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1163399_2 | SOVEREIGN ISLANDS/A special report.; For Cruise Ships' Workers, Much Toil, Little Protection | that these individuals would be able to obtain in their home countries -- jobs that do not offer either the earning potential or opportunities for advancement and that do not include full room and board, medical care and transportation benefits that are provided to cruise line employees,'' the International Council of Cruise Lines, the industry trade group, said in a statement. A Lighter Burden Some Seamen Escape Harder Life at Home Per capita income in the Philippines, which provides thousands of workers to the cruise industry, is about $1,000 a year. Over the course of their long hours, Filipino waiters and bartenders on a ship can earn 20 times that in tips, in addition to being provided room and board. Even the lowest-paid crew members earn about $400 a month, a substantial sum in many countries. Carnival Cruise Line said that its starting salaries had increased for many jobs and that it recently created the industry's first retirement plan for shipboard employees. Carnival would not disclose its pay scale, but said that a good waiter, with tips, could earn as much as a counterpart on the mainland in the United States, and that cabin stewards earned more than maids in American hotels. Critics in Congress and the American maritime industry described the foreign-flagged cruise ships as operating ''inside our waters and outside our laws,'' as several put it. They contend that the practice had led to increased pollution and problems enforcing some criminal laws. In addition, American cruise companies say that the economic advantages of foreign-flagged ships have stifled any effort to create a sizable fleet in this country. Even those laws that do govern the foreign-flagged cruise industry are often ignored or bent. Despite a 70-hour week suggested by the International Labor Organization, which is affiliated with the United Nations, seafarers routinely work 80 to 90 hours a week without extra pay, many said in interviews. And despite laws requiring free medical care and adequate sick pay for injured or sick seafarers, crew members sometimes find themselves shipped home or living on a few dollars a day in sick wages while waiting for care. Some unions have negotiated benefits below those available by law; some workers do not even realize they are covered by a labor agreement. After questions about work conditions were raised as this article was being prepared, the industry trade group announced that its 17 members |
1158588_0 | More Than a Diploma | To the Editor: I write to offer comfort to Casey Schwartz (''Hey, Yale, Can This Be My College Essay?'' Nov. 21), her parents, her friends and their parents, including the mother quoted as saying: ''I told my daughter that if she doesn't get into Yale or Harvard or Columbia, she might as well get a job at Starbucks. I'm not paying the tuition at any other place. What's the point?'' I call their attention to the weddings reported in the same section on the same date. Of the American undergraduate degrees listed for 51 brides and grooms (out of 54), only 8 are from Ivy League colleges. Yet from the smiles in their pictures and the descriptions of their careers to date, these young people seem to be content and to be succeeding in life. Personal qualities, not where one went to school, in the long run determine how one functions, and is accepted by others, in life. SARAN JONAS, M.D. New York |
1158417_4 | Countering Gay Bias Incidents at UConn | being investigated, and patrols have been increased in the center of campus, where many of the bias messages have been written on sidewalks. All officers go through diversity training. This training, also done by the Department of Residential Life, is now being considered for all university employees. Ms. Nelson feels these changes are good for those at UConn, but believes the process can begin much earlier. Assessing someone's character during the admissions process, she said, is as important as assessing grades or activities. She also feels the School of Education can affect students long before arriving by making diversity education a priority. ''We're sending out a lot of qualified teachers,'' Ms. Nelson said. ''That's a way this institution can impact so many other ones.'' Ms. Nelson admitted the response has been ''pretty incredible'' since these incidents began. Besides the effort for administrative change, many in the community have helped. Positive e-mails have flooded her computer, one student brought a plate of cookies to the Rainbow Center, and an anonymous donor sent six pizzas to a recent meeting of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Ally Association. ''It feels like we're engaged in a bit of a moral crisis, and people's characters really show,'' Ms. Nelson said. ''It's shocked a lot of heterosexual people who were unaware of the severity and depth of the hatred. ''They're saying, 'I'm not sure what I feel about the issue, but I think what's going on is wrong.'' UConn students said they believe homophobia is present, but that the steps being taken to combat it are positive. Jenny Campbell, a sophomore, points to the graffiti and the theft of the Rainbow Center's flag as examples, but admits the attitude is slowly changing. ''Now, with the Ally buttons, it seems like there's a lot more support,'' Miss Campbell said. ''People who are homophobic know there isn't support for their side.'' Many, including Mr. Austin, hope these measures will be effective. The goal, he stressed, is to help eliminate fear and hatred and lead to a safer, more diverse campus environment. ''Do I think it will create a perfect world? Of course not,'' Mr. Austin said. ''If we take care of this issue, there no doubt will be other issues to deal with. But we need to send a message to those who lack civility and lack respect that we will not tolerate this type of behavior.'' |
1158267_11 | Architecture | Reservation in Lakeside, Calif., bringing full circle his homage to the architecture of the inhabitants' ancestors. Alas, two-thirds of Gill's 300 buildings have been torn down, the majority of the remainder altered beyond recognition, and his archives were put out with the trash, making this first-ever monograph a heroic effort. Scrupulously researched and engagingly written by Thomas S. Hines, a professor of history and architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles, this long-hoped-for volume fills a shocking lapse in architectural literature. CARLO SCARPA ARCHITECT: Intervening With History. By Nicholas Olsberg, George Ranalli, Jean-Francois Bedard, Sergio Polano, Alba di Lieto and Mildred Friedman. Photographs by Guido Guidi. (Canadian Center for Architecture/Monacelli, paper, $45.) Although the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa (1906-78) is unknown to the general public, he has long been a cult figure among professionals. They revere Scarpa's fanatic attention to detail in his small but emotionally engaging structures, which display a rare ability to focus on the intimate and the cosmic with equal intensity. Though he built very little, and most of that consisted of remodelings of existing structures, his principled stance against rampant commercialism and internationalization have special pertinence today. Scarpa fits neatly into no niche of the modern movement save his own. Immersed in the architecture of his birthplace and the surrounding Veneto region, he knew better than to ape it. ''I have always had . . . an immense desire to belong to tradition,'' he said, ''but without having capitals or columns.'' Instead, he honored the past through contemporary forms made from local materials and constructed with age-old techniques. His regionally rooted but universally resonant designs -- above all three Italian museums and several memorable tombs -- feel so authentic because he cared not a whit about style and everything about the enduring verities of architecture. This publication of the exemplary Scarpa exhibition held at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal earlier this year makes the architect's often cryptic schemes more intelligible to a general audience than ever before. The thoughtful essays, particularly those by the show's guest curator, Mildred Friedman, and its designer, the American architect George Ranalli, explain Scarpa's continuing hold on the architectural mind. Guido Guidi's subtle color photographs are among the most affecting architectural images in recent memory, capturing the spirit of place that was all-important to the master, as well as evoking his poignant sense of the passage of time. |
1158416_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1158260_2 | Food; Good and Plenty | dinner parties, not to mention jobs like mine, obsolete. Perhaps, quite cleverly, you will have developed comfort-food-in-a-pill, but -- forgive my skepticism -- I doubt it. We in 1999 already have Prozac and other ostensible comfort pills (also known as mood enhancers), but it's difficult to imagine comfort food encapsulated -- that is, minus the sensory pleasures that are integral to the process of eating. Barring such Orwellian outcomes, one of the most striking changes between my millennium and yours will be in how drastically ingredients, and species, are altered. This notion was trumpeted to me recently when I attended the first Joe Baum Forum on the Future, a conference at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., which addressed issues affecting the long-term well-being of our resources. Afterward, I realized that the foods I know and love may ''evolve'' until their flavors become unrecognizable. Take tomatoes. I remember that when I was a child, my mother displayed an uncharacteristic lust for sliced Ohio beefsteaks dusted with salt and pepper. A mere 30 or so years later, I'm willing to pay serious money to find beefsteaks offering similar delight. Those ripe, perfumed fruits of my youth have been eclipsed by tougher, smaller, drier tomatoes that have been bred not for juiciness or flavor, but for portability. I worry that biotechnology will only accelerate trends like this, so that the original flavors of the foods that come down to you will have been lost in the genetic shuffle. So if by some miracle, Dear Descendants, tomatoes still flourish in your midst, know this: that they are mere shadows of their former plump and luscious selves. That even with the same recipes and ingredients that I use, your dishes will inevitably taste different. And that, for all the amazing, barely imaginable science and technology that has enhanced your last thousand years and given you an enviable life span, you are missing out on something wonderful. But there's more. Like the sinewy thick-skinned barnyard chickens I knew as a child -- all the better for frying, my dears. (''Animals that work for a living are always superior to indolent ones,'' a culinary wag once observed in disparagement of factory farming.) Or the voluptuous and sweet taste of wild, freshly caught salmon. Or the sumptuous delicacy of bluefin tuna, beautifully marbled with fat, firm and muscular from its active life. Though these |
1158351_5 | Science, Infiltrating the Stage, Puts Life Under the Microscope | if understood, is precise. ''If one takes the theater as being quite simply a microcosm in which you can look at life under a microscope, then in any situation you like, from the most banal to the most exotic, you see a series of processes. But what makes it possible to put those processes into a form that an audience can see? How that can be dramatized is a very difficult question. The fascinating things in science don't necessarily come in an obvious way through human beings.'' Mr. Brook's interest in the intersection of science and theater is not confined to comparisons between theatrical development and the scientific method. ''The century that we are just coming to the end of is a century in which science has taken an enormous leading part,'' he said. Referring to the split between the scientific and the spiritual that antedates Snow's essay by several thousand years, Mr. Brook said that one of the functions of contemporary theater was to restore the balance between ''the mystery-destroying nature of science and the mystery around the nature of science.'' It is, he said, ''an opposition that can be transcended, that can be dramatized, as perhaps in a deep way one of the essential dramas of our time.'' DR. SACKS'S studies of the brain and neurological anomalies piqued Mr. Brook's interest because of the scientist's description, in his book ''The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,'' of the patients whose cases he studied as ''mythic heroes.'' ''What has been rediscovered after 2,000 years,'' Mr. Brook said, ''is what in the language of the ancient Greeks was destiny, fate and the hand of the gods. The human being struggling with his genetic destiny is no different from the hero of Greek tragedy struggling with a different form of implacable destiny. He is still a human being caught in a trap. And that's what the theater's about, and that's what tragedy's about.'' Mr. Frayn, who disclaims any scientific background, sees a sudden new interest in the subject in society at large, owing in part to a recent proliferation of books about science written for lay audiences. He said that in his play ''Copenhagen'' he was drawn to the relationship between Bohr, the renowned Danish theoretical physicist who left Germany in the 1930's, and Heisenberg, a German who stayed and headed Hitler's atomic program. The subject attracted him, Mr. |
1158399_5 | Volunteer Connections: Returning the Favor | bad match,'' Mrs. Del Colle said. In part, the increase in the popularity of volunteering is the result of growing community service requirements from schools that encourage students to make a contribution and from churches and synagogues that want confirmation and bar mitzvah students to do the same. The youngsters working through the Volunteer Center have helped businesses create Web sites and have worked on computers, assisted at animal shelters and read mail and newspapers to people with failing eyesight, among other things. ''It has led to many warm relationships between the generations,'' Mrs. Del Colle said. Clifford D. Schneider, regional director for the Mid-Hudson chapter of the Volunteers of America, said his organization places 130 volunteers a year in jobs. Some are relief workers for people caring for AIDS victims. Others -- ''often former alumni of recovery programs,'' Mr. Schneider said -- help out at meetings for halfway house residents. Despite the increasing interest, there are still too few volunteers to go around. ''Around Christmastime, the ranks of volunteers increase, but not as much as we'd like,'' Mr. Schneider said, adding that there is a continuing need for people to relieve AIDS helpers, recreational workers and sidewalk Santas. Founded in 1896, Volunteers of America provides shelter and housing for homeless people and families, services for troubled youths and treatment and recovery programs for alcoholics and drug abusers, among other things. In Westchester, Volunteers of America runs a 58-bed, 24-hour emergency shelter for homeless men at the County Airport in Harrison. It also manages Crossroads, a 17-bed halfway house for men and women recovering from alcoholism, with a goal of preparing clients for independent living within three to nine months. In addition, it runs shelters in Yorktown and Valhalla for homeless single adults and couples. Those interested in volunteering can approach individual agencies like Volunteers of America or clearinghouses like the Volunteer Center. Or they can try the Internet, which is fast becoming a source of referral services for volunteers. E-volunteering, as it has been identified by philanthropic industry experts, accounted for about 1 million of the 109 millions of Americans who volunteered in 1998, according to a new study by Independent Sector, the Washington-based research organization that studies the nonprofit market. A two-year-old online matchmaking service, volunteermatch.org, informs would-be volunteers of thousands of opportunities across the United States. Volunteermatch uses the Internet to help people nationwide find volunteer opportunities |
1158578_4 | The World; At Last, the Face of Peace in Ulster. But No Smile Yet. | city's street fighting republican rebels, and when the Catholic civil rights movement took hold in 1969, he left his job packing bacon and eagerly joined in. Arrested for belonging to the I.R.A., he made a bold statement to a Dublin court, ''For over two years I was an officer in the Derry Brigade of the I.R.A.'' he said. ''I am a member of the I.R.A. and very, very proud of it. '' THE Derry branch of the I.R.A. was less murderous than the Belfast one but more destructive. It virtually laid waste to the business district of the old walled city with relentless bombings that had buildings rather than people as the targets. In those years, Mr. McGuinness says, he was fired upon by British troops several times, and Protestant paramilitaries have testified that he was a target of several assassination attempts. By 1972, he and Gerry Adams, who now is the president of Sinn Fein, were the two youngest members of a republican delegation secretly airlifted by the Royal Air Force to London to meet with British government ministers. It was the beginning of a relationship in which Mr. McGuinness became Mr. Adams' indispensable partner and trusted associate, the movement's primary militarist and chief negotiator. In the late 1970's they devised the policy of starting negotiations to run simultaneously with the war effort and in the early 1990's they concluded that the military campaign had run its course and was not advancing their aims. That led to I.R.A. cease-fires and the beginning of the intensive peace talks that produced the agreement in 1998 setting up the new government. In the informal meetings that Mr. Mitchell held in October to try to reinvigorate communication between Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists, it was Mr. McGuinness who proved the best able to break down the barriers between Mr. Adams and Mr. Trimble, telling anecdotes and talking about hobbies like chess and fly-fishing. Some of that outgoing personality has come to the fore now to replace the grim public image he traditionally maintained as chief negotiator. He was an ebullient figure around the Stormont parliament building last week, intent on convincing doubters that he would be evenhanded in office. He conceded that he lacked formal schooling, but said he was nonetheless qualified for his new job. Over the past 30 years, he said, he had experienced ''the political education of a lifetime.'' |
1158575_1 | Ulster's Coalition for Peace | political authority in the province is equitably apportioned between its Protestant and Roman Catholic communities. Following a carefully negotiated timetable, Britain transferred home rule powers to Belfast, Ireland gave up its constitutional claim to the North, and the Irish Republican Army named a senior officer to join the independent panel in charge of assuring disarmament of the province's private militias. Presumably, the I.R.A. will follow this step by beginning to turn over its arsenal of guns and bombs, a process it is obliged to complete by May 2000. Past efforts to end sectarian violence in Ulster proved disappointing. But no earlier initiative was as inclusive as this and none progressed so far. Northern Ireland now has its best chance in more than a generation to move from fear and economically paralyzing turmoil to a future premised on hope and pragmatic cooperation for the common good. Considerable praise for this achievement should go to former Senator George Mitchell, whose patient mediation taught leaders on both sides of the religious divide to talk to each other directly for the first time and thereby begin to build up a modest degree of personal trust. But the main credit must go to Northern Ireland's political leaders themselves, particularly John Hume, David Trimble and Gerry Adams. Mr. Hume, from the Social Democratic and Labor Party, Ulster's largest Catholic group, played a decisive role in encouraging the I.R.A. to move away from terror toward electoral politics. Mr. Adams, president of the I.R.A.'s political arm, Sinn Fein, was the main advocate within that organization for actually carrying out this historic shift. Mr. Trimble courageously and crucially brought the Ulster Unionist Party, representing a majority of the province's Protestants, to accept such difficult concessions as working alongside Sinn Fein and sharing the local political power that had long been a Protestant monopoly. After 27 years of rule from London, Northern Ireland's people will now enjoy democratic self-government. After three decades of violence that cost 3,300 lives and destroyed countless others, the province now has a promising framework for the peaceful resolution of sectarian conflicts. While this fragile achievement could still break down in the face of political intransigence from either side or a resumption of terrorist violence, this is a historic moment of hope. At long last, Ulster's political parties and armed factions have responded to the overwhelming desire of their constituents, both Protestant and Catholic, for peace. |
1158316_0 | Designs for the Next Millennium; Ocean Group | Ocean represents architecture's newest wave: designers who live in different areas (in this case, Helsinki, Oslo and Cologne) yet practice together in a paperless office located in cyberspace. They create designs that explore the expressive potential of computer software. ''Adrift,'' their proposal for the Times Capsule, reflects the group's wired, polymorphic sensibility. The proposal calls for the construction of nine capsules that would be airdropped onto the Antarctic ice shelf. With gradual global warming, the ice would melt and, over the centuries, the capsules would be released progressively into the oceans -- the latter-day equivalent of a message in a bottle. A monitoring system, based in New York, would track the drifting movement of the capsules, which would contain radio transmitters powered by special seawater batteries. Italo Calvino devotes the fifth of his ''Six Memos for the Next Millennium'' to what he calls multiplicity -- the idea that literature should encompass the variety, breadth and emotional richness of the modern self. The Ocean project embodies something close to this idea. Using computer software, the designers have molded a series of three-dimensional shapes that would result from wrapping a thin skin of titanium around ceramic capsule containers. The shapes would be different because the contents would be different, but all would be smooth, tactile things embodying doves, porpoises, whipped cream, fine sand, powder snow, the curve of a woman's torso as painted by Ingres. Herbert Muschamp is the architecture critic of The New York Times. |
1158702_4 | Concern Rising As Mars Lander Remains Silent | hope of linking with Earth. But controllers had no way of knowing if the lander received the commands or could act on them. Mission officials held out hope that the polar lander's troubles might prove temporary. Perhaps it came down at an odd angle, or it sank a few inches into a crusty surface. In either case, its position might be preventing the antenna programmed for the initial radio contact from establishing a ''downlink.'' The wider Earth-seeking broadcasts of signals might eventually bring results. But there was also the possibility, Mr. Cook said, that the lander's instruments for determining its orientation on Mars and its relation to Earth were malfunctioning. The lander's uncertain fate was a reminder of past tribulations in Mars exploration, most recently in September. At that time, the Mars Climate Orbiter, reached the planet but navigation errors brought it in too close and to its probable destruction. It has not been heard from since its final approach while trying to swing into orbit. Nearly all of the Soviet Union's efforts to send spacecraft to Mars ended in failure or limited success. Although the American program had notable successes with Mariner 9 as the first to orbit and map the planet, in 1971, and the two Viking orbiters and landers in 1976, two of its Mariner spacecraft, one in 1964 and another in 1971, failed shortly after liftoff. And in 1993, the $1 billion Mars Observer failed mysteriously just as it approached the planet. Stunned by the loss of such an expensive craft, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shifted its exploration strategy to a reliance on smaller spacecraft with more limited objectives but launched frequently and with less risk to the program if any one should fail. The first of these, Mars Pathfinder in 1997, landed on a flood plain for geological studies and was an impressive success. Its companion, Global Surveyor, arrived a few months later and is producing the most detailed maps yet of the surface. Scientists were counting on this year's missions, the climate orbiter and the polar lander, to investigate climate history of Mars and search out its water resources in an effort to learn if life might have arisen there long ago. The question of life is motivating future planning for more missions to Mars in the next decade, two at each 26-month opportunity, leading up to the return of soil samples. |
1158350_3 | A Surrealist Composer Comes To the Rescue of Modernism | thing, his spoiled-brat behavior, so much commented on in the press, shows that he is still playing the part our culture has written for a modernist artist. But more positively, as long as there are strong controlling hands like his at the stylistic mixing board, there will be enough life left in modernism, taking that word now to mean the late-Romantic projection of a strong creative personality, to last well into the coming century. Also symptomatic is the way Andrew Porter, a self-described ''hoary critic'' who has made it a mission to search out and destroy postmodernism wherever it shows its face, has cast himself as Mr. Ades's happy hyper, in informative if somewhat frantic program notes for all the composer's CD's so far. He has good reason. In Mr. Ades late modernism has a winner at last, a respectably hard-core talent to whom audiences, trusting their noses, have responded with enthusiasm, as (despite Mr. Porter's decades of devoted ministration) they have not responded to Sir Harrison Birtwistle or Brian Ferneyhough, and never will. Mr. Ades can be promoted without recourse to the imperial haberdasher's manual. For the origins of Mr. Ades's eclecticism, and a validation of his modernist credentials, consider a passage from a new biography of Richard Strauss by Bryan Gilliam, the leading American authority on the composer, published by Cambridge University Press. ''Taking a step well beyond the old-fashioned, decadent, fin-de-siecle 'Salome,' '' Mr. Gilliam writes, ''Strauss realized that the musical language for the new century should be one that intentionally lacks stylistic uniformity, a language that reflects a modernist preoccupation with the dilemma of history, one that arguably foreshadows the dissolution of the ideology of style in the late 20th century.'' The immediate result was ''Der Rosenkavalier,'' an opera from which, as it happens, Mr. Ades quotes delectably in ''Powder Her Face.'' Mr. Gilliam's sentence is a beautifully calculated slap in the face of conventional historiography, which has always regarded ''Salome'' (together with its immediate successor, ''Elektra'') as Strauss's modernist peak, and therefore his high-water mark as a creative figure, and ''Der Rosenkavalier'' as the beginning of the stylistic backslide that eventually condemned Strauss to historical irrelevance. Mr. Gilliam's proposed revision would locate the origins of an authentic modernism in the very eclecticism that is now billed, and sometimes written off, as postmodern. MR. GILLIAM'S ''dilemma of history'' might more pointedly be called the problem of |
