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1120044_0 | U.N. Takes Up Plan to Limit Population | The General Assembly today began debating an action plan first drawn up five years ago to limit world population growth, although developing countries remained deeply divided over some aspects of the plan. ''We have to stabilize the population of this planet,'' Secretary General Kofi Annan said in an address opening the special session. Most of the plan -- which seeks to freeze the world's population, now 6 billion, at 9.8 billion in 2050 by improving the status of women -- is accepted and being put into effect. But a small group of conservative Muslim and Roman Catholic third-world countries, backed by the Vatican, continues to oppose certain aspects. During negotiations today those countries, which include Libya, Egypt, Argentina, Sudan and Nicaragua, pressed on with their campaign to water down provisions calling for safe abortions, sex education in schools and contraceptive advice for young people. |
1119937_0 | College Prep By E-Mail For the Eager | THE fall term at the University of Pennsylvania does not start until September. But more than 200 incoming freshmen have already met some professors, debated politics and discussed the meaning of poetry -- all by E-mail. Their correspondence is part of an electronic seminar program that the university began this spring. Al Filreis, a professor of English, and James O'Donnell, a professor of classics, dreamed up the idea for the noncredit orientation seminars last year as a way to stimulate students while they are in the academic nether world between high school and college. ''I've always thought it was a time intellectually wasted for the universities,'' Dr. Filreis said. ''We admit the students, and then we sit there until September, sending them catalogues and things.'' Now, instead of being bombarded with glossy brochures and course catalogues, students are being flooded with E-mail. Five seminars are in progress, each one with a professor, an academic dean and 25 students who were selected for the electronic mailing list after demonstrating their enthusiasm for the program in short essays. In Dr. Filreis's seminar, participants have received as many as eight messages a day. The program is one example of how colleges are using technology to reach students before they set foot on campus. Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles decided to distribute pagers to incoming students this summer so administrators could send them messages about housing deadlines and course schedules. Columbia University and other colleges have carved out space on their Web sites for entering freshmen to exchange information. At Penn, the students in Dr. Filreis's seminar have not only introduced themselves, but have also become engaged in heated debates over the meaning of grades, the downsides of cramming and the actions of the Chinese Government (one of the students is from Shanghai, and her perspective has been of great interest). They have also sought advice from Dr. Filreis about signing up for courses, getting to know faculty members and analyzing poetry. Dr. Filreis said the discussions should give the students a focused sense of how college works before they arrive. That was his experience with the 33 students he met through last year's trial run. ''I dare say they made the adjustment to college better than the average bear,'' he said. |
1119936_6 | Internet's Chain Of Foolery | to get a generation or two beyond the original and the original is lost. You can't get caught doing it, or I don't think anyone has so far.'' And justice is hard to come by if you or your business has been the victim of an anonymous hoaxer. Internet service providers are not responsible for the information posted on their bulletin boards or flung through the gossip mill of E-mail. Charles Hymes, a Hewlett-Packard engineer who runs a nonprofit Web site that exposes hoaxes (www.nonprofit.net/hoax /hoax.html), recalls originating a chain letter hoax of his own, geared to academics and called ''Win Tenure Fast.'' ''It worked on the same premise as those pyramid schemes for making money,'' he said. ''It said if you want to build a lot of citations, simply add your name to this letter and cite it yourself, and if everyone who receives it does same thing, you'll have millions and millions of citations, and you're guaranteed tenure. I've still seen this circulating years later, in different incarnations.'' Other hoaxes have mutated as well. Electronic rumors that the Postal Service would soon start charging a 5-cent fee for every piece of E-mail eventually developed a Canadian strain, which urged E-mail recipients to lobby members of Parliament to vote against taxing E-mail, though no such legislation was in the works. Mr. Rosenberger calls that an example of ''E-Darwinism.'' ''The speed of E-mail and its incessant forwarding capability make it easier to evolve,'' he said. Steps to Take If Things Seem Too Good, or Bad, Be Suspicious Here are steps computer users can take if they receive chain letters or other suspected hoaxes via E-mail: DON'T SPREAD IT: Delete the message, or send it on to only one person, experts say. That should be your computer security officer or system administrator. Doing so makes it possible for other users to be warned not to pass on similar E-mail messages. ASK QUESTIONS: Write to the sender to ask how that person can verify the information in the message. Consider the sources. Ask yourself why I.B.M. would be writing directly to you about the latest E-mail virus. LOOK FOR INFORMATION: Use search engines to look for information about a suspected hoax -- many become the subjects of discussion groups or Web pages. SEEK REPUTABLE SOURCES: Go directly to the home pages of the companies or Government agencies that are the subject of |
1119984_0 | World Briefing | EUROPE FRANCE: NEW BLOW TO CHIRAC -- The supreme court rejected an attempt by former Prime Minister Alain Juppe, left, to escape an investigation into corruption charges that have cast a shadow over Jacques Chirac's presidency. The court agreed that Mr. Juppe must be investigated on suspicion of being an accomplice in the misuse of funds when he served as a deputy to Mr. Chirac when Mr. Chirac was Mayor of Paris. The ruling came two days after the current Mayor, the fellow Gaullist Jean Tiberi, was ordered to be investigated for influence-peddling. (Reuters) FRANCE: COUPLES BILL STALLED -- The Senate used stalling tactics to force postponement of a bill that would give legal status to unmarried couples, including homosexuals. Opponents of the bill fear it will lead to adoptions by homosexual couples. The Government of the Socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, wants the bill to become law by the fall. A new vote is scheduled for October. (AP) SWITZERLAND: SETBACK FOR SCIENTOLOGY -- The Scientology movement suffered a setback when it lost a bid in Switzerland's top court to overturn a municipal law barring people from being approached on the street by those using ''deceptive or dishonest methods.'' The court ruled that a Basel law, prompted by efforts to curb Scientology, involved an intervention in religious freedom but did not infringe it. Elizabeth Olson (NYT) SPAIN: BASQUE KILLER GOES TO PARLIAMENT -- A gunman for the Basque separatist group E.T.A. who was sentenced to 60 years in prison last week for the murder of a politician and his wife in 1998 was taken under police guard to sign in for a seat he won June 13 in the Navarra regional parliament. Jose Luis Barrios, 26, was elected as a candidate from a leftist party that is linked to the rebels, and he won court permission to present his parliamentary credentials. Al Goodman (NYT) THE AMERICAS MEXICO: UNIVERSITY TALKS COLLAPSE -- The first attempt at direct negotiations between the administration of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and students who are on strike there collapsed. Administration officials rejected the strikers' last-minute demand that the meeting, which was to be held at the national Congress, include 130 student representatives instead of 13, as the two sides earlier agreed. The strike has paralyzed Mexico's largest university for 72 days. Julia Preston (NYT) CANADA: CHILD PORNOGRAPHY RULING UPHELD -- An appeals court upheld |
1119984_2 | World Briefing | a lower court's decision that Canada's law against personal possession of child pornography is unconstitutional, arguing that the law's invasion of privacy outweighed its benefits in the fight against child abuse. The ruling, in a case involving a Vancouver man, has set off a national political controversy and is now expected to go to the Supreme Court. (Reuters) COLOMBIA: LAWMAKER SLAIN -- An opposition party lawmaker was slain by unidentified gunmen at his resort hotel, the second Colombian congressman murdered in less than a year. The killing of Jose Arnoldo Parra, 50, took place just outside Jamundi, close to the area where National Liberation Army guerrillas are believed to be still holding at least 38 hostages kidnapped from a church a month ago. (Reuters) MIDDLE EAST YEMEN: WIDER ROLE FOR WOMEN -- A U.S.-sponsored conference pledged to expand the participation of women and minorities in the political life of emerging democracies. A final declaration said participating countries agreed to appoint women to top government posts and to discuss the legal barriers to wider participation of women. Delegations to the talks came from 16 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. (Reuters) AFRICA CONGO: SOUTH AFRICAN PLEDGE -- As talks in Zambia to end the 11-month war in Congo dragged on, South Africa said for the first time that it would be willing to send peacekeeping troops to Congo if necessary. South Africa's last military foray into foreign territory ended in disaster: When its troops rolled into Lesotho last year to quell political unrest, residents turned to looting and arson, destroying most of the kingdom's capital. Suzanne Daley (NYT) NIGERIA: CABINET SWORN IN -- President Olusegun Obasanjo swore in Nigeria's first civilian Government in more than 15 years and told the nation he hoped to heal the wounds suffered under military rule. Mr. Obasanjo defended the size of the 47-minister Cabinet, saying he aimed to accommodate Nigeria's many interest groups. Many of those appointed to key positions were prominent in the 1970's when Mr. Obasanjo was the military ruler. (Reuters) ALGERIA: MINISTER DISMISSED -- President Abdelaziz Bouteflika fired Communication and Culture Minister Abdelaziz Rahabi after just six months in the job, the official news agency reported. Newspapers said Mr. Rahabi was one of the few ministers who had succeeded in building smooth relations with the fledgling independent press and that his dismissal could augur ill for press freedom. (Reuters) NIGER: |
1119932_7 | Can It Pay to Surf the Web? | on multilevel marketing, which can lead to uncontrolled growth. E-mail makes referral recruiting easier and faster than ever, leading to membership bases that may be wildly larger than expected. Mr. Jorgensen said his business model was built on the expectation of 20,000 members; as of Wednesday, more than 1.72 million people had signed up. At the same time, however, the number of members, or what on-line marketers call ''eyeballs,'' is what helped the company attract advertisers. So far, 32 companies -- including Ebay and Efax -- have decided to run advertisements on the Viewbar. The reduction in paid surfing hours will have no effect on the deals struck with advertisers, Mr. Jorgenson said. The advertisers signed up so far have paid for a certain number of ''impressions,'' or on-line displays of their ads to specific users. The company is also striking deals with advertisers to earn its own commissions on products that people purchase after clicking on ads shown on the Viewbar. Michele Slack, an analyst with Jupiter Communications' on-line advertising group, is not so sure that advertisers will shrug off the company's revised start-up policy. Some people have simply signed up to receive $20 a month and are not interested in building referrals, Ms. Slack said. Now that they will only receive $5 a month, they may be less willing to take part. ''That is a huge reduction to what they are promising these people,'' she said. ''If this ends up collapsing their user base, advertisers are going to be less interested.'' Privacy advocates say that consumers should be wary of signing up for free Internet offers for other reasons. Jason Catlett, the president of Junkbusters, a consumer advocacy group that tries to limit unsolicited mail, warned that companies like All Advantage are collecting information about members' social networks, as well as E-mail addresses and surfing habits. ''People don't like strangers knowing who knows them,'' Mr. Catlett said. To join All Advantage, members must provide their names, mailing addresses, ages and E-mail addresses. The company has promised its members that it will not divulge the information to advertisers or other companies. That also applies to data about members' referrals, Mr. Jorgensen said. Free-PC promises the same, noting on its Web site that it will keep personally identifiable information ''completely private forever.'' Privacy policies for Cybergold and Mypoints state that the companies will not share personal information with third parties |
1120064_4 | Negotiations Continue for Ulster Accord | voted for this agreement and whether the two Governments' commitment to the agreement is stronger than those who want to tear it down.'' The midnight deadline was set six weeks ago by Mr. Blair, who with Mr. Ahern has been in Belfast since Monday jointly conducting the final talks as they did 14 months ago. Back then declaring a firm deadline for a halt to talking produced an agreement. Today is the day that the new legislatures in Scotland and Wales assume their powers, and in setting the deadline Mr. Blair hoped to mark a historically simultaneous start-up of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Mr. Blair was due in Edinburgh this morning to speak at the ceremonial opening of the Scottish Parliament. Frustrated that the peace agreement has been followed by 14 months of missed deadlines and stalled motion, the two Prime Ministers have suggested that failure to take the next crucial step would force them to review the whole accord. It would also leave a menacing vacuum in the public affairs of the province at the outset of the tensest season in Northern Ireland, the summer months when the Protestant parades that are resented and protested by the minority Catholic community are held. Mr. Blair interrupted his talks on Wednesday to meet with leaders of the Protestant Orange Order to reassure them after the Government-appointed Parades Commission decided on Monday to block their members from marching from Drumcree Church in Portadown through the Catholic Garvaghy Road neighborhood this Sunday. In years past that march was a showdown that convulsed the province, and dissident Protestant paramilitaries have threatened to go on the attack now in response to Monday's ruling. Sir Ronnie Flanagan, chief constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, said on Wednesday that his force had intelligence that there were people determined to exploit the occasions with violence. Britain has flown in 1,300 troops to help the police, and Sir Ronnie warned parade organizers to keep troublemakers out. ''People who bring large numbers of others onto the street have a responsibility to look beyond that event,'' he said, ''and if it is predictable, as it was predictable last year, that there are malevolent people in the wings willing to use the peaceful protest as a cover for wreaking violence, then I believe those who would seek to bring large numbers onto the streets have a responsibility to take that into account.'' |
1124695_0 | Stalked by Deadly Virus, Papaya Lives to Breed Again | On the island of Hawaii, on what had been acres of withering, disease-infested plants, farmers this summer are walking among rows of lush green trees, harvesting the world's first crop of genetically engineered papayas. Designed with a gene that allows them to withstand the papaya ringspot virus -- an incurable disease that ruins fruit and can sicken trees to the point of killing them -- these genetically modified plants are already being credited with saving an industry that was on its way out. In the past seven years as the virus wiped out farm after farm in Hawaii's major papaya growing region, farmers continually sought out new land in what became increasingly futile attempts to escape the spreading disease. Some farmers grew so desperate that they broke into experimental fields and stole genetically engineered papaya seeds before they were approved for use by the Department of Agriculture. ''This industry was dying,'' said Emerson Llantero, manager of the Papaya Administrative Committee, a research and marketing group supported by papaya farms, most of which are small, family operations of 10 to 20 acres. The new papaya, he said, is a second chance for growers. In an expanding debate over potential problems with genetically engineered crops, including corn pollen that can kill monarch butterflies and Europe's reluctance to accept genetically engineered foods, some have argued that these novel plants have provided relatively minor tangible benefits. But farmers like Orlando Manuel, who has abandoned several farms in an effort to escape the virus, would argue otherwise for the new papaya. He said this year that he planted his entire 20 acres in the genetically modified plant known as Rainbow. ''I'd be out of business without it,'' Mr. Manuel said. ''There's nowhere to go. You can run but you cannot hide.'' The first of the Rainbow papayas are on sale in grocery stores in Hawaii and on the mainland. Like other genetically modified crops, they have drawn little reaction from the American public. Still, the new papaya is not without controversy or risks. Organic farmers say they are concerned about ecological risks. Researchers inserted the disease virus's DNA into the plant's DNA, using a method that had succeeded in protecting other crops, though the exact mechanism of how this works is still being investigated. The risks include the creation of new and more potent viral diseases. Growers also worry that the Rainbow plants may contaminate |
1124291_2 | You've Got Mail. You're Being Watched. | not be as disrespectful,'' he said. ''It would be from one employee to another, saying 'We don't want to work in an environment where this kind of thing goes on.' It'd be equivalent to the kind of natural monitoring that would have gone on around the water cooler.'' In reality, though, monitoring is rarely continuous; far more often it is used only when a company has someone or something to investigate -- when, as at Edward Jones, an employee complains about a particular message. Indeed, Laura P. Hartman, a professor of business ethics at the University of Wisconsin, thinks the threat of monitoring may be seen as a strong-enough deterrent that companies can spare themselves from much actual monitoring. Employers are naturally uneasy about unmasking inappropriate E-mail and dismissing offenders. But invasion of privacy isn't the root of the unease; the distress of firing is. Most managers dread having to do something so painful to the person across the desk. ''We have a zero tolerance policy with regard to inappropriate E-mail, and people know that,'' Ms. Heying said. ''Does that mean we didn't feel badly about 20 associates? Oh, by all means, we do.'' E-mail takes companies into new ethical territory, as they struggle with controlling a technology so utterly different from other communications tools. Unlike a phone call or hallway conversation, E-mail leaves an audit trail that can pinpoint the abuser. But unlike a paper memo, E-mail moves at lightning speed, both in delivery and in composition, often with little reflection or second thought. It will probably be awhile before there is corporate consensus on the fairest balance between privacy and protection. Until then, the responsibility to do the right thing falls upon employees, who can use common sense as a guide. If an employee's passion for E-mail privacy is born of a desire not to have the boss find out he's been placing bids all day for vintage comic books in an on-line auction, chances are he already knows he shouldn't be doing that at work. In this new high-technology world, a remarkably old-fashioned rule of thumb applies: Don't do what you wouldn't want to be caught doing. THE RIGHT THING Jeffrey L. Seglin is a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Center for the Study of Values in Public Life. His column on business ethics appears the third Sunday of each month. E-mail may be sent to: righthng@nytimes.com. |
1124315_10 | An Urban Shepherd; Harry Theodore Can't Afford to Live Indoors. But He Feeds a Hungry Family of 14. | a rusty bucket and lights a fire. He throws the meat on the grill -- an old steel refrigerator shelf -- and tosses the cooked pieces onto the cardboard. ''They like it medium,'' he says, putting two large salmon heads on the grill. Afterward, each dog picks an empty parking space and flops down. Mr. Theodore walks around playing with each dog. He inspects them and slaps the flies off their backs. Despite his no-nonsense demeanor, Mr. Theodore is a friendly man with a childlike curiosity and a love of intellectual discussion. Over the course of an afternoon, he wonders: how to obtain a biography about Nick the Greek, the legendary gambler; why the Tower of Pisa leans; what did they ever do with the Roosevelt Raceway space, and what kind of engine powers the Tommy Hilfiger blimp that roams the New Jersey skyline over the Javits Center. For visitors who themselves wonder what path led this Greek shepherd to a garbage-strewn lot near the Javits Center, he supplies this answer. Theocharas Paleologos was born the youngest of seven children on a family farm in Macedonia, where he tended 300 goats and hunted and trapped small game. At 18, he changed his name and moved to America, where a rich uncle promised to put him through college. But during Mr. Theodore's first semester at Ohio State University, the uncle became senile and control of the estate fell to his girlfriend. She decided that college corrupted the mind, and cut off the young scholar's money. Mr. Theodore took a factory job and eventually became a longshoreman. Later, he got his job as a hot-dog vendor. The remains of his plans to become a civil engineer can be seen all around his kennel compound, cleverly constructed from found objects. And his dog-rearing in New York echoes his days in Greece, when he trained his family's Doberman pinschers to hunt for wild boar. As for the future, these are Mr. Theodore's plans: He is gathering material to replace the house that burned below the apple tree. Then he will check into the hospital for testing, and soon, maybe, he will be living indoors in his subsidized apartment, with much less company. But he is also toying with another possibility. Using money he hopes to get from a longstanding disability claim, he would like to buy a large van before winter comes, pack the |
1124053_3 | God Exists, Philosophically | his own optical instruments. Many of Spinoza's friends in his not-so-solitary years of study were members of the various dissident Christian groups collectively known as Collegiants. These small sects, which were sometimes little more than discussion groups, typically rejected all religious ceremonies. They dismissed the authority of the established churches and many or even all traditional dogmas. Their religion focused on the morally uplifting effects of reading Scripture, the virtues of religious freedom and the desirability of an absolute separation between church and state. Despite his growing fame in philosophical and scientific circles -- Leibniz sought him out and the University of Heidelberg offered him a chair in philosophy, which he politely declined -- it was for his religious views, which chimed with those of the Collegiants, that Spinoza was primarily known. As a spy-priest wrote to the Inquisition (which kept a close watch on Marranos abroad, in case they were in contact with former Jews at home), Spinoza held that ''God exists only philosophically.'' What this meant, in effect, was that Spinoza's God was abstract and impersonal -- far too abstract and impersonal to be acceptable to orthodox Christianity or Judaism. When Spinoza's reputation eventually recovered from the stigma of atheism, it was the apparent identification of God with nature, presented in his posthumously published ''Ethics,'' that most attracted attention. This picture meant many things to many people. Coleridge and Shelley saw in it a religion of nature. George Eliot, who translated some of the ''Ethics'' into English, liked Spinoza for his vehement attacks on superstition. Marx liked him for what he took to be his materialistic account of the universe. Goethe could not say exactly what it was that he liked in the ''Ethics,'' but he knew he was profoundly moved by something or other. Goethe was one of the few with the courage to admit that he could not really understand what Spinoza was on about most of the time. The ''Ethics'' is a work with many still-unresolved obscurities, a forbidding mathematical structure modeled on Euclid's geometry and a technical vocabulary derived in part from medieval scholasticism. Nadler wisely chooses to outline its conclusions and not delve any deeper. It is puzzling that almost everyone who reads Spinoza reads the ''Ethics'' and not his earlier ''Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.'' This work, published anonymously in Spinoza's lifetime, is easily comprehensible and, as Nadler notes, succeeds in explaining many of the |
