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1138910_0 | Captain Of Her Fate In Any Seas | FORGET the ''widow's walk'' -- the rooftop platform from which pacing wives scanned the horizon for their seafaring husbands. Now it's the women who might well be taking to the high seas as fishermen. (Fisherwomen? Fisherpeople? No, thank you.) Technology, in the form of lighter, easier-to-control equipment, is the big factor in helping to send dames to sea -- and to send other women into all kinds of fields that also once required substantial physical strength. Of course, deep-sea fishing can still involve strenuous work, like loading 30-pound boxes of bait into the hold. But ''there's no job I can't do on the boat,'' said Linda Greenlaw, a 5-foot-3, 135-pound woman who was captain of a 100-foot swordfishing vessel for 16 years, and now of a lobster boat. Things have certainly changed in the 70 years since Ms. Greenlaw's grandparents hauled in their catch by hand. Back then, every task from pulling up anchor to bringing in a 500-pounder was performed manually. Today, with all the hydraulics and electronics aboard commercial fishing boats, most of the backbreaking work is eliminated. ''If you can open a doorknob, then you have the physical strength to operate a boat,'' said Ms. Greenlaw, 38, from her home on Isle au Haut, off the coast of Maine. ''You need only turn a handle, press a button or open a valve to do all the lifting, lugging and tugging that used to be done by hand.'' IN fact, in most equipment-intensive lines of work, brawn has become secondary to brains; no longer must workers be able to bench-press their weight. As a result, many occupational barriers have fallen over the last 10 years. Women have greatly increased their presence in areas as diverse as the Forest Service, long-distance trucking and construction work. Over all, the trend has been a plus for the economy, said Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future, a research organization based in Menlo Park, Calif. ''The quality of the labor force goes up,'' he said, ''because employers have a broader field from which to select employees.'' None of that, however, means that it is easy to run a steel-hulled deep-sea fishing boat in the North Atlantic, or to live with a five-member crew for 30 days at a time. The captain and crew, often in a state of mind-numbing exhaustion, contend with savage weather, equipment failure, too few fish |
1138706_2 | Crime and Punishment | ''Pete the Greek,'' who used both his fists and a gun to terrorize his family and others), and went on to earn a Ph.D. in criminology at the University of California, Berkeley, at 26, in 1975. Athens, a streetwise and somewhat combative young academic with a mission - the demystification of crime and criminals - persisted in his unorthodox research into the nature of violence against the tide of the prevalent mental illness model. Like many victims of violence, Athens isn't sentimental about criminals, arguing in ''The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals'' (1992) and ''Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited'' (1997) that psychologizing criminals allows them to escape legal responsibility, encouraging further violence that affects succeeding generations in an infinite regress. ''Not poverty or genetic inheritance or psychopathology but violentization is the cause of criminal violence,'' Athens writes, unavoidably employing sociologese: ''violentization'' means a social process occurring over a period of time, a kind of apprenticeship into brutality in which the budding criminal is complicit. An alternative title for ''Why They Kill'' might have been ''The Myth of Senseless Violence,'' in homage to Dr. Thomas Szasz's controversial and influential book ''The Myth of Mental Illness'' (1961), in which Szasz argues that ''mental illness'' is a mythological concept employed by the state to control deviate behavior. In this iconoclastic work and others, Szasz posits an extreme libertarian view: since mental illness doesn't exist, all lawbreakers should be prosecuted equally under the law. Though Szasz isn't listed in Rhodes's lengthy bibliography, the parallels are striking: just as Szasz dedicated his professional career to the repudiation of the psychiatric, or medical, explanation of madness, so Athens has dedicated his to the repudiation of the psychiatric, or medical, explanation of violence. In Rhodes's admiring terms, Athens is a ''rugged genius'' who has exposed the ''gears and levers of the very apparatus of evil itself.'' Of course, it isn't fair to hold Lonnie Athens to account for his admirer's uncritical enthusiasm and rhetoric. His vision of himself is more modest, tempered by a wry humor in acknowledging how as a young man he'd hoped to solve the riddle of violent crime: ''I saw myself, foolishly, becoming the Darwin of criminology.'' A qualitative and not a quantitative social scientist, Athens interviewed prisoners in maximum security prisons in Iowa, California and elsewhere, predominantly men. Dangerous men. His hope was to bypass inmates' typical narratives and get to |
1139197_5 | The World; Rethinking Population At a Global Milestone | to us why the image of the average Indian child, 50 years after Independence, is that of a scrawny, spindle-legged, barefoot creature who ekes out an existence by begging at traffic lights?'' she wrote. ''And amid the shameful squalor that is most of India, would they like to explain why our political leaders live in huge bungalows set in sprawling gardens that we taxpayers pay for?'' She points to the absence of effective welfare and population policies, and the persistence of the Hindu caste system, as causes for India's slide to the social levels of sub-Saharan Africa. Indian socialism, on the wane in any case, never had the strong welfare-state component found in Europe. Now, as India adds more than 18 million people a year to its population, will there be a demand for harsher measures for population control? Ashish Bose, an Indian demographer, says no. ''Our masses will not accept any coercive method of family planning,'' he said. He, like many development experts, says population control can in any case no longer be looked at in a vacuum. What good is a family planning clinic, he asks, if no road goes there? IN other countries, as within the varied 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 |
1138958_1 | Making Disaster Less Disastrous | huge death toll in Central America during Hurricane Mitch. Overcrowding and poverty had forced thousands of poor people to build flimsy housing in river basins and on hillsides. Deforestation had left those areas susceptible to flooding and mudslides. In 1989, in an effort to minimize the human toll, the United Nations set up the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, an agency to help countries assess risks and prepare for calamities. The agency has worked all over the world to emphasize prevention and help scientists, governments and communities devise and carry out plans. While it may take an outright miracle to persuade some nations to clean up their environment or the corruption that invites shoddy building, many effective measures to cut deaths are within reach of even the poorest countries. In 1991, flooding in Bangladesh killed at least 140,000 people. Last year the floods were more widespread and long-lasting, but fewer than 1,000 people died. This was due in part to better sanitation that reduced post-flood disease, more effective warnings and school programs about disaster risks and responses. Many villages also built raised-earth mounds with trees, fish ponds, wells and fodder for animals. In the past, villagers had been reluctant to leave their houses if it meant abandoning cattle. One reason countries have been so poorly prepared for disaster is that most of them have regarded money spent on hypothetical situations as wasted. In addition, prevention often goes unnoticed when it works. One U.N. pilot program in nine earthquake-prone cities seeks to make the risks more specific by predicting areas where damage is most likely. The Turkish city of Izmir, which largely escaped the major earthquake, is one participant. After the quake, Izmir officials identified susceptible neighborhoods and began a program to retrofit buildings in those areas. The cost of disasters can even inspire countries to change their environmental policies. After last year's Yangtze River floods, which took 2,100 lives and cost China an estimated $30 billion, China admitted that deforestation and other ecological damage was a major cause. The Government banned logging on the upper Yangtze and began a tree-planting program. While disasters usually inflict the most suffering on the poor, who have the least political clout, many countries will begin to take steps to reduce death and damage once they realize that the destruction is hugely expensive -- and to some degree an act of man, not God. |
1139352_0 | High Blood Pressure and Osteoporosis | Osteoporosis, a loss in bone density that can lead to brittleness and fractures even from everyday activities, is a major cause of crippling disability in women past menopause. Now, a new study of 3,676 elderly women in Britain and the United States has shown that the higher their blood pressure, the more severe their bone density loss. The study, published last week in The Lancet, a British medical journal, followed up on measurements of the women, whose mean age was 73, over three and a half years and found that the higher the women's blood pressure, the greater and faster their loss of bone minerals, regardless of age, weight, initial bone density, smoking, exercise or whether they used hormone replacement therapy. Dr. Francesco P. Cappuccio of St. Georges Hospital Medical School in London, who led the research team, said in a telephone interview, ''We think if you have high blood pressure, you lose more calcium in your urine.'' Although calcium loss is faster after menopause, when the ovaries stop producing estrogen, Dr. Cappuccio said, the loss from high blood pressure might start earlier and accumulate over time. Women can help reduce the threat of brittle bones by reducing salt intake, giving up smoking, keeping physically fit and considering hormone replacement therapy, he said. And such measures have an added benefit: guarding against cardiovascular disease, a major killer of elderly women. MICHAEL POLLAK VITAL SIGNS: AT RISK |
1140830_0 | Returning River to Salmon, and Man to the Drawing Board | Of all the ways in which Americans have reshaped the land to suit their priorities, none is more audacious than the vast network of hydroelectric dams that stretches across the Pacific Northwest, taming wild rivers, opening shipping passages and bringing the region the cheapest electricity rates in the nation. The construction of these huge dams, dating back to the Great Depression, was an epic engineering achievement, amply glorified by Woody Guthrie in the 1940's. ''Your power is turning our darkness to dawn,'' ran his folk song, ''so roll on, Columbia, roll on.'' But whatever their benefits to man, the great dams have proved lethal on a gigantic scale to the region's wild salmon, striving to complete their own remarkable journey from the rivers out to the Pacific Ocean and back again to spawn, right where they were born. And here on the lower Snake River, two Federal agencies are exploring a proposal that is proving to be far more contentious than building the dams was in the first place, and could have just as enormous consequences: taking four dams out of service, including the Little Goose, and restoring a 140-mile portion of the Snake to its wild, free-flowing condition. As required by the Endangered Species Act, the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the National Marine Fisheries Service are studying the most radical step of all to save the salmon. It is an idea passionately favored by environmental groups, many American Indians and commercial fishermen as far away as Canada and Alaska, who could someday catch a healthy run of Idaho-born fish in their waters, and bitterly opposed by farmers and many others in this region, who now rely on the river for shipping and electricity. The debate will almost surely wind up in Congress, where most lawmakers from the area are vowing a tooth-and-nail fight against breaching the dams, which would involve removing the earthen portions, and rendering the dams inoperative. But the once unthinkable idea is clearly on the table because for 25 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dams, has been struggling to find ways for the dams and the salmon to coexist on the Snake. Despite Federal spending of more than $3 billion on programs that include fish ladders, hatcheries and even a truck-and-barging system ''custom-made to make the trip as safe and comfortable as possible'' for the salmon, according to a |
1140837_0 | North Korean, at U.N., Urges U.S. to Lift Economic Embargo | Following its decision to suspend missile testing, North Korea today demanded that United States respond with its own ''good deeds,'' including an end to Washington's longstanding economic embargo against Pyongyang. ''It is fortunate that the United States has recently decided to partially lift economic sanctions,'' North Korea's Foreign Minister, Paek Nam Sun, said in a speech during the annual debate at the General Assembly. ''However, we look forward to the comprehensive and actual lifting of all economic sanctions.'' Once the United States stops treating North Korea like an enemy, he said, ''and moves toward improved relations, we will also respond with good faith.'' North Korea has promised not to test any long-range ballistic missiles during its current talks with the United States. The official Korean Central News Agency said on Friday that the tests would be suspended ''in order to create a more favorable atmosphere'' for the talks, which are scheduled to resume next month. North Korea tested its last long-range missile by firing it over Japan, frightening the Japanese. There had been concern that North Korea might mark its 50th anniversary as a Communist state by firing a newer missile with a longer range, capable of reaching Hawaii and Alaska. In his speech, Mr. Paek reiterated the contention that North Korea wanted to launch a satellite only in order to catch up with its neighbors in the field of peaceful space activity. ''We would be ready for discussions on the missile issue at any time if hostile nations are sincere,'' he said. Responding cautiously to questions at a news conference later, the Foreign Minister insisted that Pyongyang had ''thoroughly frozen'' its nuclear activities. But he left little doubt that the moratorium on testing missiles was temporary. If North Korea decided that it needed to launch a missile, he told reporters, ''we will launch.'' In his speech, Mr. Paek described Japan's reactions to North Korea's last missile test as ''hysterical.'' He called the protests a ruse to cover up Japan's failure to make moral and financial amends for ''crimes'' against Koreans who lived under Japanese occupation. Taking a tougher line against Japan than against the United States, he accused Tokyo of ''fabricating threats'' in order to rearm itself and re-emerge as a military power. But Mr. Paek emphasized that North Korea did not consider the United States a permanent enemy, and said his country had shown good faith in five |
1140896_8 | Lost Chances to Avert a Disaster; Competing Interests Stalled New Jersey Flood Project | lobbying by residents of Berkeley Heights, pushed through a law prohibiting the corps from building the basins at the upstream end. Over the years, the upstream communities had become more focused on environmental issues and less on the flood threat. That part of the project was put on hold so that construction around Bound Brook could begin. Many officials involved in the plan say they doubt the upper part of the Green Brook project will ever be built. In essence, a flood-control plan that began in 1980 as a focused effort in the lower portion of Green Brook, then was expanded at the behest of Congress, now reverted to its original dimensions. Along the way, a decade was lost. In August, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and Federal officials gathered in a Bound Brook park to announce that ground would finally be broken in the spring of 2000 on the first stage, the replacement of a 68-year-old bridge. Now that park is a swamp, and the curbs of adjacent streets are banked high with discarded furniture. Until late this summer, some residents of Bound Brook were still trying to block parts of the plan. And even now, others along the watershed, including some officials from neighboring Middlesex County, still question the need for the levees and pumping stations. Local environmental groups, and the state's Sierra Club chapter, still oppose the plan, saying the government would do better if it bought homes and businesses in harm's way. In case the project drags on, corps officials this week said they were planning to update the old brochure promoting the flood plan -- adding photographs of the latest disaster. As the remains of Floyd blew in on Sept. 16, J. B. Wiley Jr., an engineering consultant for the local flood control commission, was in his house in Bedminster Township, 20 miles upstream from Bound Brook, watching the upper Raritan River rise. ''When the water came across the field and began lapping against the road, I knew it was going to be bad down there,'' he said. He jumped in his car and drove toward the borough. ''I was thinking about all those nice people who'd said this would never happen, therefore we didn't need the project,'' he said. He arrived at Bound Brook as the evacuations began. ''Watching all those poor people,'' he said, ''really fired up my determination to see this thing through.'' |
1140550_4 | Unnatural Forces Preying on the Island's Future Geography | manager of Long Beach. The city recently spent millions of dollars on new bulkheads on the bay, and they are several inches higher than before. The city is also preparing to build and protect dunes along its two-mile boardwalk as part of a $72 million beach restoration by the Army Corps of Engineers. At one extreme of the global warming debate, a Columbia University computer study predicts an accelerated melting of the polar ice caps that would elevate the oceans by dozens of feet, wreaking havoc not only on Long Island but on New York City and coastal cities worldwide. ''The real wild card is what happens to the Antarctic ice sheet,'' Dr. Geller said. While such a cataclysm may be theoretically possible, many experts consider the chances to be remote. ''I'm not going to be telling people south of Montauk Highway that they should be moving or else,'' said Lee Koppelman, the executive director of the Long Island Regional Planning Board. ''I'm skeptical of these doom and gloom types who see a tremendous rise in sea levels. What makes them think the polar ice cap is going to instantly melt? ''These people don't have a sense of the difference between cosmic time and human time. Even if their hypotheses are correct, it would take place over several hundred years.'' But more and more scientists believe that something new is happening that could pose dangers. ''For a long time I was skeptical that we are seeing global warming, but I've become less skeptical as time goes on,'' Dr. Geller said. ''The evidence seems to be increasing rather than decreasing.'' In the scientific community, he said, ''A very significant majority would support the view that global warming will take place, and a somewhat lesser fraction say we're seeing it take place now. However, some of those would take exception to exaggerated claims of a disaster.'' Virtually all the experts agree that sea levels have been gradually rising for thousands of years, in the latest of the Earth's long history of alternating warming and cooling cycles. Ever since the ice ages, climbing temperatures have been raising the sea level by melting the glaciers. The oceans have also been rising simply because warmer water expands and takes up more space than cooler water. Then there are the complications of human civilization in the last two centuries of population growth, modern agriculture, urban development |
1137697_3 | High-Tech Camera Sees What Eye Cannot | the data to take any number of forms. A few keystrokes can instantly turn all of the vegetation with the same spectral fingerprint in a photograph -- all of the logs, for example -- the same color, telling the researcher how much downed timber there is after a storm. A farmer can see which parts of his cornfields have not had enough fertilizer -- those sections are turned orange by the computer -- and can apply the chemical there and only there. Unlike radar, hyperspectral technology cannot penetrate below ground, or through vegetation or buildings. But it can be combined with radar to make it even more potent. The challenge, researchers say, is how to manage and process the vast amounts of data. The technology was developed starting in the late 1970's by two researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Gregg Vane and Alex Goetz. The space agency has put hyperspectral imaging equipment on two satellites, one in orbit around Jupiter and one on the Cassini satellite, now making its way to Saturn. In the mid-1990's, powerful computers -- it takes terabytes, the next step up from gigabytes, to run the software -- enabled the technology to be brought out of the lab. A few private companies built their own hyperspectral cameras. And in the last two years, as NASA made the technology available, researchers and entrepreneurs like Mr. Boardman have written algorithms to use the technology for commercial and research projects. Last year NASA's Stennis Space Center awarded 10 two-year grants to test the real world effectiveness of the technology, including one to Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies, a nonprofit institute in Bozeman, Mont. The grant enabled the institute to pay the $25,000-a-day rental fee for the hyperspectral equipment owned by Earth Search Sciences Inc. of McCall, Idaho. The results of the imaging in Yellowstone, though preliminary, illustrate the change in store for biologists. As researchers match the airborne imagery with hyperspectral imaging taken from the ground, a process known as ground truthing, it is apparent that the detail is accurate enough to replace much of the information now gathered by hand. ''It's orders of magnitude faster than having biologists out on the landscape collecting information,'' said Dr. Robert Crabtree, science director of the Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies. ''As we start thinking about managing entire ecosystems, we have a scale of technology that fits the scale of an ecosystem.'' With |
1137789_0 | Coast Guard Using Sharpshooters to Stop Boats | Updating a tactic last employed during Prohibition, the Coast Guard is using sharpshooters on helicopters to disable the engines of drug smugglers' boats with rifle fire, the service disclosed today. The Commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. James E. Loy, said that the sharpshooters were deployed in recent weeks and that their bullets had brought two drug-laden boats to a stop in the Caribbean. Admiral Loy also said law-abiding boaters or fishermen need not fear getting shot at because rifle fire is used only after repeated warnings to stop and only after a boat's pursuers are certain it is a drug-runner. ''If there's a new risk on the part of the bad guys, that's terrific,'' he added. The admiral's press aide, Comdr. Pat Philbin, said the tactic -- reminiscent of the days when the Coast Guard occasionally fired at rum-runners from aircraft -- was decided upon after Coast Guard patrols wearied of seeing smugglers' boats race by at nearly 70 miles per hour. ''They would go by and wave at us,'' he said. ''Literally.'' Commander Philbin said that law enforcement agencies had noticed an increase in recent years of super-fast boats, 30 to 45 feet long, equipped with up to four powerful engines and carrying enough extra fuel for a 700-mile round trip as they brought drugs from Columbia across the Caribbean and to the coast of Florida. The boats, usually with a crew of two to five, have been known to carry up to 3,000 pounds of cocaine, Commander Philbin said. He estimated that before turning to airborne snipers, the Coast Guard caught perhaps one boat in 10 -- ''and that might be when they blew an engine.'' The Coast Guard estimates that 85 percent of all maritime drug shipments are made on the new speedboats, whose use has doubled in the last three years. At a news conference today the Coast Guard was a bit coy, as Commander Philbin was in a telephone interview. How many airborne marksmen are there, and from what range do they fire, and what kind of weapons do they use? ''I'd rather not say much,'' the commander replied. One sharpshooter, Charlie Hopkins of Winslow, Me., was credited with disabling a smugglers' vessel on Aug. 16 with three shots from a .50-caliber rifle. The news conference today featured Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, whose department is the Coast Guard's parent agency, and Gen. Barry McCaffrey, |
1136013_0 | Mitchell Says It's Up to Ulster Political Leaders to Settle Their Feud | Former Senator George J. Mitchell said today that ending the impasse blocking progress in the Northern Ireland peace settlement was up to the feuding politicians of the conflicted British province rather than to him, but that he believed that the stalemate could be broken. ''If I thought otherwise, I wouldn't be here,'' Mr. Mitchell said on the first day of his formal review of the accord that he helped broker in April 1998. Saying he brought no ''magic wand,'' he urged political leaders to seize an opportunity he described as ''the best in many years to set Northern Ireland on the path to enduring peace and political stability.'' Of the politicians he will cajole in the weeks to come, he said: ''Each of them sought public office and the power that comes with it. With that power comes responsibility. At this time and place, that means having the courage and wisdom to find a way to overcome the obstacles to implementation of the agreement.'' The principal obstacle is the dispute between the Ulster Unionists, the largest Protestant party, and Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, over whether the new Northern Ireland Assembly, the power-sharing institution at the heart of the agreement, can begin to function without the start of I.R.A. disarmament beforehand. Mr. Mitchell said his review would not renegotiate the original settlement, but would focus tightly on disarmament methods and timing and creating the executive Cabinet with members from the rival parties to run the Assembly. Back in his old office in the brick office complex near the Stormont Parliament buildings that were the scene of the two-year talks that led to the accord, Mr. Mitchell started what will be at least a month of meetings by ''doing a lot of listening.'' He said he would end the talks for this week on Wednesday to make way for the publication the next day of the report by the chairman of the Independent Policing Commission, Chris Patten, that is expected to recommend sweeping changes for the province's force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary. |
