which is obtained from cow blood and then "disguised" by attaching polyethylene glycol, could be used as a replacement for blood lost in an accident, during an operation or even by a soldier on a battlefield. The semi-synthetic hemoglobin, Dr. Abuchowski said, is now being tested on animals and should be ready for testing on humans by the end of the year. Another New Jersey company that has produced marketable products is the DNA Plant Technology Corporation in Cinnaminson, one of the largest biotechnology companies in the United States. David Gilbert, DNA's manager of corporate communications, said the company had focused its research on five basic areas. Using gene splicing techniques, Mr. Gilbert said, the company has been able to create new vegetables, including a snacking pepper that tastes like a sweet red bell pepper but is the size of a small jalapeno chili pepper. The company has also developed a low-fat frying oil, a test kit to detect fungal diseases in grass, another test kit to detect petroleum contamination in soil and a biological additive that helps create "a higher quality artificial snow." Long-Lived Chrysanthemum Mr. Gilbert said the company was also involved in a joint venture with a Dutch company to breed and market flowers with novel colors and patterns. One flower that the company has already created through genetic engineering is a white chrysanthemum with a long vase life. The new flower should sell well, Mr. Gilbert said. "This particular chrysanthemum is known as 'Moneymaker' in the profession because of its very desirable agronomic characteristics," he said. Indeed, experts say, the robust health of the biotechnology industry itself, particularly in the area of drug research, is based upon the same principle that motivates the creation of a white chrysanthemum. "When you win, the win is enormous," said Bernard Tenenbaum, director of the George Rothman Institute of Entrepreneurial Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison. "The biotech business is a waiting game. But the problems they're trying to solve are so big and so fundamental to society that the nurturing of | Biotechnology Companies Find a Home In the State |
501395_0 | An end seems distant in Colombia's guerrilla insurgency, the longest running in Latin America. On Feb. 1, for the fourth time in eight months, representatives of the Government and the guerrillas are to meet in Caracas, Venezuela, in an attempt to negotiate a cease-fire. "No one in the Government expected a fast process," a presidential adviser here said. "But this could easily go on for one year, two years." The violence preoccupies Colombians more than cocaine trafficking. In a recent poll published in Semana magazine, 49 percent of those responding cited guerrilla violence as more grave than drug trafficking. According to the police, guerrillas last year carried out half of the nation's 1,541 kidnappings, blew up oil and natural-gas pipelines 160 times and caused a 13 percent drop in food production by disrupting the lives of a quarter of Colombia's peasants. Unlike the Salvadoran war, which ending after 12 years, the Colombian war started 30 years ago. Although in the last two years the Colombian Government has negotiated peace accords with four small rebel groups, which laid down their weapons and had about a dozen of their leaders elected to Congress, guerrilla struggle has become a way of life for the 9,000 fighters estimated to make up the two major armed factions. Both of those groups, the National Liberation Army and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, are Marxist in doctrine and originally received heavy support from Cuba. But today, both are financially self-sufficient and seem impervious to the international collapse of Communism. Reflecting Cuba's loss of influence, few hopes for peace were raised when a Cuban Consul arrived here in October, marking an end to a 10-year freeze in relations. The Colombian rebel leaders -- by kidnapping ranchers, extorting money from oil companies, and protecting coca and opium-poppy crops -- raise millions of dollars a year for food, weapons, uniforms and the salaries of their soldiers. Government analysts say the guerrilla commanders with the largest war chests are often the most opposed to peace talks. The Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, the largest of the insurgent groups, has shifted its demands from politics to economics. In recent months, many of the guerrillas' long-held political demands have been met: direct election of mayors and governors, a civilian Defense Minister, a lifting of the state of siege, a constitutional convention, a disarming of right-wing death squads and the participation of Indians and former | Insurgency's End Seems Distant at Colombia Talks |
501545_5 | themselves "pro-choice" and "pro-life" -- misleading terms used here principally for convenience. The pro-life movement began in 1967, six years before Roe v. Wade. The women's movement, also revitalized during the 60's, gave an impetus for self-assertion to women on both sides of the abortion issue. But there are less obvious reasons, central to America's special character, which have helped to make abortion an explosive issue in this country: Religiosity. America is, and always has been, a religious country, even though it spreads its religiosity among many different religions. Perry Miller, the great historian of American religious thought, established that the New England colonists arrived with a ready-made religious mission, which they cultivated and sustained through all its manifestations, from charity to intolerance. The Virginia settlement, too, was energized by God's glory. Nothing changed in this attitude by the time the nation was invented. If anything, the creation of the United States of America made the desire to receive redemption in the New World more intense. Yet individuals sought something in American religion that was different, more emotional than the religion practiced in England. One member of an early congregation explained that the reason he made the long journey to America was "I thought I should find feelings." This personalized sense of religion, which has endured to the present, has an odd but telling relationship with the national attitude toward religion. Officially, America is an a-religious country; the separation of church and state is so rooted in the democracy it has become a cliche. Yet that same separation has created and intensified a hidden national feeling about faith and God, a sort of secret, undercurrent religion, which, perhaps because of its subterranean nature, is often more deeply felt and volatile than that of countries with official or state religions. The Catholic Church seems more steadily impassioned about abortion in America than anywhere else, even in a country like Poland -- so agitated, in fact, that it has entered into an unlikely, if not unholy, alliance with evangelical churches in the pro-life camp. In Catholic countries like Italy, France and Ireland, religion is often so fluidly mixed with social life that rules are bent more quietly, without our personal sort of moral upheaval. Americans are moral worriers. We tend to treat every political dispute that arises as a test of our national soul. The smallest incident, like the burning of the | How to End the Abortion War |
501405_1 | these days. Six Bombings in Six Weeks Over the last six weeks, the Irish Republican Army has set off six bombs in the city center as part of a continuing campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland. In addition to injuries, the attacks have cost millions of dollars in damage and have left people with jangled nerves. [ Early Saturday, the I.R.A. claimed responsibility for a roadside bombing in rural County Tyrone that killed seven workers and wounded seven others in a commuter van on Friday evening. The British Government said later that it would send 500 more troops to Northern Ireland to bolster security. ] The bombings have also snarled traffic into Belfast, with police officers in flak jackets and troops in battle gear stationed at checkpoints along roads leading into the city in an attempt to deter further bombings. Politicians opposed to the I.R.A. are calling for even tougher security measures that include imposing curfews, issuing compulsory identity cards and sealing the border with the republic of Ireland, to the south. "If they really wanted to show these visitors what is really happening in this city all they would have to do is take them for a walk to view the bomb damage around it," said Sammy Wilson, one of three members of the City Council who boycotted the dinner and dance at City Hall. Along with fellow members of the Democratic Unionist Party, a mostly Protestant political organization, Mr. Wilson wants to see a much harder line taken with Irish republican militants. Beyond the shadowy warfare between the rival paramilitary groups, which resulted in 94 deaths last year, the highest toll in nearly a decade, another battle is being waged in Belfast: a public relations campaign of images and impressions. On the one side are the British, business owners and Northern Ireland officials who argue in brochures and press releases that life and commerce are becoming more and more normal in spite of "the troubles," as the 22-year-old conflict over Irish nationalism is euphemistically called both here in the north and in the south. On the other side are the I.R.A. and some small, more militant supporting groups, whose bombs and bomb threats are intended to wreak havoc on the ordinary rhythms of life in the capital by interrupting commerce and making Belfast seem a city besieged. Compensation Is Paid The economic damage toll has grown, too, | ULSTER'S WARFARE TAKES VARIED TOLL |
502111_0 | THE Three Gorges Dam would be far from the highest ever built, but it certainly would be among the most controversial water projects in the world. Vigorously criticized by environmental groups from as far away as Canada, the dam would submerge one of the Yangtze River's most scenic spots and it would require a huge expenditure that some argue could be better used elsewhere. For backers, the primary argument for the project is not so much that it would generate electricity sorely needed for economic growth, but that it would aid in flood control. Some experts believe that one of the places most vulnerable to a catastrophic flood is the Jinjiang Levee, which runs along the Yangtze in its middle reaches. The levee protects some seven million people, and one estimate has it that 500,000 could be killed if the levee were breached in the daytime and that one million could die if it occurred at night, when people were sleeping. The Specter of Flooding Backers of the project say that the levee is precarious and that only a new dam can save people from a catastrophic flood. They say that for now, the levee could withstand only normal flooding, the kind expected every 10 years or so, and that it could crumble under the pressure of the sort of flood that occurs every 100 years or so on the Yangtze. But critics say the situation is not so precarious. They note that since records have been kept, beginning in 1153, the worst flood along the Yangtze was in 1870 and that the Jinjiang Levee held. Enormous numbers of people died, but most were on the south side of the river in an unprotected area. Some oppose the dam because it would mar one of the most beautiful sights in China, the Three Gorges, where the Yangtze drifts beneath huge cliffs. Skeptics also worry that the dam may be no better constructed than many other huge projects, arguing that the reduced risk from a catastrophic breach of the levee could be offset by the new risk of a collapse of the dam. | Dispute Over a Dam on the Scenic Yangtze |
502116_3 | reminder: Back up your hard disk. A newer program like Wordperfect for Windows will not even fit on a 10-megabyte hard disk, and 20 megabytes would be tight. A 40MB drive is adequate, assuming the user does not plan to use many other major applications. If the user wants to take advantage of several Windows programs, however, such as a word processor, a spreadsheet, a data base, a communications program, a graphics program, a desktop publishing program and a game or two, it makes sense to start looking at hard disks with a capacity of 80MB, 100MB or more. Next-generation operating systemslike Windows NT, OS/2 2.0 or some of the Unix variations will demand 10 to 30 megabytes even before any programs are loaded. Animation, sound, color graphics and even video images, the building blocks collectively known as multimedia, will require vast amounts of hard disk space, so looking at 200MB and more is not outrageous. There are several options for PC owners who are already outgrowing their hard disks. Adding a second (or third) disk is a possibility. The easiest way is to add a hard disk on a card, such as the Hardcard II from the Plus Development Corporation of Milpitas, Calif. It costs a little more than a conventional hard disk and eats up an expansion slot, but it is a fast do-it-yourself project. Those willing to open the computer case can install an internal hard disk, but the technologically squeamish might consider hiring an expert to do it. Macintosh owners have it easier; they can simply plug an external hard drive into the computer's SCSI port. Precious hard disk space can be conserved by using so-called integrated software packages like Microsoft Works or Lotus Works, which combine many popular applications in a condensed version. Another option is to use a program (or hardware attachment) that compresses regular programs into a fraction of their normal space, in effect increasing the capacity of the existing drive. Stacker ($149) from Stac Electronics of Carlsbad, Calif., is our choice for compression software. Hard disks also need care and maintenance. Several utility programs, of which PC Tools, Norton and Spinrite are the most popular, will check the disk for potential problems and do general housekeeping chores that can improve the performance of a drive. But above all, back up your hard disk. We'll discuss some backup options next week. PERSONAL COMPUTERS | Black Box: Out of Sight but Crucial |
