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639310_1 | Market Place; A new company's process excites investors in waste disposal. | for re-use. The value of the recycled substances is minimal. The market's enthusiasm for the process comes more from its potential ability to help users of the technology avoid a costly liability. Once classified as hazardous, waste must be carefully handled and disposed of under complex government regulations. Thus, the technology could not only save companies the enormous cost of having to dispose of their hazardous waste, it should also free them from having to deal with mountains of paperwork and permits. "People want to avoid disposal to the maximum extent possible," said Douglas R. Augenthaler, an analyst who follows the company for Oppenheimer & Company. "If you recycle, the waste is never a waste, it's a product, and so it is not regulated." As the name might suggest, the core of the company's technology is a bath of molten metal, usually iron. The materials to be destroyed are injected into the bottom of the bath, and the mixture is heated to 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, even exceptionally stable compounds tend to break down into their basic components, which can then be drawn off as gases from the sealed system. Molten Metal has built a commercial-scale demonstration unit in Fall River, Mass., and has begun testing the system on materials supplied by potential customers. But it has no intention of becoming a contract disposer of other people's wastes, as Chemical Waste Management is. Instead it plans to sell the devices to companies, like chemical producers, so that they can incorporate them into their own production processes. One thing that has apparently impressed investors is the cmpany that Molten Metal keeps. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company has invested in the Fall River plant and has closely followed the development of the technology. Molten Metal also has alliances with Fluor Daniel Inc., an engineering specialist unit of the Fluor Corporation; Am-Re Services, a big environmental insurer; L'Air Liquide, a French chemical company, and Rollins Environmental, which operates incinerators. As with any new technology, the biggest risk is that it might not work as well in the real world as it appears to do in the laboratory. A crucial question is whether the process will cleanly break materials down into gases that can be separated or instead will generate large amounts of slag that have to be dumped in a landfill at a heavy cost. "That's |
639407_4 | NEWS SUMMARY | canceled by Congressional budget cutters. B12 DISABLED CHILDREN OFTEN ABUSED Disabled children are abused and neglected far more frequently than other children, a Federal study found. A21 Prosecutors may drop charges against Clark M. Clifford. A20 Metro Digest B1 COMMISSIONER TESTIFIES Saying he had been repulsed by the testimony of corrupt police officers, New York City's highest police official yesterday told a mayoral commission that he would not oppose an outside monitor of the Police Department's anti-corruption efforts, as long as he retained the power to punish wrongdoers. A1 GUILTY IN RITUAL SLAYING A jury in Paterson, N.J., found a youth guilty of murder and 10 other charges against him in the bizarre ritual slaying of a teen-age friend. The defense had portrayed the defendant as a scapegoat, while the prosecution built its case on testimony from three other youths who later pleaded guilty in the killing. A1 Sports B16-22 THE LEGACY OF JORDAN Michael Jordan leaves behind a new breed of American team sports athlete, the one-man corporate powerhouse. This all began the day Jordan sat down to negotiate an endorsement deal for Nike. A1 Jordan explains his departure. B17 Column: Vecsey on the Jordans. B17 Baseball: Phillies beat Braves in extra innings. B17 Blue Jays take Game 2. B17 Football: Moore tries to win Giants job back. B22 Jets have trouble on offensive line. B22 Business Digest D1 Home Section C1-13 The Gehry house in Santa Monica: a brash landmark grows up. C1 At home with Niki de Saint Phalle: artist, monsters, two worlds. C1 Art and science of complaining. C2 In the city of change, is "Las Vegas landmark" an oxymoron? C4 Care and housing guide to aid the elderly frail. C7 Fashion: mere meets more on the runways of Milan. C10 Parent & Child C12 Arts/Entertainment C17-30 Settlement in de Kooning suit. C17 A stage director's encounters with royalty, in "George III." C17 Theater: "Family Secrets." C17 Music: The Ying Quartet. C23 Dance: Gala Graham opening. C17 The Coyote Dancers. C23 Books: A Trilling memoir. C22 TV: Images' effect on policy. C28 Obituaries D21 Editorials/Op-Ed A28-29 Editorials A victim's mantle for Mr. Giuliani. Democracy beckons Boris Yeltsin. Charles Keating's lasting taint. U.S. poverty and callousness. Letters William Safire: Depart with honor. Anna Quindlen: We're outta there. Bob Kerrey: Not so fast on Somalia. Richard P. Nathan: Reform welfare? What for? Bridge C15 Chronicle B15 Crossword C28 |
644894_2 | Nova Vicosa Journal; Art From the Amazon's Ashes Is Arousing Brazil | Brazil's agricultural frontier was marching across Parana. "There was such smoke that I never saw the natural sun," he recalled, talking here in lightly accented Portuguese over a dining table fashioned from a single hardwood slab. "I denounced the burning, but I didn't have any impact. At that time, burning the forest was a joke. People said there always would be more forest. But today there is no more forest in Parana." Mr. Krajcberg made his first visit to the Amazon in 1959, eventually setting up a base in a two-room house built atop a tree trunk near here. From here he makes trips into the Amazon, 1,000 miles inland, to retrieve the fragments of scorched forest that are the building blocks of his sculptures. Today, while his works shuttle between museums and galleries in Rio, New York, Paris and Zurich, he refuses to adopt the language of diplomacy when talk turns to the Amazon's annual burning season. How the Forest Is Lost "This year, the burning is worse than anytime during the last 10 years," he charged, his bright, birdlike eyes suddenly turning severe and uncompromising. "There is no interest in saving the forest, in not burning, in not destroying." One of Brazil's most sensitive subjects, the controversy flared anew last month when American astronauts looked out of the windows of the Discovery space shuttle and commented that their view of the Amazon appeared to be obscured with woodsmoke. Brazilian officials hurried to announce that, yes, satellites had detected 111,000 fires in the Amazon region in September. But, they added, most of the fires apparently took place in existing pastureland. According to a report by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in June, Brazilian farmers and ranchers burned an annual average of 5,800 square miles of Amazon forest in the 1980's. According to Brazilian authorities, the area of new forest burned declined from 1989 to 1991 to 4,250 square miles. Calculations for 1992 have not been made for lack of funds. Mr. Krajcberg's skepticism toward government is as deep as the weather-beaten lines on his face. His private retreat of 300 acres of Atlantic forest here is a surviving fragment of a coastal rain forest that is now 9 percent of its original size of 425,000 square miles. In March, scientists from the New York Botanical Garden studying another surviving forest fragment, 250 miles north of here, reported finding |
644939_1 | Recalling 1968, French Prime Minister Backs Off | first sign of labor union protest, will it be possible to improve the abject performance of state companies like Air France; Groupe Bull, the computer maker, and Aerospatiale, which have been piling up huge losses even as Mr. Balladur has promised to push through their privatization? Labor unions continued their strike today, disrupting hundreds of Air France flights and pressing for guarantees that any future plan for the flag carrier would have no dismissals, wage cuts or privatizations. The Transport Ministry today chose Christian Blanc, a 51-year-old technocrat with no experience in the airline industry, to replace Mr. Attali as chairman of Air France. The selection of Mr. Blanc, a former chief of the Paris public transportation system, was in the French tradition of switching top civil servants from sector to sector. The ministry also chose Michel Bernard to replace Jean-Cyrille Spinetta, who quit today as chairman of the domestic airline, Air Inter, which is part of the Air France Group. Labor unions had no immediate comments on these appointments, but they were clearly delighted that the Government had decided to scrap Mr. Attali's plan, which called for shedding 4,000 jobs at Air France and reducing bonuses paid for night, weekend and holiday work. "Union action brings results," declared Marc Blondel, the general secretary of a centrist group, the Workers' Force. "We have succeeded in getting the Government to retreat." Behind Mr. Balladur's decision to yield lay a grim assessment of the mood now in France. Recession and rapidly rising unemployment, which now totals 3.2 million people, or 11.7 percent of the work force, have provoked widespread unease. Many people therefore tend to see the Air France workers, invading roads and airport runways, as threatened employees like themselves rather than as a mob. "Everyone is afraid of unemployment and salary cuts so they have taken a kind of vicarious pleasure in the Air France protests," said Oliver Duhamel, a sociologist at the Institute of Political Science in Paris. "A telephone survey I conducted on Sunday revealed 71 percent support for the strikers, despite all the disturbance they have caused," he continued. "That is why Balladur felt he had to try to stamp out the fire before it spread." But even if he is in tune with the country's mood, the consequences for the Prime Minister, who has enjoyed great popularity since he took office in April, could still be serious. |