1123758_3 | One Agreement in Ulster: Assembly Session Is a Farce | evidence yet that the province had put behind it the sectarian violence that has taken more than 3,200 lives in favor of a political path. In London Mo Mowlam, the Secretary for Northern Ireland, said that the British and Irish Governments were reviewing the entire peace process and that Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, would meet to decide on the ''nature, agenda and timetable'' of the review. She told a somber House of Commons that it was the ''implementation of the agreement'' rather than the agreement itself that would be under study. ''Today is a setback; it would be foolish to deny that,'' she told the House of Commons. ''But it would be even more foolish to conclude that the Good Friday Agreement cannot continue,'' a reference to the day in 1998 when the pact was signed. Andrew Mackay, the Conservative Party spokesman for Northern Ireland and an aggressive advocate for Mr. Trimble, asked Ms. Mowlam to praise the Unionist leader and declare that the blame for the setback lay entirely with the I.R.A. and other paramilitary groups. She responded by saying she had respect for all the party leaders and that ''the last thing the people of Northern Ireland need now is an outbreak of recriminations.'' Reuters quoted a spokesman for Mr. Blair as saying that the meeting with Mr. Ahern would take place on Tuesday, and that George Mitchell, the former United States Senator who was chairman of the 1998 peace talks, would attend. The April 1998 agreement establishes governmental bodies and commissions aimed at balancing the demands of Northern Ireland's two religious communities and parceling out authority between them. It was approved overwhelmingly in referendums in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland, but politicians have been quarreling about it for more than a year, with guerrilla disarmament at the root of the impasse. The Unionists say they cannot let a party with a private army into government. The I.R.A. will not agree to dismantle its arsenal right now. But Sinn Fein argues that disarmament was never a precondition to putting the plan into place, and that the I.R.A. cease-fire, now in its third year, was proof of the organization's commitment to peace. While the Assembly is indefinitely suspended, other parts of the agreement, like the commission to examine reforms of the police force, will continue. The Unionists and their Conservative |
1123697_3 | AUTOS ON FRIDAY/Safety; New Seat Belts to Get More Give and Take | are clear: More than 85 percent of cellular phone customers say they sometimes use the phones while driving, and 27 percent use them on more than half of their trips. By next year there will be 80 million users, the agency said. So many cellular users call the police when they see highway crashes that seven states are beefing up ''911'' systems to handle the increased call volume, even though the number of crashes has not changed. Limited data from crashes in several states suggest that it is conversation, not dialing, that causes crashes. Dialing requires drivers to take their eyes off the road, but they tend to compensate, often by driving slower, the report said. ''Contrary to expectations, the majority of drivers were talking on their telephones rather than dialing at the time of the crash,'' it said. ''A few drivers also were startled when their cellular telephones rang and, as they reached for their phones, they ran off the road.'' ''The overwhelming majority of cellular telephone users were in the striking vehicle, and struck cars or other large objects that were in clear view,'' the agency found. Explorer vs. Sable. Explorer Wins. The bumpers of some sport utility vehicles have fared badly in low-speed insurance industry tests using poles or immovable barriers, but the bumper of a 1997 Ford Explorer did very nicely in a real-world exercise recently in Rockville, Md., when matched against the back end of a 1992 Mercury Sable station wagon. It wasn't bumper-to-bumper, but bumper-to-taillight, as the Explorer spared the wagon's bumper almost entirely by striking above it. As a result of the mismatch, the left rear corner of the car ended up moving one foot toward the hood. It would probably have gone forward farther, but the Sable's spare tire, stored upright in a compartment on the left side, served as a sort of bumper, transferring some of the impact force to the sheet metal in front of it. The tailpipe and muffler, undamaged, were clearly visible from above, where the liftgate used to be. The Sable was mine, and my insurance company said repairs would cost a bit more than $5,000, which was the approximate value of the car, which had 80,000 miles on the odometer. I was not present at the time of the accident, on a quiet residential street with a 25 m.p.h. speed limit, but witnesses said the Ford |
1123728_0 | Ireland's Precarious Peace | Northern Ireland's main Protestant Unionist party took only 15 minutes on Wednesday to reject London's latest compromise plan for peace. The rejection effectively shuts down the major aspects of the peace agreement signed on Good Friday of last year. For now, there will be no transfer of governing power from London to a local Assembly in Belfast with all parties represented. There will be no gradual disarmament by the Irish Republican Army. Instead, Northern Ireland enters a dangerous period when terrorism on both sides could make future compromise even stickier. But there is a future for peace, and the current setback should not obscure how much progress has been made. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was able to turn London away from partisanship and make it a tireless and fair mediator. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness pushed Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, into ''a seismic shift,'' as Mr. Blair put it. Sinn Fein agreed to pursue a united Ireland through politics alone. After years of claims that the I.R.A. would never disarm, Sinn Fein signaled that the I.R.A. would do so. And the Unionists and their leader, David Trimble, stopped demanding that the I.R.A. disarm even before talks began. This week, however, the I.R.A. failed to promise disarmament, as the Unionists sought. More important, the Unionist rejection reveals a failure of imagination by the party and especially Mr. Trimble. While the I.R.A.'s defiance is disappointing, the peace agreement does not require it to disarm before Sinn Fein joins Northern Ireland's Government, as Unionists now want. The issue is also largely symbolic, as most parties in Northern Ireland began as armed groups. None ever disarmed. The hope for peace now lies in new talks that the British Government wants to start in the fall, after all sides cool down. It would help, too, if grass-roots organizations on both sides pressed the politicians to respect the endorsement that voters of both religions gave to the peace agreement last year. The restraint shown so far by Catholics and especially Protestants during this year's summer parade season offers reason for optimism. The people of Northern Ireland still want peace. The politicians should not stand in their way. |
1123778_4 | The China Cloud: Is a Bomb Being Waved at Taiwan? | Daily. But no senior leader has emerged to speak publicly on the issue. Tonight, the evening news on state television calmly reported on a trip to Mongolia by President Jiang Zemin and on a meeting held by Prime Minister Zhu Rongji on the economy, without highlighting the neutron bomb. China is thought to have first tested a neutron bomb in 1988, and continued to do so on numerous occasions. But until today it has never publicly discussed that technology. The rebuttal, ''Facts Speak Louder Than Words and Lies Will Collapse on Themselves,'' asserts that China began work on a neutron bomb in the 1970's, when the United States and the Soviet Union intensified their arms race. ''China had no choice but to continue to carry out research and development of nuclear weapons technology and improve its nuclear weapons systems, mastering in succession the neutron bomb design technology and the nuclear weapon miniaturization technology,'' the report said. It denied that China stole the technology involved in those two designs and argued that many design details of the nuclear weapons cited in the Cox report were available in unclassified documents and on the Internet. It also rejects allegations in the Cox report that China had stolen American technology on launching satellites. Although Chinese leaders act offended and exasperated by the espionage allegations, they are involved in many separate struggles with the United States, all at the same time. This week, American officials are here to negotiate the issue of compensating China for damages that it suffered in the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in May. Chinese leaders still say they find it hard to believe Washington's insistence that the bombing was accidental. Washington insists that a combination of unlikely errors and outdated maps caused the bombing. . Only after the compensation issue is settled will China and the United States be able to proceed on resuming negotiations on obtaining membership for China in the World Trade Organization, a goal that China's leaders still seem determined to achieve. Yet the timing is tricky, as well as the substance of the talks. Complicating both sets of negotiations are suspicions some Chinese leaders have toward the United States role in Taiwan's latest shift from the ''one China'' policy. Chinese scholars have argued that the United States, eager to contain a fast-emerging China, is encouraging Taiwan toward independence, ruining China's goal of reunification. |
1125613_1 | DATA TYING CANCER TO ELECTRIC POWER FOUND TO BE FALSE | top scientific groups such as the National Academy of Sciences have repeatedly found no evidence of danger. And the fears of some such link have generated conflicts between homeowners, especially those with children, and power companies with high-tension lines running through neighborhoods. Critics of the power industry and the scientific status quo say enough tantalizing clues keep emerging to warrant further investigations of possible links between electromagnetic radiation and killer diseases. ''If he hadn't gotten these results, nobody would have paid any attention,'' a Federal investigator in the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said yesterday. Dr. Liburdy's papers reported data indicating that electromagnetic fields, also known as EMF, alter the entry of calcium across a cell's surface membrane. The fields are ubiquitous forms of radiation that arise from all power lines, home wiring and computers. Federal officials say Dr. Liburdy's claims were potentially very important when published in 1992 because they purported to link electromagnetic fields to calcium signaling, which is a fundamental process governing many important cellular functions. ''When he originally published these papers, there was quite a bit of interest in it,'' Glenn R. Woods, the laboratory's counsel, said yesterday. ''Now both the lab, and the Office of Research Integrity, have found that data on which he based his conclusions were fabricated.'' As part of his settlement, Dr. Liburdy has agreed to make no applications for Federal grants for three years and not contest the findings in administrative proceedings. Dr. Liburdy can, however, disagree publicly with the misconduct findings, and he is doing so vigorously, professing his innocence. The ethics investigation of Dr. Liburdy began after a whistle blower challenged his intriguing results. In July 1995, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab found he had indeed falsified data, and it alerted the Office of Research Integrity. In announcing its findings last month in the Federal Register, the integrity office said Dr. Liburdy had ''engaged in scientific misconduct in biomedical research by falsifying and fabricating data and claims about the purported cellular effects of electric and magnetic fields.'' Recently, in letters sent over the Internet to colleagues and interested parties, Dr. Liburdy has denied that his research is wrong and said he agreed to the settlement only because he was unable to spend $1 million to mount a legal defense. ''The raw data for these figures is not challenged, and is valid,'' Dr. Liburdy wrote in one letter. |
1125631_1 | NEWS SUMMARY | a rally against President Slobodan Milosevic in Pancevo, Serbia, which was badly damaged by NATO bombing and where toxic chemicals have affected health and many people are unemployed. In Belgrade, university students threw thousands of leaflets from downtown buildings calling for Mr. Milosevic's ouster. A4 The Clinton Administration has quietly decided to lift restrictions on support for Serbian opposition groups and free up aid for opposition political parties, the independent news media, lawyers and other groups promoting democracy in Yugoslavia, after a month of demonstrations throughout Serbia against Mr. Milosevic. A4 Belarus Leader Seeks Refuge Seymon Sharetsky, left, the leader of political opposition to President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, fled to Lithuania late Thursday, two days after his supporters voted Mr. Sharetsky acting President and proclaimed the Lukashenko regime at an end. Mr. Sharetsky, a former speaker of Parliament, apparently feared for his safety during a new Government crackdown on critics and protesters who charge that Mr. Lukashenko has illegally extended his rule. A3 French President in West Africa Although President Jacques Chirac of France embarked on a five-day trip to Africa saying he would promote democracy and the rule of law in countries short of both, many Africans have been disappointed by his public remarks so far, which they see primarily as stressing stability and France's economic interests. A6 World Briefing A6 NATIONAL A8-11, 16 U.S. Says Data Were Faked On Cancer-Power Line Link Federal investigators said a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, an arm of the Energy Department, had faked evidence of a link between electromagnetic radiation and cancer by omitting data that did not support his conclusions. A1 Space Telescope Is Deployed Astronauts aboard the Columbia deployed the $1.5 billion Chandra X-ray telescope, which will help scientists study invisible emanations from some of the most violent and mysterious events in the universe. A10 Program Pays for Sterilization A privately financed program starting in Chicago on Monday will provide $200 in cash to drug-addicted women who can prove that they have been sterilized or obtained long-term birth control like Norplant or Depo-Privera. Critics say the program coerces poor women whose judgment is clouded by drugs into doing something that they may later regret. A8 Ventura Addresses Convention Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota opened the national convention of the Reform Party by saying that he would not accept a draft as the party's nominee for President, but suggested |
1125581_2 | French President Stirs Anger During Visit to West Africa | parties were holding important talks, he criticized the opposition for having boycotted the March elections. His remarks were welcomed by Mr. Eyadema, who said he would not run for re-election in 2003. But they caused leaders of the main opposition party, the Union of the Forces for Change, to back out of a meeting with Mr. Chirac. Mr. Chirac also cast doubt on a recent report by Amnesty International that depicted a deteriorating human rights picture in Togo. ''It is probably, to a large extent, an attempt at manipulation,'' Mr. Chirac said of the report at a news conference in Lome, the Togolese capital. He added that Mr. Eyadema had been right in suing Amnesty International. After the London-based organization released its report in May, the Government responded by arresting an Amnesty International worker and by barring three others, including the secretary general, Pierre Sane, from entering through the Ghana border. According to the report, since the presidential elections hundreds of political opponents have been killed by Togo's security forces, which include the military, police and a special presidential unit. Although the Amnesty report caused the biggest stir, its findings have been reflected in other investigations, including the State Department's human rights report on Togo for 1998. ''Security forces were responsible for extrajudicial killings, beatings and arbitrary arrests and detentions,'' the State Department concluded. ''Government did not, in general, investigate or punish effectively those who committed such abuses.'' ''We have always considered French leaders as defenders of dictators,'' said Kokou Gawanou, a member of the Union of the Forces for Change reached by telephone in Lome. ''So I am not surprised by Chirac's comments.'' In the early 1990's, Mr. Eyadema's position had appeared uncertain during a period of political liberalization in Togo and the rest of Africa, inspired in part by Mr. Chirac's socialist predecessor, Francois Mitterrand. As the end of the cold war undermined part of the logic of propping up African dictators friendly to the West, Mr. Mitterrand encouraged democratization by tying French aid with progress toward democracy. Mr. Chirac, who once called multiparty democracy a ''luxury'' for developing countries, has not picked up his predecessor's message in his four visits to Africa. During this visit, Mr. Chirac has focused on expanding France's economic interests in Africa. Today he arrived in Nigeria, a former British colony with important French investments. He is to end his trip in Cameroon. |
1125606_0 | Religion Journal; From Witches to Angels, Alternative Spirituality | At times in the past year, people practicing spiritual ideas that fall outside the mainstream of major faiths have made news largely because of their beliefs. Examples include the Wiccans in Massachusetts, modern-day witches who protested a political commercial they considered insulting in last fall's governor's race there, and the small, similar group on a military base in Texas who touched off debate this spring after reports that they were practicing nature-centered rituals in their off-hours. Such incidents raise a question. At a time of growing religious pluralism in the United States, have esoteric forms of spirituality ever been so public and available? That was asked of Richard Smoley, co-author of ''Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions'' (Penguin/Arkana), a new wide-ranging book about alternative spiritual paths. ''I think that's true for modern times,'' Mr. Smoley replied, taking the long view. ''And the reason for it is really simple. Ecclesiastical, institutional religion is weaker in the United States and Europe than it's ever been.'' In other words, Western society largely lacks authorities who can keep certain spiritual ideas in check and discourage people from experimenting with them. Mr. Smoley was editor of Gnosis, a quarterly magazine based in San Francisco that explored subjects like Islamic mysticism and the ideas of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the 19th-century emigre who launched a mysticism movement called Theosophy. (The former publisher of Gnosis, Jay Kinney, is the co-author of ''Hidden Wisdom.'') While at Gnosis, which ceased publication recently, Mr. Smoley said he saw three trends come one after another in this decade. First, he said, there was a general interest in the spiritual implications of the ''recovery movement'' -- the so-called 12-step groups that advocate getting in touch with God or a higher power as a step in overcoming addictions. In the mid-1990's, public interest turned to the subject of angels, and more recently, he said, to cabala, a form of Jewish mysticism. One underlying trend he said he expected to continue was an interest in higher consciousness, a belief that ''the human makeup is considerably higher and deeper than we know about or have access to.'' Sorry About Yesterday A different trend in the 1990's has been the decisions of some religious groups to apologize for members' actions in the past. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, offered an apology to African-Americans in 1995 for many Southern Baptists' support of slavery and |
1121189_0 | QUOTATION OF THE DAY | ''The damage from NATO bombs to factories and bridges will have much less effect in the long run on Serbia than the rapid decline in the birth rate.'' DR. SPASOJE PETKOVIC, acting director of the Clinical Center of Serbia. [A6] |
1121193_1 | Editorial Observer; Australia's Great Barrier Reef, Under Assault | their geological mission, taking calcium from the water and ultimately depositing it as limestone skeletons that cement together to form the reef. To a snorkeler or scuba diver, the reef looks like a petrified undersea garden in muted browns, tans and off-white, with splashes of blue and purple for accent. This living coral forms a thin veneer on the surface of pock-marked skeletal limestone laid down over the ages. It is a strange, graceful, fragile world, capable of scraping and stinging those who bump against it, but vulnerable to a human kick or carelessly thrown anchor that hits the living surface. Reefs are more resilient than many think, and over the years, the Great Barrier Reef has survived repeated onslaughts. Cyclones regularly devastate the living reef, only to have the damaged segments rebound in a couple of decades. The crown-of-thorns starfish, which devours coral polyps, attacked in force twice in recent decades and is on the march again, sparking debate over whether such outbreaks are wholly natural or are worsened by human activities. Abnormally high water temperatures have caused coral bleaching and death on large portions of the inner reef, part of the worst global outbreak of bleaching ever recorded. Yet today, at a time when some other reefs are rapidly declining, the Great Barrier Reef is in relatively good shape, protected by its immense size, by low population densities in its remote northern reaches and by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which tries to balance such conflicting uses as tourism, fishing and conservation of a great natural resource that has qualified as a ''World Heritage Area'' under the United Nations. A global reef-monitoring network has found that most of the Great Barrier Reef is in good condition. But there are worrisome signs of danger as areas of the mainland fill in with people and development. Cattle grazing and sugar cane growing have unleashed silt that smothers polyps on the inner reefs and a flood of nutrients that cause algal blooms, which block essential sunlight. The reef is also under assault from urban pollution, increasing tourism and trawling that scoops up vast quantities of bycatch along with the target prawns. Oil shale mining has been proposed adjacent to the marine park, and more than 100 coastal development projects are under consideration. Worse yet, say many conservationists, the current national and state governments are too bent on development to |
1126969_0 | Preventing 'Air Rage' | To the Editor: Physical violence like that recently displayed by an aggravated customer at Newark International Airport should never be perceived as acceptable behavior, but in their treatment of passengers, airlines exacerbate passengers' anger (news article, July 25). If this weren't the case, there would be no need for Congressional regulation of airlines for unreasonable delays, canceled flights, bumped passengers and lost luggage. Too often, airlines do not report a flight as delayed until after the time the flight was scheduled to depart, causing frustration not only for passengers but also for those waiting to pick them up. Airlines should be more realistic and honest in flight scheduling, departure and arrival times and inform their customers by phone or E-mail as soon as they learn of a change in a flight's status. IRA POLLY Princeton, N.J., July 25, 1999 |
1120187_3 | At Henley, Classic Boats To Cherish | Navy fashion, including how to come up alongside the yacht.'' The Albatross is estimated to sell for $4,750 to $7,900. Vintage racing boats are another favorite collecting category. The rarest boat in the sale, Mr. Klein said, is Batboat II, a 21-foot-long hydroplane lake racing boat built in 1912 that is named for its British designer, Montague Batting. ''They didn't build very many of them, and they stopped making them in 1915, so few survive,'' Mr. Willis said. Created for the British International Trophy Races, Batboat II has a mahogany deck with an open cockpit fitted with a mahogany bench seat. The boat finished first in the 1913 trials, and was then sent to America where, Mr. Klein said, ''She was used for rum running on the Hudson River during Prohibition.'' Estimate: $9,500 to $14,250. The most elegant boat type in the sale is the slipper stern launch, whose stern angles down to the water. ''It tapers off at the back like a sucked toffee,'' Mr. Willis said. ''It was designed by a man who lived on the Thames and wanted a boat that had less wash, so he wouldn't swamp the punts and canoes.'' ''These launches are classics,'' Mr. Klein said. ''They were designed for little afternoon excursions, to see and be seen.'' Phillips is selling the Mayflower, a slipper stern launch made in 1934 that is 30 feet long and fitted with four white Decoesque movable lounge chairs. Mr. Willis said the owner was selling it because she now wanted a boat ''with the lid on it,'' meaning a top for shade. Estimate: $28,500 to $31,600. Americans like classic boats as much as the English do, though Americans divide their loyalties into camps: power and sail; modern and traditional, freshwater and salt. Bob Gilson of Madison, Wis., has been collecting old Gar Wood, Chris-Craft and Hacker power boats for 15 years. ''I love restoring wooden boats,'' he said. ''I like the smell of the wood varnish and figuring out how to maintain the old motors.'' He said he attended a classic boat show in March in Mount Dora, Fla., and planned to go to another one in Lake Tahoe, Calif., in August. ''It's a reason to go somewhere to go boating,'' he said. A nationwide speedboat show schedule is printed in Classic Boating, a bimonthly published in Oconomowoc, Wis. On the East Coast, Wooden Boat magazine of Brooklin, |
1120249_2 | On My Mind; Saving Public Colleges | its economic growth. For me, the most valuable qualities of the report were three varieties of respect. Perhaps the most important: the tone of belief in what students could do for themselves and the city if CUNY gave them the dignity of higher goals of achievements, not the sub-college standards that are good enough now. Second, the respect of pledging ''absolute commitment'' to CUNY's ''historic organizational mission'' to provide first-rate college opportunities for all New Yorkers academically able to take advantage of them. Third: proposals to help those not ready because of the failure of New York's elementary and high school system to teach so many students more than a humiliatingly low level of writing, reading and arithmetic. The most important step is the first step: to establish and help students reach acceptable goals not only in college but before they enter it. Almost all American colleges provide remedial courses. But CUNY's load and the lack of standards of remedial achievement for the college bound drag down CUNY with too many students unqualified for higher education. The report proposes that remedial classes be held not in the four-year senior colleges but in the community colleges, and that passing them must be the requirement for senior colleges -- with national standard entry tests to come. The way things are in New York, the elementary and high school system often prepares students for failure in college. The report proposes widening the emergency remedy now in some schools: CUNY teachers using summers and other free time for tutorials in reading, writing and mathematics in high schools and the late grades of elementary schools. That will cost money -- about $10 million -- and so will other proposals. The end of ''social promotion'' in elementary schools, a cockamamie, basically political idea, shoves all students on to the next grade, ready or not. Technological unification for planning throughout CUNY, a kind of remediation for management. Writing an important report is difficult; getting the money out of politicians for achievement, not stagnation, that's really hard. They must remember that when CUNY opened its doors wide in 1969, it did not switch its goals from achievement to mediocrity and failure. Open enrollment has worked out for those who had qualifications, not for those who did not. This report is not an attack on public higher education, but the opposite -- an effort to improve and protect it. |