1164685_0 | In America; Tormented Children | They are not usually part of our consciousness, these children. They shiver and tremble and act out to the awful imperatives of mental illness. Sometimes they shut down. Sometimes they lash out, attacking others, or they turn their fury on themselves. Often they are the victims of terrible crimes. We do a lousy job of reaching them. Last week the Legal Aid Society went into federal court and filed a class action suit against New York State's mental health system, charging that youngsters who are known to be severely mentally ill are being denied treatment because the state has refused to provide the mental health facilities they require. Nearly 400 children are on waiting lists for admittance to residential treatment facilities but cannot be admitted because the existing facilities are filled to capacity. So the kids, according to the suit, have been left to languish in hospitals, foster care or jail. These are children like the 12-year-old boy identified in the suit by the pseudonym Alexander A. According to the suit, cocaine and heroin were detected in Alexander's system at birth and he was physically abused before he was four months old. He was later placed in a foster home where he and his two sisters were physically and sexually abused. In the dry language of court papers, the suit said: ''Alexander A.'s mental health condition worsened sharply in 1999 when one of his younger sisters in the home was beaten to death, allegedly by his adoptive mother. Alexander A. became suicidal and was psychiatrically hospitalized for several weeks, during which he was maintained on psychotropic medications.'' In July the boy was transferred to Geller House, a diagnostic reception center on Staten Island, for evaluation. ''While at Geller House,'' the suit said, ''Alexander A. has consistently engaged in self-mutilating, self-destructive behavior, and provocative and physically aggressive behavior toward others, whom he views as 'bad.' '' It was decided at Geller House that this youngster required long-term residential treatment and his case was referred to the State Office of Mental Health. Officials there agreed. But instead of being admitted to a residential treatment facility, Alexander was promptly placed on a waiting list. He is still at Geller House. Youngsters remain on the waiting lists for months, sometimes more than a year. And while they wait, they often deteriorate. It's a cruel and wasteful and frequently tragic situation. Monica Drinane, the lawyer |
1164767_25 | Bold Effort Leaves Much Unchanged for the Poor | her time with her mother, Yolando has even begun getting up with her at 4 a.m. ''I thought I was going to have my kids go see a whatchacallit -- child therapist,'' Ms. Crawford said. ''But they just want attention.'' In describing the effect of the job the household, the children spoke less of abstract pride than of concrete stress. ''She don't want to cook -- she said she's too tired and stuff,'' Yolando said. ''When she's tired, she's crabby,'' Lorenzo said. ''She says, 'Just leave me alone.' She acts mean,'' Lavita said. ''She don't act mean,'' Lorenzo said. ''She just don't want to be bothered.'' Lavita predicted she might turn to welfare one day because ''I'll probably have kids before I have a job,'' and she does not want a husband. ''He'd probably get on my nerves.'' But Lorenzo mocked her. ''That's ghetto!'' he said. Ms. Crawford told much the same story of stress, saying she is typically too tired to help her children with their homework, and she is often too tired to cook. For a moment, her words took an uncharacteristic turn toward the bitter. ''Right now, I got to concentrate on myself and what I got to do,'' she said. ''I'm sorry my kids are taking it the way they are. They're acting like little selfish brats.'' But mostly she talked in the weary tones of working mothers everywhere. ''I sometimes feel like I'm not taking care of my family like I should,'' she said. ''But a lot of times, when I come home, I'm just so tired.'' Life After Welfare With the nation's welfare rolls down 43 percent, President Clinton, as well as his Republican critics, count the landmark 1996 welfare law as the cornerstone of their respective legacies. That law replaced a 60-year-old cash safety net with a program of time limits and work requirements. No place has come closer than Wisconsin to the goal of ''ending welfare.'' A decade ago, 100,000 Wisconsin families relied on public aid. Now 7,000 do. The changes taking place in the state, particularly in its largest city, Milwaukee, continue to reverberate in broad and unpredictable ways. Throughout 1999, The New York Times returned to Milwaukee to plot the pattern of change. This is the last article of the series. The articles and related coverage of welfare issues are available on The New York Times on the Web: www.nytimes.com/politics. |
1157740_0 | U.S. Report Finds Airport Security Breaches and Criticizes F.A.A. | Undercover government inspectors have thwarted airport security so easily that in some instances they have been able to wander through cargo areas, go through gates and even board airplanes and sit down while pretending to be passengers, officials say. The security breaches, noted at several of the nation's busiest airports, are detailed in a report by the inspector general's office of the Transportation Department, which criticizes the Federal Aviation Administration, a department branch. The F.A.A., the report says, ''has been slow to take actions necessary to strengthen access-control requirements'' and at times has not made the best use of the controls The inspector general's report and the agency's response have been on government Web sites for days and have drawn relatively little attention. Paul Turk, an F.A.A. spokesman, said tonight that travelers did not need to be alarmed and that the agency had already addressed the criticism. ''We can always improve,'' Mr. Turk said, emphasizing that his agency was not smarting from the criticism. He said the monthslong investigation by the inspector general focused not so much on who had access to main terminal areas but who gained access behind the scenes: the baggage handlers, fuel-truck drivers and other workers, or people pretending to be them. ''During our testing,'' the inspector general's office said, ''we successfully penetrated secure areas by: piggybacking employees through doors; riding unguarded elevators; walking through concourse doors, gates and jetbridges.'' After penetrating the supposedly secure areas, investigators were often able to get on airplanes. ''In some instances, we were seated and ready for departure,'' the report said. Security lapses were noted on United States and foreign airlines. Mr. Turk said travelers would notice little if any difference at airports once security was improved in response to the report. ''It could make a difference in how people do business on the ground, and who gets hired to do it,'' he said. The Washington Post, which reported on the investigation on Thursday, said the airports where breaches were found include Kennedy International in New York City, O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta and Reagan National in Washington. The inspector general's report does not list the airports where problems were found, and Mr. Turk said he had no direct knowledge of which ones were cited. But he said those mentioned are among the country's busiest, so problems would almost inevitably be detected there. Investigators found |
1157707_2 | Anxious French Mutter as U.S. Envoy Tries to Sell Globalism | we fought with Europe and for European values,'' he went on. ''When that war ended, it should have strengthened ties between us. Instead, the French have a feeling of enormous anxiety.'' Kosovo made President Jacques Chirac and many other European leaders, including Mr. Clinton's friend Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, acutely aware of Europe's military shortcomings and determined to rectify them. At the same time, Mr. Chirac and many other Europeans are increasingly concerned by what they see as a new temptation in America not to withdraw from the rest of the world, but rather to impose American values and policies globally because the United States has power that no other country can match. The danger of this new American ''hyper-power,'' as the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, calls it, was symbolized by the United States Senate's rejection of the global Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons in October. French anxiety has also grown because of the Clinton administration's wish to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so that the United States can build a system to shoot down incoming missiles from ''rogue states'' like Iraq or North Korea. ''We must avoid any weakening of the ABM treaty that could lead to a rupture of strategic equilibrium and start a new nuclear arms race,'' Mr. Chirac told an international audience in Paris in early November. Ambassador Rohatyn protested: ''We can't be both hegemonic and isolationist. What the French are really concerned about is what they define as unilateralism, which also explains why they react the way they do to trade sanctions.'' Another reason is continuing French and European economic insecurity in the face of an American economy with full employment, while Europe is still suffering from double-digit jobless rates that are often blamed on high welfare-state taxes and restrictive labor laws. Whether because of or despite those obstacles, French industry has shed its image of bloated ineffiency during the last few years and become among the most competitive in the world, Mr. Rohatyn said. And Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's Socialist-led government, continuing the policies of its conservative predecessors, has gone ahead with partial privatization of banks, telecommunications and even defense industries that were nationalized in the 1980's. But there is still a defensive tone to French public discussion of things like the opening of talks on a new round of world trade negotiations this week in Seattle. Mr. |
1157657_1 | London Journal; On Seeing the Elgin Marbles, With Sandwiches | has taken on added heat now because of new scholarship exposing reckless past treatment of the treasures by the British Museum and the desire of Greece to have them returned in time for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin -- the name is pronounced with a hard g -- took them from the Parthenon temple in 1801 while he was Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which then included Greece. The Greeks contend that he stole them; Britain says he lawfully purchased them. The government here has an unambiguous view of where they should remain. ''There has been no change at all in the government's view that the Elgin Marbles were properly acquired, legally acquired, by the British Museum,'' said a spokesman for the Department of Culture. The marbles have been on display in the museum since 1816, and it is estimated that they are now viewed by six million people a year. When first exhibited to the public, they stirred a cultural sensation, inspiring in Keats ''a most dizzy pain,'' and a poem that conveyed the self-evident rapture they induced with the simple title ''On Seeing the Elgin Marbles.'' The British have contended that bringing them to London preserved them from neglect and deterioration in Athens. But the Greeks now say the greatest damage done them occurred during a scouring operation at the British Museum 60 years ago. ''There truly was a barbarous cleaning,'' said Elisavet Papazoi, Greece's culture minister. ''The marbles were tortured.'' Evidence for the charge emerged in a book by one of the speakers at the symposium, William St. Clair, 61, a former treasury and defense senior civil servant who studied Greek sculpture at Oxford and is now a history fellow at Cambridge. He claimed that museum cleaners had used steel wool, carborundum, hammers and copper chisels to ''skin'' the marbles' original stained patina and that the museum had conducted an ''illegal and improper cover-up'' of the flawed work, repeatedly misleading prime ministers and religious leaders about the extent of the harm. The cleaning was done in 1937 to satisfy Lord Duveen, an entrepreneur with an interest in restoring artistic masterpieces. He hoped to build a separate building to house the marbles and felt their appearance should be lightened to suit modern aesthetics. Mr. St. Clair also called into question the legality of the original transfer, saying Lord Elgin bribed |
1157743_1 | Internationally, Embarrassment for U.S. | the world trade agenda. Vittorio Zucconi, a columnist for an Italian daily, La Repubblica, commented approvingly on what he described as ''the strange, but formidable alliance between environmentalist agitators and European ambassadors, between blue jeans and double-breasted suits, of mothers against 'Frankenfood,' genetically altered food, and the agricultural interests of Europe.'' Switzerland was not surprised by the unrest, having had its own experience with violent protests at a top-level meeting of the trade group in Geneva last year. Less than two weeks ago, 60 students chained themselves to the group's main staircase, barricaded the headquarters and unfurled an unflattering banner from the top of the building. In Brazil, which has the largest economy in Latin America and has been expected to act as a spokesman of sorts for developing nations, the protests were described in headlines as the worst in the United States since Vietnam. In some respects, Brazil and other Latin American countries view the demonstrators as supporters of their own position -- that the international economic order is unfair to developing nations. At the same time, though, countries like Brazil feel that the demonstrators' emphasis on environmental and labor issues tends to distract from the main question of economic inequality between rich and the poor. For its part, France seemed to welcome the protests with an anarchic spirit of its own. French skepticism over the talks is not surprising, given the centrality of France in many of the most hotly debated issues in Seattle, including liberalization of farm trade. The French news media devoted much of their coverage to chronicling the exploits of Jose Bove, the sometime French farmer and anti-McDonald's protester who is being called the ''American hero'' by some newspapers. To the delight of his countrymen, Mr. Bove illegally brought several hundred pounds of Roquefort cheese -- on which Washington has levied heavy import duties -- to the United States before joining the protesters in Seattle. The official Chinese media gave scant coverage to the conflict in Seattle, and ignored it at first. The issues that were being raised are sensitive for the Chinese leaders, who normally take pleasure in highlighting ''contraditions'' in Western societies. But they have staked their reputations on gaining China's entry into the World Trade Organization, and they fear just these kinds of angry demonstrations at home from displaced workers. In Jordan, which was scheduled to become the first and perhaps only |
1159308_0 | The Powerful Idea of Human Rights | A great flowering of the ideal of universal human rights has taken place in the last 50 years, a blink of time in a millennium. It is among the most important political legacies of this century. Despite the persistence of state-sponsored repression and genocidal conflict, the belief that individuals have a claim to basic rights and dignities is being embraced by ordinary citizens on every continent. Freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from slavery, torture and arbitrary arrest, and the right to equality under the law as common values are still quite new in many parts of the world. But leaders who violate these principles now face international exposure, sanctions and even outside intervention, as Slobodan Milosevic discovered this year. The past 30 years have seen the birth of hundreds of human rights organizations that give voice to aspirations of freedom and equality. These groups have worked to expose criminal regimes and help their victims. Many groups have become political forces in their own right, joining together to push for initiatives such as banning land mines. The movement grew out of the horrors of World War II and the brutal tyrannies that darkened the rest of the 20th century. But its roots can be traced to the Greek Stoics, who believed in universal natural laws; the Romans, who refined concepts on the rule of law; and the Enlightenment philosophers, who believed that freedom was a natural condition and that the purpose of government was to serve and protect citizens. In this millennium, documents like Magna Carta of 1215, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, and the American Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights of 1791 advanced the universality of human rights. Yet even in Western cultures where these notions of rights first developed, the progress of freedom took centuries. During the first half of the millennium, slavery was a common condition in Europe. In feudalism, only those wealthy enough to own land and arms enjoyed any semblance of freedom. In some 11th-century documents, those who were called ''free'' were hereditarily bound to their masters' land and transferred like livestock, with no rights to own or inherit property or even marry without a master's consent. In 15th-century Genoa, a census counted more than 2,000 slaves in city households. In 1860 more than half the |
1159302_1 | Nassau County to Cut Spending In Effort to Ease Financial Crisis | pay off some of the county's long-term debt, cutting the cost of debt service and yielding $10.5 million in savings in 2001. ''Only projects that are directly related to the safety of our residents, or are required contractually, are being advanced,'' he said in a statement, adding that the capital projects would be restarted as the county's fiscal health improved. His move came a day after Fitch IBCA, the bond rating agency, downgraded the county's bond status to a level just above junk bonds, joining two other major rating agencies that had already done so. Fitch said in a statement that it made the move because of the county's lack of a balanced budget, the hasty repeal of its real estate transfer tax last month by Republican legislators and ''the absence of a unified effort in the executive and legislative branches to address financial problems.'' The county faces an estimated shortfall of up to $110 million on the $2.2 billion budget that is to take effect next month. Mr. Gulotta, a Republican, said he intended to close the gap by cutting spending; last week he said layoffs were possible. The Democrats, who will take control of the Legislature in January, are calling for an outside fiscal monitor to oversee the county's finances. Mr. Gulotta said today that he hoped to cut $9.8 million from the 2000 budget by forcing all county departments except day care and senior citizen services to cut their spending on discretionary programs in half. ''These dollars are funding worthwhile programs, but the county simply cannot afford to do everything for everyone,'' he said, adding that the departments themselves would decide what to cut. Even with the trimmed programs, the county is $100 million shy of closing the projected gap for 2000. County workers remain nervous about possible layoffs. ''Any layoff of county employees would come at a huge expense in terms of money, loss of services and personal devastation,'' said Anthony Giustino, president of the union representing county workers. The county did get encouraging financial news today: Standard & Poor's, another major bond rating agency, found that the struggling county had managed to plug its 1999 deficit. But the agency was less sanguine about next year. ''The projected budget gap for fiscal 2000 is symptomatic of the county's ongoing inability and unwillingness to take permanent steps to ensure long-term fiscal health,'' it said in a statement. |
1159282_1 | Monsanto Campaign Tries to Gain Support for Gene-Altered Food | companies as Archer Daniels Midland, a large agricultural company in Decatur, Ill., but a spokeswoman for the company said it was not involved. Mr. DeNeal said that many of the church members support gene-altered foods because some scientists are using biotechnology to develop crops that may help feed the growing populations in sub-Saharan Africa. But so far the gene-altered foods that Monsanto and other companies have made into a multibillion-dollar business are crops aimed at benefiting farmers, like corn plants that have been engineered to produce their own pesticides. A spokeswoman for Monsanto said yesterday that the company had authorized Burson Marsteller, a public relations firm, to reach out to people supporting biotechnology. But paying people to demonstrate would violate the company's ethics policies, she said. ''That is abhorrent to us,'' she said, adding that the company plans to investigate. Terry Wade, a spokesman at Burson Marsteller, said it was also against the company's policy to pay anyone directly to state particular views. ''They were out there because they believed in the cause,'' Mr. Wade said. ''While we may have paid for their lunch and for a bus, we did not pay anyone to demonstrate.'' The protest in Washington, which occurred outside a Food and Drug Administration hearing on the gene-altered crops, is part of an effort by some biotechnology companies to counter demonstrations by environmental and consumer groups. Monsanto has retained Burson Marsteller under a multimillion-dollar contract to help with the grass-roots campaign. Burson employees and consultants have been trying to recruit people from churches, labor organizations and groups that represent the elderly to speak at F.D.A. hearings. Before a hearing in Chicago on Nov. 18, Burson hired Jerry Morrison, a consultant who has worked to organize labor groups. Mr. Morrison said that he had spoken to eight groups, asking them to speak at the Chicago hearing. An employee of Direct Impact, a consulting firm owned by Burson Marsteller, also called the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, asking that a union representative speak in support of the gene-altered foods at the F.D.A. hearing. The labor union declined, a union member said. Direct Impact specializes in gaining grass-roots support for corporate interests and has worked on biotechnology issues in the past. In the early 1990's, a dairy organization hired Direct Impact to recruit New York residents to speak in favor of Monsanto's artificial growth hormone for milk cows, |
1163143_0 | Strengthening Mr. Castro's Hand | Forty-one years after he came to power and a decade after the end of the cold war, Fidel Castro maintains his repressive rule over Cuba, in part with the unwitting collusion of the United States. The resolution this week of a hostage standoff with Cuban detainees in a Louisiana jail and the unresolved custody battle over 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez in Florida are examples of how an outdated American attempt to isolate Cuba and weaken Mr. Castro's regime accomplishes just the opposite. Both of these events are symptoms of an obsolete and increasingly counterproductive American estrangement from Cuba. In Louisiana, United States officials ended the six-day standoff by striking a deal with the Cuban government that permitted six of seven Cuban inmates at the center of the uprising to be deported back to Cuba. The inmates had come here in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, during which Mr. Castro sent thousands of criminals to the United States. The inmates had completed prison sentences for crimes committed in this country but were being held indefinitely because their deportation had been blocked by Mr. Castro. The agreement by which Mr. Castro dropped his opposition would appear to be a laudable example of all-too-infrequent cooperation between the two countries. But it should not have been necessary. Because the United States lacks normal diplomatic relations with Cuba, some 2,400 Cuban inmates are languishing in local jails across America under similarly combustible circumstances. Instead of deporting them routinely, the United States has to rely on Mr. Castro's political calculation that he can play the statesman, thereby enhancing his stature at home and abroad. Similarly, the unseemly custody battle over Elian Gonzalez was partly a symptom of the embargo and related laws. The boy was rescued off the Florida coast on Nov. 25 after surviving a boat capsizing that claimed the lives of his mother and stepfather. The United States ban on all exports to Cuba, including food and medicine, fuels the very hardships that drive Cubans to flee the island. The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, in turn, which enables Cubans to circumvent immigration requirements that apply to all other nationals, has become a strong incentive for the kind of smuggling enterprise using overloaded powerboats that nearly cost Elian his life. The act also made it possible for the boy to be immediately turned over to relatives in Miami, who have allowed him to be cynically exploited |