502107_0 | SEVERAL times each day, a normal cell in the body mutates into a cancerous one but is knocked out by the body's defense mechanisms. Occasionally, however, the mutant cells take hold and grow uncontrollably into a malignant tumor. Uncontrolled growth is distinguishes cancerous cells from normal ones. But precisely what goes awry in the cell and the defenses to permit the cancerous cells to take over is one of the great mysteries of science. Now findings from a team of scientists at the University of Miami headed by Dr. Werner R. Loewenstein suggest that the uncontrolled growth results from a genetic defect that leaves cells unable to communicate with each other. The failure involves defects in the tiny tunnels that connect cells and presumably allow normal cells to inhibit one another's growth, the scientists reported in The Journal of Membrane Biology, which Dr. Loewenstein edits. If gene therapy based on the new findings can someday be achieved for cancer, and if the Miami team's conclusions are confirmed, scientists might develop a specific treatment that ends cancerous growth without killing normal cells, Dr. Loewenstein said. And while other researchers called the new work interesting, the history of science has shown repeatedly that what works in the laboratory may not work in people. And even if Dr. Loewenstein's test-tube experiments do bear fruit, it will take years before the harvest comes for cancer treatment. The research involves connections, or tiny channels, about two-billionths of a meter in width in cell membranes and visible only through electron microscopes. Clusters of such channels are known as membrane channels and gap junctions. In recent years, gap junctions have been found to be one of the main channels of electric and metabolic communication between cells, allowing small molecules to pass directly from the interior of one cell to another without ever having to get outside the cell. The junctions are made of proteins known as connexins that align to form a continuous channel. In normal cells, chemicals bearing regulatory messages of one kind or another are constantly passed through these communicating tunnels. One of the messages is presumably a signal that regulates or inhibits cell growth, and loss of this signal, through a defect in the tunnels, may be at the root of the uncontrolled growth of some cancerous cells. In test-tube experiments, the Miami team reported that it had taken cancerous cells that had a | New Cancer Clue: How Cells Talk To Each Other |
501954_0 | After years of scientific debate and commercial hesitation, the first food irradiation plant in the nation now stands ready for service and could begin shipping specially treated fruit as early as next week. Many scientists at universities and Federal agencies regard irradiation of food as a safe and efficient way to retard spoilage and kill organisms that cause illnesses like salmonellosis and diarrhea. Investors in the plant hope that an initial scheduled shipment of irradiated strawberries will soon be followed by other fruits and vegetables and, eventually, poultry and seafood. "This is going to be a real bonanza for growers and consumers alike," said Sam Whitney, president of Vindicator of Florida, Inc., the company that operates the plant here. "All the surveys show that people want safer food, and this is a simple, proven process that kills the bacteria that can kill you. It's as important as pasteurization." Arguments About Risk But opponents argue that "zapping the food supply," as one prominent medical researcher, Dr. Donald B. Louria, has called food irradiation, causes many more problems than it solves. Irradiation not only robs food of some nutritional value and requires the use of dangerous nuclear material, they assert, but may also increase the risk of cancer and birth defects. "There is enormous controversy over this in the scientific community," said Michael Colby, national director of Food and Water, a consumer advocacy group based in Manhattan that has led the campaign to block food irradiation. "So why are we pushing forward with something unnecessary and easily replaceable? We seem to be recklessly promoting this frivolous technology which is potentially dangerous to human health and threatens the environment." Three states have acted on the irradiation issue. Maine has banned irradiated produce outright, and New York and New Jersey have imposed moratoriums on its sale. For many years, limited amounts of spices and edible herbs have undergone the process at some of the 38 commercial irradiation plants around the country, which also sterilize medical equipment and supplies. But the opening of a $7 million plant in this small farming and phosphate mining town 30 miles east of Tampa marks the culmination of an audacious effort to apply the technology to fresh produce and meat. Irradiation, a relatively simple process that has been known and studied for 40 years, does not actually make foods radioactive or leave a radioactive residue. Products that are to | Irradiated Food Coming, But Not Without Protest |
502113_8 | site of the Three Gorges Dam, and skeptics argue that in a few decades the reservoir will become an unnavigable pool of mud. Backers of the project have conducted extensive tests, some of them using a half-mile-long laboratory version of the Yangtze, and they insist that siltation would not be a major problem. In the summer, when the river is the muddiest, they plan to lower the reservoir level and flush the silt through, while in the fall, when the river is clearer, they would build the water level. Government officials seem to be pushing hard for a final go-ahead on the Three Gorges project in March, at a meeting of the National People's Congress. As evidence of the danger, they cite devastating flooding last summer in which 3,000 people were killed and 3.2 million were left homeless, and they emphasize that the sooner work begins on the dam, the less onerous the relocation requirements will be, partly because of the rapidly rising population. "The sooner Three Gorges starts functioning, the better," said Su Qianqing, an official of the Ministry of Water Resources in Beijing. "It's going to be more difficult for us to solve the problem of relocation if we don't start now." The Three Gorges Dam has been under discussion since the 1920's and is by far the country's most controversial construction project. In the relatively open environment of the late 1980's, an incipient environmental movement seemed to have defeated the plan for a dam when a Politburo member announced a postponement of further consideration until at least 1995. But over the last 18 months the project has been resuscitated, and in the aftermath of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989 most environmentalists and critics of the project have been cowed into silence. Dai Qing, a prominent writer who is one of the dam's foremost opponents, was arrested after the crackdown, and Li Rui, a party elder and water specialist who also opposed the project, was placed under tight restrictions. "I still have some hope that the Three Gorges Dam won't go ahead," Ms. Dai said last month, shortly before she was allowed to go to the United States to accept a fellowship at Harvard University. "If we devote so many resources to the Three Gorges, then everything else will have to wait. Education and science spending will slow, and China's backwardness and burden on the world | Chinese Aim to Harness Yangtze and Yellow Rivers |
498017_3 | "Cuba Awaits You," were still on board the helicopter as it sat on the tarmac at Tamiami Airport, with customs agents and Miami police officers guarding it. Under the terms of an international air hijacking agreement that both the United States and Cuba have signed, the helicopter must be returned to Cuba. A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington said this afternoon that the Cuban Government expected to send a crew to Florida to pick up the craft and fly it back to Havana as soon as arrangements could be made. Inside the commandeered helicopter were seats for three crew members and seat belts for 18 passengers, indicating that the craft made its 200-mile journey dangerously overloaded. "I was a little bit nervous in the beginning," said one of the passengers, a man in his 30's. "But after 30 minutes I knew we were out of danger." Mr. Perez and other friends of the passengers said today's escape had been carefully planned for several weeks and that there had been at least one attempted escape that was aborted at the last moment. Shortly after their arrival several of the passengers used mobile telephones to call relatives in Miami, and their conversations made it clear that those family members also knew that some sort of escape effort was in the works. As news of the helicopter flight spread on Spanish-language radio and television stations here, curious Cuban-Americans drove to the airport in the hope of catching a glimpse of the latest additions to Miami's flourishing exile community and the craft in which they escaped. "The next thing you know, they will be coming in submarines," said one radio commentator, rejoicing that "once again the Cuban people have made a fool of Fidel Castro." Today's flight to freedom comes amid Cuba's worst economic and political crisis since Mr. Castro seized power 33 years ago this month. Deprived of subsidies, oil and markets for its sugar exports as a result of the collapse of Communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Cuban economy has over the last two years sunk virtually to a subsistence level. Food and fuel have long been rationed, but new restrictions on electricity and gasoline consumption, including the elimination of many bus lines, went into effect on Jan. 1. Television, newspapers, movie theaters and sports arenas have also cut back their operations, leaving the | Cuban Pilot Defects With 33 Others in a Daring Helicopter Flight |
497951_0 | When Karl Malone made like Scarface Capone and ripped a hole in Isiah Thomas's head, it made people in the National Basketball Association and beyond take particular notice. At least, it seemed to. But Chuck Person, among others, was apparently otherwise occupied. On Dec. 14, in Salt Lake City, Thomas, the 6-foot-1-inch, 185-pound guard for Detroit, drove in for a shot and Malone, the 6-9, 256-pound forward for Utah, defended his basket by going for the ball, he later said. But he missed the ball -- the Mailman was obviously suffering an unaccountable lack of coordination at that moment -- and smashed Thomas in the forehead with his elbow, causing 40 stitches. Thomas was sidelined for a week and missed three games. Last Monday night, about two weeks after the Malone incident, Person, the 6-8, 225-pound Indiana forward, cracked John Paxson, the 6-2, 185-pound Chicago guard, with a savage elbow in the face while ostensibly trying to prevent a jump shot. By simple good fortune, Paxson's face was not shattered. Like the Malone attack, though, Person's onslaught made the viewer sick to his stomach. It was reminiscent of Detroit's vicious play in last season's playoffs against Chicago, and made one wonder if, as in hockey and football, basketball players ought to wear helmets and face cages. Malone was called for a flagrant foul and thrown out of the game. He was also fined $10,000 and suspended without pay for Utah's following game, which cost him an estimated $31,000 more. The penalty would seem considerable, but it really wasn't for Malone. The N.B.A. did little more than shake its finger at him. And the penalty certainly did not do what the N.B.A. hoped it would -- that is, send a tough message that would deter such brutality. Malone's salary is $2.5 million a year and he makes a substantial amount in endorsements. Thus, $41,000, while not exactly chump change to him, does not make a huge dent in his wallet, either. Not nearly the dent his elbow made in Thomas's head, anyway. Person was also called for a flagrant foul, thrown out of game against the Bulls, and later fined $7,500. But he was not suspended for a future game. The N.B.A., meanwhile, says it is concerned about violence on the court, and wants no part of it, beyond the expected battering that goes on under the basket, of course. Before | Sports of The Times; The Menace That Looms In the N.B.A. |
497964_0 | An article yesterday about a study of follow-up treatments for breast cancer referred incorrectly to one comparison of possible benefits of therapies in women of different ages. The study suggested that tamoxifen in women over 50 years old (not under 50) produces as good an effect as chemotherapy. | Corrections |