1120324_0 | Women's Groups Oppose Vatican on Family Planning | Frustrated by the Vatican's efforts to thwart a plan to limit world population growth, 126 women's organizations from around the world presented an open letter to the Roman Catholic Church today at a conference here. Expressing their disagreements in a series of questions, the women's groups, led by 57 Latin American organizations, asked how a church that holds life as ''a fundamental value'' could watch thousands of women die because they lack access to family planning and abortion. The letter asked why the Vatican wanted parents to supervise young people's sex education when many cases of abuse occur in the home, and why a church committed to social justice opposed women's achieving aspirations fundamental to their ''just and humane development.'' The letter also asked why an institution, which ''by its nature does not have women or children or sexual and reproductive problems,'' is ''blocking advances in contraception, sexual education and H.I.V. prevention'' beneficial to millions of women. The plan being discussed at the conference, first agreed on five years ago in Cairo, deals with sex education, contraceptive advice for adolescents and safe abortions. A small group of conservative Muslim and Roman Catholic countries with Vatican support continued to oppose aspects of the plan today. Many private groups interested in population policy are also frustrated, saying the Vatican and its allies have deflected the conference from its fundamental purpose, reviewing how the Cairo plan is working. Meanwhile another attack on the Vatican is coming from Catholics for a Free Choice, which is opposed to its teaching on sexual matters, and 70 other voluntary groups. They are seeking to downgrade the Vatican at the United Nations from nonmember observer status to nongovernmental organization status. |
1120267_0 | I.R.A. Talks Halt, to Much Teeth Gnashing | Marathon talks to resolve the disarmament impasse that threatens the province's peace settlement broke off early today. But a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said they would resume this morning and end with a statement on the ''way forward.'' It was the second day that the grinding negotiations had gone into the early morning and the fifth straight day that Mr. Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, had spent trying to find a compromise between the Ulster Unionists, the Protestant party that is the province's largest, and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. Mr. Blair had set midnight Wednesday as the ''absolute'' deadline for settling the dispute but relaxed the date, his spokesman said late Thursday, because ''we do not believe the gap is unbridgeable.'' That was an optimistic view shared by few people in the air of gloom and disappointment at the Stormont Castle Buildings as the participants drove off into a rainy night. Mr. Blair's spokesman said a long-awaited report on disarmament by Gen. John de Chastelain of Canada, chairman of the an international commission on the issue, would be presented to the negotiators this morning. The two Governments will receive position statements from the parties and are to decide what promise the combined views hold for moving on to the next steps in the process laid out in the April 1998 peace settlement. The general expectation was that a decision would be taken to postpone further negotiations until after the summer months of sectarian parades that have been flash points of tension. The most volatile the marches is scheduled for Sunday. It is the procession of the Protestant Orange Order from Drumcree Church. The Government-appointed Parades Commission on Monday prohibited the parade from passing into the Roman Catholic area, , and the police and British troops have been building trenches and barricades in the town, in County Armagh, to enforce the ban. The talks on Thursday began at noon, after having adjourned at 4 A.M., and Mr. Blair warned that the public was becoming frustrated with the bewildering deadlock and would have no sympathy for failure. ''The entire civilized world will not understand if we cannot put this together and make it work,'' he said. Speaking with a similar sense of exasperation and urgency, Mr. Ahern told reporters that failure would be ''unforgivable and unexplainable.'' ''There is an awful lot to |
1121760_0 | Common Ground Elusive as Technology Have-Nots Meet Haves | FOR the average Internet user in the United States, life is a never-ending stream of dilemmas: Upgrade now or later. Order I.S.D.N. or wait for cable modem service to arrive. Buy the Palm V organizer or go with the one that connects to the Web. Check E-mail while on vacation or leave the laptop at home. But a conference held here in June underscored a very different reality: in many corners of the world, there are dozens of developing countries where widespread access to the Internet -- of any kind -- remains a distant possibility. While it is true that some of the earth's most remote places are now linked to the Net -- one recent addition is Bhutan, a small kingdom in the Himalayas, which inaugurated its first Internet link last month -- there are still no connections at all in Iraq, North Korea and a handful of African countries. In many countries that have Internet connections, Net access is concentrated in the largest cities and is prohibitively expensive when set against an individual's typical income. That expense largely restricts the use of the Internet to an elite, mostly made up of foreigners, government workers and business people. And in some cases, government censors put the Internet out of reach for most people in their countries. The conference here, called INET 99, was the annual meeting of the Internet Society, a nonprofit group that coordinates Internet-related projects around the world and has the motto ''Internet Is for Everyone.'' Each year, the group holds a three-day conference; previous locations have included Prague, Montreal, Geneva and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This year, 1,600 network administrators, academics and business people gathered at the gleaming, cavernous San Jose Convention Center in the heart of Silicon Valley. That backdrop accentuated the fast-paced, high-risk, moneyed world of high technology, a world very far away from the everyday experiences of the people attending from developing nations. Many people at the conference, from places like Japan, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands, were sophisticated Internet users, concerned with cutting-edge technical issues. But many others were from countries where Internet connections are available to only a privileged few. ''It created a sort of schizophrenia,'' said Will Foster, a research assistant at the University of Arizona in Tucson who attended the conference. ''The presentations by Ebay and E*trade highlighted the tension between the go-go growth of Internet start-up companies in Silicon |
1121803_0 | THE MARKETS: COMMODITIES | SUGAR PLUNGES. Sugar fell more than 6 percent amid weak demand from Russia and ample supplies from Brazil and Europe. In New York, sugar for October delivery fell 0.37 cent, to 5.37 cents a pound. |
1121765_1 | You've Got Mail: Hello Muddah (and CC: Faddah) | a result of the deluge of faxes and E-mails from parents last summer, he established a limit of two per family per week this summer. ''We had some parents E-mailing their kids stock quotes and entire sports sections,'' he said. ''It completely overloaded us.'' Many parents would like their children to be allowed to send E-mail. ''It would enable them to send letters off quickly and often, which is not the case now, because they have trouble keeping track of stamps and envelopes,'' said Joanna Bronfman of Chappaqua, N.Y., who has two sons at Modin this summer. ''I don't care how I hear from them, as long as I can hear from them often. They can skywrite, for all I care.'' Several companies, including E-Camp, based in New York City, are attempting to give campers E-mail ability without burdening the camps. The company installs computers at camps -- one for every 25 children whose parents agree to pay a $5-per-month fee. The campers then get unlimited E-mail. E-camp said it has agreements with 30 camps, including Kinder Ring in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., and Timber Ridge in High View, W. Va. Jay Jacobs, executive director of Timber Lake Camp in Shandaken, N.Y., said he had considered using the service. But despite the fact that it would not have cost the camp anything, he y decided he didn't have the space -- or the desire. ''We want camp to be a little bit of life as it was,'' he said. ''We don't feel like we have to move ahead with every aspect of technology. Don't kids get enough of that all winter?'' Some camps, like Buck's Rock, in New Milford, Conn., and Camp French Woods, in Hancock, N.Y., offer computer programming classes and make their computers available for sending E-mail during designated times. Camp French Woods, which has 400 campers, has set up 40 computer workstations for the summer, 20 of which will be on line. ''We find E-mail is a better alternative to the phone, especially for a first-time camper,'' said Ron Schaefer, the camp's director. ''If a camper has a fight with a friend, didn't like a particular meal, or struck out with the bases loaded, writing it down helps them put it into perspective.'' E-mail, he said, ''gives them assurance without hearing their mother's voice over the phone.'' Many camps now recognize that Web sites can be a useful |
1126746_0 | Free Hard Drive Space Whenever You Need It | A start-up company in Santa Monica, Calif., is offering a free desktop hard drive service on the Internet. But like many Manhattan apartments, the virtual hard drive does not come with a lot of storage space. Founded this year, X:drive (www.xdrive .com) will give users 25 megabytes of remote hard drive space that is accessible from any computer with Internet access. The service is intended for users with high-speed access to the Internet, so those using traditional modems access might find X:drive slow, especially with large files. Unlike most previous Internet-based file storage services, X:drive is not on Web browsers for PC users. Instead, a special application for Windows 95 and 98 that creates a hard drive desktop icon to represent the virtual X:drive can be installed. Users can save documents directly to the drive or drag and drop files as they would to a C or A drive. Users of Macintosh and other platforms must use the slower Web-based interface. In an era of multigigabyte hard drives, 25 MB can hold only a few MP3's and a handful of Powerpoint documents. If you outgrow the allocated free space, $4.99 a month will buy an additional 25 MB. JENNIFER 8. LEE NEWS WATCH |
1126710_2 | Road Daze: A Hand on the Wheel and an Ear to the Phone | report on cell phone use by drivers. ''The rapid decrease in cost of a cell phone means a lot more people have access to them, and a lot of people are driving. Put the two together and this could be a major problem.'' Cell phones in the car are, of course, a distraction like many others. Reaching for a cell phone is no different, really, than stretching for a cassette, unwrapping a cheeseburger or turning around to scold a child. But the public image of many cell phone users -- as pushy, self-important multitaskers -- highlights the offense. Several studies have examined the potential hazards of talking on a cell phone while driving. The one most widely cited was conducted by researchers at the University of Toronto and published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997. While pointing out that cellular telephones could be used in emergencies to summon help (eventually they will all be able to report their locations as well), enhancing drivers' safety, the study concluded that talking on a cell phone while driving was as dangerous as driving while at the threshold of legal intoxication. That is, the risk of a collision when using a cell phone was found to be four times as high as the risk when a cell phone was not being used. An author of the study, Donald A. Redelmeier, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, said it was the distraction of the conversation itself, not the act of dialing or holding the phone, that accounted for most of the increased risk. For that reason, hands-free phones do not solve the problem and may even worsen it, he said. Having a hands-free phone, Dr. Redelmeier said, ''might lull drivers into a false sense of security and encourage them to make calls they might otherwise have avoided.'' Corroborating Dr. Redelmeier's conclusion, other studies point out that most accidents occur while drivers are in the middle of conversations, not while they are dialing or answering calls. The increased risk persisted ''even among those drivers who'd owned a cell phone over many years,'' Dr. Redelmeier said. ''It's not inexperience, but perhaps a more fundamental limitation of driving performance.'' Like others who have taken a hard look at cell phones in cars, Dr. Redelmeier was inspired by a personal experience. ''I was in my office at the end of the day returning |
1126717_3 | Tracking Down Cell-Phone Users | problems for a stand-alone handset is separating out the two parts,'' Mr. Richton said. ''In our scheme, the network handles that for you.'' That is, the towers would constantly send to the handset information that would give the handset a basis for interpreting the satellite signal. The cell phone network, taking advantage of the fact that its towers never move, would be able to keep track of all the satellites continuously. That information would be distilled into a basic summary of what the signals from the satellites should look like. The handset would use that information to locate the signal and calculate the slight timing differences caused by changes in its location. That help would let the handset come up with its location in a matter of seconds instead of minutes. Giovanni Vannucci, another member of the Bell Labs staff, said that the researchers had been able to find the location of outdoor handsets with an accuracy of within 15 feet. The system is also sophisticated enough to work with handsets indoors, even though signals often bounce off metal objects, resulting in multiple reflections. Most basic G.P.S. systems cannot handle such interference. The system would also be able to use the fixed locations of the towers to strip away some of the error introduced intentionally by the Global Positioning System's owner, the United States Department of Defense. The military introduces a slowly changing error into the signal in the hopes of confusing potential enemies and giving United States forces an edge. Steve Eisenberg, a spokesman for Lucent, said that the company had recently licensed the technology to Qualcomm, a major manufacturer of cell phone base stations and handsets. The team from Lucent also said that phone companies were brainstorming about how the location information could be used. Many engineers want to use it to track failed phone calls and reduce the dead spots that confound cell phone users. The marketing divisions, however, may come up with the most creative uses. Some companies are considering charging land-line rates when you use a cell phone within several thousand feet of your home. That would give people more incentive to save money by canceling their wired service. Of course, calls would be billed at the regular mobile rate once the cell phone left the home area. Others are dreaming of using information about phone positions to route calls. Dialing (800) PIZZAME, for instance, |
1126762_0 | THE MARKETS: COMMODITIES | SUGAR SOARS. Sugar rose nearly 5 percent on signs that demand is steady though there is an abundance of supply on the world market. In New York, sugar for October delivery rose 0.28 cent, to 6.04 cents a pound. |
1126817_3 | World Briefing | 1991 gulf war to protect the region's Kurdish population. Iraq does not recognize the zone. (Agence France-Presse) IRAQ: NERVE GAS DESTROYED A United Nations disarmament team left Baghdad after destroying samples of VX nerve gas and other toxic materials. On Tuesday, the Security Council gave them the go-ahead to destroy seven vials of VX nerve gas, despite the arguments of Russia, which suggested that the nerve gas may have been used in ''foul play'' by United Nations inspectors, such as contaminating Iraqi missile warhead fragments. (Reuters) THE AMERICAS MEXICO: STUDENT STRIKERS PILFER FILES Student strikers broke into administrative offices at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, which has been closed down for 100 days, and removed academic files and video equipment, the authorities charged. Last week, a group of strikers painted the date ''1999'' over a corner of a well-known mural on the campus by David Alfaro Siqueiros, in a protest action that drew criticism even from other strikers. Julia Preston (NYT) TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: ANOTHER HANGING Trinidad executed its 10th convicted killer in two months, hanging Anthony Briggs for killing a taxi driver. Trinidad, Jamaica and other former British colonies have ignored pleas by Britain to eliminate the death penalty and have moved to withdraw from international protocols on capital punishment. (AP) AFRICA LIBERIA: INTERVENTION FORCE SLOWS DEPARTURE A West African intervention force has delayed its final departure from Liberia to insure that arms gathered after the country's seven-year civil war are all destroyed, a force officer said. The Nigerian-led force collected the weapons and policed 1997 multi-party elections that ended the war. The force had been expected to begin its final withdrawal on Tuesday, one day after a ceremonial burning of arms in the capital, Monrovia. (Reuters) PACIFIC TONGA: UNITED NATIONS OPENS DOOR The South Pacific kingdom of Tonga, a British colony until 1970, won Security Council approval as the 188th member of the United Nations, and General Assembly ratification was expected. China had threatened to block Tonga's admission because of its ties with Taiwan but abstained from the vote. (Agence France-Presse) Correction: August 5, 1999, Thursday A report in the World Briefing column last Thursday about Tonga's receiving Security Council approval for its admission to the United Nations misstated China's position, because of an error by Agence France-Presse. China did not threaten to vote against Tonga because of Tonga's position on Taiwan; in fact, Tonga has relations |
1126768_1 | One Miracle, but Can We Hope for More? | was thrilled and felt a special joy. There is no greater moment for an oncologist than to beat the odds and save a young, vibrant life. Yet my feelings were tempered. After two decades, medical science still can't explain why testicular cancer is sensitive to cisplatin but other rapidly growing malignancies, like those from the lung, bowel and ovary, are usually not. Progress in cancer therapy has been painfully slow, like trying to scale a summit locked in third gear. Until recently, we have had scant understanding of the causes of the disease. Indeed, the discovery of cisplatin is a typical story of cancer research. Serendipity and trial-and-error testing had more to do with it than a deep knowledge of malignancy and a rational approach to its conquest. Cisplatin was found some 35 years ago by chance. Biophysicists were studying how electric fields affected bacteria. A platinum electrode was used to produce the current in the bacterial solution, and the microbes unexpectedly stopped reproducing. After much searching, it appeared that platinum had leached out of the electrode and poisoned the bacteria. The observation led to the study of drugs that contained platinum as potential inhibitors of rapid cell growth, the signature manifestation of cancer. This observation, of course, did not immediately lead to the cure of testicular cancer. Cisplatin, which contains platinum, was laboriously tested against many different tumors. For most, it had little lasting benefit. Only testicular cancer seemed to yield. Dr. Einhorn pioneered trials combining cisplatin with older chemotherapy drugs. The combinations proved highly toxic at first, and many patients died or suffered lasting side effects. Over two decades, the harsh therapy has been refined, and with it the number of medical miracles has multiplied. In less advanced cases than Lance Armstrong's, the cure rate is now about 95 percent. His odds, given his extensive bulky abdominal disease and the lesions in his brain, were estimated as not greater than 50-50. These chances certainly were improved by being treated by the pioneer himself, Dr. Einhorn, whose knowledge and intuition could be brought to bear at each step of care. Breakthroughs in the treatment of cancer have occurred about once every decade. In the 1960's, scientists discovered that vincristine and prednisone largely cured childhood leukemia. In the 1970's, nitrogen mustard and procarbazine were found effective for Hodgkin's disease, and in the 1980's, Adriamycin was found potent against certain kinds |
1125372_1 | Yield to Innovation Ahead: A Fleet of Democratic Dreams on Wheels | whose contents tend to make the mouth water. After all, Americans are trained from birth to have a Pavlovian response to the look, feel and smell of new cars. A free-range esthetic sense moves through this show, which is to say that the cars don't look alike, feel alike or even sound alike. (Three have the capacity to run nearly silently on electricity.) They combine historical consciousness with innovations in the car's three states of being: outside, inside and way inside; that is, the car's body, the space for our bodies, and the unseen inner workings of engine, frame and storage. One thing is immediately apparent: where cars are concerned, form follows function to places neither has been before. Since that phrase became the mantra of modernist design, both form and function have exploded, diversifying and specializing on every front. Today we have a far more refined understanding of people's ergonomic needs, a deeper knowledge of aerodynamics, a broader array of materials and manufacturing technologies, and higher expectations for the tactile and visual pleasure of using everyday objects -- and of course we have the computer. The computer is a design inspiration -- you could say that some of these cars intend to be iMacs on wheels -- as well as a design tool and an important design element in its own right throughout new vehicles. The cars at the Modern incorporate countless improvements and installations, many spelled out on metal labels that look like parking signs. These cars have more fuel-efficient and sometimes hybrid engines; lighter, stronger, more seductive materials; better colors; curvier, softer dashboards, and on and on. Some extend the concept of the rubber fender; others introduce the clutchless manual shift, already available in Jaguars and Porsches, to lower-priced vehicles. A general complaint, based on sitting in each car: Textile designers need to go back to their drawing boards immediately. If successful, these vehicles will improve safety and driving ease, decrease pollution and traffic congestion and bring relief to legions of inept parkers. (Several cars are quite small.) With luck, they may also dethrone the environmentally challenged, overbearing sport-utility vehicle, and perhaps curtail the homogenizing influence of the aerodynamically proficient Ford Taurus. The objects of desire on view here range from plain to fancy, from sub-compact to midsize and, except for one that is represented in prototype, all are near or in production. Several are already on |
1125483_2 | WORLD BRIEFING | the request of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., which said the group had violated a British court order banning it from protesting a nuclear fuel shipment to Japan. At Greenpeace's international headquarters in Amsterdam, officials called the move ''financial terrorism.'' Marlise Simons (NYT) FRANCE: EX-AIDE PRESSED ON JOB -- The European Parliament in Strasbourg called on a former European Union Commissioner, Martin Bangemann, to back out of a decision to take a job with a Spanish telecommunications giant he had been responsible for regulating. Telefonica S.A. has delayed confirmation of the appointment, one that has spurred charges of conflict of interest and led governments to threaten legal action at the European Court of Justice to bar him from an international civil service pension. Craig R. Whitney (NYT) MIDDLE EAST IRAQ: U.N. CHEMICALS TO BE DESTROYED -- A team of experts sent by the United Nations will destroy small quantities of toxic materials, including a minute sample of the deadly VX nerve agent, left behind in a United Nations laboratory in Baghdad and bury the residue in concrete, a senior United Nations official said in Baghdad. The official, Prakash Shah, said the chemicals posed no risk to public health. The materials were used by arms inspectors charged with disarming Iraq of chemical and biological weapons. Paul Lewis (NYT) ASIA INDIA: KASHMIR KILLINGS -- Militant separatists gunned down three members of a village defense committee in Panara, a village in the Udhampur District in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the police said. It was the sixth major strike by militants in less than a month and is believed to be part of a new campaign to bring disorder to the Jammu part of the state. Barry Bearak (NYT) JAPAN: A BRIEF HIJACKING -- A lone knife-wielding man was arrested after hijacking an All Nippon Airways plane carrying 517 people, a Transport Ministry official said. The 747 airline was traveling from Tokyo to the northern island of Hokkaido when the man entered the cockpit and threatened the crew with a kitchen knife, the pilot told air controllers. The man was captured inside the plane about an hour later, and the plane returned to Tokyo, a spokesman for the airline said. (Reuters) THE AMERICAS MEXICO: PLEA ON EXTRADITION -- After a recent series of failed extradition attempts, the Government has agreed to try harder to persuade judges to send drug traffickers for trial in |