1163084_5 | Spam Your Way to a Good Education; Online Application Forms Add to College Admissions Frenzy | influx of applicants who are less than serious about attending. But in many cases the swelling ranks of applicants are cause for cheer, they say: After all, colleges like to brag about their selectivity. The more applications they get, the more they can reject. And the higher their selectivity, the better chance they have of landing a coveted spot in annual college rankings, which use those selectivity numbers in their ranking formulas. Many admissions officers say it is too early to tell whether online applications will have any significant impact on college selectivity. The number using technology is clearly increasing, they say, but the majority of applicants still use paper. Some do not have Internet-connected computers at home. Other high school seniors are choosing to fill out some, if not all, of the forms on paper -- even if they have the means to go online. Jason Chan, a senior at Clements High School in Sugar Land, Tex., is an example. He is filling out some forms by hand and printing others onto paper with the best quality he could find. ''I've paid attention to every detail,'' said Mr. Chan, whose first choice is Brown University. ''I'm trying to stand out any way I can.'' But some schools -- like Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. -- tell students that they would actually prefer applications to be completed over the Internet. A few, like the University of Dayton, have even waived the application fee for those who use the Web. Some graduate schools, like the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., will accept only applications sent online. Guidance counselors predict, too, that students may become more inclined to take the technological route as the admissions season comes to a close. Mr. Walther of Lafayette High School, for example, envisions doing more online applications when January deadlines have passed and nervousness kicks in. ''I definitely see myself going through the Web and finding all the ones that have February deadlines,'' Mr. Walther said. ''If I can do it in an afternoon, why not have five more schools to get into?'' Avoiding the Paper Crunch -- Steering Your Digital Data to the Admissions Office THE fastest way to find college application forms online is to go to college Web sites. Nearly every college in the United States has created an online admissions area by now, and many of them include forms customized for |
1161171_0 | A Step Forward on Mental Health | To the Editor: The surgeon general's report on mental health correctly emphasizes the need for treatment of children and adolescents (front page, Dec. 13). But I would like to note that for the youngest children, treatment is a family matter. Maternal depression is a serious mental health risk for infants and toddlers. Treatment of young depressed women may be the most effective way to intervene and to insure good emotional and social development for their children. Even when a mental health problem involves a biological cause, as autism appears to do, parents need supportive therapy to do their best for their disturbed children. JEAN MERCER Moorestown, N.J. Dec. 13, 1999 The writer is vice president, New Jersey Association for Infant Mental Health. NO MORE |
1161103_3 | Where War Roiled Danube, Nature Is Peacemaker | to keep it that way,'' said Philip Weller of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, an adviser to the project. Under the plan, parts of the wetlands that were drained in the past will be restored. Engineers will flush out silted-up channels and open up old side arms of the river to let the water run more freely. The river spills into its flood plains here for about three months each year, creating ideal breeding places for fish and small reptiles and for the many wading birds that feed on them. Stands of willows and oaks harbor the shy white-tailed eagle and black stork. These birds are threatened elsewhere in Europe as their habitats have disappeared. More than 270 bird species appear in this region. As the waters recede, the vegetation attracts mammals like red deer, foxes and boar, which in turn attract hunters and poachers. There is illegal logging. ''We hope to get more protection now,'' said Tibor Mikuska, a biologist involved in the project. ''We want the authorities to cut back logging and hunting licenses.'' Unexpected support has come from some rich families, who have offered private land to extend the reserve, provided that it remains protected. ''This is a unique chance to protect the area,'' said Karl Draskovic, whose family has pledged to donate some of its forest holdings along the Drava River. ''There are still few roads, few people, a lot of lakes and a lot of wildlife. It's magnificent for bird watching.'' The local mayors plan to spend part of the World Bank loan on tourist projects, such as building observation towers and bicycle routes and converting some of the century-old farmhouses into inns. Around Mohacs, on the Hungarian side, the land seems peaceful enough. Herons and storks wheel overhead and thousands of Siberian geese have arrived for the winter. On the high ground, farmers have neatly stacked their wheat and corn harvest. But across the border in Croatia, lands near Osijek and Bilje are still off limits and rife with mines, planted by both the Yugoslav and Croatian armies. Dealing with the hundreds of mines may be the reserve's greatest challenge. The Croatian Center for Demining estimates that fewer than 10 percent have been removed so far. ''We're clearing the parts we will open to the public, the roads and the trails,'' said Mr. Mikuska, the biologist who is also a project coordinator. ''Those will |
1161192_0 | SWAZILAND SUGAR | In a move to consolidate its control of the Swazi sugar production market, the Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation has made an offer to buy a rival, the Mhlume Sugar Company, for an undisclosed amount. If successful, Royal Swazi would be the biggest employer in the tiny African nation, with 8,000 workers. The new company would produce about 315,000 tons of sugar annually. Henri E. Cauvin WORLD BUSINESS BRIEFING: AFRICA |
1161135_2 | Monsanto Sued Over Use of Biotechnology in Developing Seeds | are now using words reminiscent of the Justice Department's case against Microsoft, such as contentions that Monsanto has gained monopoly status through the use of bully tactics, intimidation, deceptive business practices and restrictive technology deals with small farmers. Heading the case is Michael D. Hausfeld, the Washington lawyer who is best known for defending Alaskan natives in the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and more recently helping win a $1.1 billion price-fixing settlement against the world's largest vitamin makers. Mr. Hausfeld is also representing victims forced by Nazis to work during World War II. Also considering a lead role in the suit is David Boies, the New York lawyer who is leading the Justice Department's prosecution of Microsoft. Mr. Boies was a lead lawyer in the class-action suit against the vitamin makers and is said to be interested in the case because of concerns about farmers. ''This is the beginning of a new chapter in the debate over genetically modified foods,'' Mr. Rifkin said at a news conference yesterday in Washington. In filing the suit in Federal court, Mr. Hausfeld said that he was seeking class-action status for the case. Nine other companies, including DuPont and Novartis, were named as co-conspirators. The lawsuit contends that since 1996 Monsanto has been using its influence in the agriculture market to gain control over the corn and soybean markets and to prepare for the widespread introduction of genetically modified seeds. The lawsuit contends that as a leader in the field of agricultural biotechnology, Monsanto initiated an effort to neutralize competition through licensing agreements with its competitors and the misuse of intellectual property rights. The company, which spent more than $8 billion to acquire large seed companies in the last few years, also conspired with other large seed companies to inflate prices and force small farmers to pay excessive ''technology fees'' and agree to restrictive planting contracts that sometimes forced them to buy package deals of Monsanto products, according to the suit. In the news conference in Washington, Mr. Hausfeld also said there was a significant amount of uncertainty about whether genetically modified seeds were safe, and that farm exports were being harmed by growing scientific and political concerns that have arisen despite Monsanto's claims that the products are safe. Several farm groups, however, defended Monsanto and its use of biotechnology. ''Soybean farmers strongly support the technology,'' said Bob Callanan, a spokesman for the American |
1164166_5 | Plans for Military Base Divide California County | ballot measures to incorporate as a city. The measure finally succeeded this year in part because leaders explained to voters that as a city it could battle the El Toro airport more effectively. Orange County is the sixth largest county in the country, with about 2.8 million residents. While at one time much of the population commuted to jobs in Los Angeles, only about 14 percent do now, and a larger number commute in from other areas. The county is about 54 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic and 13 percent Asian-American, with a tiny proportion of African-Americans. But it is estimated that, within a decade or so, the white population will no longer hold a majority. The biggest changes, though, have been economic. In spite of the county government's nearly forgotten bankruptcy five years ago, the area is choking on the spectacular growth of businesses that often located here because of the pleasant lifestyle. Some airport opponents claim the north wants to shut down John Wayne Airport and simply transfer the pollution, noise and traffic to the southern end of the county. Northerners deny this. The county government insists its plan is for two airports, keeping John Wayne open. The county envisions that the El Toro facility would be phased in gradually, with the capacity reaching nearly 29 million passengers annually around 2020. There has also been a proposal to stop the expansion in 2010, when the capacity would be 18 million passengers per year. Northerners say neither plan would satisfy the growing demand for air service. Southerners counter that traffic at John Wayne, which operates under tight restrictions, is actually declining. Northerners say that is because fares on the small number of flights are too costly. Annual passenger traffic at John Wayne Airport dropped to 7.5 million passengers last year from a peak of 7.7 million in 1997. And in the first 10 months of this year it slipped to 6.2 million passengers from 6.3 million in the same period in 1998. Just the process by which the issue is being decided worries some people because of the way it has invited emotional responses. No company has a greater interest in the battle than the privately held Irvine Company, the largest landowner in the county and the developer of the city of Irvine. The politically influential company has not taken a stance, but it has expressed dismay at this |
1164206_0 | Uncertainty Clouds Plans For Pipelines | Freed by deregulation and the demise of utility monopolies, pipeline companies are seeking to build two major new lines to open the New York-New Jersey market to vast reserves of natural gas from western Canada. In theory, the pipelines will enable more independent gas marketing companies to enter the market, encourage competition and cost cutting, and lead to cheaper gas bills for homeowners, offices and industries. But for now, the fate of the two big proposed projects and their impact on deregulated sales in the metropolitan region are uncertain. One project would stretch from a major natural gas hub in Chicago through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and into New Jersey, cutting through 33 New Jersey towns in 10 counties. The other would link the Chicago hub to New York State and run from Canada under Lake Erie and then east along New York's Southern Tier, through Orange, Rockland and Westchester Counties and end in Mount Vernon and Yonkers. The pipeline companies proposing both want them built and operating by next November to coincide with the completion of a pipeline that will bring 1.3 billion cubic feet of gas a day from the Canadian Rockies to the Chicago hub. Each of the proposed lines is intended to carry about half that volume -- 700 million cubic feet a day -- to markets in the Northeast. But completion dates of late next year seem too ambitious now. On Dec. 15, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which grants permits for new pipelines, imposed stiff environmental and marketing conditions on the proposed Chicago-to-New Jersey line. Opponents of the line predicted that the new requirements would delay construction and possibly doom the project. The proposed line ending in Westchester County is not as far along in the review process. The regulatory commission is still preparing a final environmental impact statement on the project. It is unclear when the agency will schedule a vote on a construction permit for it. The political climate surrounding each line is sharply different. Opposition is deep in New Jersey. An unusual bipartisan coalition has denounced the Chicago-to-New Jersey project, calling it speculative and unnecessary, a risk to public safety and a threat to preserved open spaces and sensitive wetlands the pipeline would cross. Foes include Gov. Christine Todd Whitman; both New Jersey senators, Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert G. Torricelli; the state's Congressional delegation; the State Legislature; and the hundreds of |
1164149_5 | U.N. Agency Is Bringing Timor Online (Horsemen in Mongolia, as Well) | Nations Development Program helped establish the first Internet service in Bhutan, just as the Himalayan nation got its first television station. ''For a landlocked country, information is a good commodity,'' said Henrik Holde at the development program's office in the capital, Thimphu, where efforts are under way to set up an Internet cafe. With per-capita incomes in the $400 range, few Bhutanese can afford Internet access, much less a personal computer. But by using microwave signals to carry the Internet to community centers in villages separated by mountains, Mr. Holde says health workers can take advantage of information on disease, and rice farmers can get better information on prices in India and Bangladesh. In contrast, Mongolia's people are spread over a largely flat area almost as big as Alaska, and most Mongolians live as nomadic herders. But thanks to heavy subsidies from the old Soviet Union, more than four of five Mongolians can read; periodically horsemen ride into a town to sell their meat and read newspapers flown in from the capital, says Atsushi Yamanaka, information and communications technology officer at the United Nations Development Program in Ulan Bator. The flights ended with the fall of Communism, so the United Nations has helped establish community e-mail centers for the newspapers to be downloaded and printed out. Borderless communications is already paying off in India, with an increasing number of Western companies moving some back-office and data-processing functions there to cut costs or offer round-the-clock services, said Mark Leigh, president of business communications systems at Lucent Technologies in Singapore. GE Capital International Services, for example, performs some transaction processing outside New Delhi and Swissair, British Airways and Lufthansa have moved some data processing to Bombay. Still, there are those who doubt whether access to the global network will really benefit people who have yet to own a telephone and whose craftsmanship, however considerable, has not prepared them for the vexations of troubleshooting the personal computer. Realities like these have stymied past efforts in Africa and Latin America. Internet advocates reply that failure to set up networks for the poorest countries only keeps them poor. ''You can't exclude these countries just because they're backwaters,'' Mr. Hitchen of the International Data Corporation said. ''The Internet is becoming so important on a basic economic level you have to start looking at Internet adoption as a measure of development like you would televisions and telephones.'' |
1157471_0 | Study of Ill Gulf War Veterans Points to Chemical Damage | Some veterans of the Persian Gulf war who have complained of chronic illnesses have signs of brain damage caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, the authors of a scientific study partly financed by the Pentagon reported today. Magnetic scans of sick veterans found lower-than-normal levels of a certain chemical, indicating damage in the parts of the brain that control reflexes, movement, memory and emotion, the study's authors said. More than 100,000 American service members sent to the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991 have since reported experiencing a raft of maladies, including fatigue, muscle pain, memory loss and sleep disorders, which have collectively come to be known as gulf war syndrome. The researchers stopped short of identifying the exact cause of the brain damage, saying that more medical research was needed. But coupled with a survey last month sponsored by the Pentagon, the findings showed that scientists were narrowing in on chemical exposure -- from pesticides, low levels of nerve gas or an experimental drug given to troops -- as the cause of the illnesses. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and presented today at the annual convention of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago. A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, declined to discuss the findings in detail, saying they were preliminary and had not yet been subjected to peer review in an academic journal, which the authors said they expected soon. ''There are many steps to go here,'' Admiral Quigley said. ''We need to take a look at it.'' The study's principal author, James L. Fleckenstein, a professor of radiology, said in an interview that the study was the first to show brain damage in sick veterans. Dr. Fleckenstein and his colleagues examined 22 veterans complaining of illnesses. Using magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which measures chemical levels in the brain, they compared the results with those from 18 healthy veterans. The experiment was repeated in a sample of six more veterans. The brain scans found that sick veterans had 10 percent to 25 percent lower levels of a chemical called the chemical N-acetyl-aspartate, signaling a loss of neurons in the brain stem and basal ganglia. Dr. Fleckenstein said that veterans with more severe symptoms showed the lowest levels of the chemical. Nearly three years ago, researchers from the same university reported that exposure to a combination |
1157468_1 | In Ancient Texts, Solace Amid War | embraced slavery, racial triumphalism and infanticide. But the classics offer a continuum with Western literature, architecture, art and political systems. The West's past, its political and social philosophy and intellectual achievements cannot, without the classics, be examined thoughtfully. Nor without a classical background can one fully grasp the nature of modern democracy whose ideas, like checks and balances, were lifted from the Greek and Roman philosophers. Thucydides, knowing that Athens was doomed in the war with Sparta, consoled himself with the belief that the artistic and intellectual achievements of Athens would in the coming centuries overshadow raw Spartan militarism. Beauty and knowledge could, ultimately, triumph over power. As my year at Harvard progressed, I devoured the classical authors in translation, but wasn't always as sure about taking on another dead language. One of my teachers, Dr. Kathleen Coleman, told me one morning that I needed a purpose behind my slog through Latin. Once a week, she instructed, I would appear at her office prepared to do a translation of a poem by Catullus or passage from Virgil. I had never read Catullus, but swiftly came to love him. I retreated in the afternoons carrying my books to the Smyth Classical Reading Room in the Widener Library with its huge oak tables and sagging leather chairs. My fondest moments revolve around this sanctuary with its well-thumbed volumes. It was there that I was freed to step outside myself, to struggle with questions the cant of modern culture often allows us to ignore. I admired the past for its achievements and was better able to question the present for its assumptions. All idylls must end. Mine was shattered on March 24, when NATO began its bombing campaign of Kosovo. I had come to Cambridge from Kosovo, and Kosovar Albanians I had known for three years were now missing or found dead. I slept little. I was chained to the news reports. My former translator, a published poet, vanished. I returned to Kosovo last summer and her family was searching for her in mass graves. I had memorized in Latin a few of the Catullus poems and parts of the ''Aeneid,'' In Cambridge, Kosovo was to most people around me an abstraction, and the words consoled and rescued me -- often from myself. I held a communion now with the long dead. I woke one morning well before dawn haunted by a Catullus |
1157428_0 | Business fliers worldwide are increasingly using the Internet to research and book their flights. | BUSINESS travelers worldwide are increasingly embracing the Internet to research and book their flights, an annual survey by the International Air Transport Association has found. Almost two-thirds of the survey's approximately 1,000 respondents from Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region said they used the Internet to find flight information, a 50 percent increase over the survey's results from two years ago. In some cases IATA compares the current results with year-earlier figures, in others with figures from 1997. Not surprisingly, North American business travelers -- who made up approximately one-third of the group surveyed -- were the heaviest users of the Internet for flight research; 70 percent of this group said they went on-line to do research, an increase of 27 percent over 1997. Such use grew at an even greater rate among European travelers (an increase of 68 percent over 1997) and Asian travelers (an increase of 63 percent). Over all, the number of travelers using the Internet to actually book a trip has almost doubled, from 9 percent in IATA's 1998 poll to 17 percent this year. One in 10 of those surveyed said they made flight reservations online weekly, one-fifth use the Internet monthly to book, while almost 40 percent make online bookings every few months. The number of respondents who said they expected to use the Internet to make travel plans in five years' time also increased significantly, rising from 39 percent in 1997 to 51 percent this year. The IATA survey also found the following: *Some two-fifths of travelers have used electronic tickets, a 60 percent increase over 1997. *Two-thirds of respondents favor airport check-in desks over automated check-in and curbside check-in. *Delays are business travelers' greatest concern. Delays on short-haul trips in particular were cited by 52 percent of respondents this year, up from 36 percent in 1998. *Almost two-thirds of travelers said they were willing to try a no-frills airline for short-haul flights, while 37 percent said they were ''very willing'' to do this. *More than two-thirds of respondents said they did not use in-flight business services like telephones, faxes and computer data ports on their last long-haul flight. When these were employed, the telephone was used most. Rating in-flight entertainment activities, respondents said they watched films the most; they also said they watched news programs and read in-flight magazines. *Airline schedules are the most important factor when choosing long-haul economy-class flights, |
1157439_0 | WORLD BRIEFING | EUROPE BRITAIN: CURB ON BEEF SALES TO END -- A two-year-old ban on sales of beef on the bone is to end Dec. 17 after assurances from medical officials that there is no longer any risk that certain cuts may be contaminated with the infective agent that causes mad-cow disease, which attacks the brain. The action was unrelated to the continuing French blockade of all British beef imports in defiance of the European Commission's decision to lift its worldwide ban last Aug. 1. Warren Hoge (NYT) NORTHERN IRELAND: ASSEMBLY APPROVED BY LORDS -- A bill to transfer home rule to the new Northern Ireland Assembly passed the House of Lords and is expected to clear Commons today. The process was speeded up to enable the Protestant-Catholic coalition for Ulster to start work on Thursday. Warren Hoge (NYT) VATICAN CITY: POPE TO VISIT FATIMA -- John Paul II plans to visit Fatima on May 13, his third pilgrimage to the site in Portugal where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to three shepherds on May 13, 1917. On May 13, 1981, the Pope was shot by a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, and he believes that Mary saved his life. The pope is expected to beatify two of the children. The third, Sister Lucia Dos Santos, 92, lives in a convent in Portugal. Alessandra Stanley (NYT) TURKEY: PLEA TO DELAY EXECUTION -- The European Court of Human Rights asked Turkey to delay the execution of the Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan for several months until it rules on his plea that the death penalty breaches European law. The case is central to Turkey's hopes of becoming a candidate for the European Union. Mr. Ocalan was convicted of treason and murder in leading rebel Kurds seeking self rule. (Reuters) SWITZERLAND: MORE HOLOCAUST PAYMENTS -- The Swiss fund for Holocaust survivors approved payments of $1.27 million to 1,600 Jewish and Gypsy applicants and political opponents of the Nazis. The fund has distributed more than $160 million. Victor Homola (NYT) UKRAINE: LEADER PROMISES REFORM -- As he was sworn in for a second five-year term, President Leonid Kuchma promised radical reforms and better living standards. ''You will see a new president before you,'' he said at a lavish ceremony that legislators had opposed. He called for ''stern pragmatism'' in pursuing economic growth and better ties with Russia and the United States. (Reuters) |