503113_0 | To the Editor: "Save Ellis Island's Ghosts" (editorial, Dec. 27) balances many of the critical decisions faced in charting the future of this unique national monument. To honor the millions who passed through these portals, a thoughtful plan must be developed to save significant elements across the island. But under current plans no part of Ellis Island is safe. Yes, there has been an outstanding restoration of the Main Building, accompanied by an emotionally moving program that relates the island's compelling story. But even as we consider the disposition of "the other Ellis Island," as your 1986 editorial describes the south side, the future of the north side remains in question. Creation of a festival marketplace in the dormitory-baggage building and development of a large-scale international broadcast center are among the plans for the remaining buildings on the north side. All of these intentions, though vaguely defined, would require significant alteration and commercialization. Would we drive the ghosts off the south half of Ellis Island only to corral them in the Great Hall -- with the bustle and clamor of a shopping mall or media center just a step away? It would clearly compromise the investments and benefits already in place within the Great Hall restoration. The balance of Ellis Island's future clearly leans to the side of preservation, given its role in the lives and souls of so many millions of Americans. We would be foolish to permit financial expediency to trample the evocative nature of this site. Possibilities for alternative development or stabilization must not be swept aside in a rush to get on with more immediate plans. ORIN LEHMAN Commissioner of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Albany, Jan. 2, 1992 | To Keep Memories, Keep Ellis Island Buildings; Striking a Balance |
499269_1 | or occupy the same radio frequency as a neighbor's cordless phone, a baby monitor or even a garage-door opener, and can be subject to eavesdropping with easily available radio equipment, like scanners. Cordless phones are basically radios, connected to a transmitter in the base, that plug into conventional telephone outlets. They have been growing in popularity for the last decade because callers no longer have to be tethered to a wall. Often selling for less than $100, the phones are a tenth the cost of cellular phones, but do not offer the mobility of cellular systems, which can be carried in a car, briefcase, or even a shirt pocket. In 1989, the Federal Communications Commission freed the 900-megahertz part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which allows signals from the base transmitters in cordless phones to travel a far greater distance than the maximum 1,000 feet for today's cordless telephones, which operate at 46 to 49 megahertz. The 900-megahertz cordless phones would provide complete coverage for a typical two-story suburban house, between two floors in an office building, and in most restaurants. They should operate up to 3,000 feet or more in a virtually open field, without interference from metal building braces or fluorescent lights. Three manufacturers are producing 900-megahertz phones for sale this summer -- the Panasonic Company, with a $500 analog unit; Code-a-Phone, which has a $400 analog unit, and a small company called Vtech Communications Inc. in Beaverton, Ore., which has a $300 digital cordless phone that it will begin shipping this month. Security Codes In Vtech's completely digital phone, the Tropez 900DX, the security of the telephone signal is made possible by scrambling the digital code. The phone selects one of more than 65,000 possible digital security codes each time the handset is placed in the radio transmitter base. The phone also automatically selects one of 20 frequencies for the best transmission. Present analog phones select among 10 such channels, but the user must do so manually. Steve Johnson, the president of Vtech, a unit of the Hong Kong-based Video Technology, said the company also planned to sell two other models in June with the 900DX. A $349 model will incorporate two phone lines, as well as a caller-identification screen that identifies the number of the incoming call -- provided the local telephone company provides the service. A $399 unit would incorporate a digital answering machine. COMPANY NEWS | No Gaps or Static From These Cordless Phones |
499316_1 | chance for countries to endorse or turn down the pact, the meeting now is likely to be the beginning of further talks. One requirement of the current proposal, presented by GATT's Director General, Arthur Dunkel, in late December, is for countries to reduce their spending on agricultural export subsidies by at least 36 percent in six years and the tonnage by at least 24 percent. Farmers picketed President Bush during his visit to Australia last week to protest America's wheat-export subsidies, which were enacted by Congress in response to Europe's even larger farm-export subsidies. The proposal would also reduce some Japanese trade barriers that have resisted American efforts during President Bush's current visit to Tokyo, such as Japanese limits on imported rice. President Bush in Tokyo and several Administration officials here said today that the broad proposal put forward on Dec. 20 was a step forward but would require changes and clarifications. Administration officials had hoped that they would need very few amendments to the text. "Both the United States and Japan believe that Director General Dunkel's proposed text is an important step that helps establish momentum to bring the Uruguay Round to a successful conclusion," said a communique issued at the end of President Bush's meetings with Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa of Japan. "Of course, the Dunkel proposal is not a final text." The United States trade representative, Carla A. Hills, said Mr. Dunkel's text "is probably where we should have been a year ago." But the Administration believes the proposal still does not address enough subjects in adequate detail for the plan to win any immediate endorsement. The proposal does not cover the opening of markets currently closed to services, like insurance, and goods, like computers. It also does not provide details by country of how much agricultural subsidies are to be reduced each year. April 15 Target These issues are to be negotiated by April 15, and the Administration response today indicates that even the issues included in Mr. Dunkel's text will not be settled until then, and possibly later. Mr. Katz expressed skepticism about Mr. Dunkel's goal of concluding all negotiations by early April. "I do not know at this point whether such a timetable is achievable," he said. "The United States will not rush to sign an agreement just to meet a deadline." On a related trade issue, a senior American trade official said today | U.S. Sees Months of Talks Needed for World Trade Pact |
503943_0 | To the Editor: The United States has agreed to support Russia's inclusion in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (front page, Jan. 4), to suspend Russia's debt payments until 1993 and to provide millions of dollars in direct aid. For little or no additional cost, the United States and the international community can use debt restructuring and foreign aid to help protect Russian forests, vital to offset the greenhouse effect and maintain the world's air quality. Russia contains more than half the world's remaining evergreen forests and one-quarter of the world's timber supply. The forests, covering an area the size of the continental United States, absorb three-quarters as much carbon as the Amazon rain forests and produce equivalent amounts of oxygen. Although many of Russia's forests are still pristine, economic and political instability have caused a veritable timber rush. Government officials, newly privatized timber consortiums and hundreds of commodities exchanges are eager to sell off the forests for hard currency, technology, food and fuel. To help Russia's economic difficulties, the United States and 16 other lender nations have agreed to suspend Russian debt payments until the end of 1992. If the I.M.F. and World Bank admit Russia, they would further restructure Russia's debt and provide billions of dollars in development loans and technical aid. The United States and the international community have an opportunity to protect the world's environment while bolstering Russia's economy. The I.M.F. and creditor nations can require Russia to preserve designated forest lands in exchange for debt restructuring and foreign aid. Exchanging debt for nature conservation is not new. There are more than 15 debt-for-nature agreements, mostly to preserve Central and South American rain forests. Private or sovereign lenders sell or donate debt to a conservation organization, which uses or forgives the debt in exchange for nature protection. Sovereign lenders can also negotiate directly with debtor nations. JULIA LEVIN San Francisco, Jan. 14, 1992 The writer, a lawyer, has served as a consultant on forestry law in Russia. | How to Use Debt to Save Russian Forests |
503748_0 | Since Jan. 6, when a gang of white youths yelling racial epithets squirted white sneaker polish on two black children in the Bronx, bias incidents have rained down hard and heavy in New York City. Sixty-one cases have been reported so far, ranging from racial slurs hurled from a passing car to subway riders slapped in the face to a 15-year-old honor student raped, her attackers told her, because she was "white and perfect." Experts say that the surge in cases is actually a predictable phenomenon that has occurred several times in recent years on the heels of a particularly shocking bias attack that attracted wide publicity. Whatever complicated turns race relations take, they should not be judged on a single spasm like the cluster of bias incidents in January, these experts say. Such a cluster often begins with an extraordinary single incident that strikes an emotional chord with the public and the media, like the shoe-polish attack in the Bronx. It affects people "very personally," said Dennis deLeon, chairman of the city's Human Rights Commission. And it is followed by a spate of other episodes with a variety of motives: some are retaliatory, some copycat, some simply everyday discord drawn under the hot spotlight of public attention. A few of the attacks are brutal, but the majority do not result in serious physical injury. Most involve verbal abuse, vandalism or pushing and shoving matches. Of the 61 cases reported since Jan. 6, when bullies painted black children white in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx, 50 were racial incidents. At least nine caused significant injuries. Most involved racial profanities and harassment, seemingly minor compared with the ones that left physical harm. In one Brooklyn case, a white motorist found a note on his windshield ordering him out of the block; his tires were slashed and flat. These clusters of incidents tend to bring people out of the woodwork who are seeking attention, police and human rights officials say. They give purposeless youths something to do. They prompt belated reports on incidents that happened weeks and even months before. A 22-year-old Jewish man told the police in November that he was walking to his Crown Heights home when he was hit in the head with a brick thrown by unidentified assailants. But not until Jan. 15 did the police learn, in a letter from the man's lawyer, that the assailants | 61 Acts of Bias: One Fuse Lights Many Different Explosions |
503898_0 | THE forests of the Amazon and other tropical regions have been getting attention for some time, and understandably so. They are home to a disproportionate share of the world's living species, they absorb huge amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide that would otherwise exert a big heating effect on the earth's climate and they are rapidly being destroyed. Less well known is the vast stretch of fir, larch, spruce and pine that girdles the continents at far northern latitudes and is known as the taiga. The word is derived from the Russian, appropriately enough since the Siberian part of the taiga is the largest forest in the world, far larger than the Brazilian Amazon. At more than two million square miles, it would cover the entire continental United States excepting Alaska. Like the tropical forests, it is a major absorber of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Now, with Russia economically devastated and hungry for hard currency as it converts to a market economy, environmentalists are raising fears that joint ventures between the Russians and American, Japanese or Korean timber companies could lead to extensive deforestation of the Siberian taiga. This, the environmentalists warn, could contribute significantly to global warming. If carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases continue to build up in the atmosphere at the present rate, the earth's average surface temperature will rise by 3 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit in the next century with possibly catastrophic results, many scientists predict. The rate of buildup would presumably increase if Siberia were deforested. The possibility is raised in an article in the current issue of the British journal Nature by Dr. Armin Rosencranz and Antony Scott of the Pacific Energy and Resources Center in Sausalito, Calif., a nonprofit environmental research and education center that works with Russian environmentalists to defend the Siberian forests. The forests "have a large role to play in mitigating global warming," they wrote, emphasizing that this "must be communicated to the negotiators of international agreements" aimed at limiting or reversing the buildup of carbon dioxide. Negotiators from 130 countries are to meet in New York next month in the fourth of five sessions aimed at producing a binding international convention on the control of heat-trapping gases. Participants say the session is crucial, since there is not much time left before the scheduled signing of the pact in June in Rio de Janeiro, and the United States and other industrial nations | Experts Say Logging Of Vast Siberian Forest Could Foster Warming |