1125464_2 | I.R.A. Blames Britain for Breakdown of Peace Accord | it is the I.R.A.'s insistence on keeping its weapons and explosives that is the cause of the stall in the talks. Mr. Trimble said it proved that the I.R.A. had no intention of disarming and showed that Mr. Adams had led Mr. Blair ''up the garden path'' during talks in Belfast this month. At that time the British asked the Ulster Unionists to accept assurances that disarmament would begin quickly after a start-up of the new Northern Ireland Assembly. Hours later, Mr. Adams and Sinn Fein's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, saw Mr. Blair and emerged to say that whether the I.R.A. disarmed depended not on them but on Mr. Trimble and Mr. Blair. ''They will have much more influence on the I.R.A. than Gerry Adams and I ever would,'' Mr. McGuinness said. Progress in putting the agreement in place halted last week when Mr. Trimble and his party refused to sit in a planned provincial cabinet with Sinn Fein until I.R.A. guerrillas began dismantling their arsenal of weapons. The accord, which is known as the Good Friday Agreement for the day is was signed in April 1998 and which sought to put an end to sectarian violence, embodies a series of measures and political institutions aimed at balancing power among the province's majority Protestants and minority Catholics. Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister and a co-sponsor along with Mr. Blair of the peace effort, had repeatedly called upon the I.R.A. to move the process forward by stating that it was now willing to begin disarming. Today in Dublin he refused to react to the new statement other than to say, ''We were neither encouraged nor discouraged about what we heard.'' Pat Docherty, Sinn Fein's vice president, said his party remained committed to the Good Friday Agreement and blamed the Unionists for balking at going forward. ''It is clear now that they do not intend to share power,'' he said. In Belfast today, George J. Mitchell, a former United States Senator who was chairman of the negotiations that produced the original settlement, said he thought that it could still succeed. After two days of talks with party leaders, he set a Sept. 6 date for the formal start of a review of the accord that he has been asked to conduct. He confessed that he had not wanted to have to return to Northern Ireland after having spent four years in |
1125448_1 | The Celebrity Who Was a 'Regular Guy' | Jimmy Mulzet, a mail room worker for the City University of New York. Reaching Up, a group that Mr. Kennedy founded in 1987 to provide educational fellowships for people who work with the developmentally disabled, is housed at his college. Mr. Mulzet, who has cerebral palsy, sometimes helps out at their meetings, and that is how he and Mr. Kennedy met in 1992. ''Most people, when they see somebody with a disability, they don't know how to act,'' said Mr. Mulzet. ''They are, like, scared, because they don't know what you're going to do. They can't handle it.'' A lot of people, he added, ''are always staring down at you.'' But Mr. Kennedy, he said, was not like that in all the seven years of their acquaintance. ''I've been through a lot of people trying to figure out what kind of man I am,'' Mr. Mulzet explained. ''John took me like I am and he never, never thought any more. He took me like a regular human being. I have a disability and sometimes when I walk I stagger, but John understands. He understands people that have a problem and he never looks down on them.'' Reaching Up was Mr. Kennedy's longest-running project. One of his aunts is mentally retarded, and like all the Kennedy cousins, he was encouraged by the family's Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation to develop a program to help with some aspect of disability. Seeking to meld his interests in the working poor and the disabled into one project, Mr. Kennedy met with unions, service providers, state mental health agencies and charities to put together the fellowship program. Bill Ebenstein, the executive director of Reaching Up, said Mr. Kennedy should be credited for recognizing the link between the education of front-line mental health workers and the quality of care received by the disabled. His program has so far helped subsidize the education of 375 students.. In creating the program, Mr. Kennedy traded on his glamour and his name to bring together the rival organizations that work with the disabled. Nobody, his colleagues recalled, said ''no'' to an invitation, and Mr. Kennedy returned the favor by associating himself with their fund-raising efforts. ''The key is bringing those people together, and John was always there to grease the wheel,'' said Mr. Ebenstein. ''I can't tell you how many payback dinners he went to with the agencies, how many college |
1122475_0 | Q&A: Dr. Shelley M. Klein; Paper Born of Necessity Aids the Disabled | WHEN her second child's hearing problem was diagnosed, Dr. Shelley M. Klein of New Rochelle thought she already knew about disabilities and how to find programs and recreational outlets. Her first child had been born with a developmental disability, and Dr. Klein, who has a doctorate in biomedical science, thought that having been through it before she could easily navigate the system for her daughter, now 14. What she found, however, was that the needs of her two children were so different that she was once again searching for resources. After setting out to find them, she decided to make information-gathering easier for other families. In January 1997, she started Alive, a publication for Westchester people with disabilities and their families. The quarterly -- which is to become a bimonthly in the fall -- is filled with articles about recreational opportunities, vocational services, political developments and the like, geared toward the needs of people with all kinds of physical and/or mental disabilities. The newspaper, which has a circulation of about 20,000, most of it free, is distributed through various agencies, hospitals, doctors' offices and places for physical, recreational and speech therapy. For a subscription, Dr. Klein may be reached by calling 632-8521 or sending E-mail to her at accwest@aol.com, or writing her at Post Office Box 263, New Rochelle, N.Y. 10804. Here are excerpts from a recent conversation with Dr. Klein, who with her husband, Alfred, has four children: Q. When your first son was born, did you find that you could not easily get information to help with his disability? A. I found that there was no vehicle by which to get information from any other agency except from the one with which you were directly involved. So if you managed to find an agency to link up with -- and that wasn't so easy, that was kind of word of mouth -- then you knew what was going on in that agency, but you didn't know what your other options were beyond that. And also as children grow -- and even as adults mature and change -- needs change. And so what might have been satisfactory or met a need at one stage wouldn't necessarily meet the needs later on. So you're constantly in search for new programs, for new opportunities. Certainly as my son is getting older -- he's 17 -- recreational and social outlets have become |
1122773_0 | NEWS SUMMARY | INTERNATIONAL 3-12 Congo Cease-Fire Signed But Without the Rebels The warring parties in the Congo signed a cease-fire in Lusaka, Zambia, after months of negotiations. But, in a last-minute twist after 13 hours of delay, the two rebel groups fighting to oust the Kinshasa Government were not allowed to sign. 10 Demonstration by China Sect Nearly 1,000 members of a spiritual movement known as Falun Gong protested for two days in a southern Chinese city last week, despite a Beijing crackdown on the group, a rights organization reported. 6 Students Protest in Iran A day after a violent police raid on a Teheran University dormitory, more than 10,000 students demonstrated there and in other Iranian cities today, clashing at times with the police. 12 India Claims Kashmir Success Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India said that militant Muslim insurgents had been driven out of most pockets in northern Kashmir and that the intrusion ''has now been decisively turned back.'' India also said that a North Korean ship detained last week was carrying missile equipment that may have been destined for Pakistan. 5 Irish Arrest 1 in Poison Plot The Irish police arrested a man in Dublin for ''crimes against the state'' involving a mass murder plot to poison England's water supply unless British troops were pulled out of Northern Ireland, a police spokeswoman said. She explained that the man, in his 50's, was arrested after a monthlong investigation. He had apparently planned to use weed killer and tamper with fire hydrants to carry out the threat. (Reuters) NATIONAL 14-20 Republicans Eager To Push Big Tax Cuts Republicans in Congress will begin this week to debate the largest and most broadly distributed tax reduction since 1981, with revived assertiveness coming from new projections showing that budget surpluses will grow faster than anticipated. 1 Teaching Rises in Popularity Just over 10 percent of all college freshmen said in a survey that they wanted to teach in elementary or secondary school, the highest percentages since the early 1970's. 1 New York Race Troubles G.O.P. Republican leaders, troubled by the party's failure to unite behind a candidate to take on Hillary Rodham Clinton in the New York Senate race next year, said today that they had privately debated whether their national chairman should intervene to discourage a primary battle. 16 A Khrushchev in America Sergei N. Khrushchev, the son of the Soviet Premier |
1122411_19 | The Little White Bombshell | it will be the one recommended by Danco, but Schaff's trials have shown considerable success with at-home use and virtually all patients prefer it.) And opponents may still seek to circumvent the F.D.A.'s decision entirely, although approval is all but certain. ''It's true that the approval process is very far along,'' admits Jim Sedlak, the director of public policy for the staunchly anti-abortion American Life League. ''But we're not going to give up. We'll appeal to Congress to override the F.D.A.'' Yet the truth is, none of this may matter quite as much as it seems because in some ways medical abortion is already a reality. Once the F.D.A. issues final approval of mifepristone, and regardless of the protocol stipulated on the label, doctors may make use of the drug more or less as they like. Misoprostol, which is already approved for ulcer therapy, can also be used alone as an abortifacient, though it is more effective in combination with other drugs. Abortions induced by misoprostol in conjunction with a drug called methotrexate, which has been approved since 1954 as a treatment for cancer and other diseases but not as an abortifacient, are already available at no fewer than 75 facilities across the country. (The main strike against methotrexate is that it takes longer and is less predictable than mifepristone; a woman who takes it could miscarry as much as two weeks later.) Besides, the clinical trials of mifepristone in the United States have helped generate interest in the drug that may prove hard to squelch, especially since women reported such high levels of satisfaction with it. In the Population Council trial, which ended in 1995, 88 percent of the 2,121 women who took mifepristone said they found the pill very or moderately satisfactory, while 96 percent said they would recommend it to friends or relatives. Even among women for whom the method failed -- they ended up having to get vacuum aspirations -- mifepristone proved surprisingly acceptable: 70 percent of them said they would try it again if they had to have an abortion. Just as important, the promise of RU-486, and even the delays in bringing it here, have already helped shift the focus of many doctors and pro-choice activists alike to earlier abortion, pushing clinicians to reconsider the seven- or eight-week threshold at which many of them would do surgical abortions. Over the last few years, clinics |
1122735_0 | In Shift, Ulster Approves Protestant March in Belfast Tomorrow | The British Government in Northern Ireland approved today the holding of a perennially contentious Protestant Orange Order parade on Monday near a Roman Catholic neighborhood in Belfast, the capital of the northern province. Despite the Catholic residents' objections that the event could produce violent clashes, as it has in the past, the Parades Commission said the Orange march could muster in a park across the narrow Lagan River, several hundred yards from the Catholic enclave on the Lower Ormeau Road. Last year, violence was averted when the commission refused to allow the parade to pass directly in front of Catholic houses. This week, the commission at first denied the Orange Order the right to gather in the park, but changed its decision today, saying the event could be held. Hundreds of police officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary are expected to patrol the area, particularly a bridge that connects the park and the Catholic neighborhood. ''This was a difficult decision to make, and we are conscious of the worries in the Catholic community,'' said Alastair Graham, the chairman of the Government-appointed Commission. Of the Protestants who will march, he said, ''They have made significant changes and we are convinced this can be a peaceful gathering.'' Any major eruption of violence on Monday could further delay the next step in the peace effort in the province. Next week, members of the Northern Ireland Assembly are supposed to form a Cabinet to pave the way for the transfer of Governmental powers from London to the Assembly, under the terms of a proposal made a week ago by Prime Ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Bertie Ahern of Ireland. But there is no certainty that this will happen, as Protestant leaders have serious misgivings about sharing a Cabinet with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. The Protestant Unionists want the I.R.A. to start disarming before Sinn Fein is allowed Cabinet posts. The I.R.A., which has observed a cease-fire for two years, says it has no intention to disarm. Today, a poll in The Irish Times in Dublin indicated that most people in the North, including Protestants, wanted the Cabinet to be formed as proposed by the Prime Ministers by Thursday. On Monday, the parade in Belfast will be one of hundreds around the predominantly Protestant province celebrating the victory in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 by the |
1122442_5 | A Garden of Sculpture as an Up-to-Date Eden | a vista of that undulating, gently domesticated order and shimmering charm that central and northern Italy seems to specialize in. Mr. Gori convened an international advisory committee and invited artists to make work that would embrace the land or speak to the building spaces at Celle and then stay there forever, or whatever part of forever is allotted to works of art. No changes to the 19th-century garden were allowed; any new artwork would have to cohabit gracefully with what was essentially an artwork of a century ago. Fifteen artists, including Mr. Morris and Mr. Oppenheim, inaugurated the project in 1982. Since then the collection has grown to 36 outdoor and 24 indoor installations, including works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Richard Serra, Fabrizio Corneli and an international roster of artists. There are also hundreds of paintings and sculptures that are not site specific. Celle is open by appointment to people specializing in contemporary art. Arrangements must be made by written request for appointments from April to the end of September, and all visits are guided. The artists have taken ingenious measures to acknowledge and reinforce the contours of the land. Mauro Staccioli sends a thin concrete wall racing abruptly up a hill through trees to point at the sky like an irresistible force materializing in the woods. Some of the sculpture, so embedded in its context, calls up the history of the region as well. In a clearing, Alice Aycock unfolds a five-part, metallic history of science and philosophy called ''The Nets of Solomon'' in homage to Leonardo and Galileo: symbolic representations of an astrolabe, a philosopher's stone, neutrino ramps, the charted movement of a hurricane and a schematic sketch of the universe. BEVERLY PEPPER carved from a hill an updated Greek amphitheater that is at once stately and serene, with cast iron reliefs, embedded in the sides of grass-covered berms, serving as backdrops for the stage; music and dance are occasionally performed here. In a pond below a series of waterfalls, Anne and Patrick Poirier, long involved with classical art, scatter what look like fragments of a huge, ancient statue of one of the giants who died fighting the Greek gods -- a staring eye with an arrow in it, bronze thunderbolts in rocks. Artists who want to change the landscape may alter the farmlands that lie outside the park. Bukishi Inoue's ''My Sky Hole'' unrolls in time and space |
1122405_8 | Plugging In Far From Home | portable computer much like a traditional external modem. Connection speeds are usually very slow, but adequate for E-mail and simple Web browsing. Newer wireless modems now being tested offer higher speeds. One of the leading wireless modem companies, Metricom (www.metricom.com) recently began offering service in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Palm Computing division of the 3Com Corporation recently introduced the Palm VII wireless hand-held computer, a $600 shirt-pocket device that not only keeps an address book, calendar and helpful traveler's software but also allows the user to send and receive E-mail and receive news headlines and stock quotes from the Web. The Palm VII is currently sold only in the New York City area, but it works in most major American cities already. 3Com said it will sell Palm VII nationwide in the fall. Monthly use fees are based on the amount of data transferred. The basic service fee is $9.95 a month for 50 kilobytes of data (a very brief message is usually a kilobyte or less). Each kilobyte over the monthly limit costs 30 cents, which can add up quickly for even moderate E-mail or Web users. Help From Satellite Devices For those who roam to the most remote parts of earth, or who spend a lot of time on boats too far from shore for a cell phone call, an effective but much more expensive solution is a satellite-based communicator. We are still many years away from easy, cheap global satellite data services, but some of the richest investors in the computer and telecommunications industries are spending billions of dollars to capture and develop the market. Some cruise ships are already making satellite-based E-mail available to guests, but at a fairly steep cost (dollars per message sent or received). The Magellan Corporation of Sunnyvale, Calif., has a $999 hand-held device called the GSC 100 that combines simple two-way messaging with a Global Positioning System (G.P.S.) navigation system. The user can send an E-mail message: ''Help! Bear has me in tree in Glacier Park!'' and, thanks to G.P.S., the message will include the sender's precise physical coordinates. The message is beamed to a low-earth-orbit satellite, which relays it back down to a ground station, which in turn sends it via the Internet. But at an annual service fee of $360, plus Magellan's transmission fee of one cent per alphanumeric character sent or received, this is not a |
1122368_0 | Seaward Ho! | BEFORE THE WIND The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833. By Charles Tyng. Edited by Susan Fels. Illustrated. 270 pp. New York: Viking. $24.95. THE USS ESSEX And the Birth of the American Navy. By Frances Diane Robotti and James Vescovi. Illustrated. 302 pp. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Media Corporation. $22.95. For all its attraction from the beach, the sea remains uninhabited and untamed to this day, cruelly indifferent to human exertion. No wonder that American national mythology makes ''the frontier'' synonymous with ''the West.'' The West could be won. Yet in the early years of the American republic the everyday frontier stretched eastward, beyond the Atlantic horizon. Sailors were the second largest occupational group in the nation, next only to farmers, and Canton and Rotterdam were more familiar to most than any Western territory. Between 1799, when the town of Salem, Mass., jubilantly launched the frigate Essex, and 1833, when Charles Tyng's memoir draws to a close in a Havana boardinghouse, hundreds of thousands of Americans followed the sea. Struggling against foreign adversaries, the vagaries of the market and the unpredictable ocean, they made themselves and America on the eastern frontier. Tyng's ''Before the Wind'' rings with authenticity and nerve. It movingly reconstructs his boyhood initiation into the lights and shadows of a sailor's life on a voyage from Boston to China, then takes him through the sleeplessness and responsibility of command. During his years afloat he faced pirates in Malaysia and the Caribbean, survived an attempt on his life by a shipmate and spent years in foreign ports of call -- securing his fortune, and even meeting Lord Byron in Italy. Newly rediscovered and edited by his great-great-granddaughter, Tyng's lyrical memoir is a testimonial to an ambitious but likable man with a penchant for the unusual. Tyng not only went around the world, but went into it wholeheartedly. A novelist's eye for detail and a storyteller's flair make this yarn a page turner. Tyng writes with the confident forcefulness that saved him countless times at sea, yet with the open-eyed wonder of a child. Occasionally brash and righteous, he displays a contagious fascination for street life in China, artwork at the Louvre and Patagonian penguins, among many other things. Sometimes his narrative reflects all too clearly the prejudices of his era, as when he encounters Hawaiian queens and enslaved Africans, but it also transcends stereotype, as when he |
1122373_4 | La Difference | brain differences in pursuing its theme. Nature may have made men and women equally good at reasoning, but the sexes do not seem to be equally good at climbing hierarchies of power. Fisher suspects -- quite plausibly -- that this is in part a matter of hormones: ''As testosterone and other male hormones contribute to men's drive to reach the top of the business ladder, estrogen most likely contributes to women's drive to take time out to rear their children -- undermining their ability to achieve these high-status jobs.'' Among the ample evidence she cites for the hormonal hypothesis is a study that found that women who had been subjected to high levels of testosterone in the womb pursued more male-dominated occupations and rose to higher positions. But if women tend to be less keen than men at clambering up the ladder, they often do a better job when they do end up at the top, especially in politics. Fisher makes a strong argument that an increased female presence in the higher echelons of power will result in better governing. As a nice bit of anecdotal evidence she might have pointed to the Queens of England, who on average have been considerably more distinguished and effective sovereigns than the Kings. ''The First Sex'' winds up with a rather rollicking trio of chapters on the ''feminization'' of sex, romance and marriage. They are stuffed with titillating facts (''Some women can even arouse themselves to orgasm without touching themselves. Only one man in a thousand can achieve an orgasm just by thinking''), and by the end, Fisher's boosterism on behalf of her sex has given way to a vision of equality: ''The 21st century may be the first in the modern era to see the sexes work and live as equals -- the way men and women were designed to live.'' While as a man I was relieved by the concluding emphasis on parity between the sexes, I wonder whether Fisher isn't still being a little too optimistic. After all, no less a feminist than Lady Violet Bonham Carter admitted that in spite of having devoted her life to the furtherance of women's rights she had come to the conclusion that there were three occupations in which men would always have the edge: hairdressing, dressmaking and cooking. Jim Holt writes about science and philosophy for Lingua Franca and The Wall Street Journal. |
1122485_3 | There's Something About Garbage | hard to see how even the most dedicated recycler could get a swimming pool into a Curby Can. In Nassau County, I'm told, residents have an even tougher assignment. They must separate glass, plastic and metal objects, which we throw all together into the same can, and they must carry out a complicated operation on their paper products: newspapers must be separated from magazines, envelopes with and without windows, cardboard, Victorian romantic novels, used train tickets, and so on -- a long list of distinct recycling categories with terrible penalties for the homeowner who gets confused. Obviously, the more precisely our trash is divided, the more potentially useful it is. In the end we could reach a steady state where everything is recycled right back to being what it was before, and nothing will need to be produced at all. Recycling is nothing new. The human race has been recycling the same old jokes for thousands of years, along with the same political promises. Television has become the greatest recycling medium of all time, and has not used a new idea since 1946. Some people spend a lifetime recycling their memories of childhood, or weddings or divorces or operations or obscure injuries to their self-esteem. The planet itself is nothing but a giant recycling mechanism. All our air and water is recycled one way or another, although we don't want to think too hard about that. When we drive we burn gasoline, which is just recycled organic stuff. The used gasoline turns into air pollution, and then into medical fees, and then into the doctor's yacht. In due time the yacht will sink into the mud at the bottom of the sea, the wood will rot away, and in a few million more years the doctor's yacht will turn into oil, which can be pumped up, turned into gasoline and start the whole cycle over again. Perhaps the whole universe is just a random mechanism for recycling heat and light and stray molecules into random forms like strip malls and Presidential candidates. When these forms have outlived their usefulness, they will be broken down into molecules and reconstituted as something entirely different, and perhaps more useful. This may be the actual secret of the universe. The true answer to the eternal question ''What is the meaning of life?'' may turn out to be ''Recycling.'' OUT OF ORDER E-mail address: liorder@nytimes.com |