1157490_2 | Documents Show Officials Disagreed On Altered Food | filed against the agency by the Alliance for Bio-Integrity, founded by Mr. Druker, a lawyer who is the organization's executive director. Mr. Druker is conducting a one-man campaign to force the agency to institute mandatory, rigorous safety testing of all genetically engineered food and require labeling. Safety testing and labeling are now voluntary. Mr. Druker, a panelist at the hearing today, was joined by Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute of the Consumer Federation of America, and Dr. Rebecca Goldberg, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, in calling for labeling and testing. Dr. Goldberg said ''the agency has not squarely placed the burden of proof on industry to demonstrate the safety of new food, which had historically been required in the past.'' Despite rising public sentiment for more information about bioengineered foods, which prompted the public hearings, Dr. Maryanski said there was no reason to change the rules covering them. He maintained that as long as developers of these foods ''follow the agency's guidelines and do the testing that is recommended,'' though not required, genetically engineered foods were ''as safe as any food on the market.'' Until this past year, Americans -- if they thought about genetically engineered food at all, and most did not -- seemed willing to leave these judgments to the agency. But all around the globe, particularly in the European Union, consumers and activists have opposed genetically modified food with such force that American farmers have found those crops banned from some countries. Now many British supermarkets require labeling of genetically modified products. The furious activity has finally had an effect in this country and many of the questions that were not asked in 1992 are being asked now. The original decisions on how to regulate genetically altered foods were made by the Bush White House. Vice President Dan Quayle announced details of a government policy for streamlining regulation of food produced through genetic engineering, saying that the United States ''was the world leader in biotechnology,'' and the government wanted ''to keep it that way.'' Ms. Foreman said in her remarks that the process of regulating bio-engineered food ''began under a cloud of political influence peddling and managerial bean counting, and the F.D.A. has done nothing to dispel that cloud.'' She said that both labeling and a mandatory pre-approval process were essential. Several food trade associations, including the Food Marketing Institute |
1157408_4 | Stealing Fire From Olympus; Staging the Greeks, With High-Voltage and Modern Energy | when he was buried in Sicily, all it said on his grave was, 'Here lies Aeschylus who fought at the battle of Marathon.' And that is what his tomb should have said: In that battle the Greeks were freed from the tyranny of the Persians and went on to create the great democracy that was Athens.'' The company, which is presenting ''King Lear'' and ''The Iliad'' at the Clark Studio Theater at Lincoln Center through Sunday and from Jan. 4 through Jan. 8, will return to masked theater next year with a touring production of ''Oedipus the King,'' in a new translation by Mr. Meineck and Paul Woodruff. The play will be performed in New York in June. Some company signatures are apparent in the current productions, including the carefully stylized ensemble choreography, a part of mask theater, that often gives the works a dreamy, dancelike quality. ''The Iliad,'' with the actors dressed as World War II soldiers, is also aided immensely by the stark and colloquial translation by Stanley Lombardo. In a review in The New York Times, D. J. R. Bruckner wrote that even though Mr. Lombardo's language was ''off the streets and out of barracks, the company's choreographed movement, the chants, occasional dances and the rhythms of the speeches convey much of the feeling of the Greek verse: its rumbles and melodies and silences, the beat of its pulse.'' Mr. Meineck said: ''In the fifth century the Greeks portrayed Homeric warriors in contemporary battle dress. What they wore as Hoplites at the battle of Marathon was what Achilles wore. These people were soldiers, the Greeks wanted to say, just like you.'' Robert Richmond, the company's associate artistic director, frequently uses electronic music composed by one of the principal actors, Anthony Cochrane, a Scot who spent several seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company. While the sets are sparse, the lighting, sound effects, staging and costumes are innovative. In ''The Iliad,'' which uses four trunks as stage props, the presence of the gods is heralded by the sound of bombers. In recent productions of ''Philoctetes,'' ''Julius Caesar'' and ''The Birds,'' a large blue silk sheet mutated into the sea, a tent, a cave, various landscapes and the interior of Julius Caesar's mind. The company's work is tightly choreographed, a quality that lends itself to smaller, narrowly focused dramas. Because of its size, Aquila is forced to cut or double |
1157498_4 | Porto Seguro Journal; Indian Tribe Wants Brazil's Plymouth Rock Back | this park has suffered are due to the Indians,'' complained Silvio da Cruz Freire, the park's acting director, ''so for them to suddenly present themselves as protectors of the environment flies in the face of reality. I can't remember a time when there haven't been Indians inside the park burning trees to plant their crops or cutting them down to use in making their handicrafts.'' Some environmentalists also worry that the Pataxo case could send the wrong signal to other groups, ranging from ranchers to miners, that covet the riches contained in other, more remote and less policed national parks. ''The law clearly states that no one can form a residential community in a national park,'' Mr. Santana said, ''and the fear among nongovernmental organizations is that this could set a dangerous precedent.'' But the Pataxo argue that they are taking better care of the park than the government ever did. ''The park guards were always taking bribes to let hunters and wood gatherers come in,'' said Aliso Coelho, a member of the Pataxo security team that, armed with clubs and bows and arrows, now controls access to the park. ''But we have captured them and turned them over to police.'' Disruption to normal activities within the park has been minimal, because it has been closed to the public since February. That step was taken, Mr. Freire said, ''in order to carry out improvements to the visitor center and expansions of services like water and electricity, with the idea that we would reopen in time for the 500th anniversary commemorations.'' Tensions in the region rose in mid-November, though, when in violation of a law that limits Indian affairs to the Federal Police, a truckload of state police officers was dispatched to a Pataxo village about 100 miles north of here for reasons that are still unclear. After the troops stopped to remove a barrier from a road, two officers were shot and killed. The police accuse the Pataxo of the killings, but tribal leaders deny any involvement. ''There is no danger of any violence in the park itself, because that is a different situation,'' said Cleto de Lima e Silva, an official of the local office of the National Indian Foundation, the Brazilian government agency that deals with indigenous peoples. ''The government is directly involved, and the government wants to keep everyone calm so that we can resolve this in |
1157432_0 | Times Company Dismisses 23 Over E-Mail | The New York Times Company dismissed 23 employees at an administrative center in Norfolk, Va., yesterday for violating the company's e-mail policy, a company spokeswoman said. The workers -- men and women in a variety of departments and functions -- were among 200 employees at a center that processes invoices, pay and benefits for the company's various divisions. An unspecified number of other employees received disciplinary warning letters over the incident, which involved internally circulated e-mail, the company said. The company would not elaborate on the basis for the dismissal except to say that the employees had violated a policy specifying that ''computer communications must be consistent with conventional standards of ethical and proper conduct, behavior and manners and are not to be used to create, forward or display any offensive or disruptive messages, including photographs, graphics and audio materials.'' The company had dismissed ''a person here or there'' over e-mail violations in the past, but never a group of such size, said Nancy Nielsen, the company spokeswoman. THE MEDIA BUSINESS |
1162500_10 | TECHNOLOGY & MEDIA: The Economy Transformed, Bit by Bit; Businesses and Society Confront the Inescapable Challenges of High Technology and the Internet | shift. That was precisely the quandary Mr. Gates was sketching out in his 1995 memo: Microsoft was threatened by the rise of Internet software; yet if it scrambled, he wrote, the company could benefit from the Internet. The speed of Microsoft's response is regarded as an exceptional case of a big company's moving nimbly to change course, but the tactics it used became the subject of the government's sweeping antitrust suit against Microsoft. The Internet's openness, low-cost use and speed are its distinctive features. The telegraph, historians note, had many of the same qualities -- it was an electronic network that transformed many business practices and was a new medium of informal communication for many. Yet the telegraph was expensive in contrast to the Internet. Sending a message was a household budgeting decision; firing off an e-mail message today is not. ''The Internet is the telegraph for the rest of us,'' noted Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future. The speed at which the Internet is spreading across the globe, pushing both the tools and values of high technology onto people, could prompt a backlash. Peter Schwartz, a leading futurist and business consultant, is a technology optimist. Along with Peter Leyden and Joel Hyatt, he wrote, ''The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity.'' Yet Mr. Schwartz, while predicting that the pace of technological change will not slow, adds that the willingness of people to accept new technology could reverse sharply if companies and governments do not make the right policy choices. The Internet economy carries the potential for creating ''a deep divide between those who have the skills to prosper and those who don't,'' he said. ''That's why education policy is so important,'' he added. The social tolerance for technology, Mr. Schwartz added, could also cool. The advance of nuclear power in the United States, he said, came to a standstill because the public fears after the Three Mile Island accident were not allayed. The recent resistance to genetically altered foods and the protests in Seattle over the World Trade Organization's global influence on environmental and labor protections, he said, are warning signs. ''An inadequate appreciation of either the losers in this new economy or of the people with legitimate concerns could be real problems,'' Mr. Schwartz said. ''If you don't address those groups early on, it will come back to bite you.'' |
1162422_5 | Auto Dealers Streamline Operations To Meet the Challenge of the Internet | extract themselves from swamps or deep snow, are likely to be replaced on many vehicles with lighter, less expensive all-wheel-drive systems. All-wheel-drive systems, which typically do not have so-called transfer cases with very low gears, are just as effective as four-wheel drives for accelerating on slippery roads, although neither helps for braking. Environmentalists have called for increased use of hybrid engines that rely partly on electricity and partly on gasoline or methanol. Indeed, Honda and Toyota plan to introduce small cars with such systems next year. But in a report in November, the Energy Information Administration predicted that 14.3 million automobiles would be sold in 2010, but only 560,000, or 4 percent, would be hybrids. Fuel cells, an even cleaner technology that involves combining hydrogen and oxygen to produce power, will propel only 2,000 or so automobiles sold in 2010, said David Chien, the agency's transportation forecasting team leader. ''They'll start making a dent around 2015,'' he said, adding that automakers were leery of damaging any new technology's reputation by offering it before it had been perfected. ''They really don't want to put something out early and blow it.'' As hybrid engines and eventually fuel cells do come onto the market, customers are likely to want to test them before buying. Indeed, while Mr. Power predicts that many customers will be willing to buy cars over the Internet someday, his company's research shows that 76 percent of new-car buyers had test-driven automobiles at the dealership where they eventually bought them, down insignificantly from 79 percent in 1996. Many other buyers test-drive a model at one dealership before buying it at another. Such research heartens dealers like Mr. Lutz, the owner of Extreme Dodge here, 80 miles west of Detroit. By relying heavily on computers, he has cut his sales staff by more than half in the last three years, lowering his costs so he can compete more aggressively with other dealers on price. But he also contends that, while millions of Americans may now be willing to buy shirts, books and toys over the Internet, they will remain leery of buying $20,000 cars or $30,000 sport utility vehicles that way. He and other dealers here continue to join the boards of community groups and lend used cars free to school athletic teams for out-of-town trips. ''People reciprocate,'' Mr. Lutz said, ''and buy cars from us.'' OUTLOOK 2000: ECONOMY & INDUSTRY |
1162486_4 | In the Works: Drugs Tailored to Individual Patients | to be used to grow new blood vessels and, in the more distant future, it will be possible to grow entire new organs. One approach to trying to determine gene function is to learn which genes are turned on in different types of cells, such as those turned on in cancer cells compared with normal cells. This has opened up opportunities for companies selling tiny chips that can quickly analyze thousands of genes at a time. Similarly, companies are now racing to figure out genetic differences among people. Differences of a single base -- known as a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP (pronounced ''snip'') -- can determine eye color or make the difference between health and illness. Such information could lead to personalized and preventive medicine. People found to be susceptible to a disease might take a regimen of pills or change their diet to prevent it. And medicines will be tailored to each individual, a discipline called pharmacogenomics. ''Snips will make a quantum leap toward patient-specific medicine,'' said G. Steven Burrill, chief executive of Burrill & Company, a San Francisco merchant bank that specializes in biotechnology. A precursor is Herceptin, the Genentech drug for breast cancer. It works in only 25 percent to 30 percent of cases, those in which the breast tumors produce unusually large amounts of a protein known as Her2. Patients are tested beforehand to see if they qualify. Millennium plans to introduce a genetic test next year that will predict whether melanoma, a skin cancer, will spread through the body. Patients whose tumors will not spread might be spared chemotherapy or radiation treatment. Personalized medicine will change the economics of the business, with fewer blockbuster drugs. ''There will be a lot of fragmentation in the market,'' said Jeffrey Casdin, chief executive of Casdin Capital Partners, a biotechnology investment fund. He said, however, that since personalized drugs would be more effective and would have fewer side effects than mass market drugs, they would fetch higher prices. Genetic profiling of patients raises privacy issues. Should, for instance, a person's susceptibility to a disease be used by insurance companies to raise premiums or by employers in hiring decisions? That is just one of the ethical and political issues likely to confront the biotechnology industry in the next decade. A huge backlash has already developed against bioengineered crops. There are controversies over cloning and the use of stem cells |
1162413_7 | OUTLOOK 2000: AN EPITAPH FOR THE 20th CENTURY; A Time of Energy And Enterprise And E-Everything | power of technology. The 20th century ''has been a triumph for human expression,'' he said. Communication has been transformed, he said, from what was once largely face to face to something that is now both instant and universal for people around the globe. No matter how effective books and other printed forms of expression were in creating change, the widespread adoption of television and the Internet has fundamentally changed how we express ourselves, he said. While the next century may see advances that make such communication even more efficient and ubiquitous, it cannot make communication faster, Mr. Eisner noted. ''You can't go faster than instant,'' he said. Mr. Eisner, who suggested that philosophers and psychiatrists were more adept at thinking about the implications of this change, shied away from predicting where this instant human expression, allowing anyone to say anything to nearly anyone else, would lead. Either global democracy or totalitarianism could result, he said. Martha Stewart, the entrepreneur whose sense of style led to the creation of her own media and merchandising empire, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, worries that we are already witnessing the drawbacks of the new speed at which we conduct our lives. While she applauded the advances of the 20th century in technology, science and medicine, ''advancement in the study of the humanities, in art and in cultural endeavors, seems to have been less progressive, especially in the second half of this century,'' she argued. The result of the widespread adoption of the telephone, faxes, e-mail messages and computers has been the inability to think creatively, Ms. Stewart said. Answering e-mail has taken the place of writing a great novel. Her own life has been consumed by the Internet, she said, and technology has allowed her to do any number of jobs at once. ''It's insane,'' she laughed, but she said she was also saddened by the widespread implications of this speed. She is also concerned about the social impact of the technology, which she described as taking away physical contact, from seeing someone directly or talking to them on the telephone. ''It is much more introverted living,'' she said. What she hopes is that the next century will provide more time for people to reflect. As people get used to the technology, they may learn to dominate it. And she hopes that we remain sensitive to the challenge of making technology accessible to all, although |
1162421_1 | Rocky Outlook for Genetically Engineered Crops | like Monarch butterflies. Over the last year, governments and the industry's biggest customers began deciding it was better to retreat than to ignore negative public sentiment. The backlash was strongest in Europe, where supermarket chains took foods containing oil from genetically modified corn and soybeans off their shelves, and regulators tabled applications to plant new genetically altered strains of beets and canola despite the opinions of their own science advisers that the crops were safe. Some of the biggest drug, food and chemical giants have already retreated from the once popular model of becoming ''life sciences'' companies with strong footings in every sector affected by biotechnology. Early this month, AstraZeneca P.L.C. of Britain and Novartis A.G. of Switzerland, announced plans to spin off and then merge their agricultural businesses into a new company to be called Syngenta. ''We went three steps forward in recent years, but we are now taking two steps back,'' said Sano M. Shimoda, founder of BioScience Securities, a research firm based in Orinda, Calif., that concentrates on agricultural biotechnology. ''I don't think we've seen the worst of it yet.'' The biggest business beneficiaries of the biotechnology backlash may be the manufacturers of the traditional agrichemicals that have been losing market share and money while battling to slow the move of farmers to new crops that are devised to work best with just one herbicide or, in some cases, to eliminate the need for certain insecticides. Some chemical giants like DuPont, Dow Chemical and Aventis have major commitments to biotechnology as well, but others, like the struggling American Cyanamid pesticides business of American Home Products, have little to lose from a setback for biotechnology. One development many foresee for next year is the adoption in many countries -- perhaps even the United States -- of labeling standards for food containing genetically modified products. Opponents of biotechnology predict confidently that labels will lead to widespread rejection of modified products, pointing to recent experience in Europe, where retailers have raced to advertise ''G.M.O.-free'' products, referring to genetically modified organisms. But analysts say that outcome depends largely on whether both kinds of products remain on the shelves, and the level of fears about health hazards and pricing. In the United States, they point out, milk produced from cows that have not been injected with Posilac, a bovine growth hormone that Monsanto produces in bacteria, is labeled, but it is usually |
1162577_0 | Monsanto and Pharmacia to Join, Creating a Pharmaceutical Giant | The Monsanto Company, which makes one of the world's best-selling drugs but has come under fire recently over genetically altered crops, and the drug maker Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc. agreed to merge yesterday in a deal that would create one of the world's largest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The two companies, which have a combined market value of about $52 billion, plan to combine their growing pharmaceutical operations and leap into the upper echelon of drug companies early next year with more than $8 billion in worldwide sales. Their union, which must be approved by regulators, is an attempt to keep pace in the rapidly consolidating world of drug makers, where big research and development budgets and worldwide sales and distribution networks are common. The new company, however, will move quickly to separate the agricultural division of Monsanto, executives said. The company has come under criticism both in the United States and in Europe over its development of genetically modified crops, which emit their own pesticides and immunize themselves against herbicides but also increase crop yields and hold out the promise of creating more nutritious foods. The new company plans to create an agricultural subsidiary and then to sell about 20 percent of the unit to the public in an initial offering next year. The idea is to separate the pharmaceutical and agricultural divisions, partly because of shareholder complaints that the agricultural division is dragging down the stock price of Monsanto. An outcry against the genetically modified crops began in Europe earlier this year, and some of the safety concerns have reached American shores. A week ago, several leading antitrust lawyers filed a class-action suit against Monsanto, accusing the company of rushing the products to market without proper testing. The suit also says that Monsanto, the world's second-largest seed company, played a central role in an international cartel that fixed the prices of corn and soybean seeds. Monsanto executives, however, dismissed the suit, which is backed by environmental advocates, as a political stunt meant to heighten consumer fears. The company insists the products have been proved to be safe and says regulators have approved their use in the United States, where more than 70 million acres of modified corn, soybeans and cotton have been planted. Now, executives at Monsanto and Pharmacia say, the division of the company will allow shareholders to make a choice. ''We do recognize that we have |
1162513_1 | Rocky Outlook for Genetically Engineered Crops | like Monarch butterflies. Over the last year, governments and the industry's biggest customers began deciding it was better to retreat than to ignore negative public sentiment. The backlash was strongest in Europe, where supermarket chains took foods containing oil from genetically modified corn and soybeans off their shelves, and regulators tabled applications to plant new genetically altered strains of beets and canola despite the opinions of their own science advisers that the crops were safe. Some of the biggest drug, food and chemical giants have already retreated from the once popular model of becoming ''life sciences'' companies with strong footings in every sector affected by biotechnology. Early this month, AstraZeneca P.L.C. of Britain and Novartis A.G. of Switzerland, announced plans to spin off and then merge their agricultural businesses into a new company to be called Syngenta. ''We went three steps forward in recent years, but we are now taking two steps back,'' said Sano M. Shimoda, founder of BioScience Securities, a research firm based in Orinda, Calif., that concentrates on agricultural biotechnology. ''I don't think we've seen the worst of it yet.'' The biggest business beneficiaries of the biotechnology backlash may be the manufacturers of the traditional agrichemicals that have been losing market share and money while battling to slow the move of farmers to new crops that are devised to work best with just one herbicide or, in some cases, to eliminate the need for certain insecticides. Some chemical giants like DuPont, Dow Chemical and Aventis have major commitments to biotechnology as well, but others, like the struggling American Cyanamid pesticides business of American Home Products, have little to lose from a setback for biotechnology. One development many foresee for next year is the adoption in many countries -- perhaps even the United States -- of labeling standards for food containing genetically modified products. Opponents of biotechnology predict confidently that labels will lead to widespread rejection of modified products, pointing to recent experience in Europe, where retailers have raced to advertise ''G.M.O.-free'' products, referring to genetically modified organisms. But analysts say that outcome depends largely on whether both kinds of products remain on the shelves, and the level of fears about health hazards and pricing. In the United States, they point out, milk produced from cows that have not been injected with Posilac, a bovine growth hormone that Monsanto produces in bacteria, is labeled, but it is usually |