611123_1 | Clinton Aides Propose Renewal of China's Favored Trade Status | which would impose conditions by executive order rather than by law. The plan would require substantial progress by Beijing on human rights issues, like a full accounting of the whereabouts of political prisoners. But it would not link renewals to progress on any single issue. The most delicate issue currently arises in Tibet, where a demonstration today against Chinese rule became rowdy, leading the police to break up the rally with tear gas. [ Page A3. ] The memorandum also says China must curb the spread of missile and nuclear-weapons technology and provide more access to its markets. China agreed last year to limit its exports of ballistic missile technology, to protect foreign copyrights and trademarks and to lower tariffs on a broad range of goods. The recommendation from Mr. Clinton's advisers suggests a softening of his final position in the Presidential campaign, which in turn was less stringent than his original stand. In December 1991, at a debate in New Hampshire, he said China's access to the United States market should be closed entirely unless democratic changes were made by the end of 1992. In his campaign manifesto last summer, Mr. Clinton wrote: "We believe that the Bush Administration erred by extending most-favored-nation trade status to the People's Republic of China before it achieved documented progress on human rights. We should not reward China with improved trade status when it has continued to trade goods made by prison labor and has failed to make sufficient progress on human rights since the Tiananmen Square massacre." Since he assumed office, President Clinton has come under intense pressure from business and farm groups not to impose any conditions on China, which has one of the fastest growing economies. More than 300 large corporations and trade associations wrote him on May 12 urging an unconditional extension. Under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974, China and other Communist countries may retain the favorable trade status only if they receive certification by the President that they allow emigration. China's status is to expire on July 3 unless President Clinton announces by June 3 that he intends to extend it. Almost all of United States trading partners have the favorable trade status. Threat of Retaliation Beijing has threatened to retaliate against United States exports if its trade status is canceled or if any conditions are imposed by legislation. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Chinese officials |
611217_6 | Experts Ponder Cuban Epidemic | of the optic nerve known as the macular-papular bundle. Among the other components were these: *Loss of vision in both eyes within a month. *Loss of a certain amount of color vision. *Loss of central vision. *An unusual type of eye movement. When asked to follow a moving object, an individual normally moves the eyes smoothly. But the eyes of the afflicted Cubans resembled a cog-wheeling pattern in which movement lagged, then jumped forward to catch up in a slow-fast-slow-fast pattern. The visiting scientists met that evening with 15 leading Cuban ophthalmologists and Mr. Castro to explain the case definition. Many of the Cuban doctors protested, saying that they knew of many patients who definitely had the disease but who did not conform to the new definition. Mr. Castro stood up, Dr. Sadun recalled, and said: "I get the point. You can only include real cases and cannot afford to have any false positives." About a year ago, the Cuban Government restricted the purchase of rum. Dr. Sadun said his team had learned from patients who were promised confidentiality that they drank two or three bottles of home-brewed rum a week. The home-brewed beverages are made from sugar cane, which contains small amounts of cyanide, and variable amounts of methanol, which can damage the eye. Dr. Sadun said that 11 home brews were being tested for methanol and other toxins. Epidemiologists have gone into the homes of affected Cubans to determine their daily living and cooking habits to determine whether some other toxin, like a cooking oil, might be involved. Dr. Sadun said he believed that many Cubans suffered from folic-acid deficiency. "The bottom line," he said, is that the folic-acid deficiency "has brought them up to the threshold, and at least two toxins -- cyanide and methanol -- are knocking them over the threshold." "It's a metabolic problem and you could probably fix the disease in one of three ways," Dr. Sadun said. These are by raising the folic acid, stopping exposure to cyanide or stopping the exposure to methanol. At one point Mr. Castro asked the group what he should do about rum. Dr. Sadun said he suggested dropping the law and giving away rum at no cost to avoid home brewing. "That could be done," Mr. Castro replied. Dr. Sadun said he was joking. But Mr. Castro said, "It's not such a bad idea." THE DOCTOR'S WORLD |
611277_0 | Before Skies Become Entirely Barren of Birds; Mass Extinctions Grow | To the Editor: Julian L. Simon and Aaron Wildavsky (Op-Ed, May 13) state that biologists have greatly exaggerated the extent of species extinction. "No one has disputed our documentation," they say. I do so now. They have no documentation. Moreover they ignore the mass of data that accumulates from one month to the next in monographs and scientific journals devoted to biodiversity. All biologists know that as habitat is reduced, species go extinct. The rate of loss, established by hundreds of independent studies on many kinds of plants and animals, has been found in the great majority of cases to fall between the third and sixth root of the area. The estimated rate of loss of tropical rain forest in the 1980's for example, translates at a typical value (the fourth root) to .5 percent species lost or doomed per year. The observed loss of bird species locally in tropical American rain forest patches reduced to 1 to 25 square kilometers has been observed to reach 10 percent to 50 percent in the first 100 years. Pollution and the introduction of exotic species drive the rate still higher, and extinction approaches totality as the last of the habitat is erased. Mass extinctions of this magnitude are being observed more frequently around the world, in groups as different as freshwater fishes and flowering plants, and they often entail the total extinction of species and races found nowhere else. It is a sad rule of field biology that when ecosystems are studied carefully before and after serious human disturbance, species extinctions are almost always revealed. EDWARD O. WILSON Baird Profesor of Science Harvard University Cambridge, Mass., May 13, 1993 |
609519_2 | In Growing Piles, Dead Tires Haunt New York | became clear that traditional ways of disposing of tires, like stacking them in huge piles on vacant land, led to unacceptable environmental hazards, tire disposal experts say. Such hazards became obvious whenever the stacks were set on fire.They burned out of control for days at a time and producing thick clouds of noxious smoke. Landfills were also a problem. For years, old tires were routinely tossed into their seemingly bottomless pits. But environmentalists discovered that tires were bulky, did not decompose and had the nasty habit of floating to the tops of landfills, even breaking through their surfaces after they were sealed and covered with a layer of soil, Ms. Canty said. Consequently, by the late 1980's, New York City began greatly limiting the numbers of whole tires that could be dumped in landfills. Now, some landfills will accept tires, but only after they are chopped into bits. Recycling Is Expensive But the environmentally sound alternative -- having tires hauled to processing plants where they are ground for reuse or disposal -- is very expensive, waste management officials say. Although ground-up tires can be used to produce a variety of products, including asphalt and a coal fuel additive in making electricity and cement, the industry is relatively new. Officials say nearly three-fourths of the 200 million tires that are discarded each year are not recycled. Ideally, when a customer buys new tires the tire dealer disposes of the old ones by paying a reputable tire processor. The processor charges the dealer $1 or more to haul each tire away, a cost that is usually passed on directly to the customer. The processor then grinds up the tires and pays a recycler to take them away or pays a fee to have them placed in a landfill. To avoid the costs that the processors charge, some tire repair shops and garages have turned to an underground economy in which anyone with a truck and a strong back can cart away the tires at a cut rate, Ms. Canty said. Anywhere No One Is Looking Many underground haulers then dump tires any place they think they can get away with it, experts said. In recent years, those places have increasingly been vacant lots. Currently, illegal dumpers can be fined $1,000 to $7,500 by the city if caught, said Ms. Canty. Vehicles used in illegal dumping can also be impounded, she said. Recently, |
609551_0 | METRO DIGEST | NEW YORK CITY WHAT TO DO WITH 4 MILLION TIRES? An estimated four million tires are discarded -- legally and illegally -- in New York City each year. As a result, the Sanitation Department is now finishing a survey to determine how many discarded tires are cluttering the city's streets and vacant lots. Once the counting is done the department can turn to figuring out what to do with them. Already the department is buying new shredders to help with the disposal and is considering a plan to attract tire recyclers to New York. A1. CAMPAIGN AGAINST TOBACCO ADS New York City has taken another step in its campaign to ban tobacco advertising from public property, announcing an agreement with the New York Telephone Company to prohibit such ads on thousands of telephone booths around the city starting in August. B3. DISSATISFACTION WITH PUBLIC SCHOOLS New Yorkers are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the public schools in the city, but many express doubts over whether Schools Chancellor Fernandez should have been ousted, according to the latest New York Times/WCBS-TV News Poll. Seventy-two percent of 1,273 adult city residents interviewed said they were dissatisfied with "the quality of public schools in New York City," while 14 percent said they were satisfied. B6. BADILLO'S IMPACT ON THE MAYORAL RACE Nothing became Herman Badillo more in this year's mayoral race than his leaving it. His withdrawal informally signaled the beginning of a general-election campaign that culminates fully 25 weeks from tomorrow. Metro Matters, B3. TWO WOMEN FOUND SHOT TO DEATH Two young women were found shot to death in an apartment in a South Bronx housing project, the police said. One victim was identified by the police as Lourdes Cruz, 18 years old, whose body was discovered in her family's ninth floor apartment in the Mott Haven section. Investigators did not immediately identify the other victim, but she was said by a neighbor to be a friend of Ms. Cruz. Investigators are still seeking a motive. B3. MELDING JUDAISM AND AFRICAN ROOTS For the last six months, under the tutelage of Rabbi Stephen C. Lerner at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism on West 86th Street, Jhon Lewis, a lanky, intense 36-year-old, has been melding Judaism and his African roots. Mr. Lewis is among the increasing number of black, Hispanic and Asian people who have embraced Judaism. B3. REGION SUNY PURCHASE |
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606566_8 | City Lights and Space Ads May Blind Stargazers | the 100-inch in their historic discovery that the universe is expanding. But by 1985, the lights of Pasadena had washed out the sky to such an extent that the Carnegie Institution of Washington decided to close down the 100-inch. In 1989, however, astronomers and other admirers of the 100-inch created the Mount Wilson Institute and began soliciting donations to put the great telescope back to work. Dr. Robert Jastrow, head of the institute, said he hoped that this goal would be realized in July. "Light from incandescent lamps in communities near Mount Wilson will continue to prevent deep-space observation by the 100-inch," he said, "but we can still do important work on objects within our own galaxy -- hunting for planetary systems, for example." Problem of Radio Interference Stray visible light is merely one of the plagues of astronomy. Another is a thickening global smog of radio interference. As astronomers increasingly focus on objects at enormous distances from Earth, they must concentrate on the part of the electromagnetic spectrum consisting of radio waves. Because the universe is expanding, light reaching Earth from distant objects undergoes a Doppler shift analogous to the drop in the pitch of a train whistle as it recedes from a listener. The recession of distant objects from Earth shifts visible light to lower frequencies in the radio range, and radiotelescopes are therefore increasingly important to astronomy. But radio interference has sharply increased in recent decades. Powerful commercial broadcasting stations sometimes cooperate closely with radiotelescopes to avoid washing out signals from distant space, but a more serious problem, according to Dr. A. Richard Thompson of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Charlottesville, Va., is the radio haze created by small appliances. "A lot of things laymen take for granted give us a lot of trouble," he said. "Things like welding machines, automobile computers and ignition systems, fluorescent lights, electric motors, and so on. And then there are things like radio-operated garage door openers. "Paradoxically," Dr. Thompson said, "large sources of radio pollution are easier for us to identify and compensate for than are weak radio sources. The weak signals get mixed into the radio background, and are very hard to separate from the extremely weak signals from space we're looking for." What of the future? "We worry about a lot of things we see coming -- mobile phone systems that will go directly through a galaxy of |
607789_3 | Private School's Computer Network Is Changing Student Life | but even if it doesn't, just the fact that it got people interested is a good thing." Dietrich von Schwerdtner, director of computing services at Peddie, said that he had expected only about half of the faculty to use the new computer system consistently, but that nearly all teachers had found it to be helpful in one form or another. "People we thought would not take to E-mail are using it every day," he said. As elated as school officials are about the computer network, it has brought some problems with it. There are concerns about the security and confidentiality of the electronic mail system, under which students can read others' correspondence if they know the correct password. School officials recently debated whether they had the right to invade the privacy of students' E-mail communications. They decided they did not. In a school at which 24 percent of students are on scholarship, there is some fear that the system will favor those who can afford their own computers, typically costing $2,000. There is also the question of how much tuition might rise, from current levels of $18,900 for boarding students and $12,900 for day students, if all students and faculty members are eventually expected to own their own computers. For the three-quarters of students who currently do not have computers, there are 60 school-owned computers they may use. Then there is the inescapable fact that Peddie's students, being teen-agers, at times misuse the equipment. Last month, on the first day the Annenberg Library opened, students spent most of their time playing computer games, oblivious to the powerful research tools at their command. As a result, games have been banned from the library and may be played only in the student lounge and in dorm rooms. Electronic-mail correspondence between students has also at times lapsed into "adolescent language," as one school official described it. One such message with obscene language was accidentally directed to the faculty mailing list. "A lot of elderly secretaries almost had cardiac arrest," said Susan James, a spokeswoman for the school. But, for the most part, school officials pass off such antics as youthful exuberance. They are confident that the system will be used as it was intended. "It's sort of a monster that has to be harnessed," Ms. James said. "It can be abused, but the potential to bring information, people and resources together is tremendous." |
607909_2 | Cuban Groups Seek Lifting of U.S. Embargo | discouraged Havana from considering reforms that would require greater individual liberties. Moreover, they say, the weakening of the Cuban economy increases the likelihood of a chaotic transition when change finally does come to Cuba. "Our position is that we must relax the embargo if we wish to see reforms in Cuba," said Rolando Prats, one of the dissidents, who delivered the letter to Clinton Administration officials during a visit to the United States. "Some say this will only strengthen Castro, but we don't believe so. If the U.S. makes a first step, Castro will be obliged to make a step as well." Growing Malnutrition Mr. Prats, who spoke from New York by telephone, is the president of a group called the Cuban Democratic Socialist Current. In recent weeks the economic picture has deteriorated further with reports that a powerful storm in March destroyed already scarce housing throughout much of the island and ruined vital crops from sugar to orange and plantain. Cuban officials have also recently reported the spread of an epidemic of a mysterious eye disease that some have linked to growing malnutrition on the island. "The economy is only half of what it was in 1989," said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist who specializes in Cuban affairs at Smith College, in Northampton, Mass. Mr. Zimbalist said there were signs that the economy was "bottoming out" after several years of steep decline, but added, "With things as bad as they are and with malnutrition rearing its head for the first time in decades, it is not clear to me what is going to happen." As their economic situation has grown more difficult, Cuban officials have themselves echoed the dissidents' request that the embargo be relaxed, suggesting that any such move by Washington would be followed by changes in Cuban policy. In an unusual appeal during a news conference last month, Ricardo Alarcon, the former Foreign Minister who is now president of Cuba's National Assembly, asked the Clinton Administration to "give it a try." Clinton Administration officials have not publicly responded to the dissidents' letter or to official appeals like that one. Calls this week to senior national security officials in the Administration were not returned. Experts in Cuban affairs say that with conservative Cuban-American groups strongly opposed to any softening in Washington's stance toward Havana, there is little chance that the Clinton Administration will take any bold new policy measures. |
607551_2 | Jazz and Politics Meet Over the Keyboard | and two young sons, Joao and Joan. Cuba hardly ever grants artists the right to live outside the country, to decide when, where or with whom they will perform, or to keep the compensation for their services. That policy of controlling "cultural workers" has contributed to embarrassing defections that have robbed the Castro regime of some of its most prominent artists: the saxophonist Paquito d'Rivera, the trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, the painters Arturo Cuenca and Tomas Esson, and the dancer Jorge Esquivel. But Mr. Rubalcaba is one of Cuba's last internationally recognized cultural treasures and the Government, weakened by growing economic and social problems, has been forced to show unusual flexibility in dealing with him. "I have not broken with Cuba and do not wish to do so, but neither does my situation follow the habitual model," Mr. Rubalcaba said. "In my specific case, there has been a reciprocal process. I presented myself to the Cuban authorities and told them that this was a time for me to advance my work outside the country, that I needed a space to develop. I had decided that I should be the source of my own economic support, and I told them all the conditions I needed to work, and it produced positive results from the start. I have my family here, but I maintain the connection with my country, which is something important to my work." As a member of one of Havana's most distinguished musical families, Mr. Rubalcaba is very much aware of, and draws from, his roots in Cuban popular culture. His grandfather, Jacobo, was a conductor and composer remembered today as the author of "El Cadete Constitucional," one of the most famous songs of a style known as danzon. His father, Guillermo, is a well-known pianist who for many years played in the orchestra of Enrique Jorrin, inventor of the cha-cha. As early as age 4, Mr. Rubalcaba joined some of Cuba's finest musicians in jam sessions in his family's living room, playing not piano but his first love, percussion. "To me at that point, the piano was nothing more than a piece of furniture that decorated the house and at which my older brother sat down to practice five or six hours a day," he said. "What I liked were drums, congas, tambourines, timbales." By the age of 8, Mr. Rubalcaba was enrolled in a Havana conservatory, where he |
607807_3 | The Flora of the Pine Barrens, Blooming in Watercolors | was an exceptionally good exhibition of African art drawn from the collection of Judith and Leonard Kahan. Lured by Mr. Koenig to Oceanville, the Cahans have lent again -- this time a selection of small to medium-sized figures and heads, together with a case full of carved pipes. They come from the Ibo, Bamana, Dogon, Benin and other West African cultures. Most demand a second look, but to this observer none more so than the Montol female figure with Cubist facets that stands with arms akimbo and the Ibo headpiece that has a wizened face scored with black lines and patterned in red, black and white. Evidently, pipes are -- or were -- as much symbols of status in African status as they were in Europe and the collection includes examples that compare favorably with Meerschaums. Interestingly enough, one specimen in brass is in the shape of a soldier wearing a cap and a tunic with three buttons -- a relic of the German presence in Africa, before World War I? Of the other shows, one is of ceramics by Malcolm Wright, an American, and Takashi Nakazato, a potter from Japan, and is an "import" from at the Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Mass. The others are juried displays of paintings by older citizens and by students at Stockton State College. Though the older artists beat the younger by several lengths, none come close to Leslie Christofferson, who is in his 80's and is no less of an artist for having produced only one work. This is a house for purple martins that is a non-leaning Tower of Pisa with a red dome. If the part-time tenants have relocated to a modern project, as seems likely, they must be keeping the neighbors up all night chattering about the mansion that was. Since Mr. Koenig has arrived, the Noyes has developed a relationship with the Composers Guild of New Jersey, under its director, Robert Pollock. In addition to acting as a co-sponsor of the concert of African and American music scheduled for May 17, the guild plans performances of new work up until June. Who knows what will happen when the museum's theater becomes a reality? All the exhibitions continue at the museum through next Sunday except for the one by the older artists, which remains through June 20. Hours are 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. Wednesday through Sunday. ART |
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610501_0 | What Were They Thinking?; When Yesterday's Clean Fill Is Today's Toxic Waste | Asbestos is old news in this old town on Long Island Sound, where the cancer-causing mineral fiber was used for decades in manufacturing automobile brakes at Raybestos Manhattan Inc. and its successor, Raymark Industries. But for a community that long earned its paychecks from the brake factory on East Main Street and knew that waste laced with asbestos was buried around town, the announcement by state officials on Thursday that lead poisoning may be the factory's greatest toxic legacy came as a surprise. Saying high levels of lead were found at seven sites where Raybestos sludge had been dumped, including a middle school's playing fields and a town park, officials recommended that all children under the age of 6 be tested for lead poisoning. Today, as hundreds of parents called health officials and doctors' offices to ask about the testing procedure, many wondered how such toxic materials could have been scattered through a densely developed town that is home to 49,000 people. "It's just unbelievable that they've been dumping these materials at schools and playgrounds where children play," said Noreen Shnipes, who lives on Nichols Avenue next to the Wooster Intermediate School, where several playing fields have been cordoned off because of lead, asbestos and PCB contamination. "What were they thinking?" People were thinking "clean fill." It was the 1950's, Stratford was growing and new neighborhoods were developing. In that environmentally innocent time, Raymark advertised its waste sludge as clean fill, and people gladly took it to fill in wetlands and low-lying areas. "It was given away virtually free," said Town Manager Mark Barnhart. "For Raymark it was a very easy and cost-effective way to dispose of their waste products." "People are now obviously left with a legacy of something altogether different," he said. "Even the town was guilty of that. Back when Wooster was constructed, the town used material from Raymark to fill in an area in back." Federal and state environmental agencies have pledged a total of $8 million to cover and encapsulate the seven sites, reburying toxic materials that have worked their way to the surface over many years. Mr. Barnhart said there should be no immediate risk from exposure to lead or other contamination at the Wooster fields or at two fields at Shore Park, all of which have been roped off. The Greatest Threat The greatest threat, he said, is on Shore Road, a lane |