503898_1 | other heat-trapping gases continue to build up in the atmosphere at the present rate, the earth's average surface temperature will rise by 3 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit in the next century with possibly catastrophic results, many scientists predict. The rate of buildup would presumably increase if Siberia were deforested. The possibility is raised in an article in the current issue of the British journal Nature by Dr. Armin Rosencranz and Antony Scott of the Pacific Energy and Resources Center in Sausalito, Calif., a nonprofit environmental research and education center that works with Russian environmentalists to defend the Siberian forests. The forests "have a large role to play in mitigating global warming," they wrote, emphasizing that this "must be communicated to the negotiators of international agreements" aimed at limiting or reversing the buildup of carbon dioxide. Negotiators from 130 countries are to meet in New York next month in the fourth of five sessions aimed at producing a binding international convention on the control of heat-trapping gases. Participants say the session is crucial, since there is not much time left before the scheduled signing of the pact in June in Rio de Janeiro, and the United States and other industrial nations differ over whether to set specific targets for limiting carbon dioxide emissions. Less attention has been given to the important role of deforestation in global warming, and particularly to the role of the taiga. Some forestry experts question whether large-scale logging will ever catch on in Siberia, given its inaccessibility, generally high costs and a short growing season for the regeneration of trees. But the pressures of economic survival in the former Soviet Union, and particularly in hard-pressed Siberia, are causing Russians to "look to natural resources for conversion into cash, and people in the United States, the West and Korea and Japan are waiting to use these natural resources," Dr. Rosencranz, the president of the Pacific Energy and Resources Center, said in an interview. He and Mr. Scott noted in the Nature article that the recent completion of a new Siberian railway helps make expansion of the timber industry possible. Thousands of people sent to Siberia to work on the railway are now jobless, they wrote, adding to the pressure to speed up development of other industries, like timber. The article asserted that the Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, the Georgia-Pacific Corporation and the Weyerhaeuser Company, three American timber giants, have begun | Experts Say Logging Of Vast Siberian Forest Could Foster Warming |
503875_1 | to all their long-term interests and are worth more if preserved as economic assets than cut down for farmland. The spearhead of this crusade is a pair of ingenious efforts to exploit the forests on behalf of medicine. The plans were described at a symposium last week at Rockefeller University in Manhattan. The gathering was organized jointly by the Rain Forest Alliance, a nonprofit conservation organization, and the New York Botanical Garden's Institute of Economic Botany. In one project, a Costa Rican research institute is prospecting for promising plants, microorganisms and insects to be screened for medical use by Merck & Company, the world's largest drug company. Merck, in turn, is supporting the prospecting effort financially and will share any resulting profits with Costa Rica. The Costa Rican Government, which has set aside 25 percent of its land as forest preserves, will use the royalties and some of the initial payments to support its conservation efforts. In the second enterprise, a small California company called Shaman Pharmaceuticals is tapping the expertise of traditional healers -- shamans, or medicine men -- in various parts of the tropics. Shaman, less than two years old, says it already appears to have made its first big "hit." The company has isolated a compound from a medicinal plant in South America that it says is active against the influenza and herpes viruses. Shaman has filed a patent, and the drug is well into clinical trials. If it or other drugs ultimately generate profits, the company intends to promote conservation of the forests by channeling some of its profits back to the localities whose medicine men provided the key plants. The theory behind both ventures is that everybody wins: the world gets new drugs, the pharmaceutical companies earn profits, and people in the tropics are justly compensated for their "intellectual property" and their collection efforts. In this way, the local people are encouraged to protect the source of the compensation and the forests are preserved, and thus able to fulfill vital ecological and environmental functions like stabilizing the planet's climate. "It's out of the realm of an academic exercise now," Dr. Michael Balick, director of the Institute of Economic Botany, said of the concept. "You've got people whose lives depend on using the rain forest, and whose cultural traditions depend on having it available, and people whose businesses depend on new chemicals all sitting down to | Shamans and Scientists Seek Cures in Plants |
502310_0 | Following is the text of Security Council Resolution 731, approved unanimously today, which calls on Libya to turn over two of its citizens to face trial in one airliner bombing and to cooperate in the investigation of another: THE SECURITY COUNCIL, DEEPLY DISTURBED by the worldwide persistence of acts of international terrorism in all its forms, including those in which states are directly or indirectly involved, which endanger or take innocent lives, have a deleterious effect on international relations and jeopardize the security of states, DEEPLY CONCERNED by all illegal activities directed against international civil aviation and affirming the right of all states, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and relevant principles of international law, to protect their nationals from acts of international terrorism that constitute threats to international peace and security, REAFFIRMING its Resolution 286 (1970) in which it called on states to take all possible legal steps to prevent any interference with international civil air travel, REAFFIRMING also its Resolution 635 (1989) in which it condemned all acts of unlawful interference against the security of civil aviation and called upon all states to cooperate in devising and implementing measures to prevent all acts of terrorism, including those involving explosives, RECALLING the statement made on Dec. 30, 1988, by the President of the Council on behalf of the members of the Council strongly condemning the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 and calling on all states to assist in the apprehension and prosecution of those responsible for this criminal act, DEEPLY CONCERNED over results of investigations which implicate officials of the Libyan Government and which are contained in Security Council documents that include the requests addressed to the Libyan authorities by France, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America in connection with the legal procedures related to the attacks carried out against Pan Am Flight 103 and U.T.A. Flight 772, DETERMINED to eliminate international terrorism, 1. CONDEMNS the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 and U.T.A. Flight 772 and the resultant loss of hundreds of lives; 2. STRONGLY DEPLORES the fact that the Libyan Government has not yet responded effectively to the above requests to cooperate fully in establishing responsibility for the terrorist acts referred to above against Pan Am Flight 103 and U.T.A. Flight 772; 3. URGES the Libyan Government immediately to provide a full and effective | Text of U.N. Resolution Asking Libya's Help |
502310_1 | involved, which endanger or take innocent lives, have a deleterious effect on international relations and jeopardize the security of states, DEEPLY CONCERNED by all illegal activities directed against international civil aviation and affirming the right of all states, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and relevant principles of international law, to protect their nationals from acts of international terrorism that constitute threats to international peace and security, REAFFIRMING its Resolution 286 (1970) in which it called on states to take all possible legal steps to prevent any interference with international civil air travel, REAFFIRMING also its Resolution 635 (1989) in which it condemned all acts of unlawful interference against the security of civil aviation and called upon all states to cooperate in devising and implementing measures to prevent all acts of terrorism, including those involving explosives, RECALLING the statement made on Dec. 30, 1988, by the President of the Council on behalf of the members of the Council strongly condemning the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 and calling on all states to assist in the apprehension and prosecution of those responsible for this criminal act, DEEPLY CONCERNED over results of investigations which implicate officials of the Libyan Government and which are contained in Security Council documents that include the requests addressed to the Libyan authorities by France, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America in connection with the legal procedures related to the attacks carried out against Pan Am Flight 103 and U.T.A. Flight 772, DETERMINED to eliminate international terrorism, 1. CONDEMNS the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 and U.T.A. Flight 772 and the resultant loss of hundreds of lives; 2. STRONGLY DEPLORES the fact that the Libyan Government has not yet responded effectively to the above requests to cooperate fully in establishing responsibility for the terrorist acts referred to above against Pan Am Flight 103 and U.T.A. Flight 772; 3. URGES the Libyan Government immediately to provide a full and effective response to those requests so as to contribute to the elimination of international terrorism; 4. REQUESTS the Secretary General to seek the cooperation of the Libyan Government to provide a full and effective response to those requests; 5. URGES all states individually and collectively to encourage the Libyan Government to respond fully and effectively to those requests; 6. DECIDES to remain seized of the matter. | Text of U.N. Resolution Asking Libya's Help |
497820_1 | of breast cancer, they were still significant, particularly several years after treatment. Tamoxifen blocks the action of the female hormone estrogen in the body. Tamoxifen, but not chemotherapy, also protected against development of new cancer in the other breast, the analysis showed. Alternative to Chemotherapy The findings suggested that tamoxifen in women under 50 years old produces as good an effect as chemotherapy, which is more arduous and toxic, and might be an alternative for some women. ICI Pharma, a subsidiary of ICI Americas Inc. of Wilmington, Del., sells tamoxifen under the trade name of Nolvadex. In women before menopause, treatment with surgery, radiation or drugs to destroy the action of the ovaries and to induce menopause also appeared to have strong benefits. The treatment, ovarian ablation, has been largely abandoned in the United States and other countries in recent years. About 80 percent of breast cancers develop in women of 50 years of age and older. The study was a statistical analysis of 133 scientifically controlled trials of all kinds of follow-up treatment of 75,000 women with breast cancer confined to the breast or nearby lymph nodes. Results from the 133 trials were not initially presented in ways that allowed easy comparison. But a team at Oxford University performed a statistical process, a type of "meta-analysis," to draw conclusions not possible from analyzing the studies one by one or in small groups. The team, headed by Richard Peto, is renowned for its innovative statistical analyses. Breast cancer researchers from around the world provided the team with the data it needed for its analysis. The study is being reported tomorrow in The Lancet, a British medical journal. The findings were announced at a news conference in London yesterday. Projections on Survival The analysis did not concern the initial treatment of the cancer, usually surgical removal or radiation treatment. Rather, it focused on adjuvant therapy, or the use of hormones and chemotherapy as a follow-up measure to get rid of any lurking cancer cells. Recurrence caused by these renegade cells occurs in 30 percent or more of women, depending on how far the disease has advanced at diagnosis. Recurrence can even occur among those with small tumors that have not spread in any obvious way to lymph nodes in the armpit. Many die. Breast cancer will strike about 10 percent of all American women at some point in their lives, and | Study on Breast Cancer Finds Therapy Is Effective for Years |