1162526_5 | Auto Dealers Streamline Operations To Meet the Challenge of the Internet | let motorists extract themselves from swamps or deep snow, are likely to be replaced on many vehicles with lighter, less expensive all-wheel-drive systems. All-wheel-drive systems, which typically do not have so-called transfer cases with very low gears, are just as effective as four-wheel drives for accelerating on slippery roads, although neither helps for braking. Environmentalists have called for increased use of hybrid engines that rely partly on electricity and partly on gasoline or methanol. Indeed, Honda and Toyota plan to introduce small cars with such systems next year. But in a report in November, the Energy Information Administration predicted that 14.3 million automobiles would be sold in 2010, but only 560,000, or 4 percent, would be hybrids. Fuel cells, an even cleaner technology that involves combining hydrogen and oxygen to produce power, will propel only 2,000 or so automobiles sold in 2010, said David Chien, the agency's transportation forecasting team leader. ''They'll start making a dent around 2015,'' he said, adding that automakers were leery of damaging any new technology's reputation by offering it before it had been perfected. ''They really don't want to put something out early and blow it.'' As hybrid engines and eventually fuel cells do come onto the market, customers are likely to want to test them before buying. Indeed, while Mr. Power predicts that many customers will be willing to buy cars over the Internet someday, his company's research shows that 76 percent of new-car buyers had test-driven automobiles at the dealership where they eventually bought them, down insignificantly from 79 percent in 1996. Many other buyers test-drive a model at one dealership before buying it at another. Such research heartens dealers like Mr. Lutz, the owner of Extreme Dodge here, 80 miles west of Detroit. By relying heavily on computers, he has cut his sales staff by more than half in the last three years, lowering his costs so he can compete more aggressively with other dealers on price. But he also contends that, while millions of Americans may now be willing to buy shirts, books and toys over the Internet, they will remain leery of buying $20,000 cars or $30,000 sport utility vehicles that way. He and other dealers here continue to join the boards of community groups and lend used cars free to school athletic teams for out-of-town trips. ''People reciprocate,'' Mr. Lutz said, ''and buy cars from us.'' ECONOMY & INDUSTRY |
1162420_4 | In the Works: Drugs Tailored to Individual Patients | to be used to grow new blood vessels and, in the more distant future, it will be possible to grow entire new organs. One approach to trying to determine gene function is to learn which genes are turned on in different types of cells, such as those turned on in cancer cells compared with normal cells. This has opened up opportunities for companies selling tiny chips that can quickly analyze thousands of genes at a time. Similarly, companies are now racing to figure out genetic differences among people. Differences of a single base -- known as a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP (pronounced ''snip'') -- can determine eye color or make the difference between health and illness. Such information could lead to personalized and preventive medicine. People found to be susceptible to a disease might take a regimen of pills or change their diet to prevent it. And medicines will be tailored to each individual, a discipline called pharmacogenomics. ''Snips will make a quantum leap toward patient-specific medicine,'' said G. Steven Burrill, chief executive of Burrill & Company, a San Francisco merchant bank that specializes in biotechnology. A precursor is Herceptin, the Genentech drug for breast cancer. It works in only 25 percent to 30 percent of cases, those in which the breast tumors produce unusually large amounts of a protein known as Her2. Patients are tested beforehand to see if they qualify. Millennium plans to introduce a genetic test next year that will predict whether melanoma, a skin cancer, will spread through the body. Patients whose tumors will not spread might be spared chemotherapy or radiation treatment. Personalized medicine will change the economics of the business, with fewer blockbuster drugs. ''There will be a lot of fragmentation in the market,'' said Jeffrey Casdin, chief executive of Casdin Capital Partners, a biotechnology investment fund. He said, however, that since personalized drugs would be more effective and would have fewer side effects than mass market drugs, they would fetch higher prices. Genetic profiling of patients raises privacy issues. Should, for instance, a person's susceptibility to a disease be used by insurance companies to raise premiums or by employers in hiring decisions? That is just one of the ethical and political issues likely to confront the biotechnology industry in the next decade. A huge backlash has already developed against bioengineered crops. There are controversies over cloning and the use of stem cells |
1162504_7 | AN EPITAPH FOR THE 20th CENTURY; A Time of Energy And Enterprise And E-Everything | power of technology. The 20th century ''has been a triumph for human expression,'' he said. Communication has been transformed, he said, from what was once largely face to face to something that is now both instant and universal for people around the globe. No matter how effective books and other printed forms of expression were in creating change, the widespread adoption of television and the Internet has fundamentally changed how we express ourselves, he said. While the next century may see advances that make such communication even more efficient and ubiquitous, it cannot make communication faster, Mr. Eisner noted. ''You can't go faster than instant,'' he said. Mr. Eisner, who suggested that philosophers and psychiatrists were more adept at thinking about the implications of this change, shied away from predicting where this instant human expression, allowing anyone to say anything to nearly anyone else, would lead. Either global democracy or totalitarianism could result, he said. Martha Stewart, the entrepreneur whose sense of style led to the creation of her own media and merchandising empire, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, worries that we are already witnessing the drawbacks of the new speed at which we conduct our lives. While she applauded the advances of the 20th century in technology, science and medicine, ''advancement in the study of the humanities, in art and in cultural endeavors, seems to have been less progressive, especially in the second half of this century,'' she argued. The result of the widespread adoption of the telephone, faxes, e-mail messages and computers has been the inability to think creatively, Ms. Stewart said. Answering e-mail has taken the place of writing a great novel. Her own life has been consumed by the Internet, she said, and technology has allowed her to do any number of jobs at once. ''It's insane,'' she laughed, but she said she was also saddened by the widespread implications of this speed. She is also concerned about the social impact of the technology, which she described as taking away physical contact, from seeing someone directly or talking to them on the telephone. ''It is much more introverted living,'' she said. What she hopes is that the next century will provide more time for people to reflect. As people get used to the technology, they may learn to dominate it. And she hopes that we remain sensitive to the challenge of making technology accessible to all, although |
1162412_10 | OUTLOOK 2000: TECHNOLOGY & MEDIA: The Economy Transformed, Bit by Bit; Businesses and Society Confront the Inescapable Challenges of High Technology and the Internet | shift. That was precisely the quandary Mr. Gates was sketching out in his 1995 memo: Microsoft was threatened by the rise of Internet software; yet if it scrambled, he wrote, the company could benefit from the Internet. The speed of Microsoft's response is regarded as an exceptional case of a big company's moving nimbly to change course, but the tactics it used became the subject of the government's sweeping antitrust suit against Microsoft. The Internet's openness, low-cost use and speed are its distinctive features. The telegraph, historians note, had many of the same qualities -- it was an electronic network that transformed many business practices and was a new medium of informal communication for many. Yet the telegraph was expensive in contrast to the Internet. Sending a message was a household budgeting decision; firing off an e-mail message today is not. ''The Internet is the telegraph for the rest of us,'' noted Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future. The speed at which the Internet is spreading across the globe, pushing both the tools and values of high technology onto people, could prompt a backlash. Peter Schwartz, a leading futurist and business consultant, is a technology optimist. Along with Peter Leyden and Joel Hyatt, he wrote, ''The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity.'' Yet Mr. Schwartz, while predicting that the pace of technological change will not slow, adds that the willingness of people to accept new technology could reverse sharply if companies and governments do not make the right policy choices. The Internet economy carries the potential for creating ''a deep divide between those who have the skills to prosper and those who don't,'' he said. ''That's why education policy is so important,'' he added. The social tolerance for technology, Mr. Schwartz added, could also cool. The advance of nuclear power in the United States, he said, came to a standstill because the public fears after the Three Mile Island accident were not allayed. The recent resistance to genetically altered foods and the protests in Seattle over the World Trade Organization's global influence on environmental and labor protections, he said, are warning signs. ''An inadequate appreciation of either the losers in this new economy or of the people with legitimate concerns could be real problems,'' Mr. Schwartz said. ''If you don't address those groups early on, it will come back to bite you.'' |
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1160101_3 | Driving Yourself To Distraction | Feb. 13, 1997, the New England Journal of Medicine published a large study, made in Toronto, of links between collisions and car-phone use. The authors studied 699 drivers who owned cell phones and had been involved in collisions resulting in substantial property damage. The authors analyzed calls on the day of the collision and for the week before, using billing records. The risk of collision was found to be four times higher during a phone call as otherwise. The study found it made no difference whether a driver used a hand-held or no-hands model, concluding it is not the use of the hands that counts, but the distraction. The other major assessment, published by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration in 1998, rounds up data, from state police reports to scientific studies. It said 85 percent of cell phone users made calls at least occasionally while on the road, and 27 percent used them on at least half their trips. The study concluded in a general way that cellular phone use while driving increased crash risk. ''What remains unknown is the relative contribution of cellular phone use, per se, and characteristics of the involved drivers,'' the summary said, citing the possibilities of ''greater propensity for risk-taking,'' fatigue and inability to divide attention. Tim Hurd, a spokesman for the safety agency, said that as a general rule, ''distraction causes fatalities.'' The summary and study are available on the agency's web site, www. nhtsa.dot.gov. (Search for ''wireless.'') Lives Are Saved The advantages of having a cell phone in the car are undeniable. Like thousands, I pay a monthly bill and almost never dial anyone, just to have the instrument when driving alone, or on a long trip. Charles F. Richmond, a troubleshooter for the Connecticut Department of Transportation, speaks for many when he says, ''The cell phone has saved more lives than the ambulances.'' The cell phone industry association presses its motto, ''Safety is the most important call you will ever make.'' Its safety rules emphasize a focus on the task of driving. Leaflets and the like are available from (888) 901-7233 or www.wow-com.com. The AAA, in its annual ''Digest of Motor Laws,'' provides the safety ideas given in the adjoining box. Research shows distraction -- not the need to hold a phone to one's ear -- is the villain. If you have to argue with someone, get off the road, whether |
1160246_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1160550_3 | Both Sides Report Progress in Talks to Avert Transit Strike | to increase productivity,'' Mr. James said last night. At a news conference yesterday, the mayor said some contingency plans intended to reduce disruption across the city, including wider deployment of privately operated vans, may be set in motion before the union's contract expires at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday. With him at the news conference was Police Commissioner Howard Safir, who said 2,400 additional officers would be called in to work each day if a strike occurred. The mayor also said the police were vigorously investigating an incident of vandalism in the subway system on the suspicion that it might have been committed by union workers. The mayor said the subway vandalism occurred at 4:20 p.m. on Friday at the 34th Street station of the Eighth Avenue line, where a switch was activated to move a local train to the express track. Instead of switching the train, the tampering tripped a security system and turned off power, he said. But the vandalism, which the mayor said could have been accomplished only by someone with a key to the switch, could have resulted in a collision and serious injuries if the safety device had not been tripped, he said. ''We will make a very big deal out of this,'' Mr. Giuliani said. ''If we catch the person who did it, we would expect that person to go to prison for a very long time.'' In a clear warning to union leaders that they should discourage acts of violence or sabotage, he added that he would ''hold the union accountable.'' Mr. Shaw said that the incident had caused train service to be delayed for 30 minutes. But he said it had not posed a threat to safety because, when the track switch was activated, it immediately caused signal lights to turn red and also set off an electronic braking system that would have prevented trains from going through the red lights. Last night, Mr. James said that the mayor was acting irresponsibly in suggesting that a union member was responsible for the vandalism. Mr. James suggested that someone else, even someone in management, might have caused the trouble. ''What the mayor said annoyed me,'' he said. ''Before the facts and the investigation have been done to indicate who is responsible, they're already sending out the buzzword, sabotage, and saying a transit worker is responsible. It could have been a homeless person. It could |
1160546_1 | Rescued From the Deep, 38 Years Later | pitching in heavy seas at the end of a four-mile tether reaching into the deep. Bits of history are interspersed. On July 21, 1961, Liberty Bell 7, bobbing in the ocean after a suborbital flight, became the first accident of the American manned space program. For reasons still unknown, the hatch suddenly blew its 70 titanium bolts, and the capsule instantly filled with water. The astronaut, Virgil Grissom, who died six years later in a fire in an Apollo capsule, extricated himself in seconds. The documentary shows a recovery helicopter trying to hang on to Liberty Bell while Grissom bobs in the rotor wash close by. Jim Lewis, then a Marine major, was at the controls. ''It sank fast enough that I had to put the wheels in the water so my co-pilot could hook on to it,'' he said in a recent interview. With the helicopter starting to overheat, the tug of war was lost, and the capsule was cut loose. There was no way to retrieve it, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration let the matter lie, quite literally, until the mid-80's, when Mr. Newport expressed an interest in locating the site even if retrieval was not yet feasible. Call it professional curiosity. ''I felt that given the direction underwater technology was going, if it wasn't possible then, it soon would be.'' Working for the Navy, he specialized in bringing up pieces of airplane wreckage. Searches went deeper and deeper. In 1986 he used a remotely operated vehicle to raise a large chunk of the booster rocket from the space shuttle Challenger, which had sunk in 1,300 feet of water. Twelve years later he helped guide a remote vehicle 12,600 feet down for a live television broadcast from the wreck of the Titanic. Meanwhile he looked for Liberty Bell. ''It was a matter of reading documents and talking to a lot of people,'' he said. But air positions didn't hold true under the ocean. ''I'm in the water business, not a flight ballistics officer,'' he said. ''These were documents written for a space mission and not designed for underwater. So you had to interpret data.'' Sonar turned up 88 possibilities. Some images were produced by the 30-foot-high sand hills in the area. Others could have been anything from plane parts to ship pieces to objects tossed overboard. The documentary shows Mr. Newport jockeying the remote unit up |
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1160130_3 | The Way We Live Now: 12-12-99; Feeding Frenzy | the people who eat Olestra, after all. Labeling was rejected out of hand -- too cumbersome and too risky. For who, given the choice, would reach for the spuds with the biotech label? Right there, in the produce section, lurks the question that goes to the heart of what it means to be rational or hysterical about biotech food. What if I approach the matter as rationally as possible and decide which vegetables to buy based on a strict ''cost-benefit analysis''? First, I'll need a little information -- a label (which we may yet get: last month a bill was introduced in Congress calling for the labeling of biotech food). Next, I'll need to know what benefits these novel foods offer. According to the industry that makes them, today's biotech crops (like Round-Up Ready soybeans that resist herbicides, and potatoes and corn that produce their own pesticide) offer plenty of advantages to farmers. They acknowledge, however, that the benefits to consumers are negligible. The food is no cheaper, safer or tastier. Now add to this calculus what we know about the risks. None to my health have been established, but then, no one's looked very long or hard, either. So: probably safe, but no guarantee. As for risks to the environment, several have already been identified -- the threat to butterflies, the prospect of superweeds and superbugs. The cost-benefit analysis seems clear: I'd have to be crazy to buy this stuff. The industry realizes that, in its case, an educated consumer is not its best customer, so lately it has adopted a new tack -- suggesting my produce-aisle calculus is shortsighted and selfish. That's because the real benefits of genetically engineered food will be reaped in the future by hungry people in the third world. Some day, ''golden rice'' will nourish the malnourished and bananas will be re-engineered to deliver vaccines. The industry, in other words, is asking consumers to do something it has yet to do itself: Forget rational self-interest, and act on faith. Maybe Monsanto and the others are sincere. So bring on the golden rice! And what will they say about this epiphany in the aisles of my supermarket or on Wall Street? A word leaps to mind: hysterical. Michael Pollan is a contributing writer for the magazine. He recently received an award from Reuters and the World Conservation Union for ''Playing God in the Garden,'' which |
1160421_7 | A Medicine Chest or a Grocery Shelf? | because of poor sales in a southwest Michigan test market. Analysts said Campbell Soup and Kellogg had invested millions of dollars developing functional foods but did not know how to sell them. Kellogg had boasted that Ensemble was rich in fiber, an ingredient so familiar to consumers, critics said, that many were unimpressed. Intelligent Quisine was a marketing disaster. ''What happened with Intelligent Quisine was that these frozen meals would be delivered to someone's home,'' said Dr. Paul Lachance, executive director of the Neutraceutical Institute at Rutgers University. ''The problem was that most people didn't have enough freezer space to store the meals. People just didn't know what to do with it all.'' Now, though, makers of functional foods believe that they have developed a successful formula. Instead of selling full meals, manufacturers are devising single products. They are basing their product assertions not on common things like fiber but on more unusual ingredients like plant stanols, the ingredient in Benecol that is said to lower cholesterol, and acid compounds said to address particular ailments (and thereby warrant premium prices). And manufacturers are also stressing the products' taste. ''People want positive things in their diet, but taste is No. 1,'' said Guy H. Johnson, vice president of nutrition at Kellogg U.S.A., which plans to introduce a soybean cereal next year. ''Functional foods will prosper because they are convenient and taste good. Our soy cereal will taste so great people will want to eat it just for that reason.'' Finally, companies plan to spread the risk, selling functional foods in many forms, including beverages. Novartis, a pharmaceutical company best known for cyclosporin, a drug used in organ transplants, took that approach last month in introducing Aviva, its functional food line, in Switzerland and Britain. The line includes muesli, juice drinks, cereal bars, biscuits and hot chocolate to provide heart, bone and digestive benefits. And the company said it would soon license several of its compounds for functional foods to makers of dairy products. The potential profit from the new brands is exciting the manufacturers. Novartis expects Aviva's worldwide sales to reach $500 million in five years, including fees from licensees. WHILE most of Johnson & Johnson's competitors have heavily criticized Benecol -- usually for its lofty price -- most have noted the brand's sales. In its first months on the market, ending Sept. 26, Benecol spread had $12.3 million in sales |
1161814_1 | 130 Venezuelans Are Killed in Coastal Flooding and Mudslides | rock that have come crashing down mountainsides. Forecasts are for the bad weather to continue for days. The disaster is attributed to La Nina, the meteorological phenomenon that has caused unusually rainy and cool weather throughout South America in recent months, particularly in the Andean region. A series of rainstorms and floods in neighboring Colombia caused even more widespread death and destruction than here. The most seriously damaged areas are the precarious hillside settlements known as ranchos, where thousands of shacks have been destroyed. Since Wednesday, when Venezuelans went to the polls to approve a new Constitution favored by Mr. Chavez, dramatic images of poor, shocked and tearful slum dwellers hauling what remained of their personal belongings down to flat land have dominated television coverage. But numerous affluent neighborhoods, luxury apartment buildings and even parts of the downtown area of the capital area have also been severely affected, with streets blocked by garbage, tree limbs and overturned cars. Torrents of mud and sewage flowed into three Metro stations in the Parque Central area, and the city closed its extensive subway system. The disaster has also led to the suspension of all air service at the main international and national airports, including American and Continental Airline flights between Caracas and Miami, New York and Houston. With the road between Caracas and Simon Bolivar International Airport in La Guaira severed at several points, an estimated 3,000 passengers and airline employees have been stranded at the main terminal, some since Tuesday night. Faced with the collapse of other transportation links as well, the government has urged people to remain at home and not to try to go to work, even though many workers were due to have been paid at midmonth. As a result, most businesses, stores, banks and government offices closed today for the third day in a row, leaving many families short of money, food and water. In some neighborhoods, shuttered or damaged stores were looted by residents who said they had no provisions. The police and the military were quickly dispatched to restore order. At the port of La Guaira, on the other side of a mountain range from the capital, desperate survivors swarmed over cargo containers of food and other supplies that had broken open after having been tossed about by the surging waters. Speaking from that area, a favorite of Caraquenos and foreign tourists because of its beautiful |
1161744_3 | WORLD BRIEFING | Radu Vasile quit after days of refusing to accept his dismissal by the president. In return, his center-right Peasant Party lifted a ban on his holding any party leadership posts. He will also be allowed to run for head of the Senate, the country's second-highest job. (AP) THE AMERICAS ARGENTINA: 2 PROTESTERS DIE -- A day after the federal government took control of the bankrupt Corrientes provincial government, two people were killed and at least 40 injured in clashes between protesting workers and the police. State employees who have not been paid since April as well as other protesters were manning a roadblock on a local bridge when the police tried to remove them. Clifford Krauss (NYT) BOLIVIA: NATIONWIDE STRIKE -- Thousands of public transport workers staged a nationwide 48-hour strike to protest a recent 4 percent rise in fuel prices. Traffic was disrupted through most of the country, with the business center of Santa Cruz, 500 miles east of La Paz, virtually paralyzed for hours. Clifford Krauss (NYT) MEXICO: FINANCIER EXTRADITION -- An Australian magistrate ruled that Carlos Cabal Peniche, a former Mexican financier, can be extradited to Mexico to face charges that he embezzled $300 million from his banks. Mr. Cabal appealed the 200-page ruling, in which the magistrate said Mr. Cabal had not proven that Mexico was persecuting him for political reasons. Sam Dillon (NYT) ECUADOR: U.S. SHUTS EMBASSY -- The United States Embassy in Quito said it would close indefinitely after receiving threats to its security. The consulate in Guayaquil will also close. No guerrilla groups are known to operate in Ecuador, and no embassy personnel are being evacuated, a spokesman said. (Reuters) AFRICA SOUTH AFRICA: LOCAL OVERHAUL -- Finalizing plans to overhaul local government, the national government announced it would reduce the number of city councils to 235 from 843 in an effort to accelerate service delivery to the poor. Towns that have been unable to pay bills or provide basic services such as running water, paved roads or garbage collection will merge with better-off towns. Rachel L. Swarns (NYT) MIDDLE EAST IRAN: VOTE REGISTRATION CLOSES -- Registration of candidates closed for parliamentary elections on Feb. 18 that will pit reformists close to President Mohammad Khatami against conservative opponents. ''We had registered 4,842 persons, including about 260 women by Thursday night,'' an election official said. Entrants will be screened by the clergy-based Guardian Council. (Reuters) |