1122362_3 | Spice Guys | alternately waylaid each other and made common cause against the local inhabitants. One of the most notorious adventurers was a Dutch commander called Jan Coen, a ruthless, sardonic, thoroughly frightening individual who brought the struggle to a murderous crescendo early in the 17th century. Coen and his Dutch crew went on a methodically murderous rampage, razing the old port of Jakarta, enslaving most of the population of the Bandas and even chopping down all the nutmeg trees on Run, the one island England could still lay claim to. Here Milton brings his narrative to a horrific climax, detailing the torture and execution of several innocent British merchants, and recounting the heroic stand of the eponymous Nathaniel Courthope, a British captain, on tiny Run. Still, down the stretch, Milton stumbles slightly over one of his main premises, which is just how much this long-ago battle on the other side of the globe had to do with the world we know today. He credits Courthope with establishing the British claim to Run and thus making it possible, nearly 50 years later, for the British to trade those rights for another island they had recently seized from the Dutch. ''Manhattan had been a small trading center with a population of less than 1,000,'' Milton writes. Now, the island would enter ''a new and ever more prosperous period in its history -- a period that would see it rise and rise until the name New York was fabled around the globe.'' This is a nice try, but one is left feeling that Milton is trying too hard to find a hero for an often sordid tale. After all, Courthope was finally ambushed and killed by the Dutch, and Run was, well, overrun. The British acquisition of Manhattan was due as much to other factors, not least of which was the propensity of the island's already self-absorbed residents to steal chunks of timber and stone from its main fort for use in building their own homes. As for Manhattan's rise and rise, that would seem to have a little to do with the inhabitants who remained when the British sailed out through the Verrazano Narrows in 1783, leaving the place in rubble. But this overreaching detracts only slightly from what is a rousing historical romp. Milton leaves one both yearning for a time when the world seemed full of infinite adventure and appalled by what |
1122652_0 | The Hazards of Trying to Sneak It In | IF, like Florida's First Lady, you have been known to skirt the rules when bringing back merchandise from abroad, you may want to mend your ways. The United States Customs Service estimates that each year, hundreds of thousands of travelers break the rules, often saying either that they forgot to pay duties or that they didn't know about them. But Customs is making it more difficult to use ignorance as an excuse for cheating. Airline passengers are about to be hit with a barrage of warnings about Customs rules and the penalties for breaking them. Signs and kiosks will greet travelers at the airport; Customs employees will approach some of them in international departure lounges to talk about the rules. Penalties can be as much as eight times the amount of duty that should have been paid, and the merchandise is sometimes confiscated. In some cases, the violation can be a criminal offense. Publicity about the $4,100 civil fine recently paid by Columba Bush, the wife of Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, after she failed to declare all the clothes and jewelry she brought home from a Paris shopping spree has caught the attention of travelers everywhere. Mrs. Bush paid fines that amounted to about three times the duty she would have paid on the items, which cost her $19,000 and had a domestic value of $25,000. The cost to her husband -- in reputation and future votes -- is harder to tally. Customs officials say that while stories like Mrs. Bush's will make people think twice about improper declarations, amateur smugglers have become emboldened in recent years because fewer people are searched than in the past. Before 1980, inspectors questioned every passenger and usually searched bags. In 1975, Betsy Bloomingdale -- wife of Alfred Bloomingdale, an heir to the New York department store fortune -- was caught failing to report the full value of two Christian Dior dresses. Because duties are intended to protect stores and manufacturers against foreign competition, that was big news. The enormous increase in international travelers, though, has made such comprehensive searching impossible. Some 71 million passengers cleared customs last year, almost four times the 18 million in 1980, while the number of Customs employees held steady at 20,000. ''People aren't used to being questioned, so they wonder, 'Why me?' '' said Susan Mitchell, assistant Customs director for passenger operations at Kennedy International Airport in |
1122726_1 | Despite Low Prestige and Pay, More Answer the Call to Teach | type work,'' said Maureen Tobin, director of the career development center at Kenyon College, the oldest private liberal arts college in Ohio, where about 20 percent of the class of 1998 planned to become teachers. The U.C.L.A. survey, first conducted in 1966, polls 300,000 freshmen at over 600 American colleges and universities each year about their lives and interests, including what they want to do after graduating. The survey does not necessarily reflect actual career choices, which may change after freshman year. Still, other signs of renewed interest in teaching are appearing as well. Applications to many of the nation's top graduate schools of education, which can also include programs in counseling, human development or psychology, are on the rise. While the number of students graduating from medical schools, law schools and business schools has dropped or held steady in recent years, the number of students earning degrees in education has increased, the National Center for Education Statistics said. The number of bachelor's and master's degrees in education rose 31 percent from 1986 to 1996 (the last year available), compared with 22 percent in other fields. Recruiters at some teacher-placement organizations say applicant pools are steady or growing. Teach for America, for example, says it has recorded a strong increase in applications in recent years, especially from schools like Spelman College, Cornell University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University and Princeton. Last fall, Teach for America, which recruits college graduates to teach in low-income districts for a minimum of two years, received applications from 3,025 people for 500 positions, up from 2,745 applicants the year before. ''We've certainly noticed over the past two years that there is an increase in interest from college students,'' said Wendy Kopp, president of Teach for America. ''Part of that can be attributed to the fact that we have become more sophisticated in our recruiting efforts. But there is also a mood on college campuses right now that is conducive to people being interested in teaching. People are looking for ways to assume a significant challenge and to make a difference right out of college.'' In response to the growing interest in improving the quality of teachers, many top liberal arts colleges are setting up or revitalizing teacher education programs. These programs, which provide the necessary coursework to get a teaching degree or certification, have seen a surge in enrollment as well. At Princeton University, |
1135390_0 | Private Eyes | Suppose you had just spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build and launch a satellite and were planning to recoup the investment by selling the satellite's pictures. Chances are you would be pretty good at thinking up reasons that someone might want to buy images from outer space. At any rate, John Copple is. Copple is the C.E.O. of Space Imaging, whose Ikonos satellite -- assuming the Sept. 24 launch goes as planned -- will offer the finest-grained pictures ever sold on the open market. ''Where do I want to park the boat?'' asks Copple, who is not, actually, in a boat, but is imagining himself in the shoes of a data-poor sports fisherman. ''I want to fish where there's a lot of underbrush underneath the water, so the fish population has a lot of food.'' The solution is obvious. Ikonos ''can see into the water quite a ways.'' Fishing is not the only endeavor now plagued by primitive uncertainty. There's also hiking. But by taking a ''3-D fly-through of Yellowstone Park,'' you could choose the most scenic trail before leaving home. Or maybe you're in the real-estate market, scouring the hills for choice acreage. Or you're in the swimming pool business, combing the city for affluent addresses with large backyards but no pools. Or you're a farmer who wants to use ''multispectral'' imagery to see which crops are in distress before they visibly falter. There is, however, one use of Ikonos imagery that Copple does not bring up -- and that, when pressed, he plays down. It's the use for which reconnaissance satellites were invented four decades ago: reconnaissance. Vipin Gupta, a remote-sensing expert at Sandia National Laboratories, is more voluble on the subject. ''In the short term, make no mistake, they're marketing for defense and intelligence applications,'' he says of Space Imaging and the several competing companies that plan to enter the high-resolution imaging business. ''Governments have been willing to pay big money for this kind of data.'' This is what makes Ikonos a geopolitical milestone. Able to discern objects only a few feet wide -- to see at ''one-meter resolution'' -- it will give presidents, generals and assorted political actors around the globe a kind of power once confined to elite nations. This democratization is not universally celebrated. Among the ambivalent: high-tech nations, like Israel, with low-tech enemies, and sole-remaining-superpowers accustomed to kicking around tinhorn dictators. |
1135584_1 | Job Testing: Multiple Choices | Systems, a Chicago-based company that develops employment tests. For many positions, a basic skills or aptitude test may suffice. For jobs in which security is an issue, a more comprehensive personality assessment may be desirable, Mr. Arnold said. The difference in time and cost can be considerable. According to Roger Sommer, employment committee chair for the Society for Human Resources Management, some basic tests can last about 10 minutes and cost just $5 to $10 an applicant, while executive testing can take most of a day and run into the thousands. John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, an outplacement firm in Chicago, says that to find out what to test for, talk with managers who have been hiring for the type of job you are interested in. ''Get a good handle on what it is that makes people in the job successful,'' he said. Mr. Arnold recommended asking three basic questions when choosing a test publisher. First, has the test been validated? The company should have evidence that people who score well on the evaluation tend to be good performers, he said. Second, is the test fair? Has the publisher followed legal or professional standards, like Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines, to insure that the test does not discriminate against applicants of a particular race, sex or age? Third, if your use of the test ever faces a legal challenge, how will the publisher help you? At the very least, Mr. Arnold said, the company should provide a psychologist, at no cost to you, to help you develop a response to the complaint. Apart from legal issues, some of the more comprehensive tests include questions that some people might regard as intrusive. The less clearly that test questions deal with job-related behavior, the greater the risk of alienating applicants, the experts said. Particularly in fields like information technology, in which the demand for qualified applicants far outpaces supply, he said, you run the risk of making the process so rigorous that applicants ask, ''Why in the world do I want to go through all of this?'' Michelle Cottle is a Washington writer. Each week, she responds to readers' questions about career and workplace issues. Send them by E-mail to working@nytimes.com or by mail to Working, Money & Business, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. WORKING Michelle Cottle is a Washington writer. |
1135355_4 | After the Trojan Horse | since Hughes did successfully adapt one classical play, Seneca's ''Oedipus,'' stunningly performed by John Gielgud and Irene Worth in 1968. He was perhaps given a strong lead from the fact that the play was prepared for Peter Brook's Theater of Cruelty festival with the National Theater Company. With the ''Oresteia,'' Hughes seems to have no overarching sense of the trilogy's architectonics. The dramas move on several levels -- mythic, psychological, historical and political. A cycle of murders seems unbreakable -- Clytemnestra's of Agamemnon, Orestes' of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus -- until Apollo and Athena recruit human agents of the polis to help check and redirect the Furies' energies. One aspect of this solution is to promote contractual relations (marriage) to equality with mere blood ties. Hughes fastens on this, and rhapsodizes over matrimony at far greater length than Aeschylus does. The trouble with this emphasis, as the classicist Froma Zeitlin has demonstrated, is that the arguments used by Athena and Apollo to support it are misogynist in their implications. A broader reading of the plays would emphasize their political meaning, as Christian Meier did in ''The Greek Discovery of Politics'' (1990). The three plays represent the three stages of Athens' constitutional development, from monarchy through tyranny to democracy. Hughes muddles this point by such things as his misreading of the Furies' opposition to verbal argument. Rational persuasion has to triumph in the end. Insofar as the Hughes translation has any politics, it is a fuzzy liberal emphasis on compromise. When Athena tells the Furies to use their punitive force to prevent civil war, Hughes turns that into an anachronistic attack on all forms of war. These words are simply added by Hughes: Do not madden our young men With the hiss of the whetstone And the dream . . . of purging themselves Of all their bodily violence In the rapture of battle. Do not addict them To the drug of danger -- The dream of the enemy That has to be crushed, like a herb, Before they can smell freedom. Athens was a warrior state, and Athena wore the armor of her aegis into battle. Aeschylus himself was proud of his service as a hoplite in the war he celebrated with his play ''The Persians.'' To make him a champion of modern pacifism shows a total misunderstanding of the man and his theater. Garry Wills's latest book is ''Saint Augustine.'' |
1135379_13 | Exploring the Amazon, Without the Machete | to New York from Belem via Miami, and a side excursion between Belem and the city of Sao Luis -- cost $1,058, about $800 less than the lowest fare quote directly from the airline. Accommodations and Dining At www.travelocity.com, I reserved a single room at the Best Western, 217 Rua Marcilio Dias, telephone (55-92) 622-2844, fax (55-92) 622-2576, for $57 for my first night in Manaus. After my jungle excursion, I stayed another night at the Best Western, and my rate mysteriously dropped to $52. The price includes the traditional Brazilian breakfast buffet -- an enormous selection of fruits, breads, cheeses and fresh juices. The Best Western is clean and well kept with somewhat drab but spacious air-conditioned rooms (insist on a high floor with a city view) in a safe and central neighborhood. Dining choices in Manaus are limited. The Best Western serves a superb lunch buffet for $6.50. On my trip with Swallows and Amazons, I ate three meals a day of fresh fish, free-range chicken and local fruits and vegetables, expertly prepared and included in my daily rate. Getting Around Manaus is crawling with tour operators and independent guides. Before arriving in Brazil, I consulted the Lonely Planet Guide to Brazil and the Passport South American Handbook, two excellent sources. I also found descriptions of hotel packages and guided tours on line -- www.zfnet.com/manaus, in Portuguese, has a directory of state-approved tour operators. The Web sites gave a sense of current rates. Swallows and Amazons, 189 Rua Quintino Bocaiuva, (55-92) 622-1246, Web site www.overlookinn.com/ swallows.html, is recommended by my guidebooks. It is run by Mark Aitchison and his wife, Tania. Their tours combine boat and canoe travel with land trekking and stays at the Over Look Lodge, about 35 miles upriver on the Rio Negro from Manaus. My three-day, two-night trip included a boat excursion to popular nearby tourist sites like the Encontro das Aguas and the Ariau Jungle Tower Hotel, wildlife- and bird-watching, a canoe excursion through small streams off the Rio Negro, and two short hikes in the rain forest. The price, $100 a day, included overnight accommodations in the simple lodge, and all meals. I found their guides and staff to be professional and knowledgeable. What to See Entry to the opera house in Manaus, Praca Sao Sebastiao, Centro, telephone (55-92) 234-0508, is about $2.50, including a tour in English. DAISANN McLANE FRUGAL TRAVELER |
1135717_1 | Secrecy Mounting As the Cup Draws Near | worth of testing and refinement -- remains a matter of serious concern. The New Zealand Herald recently reported that the America True skipper Dawn Riley was enraged after a local sports television crew broke into the syndicate's Auckland base and climbed over its boat. Unlike America One, which has three boats, America True is a one-boat campaign, making knowledge of the only craft especially valuable to potential competitors. According to the newspaper's report, three members of the television crew got into the base with a small boat around 10 P.M., climbed onto the keel bulb of their boat and started filming. ''We're worried that this could become the cool thing to do,'' Riley told a Herald reporter. Breaches like this were not likely at America One's Los Angeles site. In keeping with America's Cup challenger tradition, the keel of 49, the team's training boat, was always sheathed from view by a nylon skirt in and out of the water. Every low-flying plane that approached America One's compound was photographed and its features noted. Bob Billingham, the project manager for America One, who also worked with Bill Koch on his $100 million A3 campaign in the last America's Cup, said recently that security concerns were no joke. ''We used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on spying,'' usually from helicopters, he said. ''We'd pass the Italians doing the same thing and we'd wave.'' Of America One's $32 million budget, $7 million alone represents the cost of design, an investment Billingham and the skipper Paul Cayard, not to mention their sponsors, are eager to protect. Races for the Louis Vuitton Cup, awarded to the winner of the challengers series, begin in Auckland on Oct. 18. Even until the last moment boats can be modified based on what a spy discovers in a competitor's design, Billingham said. The closer the start date, the more likely this would mean altering the shape of the keel bulb or the winglets, thin flat protrusions on either side of the bulb. (Keeping the keel bulb concealed is therefore an article of faith for most teams.) ''There is so much information out there now that there are fewer things to copy, which makes the paranoia and secrecy even more intense,'' Billingham said. America One's two training boats are now on their way to Auckland, stripped of rigging and masts, electronics and deck hardware. They sit in cradles |
1135489_5 | As Economy Continues Surge, Sailors' Dreams Turn to Yachts | with a microwave/convection oven, and two staterooms, one with a queen-size bed. It also has radar, a global positioning satellite system and an auto-pilot device, which allows the owner to program its course and let the boat pilot itself. ''You can steer with your mouse and your laptop computer,'' he said. ''That's the new thing.'' The younger Mr. Gardella said the old term ''cabin cruiser'' is obsolete. The 42-foot Ocean Alexander is classified as a trawler, characterized by a conservative design, extended cruising range, and live-aboard furnishings. Norwalk Boat Sales was offering it for $446,125. Smaller vessels with sleeker, more modern designs, that are faster but have shorter cruising ranges and less luxurious cabins, are known as express cruisers. Large vessels, 50 feet or longer, that are bigger, wider, and faster than trawlers are classified as flush-deck motor yachts. A 68-foot Ocean Alexander model costs nearly $2 million. Many of these yachts will be on display at the Norwalk Boat Show, Sept. 23-26, at Cove Marina. Albin Marine Inc. makes diesel-powered cruising boats ranging from 28 feet to 39 feet long, and from $100,000 to $250,000 in price. The boats are made in Rhode Island, and the company is headquartered in Greenwich. The company's owner, Fred Peters, said his sales are backlogged. In the last three years, Mr. Peters said his sales have grown by 50 percent. He said he thought the growth had more to do with the improved economy than with the repeal of the tax. When people have money, they spend it. ''A boat is like a summer house,'' he said. Still, like many other people in the boating industry, Mr. Peters spoke bitterly about the luxury tax. ''Our industry was singled out,'' he said. ''Trips to Hawaii were not singled out.'' At Captain's Cove, Mr. Brewster said it took a while to get used to his 33-foot boat. Just last year he had bought a 23-foot boat, but ''when I had the opportunity to retire early, my wife said, 'That boat is not going to do it.' '' There were some tricks to learn to maneuver the new boat, 10 feet longer, into a dock slip. Mr. Lenihan said he has already decided he wants a bigger motor yacht, a 55-footer with three staterooms, so he can entertain more guests and use one of the staterooms as a home office. He had owned sailboats before, but |
1135462_1 | Mercy College Head Extends Her Hand | less by ivory tower philosophies and esoteric social theories than by dollars and cents and statistical realities. Describing herself as an educator with the dream of giving students a helping hand in the world, she said that that did not necessarily mean she was a bleeding-heart liberal or do-gooder. ''I'm just a very practical, reality-oriented person,'' she said. ''The fact is that if we don't nurture students like these, we run the risk of a society of haves and have-nots, where only the elite run the country and there is no middle class.'' Even though one of its primary goals is to attract nontraditional students, the college does not have an open-admissions policy, which accepts all applicants. Mercy tests incoming students to weed out those who do not have the basic skills necessary for college-level courses, accepting about 70 percent of students who apply. A decade ago, by serving students with weaker academic credentials, Mercy cashed in on an overlooked college population in the late 1980's and early 90's and headed off bankruptcy, Dr. Jay Sexter, the former president said then. Dr. Sexter is stepping down to teach psychology, most likely, at Mercy College. Enrollment at Mercy College was 4,800 in 1990; it was up by 46 percent, to 7,000, four years later, under Dr. Sexter's direction. He increased enrollment through new program offerings. It now has an enrollment of 9,500 students, among them 1,500 graduate students. The college, which has a $68 million yearly budget, relies mostly on tuition for its income, said Edward (Ted) Dunn, chairman of the Mercy College board of trustees and a former Mayor of Rye. In addition to balancing its budget now, it also maintains a surplus. In a unanimous vote in April, the trustees elected Dr. Lapovsky the eighth president, and Mr. Dunn said that he hoped that under her tutelage, the college would become ''less tuition dependent'' and significantly increase its present $20 million endowment. Recently named one of Maryland's Top 100 Women by the Maryland Daily Record, a business journal published in Baltimore, Dr. Lapovsky, also taught economics at Goucher, from which she graduated in 1972. Before her appointment as chief financial officer of Goucher, she was a special assistant to the president at the University of Maryland at College Park. She has also held administrative posts at the Maryland Higher Education Commission. She writes for college and university professional publications |
1141353_0 | Business Travel; Alaska Airlines plans to offer a system that allows passengers to check in on the Internet. | ALASKA AIRLINES, which pioneered the airline industry's adoption of electronic tickets, is using the Internet in an attempt to revolutionize checking in at airports, a process that is often arduous. The carrier, based in Seattle, is currently testing a new on-line check-in system, the first developed by a United States airline. It expects to offer the system in early October to travelers who have bought electronic tickets on its Web site and are flying on its domestic routes. Alaska Airlines currently sells only electronic tickets on its site; purchasers can also obtain their seat assignment on line. Travelers will be able to use the new check-in system only on the day they fly, at least one hour before departure. It will ask them the same security questions about luggage they are currently asked at the airport; once they answer these satisfactorily, they will be able to print out a boarding pass on their own computer printer. They can present this pass at the airport before departure. Travelers with luggage will be able to check their baggage with a skycap or elsewhere at the airport. All travelers will still be required to present photo identification to an agent before boarding. Ed White, Alaska Airlines' vice president for customer service, said the main benefit of checking in on line would be convenience. ''There's no line at home, and no wait,'' he said. Eventually Alaska Airlines will allow all travelers who have purchased electronic tickets through any means -- from travel agents or by telephone from the carrier -- and who are flying anywhere on the airline's route system to check in on line, Mr. White said. It is unclear if such a system will spread to other airlines. A Delta Air Lines representative said the carrier was studying the matter. A spokesman for UAL's United Airlines said that airline had no plans at present to offer on-line check-in service. Hotel Update The Swissotel Washington, in the Watergate complex, has undergone a $13 million renovation. All 250 guest rooms -- including 12 presidential suites -- have been refurbished. Guest room balconies, which offer views of the Potomac River, have also been restored. In addition, Jacques Van Staden, former sous-chef of Jean-Louis, the highly acclaimed restaurant once housed in the hotel, has been named chef of Aquarelle, its current restaurant. The Swissotel Washington is owned by Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, part of the Blackstone |