644859_0 | 2 Decades After Toxic Blast in Italy, Several Cancers Show Rise | ALMOST two decades after an explosion at a chemical factory released a toxic cloud of dioxin over northern Italy, a team of researchers has reported finding elevated rates of several types of cancer among area residents, but no overall increase in cancer. The study, by Dr. Pier Alberto Bertazzi of the University of Milan and five colleagues, was based on the medical records of more than 37,000 men and women living near Seveso, Italy, who were exposed to the highest concentrations of dioxin ever measured in a civilian population. Soft-tissue sarcoma, which has been linked to dioxin in previous studies, was among the cancers seen at elevated levels in some groups. The study adds another piece of evidence to a long debate over the potential hazards of dioxin to human health, but is unlikely to settle it. The research on dioxin in the 1990's has yielded contradictory interpretations. Some scientists say that the toxic compound is more hazardous than previously believed, while others say that its risks have been exaggerated. Early next year, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to step to the center of the debate when it completes a 30-month study aimed at more definitively describing the risk dioxin poses to people and the environment. The Seveso findings, published last month in the journal Epidemiology, are part of the extensive record on dioxin that has been assembled by E.P.A. staff scientists and outside experts. Dioxin is one of a family of toxic compounds produced as trace byproducts of heating or burning materials containing chlorine. The most toxic form of dioxin, called 2,3,7,8-TCDD, is emitted into the air or water by incinerators, paper plants and other industrial installations. A Living Laboratory Dioxin persists in the environment for decades, soil tests conducted by the E.P.A. and the states have found. And although the concentrations are minute, typically less than a millionth of a gram in a metric ton of soil, laboratory studies have found that it only takes a tiny amount of dioxin to harm rats and mice. Animals exposed to millionths and billionths of a gram of dioxin will die, develop cancer or show a range of abnormalities. In Seveso, the explosion on July 10, 1976, caused about a pound of dioxin to be released into the atmosphere. Some children developed chloracne, a severe skin condition associated with exposure to high levels of dioxin. And Seveso was turned into |
644858_1 | Getting Your Feet Wet In a Sea Called Internet | defense contractors, keeps growing; no one really knows how much or how fast. Paul Gilster, in "The Internet Navigator: The Essential Guide to Network Exploration for the Individual Dial-Up User" (John Wiley & Sons; $24.95), writes that by 1985, "approximately 100 networks formed the Internet." He continues: "By 1989, that number had risen to 500. The Network Information Center of the Defense Data Network Information Center found 2,218 networks connected as of January 1990. By June 1991, the National Science Foundation Network Information Center pegged it at close to 4,000, and connections have more than doubled within the last two years. If we extrapolate based on current numbers, the Internet could reach 40 million people by 1995, 100 million by 1998. Its current growth rate is 15 percent monthly." Most individual users have formal or informal connections to a network linked to the Internet. "Formal" means working for or attending a member company or university; "informal" means having worked for a member or being able to ingratiate oneself with a strategically placed officer. Michael Fraase, in his breezy "The Mac Internet Tour Guide" (Ventana Press; $27.95 with disk), devotes four sections to general instructions "about who to befriend and what arcane terms to utter so you'll sound like a seasoned expert." Commercial on-line services like Compuserve, America Online and Delphi have begun to add Internet links, some limited to sending and receiving electronic mail, others with full service. A host of so-called service providers, providing gateways to the Internet, have also sprung up -- probably three or four hosts if you do not read this first thing in the morning. Connecting a business to the Internet can cost thousands of dollars, depending on its size; an individual without a real or feigned relationship to a member organization can seek a service provider. Rates are reasonable, considering what the money buys. For instance, the Pipeline, a service provider getting under way in New York City, charges $15 a month for five hours on the Internet and $2 for each additional hour. A $20 fee is good for 20 hours a month, and $35 buys unlimited access. Without even trying, I have gathered eight new or recently updated books on the Internet. With, say, MCI Mail or Prodigy, you can learn as you go along. The Internet not only deserves preparation, it absolutely demands it. One reason is that, as noted, nobody |
641098_1 | Irish President Backs New Call for Peace in Ulster | Albert Reynolds. Today, she spoke in a political context in which a well-publicized national debate is under way on the Hume-Adams plan, which deals with allowing Sinn Fein to take part in official peace negotiatons in return for a convincing cessation of violence by the I.R.A. "There are important changes taking place," Mrs. Robinson said. "There's no doubt about that. There is an opening up going on. And there's also a realization not only of the sort of devastatingly negative effects of violence but that violence can deepen in a society." Clearly referring to the long-range economic development plan the Government unveiled this week at the same time the Cabinet was examining the initiative, she said: "You don't talk about jobs and employment in one breath and bringing about a peaceful framework for Northern Ireland in the other breath. The two are closely linked. If there were to be a framework of peace and reconcliation in Northern Ireland, it would boost the jobs, the employment, the prosperity." Mrs. Robinson said she thought the Government had made such a connection, adding: "It's an important consideration in working toward the pressures that will be necessary to have politicians take risks. You need to take risks to achieve peace. I would hope there would be courage, risk-taking, imagination." Mr. Reynolds has approved the initiative and the British Secretary for Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, has said he will consider its proposals if there is a cessation of violence. Most Protestant leaders in Northern Ireland have denounced it. Mrs. Robinson set off a political uproar here, in the north and in Britain in June when, on a visit to community center in predominantly Roman Catholic area of West Belfast, she shook hands with Mr. Adams. She said it was the natural thing to do, as Mr. Adams was a community leader. The gesture was widely interpreted as helping the image of Sinn Fein. In the interview, she spoke of the need to take account of the Protestant sense of alienation that has been growing in the province, based on the fear that any talks involving Sinn Fein would lead to the I.R.A.'s ultimate goal of a British withdrawal and eventual political union between the six counties of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The recent increase in violence by Protestant paramilitary groups was the result, she said, of "a sense that violence succeeds." |
641110_0 | COMPANY NEWS: An Experiment for 1,000 Drivers; Sparking Interest In G.M.'s Electric Car | Want to be the first on your block to try out an electric car? Or, put differently, want to try out an electric car that cost as much as your house did, without having to pay for it? Then watch for an insert in your next utility bill. The General Motors Corporation announced yesterday that it would build 50 Impacts, its experimental electric cars, and lend them for two to four weeks to 1,000 drivers around the country over the next two years, with the help of 14 utilities. To be eligible for the loaner, you must have off-street parking, to allow recharging, and have a daily drive of no more than 55 miles between recharging locations. That distance is the maximum that the car is guaranteed to go, assuming that the air-conditioner or heater, headlights and radio or compact disk player are running. You must also pay for the electricity, which should run about $15 for a two-week test. Finding Volunteers The utility bills will list a toll-free telephone number that volunteers can call; they will be sent more information and a questionnaire about their driving habits and attitudes toward electric cars. Yesterday, radio stations in Los Angeles broadcast the "800" number and General Motors received more than a call a minute, said Sean P. McNamara, manager of market planning for G.M. Electric Vehicles. The loans will begin early next year to customers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Southern California Edison. Pacific Gas and Electric and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District will also join in; so will Long Island Lighting and Consolidated Edison in New York; Potomac Electric Power in Washington; Florida Power and Light, Houston Lighting and Power and the Arizona Public Service Company, among others. The utilities will install chargers for the cars at the volunteers' homes. G.M. thinks it may get 100,000 responses, perhaps far more. "We're hoping to have a substantial data base," Mr. McNamara said. "We've never run anything like this before." 'Reliable Transportation' "We can talk to people about the car but until we can really show them, it's difficult for them to relate," he said. Putting the car on the road will show that "it's reliable transportation; it's not a modified golf cart," he said. The Impact, a two-seater, has acceleration like that of a sports car. The models offered for loan will have twin air bags |
640835_2 | Plans for Abortion Pill Stalled in U.S. | Have Other Benefits RU-486 is an antiprogestin that causes an abortion by cutting off blood flow to the embryo, which is then flushed out by contractions of the womb. Along with RU-486, women usually take another drug, a prostaglandin, to speed the ejection of the embryo by inducing stronger contractions. Some research has suggested that RU-486 might also be useful in treating endometriosis, fibroid tumors, breast cancer and benign brain tumors. The drug has had a politically charged history since it was first approved for use in France five years ago. Protests by anti-abortion groups in Europe and the United States prompted Roussel to take the drug off the market in France in September 1988, but the French Government stepped in and ordered the company to resume distribution. For several years, RU-486 has been a rallying point for many American women who protest that they have no access to a drug used by more than 100,000 women in France, Britain and Sweden. Roussel refused to seek Federal approval for the drug during the Bush Administration because of what the company said it felt was an atmosphere hostile to abortion. Hoechst was also threatened with a boycott by anti-abortion groups of the chemicals and pharmaceuticals sold by its American subsidiary, Hoechst Celanese, based in Somerville, N.J. Anti-abortion groups have called RU-486 "a tragedy for women and children" and a drug that, by its convenience, would encourage more abortions. Putting Pressure on Roussel Several different medical groups and women's groups have been working on strategies to push Roussel to bring the drug into this country. At a small Westchester County laboratory, now closed, Abortion Rights Mobilization has manufactured 90 doses of the abortion pill for test purposes, in an effort to goad Roussel to enter the United States market. Lawrence Lader, the founder of the New York-based abortion rights group, said he hoped to win state approval for testing those pills under an obscure New York law giving the State Board of Pharmacy the power to authorize tests of drugs that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. "We believe that if we can test on a couple thousand women in New York, Roussel would look so ridiculous they would move with the Population Council, or someone else," Mr. Lader said. "And if they still didn't move, we could try to get the patent taken for the public good." |