497820_2 | allowed easy comparison. But a team at Oxford University performed a statistical process, a type of "meta-analysis," to draw conclusions not possible from analyzing the studies one by one or in small groups. The team, headed by Richard Peto, is renowned for its innovative statistical analyses. Breast cancer researchers from around the world provided the team with the data it needed for its analysis. The study is being reported tomorrow in The Lancet, a British medical journal. The findings were announced at a news conference in London yesterday. Projections on Survival The analysis did not concern the initial treatment of the cancer, usually surgical removal or radiation treatment. Rather, it focused on adjuvant therapy, or the use of hormones and chemotherapy as a follow-up measure to get rid of any lurking cancer cells. Recurrence caused by these renegade cells occurs in 30 percent or more of women, depending on how far the disease has advanced at diagnosis. Recurrence can even occur among those with small tumors that have not spread in any obvious way to lymph nodes in the armpit. Many die. Breast cancer will strike about 10 percent of all American women at some point in their lives, and almost 30 percent will die from the disease. Worldwide, the disease affects 500,000 women each year. Mr. Peto said that for every million women receiving adjuvant therapy, 100,000 would live 10 years longer than they would have lived without the treatment. For stage one breast cancer, the most favorable form in which the tumor has not spread to the lymph nodes, about 12 women will survive an extra 10 years for every 200 women receiving adjuvant therapy, Mr. Peto said. For stage two breast cancer, in which the tumor has spread to nearby nodes, adjuvant therapy can produce about 12 survivors living 10 years longer for every 100 women treated, he said. In the United States, adjuvant therapies could save the lives of at least 3,000 American women each year, Mr. Peto said. The Oxford analysis offers the strongest evidence to support a recommendation in 1988 by the National Cancer Institute, which urged that all women who have breast cancer have adjuvant hormone therapy or chemotherapy, even if there is no evidence that the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. Although many doctors did prescribe adjuvant therapy for such patients, many others did not. Many doctors felt the cancer | Study on Breast Cancer Finds Therapy Is Effective for Years |
499057_1 | He also said the company had already received orders for the products from food processing companies that cooperated in the development. National Starch, one of the first companies to introduce a fat replacer, the tapioca-based N-Oil, is the first company to differentiate its fat substitutes. Some analysts described the move as interesting but probably more a gimmick than a true breakthrough. "Each product does need some tailoring depending on what it's going into, different gums and emulsifiers and so forth, but these things could be added separately by the food manufacturer," said Mel Wolkstein, president of Reach Associates Inc., a food consulting and environmental engineering firm in South Orange, N.J. "I don't see this as any great breakout." What Food Companies Want David Braff of Braff & Company, a New York food consulting company, wondered whether food companies would really want a variety of fat substitutes, since most of the substitutes must be adjusted to meet the needs of specific products. Many ingredient makers, including National Starch, lend lab technicians and scientists to their customers to help tailor fat substitutes to products. For example, Mr. Braff said, Seven Seas is probably looking for an oil substitute for its salad dressing so that it would have a very different way for its oil to carryflavors and stick to greens than the oil used by Kraft in its salad dressings. "I don't know how something can universally be for salad dressing," he said. "You have to look at the specific dressing formulation." Other food consultants suggested National Starch's strategy was a significant departure from the norm that will give the company an edge in the competitive market. "They are doing something quite different by offering various combinations and permutations of the technology," said Gary Stibel, founder and principal of the New England Consulting Group in Westport, Conn. "Now as a food processor, what you've got is a supplier who has done a lot of the work for you ahead of time." 30 Companies Competing Consultants estimate that at least 30 ingredient makers have fat substitutes on the market. Nutrasweet, a unit of Monsanto, introduced a version of its Simplesse last year, Tate & Lyle P.L.C.'s A. E. Staley Manufacturing Company introduced Stellar, and Pfizer Inc. put out Litesse, while Hercules unveiled Slendid. But what enthusiasts project may be a $1 billion market has yet to blossom. Food manufacturers complain that no product | Unilever Unit Entering Fat-Substitute Market |
499048_1 | changed career plans or extended apprenticeships. Ivy League Bartenders Some recent Ivy League graduates, for instance, are tending bar and driving taxicabs, and doctoral students are stalling completion of their dissertations because staying in a $20,000-a-year teaching assistantship is better than leaving a university and having no job at all. Internships that used to last for a few summer months are turning into year-round jobs at less than year-round salaries. And dean's list applicants who once preferred the riches of private industry are turning to government agencies that have entry-level slots to fill. A turn from the private to the public sector can be costly. Take R. David Powell, a recent graduate of Emory University Law School in Atlanta, where graduates have seen their average salaries fall to $45,000 from $48,000 in the space of the past year. Mr. Powell expected to practice real-estate law at a large firm in the city for a salary of about $50,000. Instead, he accepted a position as law clerk to Chief United States Magistrate Allen L. Chancey Jr. for $32,500 a year. Blue-Collar Plight "I feel lucky I even have a job," Mr. Powell said. "Several people in my class who had jobs with large firms in New York got letters before their first day of work that they had been terminated." These young people seem to understand that their hardship does not match that of their working-class peers, who are hungry for blue-collar positions that are even harder to find, who are without the blessing of advanced degrees and who, unlike Ms. Bolfango, are often without the help of credit cards, generous parents or a spouse's income. Over and over, they say they know they are lucky, although not as lucky as their friends and siblings who entered the work force in the booming 1980's. And many are showing verve and enterprise in translating adversity into opportunity. That is the case with Andrew Yap, a recent graduate of Florida International University in Miami, who offered to intern without pay at a local business magazine, impressed his superiors and four months later wound up with exactly the marketing research job he wanted at the magazine's parent company. But their voices still quaver with disappointment or resignation when they talk of what they are doing now versus what they expected, their prospects today versus those of friends just a few years ahead of them. | Graduates March Down Aisle Into Job Nightmare |
547751_0 | A World of Fancy Food This summer's Fancy Food and Confection Show, a trade show held last week in Washington, was testimony to the continuing interest in salsas, spicy foods, olive oils, biscotti, foods that suggest the Mediterranean and so-called sugar-free preserves that are sweetened with fruit sugar instead of cane sugar. But there was also some news. Condiments are chunkier this year. Olive and other oils are showing up with flavorings like garlic, chili and herbs. Olives themselves appear in increasing abundance, in wide varieties and as ingredients in condiments. And Greek foods were more evident than before. Tropical flavors were very important in teas, candies, juices, sauces and condiments. Four companies offered Key lime cookies. And since one of them, Floribbean, also sells Key lime juice in three-and-a-half-gallon tubs, this may be only the beginning. The Byrd Cookie Company of Savannah, Ga., said it originated the Key lime cookie three years ago. Dried beans of every sort have been made convenient. They were made up into excellent nearly instant soups by Fantastic Foods and Legumes Plus. And there were bags of various beans with seasonings, to make anything from chili to cassoulet, by Sierra Bean Bag and Spice Hunter. News in cheese came from Spain, with some traditional, full-flavored sheep- and goat-milk cheeses like Garrotxa from Catalonia and Roncal from the Basque country due to appear in shops soon. New from Israel is Superieur brand sheep-milk cheeses, including the first kosher blue cheese; they will also be arriving in American shops in coming weeks. Israeli Silver Goat is a well-made fresh log. And lovers of fine French cheeses can look forward to wider distribution of the carefully aged Androuet line that includes some superb items like pave d'affinois. Big, succulent, velvety textured Chateau de Born semidried vacuum-packed prunes and prune products from southwest France are another new, worthwhile import. There was, of course, some silliness, like Chocolate Body Paint by Tom & Sally's of Brattleboro, Vt. (Are you listening, Karen Finley? Demi Moore?) And some awfulness, like Old Homestead Candies' jalapeno crunch and Lollipop Tree Provencal pepper jelly, a concoction that mismatches a sweet southern red-pepper jelly with ingredients like dried tomatoes, black olives, garlic and herbs. All in the name of trend. Vegetables Become Treats One new item at the Fancy Food and Confection Show that appeared poised for instant success was Vegetable Crunch, a colorful and | Food Notes |
547773_0 | A brief article by The Associated Press yesterday about French policy toward the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty misstated the latest action. France formally submitted its adherence to the treaty; it was signed by President Francois Mitterrand on July 1, and France has long pledged to abide by it. | Corrections |
547753_2 | the public is none the wiser, Dr. Fox reasons, how can the public vote? He also worries about what happens to the active nutrients, the vitamins and enzymes whose development is suspended along with the ripening process in some genetically altered tomatoes. He worries about the delicate biochemical relationship between the physiology of humans and the foods they eat that has evolved over ages. "Our biochemistry may not mesh with the altered food," he said. He ponders the long-term environmental effects of gene-designed crops. He and others wonder what will happen to the American farmer when agriculture shifts from amber waves of grain to tissue cultures in industrial vats. Genetic engineers wave such apocalyptic concerns aside. Such worries are a sort of smoke screen for the fact that tomatophiles are wed to memories of tomatoes grown generations before they were even born. "These tomatoes of yore, well, they haven't been around for about three, four hundred years," said Thomas Churchwell, president of Calgene Fresh, the Chicago company that is about to introduce a tomato with a longer shelf life. Blasphemy! screech the tomatophiles. They bear personal witness to tomatoes that didn't resemble red tennis balls. They testify to tomatoes that squashed rather than bouncing when dropped out a sixth-story window. They beat their breasts in memory of tomatoes that did not feel like dental gauze in the mouth. Tomatophiles warn of hellfire and brimstone awaiting those who fail to honor the memory of the traditional tomato. Think of the evil imposters can wreak, they warn. The tomato of the future might resemble the tomato of memory, they say. But underneath, in that delicate dance of biochemicals that creates its smells, tastes and appearances, its life-cycle and nutritional value, the tomato will be different. Its DNA will be rearranged. The honest men and women of the tomato faith could be misled! Over generations, the holy tomato could be rendered a hollow icon. Not that the new technology doesn't suggest some advantages. Lee Bailey, the cookbook author who has recently written "Tomatoes," (Clarkson Potter) a small love song to the fruit of the Lycopersicon esculentum, doesn't balk at the thought of Arctic flounder genes in his tomatoes. "Very Provencal, fish and tomatoes," he said. But he could see the disorientation that occurs when one gets an uncontrollable blast of Provence when one is, in fact, eating the sort of beefsteak tomato that | Lovers of Tomatoes Fear Dr. Frankenstein's Garden |
547702_5 | safely consume, the general advice is not to drink at all until after the baby is born. Other adults who should steer clear of alcohol include people with peptic ulcers and other health problems that might be aggravated by alcohol; people taking medications like sleeping pills, anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drugs or certain painkillers that are known to interact with alcohol; and people with a history of alcohol addiction or problem drinking, and perhaps even those with a family history of alcoholism. Of course, alcohol should not be consumed by those who will soon be operating a motorized vehicle or other machinery that requires attentiveness, manual dexterity and quick reaction time. Even in moderate amounts, alcohol may increase the risk of certain health problems. Although the evidence is controversial, there are some suggestions that moderate drinking may slightly increase the risk of developing breast cancer and colon cancer. Alcohol may also increase the risk of developing a hemorrhagic stroke, the relatively rare but most devastating type of stroke, which results from a ruptured blood vessel in the brain. Finally, alcohol does contain calories: seven per gram, or 84 calories in "a drink," not counting the calories in the rest of the drink, such as in mixers like tonic or cola. If you have a weight problem, alcohol can add to it, especially if its disinhibiting effect prompts you to eat more than you might otherwise. Possible Benefits Why, you may wonder, should you drink at all? Dr. Enoch Gordis, director of the national institute, points out that "there are tradeoffs involved in each decision about drinking." Most people drink because they like the effects of alcohol on their emotional state and sociability. Alcohol diminishes stress, anxiety and self-consciousness and induces feelings of relaxation and conviviality. Someone who has trouble becoming acquainted with strangers at a party may find it much easier to converse under the influence of a drink or two. As for health benefits, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that moderate drinking by postmenopausal women raises their estrogen levels, which may in turn reduce their risk of developing heart disease and osteoporosis. And nearly a dozen major studies in several countries and among various ethnic groups have linked moderate drinking to a decreased risk of suffering a heart attack or a stroke caused by a blood clot. These cardiovascular benefits have been noted in both men and women. | Personal Health |