611706_2 | Bomb Outside Uffizi in Florence Kills 6 and Damages Many Works | the worst-hit building was a medieval tower, Torre Delle Pulci, behind the Uffizi. A family of four were asleep in their third-floor apartment at the top of the tower and their bodies, including those of girls aged 9 months and 8 years, were found at ground level after the building's interior collapsed. Two other bodies were found near the explosion. Both were badly burned and could not be immediately identified. A Carpet of Glass Most of the damage in the gallery was caused by flying glass, officials said. "The Death of Adonis" was said to have been slashed horizontally by a shard. The blast shook the entire west wing of the gallery, on the banks of the Arno near the Ponte Vecchio. An exit staircase collapsed, a glass skylight was shattered and broken glass carpeted 20 of the gallery's 45 rooms and the Vasari Corridor, over the Arno. "It looked as if it had been raining glass," said Stefano Tasselli, an assistant curator. Hundreds of paintings were removed from the gallery for safekeeping, he said. Journalists were barred from inspecting the damage because, officials said, the gallery was unsafe and some ceilings were in danger of collapse. Protective Shields "Many of the paintings were protected by bulletproof glass screens installed recently to prevent vandalism," said Mrs. Petrioli Tofani, the director. "Without them the damage would have been much worse." The damage to statues, which she described as repairable, mainly affected a group called "Niobe and her Children," a Roman copy from the Greek, said Antonio Paolucci, the superintendent of fine arts in Florence. He identified the paintings that were destroyed as a Nativity by Honthorst, who was known as Gherardo Delle Notti when he worked here, and "Buonavventura" and "Ciclo Vito," by Manfredi. The gallery's priceless collection of Botticellis, Caravaggios, Michelangelos and Leonardos apparently escaped serious damage. But, Mr. Ronchey said, the documents that comprise a 10-year effort to catalogue the collection fully were completely destroyed. The attack represented the greatest disaster for the city's cultural heritage since a flood in 1966 that damaged or destroyed hundreds of paintings and manuscripts. Shattering the Night The explosion stunned many Florentines, who are used to seeing their city as aloof from Italy's woes. "We Florentines have become afraid," said Grazia Stianti, a storekeeper. "We cannot feel at ease here any more." According to investigators, the explosives had been planted in a small |
611747_1 | Paris Journal; The Barricades of '68: Now That Was Very Heaven | movement has gone almost unnoticed here. It could be because the left feels defeated on all fronts. It could be simply that France's economic and social crisis is so much more serious now than in 1968. "I find the silence very worrying," said Marin Karmitz, a former Maoist who is now a successful film producer. "France has trouble dealing with its past. It tries to forget World War II, Indochina, Algeria. But those were moments of war and death; 1968 was a moment of renewal, of hope." The revolt itself came suddenly and unexpectedly. In late March, students attacked an American Express office to protest the war in Vietnam and occupied a university building at Nanterre. Then, after a lull over Easter, the movement reappeared in early May, accelerating quickly as students occupied large areas of the Left Bank to cries like "It is forbidden to forbid!" For three weeks, students had the initiative, first winning over the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, then gaining the sympathy of many ordinary Parisians and finally prompting some 10 million workers to go on strike across France. At one point, de Gaulle even left Paris for Germany, supposedly to prepare French troops to restore order. At the end of May, the uprising collapsed as quickly as it had begun. The Government granted emergency wage increases that ended the strike, while de Gaulle summoned 500,000 supporters to march down the Champs-Elysees. And, in general elections in late July, the Gaullists were returned with a solid majority. In hindsight, the movement's leaders said it failed because it was too spontaneous to define clear objectives. "At one point, we thought of seizing City Hall," Mr. Bouguereau said. "It would have been easy. But then what would we do? O.K., we would go onto the balcony to address the crowd. But what would we say?" Maurice Grimaud, Prefect of Paris in 1968, is now remembered warmly for averting excessive police repression. "We've had lots of revolutions in France," he said. "The students knew their history and they were living a theater in which they played the roles of 19th-century heroes. They might even have toppled the Government, but this wasn't a revolution." While the revolt appeared to achieve little, however, many French now believe that it quickened the modernization of French politics and society. "More intelligent people in the political class saw the need for change," Mr. Kravetz |
611345_0 | Security Council Establishes War-Crimes Tribunal for the Balkans | An 11-judge tribunal was set up tonight by the Security Council to hear charges of war crimes in the former Yugoslav federation. The tribunal will be able to impose prison terms but not to sentence anyone to death. Today's decision, approved unanimously by the 15 member countries, is the first step in a three-part program for curbing the fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina that Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the Foreign Ministers of Britain, France, Russia and Spain agreed upon Saturday in Washington. Criticism of the program by the Bosnian Muslims, who consider it too favorable to the Serbs, is delaying agreement on the other provisions: deployment of border monitors to ensure that military supplies do not reach the Serbian nationalists in Bosnia, and defense of six "safe havens" for Muslims in Bosnia. The war-crimes tribunal is intended to try to punish those responsible for the lengthy list of atrocities that all three sides have committed in Bosnia and Croatia; the United Nations has labeled the Serbs the worst offenders. The Security Council has already established a commission to collect evidence of such atrocities. The civil war has been marked by ethnically motivated killings, the expulsions of hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs from their traditional homes and the bombing of civilians. The tribunal's headquarters will be in the Hague, but the courts are likely to sit in countries much closer to the former Yugoslavia. The Secretary General has urged that those found guilty serve their sentences outside the former Yugoslavia and has asked countries to accept such prisoners. The United States representative to the United Nations, Madeleine K. Albright, stressed during the debate that those guilty of the widespread rapes in the Balkans must be brought to justice. "We must ensure that the voices of the groups most victimized are heard by the tribunal," she said. "I refer particularly to the detention and systematic rape of women and girls, often followed by cold-blooded murder. Let the tens of thousands of women and girls who courageously survived the brutal assault of cowards who call themselves soldiers know this: your dignity survives as does that of those who died." |
608802_1 | Choice of Vatican Envoy, Abortion Foe, Is Opposed | On Tuesday, Timothy E. Wirth, the State Department Counsel, delivered a speech at a population conference at the United Nations where he stated that the Administration's policy, both domestically and internationally, is to support "reproductive rights for women, including access to safe abortions." The Wirth speech represented a reversal in American policy. "In Ambassador Wirth's speech, the Administration took a very strong and definitive posture on abortion in the international arena," said Frances Kisling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, which drafted the petition opposing Mr. Flynn's appointment. "I don't know how well served they are to have somebody over there like Ray Flynn who will not support that position." Despite requests to his aides for comment from Mr. Flynn, he did not return telephone calls. Ms. Kisling acknowledged that it would be difficult to derail Mr. Flynn's confirmation in the Senate, where some lawmakers are likely to view the Vatican post as relatively unimportant and not worth getting into a fight with the Administration. The United States did not even have official diplomatic relations with the Vatican until 1984, though the Government has had a representative at the Vatican since 1848. Still, with increased emphasis by the Administration on issues like women's rights and population stabilization in the world, Ms. Kisling said she believed that the Flynn appointment was out of step with the Administration. Representatives of the group note that the Vatican will be playing an important role in a number of international conventions like one on Human Rights in Vienna next month, one on population in Cairo next year, and another in Beijing in 1995 on rights and the status of women. "We want somebody at the Vatican and we want them to represent U.S. policy," Ms. Kisling said. "We're not saying that abortion should become the litmus test for every ambassador. But where abortion or population are salient issues a person's views should be weighed and the ambassador should be in synch with administration policy." Seen as Adept Political Move The appointment of Mr. Flynn, an important bridge to Catholics in the Presidential campaign, was considered an adept political move by Mr. Clinton. Naming Mr. Flynn allowed the Administration to reach out to those in the Democratic Party who oppose abortion, many of whom were angry that another anti-abortion advocate, Robert P. Casey, Governor of Pennsylvania, was not allowed to address the Democratic National Convention. |
608810_0 | Brazilian State Leads Way in Saving Children | In the dim, smoke-stained interior of a sharecropper's shack, 1-year-old Maria sat quietly on the dirt floor, her infant spark dulled by diarrhea and malnutrition. With seven other children to care for, Maria's mother, Antonia Souza Lima, explained that she could not afford the time -- an hour-and-a-half walk -- or the 40-cent bus fare to take her listless baby to the nearest medical post. Fading quietly, Maria seemed destined to become one of the 250,000 Brazilian children who die every year before turning 5. But in a new effort to cut the devastating infant mortality rate here, a community health worker recently started to walk weekly to the Lima household, bringing oral rehydration formula for Maria and hygiene advice for her mother, who has a television setbut no water filter. With the new public health program, involving a low-cost army of health workers, Ceara state is showing Brazil that even in times of economic austerity infant mortality can be cut. In four years, Ceara, one of the poorest of Brazil's northeastern states, cut its infant mortality rate by nearly one-third. The number of babies who died before reaching their first birthday was 39 per 1,000 live births in 1990, the last year a survey was conducted, down from 57 per 1,000 in 1987. Increasingly, Brazilians are discussing their child mortality record, one of the worst in the Americas, and health planners from other northeastern states are flocking to Ceara to study its program, While Brazil has a $450 billion economy -- roughly the same size as those of Russia and China -- health workers point out that economic statistics do not always measure human welfare. Brazil scores poorly on infant mortality, the number of babies who die before their first birthday. Although its $2,920 per capita income is eight times that of China, Brazil has an infant mortality rate two and a half times China's -- of every 1,000 live births, 55 Brazilian babies die before their first birthday. "With the 'economic miracle,' middle-class infant mortality vanished, but it has not been dislodged from the shantytowns, from the rural northeast," said Nancy Scheper-Hughes, an anthropology professor at the University of California at Berkeley, referring to Brazil's explosive economic growth under the military Governments of the 1960's and 1970's. While Brazil's ruling army generals prided themselves on building the world's biggest dam and the world's longest bridge, they never showed |
607248_0 | Review/Film; The Threats to Creatures of Amazonia | "Amazonia: Voices From the Rain Forest," a documentary about life in the Amazon River basin, is a handsome, well-meaning film that is overwhelmed by the scope and complexity of its subject. The 70-minute film, which opens today at the Cinema Village on a double-bill with "Anima Mundi," a nature documentary, explores the devastating impact of Western civilization on one of the world's richest natural habitats. Although "Amazonia" offers passionate arguments about the necessity of preserving the region from development, its evocation of the political and social forces affecting the area is far too sketchy and confusing for the pieces to form a coherent historical portrait. "Amazonia" is really two movies rolled into one. Initially it appears to be a mystical celebration of the beauty and healing power of the rain forest along with an idealistic portrait of the tribal peoples who have lived for centuries in harmony with the environment. As the film goes on, it becomes a political documentary exploring the lives of those who inhabit the area. They range from businessmen who support large-scale exploitation of its natural resources, to laborers who have moved there to develop the land, to native leaders who foresee the eventual eradication of their own people if the development continues. According to the film, which was made by Monti Aguirre, a Colombian anthropologist, and Glenn Switkes, a journalist and film maker, the destruction began 500 years ago with the arrival of the first European explorers. Among the 900 indigenous tribes who existed in Brazil when they arrived, the film states, only 180 remain. The rest died out after their land was taken from them. The profound physical and spiritual relationship between the surviving native peoples and the environment is pointedly illustrated in several scenes. The most vivid is an Indian ceremony of prayer for God's protection at the foot of a rubber tree. Among those interviewed is Francisco (Chico) Mendes, a rubber tapper who organized his fellow workers to demand better living conditions and who was killed some time after he was filmed. Another powerful voice belongs to Ailton Krenak, a young Indian leader who is at the forefront of the local movement to preserve the rain forest. The film devotes considerable time to showing the plight of landless farmers who were brought into the region hoping for a better life but who instead found themselves the victims of disease, malnutrition and environmental |
610046_0 | Punishing China on Trade Hurts Wrong People; Population Control | To the Editor: I share Prof. John H. Herz's concern in his May 6 letter on population control that "it would be a tragedy if the excesses connected with the Chinese effort jeopardized President Clinton's intended reversal of American policy that denied funds for family planning abroad." But what is "the path of radical population stabilization" on which Professor Herz hopes the United Nations will set third-world countries? Can even a zero-growth program alleviate the population problem in countries such as India and Bangladesh? Looking at the images of skeleton-like children (and adults) in Somalia and the Sudan on television screens, one cannot help wondering if China's minus-zero growth policy (radical indeed) isn't the answer. One can only hope that the draconian measures to cut the fertility rate you report (front page, April 25) were aberrations -- results of actions by overzealous party functionaries in remote areas. We may yet debate which of the following is more humane: Not to let a child be born or to let a child be born to die of starvation. If any country should be driven toward dealing with the problem through "authoritarian coercion," as Professor Herz fears, let it be warned that China's one-child-per-family policy will deprive China's future citizens of the pleasure of having brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts; that the child will have two sets of grandparents, in addition to the parents, to pamper him with undivided attention, and that if the rural practice of baby-girl drowning persists, the Little Emperor, as a spoiled brat is commonly called in China, will have difficulty in finding a wife to carry on the family line. Furthermore, the country will be populated by a nation of selfish, self-absorbed, self-serving individuals. I hear that it is for fear of such horrors that China has set a time limit on enforcing the one-child policy. It is, I was assured by a Chinese official, a period of no more than 50 years. TIMOTHY TUNG New York, May 10, 1993 |
610055_0 | When Disabled Students Enter Regular Classrooms | Merari Vazquez's fellow second and third graders are learning about perimeters. Measuring is hard for Merari, who is mentally retarded and does not speak. But she is part of the group, and her classmates need to find a way she can work with them. They coax her to lie down on a big pad, using her to do their measuring. Merari is part of a bold but hotly debated educational experiment: teaching even severely handicapped children in regular public-school classrooms instead of separate ones. The idea goes far beyond "mainstreaming," which usually involves milder disabilities; at schools like Merari's, no heads turn at children using wheelchairs, feeding tubes or oxygen tanks. Schools like those in Johnson City, in south-central New York, are rare; no one keeps a nationwide count. But experts say their number is growing. And as it grows, the movement toward "inclusion" is dividing advocates for disabled children. Some hail it as an ethical and educational breakthrough; others believe children's individual needs are being sacrificed in a crusade. At schools in places like Johnson City and Redmond, Wash. -- which pay for extra aides, special education teachers to modify lessons and teacher training -- children with disabilities from autism to Down's syndrome are flourishing socially and educationally. Their classmates, too, learn empathy and tolerance for those who are different. Moreover, because many schools use the money they would have spent on special education classes to pay for the extra help the disabled students need in regular schools, inclusion does not have to cost more. But some studies show that in schools that offer inclusion programs with little extra help to these students, children are failing. Some children, particularly those with emotional problems, strain regular classrooms; others may need the smaller, quieter and more individual settings of special education. And inclusion seems to be a daunting task in inner cities, where many teachers face overcrowded classrooms already full of troubled children. "I'm very pro-inclusion on a philosophical basis, but it isn't working well," said James Ysseldyke, a professor at the University of Minnesota who worked to introduce inclusion in Minneapolis schools as part of a four-year federally financed project. "It's being used with every good intention to do some terrible things to kids." With Training, A Program Works Johnson City is a small, largely blue-collar suburb of Binghamton with 3,000 children enrolled in its four schools. The school district |
609974_0 | Personal Health | THERE are few dispassionate voices when it comes to opinions about genetically engineered foods, and the dispute over crops redesigned in modern biotechnical laboratories instead of farmers' fields is likely to continue to simmer. Do such foods represent valuable improvements or safety threats to consumers? Lest a novelist's wild imaginings of genetically engineered monster dinosaurs, soon to be a major motion picture, or an amorphous anti-science hysteria sway your thinking, it is important to understand both the real benefits and possible risks inherent in this sci-fi-come-true ability to make overnight changes in genetically determined characteristics of foods. The Food and Drug Administration, which has formulated a detailed regulatory policy to guide producers of genetically engineered foods, continues to invite public comment on how the agency should deal with this novel technology. The agency has already received some 3,300 comments, 90 percent of them from consumers and most of them addressing concerns about the labeling of genetically engineered foods and their potential for provoking allergic reactions. Making the Changes Since the dawn of agriculture, people have been making genetic changes in foods. But until recently, farmer-scientists were limited to laborious breeding techniques: picking plants with various desired characteristics and crossbreeding them over and over again. By this process it could take up to a quarter century to achieve a plant with the desired combination of traits. Even then, important elements might be missing, like a rich supply of a nutrition-enhancing amino acid or vitamin or resistance to a particular disease or pest or to frost or drought. Genetic engineering of foods involves the insertion of one or more genes with a clearly defined and desired function into plants (or animals or microorganisms) that are used for human food or animal feed. It has several major advantages over traditional breeding techniques, not the least of which are an enormous saving of time and effort and far more exact results. Traditional crossbreeding brings in a potpourri of genes, both wanted and unwanted, but genetic engineers can pick out exactly which genes to introduce without having to worry about undesirable genetic baggage. Unlike breeding, which can incorporate only the genes found in closely related plants or animals that interbreed, genetic engineering can make use of any genes regardless of their original source. Thus, a frost-resistance gene from a fish might be introduced into corn or tomato plants. Or a bacterial gene that confers pesticide |
608602_2 | Citing Safety, Airline Curbs CD and Computer Use | players at any time during a flight. These have been given this special attention because some pilots suspect that the circuitry of CD players emits signals that are more likely to affect a plane's instruments than, say, a cassette player. Imposing even stiffer restrictions, the Jordanian national carrier prohibits the use of any electronic device by passengers. Although many airlines are installing more and more of their own electronics on their planes, like telephones and video screens in seat backs, they say that these are protected in such a way that flight equipment is not disturbed. Effects of Technology But as computer makers increasingly incorporate compact-disk and telephone technology into their wares, questions about their effects in airplane cockpits may well become increasingly thorny. The computer and other electronics manufacturers are subject to F.C.C. rules prohibiting the emission of radio-frequency radiation from appliances beyond minuscule levels, which these manufacturers do not believe can affect flight instruments. "Our laptop computers don't emit enough radio frequency energy to disturb much of anything," said Mark Cohen, a mobile-systems product manager for the I.B.M. Personal Computer Company. Aircraft manufacturers also said that their equipment is shielded to an extent that it is unlikely that cockpit instruments could ever be unsettled by a computer or hand-held video game. "There's a very, very low likelihood," said David B. Walen, who studies electromagnetics at the Boeing Company. Perception or Reality? Still, the aircraft builders find themselves in a position somewhat like that of a bus manufacturer explaining that its vehicles are absolutely safe, only to have the bus drivers say that the steering occasionally feels mushy. "There's a real perception issue here," Mr. Walen said. To date, that perception has been spurred by the pilots, who have reported their unusual experiences to their companies and in professional forums. The Aviation Safety Reporting System, an organization run by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at F.A.A. request, compiles reports submitted by pilots about unusual occurrences during their flights. The group said it has received more than two dozen reports from officers whose instruments were disturbed and then calmed when passengers were asked to turn off their electronic devices. "The anecdotal evidence becomes data," said Bill Reynard, director of the program. "There is an issue here." Many Reports The International Air Transport Association, an association of 214 airlines, said that its members have reported more than 50 similar incidents. |
608602_4 | Citing Safety, Airline Curbs CD and Computer Use | that of a bus manufacturer explaining that its vehicles are absolutely safe, only to have the bus drivers say that the steering occasionally feels mushy. "There's a real perception issue here," Mr. Walen said. To date, that perception has been spurred by the pilots, who have reported their unusual experiences to their companies and in professional forums. The Aviation Safety Reporting System, an organization run by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at F.A.A. request, compiles reports submitted by pilots about unusual occurrences during their flights. The group said it has received more than two dozen reports from officers whose instruments were disturbed and then calmed when passengers were asked to turn off their electronic devices. "The anecdotal evidence becomes data," said Bill Reynard, director of the program. "There is an issue here." Many Reports The International Air Transport Association, an association of 214 airlines, said that its members have reported more than 50 similar incidents. A memo from Swissair sent to the Washington-based organization studying the issue for the F.A.A. noted that during the last two years, it had two incidents caused by CD players. In both cases, the airline wrote, the interference "could be verified by switching the players on and off." As a result, Swissair prohibits the use of CD players throughout its flights. The domestic carriers that have restricted the use of electronic devices have done so in response to the pilots' reports of unusual incidents, as well as to the F.A.A. guidelines. The typical restriction under 10,000 feet prohibits use of devices for roughly 15 minutes of flying time. Still other airline executives, speaking on the condition that they not be identified, say they are responding because public interest in the topic has kicked up a controversy that they want settled. American Airlines plans to put its policy into effect shortly because "it's a situation that has come to the forefront for a variety of reasons," Mr. Smith, its spokesman, said. "We think this is a good compromise, given our current state of knowledge." When that state of knowledge may improve is unclear. Airline executives note that with the proliferation of portable electronic devices, it is virtually impossible to test all the equipment in a wide variety of flight conditions. "We are not anti-consumer by any means," said Larry R. Ganse, director of flight safety for Northwest Airlines. "It's a matter of resources." COMPANY NEWS |