640828_1 | U.S., Praising China, Is Still Wary on Rights | top human rights official emerged from two days of talks with Chinese officials today praising the resumption of dialogue between Washington and Beijing after a two-year hiatus, but reporting no progress on improving China's overall record. At a news conference, the official, John Shattuck, gave a positive account of China's "attentiveness" in the talks, which he called "intensive" and which he said have set the stage for more blunt discussion when President Clinton meets the Communist Party chief, Jiang Zemin, next month in Seattle. In an executive order issued in May, Mr. Clinton tied China's future trading status with the United States to "significant overall progress" this year in its respect for human rights. But by all accounts China's human rights record continues to deteriorate with recent detentions of journalists, a life sentence for an official who leaked a speech Mr. Jiang delivered to an open Communist Party assembly and coming secret trials of pro-democracy advocates arrested last year. Mr. Shattuck reported no progress in persuading China's leaders that their policy of jailing political dissidents, suppressing freedom of expression, jamming foreign news broadcasts and preventing free emigration must be altered to avoid a showdown with the United States Congress next spring. "We certainly indicated to them that progress is needed," he said. If Secretary of State Warren Christopher is not able to certify such progress next spring, Mr. Clinton may be forced to revoke China's most favored nation trade status. A revocation could affect a third of China's exports and abruptly reduce its $18 billion trade surplus with the United States. Though China has escaped punitive treatment in each of the annual reviews of trade relations, Mr. Clinton's executive order and the tough line of his Presidential campaign could put Washington and Beijing in an especially contentious position next year over China's trading status. Mr. Shattuck pointedly warned the Chinese that the politics of China relations were changing in Washington. Among his objectives for this trip, he said, was to "convey to the Chinese in the clearest possible terms that the President and the Congress are for the first time united on these issues." Some Western analysts are also concerned that China's policy of suppressing pro-independence forces in Tibet could easily complicate next spring's White House deliberations. Mr. Shattuck left tonight for Tibet, where he planned to visit at least one prison as part of his inspection of the region. |
642817_1 | NUCLEAR MATERIAL DUMPED OFF JAPAN | scale." But as Mr. Yeltsin was meeting here, a Russian Navy tanker, the TNT-27, was loading 900 tons of radioactive water and other material from a major submarine base in the Russian Far East and heading for a site due west of Hakodate, on Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido. The TNT-27 was tracked first by a ship operated by the environmental group Greenpeace, and then by Japanese television networks, which beamed pictures today of the ship pumping the liquid waste directly into the sea. The fisheries union in Hakodate, one of Japan's major maritime centers, said it feared that consumers would boycott their products for fear of contamination. Much of Japan's squid, a favorite delicacy in restaurants here, comes from that region. The Russian dumping action on Sunday was carried out with a brazenness that made it seem almost routine. By sending the load into the Sea of Japan the Russian navy must have known it would be spotted. Its cargo was clearly marked with nuclear symbols, and it began dumping the radioactive waste water from a pipe in broad daylight. Greenpeace Radiation Speaking to Japanese reporters by radio telephone, staff members of Greenpeace said the Russian ship tried to prevent the group from measuring radioactivity near the ship, blasting its boat with high-power hoses. A Greepeace representative said the group had measured radiation levels around the Russian ship at about 70 times the normal background radiation. This afternoon the Russian Ambassador to Tokyo, Lyudvig A. Chizhov, was summoned to the Japanese Foreign Ministry as officials here issued a statement of "strong regret." Foreign Ministry officials said later that Mr. Chizhov had told them he had not received any information about the dumping from Moscow but had added that "technical reasons" made it impossible for Russia to stop dumping liquefied nuclear waste. Previously Russian officials have insisted that the dumping poses no threat to the environment. In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it received a letter from Russia 10 days ago informing it of a plan to dump low-level waste into the Sea of Japan, despite a global moratorium on such dumping. The moratorium carries no legal sanctions. Russia said the waste was rated at 2.18 curies, below most of the international agency's danger standards. The intense news coverage given to the ship's every move brought protests around Japan today by fishermen and anti-nuclear campaigners. Protesters gathered in front |
638752_0 | I.R.A. Welcomes Ulster Plan; Describes It as Basis for Peace | In a move expected to add impetus to a new plan for peace in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican Army said today that it welcomed the proposal because "it could provide the basis for peace." The statement was the first indication of approval by the outlawed group since the plan was announced nine days ago by Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, and John Hume, a member of the British and European Parliaments and head of the Social Democratic Labor Party. The plan, the details of which have not been disclosed, is an attempt to end the 25 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland between its Protestant majority and Catholic minority. The predominantly Catholic I.R.A. is fighting a war with British security forces to end British rule and unite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to the south. The republic is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic; Northern Ireland is made up of about 650,000 Catholics and about 950,000 Protestants. A Cease-Fire Uncertain In its statement, issued in Dublin, the I.R.A. did not address the question of whether the organization, which has about 400 active members, would agree to a cease-fire in the event of talks. Mr. Hume is expected to come to Dublin on Tuesday to brief Prime Minister Albert Reynolds on details of the plan. The Irish Government has indicated it would pass the details on to London. The British Secretary for Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, has said he would look at any report from Dublin, but insisted he would not negotiate with Sinn Fein or the I.R.A. while the violence continued. Both Britain and Ireland have said they will not talk to Sinn Fein, or the I.R.A., unless there is a cease-fire and unless Sinn Fein denounces the I.R.A.'s campaign of violence, which continued when it exploded three bombs in north London early Saturday morning, slightly wounding five people. The I.R.A. statement said it had a vested interest in the plan and had been "informed of the broad principles which will be for consideration by the London and Dublin Governments." The statement added, "Our objectives, which include the right of the Irish people to national self-determination, are well known." The plan is vehemently opposed by Protestant leaders, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain, as it has been since 1922, when the south became an independent republic. |
638702_0 | World Economies | |
638614_0 | Accous Journal; Highway Hits a Roadblock: France's Last 12 Bears | With their mighty walls stretching from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees hold some of Western Europe's last wild spaces. Royal eagles and great Egyptian vultures dip along glaciers and waterfalls. And amid the rangy pine forests the last few bears in France are fighting for survival. A new truck route linking France and Spain threatens to come thundering through the Aspe Valley, one of the region's most peaceful and spectacular gorges. The traffic will divide the habitat of the bears and, experts believe, hasten their extinction. Planners had expected protests over disturbing the valley's medieval villages and polluting the scenery with concrete, noise and car exhausts. But they had not counted on the power of the legendary brown bear. Just 200 years ago brown bears roamed across much of Europe. Today they are reduced to a few isolated pockets, and their memory lives on mostly in folk tales, coats of arms and names ranging from Berlin and Bern to Bernard and Bernadette. Given this lineage, it is not surprising that the last 12 bears of the Pyrenees have now turned the dispute over the planned highway into France's main continuing environmental battle. Most Popular Wild Animal First, conservationists won a court order for a temporary halt to the work. Then a national survey found that bears are the most popular wild animal in France and that 95 percent of the country's schoolchildren want the bears saved. Now, with construction about to resume, environmentalists from across Western Europe are arriving to join the protests. Beyond the fight over the bears and an unspoiled valley are broader European issues involving the movement of freight across Europe, which is rapidly expanding with the elimination of customs barriers within the European Community. The dispute also highlights the contradictions between Western Europe's strategies for development and conservation: it has rules to protect rivers and threatened species, but these are often sidestepped in the rush to develop the Continent's dwindling empty spaces. The planned route in the Pyrenees, which will involve drilling a five-mile-long tunnel through the Somport Pass, was conceived to move goods between Bordeaux, France, and Zaragoza, Spain. The European Community agreed to pay about 10 percent of its $300 million cost. Critics now regard it as a test case for the community's transport policy, which requires it to consider the alternative of rail transport before it finances a new road. That |