547760_0 | One of the first things you notice about Ireland's Olympic boxing team is Nicolas Hernandez Cruz. He doesn't look Irish, and his name certainly doesn't imply that he is. But Hernandez, Ireland's 34-year-old Olympic boxing coach, will tell you that since he moved to Dublin from Havana in 1988, he has adopted Ireland, from its songs to its brogue. "I'm not Irish, but I feel like being Irish when I am here with the boxers," Hernandez said with an unmistakable Irish lilt. "I get some odd looks, mostly because of my color. They say, 'Is that the black Paddy?' "I feel at home, really. I have all the music. I know the songs. The only difference between Dublin and Havana is the weather. Nice people, friendly people." Hernandez is among the growing contingent of Cuban coaches who are working with teams from other countries. Once forced to import coaches and specialists from East Germany and the Soviet Union, Cuba has become a major exporter of sports advisers. Nine countries in these Olympics, including Ireland, have Cuban boxing coaches and several other nations have hired Cuban coaches in volleyball, weight lifting, track and field and other sports. "Sports has been like an embassy for Cuba," said Raul Villanueva, the vice president of Cuba's National Institute of Sports and Physical Education. "We have a great relationship in sports with the United States. Politics has been a barrier in other areas between us, but never in sports." As part of the latest evolution of its highly refined sports system, pride in its coaches has served as a positive link to counter Cuba's negative economic news. In addition to Hernandez, there are Cuban boxing coaches on the Olympic teams of China, India, Mexico, Pakistan, Spain, Tanzania, Thailand and Uganda. And Cuba's coaching presence here goes beyond boxing. Mario Figueroa is Venezuela's wrestling coach; Gilberto Herrera Delgado is the men's volleyball coach for Spain; Carlos Cruz Delgado is Mexico's track and field coach, and Jose Cortina Martinez coaches Italy's baseball team. Spain had never even entered a team in the volleyball competition until this year, but under the direction of Herrera, for 15 years the coach of the Cuban national team, it has reached the quarterfinals. In addition to the political benefits, there is also a significant financial component to Cuba's export of coaches. Each Cuban coach sent abroad signs a contract for a one | Help Wanted? Call Havana |
552351_0 | World Economies | |
552301_1 | to a pizza parlor. In his rough way, he suggests, he feels patronized by all this "babywork." All he craves is to sit in a real classroom, to hear a spirited lesson. Thousands of the genuinely handicapped belong in special classes. But too often, critics say, assignment there is not driven by a handicap, but by money and expedience. The Board of Education likes the classification because it can collect Federal and state money to pay for small classes and teachers and counselors it otherwise cannot afford. (A disabled child's schooling costs $17,000 a year, almost three times as much as a mainstream child.) The school unions like it because, even in threadbare budgets, teachers must be hired for the handicapped. The special-education juggernaut has channeled one of every eight New York children -- 123,000 in all -- into handicapped classes, more than double the 1979 figure. Yet 75 percent fall into two amorphous categories -- learning disabled and emotionally disturbed. Elizabeth C. Yeampierre, executive director of Advocates for Children, a nonprofit group that handles 1,500 special education complaints a year, says most placements make no sense. Why else, she asks, would so disproportionate a number of Hispanic children, whose real handicap is not being able to speak English, be labeled learning disabled, and so many poor young black males be labeled emotionally disturbed? Frank Sobrino, a board spokesman, declined to discuss Christopher's case, citing confidentiality. But other officials said that Christopher was regularly found to be disturbed by three-member teams of psychologists, social workers and teachers who gave him batteries of tests. Children in the program do not have much use for such euphemisms. They call those in classes for the learning disabled stupid and those in classes for the emotionally disturbed bad. While such judgments are harsh, they are also perversely savvy. For as Ms. Yeampierre and the board's own studies have shown, special education is too often a "dumping ground" for laggard readers or unruly students. Defenders of special education say that it is often the only way to provide children like Christopher with the small classes and counseling that they need. But Mrs. Parker, who works for the Housing Authority, says that the annoying tradeoff is that Christopher is now stigmatized as emotionally disturbed. Yet Christopher, she says, has never done anything more bizarre than get into a street fight. To be sure, Christopher is no | For Misplaced Students, Special Education Can Disable, Too |
552400_2 | light of the economic problems, including debt, that hobble the region. This, in turn, raises the question of whether the Indian cultures now on the margin of society can continue to survive on their own. Some argue that it would be better to try to bring native groups into mainstream society, saying that attempts to preserve those cultures merely keep the Indians suspended in the past. "There is what I call the National Geographic approach here, a ridiculous hope that these people are going to go back to the countryside and resume the wonderful rural, indigenous life again," said Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist. "That is not going to happen. What they forget is, to these people, the medical attention and education in Lima, for example, as bad as life might be, is 10 times better than rural bliss." Others say it is absurd to talk of saving Indians by allowing their cultures to vanish. "None of us are necessarily advocating that Indian groups should be frozen in time from the benefits that can be gotten from national society, such as education and health care," said Ted Macdonald, projects director at Cultural Survival, a Harvard-based research group for American Indians. "These people are saying they want to be part of the world as equals, while maintaining a sense of their own identity and difference within that world." Plight Varies Widely To be sure, the plight of Latin American Indian groups varies from country to country. The Brazilian and Venezuelan Governments, for example, have created large reservations for the Yanomami Indians, whose lands had been invaded by miners. But such moves generally come only after much pressure from Indian groups within the country and from international rights organizations. In some of the countries with more prominent aboriginal populations, like Colombia and Bolivia, the Indians have become well enough organized that they have succeeded in getting favorable laws passed and getting members of their tribes elected to Congress. There are some countries, like Mexico, where many citizens have some Indian ancestry and greatly prize their Indian heritage. But this does not often spill over into efforts to protect the land and culture of Indians who still practice the old ways. And there are countries, like Peru, where the political control exercised by whites with bloodlines anchored in Europe is so strong that the needs of native groups are all but ignored. | Latin American Indians: Old Ills, New Politics |
550373_0 | The old hypothesis that a doomsday rock from outer space did in the dinosaurs became a bit more real last week as researchers announced new evidence for a collision on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. It turns out that a crater there, 110 miles wide and already identified as big enough to have created a global pall of dust to blot out the sun, was carved out of the Earth at exactly the right time. A team of 12 scientists reported in the journal Science that the crater is 64.98 million years old, strengthening its status as the leading explanation for a cataclysm thought to have contributed to the mass extinction of life at the end of the Cretaceous period. Skeptics still find fault with the theory. But the new findings will undoubtedly hone inquiries and may attract new converts. | AUGUST 9-15: The Doomsday Rock; New Evidence That a Crater Is a Dinosaur-Killer's Grave |
550357_7 | and shipping, a 25 percent saving. David Zentmyer, Lands' End vice president for corporate ventures, defended the higher British-catalogue price by explaining how much more it cost the company to print a separate edition and establish a local branch to work with customers. What he overlooks is the cachet that also comes with being able to brag about an overseas purchase. Geoff Godfrey, vice president of marketing for Express Technology Inc., said his order takers had been hounded lately by "a group of guys calling from a pub in Leeds." The men, regular customers, seem to have fun showing off their secret of ordering hard-to-find software from the United States at any hour from a British public telephone. TAKING ORDERS IN JAPANESE About five years ago, a Dutch tourist walked into Richard Gnant's store in Phoenix and bought his entire stock of 10 laptop computers. The tourist explained that he could easily recoup the cost of his trip by reselling them at a profit to friends back home. That set Mr. Gnant to thinking that there was clearly an untapped overseas market for mail-order goods at American prices. So he reorganized his computer software and equipment company into Express Technology, a mail-order house that sells only to overseas shoppers. "I didn't think you needed to spend a quarter of a million dollars opening an office overseas anymore," Mr. Gnant said. "Not with the new international 800 lines and the fax." Instead, he planned to pass along his lower operating costs in the form of savings to his customers. Mr. Gnant also customized his operations. He hired order-takers who speak Spanish, German, French and Japanese and put most of them on duty from 2 A.M. to 9 A.M., his company's busiest hours. He arranged for international toll-free calling and figured out how to remove the hassle of calculating duties and taxes from his customers. He worked out mailing arrangements with United Parcel Service, Airborne Express and DHL Worldwide Express. And he ran advertisements in computer magazines in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and Latin America. At first customers would call with "great trepridation in their voices," he said. But once they realized that the company stood by its guarantees, even refunding return postage costs for defective products, the hesitation disappeared. By 1991, the company's sales reached $4.5 million. Andree Brooks, based in Westport, Conn., writes regularly on financial and family topics. | The Latest in Buzzwords: Mailed From America |
552083_1 | a white marigold that Mr. Ball insists somebody will love (though why would anybody want a white marigold?). Then there's Heatwave, a new tomato hybrid that is a determinate type -- meaning that the vine will eventually stop growing, creating a bushy plant -- but it is as sweet, Mr. Ball promises, as the ones that grow over your house (indeterminate types, like the popular Big Boy, keep flowering and tend to have more flavor). Mr. Ball was playing host because his seed company, George J. Ball Inc. (no relation to the jars), which was started by his grandfather in Chicago almost 100 years ago, bought a majority interest in Burpee last year from the Recreation Company, a private New York investment group. The sale was the latest takeover in a chain that started in 1970 when David Burpee sold the family business to General Foods, which in turn sold it to ITT in 1979, which sold it eight years later to the Recreation Company. "My grandfather, George Jacob Ball, was a cut-flower grower who started breeding sweet peas and giving the seed away to his buddies," Mr. Ball said as the press sampled some baked Roly Polies stuffed with ricotta cheese and fresh corn (wonderful). "Then Grandmother said, 'Why not sell the seed?' So he started a company in 1903." MEANWHILE, W. Atlee Burpee had already introduced iceberg lettuce in 1894 and was working on the Fordhook bush lima bean that came out in 1907. Then came hybrid marigolds, cucumbers and tomatoes, all shipped as seeds. Burpee had tried to sell chicks this way in 1876, when he founded his Philadelphia mail-order business with a $1,000 loan from his mother. "But there were two things wrong with chicks," Mr. Ball said. "A lot of them died in the mail, and the ones that didn't grew up." And since hens lay eggs, there's not a lot of repeat business. Seeds were different. They shipped well, and most people were likely to order more every year. And Burpee tapped a vast market: recent immigrants longing for vegetables from the Old Country. "So W. Atlee would go over to Europe in August and go through the seed producers' fields," Mr. Ball said. "He'd find a wonderful onion and say, 'How much seed can you produce?' And the man would say, 'Oh, a hundred pounds,' and it would arrive by October." He'd go | Where Burpee First Tilled |