610265_0 | China's Cruelty and Women's Rights | China is a very big country with a very big problem: it has 7 percent of the earth's arable land -- and more than 20 percent of all its people. Today they number 1.17 billion. In several decades they will probably number 1.9 billion. So what's a government to do when its vision of a rich new future is occluded by the prospect of millions more hungry inhabitants? The answer, for Beijing, is very clear. You just take family-planning decisions out of the hands of the people. "We maintain that the most important human right in a country or nation," Peng Peiyun, minister of the State Family Planning Commission, said recently, "is the people's right to survival." To that end -- survival -- China is now exercising vicious control over its birth rate. China's population problem is indeed awesome. It is the excuse the Government has always given for its tough family-planning policy, and the reason, despite occasional reports of coerced abortions, that the United Nations Fund for Population Activities has continued to work there. Facilitating humane family planning is, after all, surely the best way to discourage Draconian population policies. Now, however, the U.N. agency is threatening to pull out of China because of abuses such as those recently cited by The Times's Nicholas D. Kristof. Forced contraception, using a thoroughly discredited, old-fashioned kind of intrauterine device, is commonplace. So is forced sterilization. Sometimes, to satisfy China's complex annual birth quotas, women are induced to give birth prematurely. Women are, in short, treated not as human beings but as livestock to be rendered infertile or medicated into premature parturition. There are economic consequences for unpermitted pregnancies as well: In rural areas especially, fines may be levied and property confiscated. Furthermore, because this is a society that still values males far more than it does females, hundreds of thousands of Chinese girls who would be expected to be born vanish from the birth statistics every year. Abortion may account for some of the disappearances; so may female infanticide, which was declared a crime only in 1949. The U.N.'s possible withdrawal would make it easier for the Clinton Administration to restore Federal money for the agency, which was denied U.S. funds primarily because of its commitment to working in China. But it will also deprive a country that desperately needs decent, humane family-planning programs of an invaluable resource. Meanwhile what is |
611889_0 | U.S. Studies Expansion Of Phone Links to Cuba | The Clinton Administration is considering allowing American telecommunications companies to expand service in Cuba. The move would allow private American companies to do business with Cuba for the first time since 1961, when the United States imposed a trade embargo. Administration and Congressional officials said other policy changes, which they declined to specify, were also being studied. Under the current policy, American companies must apply for licenses to conduct any kind of business in Cuba or with the Cuban Government. No licenses have been granted since the embargo was imposed. Under a proposal being drafted by the State Department, telecommunication companies would be allowed to establish new telephone links with Cuba or to expand existing ones. They would also be allowed to share revenue with Cuba's state-owned telephone company. Links With Cuban People The action would be a first step toward opening more lines of communication between the United States and the Cuban people, and is designed to undercut Cuban President Fidel Castro's claim that American trade sanctions are aimed at the Cuban people and not just at his Government. Administration officials say there would be no change in the current policy of keeping the Castro Government isolated. But the move to increase American links to the island might be useful if the Goverment changes. Among the issues being examined by the State Department is what level of technology will be allowed and how much money will be shared with Cuba, a State Department official said. Telephone service could be a lucrative source of hard currency for the Castro Government, which has been devastated by the loss of support from the former Soviet Union. Limited Circuits to Cuba The American Telephone and Telegraph Company was granted an exemption in the 1960's to continue providing limited telephone service between the United States and Cuba, but circuits are so limited that most calls do not go through. The company normally shares revenue from foreign telephone service with foreign carriers, but as part of its Cuban exemption A.T.&T. is not allowed to share revenue with Cuba. The money has been accumulating in an escrow account established in 1966. It now totals about $80 million. In moving to ease telephone contacts with Cuba, President Clinton appears to be shifting from the tough stand he took in the campaign last year, when he endorsed the Cuban Democracy Act, which tightened the trade embargo. But the |
611863_1 | Italians Try to Place Blame For Bomb Damage at Uffizi | protests seized Milan, Bologna, Naples, Rome and Brescia. Picture of a Suspect The police, meanwhile, issued a composite picture of a dark-skinned young man with narrow eyes and a narrow mouth, said to have been seen fleeing the area in central Florence where the car bomb was placed just before it exploded at around 1 A.M. Thursday. Forensics experts said the bomb had been made up of chemicals similar to those in the plastic explosives used in earlier Italian bombings. The bomb was thought to have weighed over 200 pounds, packed into a small stolen car. While police initially said six people had been killed, they later revised the known death toll to five, including a family of four. Such was the worry among Italian officials that other famous sites might now be attacked that the authorities in Pisa said today that the city's 800-year-old Leaning Tower would be guarded by closed-circuit television cameras and cordoned off overnight from now on. Ordinarily, a tour of the Uffizi -- which is one of the world's most famous galleries and draws a million visitors a year -- begins with a place in the line for a $7 admission to Italy's richest trove of art, chronicled in countless guidebooks on sale throughout the city. Today though, police barricades kept tourists and art lovers back from the gallery. The explosion struck principally at the gallery's west wing, housing works exhibited chronologically from Michelangelo's 16th-century "Doni Tondo" to those of 18th and 19th century artists, including Canaletto and Crespi. By today, some 200 of those works have been moved to safety, some of them propped on iron supports as if in a warehouse in a room on the eastern side of the gallery, which escaped serious damage. The reason for the move, according to the museum's director, Anna Maria Tofani-Petrioli, was simple: The explosion had blown in the skylights above them, exposing them to the city's humidity that might gnaw at the pigment, or to unseasonal rain. Glass Shields Helped What was apparent during a brief tour she gave reporters was that the bullet-proof glass shields installed to protect many paintings from vandals -- controversial additions that some visitors had said detracted from their viewing -- had also prevented flying glass from scarring them. Not all had escaped, though. In the Rubens Room, a huge canvas of the "Battle of Ivry" bore a two-foot gash. |
611854_0 | Observer; Like Lead To the Romans | Happening more or less simultaneously, Michael Jordan's midnight visit to the gambling hell of Atlantic City and the bombing of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence dramatize the modern quarrel about how best to destroy civilization. Some say fire will do the trick, and some say ice, or so the poet wrote. The modern dispute, however, is between those who favor bombs and those who believe law can do the job quieter. Metaphorically speaking, bombs may be nothing more than fire and law no different from ice, but who speaks metaphorically these days? Certainly not bombers. When General LeMay hankered to bomb Vietnam "back to the Stone Age," he wasn't dabbling in poetical expression. He didn't mean "bomb them back to the pre-industrial era," or "to the Dark Ages," or "to the Bronze Age." He meant the Stone Age. The bombing classes really believe in the Stone Age. Some among them think being bombed back to the Stone Age may have salubrious long-term effects on humanity by compelling the survivors to adopt the high-minded views of those who bombed them back there. Lawyers aren't much for metaphorical speech either. Their favorite rhetorical device is simile. "Like shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theater" -- that's about as close to poetry as lawyer talk ever comes. And that's an antique from the early part of the century. Since then lawyers have invented "the billable hour," which sounds at first as if it might be a metonym but which turns out to be the legal profession's device for siphoning the profits out of large corporations. Charging by "the billable hour" has had a bloating effect on lawyer talk. If a modern lawyer tried to invent the fine old simile about shouting in a crowded theater, he would say "deleteriously comparable to excessively audible vocalizations purporting to be expressive of the excessively audible vocalizer's putative knowledge in reference to the existence of a conflagrational, and potentially devastating, conflationary process of combustible oxidation occurring in the confines of a place licensed for the presentation of drama, both comical and tragical, in addition to performances of musical, cinematical, vaudevilliac, televisualistic . . ." It is not lawyers' decline into mumbling incoherence that interests us, however. It is non-lawyers' passion for suing, as illustrated by Michael Jordan, the basketball player. All sports-crazed humanity was scandalized the other day by reports that Mr. Jordan had been gambling in Atlantic |
611826_0 | The Inventor and the Salesman: Taking a Bright Idea to Market | Stuart Ford of Manakin, Va., said the idea for his combination chipper, shredder, vacuum and blower came to him when he realized more and more states were closing landfills, forcing people to dispose of their own lawn debris. While market research found this type of machine was available, they cost around $2,000 and less than 2 percent of households had acquired them. The inventor and marketing consultant figures that if he could build one that was affordable, compact and convenient for home use, that number would grow. He then set about developing the machine he called the Cougar. With the help of a draftsman, he designed and built a protortype and contracted with tool makers to produce the parts. One of these is a steel fabricator in Cleveland that assembles the machine, the first of which came off the production line this month. To date, Mr. Ford has invested about $200,000. He expects to sell the machines for about $550 each and sees a strong market. "Based on early figures, we anticipate that sales of the Cougar will be around $2.5 million by the end of the year," he said. HOW THEY DO IT |
610762_0 | Empire Theater | To the Editor: I was pained by your inaccurate description of the condition of the Empire Theater's roof [ "A Film Restores a Bit of 42d Street -- in Faux Decay," March 28 ] and its comment that the theaters on 42d Street "have continued their slide into decay." In fact, the Empire roof is in good condition and all the theaters are well cared for. Since the New York State Urban Development Corporation took title to the Empire and seven other historic theaters in April 1990, we have spent more than $2.5 million on a program of stabilization and maintenance to prevent further deterioration before the reconstruction begins. Our stabilization program, which was developed by an eminent team under the leadership of Hardy Holtzman Pfeiffer, has included new roofs, facade maintenance, countless system repairs, cleaning, patching and daily inspection. REBECCA ROBERTSON Manhattan The writer is president of the U.D.C.'s 42d Street Development Project. |
610781_3 | As China Leaps Ahead, The Poor Slip Behind | nation as "China's third world." Rich Get Richer Guizhou belongs to this other world. For the past dozen years, while provinces like Guangdong and Jiangsu were given economic privileges to develop, Guizhou was asked to supply its coal, timber and other raw materials at fixed state prices. The logic was that economic activity would "trickle in" to remote areas, as land, labor and transport costs rose in more developed regions. The problem is that such a process is likely to take decades. Meanwhile, poorer areas are still subsidizing richer coastal areas with cheap raw materials. Officials tacitly acknowledge this phenomenon, but they defend it as imperative for progress. "Development must be stable and orderly," said Zhao Jiaxing, vice director of Guizhou Economic Commission. "Actually, China can't develop evenly. But after the coastal areas get rich, their people will come here." By some accounts, the nation has four or five million millionaires as calculated in local currency. (A million yuan is equivalent to about $175,000 at the official rate of exchange.) Some Chinese believe that such estimates, reported in the Chinese press, are exaggerations, but they have aroused some resentment. "A certain level of gap encourages people to work," said Zhu Qingfang, who researches income differences at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "But if the gap is too big, it makes people feel uneasy." In any case, the disparities are creating strains. Conspicuous consumption is growing in the cities, leading official newspapers to denounce "money worship." Huge migrations are creating headaches, as millions of peasants flock to cities in search of work. In the past, China restricted labor movements, but it has relaxed those rules, partly to allow urban economies along the coast to soak up surplus labor in the countryside. One result is a talent drain from the poorer inland regions in China's northwest. The "floating population" has also made it tricky for the Government to control the birth rate. The Government's overriding fear is that the new inequities will provoke unrest. But some Chinese argue that even the poor are better off and therefore will not challenge the system. "We know from TV that life in Guangdong may be better than here, but Guiyang is better than before," said Zhang Jinghui, a peasant who recently got a job as a vendor in this city in Guizhou. "And anyway, you can't believe everything you see on television." THE WORLD |
610859_0 | By Windjammer Around Penobscot Bay | THE windjammers, a fleet of sailing schooners that offer cruises under canvas, made no haphazard choice in settling into Penobscot Bay, a wedge of the Atlantic in the central Maine coast. With sunrise over Mount Desert and sunset behind the Camden Hills, the bay, defined by highlands that run down into the sea, enfolds hundreds of approachable islands; its clear air and fair winds make it arguably the premier seascape and sailing ground of the Northeast. For 16 weeks of nonfreezing weather that the coast of Maine enjoys each year, the windjammers, ranging in length from 64 to 132 feet, as well as other day-trip vessels, add a picturesque filip to the seaward views as they pass, sometimes in stately procession. Anyone who has toured the area, from Camden and Rockland on the west to Bar Harbor on the east, has seen the windjammers slide by like Lohengrin's swan, long name banners rippling from fat mastheads above old-fashioned four-sided sails. At their berths in Camden and nearby towns, their spars put a 19th-century gloss on messy waterfronts. I had seen them for years, but, like all but one of the 25 other passengers on a three-day windjammer cruise crisscrossing the bay last fall, I had no real idea of what to expect of life aboard ship. Our vessel, the Victory Chimes, was a three-masted schooner with a home port in Rockland. Many of the passengers were devotees of more conventional ocean cruises who wanted to try a soft adventure trip -- an undertaking that is a little challenging, but does not wear you out, or require you to carry everything on your back or clamber over rocks. Others picked a windjammer because the total outlay, about $100 a day, was manageable. The frugal drove to Rockland, some in campers, from as far as Florida, Indiana and Ohio. Reflecting the diverse family groupings of the 90's, the passengers were rarely a husband-wife couple; there was a father-daughter-son-in-law combination; a sister and brother in their 70's; a widow and a married daughter in her 50's and several women traveling alone, including me. For my part, while I have often sailed in Maine, I was eager to take my first windjammer cruise as an autonomous person. My fellow passengers, many of them habitues of the midnight buffets of the Caribbean, settled into the rather clumsy looking Victory Chimes on Sunday night before the |
606144_0 | Updating Air Travel Security | ALTHOUGH the air traveler might as well try to influence the weather as to affect airline and airport security, there is something to be said for keeping informed about the risks of crime and terrorism while traveling. Big corporations, after all, try to protect their employees who must sometimes travel in risky places; so isn't there something that passengers can do along the same lines? With rare exceptions, travelers are not told about threats to security unless there is a specific threat that is considered plausible. For example, last month the Federal Aviation Administration warned airports to be on the alert for a possible terrorist attack, but did not make any public announcement to that effect because the intelligence that led to the warning was not specific or plausible enough. (The alert expired without incident on April 20.) When it's known that security will be unusually tight, passengers have to plan for delays at the airport. But even after the World Trade Center bombing, when Newark, La Guardia and Kennedy Airports increased their security, the general rule of showing up one hour early for domestic flights and two hours before international flights sufficed. Outlining Precautions Of course, passengers should certainly avoid letting strangers pack their bags and should refuse to carry parcels for people they don't know. If for some reason you cannot adhere to this rule, be sure to inform airport security officials; any such luggage should be carefully inspected by the airlines. For those inclined simply to avoid areas where civil unrest is rampant, it's easy to check with the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs about local conditions. The Government's travel advisories are often published in newspapers and are carried on commercial computer bulletin board services; recorded information can be heard by telephoning the State Department's travel advisory line, at (202) 647-5225. On the State Department's current list of foreign destinations where travelers should be cautious, for example, is Egypt, where tourists have been targeted by Islamist radicals. (For that matter, Germany has warned its citizens to be careful if they go to Miami; criminals in that city have been preying on tourists, whom they identify by the license plates of rented cars -- plates now being phased out.) But although terrorists often strike at airlines and airports, it is very unusual for the United States Government to warn against a particular foreign airport it considers to |
606112_0 | Women In Combat: How Other Nations Rank | The walls restricting women to non-fighting roles in the United States military cracked last week when Defense Secretary Les Aspin lifted bans against women in aerial combat and said the Administration wants the law forbidding women on warshops repealed. The United States is not blazing the trail; other countriles have women in combat jobs. Below are examples of military policies. THE WORLD |
606152_0 | Too Much of a Good Thing on Long Island Sound; Resurgence of Lobsters Lowers Prices, Brings More Fishers and Spawns Tensions | Running with the morning tide, Arthur Fodera cleared the entrance to Huntington Harbor, powered up the diesel engine in his 35-foot fishing boat and headed across the bay toward Long Island Sound to check the catch in his 700 lobster pots. With fresh bait fish in buckets at the stern and sea gulls trailing in a cloudless blue sky above his wake, Captain Fodera flipped on his radar, depth finder and the Loran tracking system that helps him find the thousands of dollars worth of lobster fishing gear he leaves on the bottom of the Sound. "There are no pots of gold in this business," said Captain Fodera, the morning sun warming his ruddy face against a chill breeze from the northeast. "It's a lot of work, but it's a good living." Captain Fodera is one of a growing number of people sharing in a rebirth of the centuries-old lobster business on Long Island Sound. Aided by conservation efforts and a decline in its natural predators, like sand sharks, the lobster has returned to the Sound in great numbers in recent years. Signs of a Turf War That, plus the growing demand from seafood markets and restaurants in the New York area, as well as from new markets, including Japan and, most recently, Europe, has brought with it a doubling in the number of licensed commercial lobster fishers over the last several years. But as a promising new season begins, Captain Fodera and the 20 other lobsterman based in Huntington and neighboring Northport fear success may spoil their business. A large supply is holding prices down, squeezing already narrow profit margins, and the rush to drop more traps has recently led to gunfire at sea and the wounding of one lobsterman. In the most recent incident, a week ago, a Glen Cove lobsterman was shot and seriously wounded by three masked gunmen as he pulled his traps from the Sound off Lattington Beach. The Nassau County police warned that it could signal the start of a lobster turf war. "That was a crazy thing to do," Captain Fodera said. "But the Sound isn't getting any bigger and some guys are feeling the pressure. Some days it's like a parking lot out here." A Fourth-Place Catch New York State issued 1,171 commercial lobster fishing licenses to state residents last year, up from 371 in 1981. More than 300 lobster fishers worked |
612258_0 | Kimon Friar, 81, Translator of Greek Literature | Kimon Friar, a prolific American scholar, poet, critic and translator of modern Greek literature, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Athens. He was 81 years old and had made his home in Athens off and on since the 1960's. The cause was complications from head injuries suffered in a fall at his home, said Michael Tobias, a friend in Los Angeles. Mr. Friar, whose first name is pronounced KEY-mon, won high praise for his many translations of Nikos Kazantzakis. The Greek author is best known in the United States as the creator of Zorba the Greek. Mr. Friar was the highly acclaimed translator of the author's magnum opus, "The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel" (Simon & Schuster, 1958). A monumental epic poem, it was an extension of the Greek classic and Kazantzakis's deliberate challenge to Homer. It appeared in Greece in 1938 and Mr. Friar first saw it in 1949. He and the author then spent four years going over practically every word in its 33,333 lines, and thus Mr. Friar considered it a collaboration rather than just a translation. Mr. Friar also contributed an introduction, a synopsis and notes. The translation became a Book of the Month, Book Find Club and Seven Arts Club selection. His skillful English renditions in "The Sovereign Sun: The Selected Poems of Odysseus Elytis" (Temple University Press, 1974) helped to persuade the Nobel Prize jury to honor Mr. Elytis with the prize for literature in 1979. Mr. Friar, of Greek descent, was born in Imrali, Turkey, and came to the United States in 1915 as a 4-year-old. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University, graduated from the University of Wisconsin and earned a master's degree at the University of Michigan. He taught at Adelphi University and Amherst College in the 1940's, at New York University and the University of Minnesota in the 1950's. Over the years, he lectured at the University of California at Berkeley, and many other institutions in this country, Greece and South America. He had weekly radio programs on prose and poetry in the Midwest, directed theater productions, wrote poetry and essays like one on "A Vision," by William Butler Yeats, for which he won one of his many awards. Oddly, he had an immigrant's problem with the English language until well into high school. Only when he read Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" did he become |
611108_0 | World Economies | |
611029_1 | I.R.A. Bombs Won't Stop Talks, A Catholic Leader in Ulster Says | province have criticized both men as the I.R.A. detonated three car bombs since Thursday, the day the vote count started after local elections in the province. More than 20 people have been wounded, none gravely. The I.R.A. justifies violence as a way to force the British to relinquish power. Sinn Fein declines to condemn the I.R.A. violence, and for this reason is excluded from peace talks involving Britain, the Irish Republic and the other political parties in the north. Mr. Hume, in an interview in Dublin, said he and Mr. Adams, who is usually his political enemy, would meet again soon in the north to try to agree on a framework that could lead to full negotiations to end the civil war. He declined to disclose details of the two sessions he has had with Mr. Adams since early April. Political analysts said they expected the Hume-Adams talks to reach a crucial point in the next week or so, and Mr. Hume was described by some as feeling an agreement was close, but not without danger of collapsing. "What we are talking about," Mr. Hume said, "is how to give expression to self-determination to all the people who live on the island of Ireland." In Northern Ireland political parlance, this means a referendum in the north and in the Irish Republic, here in the south, to determine whether Ireland should remain partitioned into an independent state and a British province. It implies that a united Ireland, excluding any British control, would require a vote of approval by the majorities in both the north, where there are 900,000 Protestants and 650,000 Catholics, and the overwhelmingly Catholic south. But before there could be such a vote, the I.R.A. would have to stop its violence long enough to give the British Government reason to believe that a peaceful settlement was possible, and to allow Sinn Fein to represent the I.R.A. in official peace negotiations. The first step, Mr. Hume is believed to be telling Mr. Adams, is to redefine the war's essential cause. Until now, the I.R.A. has insisted that the British presence is the chief problem, while Mr. Hume and other moderates insist that the basic trouble is between "the two traditions," the euphemism for Irish people who are Catholics or Protestants. An agreement between Mr. Hume and Mr. Adams would presumably note that the British are no longer the principal problem. |