644714_0 | World Economies | |
644645_0 | Bombing Causes Delay in British-Irish Talks | A day after 10 people were killed here by an Irish Republican Army bomb, the British and Irish Governments today postponed a meeting they had planned to hold on Wednesday in Belfast to discuss peace prospects for Northern Ireland. Among those killed in the blast in a Protestant shopping area were two young girls and a guerrilla of the I.R.A. itself, an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic movement that is campaigning to end British rule of Northern Ireland. Government officials indicated that they were delaying the talks to show respect for the victims and stopped short of saying that the peace initiative was dead. But the Irish Foreign Minister, Dick Spring, said the bomb attack, one of the most lethal in years, had dealt "a grievous blow" to the peace effort. The initiative, advanced a month ago by the two most influential Catholic leaders in this British province, called for an end to I.R.A. attacks in exchange for allowing the group a voice in peace talks through Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing. Today railway service was disrupted around London when an I.R.A. bomb exploded in Reading, about 35 miles west of the city. No one was injured. |
642045_0 | Amazon Tours From Ecuador | Only four hours by jet from Miami, Quito is becoming an increasingly popular jumping-off point for Americans interested in exploring the Amazon jungle. Over the last five years, nature tourism in the Ecuadorean Amazon has doubled, approaching 30,000 visitors this year. But visitors should know that Ecuador informally limits access to its Amazon region to participants in package tours purchased here or abroad. Other South American countries -- Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela -- offer unrestricted tourism in the region. One of South America's last state-run airlines, Transportes Aereos Militares Ecuatorianos, or TAME, exercises a virtual monopoly on all scheduled commercial flights into Coca and Lago Agrio in Ecuador's Amazon region. Travel agencies generally will not sell TAME tickets because the airline, run by Ecuador's Air Force, does not accept individual reservations. And sometimes, even when group reservations are made, the airline does not honor them. Foreigners should buy package tours and let a local agent run interference. Nature lodge operators either charter their own airplanes or bribe TAME personnel to guarantee seats for their clients. The only alternative is the chaos of a waiting list line at the national terminal of Quito airport. Over the last two years, Argentina privatized Aerolineas Argentinas, Brazil privatized Vasp, Peru privatized Aeroperu and Venezuela privatized Viasa. Only Ecuador leaves individual tourists stuck with the dilemma of having to buy a tour, charter a plane at enormous expense or resort to a bus ride of 12 hours or more into its Amazon region. JAMES BROOKE TRAVEL ADVISORY |
642153_1 | Malls Add Services to Keep Customers | for recycling bins in the food court, they got them, said Alice Rosen, Menlo Park's marketing manager. Menlo Park, one of the earliest malls at 30 years old, is in its second year of operation after an 18-month shutdown for rebuilding. Last month, the Quakerbridge Mall, in Lawrence Township, began offering year-round valet parking after the service proved popular during the holidays, said its marketing manager, Lisa Stezzi. And earlier this year, Bridgewater Commons instituted a smoke-free environment -- a bold move that other malls have adopted. For enhanced safety, Menlo Park brightened lighting to eliminate dark corners. A Lawrence Township police officer is now stationed at the Quakerbridge Mall, which executives say played a part in reducing auto theft at the mall by 80 percent compared with a year ago. Hit by recession and an accompanying real estate decline, new shopping-center construction starts in New Jersey declined to just eight in 1992, from 56 in 1989, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. New Jersey is home to about 978 shopping centers -- groupings of stores that have central management -- and generally the largest shopping centers are considered malls. Of the total shopping centers in the state, 35 are enclosed malls, putting most residents within a half-hour's drive of at least one mall, if not several. There hasn't been a new mall constructed in the state since 1990, when the Freehold Raceway Mall opened its doors on the site of a former race track. Many retail analysts argue that the state has all the malls it can support. The decline of mall development as a profitable venture might be the biggest constraint. "The retail market used to be more development driven; today, the money is in management," said Keith Foxe, the spokesman for the shopping-center council. Shopping-center management companies receive not only rent but also a percentage of their tenants' profits. Some experts trace the malls' extra efforts at luring shoppers to 1988, when Bridgewater Commons, the second-to-last mall to open in the state, had its debut in central New Jersey. "Bridgewater Commons made all the other malls in the state look tired," said Prof. James W. Hughes, associate dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. "Malls began to see that new players could come on the scene and take business away." 'Siren Call' of Affluence Retail developers have |
642376_2 | Conversations: Khaleda Zia; A Woman Leader for a Land That Defies Islamic Stereotypes | primary education is now free and compulsory up to grade five -- and for girls free up to grade eight," she said. "We are experimenting in some areas with a scheme that gives food grains to families who keep their children in school. "Sometimes, a parent will bring a bright girl to me who is too poor to continue her studies," said the Prime Minister, the mother of two university-aged sons. "I have a discretionary fund for such girls." Prime Minister Zia has benefitted from the help of strong Bangladeshi nongovernmental development organizations, which even in the Ershad years managed to steer clear of the pervasive official corruption that weakened or paralyzed government aid projects. Although a militant Islamic fringe tries to curb the public role of women, Prime Minister Zia, the daughter of a provincial businessman and a prominent social worker, is confident that Bangladeshis will reject the fundamentalist message. Her critics say she could do more to ostracize Islamic militants, some of whom became her political allies in 1991. "We are religious people, certainly," Mrs. Zia said. "But we are not extremists or fanatics, and therefore we are more liberal, and we consider that our women are more free. We have women who are very famous singers, and women who take part in drama on the stage and in the cinema." A lot of this has to do with the culture of Bengal, a lush part of the Indian Subcontinent where the harsh plains of the north and west dissolve into emerald rice fields laced with waterways and shaded by palms. Both Calcutta, in eastern India, and Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, are centers of commerce and intellectual life. When Bengal was split along Hindu-Muslim lines in 1947, what is now Bangladesh became a distant part of Islamic Pakistan. In 1971, putting Bengali nationalism ahead of religion, Bangladeshis opted for a precarious independence instead, and slid rapidly into hopeless underdevelopment. Now, less than a quarter-century later, the country has begun to turn around, international development organizations say. At the World Bank, nobody calls Bangladesh a basket case any more. Although it still ranks among the least developed nations -- and is vulnerable to horrifying natural disasters -- the country outpaces much of Africa and a few Asian nations in certain measures of improved quality of life, according to the United Nations Development Program. Birth Rate Down A population growth |
642376_4 | Conversations: Khaleda Zia; A Woman Leader for a Land That Defies Islamic Stereotypes | Rate Down A population growth rate that was approaching 3 percent has been cut to less than 2.4 percent -- lower than the average rates in Central America, Africa and the Middle East, though still triple the North American rate. Three-quarters of Bangladeshis now have access to some kind of basic medical care, a higher rate than in India. And women's health cooperatives have helped bring most of the babies within reach of vaccines. Population experts are stunned at this Muslim society's acceptance of family planning, including some abortion and sterilization. "It is a wrong conception that Islam is against family planning," Mrs. Zia said. "That may be true of the Catholics, but not Muslims. There is nothing in Islam that accepts that convention. Certainly in Bangladesh we do not have that constraint. Family planning is widespread and has been accepted in every corner of the country. Women and men are aware of its importance, and they are practicing it. That is why our birth rate has come down." Prime Minister Zia, who was married at the age of 15 and learned much of what she knows of the world from her travels with her late husband when he was army chief, has a policy of taking young Bangladeshis abroad on official trips to "give the bright ones international exposure," she said. With her in New York as part of Bangladesh's United Nations delegation were a teenage girl and boy who had scored the highest marks in their Dhaka schools. The Prime Minister said she has felt no resistance from men who have to deal with her as Bangladesh's leader. Her relations with the unpredictable army are good because of her husband's long military service and sympathy over his death at the hands of dissident officers. But like other South Asian women who have held high office -- Indira Gandhi, Ms. Bhutto and Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka -- both she and Sheik Hasina, the daughter of Sheik Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's founding father, are the inheritors of the legacies of male relatives. Nonetheless, Mrs. Zia says women now stand on their own political feet in Bangladesh. "From my experience, voters do not see any difference between men and women," she said. "They judge candidates for what they say. It is possible for women to come up in politics in Bangladesh now without any family connections. In this we are equal." |