1139888_2 | Families of Taiwan's Missing See Little Hope in the Rubble | while the top eight remained intact, though they now lean more distinctly and precariously than the tower in Pisa. ''I was lucky,'' said Mr. Tsai, who said he escaped unhurt from his ground floor apartment with his wife and child after being trapped for 30 minutes. He seemed humbled by the experience. ''I don't know why we lived,'' he said quietly. ''My good friends did not.'' Arun Azarwal, a friend of Mr. Tsai's, was visiting Taiwan from his native India this week. He came to Hsientai Street to watch the rescue work tonight, mindful of a mutual friend who remained, and said he found it hard not to meditate on the tenuousness of life. ''It happened so fast,'' he said. ''It was the middle of the night, so I wonder if they even woke up.'' The soldiers, working in combat camouflage uniforms and hard helmets, had already dragged four people from the wreckage on Tuesday. All were dead. Tonight, the soldiers gingerly took apart piece after piece of the rubble as they looked for more victims. It must have looked excruciatingly slow to Mrs. Tsou and others with relatives and friends buried within, but the half-collapsed building seemed continually in danger of collapsing more fully. At one point, a shout went up. Another victim had been sighted, deep within the mess. The crowd murmured in excitement, but it soon became apparent that it could take hours before the soldiers would get close enough to determine if the person was alive. A handful of red-shirted rescue workers from a neighboring county arrived to help, many with flashlights taped to one side of their helmets, like miners looking for coal in a tunnel. Mr. Tsai and a handful of other residents took charge of directing them, fetching ladders and pails and rope, and instructing them about leaking gas lines. ''It's really like a war,'' marveled Kao Chen-ting, a taxi driver who stopped to watch the soldiers at work. ''It's big and it's terrible. You have to fight it.'' After so many hours on the sidelines, Mrs. Tsou seemed to lose some of her stoic demeanor, and vented some frustration that there was not more help from official channels. ''I always thought the government would act in a crisis to save people,'' she complained. ''Where are they? What have they done for us? Why do we have to endure this on our own?'' |
1139785_1 | The Office Meeting That Never Ends | shot up, with the number of home users leaping from a mere 500,000 in early 1997 to more than 25.1 million at the end of June, according to Media Metrix. So it was only a matter of time before home computer users started to install instant-message software on their office computers and create informal networks of conversing colleagues. The business market is big enough and lucrative enough that Microsoft and Yahoo spent part of the summer in a spat with AOL because they want to link their instant-message systems to AOL's so that messages can easily flow from one system to the others. Unlike E-mail messages, which wait patiently for you to open them, an instant message is the electronic equivalent of a ringing phone because it pops up on the recipient's screen right away. But somebody apparently forgot to ask instant-message users what they thought. Many of the features that make the service so appealing to teen-agers -- its speed, intrusiveness and the ability to see who else is on line -- have made it as welcome as a Friday afternoon meeting in many offices. Messages that pop up on screen at an inopportune moment (sometimes from the next cubicle) are destroying workers' concentration. Thoughtless text scrawled and sent in haste can spark on-line arguments. And in some offices, the question of who is privileged enough to receive certain instant messages is creating the kind of tortured pecking order last seen in high school. Razvan Surdulescu, a software developer at Trilogy Software in Austin, Tex., started using instant messages several months ago to chat with friends in and out of work. But he started to be frequently interrupted by personal messages just when he was about to go to important meetings. ''It got out of control in April,'' he said, ''because I have a lot of friends who weren't working and had a lot of time on their hands. Every day at around 5 P.M., they'd ask if I wanted to have a chat, at the worst time of day. So I had to set the controls to make myself invisible to most people. I started lurking, in the sense that I was only available to co-workers who really needed to reach me.'' Instant messages can be more annoying than other forms of electronic communication because they appear on screen as soon as they are sent. Recipients of voice |
1134819_2 | For One Teacher, a Lesson About E-Mail and Privacy | beginning, I thought it would be a simple one. They could send me papers via E-mail. I could use E-mail to send them back. They could send me questions via E-mail. I could use E-mail to send back answers. Since I teach journalism, I could send them to Web sites to read The Denver Post the day after the Littleton killings or tell them to check out the new study on coffee posted at the National Institutes of Health or give them an assignment to find out as much information as they could about a classmate, armed with only that person's phone number. I tried to mold this new aspect of our relationship around the traditional pedagogical core. I changed my screen name from ElizaS to the more restrained ElizStone. I was their teacher, after all. Some of the initial rough spots were familiar ones, only in a new key. I found, to my chagrin, that I could misplace just as many E-mail papers as I did the hard-copy kind. For their part, excuses for missing work remained essentially unchanged. ''I know I left it in your mailbox'' altered not at all, while ''my dog ate it,'' merely changed to ''my computer ate it.'' What I didn't anticipate were the options available to those students of mine who, like Rachel, were AOL subscribers -- and that was nearly half of them, as it turned out. For users like us, the first part of an E-mail address is the screen name. Once my students knew my screen name, they could slap it onto their Buddy Lists. Then whenever I went on line, my name would appear in a small window on their monitors. I began to think of the Buddy List window as a sort of on-line ''Rear Window,'' from which they could secretly watch my comings and goings. I knew more about them, too, than I once had, often from their screen names alone. Sports zealots -- like a Mets fan, Piazza1979 -- were obvious. When Flipper70 hobbled in on crutches one day saying her tendon had snapped, I figured out, correctly, that she was a gymnast. Sometimes, though, what was right before my eyes proved mysterious. Gigglez122 is one of the most somber students I've ever had. Does she have a merry side? Does she yearn to? Sabachik is Irish. I don't know what to make of BluLady, Punkissa |
1134831_0 | NEWS WATCH | CAR DISTRACTIONS -- And you thought it was dangerous to talk on a cell phone while driving. How about carrying on a videoconference? Brabus, a German auto company, is marketing the Megacar, a fully wired automobile that comes with a 150-kilobits-per-second wireless connection (more than enough for video phone calls), an Intel Pentium III chip, Windows NT and a 17-inch monitor. The price is $300,000, although the connections can be installed in any car for $90,000. |
1136177_1 | Different Genes, Same Old Label | also tested positive for genetically altered ingredients. Consumers Union said it tested breakfast cereals and cooking oils too, but that the results were inconclusive. It also reported that 60 percent of all hard-cheese products are made with a biotech version of rennet, the enzyme from calves' stomachs. And it analyzed McDonald's McVeggie Burgers, sold in some of the chain's New York City restaurants, and they tested positive. Consumers Union said it chose to test foods that were likely to include genetically altered ingredients; the testing analyzed the DNA makeup of those foods. Genetic engineering involves the splicing of plant or animal genes into the DNA of other species, either to improve crop yields or to ward off insects or disease. Corn, potatoes, squash, papayas, soybeans and canola are among the bioengineered crops already on the market. All a company has to do to grow bioengineered products is certify to the Agriculture Department that it will take safety precautions. Because so few safety studies have been done, there is no evidence that genetically engineered food now on the market is unsafe to eat. But some scientists and consumer advocates worry about the potential for unknown allergens, an increase in natural toxic substances, a decrease in nutritional value and especially environmental damage. In addition, some religious groups are concerned about the possibility that genes from foods they are forbidden to eat will be put into other foods, like shellfish genes into a tomato. The environmental concern has led to protests like the one in Maine, in which a group calling itself Seeds of Resistance claimed responsibility for cutting down 1,000 stalks of genetically engineered corn in an experimental field near Bangor. But the big issue, as Consumer Reports emphasized, is whether consumers should be informed when bioengineered ingredients are used, so they can decide whether to avoid them. A recent survey by the International Food Information Council found that 71 percent of consumers in this country rated themselves as poorly informed about food biotechnology. (Only 2 to 3 percent thought soybeans were genetically engineered, for instance.) But when they do know, they often act. After bovine growth hormone was approved in 1993 to increase milk production, sales of organic milk skyrocketed, and last year they doubled. That still represents only 0.3 percent of the $75 billion dairy market, but analysts say the figure could reach 2 percent by 2005. Between 10 and |
1136267_0 | World Briefing | EUROPE NORTHERN IRELAND: PESSIMISM ON PEACE Leaders of Northern Ireland's smaller parties gave former Senator George J. Mitchell little encouragement in the second day of his mission to mediate the deadlocked peace settlement. The accord has stalled over Protestant politicians' refusal to let Sinn Fein take part in the province's new government unless its Irish Republican Army allies start to disarm. Eileen Bell of the non-sectarian Alliance Party said, ''I can only hope that at the end of the day common sense and decency will prevail, but there is little sense of either at the moment.'' Warren Hoge (NYT) SPAIN: BASQUE PRISONER TRANSFER The Government will transfer 105 Basque prisoners to jails closer to their homes in northern Spain, in a move to try to revive the stalled Basque peace effort a year after the separatist group E.T.A. declared a cease-fire. It is the largest transfer ever of Basque prisoners, affecting a quarter of the 405 Basque militants, convicted or awaiting trial, in Spanish jails. Al Goodman (NYT) GERMANY: SCHRODER ON SLAVE TALKS After a meeting with leading German industrialists, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder said financial claims from American and German lawyers representing forced laborers exploited by the Nazis were ''completely unrealistic.'' His remarks suggested that a settlement under which German companies and the Government would compensate victims of slave labor and forced labor is not imminent. The companies made an initial offer of about $1.7 billion, which has been met by claims for over $20 billion. Roger Cohen (NYT) FRANCE: McDONALD'S PROTESTER FREED The leader of a farmers' union who was jailed for nearly three weeks after vandalizing a McDonald's restaurant was freed from prison after paying a $17,000 fine, donated by supporters and Roquefort cheese producers. Jose Bove, left, and four other members of the Farmers Confederation were jailed for damaging a McDonald's construction site on Aug. 12 to protest the spread of American trade ''hegemony'' and general economic globalization. (AP) MIDDLE EAST EGYPT: 4 MILITANTS KILLED The police said they killed four members of the banned Islamic Group faction in a shootout in Cairo, a day after security officers with President Hosni Mubarak in Port Said shot to death a man they said had struck the President's hand with a sharp object. The incidents were unrelated, according to the police, who said the slain Port Said man had no known criminal record or radical political affiliations. William A. |
1136199_1 | Details on Cardinal's Brain Tumor Are Scant | other organs, like the lungs or breast, are also counted in the brain tumor total, the number of brain tumors rises to about 100,000 a year in the United States. Dr. Ted Gansler, medical editor for patient information at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, said he did not know the details of Cardinal O'Connor's case, but speaking about brain tumors in general, he said: ''Some tumors may be found in a part of the brain that's not essential for survival, and surgery might be more feasible. But the converse is, if it's in the brain stem, which controls breathing and life-sustaining functions, then curative treatment may be much less likely.'' But there are many types of brain cancer, and the outlook for patients varies widely depending on the type as well as the location of the tumor. Dr. Gansler said the most common type of primary brain cancer in adults is a glioma. Those tumors form not in the nerve cells of the brain, but in glial cells, which comprise several different types of cells that carry out a variety of functions. Some help to support and nourish nerve cells, some make the fatty material that insulates nerve cells, others line cavities in the brain that contain cerebrospinal fluid. Gliomas vary in both the type of cell they affect and their aggressiveness. In some cases, the average survival is 6 to 8 years, but in others it may be only 12 to 18 months. ''In cases where the outlook is not very good, people might want to explore clinical trials that offer new treatments that may be more effective,'' Dr. Gansler said, noting that the National Cancer Institute Web site (the address is www.nci.nih.gov) lists 106 studies now in progress, testing experimental treatments for brain cancer in adults. The treatments include radiation, chemotherapy, biological therapies that alter the immune system and gene therapy designed to make tumor cells more vulnerable to certain cancer-killing drugs. Yesterday, a spokesman for the Archdiocese said that Cardinal O'Connor, who was released from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on Saturday, was recuperating at home and still planning to say Mass this Sunday at St. Patrick's Cathedral. ''He is at his residence, and working,'' said the spokesman, Joseph Zwilling. ''He has been working all the way through, even while in the hospital. But he is taking it easy. No public events are planned for him prior |
1141551_0 | For the People, by the Computer | IN San Diego, comments at public hearings can be submitted by E-mail. Boston residents can use the city's Web site to complain about broken street signs or to pay parking tickets and excise taxes. And in Indianapolis, taxpayers can get electronic copies of the city budget and rework them, then send them to Mayor Stephen Goldsmith just to show him how they would do his job. The concept is called electronic government, and it means giving people access to a wide range of municipal services and information through the Internet. In cities across the country, it is rapidly changing the way people interact with City Halls. ''Think back to the banking industry,'' said Allan H. Dobrin, New York City's Commissioner of Information Technology and Telecommunications. ''You basically had to go into a branch, stand on line and see a teller. Now none of us do that. ''That same kind of paradigm switch will happen in government now. People will get all of their services without having to go to a government office.'' Municipal sites on the World Wide Web, like NYC Link, New York's site (www.ci.nyc.ny.us/home.html), already offer information about services and events and let people get government forms, register complaints or communicate with officials via E-mail. The site has been available since July 1996. The goal of electronic government is to go beyond offering information and communication by enabling residents to do business directly with their local governments. By relying more on computers and less on workers, cities hope to save money as well. Some city Web sites are already offering a number of services. The Indianapolis site, Indygov (www.indygov.org), for example, provides information about polling places, parks and zoning issues. But the site also lets residents pay parking tickets and submit applications for electrical permits. And in San Carlos, Calif., contractors will soon be able to schedule building inspections with just a point and a click (www.ci.san-carlos.ca.us/building/smartpermit.html). The move toward electronic government raises logistical challenges and some legal issues, and there are questions about security and privacy, similar to the ones that have arisen with electronic commerce. But since this is government, there are also concerns about making such services accessible to more people. While anyone can get in touch with City Hall on the phone or in person, many people, particularly older or poorer ones, lack computers and Internet access. So there is a concern that as |
1141581_0 | NEWS WATCH | So you want to check your E-mail, but a computer isn't handy. Why not just pick up a telephone and have it read to you? A free service called Mytalk.com permits users to do just that. More than 100,000 people have signed up for the service (www.mytalk.com), which carries ads, since it began this summer, said Kevin Wray, director of Web strategy and programs for General Magic, the company that runs the service. |
1141590_1 | World Briefing | law that allows Italian citizens abroad to vote in Italian elections. Government statistics show that about 3.6 million Italian citizens live outside the country, more than 300,000 of them in the United States and Canada. Alessandra Stanley (NYT) ITALY: WOMEN CAN ENLIST Up to 20,000 women are expected to apply to join Italy's armed services after Parliament passed a law that allows women to serve as volunteers in the military. Most other European countries already allow women to serve. Alessandra Stanley (NYT) LIECHTENSTEIN: PRINCELY THREAT Prince Hans-Adam II has threatened to move to Austria if Parliament votes to rein in his powers, his spokesman said. The prince seeks the authority to dissolve the Government and Parliament without explanation. He said he would first work with his advisers to create a new reform package that both sides can accept. (Agence France-Presse) BULGARIA: DEATH PENALTY BAN Bulgaria has confirmed its decision to abolish the death penalty by ratifying an international ban on capital punishment, the Council of Europe said. The council said the decision would take effect on Friday. (Agence France-Presse) THE AMERICAS MEXICO: NEW MAYOR Mexico City's legislative council has ratified Rosario Robles Berlanga to succeed Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano and become the first woman to be Mayor. Ms. Robles served for nearly two years as the chief of staff of Mr. Cardenas, who stepped down on Tuesday to run for President. Julia Preston (NYT) COLOMBIA: NEW VIOLENCE Yet another outbreak of violence by armed groups of the left and right has resulted in the deaths of at least 15 people and the kidnapping of another 16. Right-wing death squads killed 10 people and abducted 10 in Magdalena and Antioquia provinces, authorities said, while a unit of the Marxist-Leninist People's Liberation Army stormed into a village in the same northern region, executing five people. Larry Rohter (NYT) ASIA JAPAN: CULT CUTS BACK Bowing to public pressure, the Japanese doomsday cult accused of a 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo subways said it would close its branches, stop recruiting and stop using its current name. But the Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth Sect) did not offer an anticipated public apology for the incident that killed 12 and left thousands ill, saying only that it was considering its future. (Reuters) MIDDLE EAST JORDAN: EDITOR HELD The editor-in-chief of an independent newspaper was arrested in connection with the publication of articles by a pro-Hamas former |
1141576_1 | A Colorful St. Peter's Raises Eyebrows | world'') is in delicate shades of red and green. Renato Nicolini, a former commissioner of culture in Rome's city government, decried the restoration as ''post-modern.'' ''It's the desire to transform everything into a movie set,'' he said. Carlo Bertelli, an architectural historian, was equally dismissive. Belittling the facade's restored shade as the ''color of tobacco,'' and using the English word ''beautification'' as if to suggest a project inspired by Disney, he complained that ''the televised image had won out over the real monument.'' The restoration was prompted by a desire to beautify the basilica, the central church of Christendom, and its piazza for the Jubilee celebration next year for the start of Christianity's third millennium. In recent months, workers finished restoring the sweeping colonnade, which was completed in 1666 by Gianlorenzo Bernini to embrace the immense piazza. It is the second time in recent years that the Vatican has completed a major restoration, after the cleaning of Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, and the debate over the facade seems to echo recriminations over the restoration of the chapel. Art historians and restorers were stunned by the revelation of Michelangelo's bright colors. Still, some feared that the work had been permanently disfigured. Maderno's use of color was not the only striking discovery during the basilica's restoration. Close measurements of the facade with computerized equipment showed that the left side, as seen when facing the basilica, was roughly 16 inches lower than the right because of settlement in the unstable ground below. Maderno had added bell towers at the extremities when Pope Paul deemed the original facade too narrow for Michelangelo's massive construction. Bernini was commissioned in the 1640's to carry the bell towers higher than the present height of the facade, but work was interrupted and the construction dismantled when the building's settlement rapidly accelerated, threatening the entire facade. The restorers studied four tears in the facade that were partly caused by settling that began almost immediately after completion. Car and bus exhaust added to the soot from centuries of wax-torch illumination of the facade on high-feast days, dulling the building's contours to a uniform gray. Such damage masked details of a facade that Sandro Benedetti, a professor of architecture at La Sapienza, the main campus of the University of Rome, describes as ''one of the first works that open the chapter of the Roman Baroque.'' The facade is generating |
1135876_1 | On Newsstands In Britain, Beer and Babes Are in Decline | in the laddie book's native land, after almost of five years of double-digit percentile circulation growth, demand seems to be flagging. Circulation figures reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations in Britain for FHM declined 9.6 percent from June 1998 to June 1999, a sharp turnaround from growth of 53.6 percent in the prior 12 months. The most recent circulation figure reported was 701,089. Loaded, published by IPC Magazines Ltd. was down even more, dropping 15.8 percent, to 384,351, compared with a rise of 20 percent in the previous year. And Maxim, despite its burgeoning circulation in the United States, grew here by only 3.1 percent -- to 310,096 -- from June to June, compared with 63 percent growth in circulation in the prior year. The circulation of Men's Health was off 11 percent, to 218,724. And Arena and Face, two of the oldest of the group, fell by 26.2 percent and 28 percent, respectively, to 46,777 and 57,703. All this has left editors and publishers on both sides of the pond asking: Is the boom over? Is it possible that sex no longer sells? ''A little bit of sex and hedonistic bad behavior goes a long way; but after a while that's all it was,'' said Mike Soutar, whom Dennis Publishing recently hired away from EMAP's FHM to become editor of the American edition of Maxim. Mr. Soutar said he was working to keep Maxim from lapsing into laddie-book formula. But he would provide no specific examples, saying simply that the British circulation decline was ''a timely reminder that we have to keep evolving.'' In essence, the laddie formula involves a couple of photo spreads of women, often in lingerie, interviews with and photographs of scantily clad models and actresses, some barroom jokes and a twist of how-to-get-the-girl advice for good measure. In the last several months, British magazine publishers have rushed a bevy of imitators to market, hoping to cash in on the sector's phenomenal growth. EMAP introduced a spinoff of its successful FHM, called FHM Collections. Cabal Communications Ltd. joined the fray with a magazine called Front, which is risque enough that some retailers display it on the top shelf with the likes of Playboy and Penthouse. And IPC introduced Later, a spinoff of Loaded aimed at older readers. Some editors worry the market is now too crowded and that some of the newcomers are dragging standards |
1135883_2 | The Undiscovered Plan B for Northern Ireland | violence has gone,'' Mr. Blair said. ''That doesn't just mean decommissioning, but all bombing, killings, beatings and an end of targeting, recruiting and all the structures of terrorism.'' The Prime Minister cannot possibly claim that this promise has been fulfilled. Instead, the continuing violence has only added to a lingering sense of unease about the whole peace process. This distaste is widespread and not confined to Ulster Protestants or English Tories. More and more have come to share the view of the Irishman who said, when asked how anyone could be against a peace process, ''I like the peace, I don't like the process.'' There is a strange comparison to be made between Northern Ireland and that other problematic peace process in the Middle East. The wrangling there last week stemmed from the Israeli reluctance, which many find understandable, to release prisoners with blood on their hands. Since the peace agreement was signed in Northern Ireland, more than 270 paramilitary prisoners have been released, most of them I.R.A. men, but also some Protestant loyalists. Or compare those released prisoners with terrorists in America. Last week, Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma deplored the idea that President Clinton might grant clemency to 16 members of the Puerto Rican F.A.L.N. They were convicted of crimes that supported terrorist acts likes bombing and killing. In an article on this page, the Governor quoted the President's condemnation of the Oklahoma City bombing as ''a terrible sin.'' And he also cited Howard Safir, the New York Police Commissioner, who said that releasing the F.A.L.N. prisoners would ''encourage terrorism worldwide'' and that ''we should never make deals with terrorists.'' Those words have a bitter ring in Ulster. The failure of F.A.L.N. members to express any penitence for what they have done is rightly held against them. But the Sinn Fein leaders have also never expressed any remorse. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are both former ''chiefs of staff'' of the I.R.A. and are both almost impressively unapologetic about its methods. Last summer, there was a horrible bombing in the town of Omagh. It killed 29 people, most of them Catholics. This was not the work of the I.R.A., but of a splinter group. Nevertheless, Mr. McGuinness has reportedly all but conceded that he knows the identity of the Omagh killers, but he refuses to name them. This is a man who is supposed to become a salaried |