609468_5 | Omaha | Omaha in 1925. Impromptu observances are often held at the site of his childhood home, 3448 Pinkney Street. For an overview of black history, the nearby Great Plains Black Museum, 2213 Lake Street, (402) 345-2212, housed in the old Webster Telephone Company Building, is well worth a visit. Monday through Friday, 8:30 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission: $2. The spacious, rambling Henry Doorly Zoo, which is adjacent to Rosenblatt Stadium, has shady woods with many large open-air enclosures for its residents. Its piece de resistance is the year-old Lied Jungle, a simulated rain forest with a remarkable array of tropical birds, animals and plants. The zoo, 3701 South 10th Street, (402) 733-8400, is open daily, 9:30 A.M. to 5 P.M., except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission: $6.25 ($4.75 for the elderly, $3 for children ages 5 to 11). Where to Stay Just on the west edge of downtown, the Holiday Inn Express, 3001 Chicago Street, (402) 345-2222, is an easy half-mile walk to the Joslyn Art Museum, although not particularly pleasant, since it requires traversing the Dodge Street Bridge over roaring I-480 traffic. The hotel is on the bus line (Nos. 5, 30 and 36 go downtown). Doubles, $39 to $74. The Holiday Inn Central, 3321 South 72d Street, (402) 393-3950, is just north of I-80 (72d Street exit). The motel houses a branch of the Garden Cafe, a locally owned chain of family-oriented restaurants. Doubles average $75. The Best Western Regency West, 909 South 107th Avenue, (402) 397-8000, is near 1 Pacific Place, a center with shops and restaurants. Doubles average $67. Budget: The Sleep Inn, 2525 Abbott Drive, (402) 342-2525), with 93 rooms, is a tidy choice, near Eppley Airport, just north of downtown. Doubles, $38.95; weekend rate, $29.95. Luxury: Two downtown hotels are within walking distance of the Old Market and Heartland Park. The Radisson Redick Tower, 1504 Harney Street, (402) 342-1500, preserves a 1930's Art Deco office building. Doubles, $120; weekend rate, $65. The Red Lion Hotel, 1616 Dodge Street, (402) 346-7600, a large, modern hotel, caters to a business clientele. Doubles, $127 to $133; weekend rate, $69. Where to Eat Omaha defies its position smack in the middle of America's meat-and-potato belt, and most Omahans have a cosmopolitan attitude when it comes to dining out. Some Old Market possibilities include the following: The Diner, 12th and Harney Streets, (402) 341-9870, is exactly what |
609201_0 | Needed: More Research On Women's Health | The National Institutes of Health's recently announced medical study on postmenopausal women to be conducted at the New Jersey Medical School among other sites nationwide ("A Medical Study on Older Women," April 4) is long overdue. As the chairwoman for the Medical Society of New Jersey's Committee on Women in Medicine, I am working with other individuals and organizations to develop a statewide agenda to advocate improvements in access, disease prevention and research for women's health. We have found research to be severely lacking for many groups of females aside from the postmenopausal women on whom the N.I.H. study is focusing. Among the topics discussed at our committee's daylong conference in March were the fact that New Jersey has the third highest breast cancer death rate in the United States while less than 15 percent of women over 40 receive annual mammograms. New Jersey also has the highest percentage of female AIDS patients. The conference also addressed the difficulties encountered by pregnant women in receiving adequate pre-natal care. Some physicians, fearing potential harm to fetuses and subsequent malpractice suits, have been unwilling to treat pregnant women for problems unrelated to pregnancy. Nationwide, nine million women of childbearing age lack health insurance, primarily because they are more likely than men to work for employers who do not provide health insurance or be dependent on spouses whose benefits do not include family coverage. Women of all ages have for too long been excluded from research of many serious diseases that affect them as much as or more than men. For example, though heart disease kills more women than men, clinical research in this area has traditionally focused only on males. What's more, dosages of medication administered for all ailments are generally based on research for the average 170-pound male. While we applaud the N.I.H. program, it is critical that future large-scale medical research projects include not only postmenopausal women but women from a number of different high-risk groups. PATRICIA G. KLEIN, M.D. Chairwoman Committee on Women in Medicine Medical Society of New Jersey Dr. Klein is a neurologist with offices in Teaneck and Westwood. |
609252_0 | What the World's Women Want | The staple image of overpopulation is a ravaged landscape: rivers thick with pollutants, land on which there is no topsoil, forests denuded of trees, and sad migrations of people looking for more space, more food, more chances. What you won't see -- unless she's starving, and thus a cynosure for cameras -- is a woman whose life consists of bearing child after child to live, or die, in this wasted landscape. During the years of debate over whether unbridled population growth is a boon or a disaster, nobody's talked much about her. And, tragically, she cannot speak for herself. Last week, however, at a United Nations meeting planning the once-a-decade International Conference on Population and Development to be held in Cairo next year, voices from all over the world spoke on her behalf. Perhaps the strongest was that of Timothy Wirth, the State Department Counselor. "As we prepare for Cairo," he said, "we must recognize that women know . . . what they need, and they must be equal partners in programs and policies." Therefore, he continued, the Clinton Administration intends to reverse the family-planning policies announced at the Mexico City conference in 1984 by President Reagan and embraced by President Bush. In banning Federal aid to international family-planning agencies that condoned abortion in any way, they held women in poor countries hostage to the messy abortion politics of this rich one. For these women, pregnancy can be a killer: at least 500,000 die of pregnancy-related causes every year -- 25 percent of them because of an illegal, botched abortion. Furthermore, they'll go on dying if they can't get contraceptives and safe abortions. The Clinton Administration, Mr. Wirth said, is committed to supporting their access to both. A woman who cannot control her reproductive life has little control over much else in her life. She will be poor -- and powerless. Population control, then, will not only ease pressures on an endangered environment, it will enhance the lives of women who in all too many cruel instances are treated as second class. As the 21st century approaches, the earth's nations must pay more profound attention to the earth's health. They can start by paying profound attention to women's health. |
609314_0 | A Reader's Guide to the Balkans | To the Editor: Robert D. Kaplan's suggestion that one should read the poems of C. P. Cavafy, Odysseas Elytis and George Seferis to understand the Greek psyche is misleading, for while these poets are certainly great in their own right, their poetry often deals with topics that have little to do with Greece and that are concerned with their personal philosophical problems. Two works of literature that provide excellent insights into the Greek character are Nikos Kazantzakis's novels "The Fratricides" and "Zorba the Greek." BILL MATSIKOUDIS Colts Neck, N.J. |
609121_0 | Carving an Identity Niche on the East End | THE front of WEHM-FM, the newest radio station in East Hampton, is a giant window on Main Street. But it is a Hamptons main street. "I always honk and wave to them as I drive by," said Christie Brinkley, the model. "I'm not sure if they recognize my car yet." Recognizing the prominent has become a daily activity at WEHM, where star power is not only on the air, but also behind the scenes. One can't talk about the station without sounding like a name dropper. Among the owners are Ms. Brinkley and her husband, Billy Joel. "I wanted to get involved in a local business," Mr. Joel, of Amagansett, said. "People think I own restaurants out here or whatever, but this is my first business." Rather than pizza, Mr. Joel chose platters to spin. "I've always liked radio," he said. "I've always understood radio, and someone once told me, 'Do what you know.' " "We're equal partners in this," Ms. Brinkley said. "People say, 'Oh, I heard your radio station.' It's kind of fun." At 5,000 watts, WEHM, at 96.7 on the dial, may have more power coming from its personnel then its tower. A principal owner is Michael P. (Mickey) Schulhof, who runs the Sony Corporation U.S.A. when he is not helping to run the station in the Hamptons. The other principal owner is Leonard Ackerman, a lawyer in East Hampton. Mr. Ackerman is president and chief executive of WEHM, which advertises itself as "the Voice of the East End." Helping to define that voice is the community affairs director, Connie Collins, who was on WNBC-TV News for 17 years. "When I was putting the programs together I called some my friends," Ms. Collins, of Bridgehampton, said. She persuaded Liz Smith to offer a gossip report. "I have one of her bitch's pups," Ms. Collins said. "We're family." And Pia Lindstrom to review movies. "She had it written into her Channel 4 contract," Ms. Collins said. And Christi Ferer of "Today" to report on fashion. Kristi Witker of Water Mill, a former co-anchor and correspondent at WPIX-TV, has a health program. "I pick a disease of the week," she said. "But it has to have some hope to it." Besides a program for writers -- "writers are like daisies out here," Ms. Collins said -- and other groups, Ms. Collins has a business program. "I'm doing it now," |
609368_18 | The Telephone Transformed -- Into Almost Everything | used to call it news, Al. With changing telephones are coming profoundly altered relationships to information of all sorts. Someone who logs onto the Internet has instant access to something else called news -- news in its rawest and most ancient sense, messages between users, either broadcast or one to one, in thousands of groups. A group may be alt.fan.dan-quayle (where a long-running series of messages still spins off the topic "Mr. Potatoe Head") or rec.music.indian.classical or alt.books.anne-rice or alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless -- not to be confused with alt.binaries.pictures.erotica. The Internet -- a disorganized, evolving entity built up from hundreds of thousands of interlinked university, corporate and government networks -- remains far from user-friendly, compared with commercial services like Compuserve and Prodigy, but it seems to be reaching a watershed. Non-technically-minded individuals without university connections can now attach themselves to the Internet through commercial services that are springing up. There is an astonishing breadth of knowledge here, and an astonishing ability of people to find sympathetic sharers of the most esoteric interests. And no matter how long one remains on line reading such news, on exit one gets a reminder that we are drinking from a deep sea: There are still 1038071 unread articles in 1388 groups. The business of providing information -- gathering, reporting, editing, organizing and disseminating news -- has barely begun to respond. One service traditionally provided by institutions like the newspaper you are now reading (unless, that is, you have retrieved these words from an electronic data base or had them scanned and e-mailed to you) has been the sifting of information: editors use the limited space and varied typography of a newspaper to make judgments about what news is important. Their judgments are broadcast in more or less identical form to a million readers. Big newspapers and network news shows are culturally unifying, but, with a few exceptions, these organizations have been slow to adapt to the changing information marketplace. And cultural fragmentation seems to lie at the heart of the information services springing up across the telephone network. At Bellcore, the wing of Bell Labs that spun off with the Baby Bells after the A.T.&T. breakup 10 years ago, two of the many prototype systems for replacing human judgment about what information we do and do not want to receive are called Simple Electronic Filtering Tool (SIFT) and Electronic Receptionist (no acronym to date). SIFT is |
609368_20 | The Telephone Transformed -- Into Almost Everything | designed to sort incoming mail and news according to personal preference, forwarding it to one's pocket pal, or e-mail, or voice mail (after automated conversion to speech), or fax machine or wastebasket. There are reasons to worry about such systems. One is that they require a huge amount of machine intelligence; as Penzias likes to say, a computer trying to identify your love letters is likely to missort I'd love to see your sales figures and If I can't see you I'll kill myself. Another is that they seem to drain the element of chance from our everyday wanderings through the world of information -- the news we stumble on when turning pages. There is surely a kind of obsessiveness at work in the accumulation of the gadgets and the information-service subscriptions that let us have news bits instantly around the clock. These days you can't afford to wait for business news, goes a pitch for the Prodigy on-line network, though it might as well be for any of several dozen services. Who can afford to wait? "There's a tremendous drive toward increasingly fast gratification," says James Katz, a sociologist at Bellcore. "People feel more time-stressed." For most of the new technologies, faster means smaller: headlines and sound bites. Al Zabarsky still enjoys the nostalgic, tactile feeling of reading his Sunday paper by the swimming pool, but the kind of news that you can't afford to wait for tends to be quicker to digest as well as deliver. Still, everyone seems to be going on line. Physicians are setting up programs to transmit not just medical-journal data bases, but also summaries of patient records faxable straight to the emergency room, and even face-to-face video encounters between doctor and patient. Law firms and corporations have just begun collaborating in an on-line network created by Steven Brill of American Lawyer Media that treats legal briefs and sample contracts like any other data-base fodder. The idea is that young associates all over the country are duplicating effort, day after day and year after year -- at the expense of their clients, of course -- recreating legal research that could more efficiently be thought of as a standardized commodity. President Clinton's campaign had set up several e-mail addresses even before he took office. On Compuserve, try GO WHITEHOUSE. On the Internet, clinton-info@campaign92.org. Virtually anyone with a computer can subscribe electronically to the full range |
609171_0 | The Blizzard | To the Editor: My experience at the time of the blizzard does not bear out the information given in the chart. I was booked on Flight 1165 from Kennedy Airport to Costa Rica on March 13. I arrived at the airport three hours before the flight was due to leave at 9:59 A.M. for Miami. We were informed that the plane was delayed and finally that it had been canceled, but we were told that unless we waited until the tickets were returned to us a refund could not be guaranteed. No one could possibly blame American Airlines for the cancellation as by this time the blizzard was imminent. Unfortunately, due to the delay in American's making this decision, I was not able to return to Connecticut by Connecticut Limousine as that company too had discontinued its service. After recovering my luggage I inquired about hotel vouchers and was informed that it was not the policy of American to issue assistance to passengers if the flight cancellation was not their responsibility. I requested that I might be allowed to sit in a chair as I am too old to sit on the floor as many people were having to do. I was told that all the chairs had been removed from the main lobby because otherwise many derelicts used them. I then asked if one of the waiting areas at the various gates could be opened to provide seating but was told that this could not be done for security reasons. I was told that there was nowhere to leave luggage as its safety could not be guaranteed. Eventually I was advised that I should walk through the corridor to the adjoining building where there were some chairs in the downstairs lobby. Dragging my luggage, I walked over. The chairs were all taken. Upstairs in this building there were no chairs and people were lying on the dirty carpet. After a sleepless night on this cold, drafty floor I returned to the main building and discovered that there American Airlines had handed out blankets the previous night, and opened up one of the waiting areas for seating (as I had suggested) and moreover had provided free tea, coffee and cocoa. Since no announcement of these efforts was made over the intercom in the building where I was, there was no way to know. I certainly didn't meet anyone who was |
609076_1 | In the Region: Westchester; Dealing With Cellular Phone Antennas | proliferation of antennas, radio towers and satellite dishes, all transmitters that some say pose a health risk and detract from a community's overall appearance. "This is also a real estate issue," said Ms. Lederer-Plaskett, a broker with Icon Realty Corporation in Scarsdale. "For the last two or three years people are staying away from housing that's anywhere near those sites." The basic problem is that many municipal codes haven't kept up with advances in technology. Most were written in the 70's, before the proliferation of cellular telephones and satellite TV dishes that transmit and receive other data. But local zoning laws can be preempted if they impose "unreasonable limitations on, or prevent" the reception and delivery of such services, says the Federal Communications Commission. The agency regulates the cellular and satellite industries and insures the public's right to enjoy these services unimpeded by local zoning laws. Most of the health concerns seem to be limited to cellular antennas and satellite dishes that transmit, as well as receive, signals. The technologies operate via radio and microwave frequencies and the research done on the effects of radiation from these sources has so far reached no firm conclusions. Last year, a Florida man sued, saying that his wife's fatal brain tumor had been caused by her use of a cellular telephone. The suit is still in a pretrial stage. Representatives of the cellular telephone industry say there is no danger. "Once people are educated, the fears go away," said Jane O'Donaghue, spokeswoman for Cellular One. A commercial cellular antenna, she said, "puts out a maximum of 100 watts, which is much lower than for most radio stations." Nevertheless, concerns about health persist, coupled with more standard zoning questions, such as where and how big an antenna should be and how it should look. Some communities that already regulate the height and placement of radio towers "may just add on new regulations to cover the newer technologies," said Jonathan Kanter, chief planner for the county Planning Department. "Others that don't have anything in place may take a blanket approach that would cover everything." Greenburgh was considering drafting an ordinance to limit installations of transmitting antennas to commercial and multipurpose areas, but some residents balked since many co-op apartments and other multifamily homes are in those areas. "It's just not fair to burden these residents exclusively," said Ms. Lederer-Plaskett. "We're still looking at the possibility |
609313_0 | A Reader's Guide to the Balkans | To the Editor: Robert D. Kaplan's suggestion that one should read the poems of C. P. Cavafy, Odysseas Elytis and George Seferis to understand the Greek psyche is misleading, for while these poets are certainly great in their own right, their poetry often deals with topics that have little to do with Greece and that are concerned with their personal philosophical problems. Two works of literature that provide excellent insights into the Greek character are Nikos Kazantzakis's novels "The Fratricides" and "Zorba the Greek." BILL MATSIKOUDIS Colts Neck, N.J. |
608380_0 | U.S. SET TO CHANGE ABORTION POLICIES | Declaring that it wanted to help lead a new global effort to address the issue of overpopulation, the Clinton Administration said today that efforts to stabilize world population growth must concentrate on providing more opportunities and rights for women, including abortions. In a speech to a United Nations committee that is planning a major conference on population in Cairo next year, Timothy E. Wirth, the State Department Counselor, said the Administration intended to reverse policies on population growth that had been adopted under Presidents Reagan and Bush. Under the two Republican Presidents the United States refused to finance international population programs that provided women with counseling on abortion. In addition, in Mr. Reagan's term, the United States took the position that population growth was a "neutral phenomenon" -- neither harmful nor beneficial to the environment -- and that the important issue was economic development. A Question of Choice In a previous United Nations population conference held in 1974 in Bucharest, Romania, and in 1984 in Mexico City, the issue of abortion was played down. Some population experts say that out of deference to Catholic countries and some Muslim nations, they do not expect next year's gathering to approve a strongly worded statement asserting a woman's right to an abortion. Still Mr. Wirth said the United States would push for it. "The U.S. Government would be remiss if it did not develop recommendations and guidance with regard to abortion," Mr. Wirth said. "Our position is to support reproductive choice, including access to safe abortion." Population experts say about 125,000 women die each year -- about one-fourth of all maternal deaths -- as a result of improperly performed abortions. Almost all of these deaths occur in developing countries. In outlining Administration policy for the first time in a forum devoted to population issues, Mr. Wirth made clear how dramatic a change the Clinton Administration was making in the area of population stabilization. President 'Deeply Committed' "President Clinton is deeply committed to moving population to the forefront of America's international priorities," Mr. Wirth said. "He understands the cost of excessive population growth to the health of women, to the natural environment and to our hopes for alleviating poverty. He believes that America cannot stand aside as the world confronts one of the largest challenges of this century and the next." Mr. Wirth also put the Clinton Administration on record endorsing other ideas in |
608326_3 | Record Store of Near Future: Computers Replace the Racks | sitting around, unused," said Robert Delanoy, vice president of retail record sales for Tower. Personics, Mr. Delanoy said, had trouble getting licensing rights from record companies, and thus had a limited selection. And most customers preferred to just buy tapes rather than compile their own. For his part, Mr. Delanoy is skeptical about the I.B.M.-Blockbuster effort. "We're going to keep on doing this the old-fashioned way -- just sell 'em," he said. Backers See Advantages Yet I.B.M. and Blockbuster are convinced they have a more advanced system, more marketing muscle and better timing. "This is a distribution channel with compelling advantages for retailers, content suppliers and consumers," said Robert Carberry, president of Fireworks Partners, the I.B.M. unit handling the partnership with Blockbuster. The new system, which should be available in the first half of next year, will involve a kiosk in the store, where consumers will order selections by touching a computer screen. The first offerings will be audio compact disks and video games, with videocassettes offered later. Working models of the system copy CD albums in about six minutes. Color laser printers in the kiosk will reproduce the jacket pictures and liner notes -- with a quality that company officials say is indistinguishable from factory production. At the outset, the price of the electronically distributed CD's will be the same as those from the factory. But that could eventually change, since $3 to $4 of the cost of a $15 CD now goes for transportation. Unlike the early system tried at Tower Record stores, the I.B.M.-Blockbuster venture will offer only the same CD albums that the record companies market. It will not give consumers the option of making their own album by picking and choosing songs , for instance. Maybe Easing Some Fears That restriction, I.B.M. and Blockbuster officials say, should simplify the task of counting the number of times a recording is transmitted from a central computer bank to stores, presumably allaying record companies' fears about piracy. And it would simplify the task of paying record companies a fee each time a recording is reproduced. Officials with the venture say they have held talks with some record companies, game makers and movie studios, and many of them are intrigued. A big Japanese video game producer, for instance, is said to be quite interested. In its statement, Sony said it had not been contacted by either I.B.M. or Blockbuster. |