1162959_2 | Nature's Guardians Still Face Disrespect | more subtle forms of harassment and discrimination, like refusal to serve Forest Service employees at local restaurants and motels. She decried the poisonous political and social climate -- a problem compounded by the lack of cooperation from federal prosecutors, particularly the United States attorney in Nevada, in acting on complaints about many kinds of crimes. A memo this year from a Humboldt-Toiyabe law-enforcement agent summarized 21 felonies and 52 misdemeanors that had been referred to the Justice Department since 1990 without result. The cases ranged from physical intimidation of federal employees to thefts of artifacts and illegal grazing. The heart of the Forest Service's work in the Humboldt-Toiyabe is to manage the use of the land -- controlling grazing and logging, for example, in a way that prevents the land's resources from being overtaxed. When a federal environmental law is violated, as when a rancher runs his cattle on federal land without permission, the Forest Service has no alternative but to ask for federal prosecution. Failure of the local United States attorney to follow through encourages others to defy environmental restrictions and plays into feelings of contempt for Forest Service employees. Despite the Clinton administration's oratory about its commitment to the environment, from 1996 through 1998, there were 27 percent fewer prosecutions and 38 percent fewer convictions for environmental crimes of all kinds than in 1989 through 1991, in the Bush administration. The reason is not a lack of incidents to pursue. There has also been a 26 percent rise in Justice Department ''declinations,'' or refusals to prosecute environmental crimes. After Ms. Flora's resignation, the Forest Service and the Justice Department set up a joint committee to study the severity of problems in the Humboldt-Toiyabe. This overdue effort should not be confined to Nevada. Even in less contentious areas than Elko County, federal wildlife agents, land managers and agency lawyers, frustrated by a lack of support from federal law enforcement agencies, are quietly resigning, taking early retirement or transferring to less stressful assignments. The stakes in the conflicts transcend the latest attempt to reopen a road or graze more cattle. The intensity of competing demands on our public lands will only deepen with each passing year, making the job of protecting our natural resources ever more difficult and, unfortunately, dangerous. We should heed the warning flare in Elko County. Jeff Ruch is executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. |
1163005_5 | Havana Journal; To Have and Have Not: Cubans' Life With Castro | riding her bike on the street. ''I make $8 a month and that bike over there costs $30,'' said the man, who declined to give his name. ''I get paid in pesos. How could I buy that? You cannot live on that. Who can?'' He wondered how much longer it would be like this. ''Things have got to get better,'' he said. ''Maybe by 2005?'' But guessing when change will come, either by political reform or biological inevitability, has proved to be a perplexing game. At 73, Mr. Castro has outlived many of his fiercest critics. At a summit meeting in November of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations, he was resolute in affirming the path he had chosen 40 years ago. Rather than speculate about any possible transfer of power, publicly at least, many Cubans prefer to criticize the embargo, saying that it has not accomplished much except to deny American businesses the chance to invest in Cuba. ''They themselves lose more by not selling to us,'' said Cristobal Solano Zuleta, a barber in Cayo Hueso. ''So why not remove it? There is still a little group in Miami who are pressuring Washington because they have money. But it will not remove Fidel.'' A few of his friends and neighbors had gathered inside his cramped apartment to celebrate his wedding earlier in the day. Apart from festive music and glasses filled with rum, there was not much else to fuel the party, but they made do with what they had. ''I only wish for a better future,'' Mr. Solano said. ''Economically, socially. I don't know. To live a little better. We are of the lower class, but we live well. Poor, but well. We eat every day. We struggle, like any human being.'' It wasn't easy, his friends said, but they insisted it was the only way they knew. ''There are people who say Fidel is going tomorrow, or that he is gone,'' said Raul Cabrera, 39, who dropped in on the party after finishing his shift at a construction site. ''But those of us who were born with this will follow the revolution until the end.'' More neighbors joined the party, as a young boy beat out a dance rhythm on a wooden block mounted on a steel pipe. ''Our wine is bitter,'' Mr. Cabrera said. ''But it is ours. We labor. But it is ours and we drink it.'' |
1162930_0 | A Disabled Girl's Rights | To the Editor: Re ''Abortion Is Rejected for a Girl, 13, Bitterly Dividing the Italians'' (news article, Dec. 17): The circumstances related to a developmentally disabled girl's pregnancy demonstrate the denial and shame surrounding sexual activity and the disabled. People with disabilities have the same human and reproductive rights as everyone else. They are entitled to information, education and services related to their reproductive health. Here, a 13-year-old with the mental age of 6 will be forced to bear a child. Sex education and family planning might have spared her this predicament. What is certain, however, is that political views should not pre-empt a meaningful inquiry into her best interests. MINDY ROSEMAN New York, Dec. 17, 1999 The writer is staff attorney, International Program, Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. |
1164261_0 | OBSERVATORY | Lawn Care Gene It's a suburban homeowner's fantasy: a lawn that grows to a certain height and no higher, and never needs mowing. That dream may become a reality someday, with the recent discovery of a gene that appears to control the production of an important growth hormone in plants. The gene, known as BAS-1 and isolated from Arabidopsis, a weed that is a member of the mustard family, works to break down the hormone, a steroid called brassinolide. The discovery was made by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California and colleagues in Japan and reported in a recent issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The hormone is found throughout the plant, but the researchers discovered that the gene acts selectively to break it down in different kinds of tissues, with the effect most noticeable in the stems. By tinkering with the gene, it may be possible to stop growth completely in the stems, say, while allowing normal growth in leaves and flowers. So a homeowner may someday be able to choose a lawn like a carpet: from fine to plush to shag. Now if scientists could just figure out how to get it in something other than basic green. Engine's Mixed Results A new kind of rocket engine for the next generation of reusable space vehicles has been tested at full power for the first time. The 18-second test of what is known as a linear aerospike engine was carried out on Dec. 18 at a NASA center in Mississippi. Officials said the engine performed well, though some erosion, in the form of pinholes, was noticed on an inside wall of a thrust chamber, a structure that replaces the bell-shaped nozzles of conventional rocket engines. The aerospike engine is being developed to power the X-33, a half-scale unmanned prototype of a rocket that would take off and land like the space shuttle, but would be completely reusable (the shuttle's huge external fuel tank, among other components, is expended in each flight). NASA officials said that the erosion found after the test was within the range expected for an engine under development and would not slow the testing process. That's a good thing, for the X-33, a cooperative project involving NASA, the Lockheed Martin Corporation's Skunk Works division and other contractors, is at least a year behind schedule and above its $1.2 |
1159723_1 | Agreements by two agency giants add to a year-end rush to capitalize on Internet advertising. | capitalist, making an unspecified investment in E-Dialog along with two venture capital firms, Commonwealth Capital and One Liberty Ventures. ''It's important for us to pair up with agencies,'' said John Rizzi, president and chief executive at E-Dialog, because ''it's a way to differentiate us from other e-mail marketing providers.'' ''Our future,'' he added, ''is not just our relationship with our clients,'' which include CDNow, Doubleday, Lycos, Major League Baseball and the National Football League, ''but to add to our business through agencies.'' Interpublic agencies include Carmichael Lynch, Draft Worldwide, the Lowe Group and the McCann-Erickson World Group. ''We'll put E-Dialog together with our agencies,'' said Gil Fuchsberg, vice president for new media and technology at Interpublic, ''when clients tell us: 'My Web banner ads are not working. What other ways are there to get response?' '' E-mail marketing is booming despite complaints from some computer users and privacy advocates who denounce the practice as disseminating spam, or unwanted e-mail. To counter that, many advertisers send e-mail ads only to consumers who agree to receive cyberpitches, a process known as opt-in e-mail or permission-based marketing. ''Permission is important,'' Mr. Rizzi agreed, ''but our focus is in precision, sending mail from some company you have an affinity or relationship with, so you're delighted to get it.'' For instance, Mr. Rizzi cited a campaign last summer for Ticketmaster/CitySearch, a unit of USA Networks Inc., centered on sending a series of three unsolicited e-mail messages to people who bought tickets to Bruce Springsteen concerts in New Jersey. ''The first e-mail was to thank you for your order,'' Mr. Rizzi said, ''the second provided directions to the arena and your seat, and the third, sent the morning after the concert, included the playlist from the night before -- with every song a link to buying the CD on which the song appears, plus show merchandise for sale like T-shirts and programs.'' ''Forty-seven percent of those who opened the mail clicked to something,'' he added, ''and in the best scenarios, 20 percent of them bought something.'' The deal in the realm of interactive agencies also involves Interpublic, which is bundling many -- but not all -- of its interests in shops devoted to online advertising, design and consulting services into a unit named Zentropy Partners. Zentropy is starting with almost 500 employees at 11 offices in 5 countries handling accounts with annual revenue estimated at more |
1159810_2 | Tantalizing Signs of Ancient Martian Ocean | week ago today while trying to land near the Martian south pole to search for water. Editors at Science said the loss of the spacecraft had no affect on the timing of the ancient-ocean paper. In September, yet another craft, the Mars Climate Orbiter, vanished as it approached the planet. Mars today is an icy desert with dust storms and reddish dunes. The planet also has thin, tattered clouds, but the only evidence of water in any quantity is at the north and south poles, where there seems to be a mix of carbon dioxide and water, like frozen seltzer. Scientists agree that Mars in its early days was much warmer and wetter, and they have even found channels in the planet's surface that once apparently carried rushing water into the northern lowlands. Dr. Parker in 1989 and Dr. Baker in 1991 went further. They proposed that the flowing water collected in large standing bodies or seas. At the time, their ideas were considered wild. The Brown study has given that hypothesis its most rigorous test. The main tools of the investigation were thousands of photographs and altitude measurements made by the Mars Global Surveyor, a $150 million craft that went into orbit around Mars in 1997 and began its prime mission in 1998. In May, based on data from the Surveyor, scientists unveiled the first three-dimensional map of the planet. The Brown team extended the Surveyor work. Among other things, it analyzed height measurements made with great precision as the Surveyor bounced laser beams off the planet's surface, allowing land elevations to be determined by measuring the time of the round trip. Among the important findings, based on the altimetry and photographs, were: * The border between two geologically dissimilar areas in the northern lowlands is nearly level in elevation, suggesting an ancient coastline. * The topography below this possible shoreline is much smoother than that of the region above at higher altitudes, which is consistent with smoothing by sedimentation. * The volume of the putative sea is within the range of previous estimates of water on Mars. * A series of terraces run parallel to the apparent shoreline, bolstering the idea of receding waters. * Low areas bear what appear to be mud cracks, like those in dry terrestrial lake beds. * Scars from impact craters suggest ground water or ice in the northern lowlands is near the |
1164866_0 | In America; Miracles At Warp Speed | Just 50 years ago, no time at all in the long excursion of history, Americans were driving cars with divided windshields, listening to ballgames on radios that crackled with static, and reading comic strips that suggested someday there might be a portable electronic device (a wrist radio, perhaps) that would allow individuals to have the equivalent of a telephone with them at all times. Forget for a moment your personal computers and fax machines. Americans on the cusp of 1950 hadn't even heard of rock 'n' roll. Milkmen were ubiquitous. Credit cards were not. Even television was an oddity. Just 50 years ago. Tonight the country will raise a toast to the peaceful and prosperous transition from one epoch to another, a toast that in effect is a salute to the remarkable advances of the past half-century. Those advances have been driven by science and technology and a commitment to the ideals of freedom, and they have lifted the quality of life for most of us to heights that would have astonished midcentury America. Now buckle up. This ride is just getting started. The last few decades have been amazing. But the next few will be profound. Listen to Dr. Dari Shalon, director of the Harvard Center for Genomics Research: ''Some recent results have indicated that things that looked very complex, such as aging and intelligence, can actually be altered with a single gene. And once you can alter something with a single gene, it's not far-fetched to imagine gene therapy permanently altering what's called the germ line, which means it gets transmitted from generation to generation. I think people will be very hesitant to do that on humans, but it's very easy to make a small molecule drug that you can just take as a pill that alters the activity of a single gene. The pharmaceutical industry is well geared to do that. ''So once certain genes are discovered that actually change, if you will, a cognitive trait -- intelligence -- or even things such as life span, it's not too far-fetched to imagine a small pill that actually influences these two activities. I don't think it's as far off as people think. ''Less drastic will be things such as tissue regeneration. So, for example, people who are suffering now from nerve disorders -- say, Parkinson's disease or liver disease -- we're getting pretty close in animals and pretty |
1159502_0 | World Briefing | EUROPE NORTHERN IRELAND: ADAMS TELLS OF CAR BUG -- Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, accused the British intelligence services of planting a listening and tracking device in his car during recent negotiations on a Northern Ireland settlement. Mr. Adams said he had protested to the British and Irish governments, which co-sponsored the talks. ''I think this is a hugely serious breach of faith,'' he said, and called on Prime Minister Tony Blair to find out who was responsible. Alan Cowell (NYT) NORTHERN IRELAND: PROTESTANT DISARMAMENT -- The Ulster Freedom Fighters, the biggest Protestant paramilitary group, said it would send representatives to the group overseeing disarmament under the accord giving the province self-government. But it said it would consider disarming only when the Irish Republican Army had ''already begun to decommission its arsenal of weaponry.'' An I.R.A. representative has already met with the disarmament group. Alan Cowell (NYT) TURKEY: FINED OVER KURDS -- The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey had unfairly banned a pro-Kurd political party in 1993, and ordered the government to pay $4,685 to the party's founder and president. Lawyers said the party, Freedom and Democracy, supported separatism. Stephen Kinzer (NYT) FRANCE: EQUALITY FOR WOMEN -- The cabinet approved a bill to put women on the same election footing as men by encouraging parties to field more female candidates. The bill, which fulfills a Socialist election pledge, avoided setting quotas for women in government but proposed cutting state funding to parties that put forward more male candidates. It could become law in time for local elections in 2001. (Reuters) NETHERLANDS: LOCKERBIE TRIAL POSTPONED -- Defense lawyers for two Libyans accused of the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, sued successfully to have the trial postponed from Feb. 2 to May 3, but lost another motion seeking to drop conspiracy to murder charges from the case. (Reuters) MIDDLE EAST IRAN: DISSIDENT TO APPEAL -- A compromise over the jailing of Abdullah Nouri, a popular reform politician, seemed closer after he and the tribunal that convicted him of anti-Islamic activities agreed to an early appeal. The court had earlier denied the 50-year-old cleric the right to appeal, and he had said he preferred to serve his five-year sentence. Mr. Nouri's lawyer said the cleric would enter his candidacy for elections in February, which his conviction |
1159446_1 | Two Years Before the Mast (and the Computer) | in this season is proving more difficult than we thought!'' reads one of the weekly updates posted on the Makulu II's Web site, www.reachtheworld.org. ''We did NOT find the wind that we hoped would carry us southwest to Brazil. As a result, we have changed our plan and are heading directly to Trinidad, a 2,200-plus-mile passage that could take as long as 40 days.'' The interactive adventure has all been done in the cause of education -- that of the crew and, most important, of the students who are part of a global network of classrooms linked to the Makulu II over the Internet, said Heather Halstead, the 25-year-old creator and co-captain of the project. The crew receives as many as 200 messages a month from students and teachers. They are part of a project that would not be possible without the relatively low-cost computer-assisted communications available today, Ms. Halstead. ''I've always been into teaching my whole life,'' Ms. Halstead said in an interview in New York, where she was taking a break from the voyage to visit her family and some of the project's participating schools. ''And I always knew I wanted to sail around the world.'' And despite the obvious fun Ms. Halstead and her crew have had, the pictures and dispatches that have been streaming from the crew have hardly been the stuff of vacation postcards. Instead, Ms. Halstead, with the help of a group of educators, created a curriculum center online that helps classroom teachers use the experiences of the Makulu II crew to learn and teach about world cultures and more. There have been lesson and activity guides that have covered, among other subjects, African art and gravestone art, world languages, origin myths and astronomy, cartography and weather forecasting. The sailboat uses satellite-assisted navigation and communications, which include an on-board telephone and e-mail. But the services are expensive, she said. The telephone, which uses a technology called side band radio that bounces signals off the atmosphere, costs about $5 a minute, and e-mail costs almost a penny per character, Ms. Halstead said. The crew also uses much cheaper e-mail systems at cybercafes when it can find them on land, she said. By communicating directly with Ms. Halstead, a sixth-grade class was able to persuade the Makulu II crew to swing by Singapore to complete a fact-finding itinerary; another school asked the crew to ask middle |
1159573_0 | P.S. Send Nicer E-Mail | To the Editor: I would like to add one more item to Letitia Baldrige's list of e-mail rules for good manners (Op-Ed, Dec. 6): When you respond to my e-mail, do not -- wholly, blindly and simply because the e-mail software lets you -- include my message in your answer. I'm not interested in rereading what I wrote. It doubles the amount of computer memory needed to store the world's e-mail correspondence, and if I am so dimwitted as to have forgotten what I said, you probably shouldn't be responding in the first place. KENNETH R. JOLLS Ames, Iowa, Dec. 7, 1999 |
1157971_0 | U.S. Hires Advisory Firm in Microsoft Case | The Justice Department said this evening that it had hired New York investment bankers to help determine the financial impact of various proposals for restructuring Microsoft or changing its business practices to resolve the antitrust case against the company. The department said the investment firm Greenhill & Company would ''assist the division in analyzing financial aspects of the full range of potential remedies in U.S. v. Microsoft, including conduct and structural relief.'' The government and 19 state attorneys general have just begun settlement talks with Microsoft that are likely to continue for the next two or three months, and the government intends to use Greenhill's advice as it devises settlement proposals. The trial judge's findings of fact last month made it clear that he would rule against Microsoft if no settlement were reached. In that case, the Justice Department would have to prepare a remedy proposal, and once again Greenhill would provide advice. Remedies under discussion run from forcing Microsoft to change its business practices, so-called conduct relief, to breaking up the company, known as structural relief. Greenhill & Company specializes in mergers and acquisitions but also offers strategic advice to its clients for ''recapitalization and restructurings'' and ''hostile and defensive strategies,'' a company document states. The company is led by Robert F. Greenhill, who was a senior executive at Morgan Stanley, then chief executive at Smith Barney before starting his company in 1996. The Justice Department stressed that hiring the company did not indicate that the department had decided which remedy, or settlement proposal, it would offer. But some proposals would require far more sophisticated analysis than others. Forcing Microsoft to rewrite certain contracts would not require much financial advice. But requiring it to auction the source code for the Windows operating system -- an idea that has been favored by the states -- or breaking up the company, would require complicated financial analysis. Microsoft executives, in arguing against some remedy ideas, have often said the government does not understand the technological and financial implications of the proposals. The company said it had no opinion on today's announcement. Greenhill & Company bills itself as an expert on technology. Most of the deals it has managed in this area have been on behalf of Compaq Computer, a close Microsoft ally. |
1157991_1 | NORTHERN IRELAND PICKS UP THE REINS OF ITS GOVERNMENT | pledge to make contact with the commission, headed by Gen. John de Chastelain of Canada, was crucial to the agreement to form the government. In a ceremony this morning in a marble hall of the Foreign Affairs Department in Dublin, Ireland's foreign minister, David Andrews, and Britain's secretary for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, signed a treaty formally renouncing the Irish Republic's 62-year-old constitutional claim on Ulster and replacing it with north-south ministerial councils and cross-border bodies. The event was topped off by champagne toasts. Minutes later, in his cabinet room, Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, signed the act officially changing the constitutional clauses. Members of his government stood behind him, and a portrait of Charles Stewart Parnell, a 19th-century hero of the struggle for Irish independence, gazed down on them. ''Every Irish person is entitled to feel a great sense of pride today in what we have been able to achieve together in bringing about peace throughout Ireland,'' Mr. Ahern said. In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair, who with Mr. Ahern sponsored the peace talks that led to the 1998 agreement, said the day represented ''the hope that the hand of history is at last lifting the burden of terror and violence and shaping the future of the people of Northern Ireland and in particular the children.'' In Belfast, David Trimble, the leader of the Protestant Ulster Unionists and the first minister of the assembly, and Seamus Mallon of the Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party, who is the body's deputy leader, acted as co-chairmen of the first meeting of the cabinet, emerging 80 minutes later to say it had been a constructive session. Mr. Mallon said, ''I have to say it was very pleasing to see the nature of the personal relationships there -- the way in which all the ministers were very, very well briefed in terms of their own departments.'' Seated around the circular cabinet table with Mr. Trimble and Mr. Mallon were Martin McGuinness and Bairbre de Brun of Sinn Fein; Sir Reg Empey, Sam Foster and Michael McGimpsey of the Ulster Unionists, and Brid Rodgers, Mark Durkan and Sean Farren of the Social Democratic and Labor Party. Of the 12-member executive body, the two from the Rev. Ian Paisley's hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, Nigel Dodds and Peter Robinson, boycotted the meeting and held a news conference to denounce the new political arrangements. The party |