1135884_1 | Mitchell Prepares Rescue Effort for Ulster Peace Settlement | ''It is unthinkable to me that after having reached agreement, the parties who support the agreement will permit it to fail. That would be a terrible tragedy, an irony, and I think it would be unforgivable.'' The process of putting the April accord into effect ground to a halt in July, when the Ulster Unionists refused to allow a start-up of the new Northern Ireland Assembly without greater assurances that the I.R.A. would give up its weapons. It was after that breakdown that the British and Irish Governments, the sponsors of the overall peace move, turned to Mr. Mitchell, the chairman of the original peace talks and the only person in the long insult-ridden process to have maintained the trust of all sides. Regardless of any initial progress Mr. Mitchell can make, tensions will almost certainly rise further this week with the publication on Thursday of a long-awaited report on Northern Ireland's police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary. How the overwhelmingly Protestant force should be reformed, perhaps the most single divisive issue in shaping Northern Ireland's future, has been studied by a commission headed by Chris Patten, the former Governor General of Hong Kong. The lack of trust is fueled by Protestant doubts that the largely Catholic republican movement has given up violence in pursuit of its goal to forge closer links between with Ireland, and by republican doubts that the Unionists, who want to keep Ulster in the United Kingdom, are sincere about sharing political power with the Catholic minority. The conflicting attitudes have been reinforced by events of recent weeks. The Unionists are furious with Mo Mowlam, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, for her formal finding last month that the I.R.A. had not broken its cease-fire even though the guerrilla organization was involved in the killing of a man suspected of having been an informer and in a gun running plot uncovered in Florida. Ms. Mowlam is thought to have based her admittedly delicate decision on a wish to keep Sinn Fein engaged in the peace search, but the Unionists termed her ruling naive and unprincipled, and they called for her removal from office. An immediate surge in I.R.A. punishment beatings and expulsions from Northern Ireland of teen-age troublemakers, a process known as ''exiling,'' further convinced the Unionists that Sinn Fein could not be trusted with positions in the province's public life. They assailed Ms. Mowlam and Prime Minister |
1137923_0 | Protesters Just Say No To 'McDo'; Jospin Glad | When it comes to showing France's refusal to roll over to American-led globalization of the world economy, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin bows to almost no man. But he did Monday night on national television, when he was asked about protests at 40 McDonald's restaurants around the country this summer against extra American tariff duties on Roquefort, foie gras and other French products imposed because France refuses to import American hormone-treated beef. Mr. Jospin took off his hat to the leader of the protests, a French farmers' union official named Jose Bove, who spent about two weeks under arrest after a demonstration in Auch on July 27 wrecked a McDonald's building site. ''We are still a people of Gallic origins,'' Mr. Jospin said, bringing to mind visions of Asterix and Obelix, the popular cartoon Gauls, underdogs who use their fists, and magic potions, and always get the best of all the Roman legions Caesar can throw against them. ''Whenever there are movements, there are personalities that emerge,'' Mr. Jospin said, recalling a truck driver lionized as ''Tarzan'' during an epic truckers' strike in 1992 and a spokesman for the jobless known as ''Robin Hood,'' who caught the country's sympathy for their plight in 1997. ''Here again is a strong, vigorous personality, who stems a bit from our people, with the radicalism that has always existed,'' Mr. Jospin told his interviewer. ''I am personally not very pro-McDo,'' Mr. Jospin said, using the familiar diminutive for the fast-food chain, pronouncing it ''Mac-doh'' the way millions of French customers do. After pointing out earlier that its ubiquitous branches buy mostly French beef and potatoes and provide income for tens of thousands of French farmers, McDonald's is now lying low under its golden arches. The chain made no comment today about the Prime Minister's remarks, and an official said the wave of demonstrations against its restaurants appeared to have calmed down. |
1137114_0 | Watching Europe And the Theater | BILL T. JONES Dancer and choreographer RIGHT now I am not as interested in pure dance as I am in international forms that are being treated in new ways. That's why I am always interested in seeing what people do with Shakespeare; I'd like to see good Shakespeare brought back to Broadway. I myself am working on a Greek tragedy set in contemporary New York. There's a Japanese group called Dumbtype that works in France and around Europe. They use media, video in a very interesting way and do something almost like performance art. AARON COPP Resident lighting designer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company I M not a big planner, but there are certain things I don't miss: I would see Trisha Brown sneezing. There are a couple of ballet companies in Europe that I love: Frankfurt and Netherlands Dance Theater. Over there, choreographers can make larger-scale work, which has mostly been denied to modern choreographers here. When Billy Forsythe's imagination runs wild, he's not necessarily limited by the fact that he's performing in a tiny theater with no fly space or by the fact that he has five dollars. It doesn't necessarily make the work better, but it is different and something I don't get to see here very often. STACEY CALVERT Soloist, New York City Ballet I M really looking forward to seeing Kevin O'Day's ''Delta Inserts'' for the Stuttgart Ballet in January. It got such great reviews. The Stuttgart actually changed their program to put it on in Newark. Kevin seemed shocked that it was such a huge success. I have heard a lot of good things about the Lyons Opera Ballet; I have never seen them perform, but some people I know have danced there, and the director has brought in a lot of very diverse rep. The Pina Bausch stuff, at BAM in November, is always interesting to see as well. Margie Gillis, too, a great performer, will be at the Joyce Theater in March. I know Twyla Tharp will be doing a piece for our company -- that was the big buzz, the most interesting thing I can think of. TRISHA BROWN Dancer and choreographer LAURIE ANDERSON hasn't been on a New York stage in some time and she has a new piece called ''Songs and Stories From Moby Dick'' at BAM in October. I want to see what she's up to at |
1136986_1 | Made in the U.S.A. | they? And yet Fingleton is right on a basic fact. Manufacturing is and will remain the central economic activity in world trade. This book is best at its descriptions of modern manufacturing processes -- Nikon's stepper machines, central to semiconductor production, for instance, or Sony's laser diodes -- and for its screeching critique of our Internet-obsessed business press. New Age gurus take deserved hard hits -- though Fingleton is silent on their leading acolytes, Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich. Fingleton laid out his view of the hidden strengths of the Japanese economy in ''Blindside.'' Here he says that in the 1990's Japanese policy makers decided to play down their continuing successes (notably in isolating their financial crash from their still strong industrial sectors), partly to stay below American political radar. Hence the looming crisis as he sees it: Japanese (and German) manufacturing continue to advance while Americans place vain hopes on service sectors like software, dominated by small, overvalued companies like Microsoft, highly vulnerable to piracy, outsourcing and low-wage imports. O.K., but so what? Can the United States survive and prosper as a financial services, software, information and entertainment-producing society whose role in the world is also anchored, as Fingleton does not say, by its position as chief military enforcer and supplier of the world's reserve currency -- the dollar? The fact is, we have full employment without inflation, declining inequality and a balanced budget. There is no very obvious evidence the party will end soon. Would we be better off with high tariffs and so higher prices -- and foregone use of Japanese microelectronics in favor of inferior home production? Would we be better off supplying fewer dollars to world finance and forcing reserves to be shifted to the Euro? Economists typically respond to arguments like Fingleton's with a one-size-fits-all attack on protectionism and the mercantile fallacy. This is a mistake. The mercantilists in their day (Elizabethan England and 19th-century Germany under the influence of Friedrich List) knew what they were doing. And the pursuit of industrial advantage and of a reserve of treasure is sensible policy for middling powers in an unstable world -- as Japan learned and both China and Taiwan, the survivors of last year's crisis, can attest. Yet the same course is not necessarily sensible for the leading financial and imperial powers. Countries like ours, or the elites that run them, have other interests. Whether |
1138631_0 | Kennedy Papers' Forger Sentenced to 9 Years | The man who sold hundreds of forged documents supposedly written or signed by John F. Kennedy was sentenced to nine years and seven months in prison yesterday, a stiffer term than usual, and ordered to pay $7 million in restitution to victims of his scheme. The defendant, Lawrence X. Cusack 3d, sat silently as Judge Denise L. Cote of Federal District Court in Manhattan rejected his lawyers' assertions that he deserved leniency because of a ''mental impairment'' and because of his devotion to his wife and four young children. Calling Mr. Cusack a ''criminal opportunist who uses his family connections to enrich himself,'' Judge Cote said that he had shown a ''complete disregard for the impact that his actions would have on others'' and expressed concern that he might engage in future criminal activity. Under Federal sentencing guidelines, which trial judges usually follow, Mr. Cusack, 48, faced a term of about 6 to 8 years for his conviction on April 30 on 13 counts of mail and wire fraud. But Judge Cote said that she was imposing the longer term because of the unusual circumstances of the case, including Mr. Cusack's design of a crime that could damage the reputation of Kennedy and other well-known people. ''In authoring and promoting the documents,'' Judge Cote said, ''he showed a disdain for society's understanding of important political and historical figures.'' In addition to Kennedy, the judge cited others whose names or forged handwriting had appeared in the papers, including Robert F. and Joseph Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, J. Edgar Hoover and Francis Cardinal Spellman of the New York Archdiocese. Some of the documents had linked Kennedy to Monroe and to a Chicago mob figure. Others purported to detail an affair between Kennedy and Monroe, and Kennedy's supposed agreement to pay the actress to remain silent about their relationship. The judge also cited other grounds for a harsher sentence, including what she called Mr. Cusack's stealing of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the estate of his late father, a prominent lawyer, years before he embarked on his fraud. Judge Cote called Mr. Cusack ''a man without scruples, who would sacrifice any person or institution in the service of his greed.'' Throughout the hearing, Mr. Cusack remained silent, shaking his head slightly as Judge Cote issued her rebuke. Mr. Cusack had always contended that the papers were genuine, and that he had found them |
1138591_1 | Greek Orthodoxy in U.S. Is on the Cusp of Change | roots and fully accustomed to the democratic decision-making style of the American political culture. The crisis became so great that some openly discussed the possibility of independence, or autocephaly, removing the archdiocese from control by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the historic seat of Greek Christianity, in Istanbul. Parishes withheld money, and lay leaders, priests and bishops appealed to Patriarch Bartholomew I, who had appointed Archbishop Spyridon in 1996, to replace him. In an interview yesterday, Archbishop Demetrios, wearing his black, clerical robes, said he understood that many Greek Orthodox lay people were ''very prominent, very proud'' members of American society with a different understanding of their church than immigrants would have. He said he did not think moves toward autocephaly would continue. And he added, perhaps a bit optimistically, that the controversy over Archbishop Spyridon ''could help in improving, not diminishing'' ties between Greek-Americans and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, as both sides came to a new respect for each other. A value of that bond, Archbishop Demetrios said, is that it helps keep Greek Orthodox religious life rooted in its historic tradition. After Aug. 19, when Archbishop Spyridon resigned and a synod convened by Bartholomew chose Metropolitan Demetrios of Vresthena in Greece to succeed him, the organization most critical of Archbishop Spyridon, Greek Orthodox American Leaders, announced it would disband. Its leaders have praised Archbishop Demetrios's appointment, posting a notice calling him a man ''of deep spirituality and intellectual strength'' on an Internet site (www.voithia.org) that served as an unofficial forum for news and opinion on archdiocesan events during much of Archbishop Spyridon's tenure. Archbishop Demetrios is familiar to many Greek-Americans. He received a doctorate from Harvard in 1972, served as a priest in Fall River, Mass., and taught at the archdiocese's Holy Cross School of Theology in Brookline, Mass., for a decade, until 1993. Born in Thessaloninki, Greece, 71 years ago, he is the author of three scholarly books on Orthodox Christian theology. His brother, Anthony Trakatelis, is a biochemistry professor in Greece and a member of the European Parliament. The new archbishop could face an immediate financial concern if there is a deficit in the archdiocese's budget, as was reported last week by a Greek-American newspaper. He said he did not know if one existed, but added: ''We do have, I believe, the resources, and I mean the people'' who would contribute financially to rectify such a situation. |
1139289_0 | Heeding the Ominous Buzz of a Vicious Animal | To the Editor: Re ''Public Beliefs, Global Politics and Pesticides'' (Big City column, Sept. 16), by John Tierney: The world doesn't have time to watch the developed countries debate the safety of malathion and DDT. Even if we use these chemicals without restraint, we will not significantly reduce the millions of mosquito-caused deaths every year or the millions of cases of chronic mosquito-delivered infections that people must live with. It is far past time to get serious about these vicious animals. We have destroyed smallpox and almost wiped out polio. We are deciphering the genetic code. The United States and other countries should support an emergency project to apply the world's genetic, molecular and biochemical knowledge to the total eradication of all the mosquitoes in the world. Then we would never again be told, as we are now, that a child dies of malaria every 12 seconds. TOM RIEKE Ann Arbor, Mich., Sept. 16, 1999 |
1139244_0 | Eredo Journal; A Wall, a Moat, Behold! A Lost Yoruba Kingdom | Off the main road in this unassuming town, a footpath that snakes through the thick bush and trees of the Nigerian rain forest leads to the remains of what is certainly one of the largest monuments in sub-Saharan Africa: a 100-mile-long wall and moat whose construction began a millennium ago. The monument, called Sungbo's Eredo, was erected around a kingdom of the Yoruba -- one of the three main ethnic groups in present-day Nigeria -- and surrounds several towns and villages. Here, the Eredo's earthen bank rises 70 feet in the air from the bottom of a wide ditch, its reddish, vertical wall glistening with patches of moss. Few Nigerians have heard of the Eredo; fewer still have visited it. Much of the Eredo lies in ruin, or hidden in the nearly impenetrable rain forest, ignored by locals and Government officials alike. Over the last five years, however, a team of Nigerian and British archeologists and preservationists have succeeded in mapping the structure after the work of an earlier archeologist piqued the curiosity of Patrick Darling, an archeologist at Bournemouth University in Britain. A carbon analysis of parts of the rampart showed that it dates from the 10th century and suggested that a highly organized kingdom existed in the rain forest at least three centuries earlier than previously believed. Because many ethnic groups and cultures have inhabited Nigeria's territory over the centuries and because the country has drawn relatively few archeologists compared with its neighbors here in West Africa, Nigeria is considered a potential treasure trove. ''What else lies in the rest of the rain forest in Nigeria?'' said Mr. Darling, leader of the mapping team. ''There is so much in Nigeria that's not known.'' The Eredo, which encloses an area about 25 miles from south to north and 22 miles from west to east, is only about an hour northeast of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital. But as is the case with most artifacts in Nigeria, the need to preserve it has attracted little Government attention, said Willie Nwokedi, president of Legacy, a private conservation group based in Lagos. The military Governments that ruled Nigeria for most of the years since independence in 1960 have allowed the country's historical sites to deteriorate. For instance, it is possible to see people freely walking atop the remains of the walls in Nigeria's ancient city of Kano. Many of the country's museums have |
1134637_2 | Business Travel; A system for a quick pass through immigration at airports has surprisingly few users. | ''the only requirement for eligibility is that you travel on business more than two times a year.'' (Those with criminal records, including tycoons, are not eligible, however.) Besides Americans, Canadians and citizens of the 26 countries participating in the multinational Visa Waiver Pilot Program -- who otherwise meet the business-travel requirements -- are also eligible. Among the countries participating in the visa waiver program are Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Inspass kiosks are now operating at these airports: Kennedy International (International Arrivals, Terminal 4; American Airlines, Terminal 8; British Airways, Terminal 7, and Delta Air Lines, Terminal 2); Los Angeles International; Newark International; Miami International; San Francisco International; Dulles International, and at United States immigration preclearance sites at Pearson International in Toronto and Vancouver International. Given the high satisfaction rates among participants, the agency was ready to expand the service quickly to 23 airports that serve significant numbers of Americans returning home from international business trips. But financing for the hardware to operate the program was reduced in the last year, so current plans are to expand the program only to Seattle and Honolulu by the end of this year. Plans for expanding to Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Cincinnati; Dallas-Fort Worth; Detroit; Houston; Minneapolis; Montreal; Orlando, Fla.; Ottawa; St. Louis, and a yet-to-be-chosen location are now on hold. The card, which is free, is good for one year at every location. Users must still carry a passport, in case a technical glitch required a visit to a live I.N.S. inspector at a booth. Travelers must also still pass through customs. Enrolling involves filling out I.N.S. form I-823, which can be obtained and processed at the Inspass enrollment offices at the eight participating airports. The form can also be downloaded from the Web at www .ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/howdoi /inspass.htm. ''We estimate that for those who use the system we can get you from the jet way to the street in a total of 20 minutes or less,'' Ms. Schmidt said. Side Trips About 40 percent of all Americans who make trips of 50 miles or more attend a sporting event while traveling, according to a recent survey by the Travel Industry Association of America. Baseball is the favorite attraction, followed by football, basketball and auto racing. Business travelers are the biggest spenders. Anyone spending $500 or more at a stadium or arena is probably traveling on business, the survey found. |
1134651_0 | Animal Rights Protest | |
1136498_0 | Controlling Students' E-Mail | To the Editor: If Elizabeth Stone had learned a little more about the America Online service, she would have known that each AOL member is allowed to create up to five screen names per account. That would easily have solved the problem of her students knowing when she was on line at night. She could have simply created one screen name for school business, to be given out to her students, and another private screen name for her nocturnal cyber-roaming. ALAN MANDEL New York City, Sept. 2, 1999 |
1136383_0 | Pirate Lore and Salvaged Treasures | READ ''Treasure Island,'' my sixth-grade teacher told the class, because if you discover its thrills now, they will stay with you forever. A lot of people have taken that advice because pirate sites for young and old abound on the Web. But reliable pirate sites? They're as scarce as reliable treasure maps. Yes, with only a few mouse clicks and a few thousand dollars, you, too, can help finance the search for the hundreds of tons of gold buried in the Philippines and the West Indies. What? They came up empty? Well, looks as if you've got to learn about real pirates after all. The Pirate Web Ring (webring .org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=piracy ;list) lists 44 sites, but some appear fanciful and many are for role-playing games. Fortunately, there are also some thoughtful and exciting Web pages that have navigated the treacherous shoals of legend. One Web ring site that does justice to both fantasy and history is No Quarter Given (www.discover.net /nqgiven/index.htm), a supplement to a subscription magazine of the same name. This is a big home port for re-enactment groups, current festivals, new discoveries and, yes, pirate chat rooms. On sites like Think Quest's Pirates: Fact and Legend (despina .advanced.org/16438/main.shtml), an enthusiast can read some hair-raising history and learn about the Golden Age of Piracy, roughly 1680 to 1725. There is Blackbeard lighting his long hair before going into battle and ending his career with his head on a pike. There is Henry Morgan overcoming a jungle march, 600 Spaniards and a stampede of bulls to plunder Panama's gold. For a look at a real ship, see www.whydah.com, which chronicles the history and ongoing salvage of the Whydah (pronounced WID-da), the flagship of Capt. Samuel (Black Sam) Bellamy and the only documented pirate shipwreck (with documented pirate treasure) ever recovered. The Whydah's story is also told on The National Geographic's site, www.nationalgeographic.com /whydah. Bellamy had a spectacular but short career in the Caribbean and off the Atlantic coast, capturing more than 50 ships before he was 29. But the Whydah went down with 144 men and much of Bellamy's treasure in a howling Northeaster off Provincetown, Mass., in April 1717 (according to legend, the captain had detoured into disaster to see his mistress in Cape Cod). Barry Clifford, a professional treasure diver, found the wreck in 1984, and the recovery is still going on. Some of the salvaged gold, 400-year-old African |
1136500_0 | Controlling Students' E-Mail | To the Editor: I applaud Elizabeth Stone for being so patient with her students' instant messaging her on line. When I first advised my students at John Jay College of my screen name, I also liked how this new accessibility was empowering many of them to converse with me outside of class. (They were thinking! They were writing! At 4 A.M.!) But I also felt like I was becoming too much of an instant pen pal. Now I still freely give out my home E-mail address, but when I'm on the Internet, I'm signed on under a different screen name than the one my students know. I only use the screen name they know me by to read and write mail to them. And I still strongly encourage my students to engage in instant responses with me -- face to face during office hours. BOB LAZAROFF Teaneck, N.J., Sept. 3, 1999 |
1136497_0 | Controlling Students' E-Mail | To the Editor: I've been using E-mail to communicate with my students for three years now, and it's all the good things mentioned in ''For One Teacher, a Lesson About E-Mail and Privacy'' (Sept. 2). It even saved my class last year when my husband was seriously ill the first half of the semester; I sent and received assignments, and answered E-mail questions, via a laptop in the hospital, keeping me in touch with students and keeping them in touch with the class. But I avoided the privacy problems the writer, Elizabeth Stone, faced by never giving out my AOL address to my students. I used the E-mail address provided by the school. SONIA JAFFE ROBBINS New York City, Sept. 2, 1999 |
1136406_0 | NEWS WATCH | DIGITAL FILM FESTIVAL -- Can an even-longer ''director's cut'' of ''Blade Runner'' be far behind? The Sharp Corporation and Japanese Government researchers have developed a new memory disk that can store 200 gigabytes of data, more than 40 times as much as conventional DVD disks. But it will not be available for at least two years. SLOTH WITHOUT EFFORT -- Good news for couch potatoes everywhere: La-Z-Boy Inc. (www.lazboy.com) will sell its furniture on line next year. And the company is also releasing the Oasis, a chair with a built-in cooler that should appeal to its new wired audience. Still no word on the footrest modem or armrest microwave. |