642188_0 | Tech Notes; Computerizing the Clunker | COMPUTERS work well in new cars to reduce air pollution, but what can be done with old ones, especially in third world countries where old models predominate? In those lands, where often the only gasoline is leaded, catalytic converters are not practical. A start-up company in Maryland won a patent last week for a device that cleans car exhaust and reduces fuel consumption by harnessing a computerized sensor to an old-fashioned carburetor. The system can continually adjust the air-fuel mixture, making it as lean as possible at any given instant without hindering the engine's performance. It can also work with fuel-injected cars. The Lean Power Corporation of Silver Spring, Md., attaches a magnetic sensor that monitors the speed of the engine's flywheel. The sensor looks not only at revolutions per minute (a measure of engine speed) but also at the flywheel's smoothness of revolution (an indication of performance) and sends the appropriate signals to an air-control device attached to the carburetor. "When combustion is smooth and uniform, the sensor tells our controller that the engine will tolerate a leaner mixture," said Michael D. Leshner, the company's vice president and senior scientist. "When it gets rough, it tells our controller it's a little too lean." From a chemistry standpoint, air and gasoline mix best at a ratio of 14.7 parts air to 1 part gasoline. But power is maximized at a richer mixture, 12 to 1, and cleanliness is maximized at a higher mixture, 19 to 1. The Lean Power system decides how rich the mixture needs to be by looking at fluctuations in the flywheel, which runs faster after a cylinder fires and slows down between firings. A four-cylinder engine fires twice in each revolution, and the engine runs between 600 and 6,000 revolutions per minute, which means measuring a cycle of acceleration and deceleration 100 times per second or less. Using mechanical means to measure something that fast is hard, but Mr. Leshner said, "for modern electronics, that's slow. It's 100,000 times slower than your personal computer." The company has been concentrating on Mexico, where it hopes soon to announce a joint-venture partnership with a manufacturer. Tests at Ford de Mexico's engineer labs showed carbon monoxide reduction of 60 to 70 percent, hydrocarbon reduction of 20 to 40 percent and nitrogen oxide reduction of 15 to 25 percent. The product is supposed to sell for less than $200, and |
642136_5 | When We Build It, Will They Come? | interactive video services. "We think the hardest part in all this is giving people a sense of where they are." To meet that challenge, companies as diverse as Microsoft and TV Guide are working on computer "navigators" or "agents" that help people find their way. Agents are usually software programs that search through streams of programming or data and select the things a customer wants. The Sandpoint Corporation, a four-year-old company in Cambridge, Mass., has developed a program called Hoover that "sucks up" reports and articles from 5,200 publications and data bases. Customers instruct the software to look for particular topics -- about an industry, a company or an individual -- and the system prepares reports that are easy to read and are continually updated. The system was initially developed for big corporate customers, which pay at least $28,000 for the software and install it on large computers that in turn serve individual executives. But Sandpoint executives believe the system could be offered just as easily to home viewers through networks like those envisioned by Bell Atlantic or by a joint venture between Time Warner and U S West. "What we're doing is giving people a way to fish in the electronic ocean," said Michael Kinkead, Sandpoint's president. Some industry executives predict that the most immediate applications for the new networks will be in letting customers see the programming they want precisely when they want it. While videocassette recorders now allow users to, say, tape the CBS Evening News for later viewing, people in the future will be able to call up all the networks' news programs or retrieve just the weather or sports reports. "THERE are only a handful of things that I really want to see, but I want to see them as efficiently as possible," said Lawrence Ellison, chief executive at Oracle Systems, a software maker in Redwood Shores, Calif., that has built a computer "server" that stores and dispenses video programming in digital form. Many industry executives say it will take at least several years of trial and error before the first new "killer applications" emerge. "The I.B.M. personal computer came out in 1981, but Lotus 1-2-3 didn't come out until 1983 -- the killer application didn't come out for two years," said Thomas Dooley, senior vice president of corporate development at Viacom. "There's a time line and a sequence here. First you get the machines, |
640074_7 | The Yangtze's Gorges | talked on the boat had a similar reaction to the Three Gorges, but we were genuinely impressed by a side trip on the second day to the Lesser Three Gorges. These are on the Daning River, a tributary of the Yangtze, and nearly all cruise boats make the seven-hour side trip. Because the Daning is narrow and shallow, we transferred to a group of motorboats that could each carry about 20 people. With the motorboat's awning pulled back and the spray of the rapids around us, the boat ride was much more engaging than the one on the Yangtze. The toilets on the small boat were so dirty that we all limited our intake of beverages. The Daning is a pretty little river, a refreshing turquoise after the brown of the Yangtze, flanked alternately by steep cliffs and gentle tree-lined slopes. The boatmen point to odd-shaped formations that are thought, with some stretch of the imagination, to resemble pandas, Buddhas and goddesses. Perhaps the most interesting stop was Zigui, a county seat where we docked for the second night of the cruise. A famous poet and statesman, Qu Yuan, committed suicide in about 288 B.C. by leaping into the river here. His suicide is commemmorated each spring with dragon boat races, held especially for tourists, who can participate, whenever a cruise boat pulls up. It's all rather hokey, but everybody seemed to have fun. We also explored Zigui and visited a temple honoring Qu Yuan. Trips to the Three Gorges have been particularly popular in the last few years because of fears that the area will be inundated by the Three Gorges Dam, but "farewell tours" seem a bit premature. Opposition to the dam, which would be the world's largest hydro-electric project if it is completed when scheduled, about 17 years from now, remains considerable, and there is some prospect that the scheme will be quietly dropped after the death of China's 89-year-old senior leader, Deng Xiaoping. Although the 607-foot-high dam would not destroy the landscape, it would change it radically, raising the level of the water and making the vistas less dramatic -- something that already happened with the construction of the Gezhouba Dam in the 1970's and 1980's. Accounts from several decades ago describe the Three Gorges as exciting rapids with boulders and whirlpools. Now the gorges are placid and much deeper than they used to be. Some |
640050_0 | Spicier Old Stops, Exotic New Ones | THE fall season is a pronounced one in the cruise industry. The flotilla that cruises to Alaska in spring and summer has relocated to warm-weather ports, there are longer cruises to choose from, and South America and the South Pacific show up on more itineraries. Many veteran travelers prefer fall and winter cruises because they provide a respite from the cold and from the summer throngs who have helped the industry achieve record bookings almost every year since the 1970's. Since then growth in the number of passengers has averaged more than nine percent a year, and is expected to grow from 4.4 million passengers in 1993 to eight million in the year 2000. But ships booked to 90 percent of capacity in recent years owe much to widespread discounting. In the last year, the industry has had some success instituting a more orderly system of graduated discounts -- the highest for early bookings. But brochure prices are still like auto sticker prices: essentially negotiating ploys. Cruises have been ranging farther and farther afield, but this year's fall-winter schedules are more wide-ranging than ever. This diversity is a response to consumer demand -- demand that has ships calling at remote islands like St. Helena, where Napoleon was exiled, at Yemen, on the southwest Arabian peninsula, which only recently has tolerated tourists, and at as many as five Vietnamese cities on a two-week voyage. At the same time, Caribbean cruises remain highly popular, and cruise lines are trying to spice them up with new ports of call, new land packages or new wrinkles. About 75 ships are Caribbean-bound this fall and winter, mostly on 7-to-12-day voyages. Panama Canal transits, for example, have become popular in recent years, with 50 in each direction scheduled between now and April. But many of Royal Cruise Line's 16 canal cruises include new calls at the San Blas Islands, famed for its colorful appliqued fabrics (molas) handcrafted by Cuna Indian women, and two of those cruises will visit New Orleans for the first time. The Regent Star's weekly sailings from Montego Bay, stopping in Costa Rica, Cartagena and Aruba, include a partial transit of the Canal; after going through the Gatun locks, one of three sets of locks in the waterway, the ship turns around in Gatun Lake for the homeward trip. One of the more unexpected trends is the emergence of Southeast Asia as a |