551953_0 | The postponement of a plan to build four giant office towers in Times Square has forced the New York City Transit Authority to abandon a $165 million project to renovate the ramshackle Times Square subway station, dealing another blow to efforts to revitalize the neighborhood. The Transit Authority's proposal for the labyrinthine station, the second busiest in the subway system, had depended on an investment of $90 million from the office towers' developers, the Prudential Insurance Company of America and Park Tower Realty. But now that the recession has prompted state and city officials to release the developers from their obligation to construct the towers anytime soon, the subway project is neither financially nor structurally feasible. "Frankly, we don't know what we're going to do," said Jerome Forman, senior vice president at the Transit Authority. "The strategy that was in place is not going ahead." Commuters Still Stranded The subway project had been a centerpiece of the Times Square redevelopment plan. It was supposed to transform the station, which connects eight subway lines and serves more than 200,000 passengers a day, into a bright, clean and efficient transportation hub, thereby encouraging more people to visit the Times Square area. Commuters have long voiced disgust over the station's gloomy and sometimes threatening corridors. The renovations, which took a team of 20 architects and engineers more than five years and $16 million to design, would have been the most extensive ever undertaken by the Transit Authority. They had been scheduled to start in 1991, but were delayed by design and engineering problems and concern over the schedule for the office towers. But even before the tower project was postponed, some subway-rider groups had criticized the plans as excessive, saying that the Transit Authority should use its money for more basic improvements, like new signs and lighting, instead of rebuilding the complex. They also raised concerns about the Transit Authority's policy of relying on money from developers at the mercy of fluctuations of the real-estate market. Station Opened in 1904 The Times Square station opened in 1904 when the city's first subway, built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, was completed. Since then, the station has expanded haphazardly, creating a jumble of confusing passageways. The renovation was intended to change that. The Transit Authority had intended a four-year construction effort. Successive sections of the station were to be renovated as a central rotunda, | Times Sq. Subway Station Plan Is Canceled |
553176_3 | may be able to negotiate a bonus," as a result. "The most important thing is research, research, research," about both a company and the specific job, he continued, through a business library, annual reports, 10-K's and personal contacts. That is because the candidate who knows what the company needs is then in position to land the job by showing how he or she can meet those needs. Mr. Hart generally advises writing a one-page resume, or occasionally two. "Use the bullet approach with succinct sentences, not a narrative style," he said. "Make supervisory experience apparent, and construct it chronologically. Concentrate on accomplishments that show how you saved money, streamlined operations." The cover letter should not duplicate the resume, but should be appropriate for the specific job. He recommends four paragraphs covering: objectives; highlights of one's background, showing how the candidate will benefit the employer; geographic and compensation range sought, and interest in a personal interview. It is important throughout the job search to keep busy and optimistic, he said, setting a daily agenda and working in an office or library, not just sitting at home. Jeffrey J. Mayer, a Chicago author and time-management consultant, who has written an excellent new book, "Find the Job You've Always Wanted in Half the Time with Half the Effort" (Contemporary Books, 125 pages, $16.95), makes the process sound less daunting. Yet much of their specific advice about resumes, letters and networking is similar -- as is their stress on being well organized. What distinguishes Mr. Mayer's book is what he calls "the career discovery system." He said: "Spend time thinking about, Who am I? What do I like? What's important to me?" Include hobbies or spare-time activities, he added, because they may lead to work. The most successful people are those who enjoy their work, and a person who can figure out what he or she really enjoys and how it can benefit an employer has a winning approach. "It's simple, it's logical, it works," Mr. Mayer said, and it leads to a positive, enthusiastic approach to the job search, instead of a frightened, discouraged one. "Never bad-mouth your former employer," he said. "The real job market is word-of-mouth," he added, "and you've got to keep your spirits up." Still, it may be necessary to accept a less than ideal offer for breathing room, he said, while continuing the search for that great job. | Your Money; Important Time For Job Seekers |
547009_2 | college credits at the State University of New York at Purchase in the department of environmental sciences. A $25 materials fee is the only cost, covering about five texts on the ecology of the region, child psychology and teaching methods. Candidates must be at least 18; a background in teaching or the ecological sciences is not required. The county naturalist's office said some of the volunteers are teachers on sabbatical, but most simply have an interest in the environment or enjoy working with children. NEARBY RAIN FOREST Tropical rain forests cover less than 7 percent of the earth's surface, but they support more than 50 percent of all species, said Gregg Dancho, director of the Beardsley Zoological Gardens in Bridgeport. The rain forests are decreasing by 60 acres a minute, he said, while the world population increases by 250,000 inhabitants a day. Mr. Dancho gathered the statistics in connection with the opening last month of the 5,000-square-foot New World Tropics Building, the largest South American rain forest exhibition in the Northeast. "We are facing worldwide destruction of animal habitats," he said, "leading to the eventual endangerment of human beings as well." While an outing to Bridgeport from Westchester may sound daunting, the drive, about 35 miles up Interstate 95 from White Plains, should not take more than 45 minutes. The Beardsley is the only zoo of its kind in the region. In addition to preserving and propagating South American rain forest species, it is expected to become a major tourist attraction. More than 40 animals represent 21 species, from ocelots to woolly monkeys to keel-billed toucans, and the population is expected to grow to 50 by early next year. Orchids, bromeliads, palm trees and other plants are at home in a setting of waterfalls, streams and pools, where the humidity level is maintained at 75 percent. The flora is kept dewy fresh with mist from fog-producing machinery, and the temperature is a steady 75 to 80 degrees. The building was created out of the original zoo, built in 1956 as a typical enclosure for animals. With changing attitudes toward confining animals in small, unnatural spaces, the zoo was sharply criticized in recent years for failing to keep up with the times. Eventually the state financed the conversion with a grant of $1.5 million. The 56-acre zoo is open daily from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. Admission is $3.25 for adults, | WESTCHESTER GUIDE |
546838_0 | Sounding the bottom of a thick Alaskan glacier, scientists have made measurements showing what they feel sure is the deepest gorge in North America, perhaps in the world. It is the Great Gorge, on a flank of Mount McKinley. The readings, made with seismic instruments used in subsurface mapping and oil exploration, show the gorge to extend almost 9,000 feet, as measured from the peak of Mount Dickey, straight down the granite walls to where the surface of Ruth Glacier runs through the chasm, and then further down through the glacial ice to the bottom. The depth of the glacier, which had been the big unknown, was found to be 3,770 feet. "This gorge, if devoid of ice, would be almost exactly 9,000 feet deep, one of the greatest defiles in the world," said Bradford A. Washburn, a mountaineer, cartographer and retired director of the Museum of Science in Boston. Comparing to Depth Records By comparison, the Grand Canyon is 5,300 feet deep from the rim to the bottom. The deepest canyon in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is El Canon de Colca in Peru, at 10,574 feet. King's Canyon in California, between the Sierra and Sequoia National Forests, is 8,200 feet deep. Recognizing depth records becomes a problem of semantics. Geologists make a distinction between canyons and gorges. A canyon is wider than it is deep; the Grand Canyon's width at the rim ranges from 4 to 13 miles. A gorge is deeper than it is wide; the Great Gorge is almost twice as deep as it is wide. It has two sides; the other side is a mountain called Moose's Tooth, almost as high as Mount Dickey. Dr. Keith Echelmeyer, an associate professor at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, said in a telephone interview that some gorges in the Himalayas could turn out to be deeper, depending on future depth probes of some remote glaciers. The probe of the glacial ice in Great Gorge was undertaken at the instigation of Mr. Washburn, who arranged for financial support, and was directed by Dr. Echelmeyer, a glaciologist. Mr. Washburn, who has mapped Mount McKinley as well as Mount Everest and the Grand Canyon, said that after his first trip to the area in 1937 he had suspected Great Gorge would be among the deepest in the world. 'Very, Very, Very | Team Reports Finding Continent's Deepest Gorge |
547120_1 | about promoting abortion. Refugees. The international homeless total reached 18 million in 1991, and grows faster each year. The main causes are war and poverty. Costs are staggering: $7 billion yearly just for those seeking political asylum. Peacekeeping and Peacemaking. The flood of refugees will grow and so will threats to peace unless collective security is strengthened, and quickly. U.N. forces now stand guard in a dozen places at an annual cost approaching $3 billion. That figure will have to be at least doubled and a standing U.N. force established to prevent what could become rampant anarchy. Economic Development. Aid to and trade with poor nations are matters of self-interest to rich ones. U.S. trade with developing nations has been increasing faster than with any other group of nations and already is 35 percent of all U.S. exports. Trade as a percentage of U.S. gross national product has doubled to 25 percent since 1970. Making the poor richer is the best way to prevent refugees and create new exports and wealth for Americans. The Environment. The tab for making good environmental practices affordable for poor countries (and for wealthy ones as well) will be in the billions yearly. But the costs of doing little to control greenhouse warming gases and deforestation would be unimaginably higher. And dealing with environmental problems will create jobs and growth. Also with attention to hard facts, here is how the commission proposes to raise the necessary money -- and plenty more to cover domestic priorities and budget-deficit reduction: Promoting Economic Growth Through Freer Trade. This is the surest and cheapest means to pump up economies. For the U.S., every additional $1 billion in exports produces 20,000 jobs. The leaders of the industrial world have become so mesmerized by economic gimmicks and so mired in domestic politics that they have failed for years to press ahead on the freer-trade front. Cutting Military Expenditures. Worldwide spending for arms and armed forces reached $1.2 trillion in 1988, and if promises are kept, will decline to about $800 billion by 1996. The commission wants to bring this down by an additional $200 billion, which seems reasonable given the decline of transnational threats. For the U.S. alone, this could generate savings of $90 billion annually after five years. Raising Energy Taxes. U.S. energy efficiency is about half that of Western Europe and Japan. Inefficiency here adds to the trade deficit | Foreign Affairs; Redefining National Security |
546812_4 | English-language skills, is proving less tractable: they leave school at twice the rate of their non-Hispanic classmates. Characteristics known to push children off the edge and out of school, such as pregnancy, drug or alcohol use, low family income or failing grades, do not account for all dropouts. Other pathologies, such as low self-esteem and a sense of alienation, or the school environment, are recognized as manifestations of basic problems that, in combination, threaten all youngsters. For example, a student with a history of poor grades -- the result of trouble at home, perhaps -- develops low self-esteem. He or she joins a gang, tangles with the law, leaves school and never makes it back. Makisha Bailey's web of difficulties centered on family problems. Ms. Bailey, 17 years old, lives in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. An average student who says she loves school, she has dropped out twice because she was pregnant. Her mother, a recovering alcoholic, now watches her children during the day. But Makisha, who lives with friends, is not back in school. Chris Miller's problems sprang more from his high school environment. A member of a prototypical, solid-middle-class family of four in Greenville, S.C., Chris, now 20, said disruptions were so frequent in class that "I got to the point I didn't care." Refused permission to transfer, he dropped out while retaking courses after he failed 11th grade. He works locally as a hotel waiter. So many targets require a veritable armory of weapons. "I'm not saying we know how to solve the problem," said Russell W. Rumberger, an associate professor of education at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "But we now have a better idea of how complex that problem is and the need to have more varied strategies to address it." Those strategies are either long-term, such as early intervention, or short-term, such as remedial classes; one-shot efforts targeting a group with a specific program, like pregnancy programs, or full-scale attacks that usually involve overhauling a school system. Encouraged by the success of initiatives like Head Start for preschoolers, most education experts agree that early childhood education is the best long-term preventive strategy. An estimated 35 percent of all children start school ill prepared for education, especially in the area of language development. Many elementary schools are creating multi-year programs that will help toddlers acquire and develop language skills. Focusing on Short-Term Remedies For | Special Report; Living on the Edge |