609740_1 | Doing Science on the Network: A Long Way From Gutenberg | other types of communication. All it takes is a personal computer and a phone line. "It's the most fundamental shift since Gutenberg," said Dr. Larry Smarr, an astrophysicist who directs the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. "The Internet is basically a space and time destroyer," he said. "It shrinks distance and time to zero. It's as if all the world's scientists were in one room, available at one computer. Needless to say, this is having a profound impact on the way science is done." Dr. Stephen S. Wolff, head of networking at the National Science Foundation, the Federal agency that runs the nation's top science network, said the emerging era meant "you can be physically isolated without being intellectually isolated," adding, That's a profound change." The shift is clear to Dr. Brendan D. McKay, a computer scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. Three years ago over the networks he got an electronic query about his work from Dr. Stanislaw Radziszowsky, a mathematician at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Since then, the two have exchanged more than 1,000 messages over the networks in a partnership undaunted by a distance of thousands of miles. While one works, the other sleeps. "The ability to communicate very rapidly and cheaply with anyone anywhere has revolutionized collaboration," Dr. McKay said in a telephone interview. Thousands of Australian researchers, he added, are linked into the global net. "Everybody's starting to use them," he said. A hint of the emerging power of the networks occurred in March as a robot from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution explored the bottom of the Gulf of California. More than a mile down, surrounded by inky darkness, the robot scrutinized hot vents and bizarre life forms. Instantly, its raw data were flashed over a tether to a surface ship and then, via satellite, to computer networks and researchers around the globe. A very different realm is to be explored by environmental scientists at the Polytechnic University of New York. Over the networks, they are preparing to hunt for treasures of environmental data hidden inside hundreds computers around the world, such as those at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, the World Health Organization in Geneva and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has voluminous satellite data. The scientists' aim is to open such out-of-the-way archives to routine analysis. The study of the social |
609740_4 | Doing Science on the Network: A Long Way From Gutenberg | said Dr. Radziszowsky of the Rochester Institute of Technology. "They were not that popular a few years ago, but now more and more people are realizing their tremendous power. They're a tool of greater capability than anything before." Barring Electronic Junk Mail Indeed, so many people are now putting so much material on the networks that data overload and psychological burnout are hot topics. Emerging aids include the introduction of human editors similar to those at print journals, computer programs that pinpoint desired data, and electronic islands that bar the equivalent of hooligans, junk mail and brassy salesmen. "Dealing with the Internet is like dealing with a fire hose," said Susan K. Kubany, president of Omnet Inc., a private company in Boston whose network for oceanographers prides itself on decorum and civility. "Much of the beauty and wonder of Internet and its resources, if you look on the horizon, could become a horrific problem. Systems and people will shut down. I know people who have stopped using Internet because they get 500 messages a day." "We believe that giving people tools and resources is important, not just data," she added. "We manage our net very carefully for the benefit of the community." At its heart, the research enterprise has always been a social process, despite the myth of the scientist as a lone genius at work in isolation. Moreover, the speed with which ideas are communicated has often been a basic regulator on the pace of scientific progress. In the 17th century, at the start of the science revolution, books were the main way of disseminating new ideas. The process was costly, haphazard and slow. An innovation, the scientific journal, made its debut in 1665. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London was published monthly, and its success prompted a deluge of such periodicals over the years. Printed Journals Face Problems Today at least 40,000 scientific journals roll off presses around the world, flooding libraries and laboratories with more than a million new articles each year. Some of the best-known journals are published weekly. Publication can still entail delays of many months, and sometimes years. Moreover, the distribution of journals can be severely limited by geographical barriers and skyrocketing costs, which have risen for two decades at an average rate of 13.5 percent a year. Today an annual subscription can cost $1,000 or more. As a result, foreign |
609881_3 | Medical Schools Gaining An Unexpected Popularity | do good for the community. An additional attraction is the excitement of new technology, like gene therapy. And many students are optimistic that things will somehow improve for doctors, though most offer little in the way of specific predictions. Applicants are also realistic. In a generally inhospitable job market, they see medicine as a surer way of earning an income. "There is going to be an enormous demand for doctors in the future," said Cynthia Shoemaker, a sophomore at Wellesley College who plans to apply to medical school after returning from a year at Oxford University. "Whether there's money or not, people are still going to be sick and dying." Many applicants have relatives and friends who have been laid off at I.B.M. and other corporations that had been seen as bastions of stability. "Interest in engineering, computer science, banking, business and law has fallen off with the end of the boom," said Dr. Gerald Foster, director of admissions at Harvard Medical School. Medicine, he added, is seen as recession-proof. Diversity in Applicants The incoming class will probably much more closely resemble the American population in sex and ethnic background than past classes. This year about 42 percent of the applicants are women, 18 percent Asians, 8 percent blacks and 5 percent Hispanic people. As in the past, the overwhelming majority of those entering medical school next fall will come straight from college. But officials of several medical schools said they hoped to admit a small number of students who have done something else since graduating from college. "The student who breaks step, even for a year, is a different student, especially if they did it by choice," said Dr. D. Daniel Hunt, a dean at the University of Washington in Seattle. "You just can't get away with saying sit down and take notes, and they keep the teachers more honest than someone right out of college who tends to accept what is said." Among those who have already been accepted in this year's pool of applicants are a National Basketball Association player, an Orange Bowl queen, nuns and other clergy, commercial airline pilots, bankers and a massage therapist who had worked with AIDS patients. Some said they have made enough money in the years since graduating from college to pursue the career in which they were most interested, medicine. "It's ironic that as medicine is becoming more and more |
609893_0 | Rival Catholic Politicians Talking Peace in Ulster | The two most influential Roman Catholic political leaders in Northern Ireland, who have long been vehement enemies, have begun to discuss the possibility of a framework for peace that would end the violence here between the Irish Republican Army and British forces. More than 3,000 people have been killed by civil strife in this predominantly Protestant British province since 1969, including 28 in Northern Ireland this year and 3 killed by I.R.A. bombs in England. The rate is lower than in previous years. John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, which condemns I.R.A. violence, has met twice in the last month with Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing. Sinn Fein steadfastly refuses to renounce violence as a way to drive the British forces out of the province, which has about 900,000 Protestants and 650,000 Catholics. The discussions, which both leaders say will continue, came as a surprise to virtually all officials, politicians and analysts in Northern Ireland, the British mainland and the Irish Republic to the south. They began at a time when the British Secretary for Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, has been trying to persuade political leaders here to resume the peace talks that faltered last fall. Officials and experts say it is impossible to tell whether the Hume-Adams talks might lead to serious progress toward peace. Many Past Failures Dozens of initiatives have failed since 1969, when the violence erupted, stemming from Catholic protests against discrimination by the Protestant majority. The I.R.A. then renewed its guerrilla war to drive the British forces from the province and pave the way for a united Ireland, ending the partition that took place when the south of the island became independent in 1922. "Our object," Mr. Hume said in an interview, "is to bring about a lasting peace. We are not talking about a cease-fire, but about a total cessation of all violence." He said this included violence on the part of the I.R.A. and the British security forces. Mr. Adams said at a news conference that "we are committed to exploring the basis on which we can move forward to lasting peace." Mr. Adams, a member of the British Parliament until a candidate from Mr. Hume's party defeated him last year, denies that his party is a wing of the I.R.A. and notes that it would be illegal for him to talk to |
606995_1 | Third World Population Explosion Demands Western Response | confronting humankind at this juncture: the ongoing population explosion. I refer to the report on the Chinese effort to control it, and the article on our immigration service's being swamped by a seemingly uncontrollable influx of asylum seekers. In either case we risk drawing wrong conclusions. It would be a tragedy if the excesses connected with the Chinese effort jeopardized President Clinton's intended reversal of American policy that denied funds for family planning abroad; this reversal can only be the beginning of a more ambitious effort, together with other industrial countries and possibly through a United Nations setup, to set third world countries on the path of radical population stabilization. As far as the asylum problem is concerned, it would be a mistake to believe that revamping immigration services would suffice to deal with it. European countries have learned what we still have to learn: that behind the genuinely political persecutees there looms an infinitely larger number of what the Germans call "economic refugees," that is, tens of millions of third world people who, facing misery if not starvation, will press against the borders of the still affluent. But unless something radical is done, no exclusion laws will help, nor will barbed wire or guns. Humankind confronts the novel condition -- unique in its entire history -- of its global numbers outgrowing the carrying capacity of the planet (these numbers now devouring and destroying what remains of the basic resources of the world: arable land, fresh water, forests, and so on). While in former eras "surplus" populations would find "empty" regions to which to migrate, the frontier is now closed. Even countries like the United States, Canada, Australia or even European ones that still can (and should) absorb millions, with a world population increasing by about 100 million each year and doubling exponentially within ever shorter periods, migration alone cannot solve the problem. This can only be done by developed countries jointly assisting the overpopulated countries in family planning and education, combined with aid for basic need fulfillment and old-age security systems; and, if need be, denying aid to governments unwilling to engage in such policies. Unless we act rapidly, it may be too late to approach the problem decently. Countries might be driven toward dealing with it through authoritarian coercion. JOHN H. HERZ Scarsdale, N.Y., April 28, 1993 The writer is emeritus professor of political science, City College, CUNY. |
607074_0 | ARABS TO EXTEND TALKS WITH ISRAEL | In a signal of possible progress in the Middle East peace talks, Arab delegates to the negotiations have decided to extend the discussions with Israel at least into the latter part of next week, a Syrian official said today. Mowaffak Allaf, head of the Syrian delegation to the talks, told reporters that the decision to extend the talks was made Tuesday night at a meeting of the heads of the Arab delegations. But as if to underscore how often Middle East negotiations are a matter of one step forward and one to the rear, the spokeswoman for the Palestinians, Hanan Ashrawi, said today that her delegation was suspending until the middle of next week participation in a working group on human rights because, she said, Israel had failed to provide some requested information. While Mr. Allaf played down the results of Syria's talks with Israel over the last few days, he said the Arab delegations "had responded positively to the invitation to prolong the round for another week, hoping that this will contribute to having at the end some concrete results in the peace process for the first time." Originally, the latest round of the peace talks were scheduled to last three weeks, from April 20 through May 6. But the start of the negotiations was delayed for a week, principally because of Palestinian reluctance to attend. After winning additional concessions from the Israelis and being pressed by the Syrian President, Hafez al-Assad, to attend, the Palestinians agreed to take part, and the negotiations resumed last Tuesday. As the talks began, the Israelis and the Americans, who are along with Russia sponsoring the negotiations, said they hoped that the talks would become continuous, without the long breaks that have characterized previous discussions. Arab delegates, particularly the Palestinians, have said the issue of continuous talks would depend on progress on substance. Even while agreeing to an extension, Mrs. Ashrawi stressed that difficult negotiations remained. "I would say things are serious, though difficult," the Palestinian spokesman told reporters. "Although in our land, we have seen epiphanies before, I don't think you will see epiphanies in this peace process. It is a cumulative, incremental process that takes tremendous hard work and attention to details, and work that cannot be daily discussed with the media." |
608965_0 | CLINTON EXPECTED TO ORDER RENEWAL OF NUCLEAR TESTS | With a Congressional moratorium on nuclear testing due to expire on July 1, President Clinton is expected to approve a plan that would allow underground blasts to resume by the end of the year, Administration officials said today. But the officials said Mr. Clinton was likely to emphasize that he intended to call a final halt to the testing in 1996. Congress, following the lead of Russia and France, imposed the nine-month moratorium on testing in 1992 and stipulated that tests could resume temporarily only after July 1 and only after the President had submitted a proposal for a comprehensive test ban to go into effect by 1996. Testing for Safety Representatives of the Departments of State, Energy and Defense have endorsed the new tests, saying that if the United States is to join in such a treaty, it must act while it can to insure the weapons' safety and reliability. But the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency has warned that Russia and France, which have agreed to stop testing as long as the United States does, will almost certainly respond by resuming weapons tests of their own. Such activity by the nuclear powers would make it more difficult to persuade countries like North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear aspirations, the agency has said. The principal members of the National Security Council met today to review the issue, Administration officials said. The group reached no formal decisions, and officials said it might be a week or more before Mr. Clinton announced a decision. Pentagon Calls Tests Vital But officials said they believed that it was unlikely that the President would overrule the recommendations of the Pentagon and the other national security agencies. They have publicly urged that the tests be resumed as soon as possible, saying they are vital to the safety and reliability of the United States nuclear stockpile. The nine-month moratorium passed by Congress in September included an amendment allowing the Administration to propose as many as 15 nuclear tests from 1993 to 1996, but none after that unless another country conducts one. It requires that the Administration give advance notice of its plan, and allows Congress to reject it. The United States last conducted a nuclear test in the summer of 1992, shortly before the moratorium went into effect on Oct. 1. The ban also in effect bars testing by Britain, which uses the same |
608970_0 | A U.N. Agency May Leave China Over Coercive Population Control | Alarmed by indications of a harsh family planning crackdown in the Chinese countryside, the United Nations Population Fund is considering withdrawing from China and ending its work in the most populous country in the world. The fund's withdrawal from China would end a fierce decadelong controversy about the role of the United Nations in China's one-child family planning program. The population fund has become associated -- unfairly, many diplomats say -- with the forced sterilizations and other coercive measures that China uses to control its population growth. Administration Trying to Decide The United States has refused to contribute to any of the fund's activities worldwide because of its presence in China. The Clinton Administration has said it wants to restore financing, but it has postponed doing so because of Congressional concern after recent reports about a family planning crackdown. A withdrawal from China would make it easier for the Clinton Administration to return to the population fund. But withdrawal would also remove a restraining force from China's population program, possibly producing more coercion than ever. Dr. Nafis Sadik, executive director of the New York-based population fund, confirmed in a telephone interview that withdrawal was a possibility. But she said Beijing might take the initiative and announce that the agency's program in China had ended. 'Chinese Might Just Get Fed Up' "The Chinese might just get fed up with everybody and say, 'We're doing very well, thank you, and goodbye,' " Dr. Sadik said. One diplomat said that if China was threatened with a pullout by the population fund, the Government would almost certainly announce on its own that the United Nations support was no longer necessary. Dr. Sadik said the Chinese "also don't want to be seen as jeopardizing resources to us from other donors." "That would be denying women all over Africa, Latin America and Asia Unfpa support," she said. Unfpa is the acronym of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, the population fund's former name. The acronym is still widely used. Diplomats have mentioned to Chinese officials that it might be time to "graduate" from the United Nations program, but it is unclear whether China is prepared to take the hint. "We haven't heard of this," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said when asked to comment on the population fund's plans. "Implementing a family planning policy is one of our basic national policies. For many years, we |
608952_0 | Alcohol's Benefits | To the Editor: Re "Study Finds 2 Drinks a Day Keep Heart Fit" (news item, May 3): The conclusions of Dr. J. Michael Gizano's clinical study have been suggested in other research trials as well. However, it is imperative that the millions of postmenopausal women who have had endometriosis, growth of tissue, as on the ovaries or in the peritoneal cavity, be alerted to other clinical findings. Dr. Judith Gavalier of the University of Pittsburgh has demonstrated that as few as three to six drinks a week can stimulate metabolic reactions that increase estrogen levels in postmenopausal women. In most women, this may have a beneficial effect in retarding bone loss. However, in postmenopausal women who have had endometriosis, raising estrogen levels could lead to a recurrence of endometriosis symptoms. SHARYN THYLAN President, Endometriosis Alliance of Greater New York New York, May 3, 1993 |
592705_0 | George Town Journal Their Prison Island: U.S. Policy Maroons Cubans | When Angel Garcia set out recently for Florida from the southern coast of Cuba in a stolen, overcrowded lobster boat, he figured that if he was picked up at sea it would be by the Cuban authorities, who would arrest him, or by the United States Coast Guard, which would rescue him. Instead, with the rotting 60-foot wooden boat leaking badly, Mr. Garcia was forced to direct the vessel toward the nearby Cayman Islands, where a private scuba-charter boat towed it the final 15 miles to harbor. There has never been any doubt in the minds of Mr. Garcia, or the 102 other passengers aboard the ship, the Cayo Largo Unidad 10, that any rescue is preferable to drowning. But since their arrival in the Cayman Islands, less than 200 miles south of Cuba, they, like other Cubans who have been washing up here recently, have quickly learned that all rescues are not created equal. Since 1966, in a special legacy of the cold war, any Cuban without a criminal record, unlike citizens of any other country, has been automatically granted legal residence immediately upon his arrival in the United States. Last year more than 2,500 Cubans fled to the United States by sea. Many were picked up and taken to shore by the Coast Guard. Mr. Garcia and his shipmates therefore thought that once they pulled into harbor here, Washington would quickly send someone to pick them up. A Bitter Awakening "Will they be taking us by boat or by plane?" the gaunt and weather-beaten captain asked a reporter the other day, holding fast to his belief that the country he called "my destiny" would soon be calling for him. Clearly, Mr. Garcia had not had time to absorb the lesson already learned by most of the 228 Cubans who have landed here accidentally, or who had deliberately chosen this slender, 20-mile-long British dependency as a stopping-off point in their journey to Florida in the last two years. In this tiny haven of secretive international banks and deep-sea-diving operations, Caymanians, eager to prevent their 100 square miles of territory from being overrun by any outsiders who are not affluent tourists, see the Cubans not as heroes, but as a troublesome burden. To the dismay of the Cubans and Caymanians alike, Washington, faced with greater immigration challenges, from policing the Mexican border to preventing an exodus of boat people from |
592628_0 | Protectionism Doesn't Help Balance of Trade; We Must Manufacture | To the Editor: In "Car Import Duty Can Only Hurt U.S. Economy"(letter, Feb. 7), Michael May seems to argue that America's economic position is improved if it imports automobiles without some form of control. The consumer will save $1 billion (no basis provided for that number), the trade deficit will help pay the Federal deficit and lower the interest rate. If we accept that the American consumer will save $1 billion by purchasing automobiles at "a few hundred dollars less" than the domestic equivalent, does it necessarily follow that the American economy is improved? I am not sure it does. The $1 billion saved is for those who buy automobiles. What would the impact be to the economy if the money spent for these foreign automobiles were spent for domestic products. With the price of the average car in excess of $10,000, I doubt that the price elasticity of demand for new cars would cause a significant decrease in total units sold. Competition among G.M., Ford and Chrysler would work to control prices. What would the impact be on the economy if we spread $20 billion additional automobile manufacturing across the economy. (The figure comes from an assumed 5 percent saving in Professor May's few hundred dollars a car.) In introductory economics courses we are exposed to the multiplier effect of new spending. If we assume a modest multiplier of three we are talking about $60 billion of economic activity. This encompasses all segments of the economy: glass, tires, rubber, batteries, textiles, carpets, ferrous and nonferrous metals, machine tools, home building, retail trade, computers and controls. We generate higher-paying jobs in these related industries without eliminating jobs in the service industries. More jobs mean less paid out in unemployment and welfare benefits. At the same time we have an increase in taxes collected at every level of government. Increased taxes and reduced spending work to reduce government deficits. This reduces pressure on the capital markets by lowering one segment of demand. Funds available increase. With our modest savings rate of around 2 percent we could generate $1.2 billion of savings. Domestic manufacture generates jobs, increases tax yields, reduces deficits and creates 20 percent more savings to help reduce interest rates. If we as a nation are going to consume products, we must manufacture products. When we do, we are all better off. J. CARTER SHOOK Ardmore, Pa., Feb. 11, 1993 |
592591_0 | Corrections | A chart yesterday with the Personal Health column, about ways to assess a treatment's risks and benefits, incompletely stated the assumptions underlying an estimate of changed life expectancy for a woman given estrogen replacement therapy. The figures were for a woman who had had a hysterectomy and who received estrogen alone. |