640069_2 | A Landmark Manages to Cheat The Wrecking Ball | sprawling city like Los Angeles needed a central library at all. Why not scatter the collection throughout the city, they asked, on the rationale that pro- library voters lived in residential neighborhoods, not downtown office towers. Making the same argument, but for an altogether different reason, were the celebrants of technology, who thought that computer terminals everywhere were the way to bring Los Angeles into the new era of library science. The city debated for years but finally resolved the issue in the right way, by deciding to save the Goodhue library, restore it and expand it. In 1986 a devastating fire in the Goodhue building set the effort back and stretched out the timetable to a full decade from the hiring of the architect to the cutting of the ribbon last week. The results are worth it. The Goodhue building has been exquisitely restored, and joined to a large new structure beside it that now contains most of the library's stacks and reading rooms. While the two sections do not flow together seamlessly either inside or out -- we always know whether we are in the new or the old wing, which is as it should be -- the Goodhue and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer buildings sit together comfortably, even amicably. It's no small accomplishment, since the Goodhue building was designed to stand entirely alone: with a floor plan shaped like a cross, four major entrances and a brilliantly colored pyramidal tower as a central exclamation point, this is not a building that wants any competition. Norman Pfeiffer, the architect in charge of the project, has managed to create an addition that both defers to Goodhue and stands strongly on its own. The new structure is slightly whimsical, slightly institutional, its style a kind of decorated industrial modernism that picks up on the Art Moderne leanings of the Goodhue building. It is covered in a combination of adobe-colored stucco and green terra cotta, and its carefully sculptured setbacks mount upward in a way that relates to the shape of the Goodhue building without directly imitating it. The addition is anchored by an eight-story atrium, roughly half of which is set below ground to keep the profile of the new building low and allow the tower of the original building to keep pride of place on the skyline. The atrium is full of natural light, and it has no feeling of |
639952_0 | Oct. 3-9: Small Bomb, Big Problem; Chinese Explosion Puts Another Dent In Relations With U.S. | At 80 to 90 kilotons, the nuclear bomb tested by China last week is deemed medium-sized. But arms-control advocates worried that the blast could set in motion an international chain reaction as well. President Clinton had urged China not to carry out the test, and the day after it took place he directed the Department of Energy to plan for resuming America's own nuclear tests, which were halted a year ago. The disarmament advocates worry that Russia, France and Britain could follow suit. But that may be too pessimistic. To resume testing, the Administration would have to get approval from a reluctant Congress. And Mr. Clinton has set conditions, such as progress on concluding a treaty to ban nuclear tests worldwide, before seeking Congress' nod. Still, the test was another blow to increasingly shaky relations with China. In August, the United States imposed trade sanctions because China had sold missile technology to Pakistan. In September, it searched for, but did not find, poison gas ingredients on a Chinese ship bound for Iran. Mr. Clinton is to meet President Jiang Zemin of China next month at the Pacific Rim summit meeting in Seattle. They will have a lot to talk about. STEVEN A. HOLMES |
645278_0 | Catholic Bishops Proposing Active U.S. Policy Abroad | The nation's Roman Catholic bishops have drafted a statement calling for a more active American role on the world stage, including supporting the United Nations, expanding foreign aid and, when necessary, using military force for interventions intended to rescue people from hunger or mass violence. Now in draft form, the statement is meant to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the bishops' 1983 pastoral letter on nuclear arms, which stirred intense public debate because it ran counter to the Reagan Administration's emphasis on a build-up of nuclear weapons. The new document, which will be submitted for amendments and a vote at the bishops' meeting Nov. 15-18 in Washington, also appears to challenge what the bishops say is an radically altered political climate. "After the cold war, there has emerged an understandable but dangerous temptation to turn inward, to focus only on domestic needs and to ignore global responsibilities," the statement reads. "This is not an option for believers in a universal church or for citizens in the world's most powerful nation." No Movement, but a Reflex Archbishop John R. Roach of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who heads the bishops' committee on international policy and helped draft the document, said that the bishops did not see the growth of an isolationist ideology like the one in the United States before World War II, but rather "an involuntary reflex" that risked "withdrawing more and more from any involvement overseas." The bishops sensed this drift, he said, in public anxiety over American actions in Somalia and Bosnia as well as in the public's "enormous preoccupation, and a legitimate one, with what's going on at home, whether health care reform or the economy." Unlike the 1983 document, the present statement is not meant to be a full-scale pastoral letter, which usually sets forth authoritative church teaching. By contrast, the drafters called this statement "a set of more modest reflections" that do not "provide definitive answers to the key policy questions of this moment." Some Broad Principles Nonetheless, the statement proposes priorities for American policy makers, and it offers guiding moral principles for complex issues like the use of economic sanctions, the rights of nationalities to self-determination and military interventions. This statement is not likely to curtail the wide range of opinion on international issues among Catholics, both in the pews and in the pulpits. But it can become a widely known base line for discussions |
645252_0 | NEWS SUMMARY | International A3-21 ATROCITIES IN A BOSNIAN VILLAGE Until Saturday, the quiet mountain village of Stupni Do had escaped the horrors of the Bosnian war. Now, many of its Muslim inhabitants have been slaughtered and the village has become a symbol of the nation's madness. A1 Bosnian forces killed a gang leader in Sarajevo. A21 HAITIAN RUSH TO FINISH HIGHWAY With the U.N. set to widen an oil and arms embargo, the Haitian military seems to be rushing to complete the first highway to connect Haiti with the Dominican Republic. A1 U.S. WEIGHS FULL HAITI EMBARGO With efforts to restore Haiti's elected President stymied, President Clinton's top advisers met to consider a complete embargo against Haiti. But they took no action. A17 CANADIAN WANTS TO ALTER PACT Canada's Prime Minister-designate, Jean Chretien, said he wants changes in the North American Free Trade Agreement and may not implement it without them. A20 The Reform Party has come storming out of Canada's west. A20 YELTSIN SIGNS LAND DECREE President Yeltsin signed a decree to allow farm workers to own and dispose of land freely, lowering a major barrier to reforming the Soviet system of state farms. A11 U.S. SEEKS RUSSIAN WITHDRAWAL Secretary of State Christopher used a visit to Riga to press Moscow to withdraw all its troops from Latvia and Estonia. A7 Waldemar Pawlak became Poland's new Prime Minister. A6 EGYPT CALLS KILLER UNBALANCED Egyptian officials said that the man who shot and killed two American engineers and a French jurist was mentally ill and that they had no evidence linking him to any Muslim militant groups. A12 A French book on the Nazi murder industry provokes a storm. A3 In strife-torn Belfast, a day of funerals and of fear. A10 The U.S. is pushing Japan to buy American-made vehicles. D1 Alexander M. Haig Jr. is seething about America's China policy. A14 Many Hong Kong Chinese choose unusual English names. A15 A Luxembourg court threw out a B.C.C.I. liquidation plan.D24 Pisa Journal: The tower is being pulled in another direction. A4 National A22-25, B12-13 CLINTON PRODUCES HEALTH BILL President Clinton's health plan moved from brainstorming to serious law-making as he presented Congress with the most complex, detailed legislative blueprint devised by any President. A1 The health plan unleashed a battle of partisan medicine shows. A24 Health care financing: how to avoid the pitfalls of Medicare. A25 POLITICAL PERIL: THE DETAILS News analysis: |
645338_4 | Expert Tells Of Markings On Van Parts At Blast Trial | the prosecution case is being built in such small increments that Mr. Salameh's name has not yet been mentioned by any of the 58 witnesses who have testified so far. Indeed, once Mr. Fritz brought up the Ford Econoline van, the prosecution turned to a different element in their case, calling to the stand Manuel Zambelas, a senior field engineer for the Michelin Tire Company, who entertained the jury with his description of 5 of the 19 tire fragments found in the wreckage. "I know my tires and these are Michelins," Mr. Zambelas proclaimed with apparent pride, drawing guffaws from the jurors and smiles from some of the defendants. Mr. Zambelas explained in considerable detail how the make of any tire fragment can be easily determined, as can the reasons for tire failure. He talked about distinctive tire tread patterns and the markings inside the tire as the chief clues to its manufacturer. "Whatever you do to a tire, the tire will tell you," he said. "All you have to know is how to read it." 16-Inch Tires Mr. Zambelas said that he determined that five of the tire fragments were from Michelin tires. He said that four of them came from the same tire, which he said was a retread. The fifth fragment came from a different tire and it was not a retread. Mr. Zambelas was followed by James B. Gardner, an engineer who works for the Bridgestone-Firestone company, another tire manufacturer. Mr. Gardner testified that he also examined all 19 of the tire fragments found in the wreckage. He said there was a Michelin retread tire among them, a Bridgestone and a Firestone. Both witnesses contended that the tire fragments came from 16-inch tires of the sort that would be used on a pick-up truck or a heavy-duty van. The prosecution seemed to be building up its contention that the van was at ground zero of the blast but it was not entirely clear how the tire fragments substantiated its argument. Mr. Zambelas said that he had never before seen tires blown into small fragments like the ones he examined in this case, contending that it would have taken a tremendous force to do so, far more than an ordinary blowout. The prosecution has not yet presented any evidence to show that the van rented by Mr. Salameh had the types of tires identified by the witnesses. |