1158195_0 | Gifts for Body and Soul on New York-Havana Flight | More than anything, the objects packed carefully into luggage for the first direct flight from New York to Havana in nearly four decades told the story. There were gifts, a reminder of families separated by distance and years. There was medicine, a necessity engendered by the economic embargo against Cuba. And there was Pokemon -- a harbinger, perhaps, of a Cuban future increasingly shaped by the capitalist world. One hundred thirty-six passengers lined up early last evening for the 8:35 flight from Kennedy International Airport. (Security precautions delayed departure until just after 10 p.m.) Some were en route to the Havana Film Festival; others, to family reunions and a reconnoitering in old neighborhoods. ''He's been waiting for this day to happen for 30 years,'' said William Morales, 28, a New Jersey police officer, of his grandfather, Guillermo, 85, who is Cuban by birth. The senior Mr. Morales was philosophical.''I don't really know what to expect down there,'' he said in Spanish, shrugging his shoulders. ''Whatever happens, happens.'' The flight, which was handled by Marazul Charters, a company based in New Jersey, reflects the Clinton administration's more relaxed policy toward Cuba. It also reflects the determination of the company -- which is run by a father and son, Francisco and Daniel Aruca, who oppose the trade embargo -- to use air travel to influence policy toward Cuba. Until now, travel to Cuba has required a stop in Miami, the Bahamas or Mexico. The flight will make it easier for the thousands of Cuban-Americans who live in the New York metropolitan region to legally visit relatives on the island. American citizens, while technically free to travel to Cuba, are prohibited from spending money there unless they are journalists, scholars or Cuban-Americans visiting relatives. ''It's my first trip like it was 50 years ago,'' Pablo Armando Fernandez, 70, a poet and novelist who lives in Cuba, said of not having to stop in Mexico or the Bahamas. The company has scheduled weekly flights on Friday evenings, at a round-trip fare of $629. The flights are run by Grupo Taca, a Central American airlines alliance. Karen McMullen, a film editor, and a friend, Julie Schecter, a real estate agent, were going to the film festival. They were able to get on the first flight after two other passengers canceled. ''We're making history,'' Ms. McMullen said, laughing. But in her next comment was an implicit |
1158122_0 | Lure of Internet Success | To the Editor: M.B.A. candidates are dropping out of business schools and flocking to Internet companies not just to follow the money (news article, Nov. 28). They are looking to carve a niche in an industry they know is changing business around the world. On the Web, there are few barriers to entry. Almost every dot-com company is working hard to get a first-mover advantage because the only sustainable advantage will be name recognition and a place among well-used ''bookmarks.'' But once the Internet bloom falls off the rose, the success of Internet companies will depend on satisfying the customer, increasing the company's value, running effective operations and managing people well: things you learn in business school. FREDERICK W. WINTER Pittsburgh, Nov. 30, 1999 The writer is the dean of the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh. |
1161560_0 | How to Make a Scientific Breakthrough Seem Horrifying | CONSIDER the possibilities of a scientific breakthrough that could allow farmers to grow more food while using less pesticide, or to add vitamins to vegetable oils to prevent malnutrition. Maybe some plastic products now made from petroleum could instead be produced from plants. Would the stock prices of companies developing such products soar to Internet-style heights? Would the scientists be viewed as potential saviors in a world where hunger and malnutrition are realities for many millions, and where pollution from oil refineries remains a problem? The answer to both questions is no. Seldom in human history has a technology with such exciting possibilities seemed less popular than genetic modification of foods -- a k a ''Frankenstein foods'' in the British tabloids -- is today. Wall Street is leery, and now class-action lawyers have leaped in with a double-barreled suit accusing Monsanto, the leading company in the field, of trying to monopolize a business the lawyers say relies on foisting possibly dangerous foods on the public. The way things are going, Monsanto executives who want to avoid being harassed at cocktail parties and on airplanes may take to lying about what they do. Perhaps they'd do better if they claimed to be from Philip Morris. How did we get to this point? One answer is that the industry's lobbyists were too successful. They persuaded the Food and Drug Administration that genetic modification -- which involves inserting a gene into a plant -- was not very different from the old way of breeding plants, and that the corn or soybeans were equally nutritious. So there was no need to call attention to it on labels. But because there was no need to reassure consumers, there was also no need to educate them. The marketing efforts focused on farmers and, as it happened, the early products did more for farmers, with higher crop yields and resistance to pests, than for consumers, in terms of improved nutrition. Farmers embraced the technology. Then the resistance arose, largely in Europe. Who can be absolutely certain that these products will not have some bad effect on animals, or plants or the environment? Ask the question that way, and the answer is that no one can. Ask whether the evidently small risks offset the potential gains -- in nutrition and in reducing pesticide use, among others -- and you might get a different answer. Now European fears are |
1161534_1 | With a 'Don't Be Vexed' Air, Chirac Assesses U.S. | world because I think it's inevitable.'' China, India, Europe (as Mr. Chirac believes) and Russia (according to Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine) will all be great powers in the next century. French criticism of American ebullience may seem as relentless as Cartesian logic. ''There are moments when Americans get exasperated and think all we're trying to do is create difficulties for them,'' Mr. Vedrine told a group of American journalists here the other day, and those moments have sometimes stretched on endlessly since the days of de Gaulle. Nothing irritates the French more than being dismissed as cranks rather than accepted as helpful critics. Mr. Chirac in particular bends over backward to assure Americans of his friendly predisposition, proudly telling visitors that he has credentials as a soda jerk from Howard Johnson from a student summer in Cambridge, Mass., and has scores of American friends he considers family. So he feels entitled to offer a little constructive criticism. ''I have been, of course, an observer of Congress for quite some time,'' he said. ''To be perfectly frank, there used to be prominent people you could telephone, ask about things, discuss, consult, have a dialogue with. Today it's more difficult.'' On the whole, he said, Congress does not seem as open to the world as it once was -- ''Not the best attitude, given the responsibilities the United States has in the world.'' He was particularly critical of the Senate's rejection of the test ban treaty this fall, a vote that threatens, he said, ''to set a bad example and start the arms proliferation race again.'' A decision by the Clinton administration next year to build a limited antimissile defense against intercontinental rockets launched by small nations like North Korea, Iran or Iraq would create more global strategic instability than it would eliminate, Mr. Chirac believes. ''If you look at world history,'' he said, ''ever since men began waging war, you will see that there's a permanent race between sword and shield. The sword always wins. The more improvements that are made to the shield, the more improvements are made to the sword.'' ''We think that with these systems,'' he said, referring to the possible United States antimissile shield, ''we are just going to spur swordmakers to intensify their efforts.'' ''China, which was already working harder than we realized on both nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles for them, would of course be |
1163613_5 | Latin America Tackling Possible Computer Woes | the region, like Guatemala and Bolivia. In an attempt to help countries like these prepare for the problem, the bank this year opened a $200 million emergency credit line to finance computer upgrades. ''Some of these countries have been hurt by natural phenomena like hurricanes and a decline in the prices of their main commodity exports that make dealing with Y2K more difficult,'' Mr. Guedes said. Ecuador is one country in the region that has suffered damage from natural disasters and, until recently, a weak market for oil, one of its main exports. Yet in a sign that the situation in places like Ecuador might actually be better off than some critics expect, the country, like most other Latin American nations, has organized a task force to deal with the Year 2000 problem. Jacqueline Herrera, the official in charge of the task forces, said she is confident that crucial parts of the economy, such as electrical generation, telecommunications, water treatment and air travel, are prepared for the potential effects. ''We're better prepared than a lot of people might expect,'' said Ms. Herrera. ''And we're in constant contact with other task forces in Latin America, so we know that our efforts are in line with others.'' The saving grace of countries like Ecuador and Paraguay may lie in their relatively unsophisticated computer networks when compared with those in rich industrialized nations, or even those in more prosperous Latin American countries like Chile. Even in those parts of Latin America where the Year 2000 problem might actually do damage, it is being shrugged off by many people. The relative nonchalance among Latin Americans to the issue might have something to do with their approach to the economic, political and social turbulence that have been common throughout the region's history. ''Latin Americans tend to be more passionate than their colleagues above the equator when it comes time to make a decision,'' said Max Gehringer, a Sao Paulo businessman who writes a column on corporate culture for Exame, Brazil's leading business magazine. ''In practical terms this means we either magnify a problem which really isn't that large or we underestimate something we don't understand entirely,'' said Mr. Gehringer. ''Two things can happen on the first day of January: Either our companies will enter in reactive panic or an absence of problems will have us saying, 'See? It was all just hype.' '' INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS |
1163555_1 | Seeing the Strangest Number From 2 Sides | so it has seemed: it inspired the calculus, spurred explorations of the infinite and now holds court in contemporary physics' most baroque theories. It has also just inspired two books: Robert Kaplan's ''The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero'' (Oxford) and Charles Seife's ''Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (due in February from Viking). Both trace zero's origins from Sumerian strokes with hollow reeds in wet clay; both note Greek uneasiness with the idea (for the Greeks, Mr. Kaplan suggests, zero ''wasn't a thing, a number, but a condition'' ). Both point out that it was in India, nearly 2,000 years ago, that zero was first treated as an object worthy of contemplation -- perhaps because of Hindu religious interest in the concept of the void. But it still had a long way to go before it became a number among others, although somewhat more mysterious. For in both books too, even as zero sheds light, it casts shadows. It may have simplified arithmetic (compare the calculation MM x CCCI with 2000 x 301), but it also introduced a snake into the garden (try dividing any number by zero or raising zero to the zero power -- everything falls apart). It led to the development of perspective in Renaissance painting (zero is in the infinitely distant vanishing point) and was also associated with gruesome rituals (Mr. Kaplan describes the intricate cycles of the Mayan calendar that returned to zero every 52 years -- an occasion marked by the sacrificial ripping of hearts and jaws from living victims). Zero's heroes, in fact, seem to have had as much contact with the irrational as the rational. These books are full of zero's eccentrics and victims. Mr. Seife gives us such zero-inspired thinkers as the Greek philosopher Zeno, stabbed to death after chewing off a tyrant's ear; the medieval philosopher Boethius, clubbed to death; the 16th-century scientist Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake. Mr. Kaplan offers John Napier, the 16th-century Scottish baron, who dabbled in the occult, predicted the time of the last judgment and discovered how to solve complicated algebraic equations by setting them equal to zero. For all their similarities, though, the books' accounts of nothingness approach zero from different directions. Mr. Seife is the United States correspondent for New Scientist and recounts his story as an accomplished science journalist, standing on the outside bringing clarity to complex |
1162715_0 | Mission in the Rain Forest | To the Editor: I write in response to a profile of me (''A Romance With a Rain Forest and Its Elusive Miracles'') on Nov. 30. While I appreciate its supposed concern for my career, the evolution of Shaman Pharmaceuticals into Shaman Botanicals has not amounted to a ''personal career crisis.'' The major thrust of my career has always been to help protect culture and environment rather than a personal search for new jungle medicines. I've been fortunate to develop close relationships with many indigenous peoples in the Amazon, and my concern for their predicaments supersedes any other endeavor. The tragedy playing out in the rain forest, where indigenous cultures thousands of years old are destroyed in a matter of months, make my own career ups and downs -- including this article -- seem trivial by comparison. It is indeed disappointing, however, that the article did not describe my current work with the Amazon Conservation Team to develop the field of ''biocultural'' conservation. I would have expected that projects in indigenous mapping, integration of Western and indigenous medicine and the establishment of indigenous rain forest reserves -- all at the interface of Western science and indigenous wisdom -- would have been of great interest to the readers of Science Times. Furthermore, despite the article, while I no longer engage in biopros pecting, I have not renounced it; quite the contrary. I have always believed that bioprospecting can play a positive role in conservation, provided ethical concerns regarding rights of both the indigenous peoples and host countries are adequately addressed. In the meantime, the biodynamic potential of the natural world is without question. For example, in the past 24 months, new anticoagulants based on leeches (Refludan) and snake venom (Aggrastat) have been brought to market, as well as a new antibiotic (Synercid) from soil fungi. New painkillers from tropical cone snails (ziconotide) and South American frogs (ABT 594) are in the pipeline, as are many other promising leads from natural sources. As anyone who has read my work or attended my lectures knows, I continue to believe that the rain forest holds many elusive secrets not readily visible to Western eyes. It is my belief -- and the hope of many of the indigenous colleagues with whom I work -- that someday we will all benefit from new rain forest medicines. My ''romance with the rain forest,'' as the article put it, |
1162736_3 | THE MARKETS: Market Place; After Deal Of 2 Giants, Shares Plunge | the growth potential of plant biotechnology, with huge expected gains once the company broadens its pipeline and starts genetically altering crops to produce more nutritious foods. Having spent billions of dollars to develop genetically engineered crops, Monsanto has lobbied for worldwide approval, so that the company can sell to farmers everywhere and so that foreign markets will be receptive to the exported biotechnology crops of American farmers. In Europe, though, Monsanto has suffered from a vicious backlash against genetically modified foods, and a movement against the products has begun to take hold this year among Americans as well. Monsanto executives say that the products have been proved safe and that once the storm clouds clear, Monsanto stands to gain the most because it is the world's second largest seed company and the developer or licensee of more than 90 percent of the genetically modified crops now on the market. In 1996, just 2.8 million acres worldwide were planted with biotechnology seeds; in 1999, an estimated 70 million acres were planted. And Roundup, the company's best-selling herbicide, has been a cash cow for nearly 20 years, racking up more than $2 billion in sales in 1998, and effectively crippling its competitors in the agricultural chemicals market because of its compatability with many biotech seeds. Some investors have decided not to stick around. Yesterday, shares of Monsanto dropped $5.125, to $36.625. The stock is down 22.9 percent in the last year; and shares of Pharmacia fell $3.125, to $47.125. The problem might be, as Mr. Wilbur outlined, simply a question of uncertainty. After moving swiftly to create, market and license its biotechnology products, and acquire some of the world's largest seed companies, Monsanto has stumbled repeatedly in its effort to integrate its units and convince the public of the feasibility of what it has called the new agriculture. Monsanto and other big seed companies have been embroiled in a series of lawsuits over patent infringement. Farmers have complained about Monsanto's aggressive tactics, which included hiring detectives, to enforce its contracts. There have also been growing concerns about the safety of genetically modified seeds, which have been approved for use in the United States, but are still little understood by the public. Monsanto is also facing legal challenges because of its dominance in the seed market. Just last week, a group of leading antitrust lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto, saying the |
1162656_6 | Risks For Cancer Can Start In Womb | than inactive women, had been active in their teens and early 20's as well as later in life. In general, the less estrogen a woman is exposed to -- from fetal life through childhood and adulthood -- the lower her risk of developing breast cancer. Early menopause, which results from a loss of estrogens produced by the ovaries, has long been known to reduce breast cancer risk. Women whose ovaries are removed in their 30's and who take no hormone replacement have up to 75 percent less breast cancer than women who undergo natural menopause at around age 50, Dr. Janssens noted. Dr. Malcolm Pike, a hormone researcher at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said in an interview that Japanese women on a traditional low-fat, high-fiber diet routinely produced 25 percent less estradiol than American women did. Estradiol is an estrogen that is considered an important promoter of breast cancer. Dr. Pike suggested that American women might be able to achieve the Japanese pattern of estrogen production and low breast cancer risk by adopting, from childhood on, a diet that derived less than 10 percent of its calories from fat and that was at least twice as rich in fiber as the current American diet. Over all, Americans derive about 34 percent of their calories from fat, much of it animal fat, and few American women consume less than 20 percent fat calories at any stage of life. ''We could get rid of 85 percent of American breast cancer by starting with 10-year-olds,'' Dr. Pike said, ''keeping them on a low-fat, high-fiber diet, exercising them heavily and keeping them slim.'' Some experts maintain that Asian women are protected by their lifelong high intake of soy, which is rich in weak plant estrogens -- isoflavones like genistein -- that may block the action of a woman's own estrogen. Dr. Pike said the jury was still out on that question. Dr. Mark Messina and colleagues at the University of Alabama in Birmingham suggested that soy might be protective in part because it increased the length of a woman's menstrual cycle, which is associated with a lower risk of breast cancer. But in adults, Dr. Pike said, studies of soy's effects on breast cancer had produced conflicting results, with some studies suggesting that plant-based estrogens, especially in large quantities, might promote, not prevent, breast cancer. Instead, he suggested: ''Soy in |
1162724_3 | Biology Meets High Technology; Biochips Signal a Critical Shift for Research and Medicine | of nucleotides -- that inform every aspect of human biology. That project is expected to be completed within a year or two, either by the national labs or private companies or, as seems most likely, a combination of the two. Genomics companies like Human Genome Sciences, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Incyte Pharmaceuticals and the Celera Genomics Group of the PE Corporation rushed to beat the public effort by finding and patenting genes of medical utility. Bioinformatics companies, like DoubleTwist.com and Informax, offer software to interpret genomic data. The chip companies, led by Affymetrix, based in Santa Clara, Calif., offer a tool to automate the arduous lab work of biochemical research -- and maybe to do much more. ''We're going to burn a set of chips with the whole human genome,'' said Stephen P. A. Fodor, president and chief executive of Affymetrix. Dr. Fodor headed a group that pioneered the field of biochips, with a 1991 paper in the journal Science describing how photolithography, the standard process by which semiconductor companies etch circuits in silicon, could also be used to synthesize biological materials on a chip. Companies like Eli Lilly, SmithKline Beecham and American Home Products have been eagerly buying Affymetrix's GeneChip arrays, helping to increase the company's revenues in the first nine months of this year to $65.7 million, from $35.8 million in the comparable period a year earlier. Often lost in the excitement about the completion of the genome project is that the first human genome will be a consensus, culled from the DNA samples of dozens of anonymous donors. The sequence of each gene will be arrived at only after billions of taxpayer dollars and a decade of study in laboratories lined with $300,000 gene-sequencing machines and other elaborate devices. What the makers of biochips promise is to offer that same depth of information at the individual level and at low cost. ''As soon as the reference DNA is out there, this will move in a thousand different directions,'' Dr. Fodor said. Nevertheless, most of the chip companies agree that the next big application will be the interpretation of how genetic diversity affects the efficacy and side effects of drugs, a field known as pharmacogenetics. The idea is to use the chips to spot genetic differences known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNP's (pronounced SNIPS), because they consist of a misspelling of just one letter of the genetic code. A |
1162719_0 | Mission in the Rain Forest | To the Editor: The Scientist at Work profile of Dr. Mark Plotkin was an unfortunately truncated picture of one of the most committed and effective individuals working for indigenous peoples, their cultures and the forests in which they live. Yes, Mark Plotkin started out as a traditional ethnobotanist working in Suriname and the Amazon seeking indigenous knowledge that could be useful for modern medicine. And, yes, he has ceased that approach. He did that not only because of the problem of low rates of ''success'' as measured by a drug going to market or because of issues surrounding intellectual property rights for indigenous knowledge but because as much as anyone, he is committed to these people and their cultures. His work has become a full-time effort to help these peoples protect their cultures and their knowledge and simultaneously protect the forests in which they live. That may be distant from his original approach, but it deserves real respect. DR. THOMAS E. LOVEJOY McLean, Va. The writer is chief biodiversity adviser to the World Bank. |
1162674_0 | Chirac and the Bomb | To the Editor: Re ''With a 'Don't Be Vexed' Air, Chirac Assesses U.S.'' (news article, Dec. 17): For President Jacques Chirac of France to speak out critically against the Senate's rejection of a nuclear test ban treaty oozes with hypocrisy. Whatever the merits of the Senate's action, Mr. Chirac is the least qualified among world leaders to criticize. One of his first actions upon assuming the presidency in 1995 was to initiate a series of nuclear tests in the South Pacific, at a time when there was a de facto hiatus in nuclear testing among the major powers. It was France's irresponsible testing policy that gave countries like India and Pakistan the political and moral capital to test their nuclear arsenals. RAYMOND J. LEARSY New York, Dec. 17, 1999 |
1161979_5 | With a New Century, a Promise of New Sounds | are often comfortingly regressive. Certainly there are few religious composers who emulate Olivier Messiaen in taking it as their sacred duty to embrace any and every sound. Other sources of purpose are hard to find. Few composers can draw strength from a sense of serving an audience, since the audience, in the main, has shown itself perfectly capable of getting along without them. Nor is there much support to be had from political forces. Socialism and nationalism, which once energized so many composers, do so no longer. What remains is the domain of the personal, and the widespread return to the conventions of Romantic music can perhaps be explained as a searching for means of expression. Especially during that earlier period of placidity following ''Tristan,'' music had great rhetorical power, a wide expressive range and the stylistic breadth to give voice to such diverse personalities as Brahms and Liszt, Verdi and Tchaikovsky. There is also the example of a previous reinvocation of the late Romantic style, in the 1930's, when composers across the range from Schoenberg to Prokofiev went back to it. Nothing is new in postmodernism except the name. It cannot be, though, that means of expression for today are to be found only in a musical language well over a century old, understandable though such a return may be in terms not only of the Romantic style's allure but also of the comparative underselling of expression by the 20th-century modernists. Stravinsky and Cage, at an extreme, explicitly disclaimed subjective expression, though their music argues loudly with their manifestos. And the composers who emerged right after World War II had their sights on levels of abstraction that would enable them to write a new, clean music. Since what had recently happened was inexpressible, the only appropriate course was to express nothing. Expression, though, is unavoidable. And especially at a time like now, when expression has come to the forefront again, one can hear the anger in Mr. Boulez's early music, the fastidious wit in Milton Babbitt's, the sense of wonder in Gyorgy Ligeti's. From a modern, expressive viewpoint, too, the music Luigi Nono wrote in the 1950's has come to have greater importance, for Nono absented himself from the contemporary drive to theorize, insisting that he could and must express the sufferings, struggles and hopes of his time. And he did so not by resurrecting Romanticism but by pursuing |