590911_0 | Brazilian Sequel: A Jailbreak, a Bitter Widow | With the killers of Francisco (Chico) Mendes apparently on the run in Bolivia, the widow of Brazil's slain Amazon defender asserted today that the authorities had ignored repeated warnings that security was dangerously lax at the Amazon jail. "The authorities knew about the conditions, but they didn't take any measures," the widow, Ilzamar Gadelha Mendes, said in a telephone interview from Xapuri, an Amazon town 2,500 miles northwest of here. Convicted in December 1990 for a murder that gained world notoriety, Darly Alves da Silva and his son, Darci Alves Pereira, escaped Monday from a lightly guarded "maximum security" jail that had only a low outside wall and no functioning guard towers or searchlights. "The only people who don't escape from our jail are those who don't want to," Americo Carneiro Paes, acting security secretary for Acre state, admitted to reporters in Rio Branco, the state capital. O Globo, a Rio newspaper, reported today that Monday's escape was the fifth successful escape from the prison in the last two months. "This incident comes as a surprise to no one," read a protest letter sent today to the Brazilian President, Itamar Franco, by five American environmental groups, led by the Environmental Defense Fund. "Union leaders, environmental activists and the press have long reported the Alves' privileged situation and scandalously lax conditions of incarceration in the Rio Branco jail." On Dec. 22, 1988, Mr. Pereira, a 21-year-old member of a local ranching family, ambushed and killed Mr. Mendes, a leader of union of rubber tappers whose livelihood was threatened by rain-forest deforestation. During the 1980's, a climate of criminal impunity reigned in the Brazilian Amazon, where hundreds of union workers and Indians were killed in cases that were left unprosecuted. But an international outcry forced Brazil to prosecute in the Mendes killing. The conviction in 1990 was hailed as a major step toward reducing lawlessness in the Amazon frontier. Around Brazil and across the world, Mr. Mendes achieved the posthumous stature of a martyr for the environment. At least a dozen Brazilian parks, squares and streets now bear his name. But in Acre, sympathetic policemen and ranchers showered privileges on the convicted father and son -- a color television, a refrigerator, a freezer, a stove, a radio and overnight visiting rights with women. Six months after he was convicted, Mr. da Silva, then 54, fathered a baby boy with a girlfriend, Maragareth |
590806_0 | For the Lowly Radio, New Tricks Are in Store | The radio industry has a long history of confounding skeptics, from those who thought the advent of car radios in the 1920's posed an unacceptable driver distraction, to the gloom mongers of the early 1950's who saw television silencing radio forever. And when the first palm-sized transistor radio went on sale in 1953? Naysayers dismissed it as a mere novelty. Now comes broadcasting's latest challenge: persuading listeners to interact more with their radios by embracing a new radio data system, which prints messages on a small display screen, among other features. Known as R.D.S., it is radio's first significant innovation since stereo sound was added to the FM signal in 1961. The technology, imported from Europe by American broadcasters and electronics companies, is being called by some a revolutionary advancement that can simplify and enhance the lowly radio with features that give listeners more information about the stations and programs they are listening to and greater ease in skipping around the dial. Features Are Listed "This new technology will bring an exciting, useful and cost-effective new service to the radio listener," said Almon Clegg, an industry consultant and chairman of a committee sponsored by electronics manufacturers and broadcasters to develop the system for use in the United States. Despite such a breathless billing, its success will depend on American audiences' interest in features that include: *A small screen to display printed information like the station's call letters, a song's title and artist, traffic and weather bulletins and, possibly, advertising. *The ability to search the dial by format rather than station, enabling a sports buff, for example, to search for all the sports programming in a city with the push of a button. *Automatic switching to a traffic report on another station, then switching back once the traffic update is over. *A "hand-off" function to automatically tune the radio to a stronger station playing the same program, allowing a driver traveling across country, for example, to continue listening to National Public Radio without touching the dial. *A broadcaster's ability to turn on a switched-off radio to announce an emergency or weather warning, as a more efficient alternative to the decades-old Emergency Broadcast System. These various feats are accomplished by sending a digital text signal -- using the zero's and one's of the binary language of computers -- via the unused portion of the radio signal called a subcarrier. Uses Binary Language |
587712_1 | Moscow Insists It Must Sell the Instruments of War to Pay the Costs of Peace | buyers is essentially our list of nasties." Of even more concern, the diplomat suggested, is the danger that dangerous new technologies will spread as Russian factories win more freedom to seek customers and as highly trained military scientists and engineers are offered large amounts of money for their expertise. Russian officials say a group of missile engineers -- not nuclear engineers, as originally reported -- were detained at the Moscow airport last fall on their way to North Korea. Meanwhile, in Ukraine Newly independent states, like Ukraine and Georgia, are seeking their own customers outside the Russian system, and impose few export controls on low-tech weapons like rifles, artillery and ammunition. There are also persistent reports that Ukraine, for instance, is seeking Greek and other buyers for ships of the Black Sea Fleet, which is under the joint control of Moscow and Kiev. But Russian officials say, and Western diplomats agree, that factories outside Russia were designed to make routine parts or to assemble weapons, while highly sensitive parts were almost all made in Russia and still come under Russia's export controls. Washington Does Likewise And for all the anxiety about proliferation, Russia has a fairly well-defined system to approve sales of advanced arms. Western diplomats say there has been little cause for concern thus far about unauthorized sales or exports of complex technology. Russian officials make no apologies for selling arms abroad or seeking to sell more, stressing a system of oversight to prevent sales that might destabilize countries. They also note that despite the smaller world market, the United States has maintained the level of its arms sales abroad while Russian sales have fallen sharply. Russian officials acknowledge that much of the Soviet Union's arms revenues were on paper, since allies like Vietnam, Cuba and others rarely paid what they owed. According to the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, arms credits constitute more than 40 percent of the $146 billion owed to Moscow, and are considered uncollectible. Russia now demands hard-currency cash from purchasers, while the United States is able to grant concessionary credits. Russian officials also acknowledge that enormous problems in supplying spare parts and servicing have diminished their competitivity, especially for aircraft. Problems for Old Customers The collapse of the Soviet Union has also meant big problems for traditional customers like Syria and India. No longer able to deal with a single Soviet ministry for parts, they must |
587694_0 | Tenneco's Ailing Chairman Says Therapy Is Going Well | The chairman of Tenneco Inc. today provided his first medical update since announcing Jan. 19 that he had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Speaking before 120 Wall Street analysts in New York this morning, Michael H. Walsh said his initial chemotherapy treatments last week had gone "exceedingly well." "I feel very, very good," he said. Tenneco also announced today that it turned its fortunes around in the fourth quarter, posting a $35 million profit compared with a loss in the comparable period a year earlier. 'How Do I Sound?' When Mr. Walsh first disclosed his condition, he said doctors confirmed that he had no symptoms from the usually fatal illness and that he could continue working while receiving monthly treatments to contain or shrink the tumor at Houston's M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Mr. Walsh, 50, answered a reporter's question in a telephone conference call today after the analysts' meeting about his mood and physical condition with a question of his own, "How do I sound?" As if on cue, the reporter replied, "You sound great." "That's how I'm doing," Mr. Walsh said. He also indicated to reporters that he viewed his case of brain cancer as having no relevance to the stormy debate over the safety of cellular telephones. "Have I ever been a user of cellular telephones?" he said, restating a reporter's question. "No." Tenneco's fourth-quarter profit compared with a $26 million loss in the quarter a year earlier. Income from operations improved modestly, to $192 million from $183 million. Most of the improvement came in the farm machinery and construction equipment unit, J. I. Case. Case narrowed its operating loss -- mainly through price increases and cost reductions -- to $94 million from a loss of $227 million. Dana G. Mead, head of the Case unit and Tenneco president, said he anticipated a loss for the current quarter, but that demand for Case products should rise by at least 4 percent and that the unit would be profitable over all in 1993. Tenneco will take a $430 million charge in the first quarter because of an accounting change for retiree health benefits. COMPANY NEWS |
587520_1 | U.S. Resumes Granting Patents On Genetically Altered Animals | of human health. Near term, scientists expect to see such developments as laboratory mice made genetically suited for research on AIDS and other human diseases; genetically altered pigs that produce human hemoglobin for use in blood substitutes, and bioengineered cows that produce milk with the proteins found in human mother's milk. The most ambitious and very likely the most controversial of these efforts is in "xenografts" -- developing animals that can supply organs like hearts, livers or kidneys for human transplant recipients. The DNX Corporation, a biotechnology company in Princeton, N.J., is working to develop pigs with genes that mask the immunological markers of "pigness," which normally provoke a human immune system to wage all-out war against an alien body part. Timetable for Transplants Officials at DNX, which in 1991 developed a pig that produces human hemoglobin, said the first swine-to-human transplants could take place by the late 1990's. "My understanding is that these first few are just the beginning," James McCamant, publisher of the Ag-biotech Stock Letter in Berkeley, Calif., said of the recently issued patents. "To me, the most important impact is that it will allow us to find out who's got a strong patent position. Over the next 12 months, we should have a lot clearer idea of what's going on." The approval of new animal patents, while good for the United States biotechnology industry, is almost certain to reignite political opposition in Congress from animal-rights groups and some farmers. In 1989, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would exempt farmers from paying royalties on the offspring of genetically engineered livestock, but the measure never advanced very far in the Senate. But much has changed in the last five years. Industry executives say their shift away from farm animals had little to do with the political controversy. Rather, most say the decision stemmed from technical issues and a concern that farm animals simply would not produce big profits "The science wasn't ready yet to make it economically feasible," said James Sherblum, president of the TSI Corporation in Worcester, Mass. TSI dropped efforts to develop a "super pig" whose meat would have less cholesterol, largely because of persistent problems with the animal's immune system. Move Into Drug Testing Hoping for more immediate profits, TSI put most of its money into developing mice that could be used as laboratory models and is using them to carve out |
587556_2 | Treating Ills in Childhood Cancer Survivors | oncologist, both at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, and Dr. Donna R. Copeland, a pediatric psychologist at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, recently summarized the various physical, educational, psychological and social consequences that can afflict children cured of cancer. Long-Term Health Damage Writing last fall in CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, published by the American Cancer Society, Dr. DeLaat and Dr. Lampkin noted that while children tolerated the immediate toxic effects of therapy "surprisingly well," they were more susceptible than adults to long-term damage, since their bodies were growing and their organ systems were developing. Thus, children with leukemia who were treated with radiation and/or chemotherapy to the brain or spine may suffer a deficiency in growth hormone or bone growth, leading to short stature or spinal deformities. Lungs can be severely damaged by certain cancer-killing drugs as well as by radiation to the chest, for example, to treat Hodgkin's disease. Dr. Copeland noted that learning disabilities, diminished intellectual ability or even mild mental retardation were common results of radiation to the brain, once widely used to prevent recurrence of childhood leukemia and still a main treatment for brain tumors. In most youngsters, impairment does not occur immediately and thus may not be recognized as related to the treatment. Instead the effects of radiation to the brain typically show up one or more years later and gradually get worse. Dr. Virginia C. Peckham, formerly an education cancer specialist at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, found that years later children whose leukemia had been treated with the old high-dose cranial radiation were two grade levels lower than expected in reading and arithmetic, based on their performance at the time of treatment. While some children were doing better than expected in school, more than 40 percent were in special education classes and half had had to repeat a grade. When radiation or potent chemotherapy is needed to treat cancers of the abdominal area, reproductive organs can be damaged, resulting in infertility or sterility in men and women and anatomical deformities in women that can interfere with a full-term pregnancy. But here is also good news: researchers have so far found no evidence of an increase in birth defects among the offspring of patients who later have children. The long-term risks of cancer treatments in children are further enhanced by the fact that those who are cured |
587556_6 | Treating Ills in Childhood Cancer Survivors | that are meant to reduce long-term adverse effects." Dr. Louis Costine, childhood cancer specialist at the University of Rochester's Strong-Memorial Hospital, emphasized that in developing safer treatment strategies, oncologists must always be careful not to compromise a child's chances of cure. Still, he outlined many changes that have been made in treatment regimens to reduce long-term risks, sometimes with the surprising effect of increasing survival chances as well. They include reducing the amount of radiation therapy used to treat Hodgkin's disease by combining lesser radiation with chemotherapy; modifying the kinds and duration of chemotherapy and limiting or eliminating radiation therapy to reduce the risk of muscle, bone and organ damage in children with Wilm's tumor, a kidney cancer, and decreasing the duration of chemotherapy, changing the drugs used and relying less on radiation to the brain to treat children with acute lymphocytic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer. Areas of Frustration "For most cancers in children, we have succeeded in increasing survival and decreasing both the immediate and the delayed side effects," Dr. Costine said in an interview. "But areas of frustration remain. For example, brain tumors, which are the second most common cancers in children, are still difficult to eradicate, and attempts at cure can have side effects that are often severe." These can include impaired hearing or vision or mental retardation. Dr. DeLaat and Dr. Lampkin emphasized that follow-up care should not end once children are considered cured, since many will suffer delayed effects that are amenable to treatment. For example, when hormone production is impaired by cancer therapy, hormones can be given to alleviate growth problems or delays in puberty. In addition to helping children weather the consequences of cancer treatment, long-term surveillance of cancer survivors can help researchers identify other delayed effects that warrant further changes in treatment regimens, they wrote. Dr. Peckham, who discussed the educational consequences of cancer treatment in the quarterly newsletter of the Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Bethesda, Md., 20814, telephone (301) 657-8401), emphasized that children who survived cancer "need close and careful educational monitoring." Dr. Peckham added, "It may be possible to do some preventive educational interventions before the full impact of delayed effects is realized." Dr. Copeland urged cancer treatment centers to alert parents and school personnel to the possible side effects of cancer treatment and to equip parents to serve as educational advocates for their children. |
587719_1 | Market Place; In cellular telephone stocks, perception is everything. | at Josephthal Lyon & Ross Inc., also recently downgraded to "sell" his rating of the stock of Pacific Telesis. The regional Bell company in California announced that it would spin off its cellular telephone business and sell stock to large investors or the public. The cellular industry's stocks seem to be undergoing as many oscillations as a radio signal. On Jan. 21, a Florida man said on the "Larry King Live" television show that he was suing a cellular manufacturer and carrier for causing his wife's fatal brain cancer. Cellular stocks plunged the next day and have been wobbling with every wave of favorable and unfavorable comment on the cellular industry. Yesterday, after a Congressional hearing on cellular telephones and health hazards, the stock of McCaw Cellular, the biggest wireless carrier, closed in over-the-counter trading at $35.25, up $1.875. Shares of Motorola, the biggest maker of cellular phones, closed at $54.25, up 50 cents, on the New York Stock Exchange. The news media have not provided much to inform a scientifically uneducated public. Most coverage has taken the form of evidence Ping-Pong: one scientist serves up a potential peril and another expert lobs back a calming reassurance. What is undisputable is that the danger of any electromagnetic field, including those generated by cellular telephones, is defined by its radio frequency, its power and its proximity to human tissue. A field is dangerous when all three aspects are dangerously high; if only two are high, the chances of harm usually drop sharply. With pocket-size cellular telephones, the danger of heat damage is almost nil. The frequency is under 900 megahertz (compared with 2450 megahertz for a microwave oven) and less than half a watt of power (compared with 700 watts for a microwave oven). But the phone is next to the head, which is why cellular telephone users become nervous and cancer victims litigious. The danger of some mysterious nonthermal effects is harder to evaluate, and the effect of a very low frequency, like 60 hertz for household appliances, is still open to question. But cellular telephones, by their very nature, are designed to deposit most of their radio signal into space so they can connect to other radio transmitters and thus complete phone calls. Only a fraction of the small amount of electromagnetic radiation reaches the head. Trying to evaluate the effects of such tiny energy field may take years. |
587588_3 | Food Notes | midnight, will feature drinks, dancing and hors d'oeuvres prepared by a number of New York chefs. Tickets, $30, are available at the door. Tie and jacket are required for men. A New Mayonnaise Hellmann's has introduced a reduced-fat, cholesterol-free mayonnaise. With 3 grams of fat and 40 calories in a tablespoon, it is somewhat lower in fat than the company's light mayonnaise, which has 5 grams of fat and 50 calories, and considerably lower than its regular mayonnaise, with 11 grams per tablespoon. The new product will soon replace Hellmann's cholesterol-free mayonnaise, which has 5 grams of fat and 50 calories in a tablespoon like the light version, but contains no egg yolks. The company said it has no plans to introduce a fat-free mayonnaise. Ken Foster, the senior brand manager for the product, said the company felt that for people who used Hellmann's or Best Foods mayonnaise, its brand west of the Rockies, taste was the first consideration. The flavor of the new Hellmann's product is quite similar to the regular mayonnaise. It is less sweet, less vinegary and less starchy than Kraft fat-free mayonnaise, which has no fat and 8 calories in a tablespoon. Mr. Foster explained that technology has made it possible to reduce the amount of fat in a mayonnaise and even to eliminate the egg yolks. "There have also been breakthroughs in developing sophisticated starches," he said. "So we can use common natural ingredients." Well, almost. Both Hellmann's and Kraft add artificial coloring. And they use a lot of corn syrup, a common ingredient for pecan pie, perhaps, but not one normally found in recipes for mayonnaise. The reduced-fat mayonnaise is the same price as the regular. First, Holes; Now, This CLAES OLDENBURG -- or maybe Salvador Dali -- has met the Lifesaver. The soft, rubbery Lifesavers Gummi Savers, new this month, are almost surreal compared with the hard candies with a hole that have been on the market since 1912. Gummi Savers come in rolls of the classic five fruit flavors, plus two assortments: berries and tangy fruits. They were introduced, said Harriett Knox, a company spokeswoman, to capture a share of the gummy candy market, up 35 percent last year. Gummi Savers, roughly the same size as regular Lifesavers, come in a package nearly twice the size since the candies are in a compartmentalized plastic tray. They cost about 45 cents a roll. |
587573_2 | Eating Well | ready by next year. (Time-release and chewable supplements aren't covered.) So now you can look for the disintegration standards and buy only those products that include them on the label. On another topic, Nutrition Action says that checking expiration dates is only partly useful because manufacturers can choose arbitrary expiration dates. Don't buy a supplement that is within nine months of expiration because it has probably been in the bottle for several years. Store brands, especially from large chains, are generally identical to the more expensive national brand products, the newsletter says. In addition, it is better to choose a supplement high in beta carotene than one high in vitamin A. Beta carotene converts to vitamin A and is the desirable antioxidant. Large quantities of vitamin A can be toxic; the maximum dosage considered safe is 5,000 international units a day. High doses of thiamin, riboflavin and niacin -- the B vitamins -- are not essential: there are more than enough of them in the food supply. Since vitamin C is an antioxidant, it's useful to take as much as 250 to 500 milligrams a day, but not if you have to pay a premium in a high-potency multi-vitamin. Better to buy vitamin C separately and cheaply. It's difficult for people in the northern latitudes to get the United States Recommended Dietary Allowance of vitamin D from the sun between October and March. It is particularly important for postmenopausal women in these latitudes to consume 400 international units of vitamin D, because a deficiency may be linked to bone loss. Women who are thinking of becoming pregnant should take 400 micrograms of folic acid a day to reduce the risk of neural tube defects. Vegans, those who consume no animal or dairy products, need to take vitamin B12. A deficiency can cause irreversible brain damage. Older people often do not absorb B12 well and may also be deficient. Excess iron can be harmful. Men and postmenopausal women do not need more than the recommended allowance. Some brands like Nature's Plus Power-Plex, GNC Women's Vita Pak and Geritol Complete supply two to three times that amount. Do not take more than the recommended allowance of copper, because it is an oxidant. Multi-vitamins do not contain 100 percent of the recommended allowance for all nutrients, and that includes calcium and magnesium. In addition, selenium and chromium are often left out of multi-vitamins. |
589142_1 | Scientific Treasures Are Being Uncovered In Peat 'Wastelands' | As technology improves, he said, clues from bogs could be used to model future climates. Archeological Marvels Over the last 20 years peat lands have produced spectacular archeological finds, dating to the Neolithic. But instead of merely preserving the skulls and bones found in dry sites, oxygen-poor peat bogs preserve skin, hair and sometimes brains. Lindow Man, some 2,000 years old, is probably the most studied body ever found in a bog. Workers extracting horticultural peat came upon a human leg in 1984 on the Lindow Moss near Manchester. The machinery destroyed the other leg, but archeologists later found a well-preserved upper body. Scientists eventually teased out the ancient man's age, health, cause of death, even his last meal. Dr. Paul Buckland, a wetlands archeologist at the University of Sheffield, said most of the important finds have come during commercial peat extraction. Peat is an ideal medium for cultivating plants. About 2.1 million cubic yards of horticultural peat are taken from British bogs each year, with another million cubic yards imported to meet the demand, according to Alan Robertson, a spokesman for the U.K. Peat Producers Association. He said the industry holds almost 15,000 acres of peat land, with little regarded as having "current conservation value." While producers may see little conservation value, many scientists and environmentalists do. Because peat accumulates slowly, about four- to eight-hundredths of an inch per year, scientists argue that peat producers are mining a nonsustainable resource. Northern Concentration Although found throughout the world, peat bogs have been called the Northern Hemisphere's equivalent of tropical rain forests. Conservationists say that continued extraction of peat for horticulture is endangering rare species, destroying an unparalleled scientific archive and contributing to global warming by liberating millions of tons of stored carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. A study conducted by scientists at the University of Exeter and published last summer by Friends of the Earth, an environmental advocacy group, found that while peat bogs cover only half the area that rain forests do, they hold more than three times the carbon. Bogs bear distinctive, though not richly diverse, wildlife. Few plants and animals can survive under conditions of extreme wetness, acidity and a paucity of nutrients. Most of those that do cannot live in any other habitat. Some develop a symbiosis with bacteria and others, like sundews, eat insects. Sphagnum Is the Key The most common plant is |