645300_2 | Pisa Journal; The Leaning Tower Loses a Tiny Bit of Its Tilt | model towers in miniature, postcards and guidebooks. The alarms have been sounding about the tower's steadily increasing tilt for years, but, usually, it took disasters at other towers to focus attention on what is one of Italy's principal wonders. Committees Aren't Enough People got worried, for instance, when the Venice cathedral's bell tower collapsed early in this century. They set up a committee that led to many more committees, which all concluded that, if the tower kept on leaning the way it was leaning, it would one day fall over. Not that the issues seemed all that pressing: the tower of Pisa was increasing its tilt by roughly one twenty-fifth of an inch every year. But then, in 1989, another tower in Pavia did collapse. And that persuaded people that committees were not enough. In January 1990 the tower was closed to the 800,000 energetic visitors who, every year, clambered up its 294 steps to get to the top. Then experts began studying two issues -- the tilt of the tower and its structural stability. The news was worrisome on both fronts. "The tower has leaned increasingly throughout its existence," Professor Viggiani said, "but we found it was on the verge of falling down or collapsing because the structure is badly stressed." So, last year, a girdle of steel cables was thrown around the base of the tower. Then the tower's original base was reinforced with concrete so that, this year, the lead ingots could be placed on it: first 140 tons, then 300 more tons and, by the end of this year, a further 200 tons is to be placed on top of the existing ingots, to pull it further back from its alarming tilt. Then, Professor Jamiolkowski said, the idea is to stabilize the lean by a process called "controlled subsidence," meaning that the ground below the northern flank of the tower will be lowered to provide a more level base. That, possibly, is the riskiest part of the whole operation, but, according to Professor Jamiolkowski, the maneuver is vital if, as he hopes, the tower is to be reopened to visitors some day. The Ultimate Aim Ultimately, Professor Viggiani said, the aim is to reduce the tower's lean away from the vertical from around 10 degrees to 9 degrees -- and fix it there. Restoring it to vertical is out of the question, of course: there are |
645298_2 | Belfast Observes a Day of Funerals and Fear | wounding five others. Including Saturday's bomb attack, which killed 10, 14 people have died over the last four days. A paramilitary squad of Protestants called Ulster Freedom Fighters is picking victims apparently at random in Catholic areas. In a statement about Tuesday's attack, the group said, "It is just the start of the violence that is to follow." The I.R.A. has apologized for the loss of innocent life caused by the bomb at the fish shop, saying that it had been aimed at Protestant gunmen meeting in an office above and exploded by accident before a warning could be called in. The meeting had apparently broken up some time before. The victims were the store-owner and his daughter and families out shopping on a busy afternoon. The violence has stalled a peace initiative that had raised the hopes of some people for a way out of the 25 years of fighting between the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority in Ulster. The initiative, which has not been made public, grew out of talks between John Hume, the moderate Catholic leader of the Social Democratic Labor Party, and Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A. Because of his influence over one side of those engaged in the armed struggle, Mr. Adams's participation was noteworthy. But it also raised problems since Britain refuses to have anything to do with Sinn Fein as long as the organization refuses to repudiate the I.R.A.'s violence. Immediately after the bombing, Mr. Adams criticized it but stopped short of outright condemnation. Mr. Adams was very visible at Mr. Begley's funeral today, leading several thousand mourners along with other Sinn Fein officials. At one point, he helped to carry the coffin. A photograph of that, in the evening newspaper, was already enraging Protestant unionists. After a service, the funeral moved through the streets to Milltown Cemetery some three miles away. At the gravesite, in a chilly wind under a leaden sky, Mr. Begley was eulogized as "a gallant Irish patriot." Not more than a mile away, a memorial service was being held by Protestants at the site of the bombing. A crowd of several thousand sang hymns and prayed. Leading the service, the Rev. Roy Magee said at one point, "The voices of those who lost their lives on this spot are crying to us from the grave: The violence must stop." |
645386_1 | Making Car Theft More Difficult | alert a thief that the owner is doing something about security. ELECTRONIC ALARMS: Usually this system will include a loud siren, a cutoff switch for the ignition, glass and sound sensors, motion detectors (which, when too sensitive, cause the false alarm problems evident on city streets) and remote control features. One problem is that the remote controls send out radio-frequency codes that can be duplicated with scanning devices thieves can make themselves. One company, Clifford Electronics of Chatsworth, Calif., manufactures a system with codes that it says are so complex it would take a scanner 19 years to try every possible code to disarm the system. Prices for electronic alarms can cost $200 to $1,500 or more. CAR TRACKERS: There are two major systems. Lo-Jack, available so far in eight states (including New Jersey but not New York, Pennsylvania or Connecticut), claims a 95 percent rate of car return after theft. The system, which is activated by the car's owner over telephone lines, contacts a police radio network and sends out a homing signal. The police can then trace the car and the thief. The problem is that if the owner doesn't notice the theft right away, the thief can, for example, drive a New Jersey car into New York or Pennsylvania, and the police can't track it until the car is driven back to a state where Lo-Jack is available. Lo-Jack costs about $595. The Intercept system by Code-Alarm is $1,495. It can track a car anywhere cellular phone service is available. The system includes a cellular phone, and when Intercept senses a break-in or theft, the phone will automatically dial a monitoring station to report the vehicle's latitude and longitude every two seconds. The New York Police Department recommends "layering" security devices. Detective Concepcion said there should be at least one sign, like a steering wheel lock, as well as an alarm system of some sort. The following are also recommended: * The department will etch a vehicle's identification number on windows and other car parts. This marking will help identify the car if it reaches a chop shop, where cars are cannibalized and sold for parts. * Drop a business card between the window and the door. If the police raid a chop shop and find the door, the card will tell them whom to call. * Install a hood lock to keep a thief from starting |
638178_1 | Gains Cited at U.N. on Cutting Infant Deaths | children, and insure universal access to clean water, all by the year 2000. After the leaders set the goals for reducing infant mortality, African, Asian and Latin American governments adopted 1995 targets for themselves as a way of measuring progress. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh, the chairwoman of a meeting held here on Thursday to review the results, said Bangladesh had raised infant immunization rates from 2 percent to 70 percent over the last five years and expected to reach the 1995 target of 80 percent on time. She also reported that 66 percent of Bangladesh's 6- to 10-year-olds were now enrolled in primary schools, against a 1995 target of 68 percent. James P. Grant, executive director of Unicef, which sponsored the 1990 summit meeting, said he hoped that the new figures would allay skepticism that the ambitious goals for the year 2000 would ever be met. If infant mortality rates are sharply reduced, he said, population growth will slow in the developing world because parents will assume that all the children they bear will survive. Unicef says in a report that 86 countries have drawn up plans aimed at achieving end-of-the-century targets while 50 more are doing so. Already 12 developing countries have immunized more than 90 percent of their children against major childhood diseases, exceeding the target for the year 2000, while 10 nations, including India and China, have now reached the level of 80 percent. The six diseases targeted in the immunization program are measles, polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus. But Unicef says the world is far from meeting targets for financing the planned reductions in infant mortality. Goals endorsed at the 1990 summit meeting call for developing countries to spend 20 percent of their domestic budgets, or about $16 billion a year, on meeting basic needs like primary education, clean water and health care. International donors would allot 20 percent of the assistance they give, or some $8 billion a year, as foreign exchange for such programs. Other targets that developing countries have set themselves for reducing infant mortality by the mid 1990's include elimination of neo-natal tetanus and vitamin A deficiency; the near-elimination of polio; a 95 percent reduction in the mortality rate from measles; universal iodization of salt to prevent iodine deficiency, and encouragement of breast feeding by eliminating the practice of supplying infant formula for free or at low cost. |
638183_2 | U.S. REACHES PACT ON PLANT CLEANUP | earlier this year that it could not meet the schedule laid out in a 1989 agreement. When it was announced, that agreement was hailed as a landmark for bringing a Federal weapons plant into compliance with national environmental laws. But as technical problems emerged, the deadlines began to seem unrealistic. The new agreement still specifies dates for major aspects of the cleanup, and the Federal Facilities Compliance Act, enacted after the 1989 agreement was signed, gives state and Federal environmental officials stronger enforcement authority. The agreement covers cleanup of liquids and sludges in 177 underground tanks, ranging in size from 55,000 gallons to one million gallons, at the plant on the Columbia River in central Washington. Sixty-seven tanks have already leaked, and more will do so before their contents can be embedded in glass. In addition, some wastes generate hydrogen, which can burn or explode. Engineers are not even sure what is in all the tanks, let alone how to get the material out. The Energy Department had agreed in 1989 to begin the glass containment by the end of 1999, but Ms. Riveland said, "I'm not sure that was ever realistic. She said that while the deadline had become an important symbolic goal, meeting it would have required beginning construction of the glass factory in the mid-1980's. It has not even been designed. River to Be Protected The larger factory now contemplated could finish the job in 2028. Roger Stanley, the Department of Ecology's top negotiator, said that under the old agreement completion "wasn't on the map; it likely would have been out in the early 2030's." Other parts of the new agreement include extensive work to protect the Columbia River and to reduce the part of the 540-square-mile Hanford reservation contaminated with radioactivity. Almost half the site is to be opened to other uses by October 1994, although the agreement does not specify the new uses. The agreement calls for accelerated cleanup of contaminants that have reached underground water. In addition, it gives the environmental regulators more control over encapsulation of highly radioactive used reactor fuel now stored not far from the river. Regulators will also get increased access to the Energy Department's work records. But the work will still proceed slowly. The new agreement, for example, calls for pumping all liquids out of the 149 single-shelled steel tanks, but the pumping will not be done until 2000. |