1162076_3 | Navigating the Bias Minefield | or because the case shattered the notion that a board's admissions decisions were virtually bulletproof. The stunning part of the decision was that several board members were held personally liable for a significant portion of the damages, money that ultimately came out of the board members' own pockets. Since then, co-op lawyers say, boards have become increasingly skittish about skirting the boundaries of antidiscrimination laws when making decisions about sublets and admissions. ''This is an issue that is constantly being discussed between co-op boards and their lawyers,'' said Arthur Gussaroff, a Manhattan co-op lawyer. ''The fact is, fortunately or unfortunately, when you put together all of the federal, state and municipal antidiscrimination laws, you end up with a whole bunch of categories of people who are protected from discrimination in housing.'' Mr. Gussaroff explained that taking all three levels of antidiscrimination laws into consideration, it is now illegal to discriminate against a prospective purchaser -- or renter -- based on the individual's race, creed, color, national origin, physical or mental disability, gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status, citizenship, occupation, and whether children will, or may in the future, reside in the apartment. In fact, Mr. Gussaroff said, since everyone alive is arguably a member of several protected categories, boards have to be extremely careful about what questions they ask an applicant and how those questions are asked. ''You can ask applicants if they are 18 or older, but you can't ask how old they are,'' he said. ''You can't even ask the applicant to submit any document that reveals the applicant's age -- something I consider a little nutty.'' In addition, Mr. Gussaroff said, while boards can ask how many people will be residing in an apartment, they should not ask the ages of the occupants or whether some are going to be children. ''You can ask about criminal convictions, but you can't ask about arrests,'' he said. ''And you can ask a convicted applicant about drug use, but you better be careful because drug use can be regarded as a disability. And here's a good one: you can't ask a person if he's a citizen, or even if he has a legal right to remain permanently in the United States, because that can be used as the basis for a claim for discrimination based on national origin.'' MR. GUSSAROFF said that the only information a board can inquire about |
1162328_0 | December 12-18; Monsanto Sued Over Seeds | The Monsanto Company, which has vowed to create sustainable agriculture through the use of genetically engineered crops, was hit with a class-action lawsuit by antitrust lawyers who claim that Monsanto rushed genetically engineered corn and soybean seeds to the marketplace without testing them for safety. The suit, filed on behalf of a group of small farmers and environmental groups, also charges Monsanto with leading an international cartel that has fixed prices in the seed market and stifled competition in the market for bioengineered crops. Monsanto executives denounced the suit and said its products are entirely safe. DAVID BARBOZA |
1162045_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1162011_0 | PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL | |
1161972_0 | Who Needs Philosophy? | Kudos to Robert Boynton for capturing Martha Nussbaum's ability to relate ancient philosophical ideas to current political issues. Nussbaum shows us that understanding philosophy is neither a mystical free-for-all nor an exercise limited to the intellectual/social elite. The mental rigor and focus that philosophy demands applies to many facets of our daily life, including our examination of the world around us and, in Nussbaum's case, having the focus and tenacity to run a race steeped in ancient Greek tradition -- the marathon. Alexandra Natasha Steinberg Washington |
1160773_0 | In Human Rights, A Global Revolution | To the Editor: ''The Powerful Idea of Human Rights'' (editorial, Dec. 8) mentions that leaders who violate human rights are now subject to international exposure. In fact, the communications revolution's effect on human rights reaches much further than the exposure of atrocities and oppression, as important as that is. As more people come to understand -- through radio, television and the Internet -- that free and uncensored interconnectedness is essential to economic growth, to more democratic government and to personal freedom, it is inevitable that global communication will spread, with or without the blessings of those who feel threatened by it. Those whose power rests on isolation, fear, ignorance and secrecy will find it increasingly difficult to maintain their status. STEPHEN A. FREEMAN Morris Plains, N.J., Dec. 9, 1999 |
1160752_0 | MANY NOT TREATED | One in every five Americans experiences a mental disorder in any given year, and half of all Americans have such disorders at some time in their lives, but most of them never seek treatment, the surgeon general of the United States says in a comprehensive new report. Many people with mental disorders do not realize that effective treatments exist, or they fear discrimination because of the stigma attached to mental illness, the study found. And, it said, many people cannot afford treatment because they lack insurance that would cover it. After reviewing hundreds of studies, the report concludes that ''a range of effective treatments exist for nearly all mental disorders,'' including the most severe. The report's principal recommendation is to ''seek help if you experience symptoms of mental illness.'' The report is to be issued at the White House on Monday by the surgeon general, Dr. David Satcher, the government's leading spokesman on matters of public health. Dr. Satcher finds a huge gap between the need for mental health services and their availability. A major theme of the report is that mental health must be part of mainstream health care, not an afterthought or an offshoot. The report says that ''22 percent of the population has a diagnosable mental disorder,'' as suggested by several recent studies. It also says that ''mental illness, including suicide, is the second leading cause of disability,'' after heart disease. But, it says, ''nearly two-thirds of all people with diagnosable mental disorders do not seek treatment.'' The statistics, derived from studies published in the last few years, will probably not surprise psychiatrists, psychologists or other specialists in mental health. But the report is significant because it meticulously analyzes huge amounts of data and puts the imprimatur of the government on the findings, just as the surgeon general's report on smoking and health did in 1964. Mental disorders are defined in the report as health conditions marked by alterations in thinking, mood or behavior that cause distress or impair a person's ability to function. They include Alzheimer's disease, depression, attention-deficit or hyperactivity disorder and phobias. The report says people are deterred from seeking treatment for mental disorders because they have no health insurance, their insurance does not adequately cover the costs or they have an ''unwarranted sense of hopelessness'' about the prospects for recovery from mental illness. The document declares that ''mental disorders are not character flaws, |
1159026_4 | Clinton Remark on Child Labor Irks Brazil | as worthy, they are not convinced that the United States understands the problems. They wonder whether granting those rights might not destroy the competitive advantage they need for development and whether the West is prepared to provide the billions of dollars needed to eradicate the poverty that lies behind child labor. The Brazilian shoe industry, an important exporter to the United States, today described President Clinton's remark as a lamentable mistake. Nestor de Paula, the president of one of the main associations of shoe manufacturers, said, ''Our opposition to child labor in the shoe industry is widely known.'' In fact, the industry -- buffeted by globalization and the loss of thousands of jobs -- has made huge progress in recent years toward eliminating child labor. In Franca, the main production center in the state of Sao Paulo, child labor has been eliminated, and it is fast disappearing elsewhere, United Nations studies show. The bulk of the more than 700,000 children aged 7 to 14 at work in Brazil are now employed in the coal industry in rural areas and in various informal jobs in the underground or criminal economy of big cities. ''If Mr. Clinton had been well informed, he would have condemned the use of children in the coal business and the criminals who exploit children,'' commented Klaus Kleber in Gazeta Mercantil, Brazil's leading business paper. ''But it so happens that Brazil does not export coal to the United States, or street children.'' That sentiment reflects the widespread view in Brazil and in countries like India that behind the pious sentiments of the United States lie down-to-earth political and economic considerations. ''When the United States no longer knows how to protect its industry, it turns to social issues,'' said Francisco Renan Proenca, the president of the industrial federation of Rio Grande de Sul, a state where the shoe industry is large. Mr. Dornelles, the labor minister, said, ''The United States is open in its language but closed in practice.'' Such suspicions feed the growing conviction that behind the seemingly neutral terms of ''globalization'' and ''free trade'' lies a calibrated calculation by Washington of its own interest. Brazilians have responded by trying to attack what they see as inconsistencies in American trade policy, including barriers to Brazilian orange juice and sugar. But the unease seems broader. ''Most Brazilians favor globalization,'' Mr. Bacha said, ''but not at the price of subordination.'' |
1159005_1 | Visiting U.S., British Cabinet Minister Urges Investment in Ulster | Mr. Mandelson acknowledged that, without continued cooperation between pro-British unionists and pro-Irish republicans, the negotiations that have ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland could be set back ''to square one.'' ''The parties now realize that they need each other,'' he told reporters. ''This is the essence of the accommodation that has been struck.'' But, he said, ''we still have to go the final mile.'' Last week, London transferred local government authority for Northern Ireland to a new power-sharing assembly drawn from the Protestant and Catholic parties. Last weekend, the outlawed Irish Republican Army sent an emissary to meet with an international disarmament committee to discuss the turnover of its weapons, which is required under the peace settlement. Mr. Mandelson said that as a result of the peace effort, Northern Ireland had undergone a ''transformation'' that should have obvious appeal to American business executives. ''It's a completely different place -- no road checks, no roadblocks, people going about their day's business, their normal lives, as anywhere else in the United Kingdom,'' he said, adding that he wanted ''to bring home to the American business community the huge return from their investment in Northern Ireland, if they were to commit to that.'' The United States is already the largest single foreign investor in Northern Ireland. According to British government figures, American companies have invested about $1.9 billion there in the last five years. Last year, two-thirds of all first-time investment in Northern Ireland was made by American companies, including several electronics firms seeking to take advantage of its well educated, relatively low-cost work force. American companies employ about 10 percent of the nearly 140,000 people who work in manufacturing jobs in Northern Ireland. ''We have good people, good skills,'' Mr. Mandelson said. A close political ally of Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr. Mandelson was appointed to the Northern Ireland post in October. The mood of the talks today between the British delegation led by Mr. Mandelson and Clinton administration officials was that of a mutual admiration society. Mr. Mandelson repeatedly praised President Clinton and former Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, who oversaw the negotiations that led to home rule in Northern Ireland, for their peace efforts. He said that Mr. Clinton had made use of the ''the persuasive skills for which he is famous'' in the peace negotiations and that ''he has not spared any effort, any ounce of energy.'' |
1159077_2 | Robert A. Swanson, 52, Co-Founder of Genentech | scheduled to go public this week. Robert Swanson grew up in Florida, the son of an Eastern Air Lines employee, and earned degrees in chemistry and management from M.I.T. He joined Citicorp Venture Capital in New York and was transferred to San Francisco, then joined the venture capital firm now called Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. The technique of gene splicing, in which a gene from one organism can be inserted into another, had been developed in the early 1970's by Herbert W. Boyer of the University of California at San Francisco and Stanley Cohen of Stanford University. Mr. Swanson persuaded Dr. Boyer to meet for 10 minutes. So taken was Dr. Boyer by his vision and enthusiasm that the meeting stretched to three hours. The two men formed Genentech in April 1976, and it is widely considered the first biotechnology company. Another biotechnology company, the Cetus Corporation, was actually formed five years earlier, but its focus was not initially on gene-splicing. When Genentech went public in 1980, its stock soared on the first day of trading. Mr. Swanson built a strong scientific team by recruiting from universities. Scientists could publish their work, something most big drug companies were reluctant to allow. Genentech, based in South San Francisco, boasted an informal atmosphere, known for its Friday afternoon themed parties known as ho-ho's. Still, Mr. Swanson was extremely hard-driving and demanding, and Genentech's early days were marked by some controversy over allegedly aggressive sales tactics. In April, Genentech agreed to pay $50 million to settle Federal criminal charges that it had marketed human growth hormone for unapproved uses from 1985 to 1994. Last month, Genentech agreed to pay $200 million to the University of California at San Francisco to settle a patent infringement lawsuit stemming from the development of a human growth hormone in the company's early days. In 1990, Genentech agreed to sell 60 percent of its stock to Roche Holding, the Swiss drug giant, for $2.1 billion. This year, Roche bought the rest of Genentech it did not own but then sold shares to the public again. Mr. Swanson was involved in numerous civic and academic activities, serving on various advisory councils at M.I.T. and as a trustee of the San Francisco Ballet and other organizations. He is survived by his wife, Judy Church Swanson; his daughters, Katie and Erica; and his mother, Arline Swanson, of Foster City, Calif. |
1159027_0 | Program to Check Safety of Airlines Abroad | In an effort to improve safety on airlines that do not fly to this country, the Transportation Department announced a plan today to require United States airlines to report on the performance of their foreign partners. The program is similar to an agreement last August between the big American carriers and the Defense Department, under which the airlines audit their overseas commercial partners and report what they have found. The Defense Department has already used that information to allow service personnel to resume flying on one airline and to begin an investigation of another. But the Transportation Department program would make those audits mandatory before it would approve partnerships called code-share agreements. It could also terminate existing code-shares. ''Through this program, Americans will know that foreign code-share partners meet international safety standards,'' said Rodney Slater, the Secretary of Transportation, who was attending an aviation conference in Chicago. Code shares are agreements under which one airline flies the airplane but two can sell tickets on the flight. The safety implications of code shares became clearer after Swissair Flight 111 crashed off Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1998, killing all 229 people aboard. Swissair and Delta have a code-share agreement, and Delta was legally responsible for the two-dozen people to whom it had sold tickets. Delta has maintained its relationship with Swissair, which is already subject to Transportation Department regulations because it flies to the United States. But Delta dropped Korean Air Lines after several accidents, including a plane crash in Shanghai in April. The plan announced today is modeled after an agreement struck by six American airlines and the Defense Department, which buys 200,000 tickets a year on foreign airlines. The six have 160 code-share agreements with foreign airlines among them. The Pentagon has already used information from Delta Air Lines to reinstate Korean Air Lines, which the Pentagon had stopped using after the Shanghai crash. Delta has not reinstated its own agreement with K.A.L., but has reported on the airline's improvements, said a Pentagon official involved in the program. The Pentagon has used information from the program to begin an audit of another foreign carrier to see if it should be put on the ''non-use'' list, the official said. He would not name the airline. Twenty-six domestic and international airlines are on the Pentagon's non-use list, some of them with only two or three planes. |
1160902_1 | Dozen Sets Of Parents Before Trust Is Fostered | became depressed and angry at home, and lashed out at his classmates and teachers during the day. He moved in and out of several psychiatric hospitals. After his 12th unsuccessful foster home, Mr. Torres was referred to the Jewish Child Care Association, a beneficiary of the UJA-Federation, one of seven local charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The association focuses on children who have been failed by the systems created to help them. Mr. Torres's case was handled by the association's therapeutic foster home program, which deals with emotionally troubled children and adolescents who have been in psychiatric hospitals or multiple foster homes. First, they moved Mr. Torres to the Pleasantville Cottage School, a residential program in Pleasantville, N.Y., though he continued to attend the institute in the Bronx. Then, the agency began looking for a foster family willing to go through an unusually intensive training program to prepare for Mr. Torres's needs. They found a match with Philip and Evelyn Reiter of Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. There were two things that attracted the couple to Mr. Torres, Mr. Reiter said. Mrs. Reiter is also blind, so they felt it would be no trouble to accommodate his disability. Also, the Reiters are born-again Christians, and Mr. Torres was just beginning to explore his Christian faith. The match worked. ''The first year was totally crazy, because I thought this was too good to be true,'' Mr. Torres said. ''But they were the first people who were committed to seeing me through it. It made me feel that even if something tragic happened, everything wouldn't fall apart as it always had.'' As soon as that fundamental piece of the puzzle was in place, everything else started to change as well, Mr. Torres said. He joined a church, became a disciplined student and began winning medals in sports. In one year, he earned first, second and third place in track and field tournaments, and first and second place in swimming tournaments between all the East Coast private schools for the visually impaired. He joined the wrestling team, quickly rising in the ranks. The Reiters and Mr. Torres decided to try ''mainstreaming,'' and with the help of the Jewish Child Care Association, he switched to Croton-Harmon High School, the local public school, where he is now a senior. There, he has maintained an A average, and won both a silver and a |
1164062_3 | Practical Traveler; Tighter Security For Web Buyers | for reservations made completely online; through April 30, United Airlines (www.ual.com) is giving 3,000 miles upon each customer's first online booking, plus the standard 1,000-mile bonus for each online purchase. Sites are offering other forms of encouragement as well -- most notably convenience. Online travel companies have made it easier than ever to complete transactions, in part because they now offer a degree of personalized service that's almost unsettling. For instance, Expedia (www.expedia.com), Travelocity's chief competitor, allows registered users to create a file of travel preferences for everyone in the family, including frequent flier numbers, seating and food preferences, disabilities and age (in case anyone qualifies for discounts). Expedia will also store a user's home airport the first time a trip is booked through the site, which, when combined with the travel preferences and credit card information stored by Expedia, can whisk users through a reservation in three to four clicks. Travelocity boasts the same capability, and both sites go to great lengths to assure that personal information will remain confidential. Travelers who are either too leery of storing personal information on multiple travel sites or don't want to spend the time typing it in are candidates to use an increasingly popular online technology called the ''digital wallet.'' These wallets allow users to store their information either on their computer or on a secure Internet site, where it can be used to fill in forms with one click. Two of the more popular wallet devices are offered by eCode (www.ecode.com) and Gator (www.gator.com), each of which provide the service free. ECode, based in Santa Clara, Calif., stores a user's personal and credit card information -- as well as log-ins or passwords for sites requiring registration -- on the company's secure server. Whenever users confront a blank form on any site, they click a button and their relevant information is instantly sent -- encrypted -- to the site. Gator, which has compiled hundreds of thousands of users in a few months, stores your information on your computer. Frequent travelers must store it on laptops to use a digital wallet on the road. Downloading a Wallet With both Gator and eCode, users must spend a few minutes downloading the wallet software, which does not work with a Macintosh. Wallets only help fill out the transaction forms -- ticket returns or any other issues arising from the purchase must be handled directly with |
1163906_0 | Merits of Altered Crops | To the Editor: Your article ''Monsanto and Pharmacia to Join, Creating a Pharmaceutical Giant'' (front page, Dec. 20) states that Monsanto has been under attack in Europe and in the United States for developing genetically modified crops that are substantially superior to regular varieties. While opponents of genetically modified products fan the flames of public fear of use of such crops, the truth is that they do not threaten food safety, and in fact hold much promise for present and future generations. The real basis for the opposition is anger at agricultural business practices. Consumers should not confuse that with real threats to food safety. RUTH KAVA Dir. of Nutrition, American Council on Science and Health New York, Dec. 20, 1999 |
1163816_4 | A Firm Foundation, Starting at the Roof | ''We've always operated on the principle of being a self-supporting church,'' said the Rev. David Johnson, the rector emeritus. ''But the reality of expenses today -- it will probably cost $75,000 to $100,000 just for scaffolding.'' The first phase of repair and stabilization might reach $500,000; a daunting sum for a congregation that is still vital but smaller and grayer than it once was. It may seem a stretch for the empowerment zone corporation to play angel, especially when its purpose is to spur business and create jobs, using $300 million in Federal, state and city money. But the agency sees historic buildings as catalysts in economic development, as they bring visitors -- and visitors' dollars -- uptown. ''Many, many people come up to visit, to hear gospel services and to enjoy the architecture of these splendid, unrivaled jewels,'' said Alex Saavedra, director of planning and historic preservation for the empowerment zone. ''St. Martin's has one of only two carillons in New York City. That's something visitors would love to come see.'' (The other carillon is in Riverside Church.) St. Martin's, originally known as Holy Trinity, was completed in 1888 to designs by William A. Potter. As an example of the robust Romanesque Revival style associated with Henry Hobson Richardson, it has few rivals, if any, in New York City. In 1928, the Rev. John Howard Johnson founded the St. Martin's congregation, which eventually took over the Holy Trinity buildings and was made an independent parish. One of his sons, David, was the rector from 1961 until this year. Another, the Rev. Johan Johnson, is the current rector. Although Father David Johnson is nominally retired, he can still climb nimbly up the open staircase to the tower and swing the bells, one of which weighs 3,100 pounds and is 53 inches across, sending the sound booming out across Harlem. Cast by the Van Bergen foundry in the Netherlands, the carillon was dedicated exactly 50 years ago this month. And it will be rung at midnight on Friday to mark the millennium. The 42 bells are in good order, Father Johnson said, but the clavier -- a keyboard the size of an upright piano with five-inch wooden levers -- must be replaced. There is no point, however, in fixing the carillon until the tower structure and the roof overhead are secure. Father Johnson refers to the carillon as the ''poor people's |
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