589126_0 | Basel Solves Problem Of Too Many Pigeons | BY using slogans like "Feeding pigeons is animal cruelty" and nursing controlled flocks whose eggs were periodically removed, the city of Basel, Switzerland, sharply reduced its pigeon population in four years. In a report in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Nature, Dr. Daniel Haag-Wackernagel of the department of medical biology in the University of Basel's Institute of Pathology pointed out that most cities of the world are grossly overpopulated with pigeons. The birds live in "slum-like" conditions, he said, causing "a variety of health and environmental problems." When Basel prohibited pigeon-feeding in 1978, the edict was ignored by bird lovers. The government therefore asked the university to study the problem and recommend a solution. It found that killing the pigeons was of no avail, since they quickly regenerated. The answer was to greatly reduce their food supply, heavily dependent on bird-feeders. In the belief that bird overpopulation is a form of animal cruelty, the Basel Society for the Protection of Animals joined the city in an intensive education campaign. "Feeding pigeons has become taboo and only a few incorrigible people continue," Dr. Haag-Wackernagel wrote. To offer an alternative for "pigeon friends," he said, they built nine "controlled and well-kept pigeon lofts to house a small but healthy population." From these they removed about 1,200 eggs a year. Pigeon-Action I was initiated in 1988, followed by Pigeon-Action II in 1990. Thirteen flocks were monitored weekly and after 50 months it was found that their population had fallen 50 percent, to 10,000 birds. The ultimate goal is 5,000. SCIENCE WATCH |
589430_0 | Food Notes | A New Roasted Garlic Oil Of the few garlic-flavored oils on the market, none have the mellow, slightly smoky pungency that characterizes the new Consorzio roasted garlic oil created by Michael Chiarello of Tra Vigne Restaurant in St. Helena, Calif. This is a golden olive oil that packs an enormous amount of aroma and flavor in just a few drops. A teaspoonful can gloss and season a portion of poached fish or chicken breast. A scant tablespoon can add ample flavor to enough mashed potatoes to serve four people and makes butter unnecessary. The oil should be used as a seasoning but not for cooking, since high heat will change the flavor. It comes in a 12.6-ounce bottle for $11 at Williams-Sonoma stores throughout the region. Two Contests In conjunction with the opening of a Mexican film, "Like Water for Chocolate," whose poignant love story is filled with scenes of cooking, recipes and their effect on romance, Miramax Films, the distributor, is holding a recipe contest. Entrants must be at least 21, and the rules call for submitting a recipe using chocolate. The recipe, postmarked no later than March 15, must be typed double-spaced with name, address and telephone number in the upper right corner of plain white letter-size paper. First prize is a five-day trip to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, that includes classes in Mexican cooking. The winner will be announced on April 30. For more information: Sara Widness, (212) 988-0506. Another contest, sponsored by Paul Jaboulet Wines from the Rhone region of France and the French Culinary Institute in New York, offers a 10-week, 100-hour course in cooking techniques as the prize. Contestants must submit a recipe for a main dish that is low in fat and calories yet flavorful enough to be served with a hearty red Rhone wine. Deadline for entries is March 1. Six finalists will participate in a cookoff on March 15. Entry forms and more information can be obtained by writing to Karla Vermeulen, French Culinary Institute, 462 Broadway, New York 10013, or by calling Tom Sharp at (212) 219-8890. Sweet-Potato Chips Saratoga Potato Chip Company, in the Bronx, has introduced thin, crisp sweet-potato chips. Slightly sweet, lightly salted and delicious, they can be used as snacks or as a crunchy, professional-looking topping to grilled fish, chicken and other dishes. Two-ounce bags are $1.25 at convenience stores and other food shops. The |
589384_2 | Personal Health | that DES can render certain aspects of the immune system hyperactive, prompting them to turn against the body's own tissues. Preliminary research in DES daughters suggests that related immune problems may include a thyroid condition called Hashimoto's thyroiditis, pernicious anemia, myasthenia gravis (a nervous disorder that weakens muscles, especially in the face and neck), a serious intestinal disorder called regional enteritis and possibly chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple sclerosis. Continuing surveillance of DES sons and daughters may reveal still further immunity-related problems. As with vaginal cancer, the risk of developing immunological problems seems to be related to the dose and duration of DES treatment of their mothers, some of whom were given the hormonal drug from the first to the last month of pregnancy. It is also not yet known whether DES will cause problems in the daughters when they reach menopause, and some researchers and advocates insist that DES "babies," both men and women, be followed for life to define the possible health risks fully and possibly to reduce them. Meanwhile, frequent checkups of DES-exposed men and women are being urged to detect and treat any problems that might develop. Problems to be on the lookout for include breast cancer in women and prostate problems in men as they age. Thus far, nearly 600 cases of DES-related cancers of the vagina or cervix have been reported to a national registry. Affected women and girls have ranged in age from 7 to 31, with the peak incidence of cancer occurring at the age of 19, or before most of the young women would have tried to have children. One frequent sign of possible cancer in a DES daughter is excessive vaginal discharge or vaginal bleeding, but experts caution that cancer can be present even in women with no symptoms. Monitoring Situation By now everyone who had experienced prenatal exposure to DES should be at least 19 years old, since the Food and Drug Administration banned the use of the drug during pregnancy in 1973. And by now all the DES daughters should have been examined at least once and preferably several times by a gynecologist familiar with the effects of DES. If they have not been checked, no more time should be wasted in getting a thorough pelvic examination, including inspection of the external genital organs and the inside of the vagina, a Pap smear of the cervix, iodine staining |
593293_3 | ECONOMIC PULSE: Florida; Florida Is Acting Like a Sunbelt Economy Again | Florida mainly with tourism and oranges, foreign trade has rapidly grown to rival those economic mainstays. The most recent statistics show that the state's exports totaled more than $18 billion through October last year and that they now contribute to the state's economy three times as much as agriculture. Exports are also gaining quickly on tourism, which at $29 billion is the largest part of the state's economy. As a result, business executives and government officials are looking to the increasingly international character of the state's economy to produce growth. That means more emphasis on tourism from foreign countries, and a concerted effort to develop the service and high-technology businesses most likely to attract foreign investors, enterprises as as diverse as hospitals, architecture concerns, computer retailing and warehouses. Even in the depths of the economic downturn, Florida's foreign trade was growing by more than 10 percent a year, helping to brake the overall slide. With the trade boom have come many small companies specializing in areas like medical instruments, computer software and hardware, food processing, communications equipment and publishing. To be sure, some of the goods exported from Florida are produced elsewhere and simply pass through its ports. But to policy makers and business leaders, the recent trade surge makes it clear where Florida's brightest economic prospects are: outside the United States. International trade is seen, among other things, as a way to attract clean, high-technology industries to the state and fortify a historically weak manufacturing sector, which a decade ago constituted only 12 percent of total output and now accounts for less than 9 percent. All predictions about the nature of the economic recovery rest on the assumption that Florida will not have to divert money and energy to cope with another influx of refugees from Cuba or Haiti. Should Fidel Castro fall or the naval blockade of Haiti be lifted, "it would be an incredibly taxing strain on resources, especially coming after Hurricane Andrew," Dr. Morrell said. By stressing trade, Florida is accepting the notion that geography is destiny and that its reputation as the "Gateway to Latin America" is an advantage, not the burden that periodic waves of immigration may have suggested. The state's leaders now believe they can instead capitalize on the talents of the immigrant population that has poured into the state for 30 years. "We now have a situation in this state where we |
593183_1 | Estate of the Art | a shingle-style house with all the modern conveniences, he knew just what the client wanted. The site was spectacular, right on the Connecticut coastline, but at three-quarters of an acre, the lot was compact, verging on cramped. Further complications arose when it was discovered that the new house, in order to comply with building codes, had to occupy the foundation of an old boathouse. Wharton approached the problem with low-key aplomb. "The worst thing would have been to overwork the architecture," he says. "Nature has done it all for you. We just had to provide a good base from which to enjoy it." And so he played down big design moves in favor of a cedar-shingled facade that manages, through the use of gables, dormers and windows, to be both modest and exuberant at the same time. From the moment of arrival, all eyes are directed to the view, thanks to a Dutch door with a glass top that gives the illusion of infinite space. Inside, the rooms are lined along the water. A continuous wall of oversize windows and French doors runs straight from the kitchen to the living room with its spectacular balcony jutting over the water. "It's supposed to feel like you're on the promenade of an ocean liner," Wharton explains. The architect's love of the water (he grew up in Bermuda) asserted itself in nautical motifs. On the oak floor of the foyer, for example, there's a compass designed out of cherry and walnut inlays. In the master bedroom, the bed is built into the wall and trimmed in mahogany like a berth. There's even a porthole above a desk in the downstairs office. While a boating theme may not suit everyone, it is exactly this kind of slightly eccentric, carefully honed detail that makes period houses so appealing, and is so lacking in new construction. Upstairs, the new-old dichotomy is further expressed in bedrooms where huge windows take advantage of the views while sloping ceilings and dormers provide a little old-fashioned coziness. But the house's real charm lies in the way its moods shift, taking advantage of the changing dynamic between light and water, weather and shelter. While the exterior presents an imposing demeanor -- almost like a riverboat run aground -- inside, flooded with light and buoyant detail, the house maintains its intimacy. A paradox, perhaps. More like the best of both worlds. DESIGN |
593294_0 | Wilderness Tale | THIS WEEK |
593339_1 | U.S. URGES NATIONS TO SPEED GROWTH | of Seven had committed itself to jointly addressing the world's economic and trade problems, and that they hoped for more specific proposals at the group's next meeting in Washington in late April. In addition to the United States, Germany and Japan, the Group of Seven includes France, Britain, Canada and Italy. "We have a real opportunity for collective action to restore growth, to promote an open and fair trading system and to address other international economic problems," Mr. Bentsen said. But, despite their pledges of cooperation and coordination, most nations remain far more concerned with their domestic economic priorities. Germany's central bank, for example, remains reluctant to significantly reduce its high interest rates to stimulate the economy before it is certain that the danger of inflation has passed. In Japan, the Government is leery of the strategy urged by the United States, which calls for increasing Government spending to boost economic growth, increasing consumer demand for imports and reducing its burgeoning trade surplus. Position of Strength Mr. Bentsen acknowledged that a coordinated Group of Seven economic plan was unlikely to be forged anytime soon, saying April would be "a very early deadline for that type of situation." The meeting was the first among the economic officials of the seven nations since the Clinton Administration took office. In contrast with his predecessors at sessions over the last several years, when the United States was on the defensive over its budget deficit and its lackluster economic performance, Mr. Bentsen seemed to be in a position of relative strength in asking other countries to do more. The economy in the United States grew at an annual rate of 4.8 percent in the last three months of 1992, the fastest pace in five years. President Clinton's speech on Friday on international economic relations may have defused some criticism from other nations that the Administration is taking a protectionist turn and possibly setting the world on the path to a global trade war. Some nations welcomed the Administration's deficit-cutting plan as evidence that the United States was serious about addressing its economic weaknesses. "There was a very strong welcome on behalf of every country for the budget measures, the deficit-reduction measures, introduced by the new Administration," said Norman Lamont, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer. Russian Economy Considered The ministers also discussed the deteriorating economic situation in the former Soviet Union. Mr. Clinton has proposed that |
593327_1 | Weather Disruption to Last a While, Data Show | warm current that flows along the Pacific coast of South America and, among other things, has given California its rainy and snowy winter, will persist into the spring and maybe the summer, scientists said Friday. The measurements, made by sensitive altimeters aboard the Topex/Poseidon satellite, which was launched by the United States and France last August, show that a "pulse" of unusually warm water is spreading from the western Pacific to the eastern Pacific and will reach the coast of South America in the next few weeks, an American and French team of scientists said at a news conference at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. As happens periodically, a similar pool of warm water spread to South America a year and a half ago, creating what meteorologists call an El Nino event. The warm water had largely dissipated in the eastern Pacific. But in recent weeks meteorologists noted that warm water was unexpectedly persisting in the central Pacific, contributing in some measure to the continuing storms on the West Coast. The new pulse of warm water, moving eastward across the equatorial Pacific, is expected to renew a global chain of atmospheric events that brought storms to the West Coast and cooler weather to the eastern United States this winter, said Dr. James Mitchell, an oceanographer at the Naval Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research Laboratory at Bay St. Louis, Miss., a member of the American and French team. The ocean and the atmosphere form a closely connected climatic system, and sea temperatures have an important effect on global patterns of air circulation. El Nino, named for the Christ Child because it typically occurs near Christmas, causes warmer and drier weather in the Southern Hemisphere and wetter, cooler weather in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. The El Nino pattern should continue for the next month or two at the least, Dr. Mitchell said. Precise measurements made possible by the new satellite should make it easier to predict El Nino events, he said, but the new data have not yet been included in computerized ocean models from which predictions are derived. The warmer the water in an El Nino event, the more severe the weather disturbances that result. In 1982-83, an unusually strong El Nino caused devastating droughts and floods. A 1986-87 event was less severe, and Dr. Mitchell said the current event is not as intense as the one in 1986-87. |
593338_5 | Chinese Suffer From Rising Pollution As Byproduct of the Industrial Boom | provoking concern. The seven major rivers that flow through cities are choked with sewage, and the abundance of prawns and scallops in coastal waters has dropped markedly. In 1991, factories dumped 25 billion tons of industrial waste into the country's waterways, aggravating an already-strained water supply that leaves 85 percent of Chinese cities short of clean water. In the countryside, only one Chinese in seven has safe drinking water, the World Bank says. All this makes the job of Qu Geping, head of China's Environmental Protection Agency, a delicate task of lobbying for a cleaner environment without appearing to be an obstacle to growth. Partly because of growing awareness of the problems, Mr. Qu's influence is increasing, and he is believed to be close to Prime Minister Li Peng. Deng Nan, a daughter of China's senior leader, Deng Xiaoping, is also a senior official with a moderate interest in pollution problems, and experts say they believe she has played a role in the growing environmental consciousness of her father. Still, Mr. Qu does not have ministerial rank, and he has little clout in policy-making. "Of all the world's fast-developing nations, the hardest place to be a minister of environmental policy is in China," Mr. Qu said, after talking for an hour about China's environmental achievements. "I am worried. With the economy developing so fast, I don't know if our environmental protection can keep up." Need for More Spending China spends about 0.8 percent of its gross national product on improving the environment. The World Bank says that to control the current environmental deterioration, China would have to spend nearly 1.5 percent of its G.N.P., nearly the same percentage that some Western countries like the United States allocate. For now, local environmental officials rely on raising money on their own through pollution taxes and fines. Enterprises are allowed to pollute as long as they pay a tax to the local environmental agency if their waste exceeds centrally defined standards. In 1991, the total annual amount of such pollution taxes reached $350 million, and that figure is expected to rise. Fines are also imposed but are mostly tiny. As a result, local officials pin their hopes on money from overseas. "We are striving to get donations from overseas to help solve our environmental problems," said Xu Shubi, the deputy chief of Chongqing's Environmental Protection Bureau. "But we haven't found any donors yet." |
593087_1 | The Executive Computer; A Web of Networks, an Abundance of Services | sharing data, using remote computers and exchanging electronic mail. Now it contains large and small, commercial and nonprofit networks that offer a remarkable array of services. Many companies both small and large have found that using the Internet is good business. At the low end, a small business could use the Internet for an electronic mailbox that could be called each day for messages. Using services like the Well, of Sausalito, Calif., or the World Software Tool and Die, of Brookline, Mass., a company can explore the Internet without running up a big bill. Customers dial these services much like they would a bulletin board. The difference is that the Unix-based computers of the Well and World Software can easily climb throughout the Internet. Providing slightly more sophisticated service are companies like Performance Systems International Inc., of Reston, Va., which have broader networks. These services are available in most large cities by dialing a local number. Cheryl Currid, a business consultant in Houston, said she had begun using Radiomail, a Menlo Park, Calif., company that provides two-way mobile electronic mail over the Internet. Since she signed up, her cellular phone bill has dropped sharply. "I'm an electronic mail addict," she said. "People can find me wherever I am. I have negotiated several business deals recently without even using a telephone." The cost of using the Internet varies widely. To subscribe to an electronic mail service like the one offered by Performance Systems costs $19.50 a month, while on-line systems like the Well and World Software generally charge $2 to $4 an hour, plus a monthly fee of $5 to $20. A larger company might be looking for a relatively inexpensive way to hook up various offices to share data. Cygnus Support Inc., a software company in Mountain View, Calif., uses the Internet to link with its Cambridge, Mass., office and trade information on software development projects. The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, a research consortium in Austin, Tex., uses the Internet to provide electronic data interchange, which allows businesses to transmit detailed information along with payments as part of sophisticated inventory and delivery systems. At the top end of the Internet is Advanced Network and Services Inc., of Elmsford, N.Y., which offers high-speed network connections to large corporate customers. The cost of these services can reach thousands of dollars a month. To help small businesses take advantage of the Internet, |
593088_4 | Technology; From the Rugged Outback, A Quick-Fix Modular Tire | the actual shape into tool steel. The finishing detail in the mold tooling is added using electric discharge machining whereby a high current is passed through a shaped electrode of the positive of the piece being molded. As it is plunged into the roughed-out shape of the tool steel, it burns out a precisely formed negative image of the electrode into the cavity. The segments can only use one rubber compound, are easy to produce and can be manufactured by either injection or transfer molding processes. They do not have the complicated processes associated with the heterogeneous structures used in pneumatic tires with their many rubber compounds and cord belting materials. Tread segments, therefore, can be profitably manufactured with lower investment in capital equipment and in lower production volumes than pneumatic tires. As another benefit of their simple composition, segments can easily be ground up and the crumbs either burned as fuel, added to asphalt for paving or used as filling in making new tires. Airboss estimates that a third of its requirements for rubber might be met this way. Production of high-volume, low-margin passenger car and truck pneumatic tires constitutes the majority of the U.S. $50 billion global tire market. Indeed, in the 100 years since Andre Michelin said that air was the cheapest spring, rubber-composition tires filled with air under pressure have been produced for every type of vehicle. It would be tough to start a new company today and compete with the likes of Dunlap, Goodyear, Michelin and Bridgestone in the mature, oligarchic rubber tire industry, but Airboss has limited its initial marketing to a focus segment that it can dominate and has export orders from European and American equipment makers, as well as a strong business here at home. AIRBOSS has gained the approval of its tires as original equipment by a number of loader manufacturers and has started pilot production of the key sizes. Now demand has outstripped supply for new wheels and replacement segments, and demand for tires for other vehicles has emerged. Airboss plans to develop 27 additional sizes to address other off-road applications. Potentially, these types of tires could be used in a variety of other construction, earth-moving, mining, agriculture, forestry and general off-road equipment, offering a cheaper, safer, environmentally sounder solution to the problem of navigating treacherous terrain. Joshua Shapiro writes about technology as he travels through Asia and the Pacific. |
592048_0 | World Economies | |
591981_0 | A Little Girl Speaks, and a Nation Listens | For years, Mary Somoza has been an advocate for disabled people, lobbying elected officials, speaking before a Congressional subcommittee and serving on various task forces. But she marveled yesterday over how much attention the cause has received since her 9-year-old daughter met President Clinton on national television Saturday morning. "It's just snowballed," Mrs. Somoza said as reporters waited in the hallway of the family's West Side apartment for a chance to speak to her daughter Anastasia, who is disabled. "It's good that this issue is getting this much attention. And it's good that it was my daughter who put it in the spotlight. She's going to be the advocate when she grows up." Emotional Appeal In an emotional appeal during a question-and-answer session with children that was broadcast by ABC, Anastasia pleaded that her twin be allowed to attend regular classes rather than special-education classes at their elementary school. The President, however, said he could do no more than speak out about the issue. Anastasia and Alba, who both use wheelchairs because of cerebral palsy, are third-grade students at Public School 234 in TriBeCa. Anastasia told the President that the school would not permit Alba, who cannot speak, to transfer from special-education classes to regular classes. Robert Terte, a spokesman for the Board of Education, declined to comment on the matter, citing confidentiality laws. But he said children are referred to special-education instruction after being evaluated by psychologists, educators, social workers and others. May Be Appealed He said the recommendation to place a student in special-education classes is not made by the school, but rather by a committee in each school district. The recommendation, he said, may be appealed by the parents. Though Mrs. Somoza said she has not formally requested a transfer for Alba, she did mention it to the principal last month. "The principal said she was against that and didn't think it would work out," she said. Mrs. Somoza said she will formally request the transfer at the end of the month. A Break for Ice Cream As reporters streamed in and out of the family's second-floor apartment yesterday, Anastasia and Alba took a short break over bowls of vanilla ice cream in the kitchen. "I tell you, if I had to do it over again, I would have disappeared today," said the girls' father, Gerardo, who was growing tired of all the attention. "We're going back |
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