1136399_0 | Internet Connects Inventors to Information (and One Another) | RODNEY LONG is an Alabama inventor who typically spends 16 hours a day on the Internet, logging on to things like inventor forums and an on-line patent database (www.patents.ibm.com /ibm.html) that has been sponsored by I.B.M. since 1997. Mr. Long, a former maintenance mechanic for U. S. Steel, has already seen one of his inventions go into production: a device that moves granulated materials like cement and sand more reliably through processing plants. That success has spurred him to keep tinkering, often with on-line help. ''Without the Internet,'' he said recently, ''I wouldn't have the other 27 inventions that I do.'' Another inventor who is fond of the Internet is Nancy Beaule of Lewiston, Me., the inventor of the Pie Saver. (It keeps pie edges from burning and can be seen at www.betabake.com.) She applied for a trademark more than a year ago, but had no idea where her application stood until she checked the Federal Patent and Trademark Office's Web site four months ago, and discovered, to her relief, that her trademark was pending. Lately, she has used the Internet to do patent searches. (The Pie Saver, by the way, is also available in supermarkets and at Yahoo's shopping site.) Inventors like Mr. Long and Ms. Beaule are flocking to the Net. To be sure, part of what they find there is silliness of the mad inventor variety. There are, for example, roughly a dozen Web sites that seem to exist solely to highlight kooky -- if not downright absurd -- inventions. But the silliness is vastly outweighed by Web sites that together offer a veritable dream shop for inventors. Inventors can find on-line support groups, chat rooms, message boards and patent and trademark databases. And the main goal of some sites is to alert inventors to those suspicious promotion and development companies that have long snookered inventors, especially beginners. One such company bilked Gary Kellmann out of $3,000 when he was 19 and was trying to sell his first invention, an alarm clock that could be turned off with a remote control. Mr. Kellmann of St. Charles, Mo., is now 30 and has four inventions on the market, including adhesive ''belly buttons'' that give a pierced look without the pain. But he wishes he had had access to the Internet information when he started out. He used to drive two hours at a stretch from Southeast Missouri State |
1136503_0 | Praising the Virtual Campus | To the Editor: In the article about distance education, Carole S. Fungaroli, who is writing a book about the value of university degrees, states: ''I don't see anything that these people are offering that you can't get better on campus.'' Has it occurred to Ms. Fungaroli that there are many thousands of people all over the world who cannot attend school on a college campus? PAULETTE MARK Checotah, Okla., Sept. 7, 1999 Circuits welcomes letters from readers. Letters must include the writer's name, address and telephone number. Letters can be sent by E-mail to circuits@nytimes.com or by mail to Letters, Circuits, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036-3959. Letters selected may be abridged. |
1139586_0 | Converting E-Mail From Spam to Steak | HANS PETER BRONDMO is building an Internet company squarely astride the most bitter cultural divide in the on-line world -- the war over privacy and E-mail spam. There is possibly no more bitter issue for most Net-smart computer users and Web surfers than the tidal wave of digital junk mail -- known as spam -- that has accompanied the explosion of electronic commerce. When coupled with the tendency of every Web business to deploy data-mining software to chart each mouse click a visitor to a Web site makes, the Internet has increasingly become a battleground between digital-age marketeers and consumers. The E-mail war and the ethical issues that commercial E-mail raises hinge on the issue of ''opt in,'' the use of a check box or other device to permit a computer user to decide whether to receive electronic mail and on what subjects. For example, a customer may want to be alerted to new books and compact disks by favorite authors and musicians or may want timely customer service information on an electronic device that he or she has bought. The new power and precision made possible by these Internet software technologies carry the potential for great abuses. ''The important thing is whether or not it is genuinely opt in,'' said Tara Lemmey, the president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit foundation here that focuses on civil liberties in cyberspace. ''Then companies can get around spam and other issues as well.'' But it is just as easy to lose a potential customer when using commercial E-mail incorrectly, Internet marketing experts say. ''You can do great damage to your brand quite quickly,'' said Preston Dodd, an Internet analyst at Jupiter Communications, a market research company in New York, ''because your customer can respond to you almost instantly with a message like, 'Stop sending me these E-mails you blankety-blank.' '' So Mr. Brondmo, who was born in Norway and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory, is carefully picking his way through a potential minefield with Post Communications, the business he established in 1996 in a converted brewery in San Francisco's multimedia gulch. Today, Post provides clients with customized marketing programs based on software tools that blend traditional database marketing with E-mail focused on specific consumers. Many Internet marketers are confident that E-mail will transform the traditional direct-mail world, which came of age in the era of mainframe computers. |
1141113_3 | Building Robot Aides To Follow Astronauts | data, running speech-recognition and voice-synthesizer software, relaying communications and tracking the devices. The station would also contain docking ports for recharging the P.S.A.'s batteries, and sensors that could be snapped onto the robots, depending on tasks assigned to them. Earlier this month, engineers at Ames completed a crucial test of the robots' components by mounting them on a hoverplate and guiding them around a test table on a cushion of air. And the team has received financing to develop a prototype. ''We hope to launch a personal satellite assistant in about two years aboard a space shuttle and in about three years aboard the International Space Station,'' Mr. Gawdiak said. The space station, a $60 billion project involving the United States and 16 other nations, is to house up to seven astronaut-researchers. Developers would like to use at least three P.S.A.'s on the station to demonstrate the technology. That would allow the devices to work in formation to zero in on environmental problems, such as a temperature spike or a leak. The devices might also be used in conjunction with robot sentries that are being considered for work outside the space station. On Dec. 3, 1997, the shuttle Columbia demonstrated a free-flying, remote-controlled robot camera called Aercam Sprint, developed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Astronauts guided the beachball-size device, powered by gas jets, outside the shuttle for more than an hour to show that it could be used, instead of a human space-walker, to inspect the exterior of a spacecraft. William L. (Red) Whittaker of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University said free-flyer robots such as P.S.A.'s have great potential for performing many tasks in space. The next step, he said, would be to put manipulators on them so they could push buttons or pick up things. ''But to be successful, these robots will have to prove that they work and make it on their own merits,'' he said, ''It isn't enough that a technology just be impressive.'' Mr. Gawdiak said that, ideally, he would like each crew member on the space station to have a P.S.A. pal customized for his or her work schedule. The device could do everything from waking the crew member each day to checking ahead to see that equipment is in place for the human's next assigned task. But, Mr. Gawdiak said: ''The crew does not want a 'Big Brother' up there |
1140291_1 | Ballerina's Ovarian Tissue Transplant Gives Hope to Other Young Women Facing Infertility | noncancerous disorders like cysts or endometriosis, or who face infertility as a side effect of chemotherapy for cancer. Women at a few other medical centers have also had ovaries removed and frozen, but Dr. Oktay's report is the first case in which the tissue was given back to the patient and found to work. ''This is great news, and important information,'' said Dr. Jairo Garcia, director of the in vitro fertilization program at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. ''The application of this is of tremendous value for younger patients who had malignancies and are scheduled for radiation or chemotherapy, which jeopardize their reproductive potential.'' But the procedure cannot stop menopause in older women, and it cannot be done for women with ovarian cancer, Dr. Oktay said, adding that he was disturbed by press reports, particularly in British tabloids, proclaiming that menopause could now be reversed and women with ovarian cancer could give birth. The research was first reported in England because one of Dr. Oktay's co-authors on a paper about the technique disclosed the information to the British press. Originally it was to have been released on Monday, at a Meeting of the Society for Reproductive Medicine, in Toronto. ''We've been swamped with people who are menopausal or perimenopausal calling us, thinking they can freeze an ovary and have it returned,'' Dr. Oktay said. ''This is not a procedure for menopausal women. It's for women under age 30. It's meant for preserving ovarian function in women who are otherwise going to lose it, mostly because of cancer treatment or the ovaries coming out for benign conditions. It's not meant for somebody with ovarian cancer.'' Women close to menopause are not candidates for the procedure because their ovaries do not have enough eggs to restore fertility after freezing and thawing, he said. And, he added, no doctor would put a cancerous ovary back into a patient. Asked if a young woman could have one ovary removed at, say, age 25 and given back later at 50 to ward off menopause and extend her childbearing years, Dr. Oktay said that for now he would not perform such an operation on a healthy woman. First of all, he said, it is not known whether removing an ovary might harm her health or fertility. Second, doctors do not yet know how long or well the transplanted tissue will survive and function. But other experts |
1140278_0 | Herbert V. Shuster, 75, Consumer Products Tester | Herbert V. Shuster, a food scientist who founded one of the nation's oldest consumer product testing companies, died Monday at a nursing home in the Brighton section of Boston, where he had been for several days. He was 75 years old and lived in Waban, Mass. The cause was complications from a recent stroke, according to James Shuster, one of Mr. Shuster's sons. Born and raised in Boston, Mr. Shuster formed his company, Herbert V. Shuster Inc., in 1955, and built it into one of the leading independent companies involved in research and development of consumer products. The consulting company specialized in product testing for the food and drug industries. Through his company, Mr. Shuster became a pioneer in the field of manufacturing private-label products, which are made for stores to sell in competition with national brands. In 1995, the company was acquired by Hauser Chemical Research of Boulder, Colo. At that time, it had a professional staff of more than 100 people and worked with many manufacturers and marketers that were among the nation's 500 largest industrial companies. Mr. Shuster graduated from the Boston Latin School and served as a meteorologist with the United States military during World War II. He later graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and received his doctorate in food technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Shuster is survived by his wife, Roseanne; two sons, Mark of Newton, Mass., and James of Providence, R.I.; a daughter, Amy Muscott of Amherst, N.H., and three grandchildren. |
1138410_2 | Scientists Point to New Evidence of Liquid Water on a Jupiter Moon | ocean. The Arizona planetary scientists, led by Dr. Gregory V. Hoppa, theorized that Jupiter's huge size, 300 times as massive as Earth, causes tremendous tidal stresses on Europa. According to their model, Europa's ocean tides must rise and fall some 100 feet, compared with Earth tides of about 4 to 6 feet. Europa's slightly eccentric orbit, the scientists said, contributes to the tidal forces that shape the fracture lines. When Europa is closer to Jupiter, the tides are higher because the planet's gravitational tug is greater. When Europa is farther away, the tides fall. This causes Europa's ice shell to flex and crack. The crack would propagate slowly across the ever-changing stress field, describing an arc. The scientists using the model say each arc segment in the scalloped lines forms in 3.5 days, which happens to be the time it takes Europa to make one complete orbit around Jupiter. Each arc ranges from 45 miles to 120 miles in length. In a telephone interview yesterday, Dr. Hoppa, of the university's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said, ''The only way this model works is if there is a significant water layer below the ice. Only if there is a liquid water ocean could there be tides that would account for the surface features we see.'' Other members of the Arizona team are Dr. B. Randall Tufts, Dr. Richard Greenberg and Dr. Paul E. Geissler. The scientists caution that the findings do not necessarily mean there is still a liquid ocean under Europa's ice, only that there was one there when the surface markings were formed. Other planetary scientists agreed but noted that the relative absence of cratering on Europa indicated that the strong ocean tidal forces must have existed in the recent past. They could not think of any obvious reason the liquid ocean would have disappeared.. Dr. Ronald Greeley of Arizona State University, a member of the Galileo team, said, ''The likelihood is that, yes, there are liquid oceans on Europa, but we can't say that definitively with the information available now.'' Because of increasing interest in Europa's watery past or present, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is making plans for a spacecraft to be launched in 2003 and go into an orbit of the Jovian moon in 2008. Its remote-sensing instruments are to include ice-penetrating radar to establish once and for all if there are still oceans on Europa. |
1138768_0 | In the Region/Westchester; Reinventing the Campus of Bedford's Middle School | THE architect of an ongoing construction project at this town's middle school calls it a ''reinvention'' of an unusual campus, which was originally designed as something of an educational experiment. ''It was really an architectural challenge in that we created new spaces, had to link them all together and, at the same time, keep the integrity of what was there before,'' said Peter Gisolfi, head of the firm that bears his name in Hastings-on-Hudson, which designed the school's renovation. The $8-million project at the Fox Lane Middle School, which is expected to be completed next month, is one of a large number of construction projects now taking place in school districts throughout the county. But it is probably the most ambitious in that it changes the way the school operates and its approach to learning. The school, which serves grades 6 to 8, is unusual for a middle school since it's not one building, but rather a minicampus inside a larger campus that also includes the high school. It was originally designed in 1966 by the Architects' Collaborative, a design firm in Cambridge, Mass., based on a pedagogical model developed by educators at Harvard University. The concept was to build three academic ''houses'' in separate buildings, plus an octagonal central building. Each house would have students from all three grade levels, with many classes mixing students from each grade in an ''integrated learning'' approach. ''It worked better in the conception than in the execution, I think,'' said Mr. Gisolfi, explaining that the academic ''houses'' were built into the side of a hill. ''They designed the buildings as if they were on a flat surface,'' Mr. Gisolfi said. ''The students were forced to walk up hills and down in inclement weather. The school board wanted us to link the buildings and create more space for expanding enrollment. '' His firm's solution was to design covered walkways linking the academic buildings. ''They all have glass walls on the interior court with windows on the opposite side,'' Mr. Gisolfi said. ''This provides light and gives students a sense of protection from the outside world. But inside, they can see each other walking from building to building.'' To address the space issues, the firm designed a new 12,000-square-foot library and cafeteria building, which now serves as the focal point of the campus. Moving both functions out of the academic buildings served to free up |
1138692_4 | The News of the Day, on Canvas | in company with a gigantic horse that turns its crupper toward us. We have no trouble knowing which side is which. The massed Spaniards, on the right, have their lances intact and upright. The Dutch, on the left, are attentive but not humiliated. (One of them still has a gun on his shoulder.) Above all, we notice the way in which Justin of Nassau, the Dutch general, hands over the key of Breda to the Spanish commander, Ambrosio Spinola. The Dutchman bows, and would bow lower if the Spaniard did not insist that they meet as equals, each respectful of the other. Velazquez the portraitist was at his best in this crowded scene, where there are winners and losers, but clearly no nobodies. Drowning at sea is almost everyone's least favorite nightmare. And when drowning is compounded by starvation and acts of cannibalism, horror's cup runs over. That was what happened when a French naval frigate, the Medusa, ran aground and sank while on its way to Senegal on July 2, 1816. One hundred and fifty men, mostly French soldiers, scrambled onto a large raft -- almost 65 feet by 23 feet. It was to be 13 days before the survivors were rescued by another ship, the Argus. By that time only 10 of the original 150 men were still alive. At night, the seas ran high and man after man was swept overboard. After the first 24 hours, the survivors, fueled by alcohol, began to kill one another. Before long, men who by then were barely alive began to eat the recently dead in hopes of gaining strength. On July 11, the sick, the dying and the terminally weak were thrown overboard. The survivors raised the mast with a makeshift sail to protect themselves from the sun. On July 17, a sail was glimpsed on the horizon. With their last strength, the survivors hoisted a young man on their shoulders so that he could wave the remains of a shirt. The Argus vanished, only to reappear and rescue the survivors. Theodore Gericault knew that he had a great subject. (The French historian Michelet was to say later that ''the whole of France had gone to sea in the Medusa.'') He met and talked with two of the survivors, whose account of their experiences was to come out in November 1817. He took a huge studio, worked with cadavers from |
1138802_3 | Q & A/Dr. Vincent T. DeVita Jr.; A Doctor at Yale Spends a Lifetime Fighting Cancer | that in women who migrate from Japan to Hawaii the incidence of breast cancer goes up. If they migrate from Hawaii to California the incidence goes up higher. When Italian women who have a relatively low incidence of breast cancer compared to us, migrate to Australia where a lot of Italians do migrate, the incidence of breast cancer goes way up. Australians eat a lot of fatty meat. Italians have a healthy Mediterranean diet. The data looks like it's probably fat content of the diet. Can you actually reduce the incidence of cancer by reducing fat in diet? There is no real evidence that can happen. Q. What about chemical causes of cancer? A. We used to say in Washington that if you take all the chemicals in the environment, for example, nitrates, pesticides, PCBs, industrial chemicals and so forth, those chemicals caused 7 1/2 percent of all cancers. It has been revised downward to 5 percent. The published perception is just the opposite. Remember Love Canal? News stories used to say ''chemicals in Love Canal cause cancer and other diseases.'' The fact is there was no increase in cancer rates among the residents. There were increased numbers of neurological diseases. The chemicals did damage people. They didn't cause cancer. Chemicals are not the dominate cause of cancer in this country. Radiation in the environment is actually a bigger risk. Q. Are there other known causes of cancer? A. The sleeper is virus. This is a tricky thing. We don't want people to think they can catch cancer. I think in the end we will find that up to a third of all cancers are viral related. This is where genetic background comes in. Probably for the majority of viruses there is a genetic predisposition to cancer and viruses are just a cofactor in causing cancer. The hepatitis B virus is probably the major cause of liver cancer. Hepatitis doesn't itself cause cancer, it creates the environment, the damaged liver, so that eventually cancer develops. Liver cancer is the second-commonest cancer in the world. We don't see much in this country. Vaccines are reemerging as a new tool. They are often being used therapeutically. A person who has cancer gets the vaccine and it makes the disease go away. Q. Does money buy ideas for identifying and treating cancer? A. Money is very important. Research is expensive. Many times we |
1139100_0 | September 12-18; The Coast Guard Begins Shooting at Speedboats | The Coast Guard got tired of drug smugglers in speedboats racing by its patrols on the open sea at close to 70 miles per hour. So the brass decided to use a tactic last employed against rum runners during Prohibition. Sharpshooters with rifles have been authorized to fire from helicopters to disable the engines of smugglers' boats. So far, the Coast Guard boasted last week, smugglers on two boats have learned that they can't outrun bullets. DAVID STOUT |
1138981_6 | The World; Rethinking Population At a Global Milestone | states of India, moreover, surprising contradictions point up the traps in seeking quick answers for why population control seems to work in some places but not in others. In Bangladesh and Indonesia, which were under military rule, private development and environmental organizations began to flourish, along with successful family planning programs of all kinds. General Suharto, the President deposed last year in Indonesia, opened condom factories and encouraged ''supermarket style'' local family planning centers. There were none of those grimy, unsanitary sterilization camps that are often all that is available to the majority of rural Indian women, and no harsh laws like those in China that prevent most families from having more than one child. Yet Adrienne Germaine, president of the Women's International Health Coalition, which supported women's groups in Bangladesh, says this doesn't indicate that autocracy or human rights violations are necessary for successful population programs. ''While there have sometimes been lapses in the quality of care and the voluntary nature of the programs in Bangladesh or Indonesia,'' she said, ''over all, you haven't seen some of the draconian measures taken by China.'' ''But what is important to mention is that while, yes, the Chinese Government was autocratic, they were autocratic also in insisting that all children should be in school and all people should have basic health care and all people should have housing,'' Ms. Germaine said. The package improved the lives of many Chinese, creating more support for the family planning program than many outsiders would expect, some experts say. ''Chinese expanded freedoms of a different kind,'' Professor Sen argues, adding that China's critics often do not recognize that educational opportunity and universal health care liberate people to live longer, more fulfilling lives. Professor Sen also says that India has missed opportunities that might have made its performance more comparable to China's. When lower fertility is harnessed to democracy it creates a dynamo, he says -- and more so if literacy and economic opportunities for women as well as basic health services are added to the mix. He faults much of India, including liberal economic thinkers, for not seeing these connections. Mark Malloch Brown, the new administrator at the United Nations Development Program, is on the side of patience. ''India is changing,'' he said. ''Its sheer size means that there's a persistent rural backwater, where caste, a lack of basic services, poverty, means that change is a |
1138738_2 | An Amazon Cruise Turns Into a Party | The captain took us on a tour of his three-level, whitewashed boat. The Nadson Jeane IV looked reasonably shipshape; it had upper and lower decks outfitted with beams and hooks for hanging hammocks, and an observation deck on top. On level two, adjacent to the first-class hammock area, were a couple of private cabins that locked. The captain opened one. It was closet sized and felt claustrophobic, but it had air-conditioning, two bunk beds and -- the major selling point -- a tiny, reasonably clean private bathroom with a shower. I could have this cabin all to myself from Manaus to Santarem for $88. The boat was leaving in a few hours, and the trip would take about 36 hours. The price of a first-class hammock ticket was about a third of the cabin fare, and I knew I'd be spending most of the cruise out on the cool, breezy deck. But I had photo equipment and I didn't want to leave it out in the open -- every guidebook included an ominous warning about theft aboard riverboats. I handed the money to the captain, and he wrote out my ticket on a form that bore the shipping company's reassuring motto: Seguranca, Conforto e Rapidez -- Security, Comfort and Speed. An hour and a half before its scheduled departure, the Nadson Jeane IV was nearly empty of passengers. I put my bags in the cabin, hung my spanking-new hammock (purchased in the street for $23) outside nearby, in a nice airy and empty spot, and hopped in. I swung back and forth and soon understood why even four-star hotels in the region affix hammock hooks to the walls of rooms. ''Everything important happens in a hammock,'' begins a favorite Amazonian poem. I lay back, and anticipated the next couple of days sailing leisurely down a river so broad it is almost like the ocean. I amused myself by thinking about which book I would choose to read on this gentle journey. Then, suddenly, a hubbub rose. I sat up and looked over the side of my hammock, and saw that the deck had become a swinging thicket of color. Rows and rows of hammocks were stretched to my right, and to my left -- I could reach out and touch my neighbors on each side. I dove back down into the security of my swinging nest. Oh well, only 15 |
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