546903_0 | RAIN FOREST HABITAT According to Gregg Dancho, director of the Beardsley Zoological Gardens in Bridgeport, tropical rain forests cover less than 7 percent of the earth's surface, yet they support more than 50 percent of all species. Today, the rain forests are decreasing by 60 acres a minute, while the world population increases by 250,000 people a day. Mr. Dancho gathered the statistics in connection with the opening last month of the 5,000-square-foot New World Tropics Building -- the largest South American rain forest exhibition in the Northeast -- on the site of the zoo. More than 40 animals in the new center represent 21 species, from ocelots to woolly monkeys to keel-billed toucans, and the population is expected to grow to 50 by early next year. Orchids, bromeliads, palm trees and other plants are at home in a setting of waterfalls, streams, pools and an automatically maintained 75 percent level of humidity. The flora is kept dewy fresh with mist from fog-producing machinery, and the temperature is a steady 75 to 80 degrees. The building was re-created from the original zoo, which was built in 1956. With changing attitudes toward confining animals in small, unnatural spaces, the zoo was sharply criticized for failing to keep up with the times, and eventually the state financed the conversion with a grant of $1.5 million. It is the only attraction of its kind in the area, the only zoo in Connecticut and, in addition to preserving and propagating South American rain forest species, it is expected to boost tourism. The 56-acre center is open daily from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. Admission is $3.25, $2 for children and the elderly, free to children under 3. Parking costs $3. To reach the zoo take Exit 27A from Interstate 95, then Exit 5 from Route 25, turn left, and at the fourth traffic light left again onto Noble Avenue and the entrance. Call 576-8082 for more information. ALBUM FROM CAMP Pictures may not be taken by just anyone at Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Eastford. But Robert Benson, a freelance photographer specializing in architectural and editorial photography, had permission. The results are on display at the Pump House Gallery in Bushnell Park in Hartford. Mr. Benson concentrated on seven children who attended the camp and contributed poetry and prose to a book titled "I Will Sing Life: Voices From the | CONNECTICUT GUIDE |
553574_0 | The Nissan Motor Company has gone to great lengths to give customers what they want. Japanese buyers of the Nissan Sunny, known as the Stanza in the United States, can choose from nearly 200 variations with different engines, bodies, tires and transmissions. The company has sold fewer than a dozen units of some combinations. But those days are over. Nissan, which said Friday it will lose money this year for the first time in about four decades, is trying to save money by cutting back on the number of variations it is offering, even it if means sacrificing market share. It is also leaving some models on the market longer than the customary four years. And it is trying to use the same parts in more models. Right now, for instance, there are about 70 kinds of steering wheels used in its automobiles, when far fewer would do. The move at Nissan is part of a big change occurring in Japan's auto industry. Buffeted by a slowdown in sales and a host of other problems, Japan's auto makers are being forced to modify the vaunted system by which they design, produce and sell automobiles, even as this system is being emulated around the world. The system, first developed by Toyota and often called "lean production," involves rapid introduction of models, a flexible manufacturing system that can make many kinds of cars on the same assembly line, low inventories and long-term relationships with suppliers. But now, manufacturers are starting to cut the number of products they offer, slow the pace at which they bring out products, reduce their reliance on low prices as a marketing strategy, keep larger inventories and loosen historic bonds with suppliers. And a severe labor shortage in Japan might make it more difficult to attract and retain the skilled, disciplined workers who are a hallmark of the system. Reworking the Toyota System "We're looking right now at the most significant shift and the greatest pressure on the Japanese system since it achieved pre-eminence in the early 80's," said Harley Shaiken, professor of work and technology at the University of California at San Diego, who is studying Japanese auto factories this summer. "The Toyota system that powered Japan in the 80's will need an overhaul for the 90's." No one expects Japanese companies to abandon lean production, only to modify it. And no one expects the big Japanese | A Lower Gear for Japan's Auto Makers |
553283_2 | Mr. Saul lays out his thesis, are readable and occasionally stimulating. After that, things grow tedious, in large part because this relentlessly verbose book is almost completely lacking in narrative sweep. (Mr. Saul would have done well to spend an evening or two with Paul Johnson's "Modern Times" before sitting down to write.) Though he holds a doctorate in history, he writes like an autodidact, anxiously seeking to prove his expertise through the unselective piling up of detail on detail, and far too much of what he clearly intends as trenchant social criticism is flatulent cliche: "On Wall Street, on April 24, 1987, a rock band appeared on the floor of the American Stock Exchange to excite brokers with its music. The Hard Rock Cafe restaurant franchise was going public. The appearance of that band on the trading floor symbolized the service-industry mind, the role of hype in a deregulated marketplace and the idiotic joy which always appears in moments of economic anarchy." To be sure, Mr. Saul is onto something when he singles out the blind worship of reason as the original sin of the 20th century. Unfortunately, a lot of people have been onto the same thing for a lot longer. Mr. Saul devotes little more than a page of "Voltaire's Bastards" to Edmund Burke, whom he praises as a thinker "closer to the middle way than were the optimistic rationalists, who imagined whole populations sliced free of their limiting past and present, then flipped over to fry in a new, clean future with all the inanimate passivity of a Big Mac." (That passage is a good example of Mr. Saul's taste in metaphor.) No mention is made here or elsewhere of the fact that Burke spawned a whole school of political philosophy, the conservative intellectual movement, whose members, the British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott in particular, have written extensively about the way in which post-Enlightenment rationalism encouraged widespread belief in what Peter Drucker has called "salvation by society" and paved the way for modern totalitarianism. IT is true that Mr. Saul's critique of modernity is far more sweeping (and indiscriminate) than that of many conservatives, but he nonetheless seems ignorant of the fact that much of what he says has been said before, and said better. I say "ignorant" because Mr. Saul gives no sign of being aware that there is a conservative intellectual movement, much less | Let's Not Be Reasonable |
553409_0 | Women and the Church A proposed Catholic pastoral letter rejects the ordination of female priests even more strongly than did three previous drafts. Page 20. Zaire Growing Poorer Zaire, a nation of nearly 40 million people, is one of the world's poorest and getting poorer at a rate that has been gathering speed. Page 14. | INSIDE |
553507_0 | Trying for a fourth time to draft a pastoral letter on the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church, a committee of United States bishops has offered a version that rejects the ordination of female priests even more vigorously than the one that stirred intense debate at a meeting of the bishops in June. The new version, which also plays down the condemnation of sexism found in earlier drafts, appears to reflect strongly the criticisms made by conservative bishops. At the meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops at the University of Notre Dame in June, conservatives called for a clearer, more vigorous defense of current church teaching on ordination, sexual morality and the relations between men and women. Sexism: 'Evil' but Not a 'Sin' Liberals and conservatives have been debating the document for nine years. When it was first drafted by small panel of bishops, after a series of hearings around the country, it put heavy stress on consulting women about their concerns and called for further discussions on birth control, abortion and the ordination of women as deacons if not as priests. After objections from conservative Catholics and the Vatican, these proposals were removed or modified in later drafts. At the meeting in June, many Catholic feminists, angered that successive drafts of the letter had grown more and more conservative, urged that the entire effort be abandoned. The bishops' 50-member Administrative Committee will discuss the new draft in mid-September. Unless it votes otherwise, the document will be debated by the full conference of bishops at their meeting in late November. The new draft has not been made public. A copy was obtained by the church news agency, the Catholic News Service, and its contents were reported to diocesan newspapers on Friday, the same day it was mailed to the nation's bishops. The news service's report contains extensive quotations from the new draft, comparing it with earlier versions. For example, the new draft retains language calling sexism "a moral and social evil." But the last remaining reference to the "sin" of sexism has been dropped. The third draft emphasized a heavy stress on sexism "even at the risk of seeming to oversimplify," the bishops wrote, because it was "so deeply rooted in the fabric of society that it tends to permeate human relationships" and to lead to other evils "that deeply disturb women." Recognizing the Differences The | Catholic Panel Rewrites Letter On Female Role |
553575_0 | The Nissan Motor Company has gone to great lengths to give customers what they want. Japanese buyers of the Nissan Sunny, known as the Stanza in the United States, can choose from nearly 200 variations with different engines, bodies, tires and transmissions. The company has sold fewer than a dozen units of some combinations. But those days are over. Nissan, which said Friday it will lose money this year for the first time in about four decades, is trying to save money by cutting back on the number of variations it is offering, even it if means sacrificing market share. It is also leaving some models on the market longer than the customary four years. And it is trying to use the same parts in more models. Right now, for instance, there are about 70 kinds of steering wheels used in its automobiles, when far fewer would do. The move at Nissan is part of a big change occurring in Japan's auto industry. Buffeted by a slowdown in sales and a host of other problems, Japan's auto makers are being forced to modify the vaunted system by which they design, produce and sell automobiles, even as this system is being emulated around the world. The system, first developed by Toyota and often called "lean production," involves rapid introduction of models, a flexible manufacturing system that can make many kinds of cars on the same assembly line, low inventories and long-term relationships with suppliers. But now, manufacturers are starting to cut the number of products they offer, slow the pace at which they bring out products, reduce their reliance on low prices as a marketing strategy, keep larger inventories and loosen historic bonds with suppliers. And a severe labor shortage in Japan might make it more difficult to attract and retain the skilled, disciplined workers who are a hallmark of the system. Reworking the Toyota System "We're looking right now at the most significant shift and the greatest pressure on the Japanese system since it achieved pre-eminence in the early 80's," said Harley Shaiken, professor of work and technology at the University of California at San Diego, who is studying Japanese auto factories this summer. "The Toyota system that powered Japan in the 80's will need an overhaul for the 90's." No one expects Japanese companies to abandon lean production, only to modify it. And no one expects the big Japanese | A Lower Gear for Japan's Auto Makers |
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