638152_0 | DEBATE FOR PEACE INTENSE IN ULSTER | As the British province of Northern Ireland enters its 26th year of sectarian violence involving its Protestant majority and Roman Catholic minority, a new peace initiative has provoked intense debate in the north and here in the Irish Republic. Two questions are central to the debate on how to end the guerrilla war between the Irish Republican Army and the British forces. First, Irish and British political leaders, analysts, journalists and ordinary people are asking why, if peace agreements have been reached in South Africa and the Middle East, cannot Northern Ireland move faster toward ending the fighting that has killed more than 3,000 since 1969. Second, the new initiative has focused increased attention on the most disputed political point in the situation: whether the I.R.A.'s political wing, Sinn Fein, should be allowed to participate in formal peace negotiations along with other northern political parties, Catholic and Protestant, and the Irish and British Governments. Sinn Fein and its president, Gerry Adams, are excluded from such talks because they refuse to denounce I.R.A. violence. 3 Bombs in London Indeed as the debate surged, the I.R.A. continued its campaign, detonating three huge bombs in Northern Ireland that killed no one but caused millions of dollars in property damage in recent days. In the latest incident, the police said three bombs exploded in London early today, wounding six people. The I.R.A. took responsibility for the bombings today. Officials here, in the north and in Britain condemned the attacks in television broadcasts. Mr. Adams, who, under British and Irish anti-terrorist laws, is banned from speaking on radio and television, neither condoned nor condemned the attacks in statements to newspapers. The new initiative was announced a week ago by Mr. Adams and the most influential moderate Catholic leader in the north, John Hume, who is a member of the British and European Parliaments and head of the Social Democratic Labor Party. Usually, Mr. Hume and Mr. Adams are vehement political enemies. But after five months of talks, they announced that they had made considerable progress and "are convinced from our discussions that a process can be designed to lead to agreement among the divided people of this island, which will provide a solid basis for peace." They provided no details. The sparse announcement left officials to wonder if the details would include a promise by the I.R.A. to cease its violence in return for a |
638449_17 | Are Women's Hearts Different | their bodies manufacture. Estrogen serves several functions. It boosts a woman's levels of H.D.L. (high-density lipoprotein, the "good" cholesterol that helps carry blood fats out of the body), which helps keep the arteries clear. It lowers L.D.L. (low-density lipoprotein, the "bad" cholesterol, which accumulates as plaque). And it has a favorable effect on the reactivity of the blood-vessel walls, making them more likely to dilate to accommodate the increased blood flow necessary to get around blockages. With menopause, however, levels of this hormone drop and women seem to lose their advantage. The cholesterol profile of a postmenopausal woman gradually changes, with the result that the protective H.D.L. no longer predominates and the artery-clogging L.D.L. increases. Blood vessels themselves become less flexible. Beginning in their 50's, women are prone to atherosclerosis, and by the time they reach their 60's they are at risk of the major symptoms of coronary heart disease. The possibility that estrogen-replacement therapy might prevent heart attacks got its biggest boost from the Nurses' Health Study of 32,000 nurses at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. In 1991 scientists with the project reported that the nurses who were on estrogen-replacement therapy -- even for a very short time -- had nearly half the rate of heart attacks suffered by nurses who had never taken estrogen. Estrogen's main benefit might be its ability to raise a woman's H.D.L. level. "H.D.L. cholesterol appears to be an excellent predictor of heart disease in women," says Dr. JoAnn Manson, an endocrinologist and epidemiologist with the Nurses' Health Study and a co-director of women's health at Brigham and Women's. Even the mysterious Syndrome X may be explained in part by problems with estrogen, according to Dr. Philip M. Sarrel, professor of psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology at the Yale University School of Medicine. "The problem is one of vasodilator reserve capacity," he explains. "With that capacity, when the woman is stressed, her blood vessels dilate and allow extra blood to get to the heart. When estrogen is lacking, that reserve capacity decreases -- and in times of stress the blood flow to the heart may decrease." In premenopausal women, says Sarrel, angina symptoms often occur during the second half of the menstrual cycle, when estrogen levels are relatively low and are competing with increasing levels of a second female hormone, progesterone, which is also essential to a healthy reproductive system. In menopausal |
638303_0 | Hawaii Check-Ins Behind the Wheel | A typical 10-day family vacation in Hawaii might include five days on Oahu and five on one of the other islands. The annoying part comes when it's time to get from one island to the other -- dragging luggage and other paraphernalia from the rental car to the airline counter for what will be a very short flight. Now Aloha Airlines' new Drive-Thru Check-In, which was begun in August, lets travelers check in without even getting out of the car. Passengers drive to the fourth level of a new interisland terminal at Honolulu International Airport and get in the Drive-Thru Check-In lane, which has a conveyor belt on one side and an office at the end. The driver pops the trunk and an Aloha employee checks in the passengers; other employees tag the bags. The luggage goes to ground-level aircraft via a spiral chute. Passengers then park and head for the gate. The service, available to confirmed passengers only, operates from 4:45 A.M. to 7:30 P.M. daily; passengers need to check in at least 30 minutes before flight time. LENORE MAGIDA TRAVEL ADVISORY |
638438_1 | Neighborhood Report: Lower Manhattan; 2 Buildings, 200 Years Old, To Be Rubble | Borough President, Ruth W. Messinger, last week asked city officials for a reprieve and urged them to institute a new policy of fortifying landmarks against collapse instead of destroying them. Both buildings are vacant and rickety. On Sept. 21 the roof and top front of 229 collapsed with a boom and a clatter of bricks. A police officer entering his car was slightly hurt and barely escaped serious injury. The story of how the buildings fell into disrepair and were slated for dismantling is a tangled tale involving several city agencies; the owner, Douglas Palermo, and the mortgage holder, the Resolution Trust Corporation. Preservationists say the buildings decayed because of the owner's neglect and because city agencies failed to act in time. Some critics say demolition would reward the owner of the site by presenting him with a valuable vacant lot to develop. Mr. Palermo said there had been delays in his receipt of official notices of the buildings' violations. He said he had given city officials a plan for repairing the sites, but had been hampered by the original lender's bankruptcy and by the depressed market for restored properties, which made it difficult for him to finance the repairs. City officials say Mr. Palermo broke his promises to fix the two houses, and that the city has little money for doing the job, which would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The demolition, by Demo-Tech, will cost $96,000, to be charged as a lien against the property. Some critics argue that the same financing device should have been used instead to pay for repairs to save the buildings. "It's a bitter disappointment that we are losing these landmarks, needlessly," said Gary Fagin of the South-Water-Front Neighborhood Association. Paul Goldstein, manager of Community Board 1, said the city was "much too eager to take the easy route of demolition." Robert Sillman, an engineer who inspected the site, said, "I feel very strongly they should be preserved." Frank Sciame, a contractor who restored a building at 247 Water Street after it collapsed, said 227 and 229 are also salvageable. The Buildings Department cited Mr. Palermo for unsafe-building violations in 1990 and last June the city ordered him to fix them. On Sept. 13, the agency declared an emergency requiring immediate repair or demolition and turned the case over to the Housing Preservation and Development Department, which prepared for demolition. BRUCE LAMBERT |
638233_0 | On the Scent of Lawbreakers | AS a swarm of jet-lagged passengers from Alitalia Flight 600 out of Milan fought for their baggage recently at Kennedy International Airport in New York, one woman found herself with a new four-legged friend. He was a peppy little beagle by the name of Bamboo, and he showed a keen professional interest in her carry-on bag. "Excuse me, ma'am, any food in that bag?" asked Suzanne Koemm an Agriculture Department dog handler at the other end of Bamboo's green leash. The passenger looked puzzled. "Mangiare?" asked Ms. Koemm, who is tall, slim and very serious about meat and vegetables when they happen to be in luggage. "Frutta?" The passenger shrugged her shoulders sheepishly. Ms. Koemm began to search the bag. Bamboo looked on smugly, already certain of the outcome. Surprise! A box of figs. Possible Med-fly infestation. Ms. Koemm took out her felt-tip pen and proceeded to "mark the dec" -- that is, to print a big green A on the customs declaration, a signal to Customs to send Ms. Figs over to an Agriculture officer for confiscation of the fruit and a more extensive search. Score another victory for American agriculture and the Beagle Brigade. The 50 dogs that make up the national Beagle Brigade are the hardest-working, least well-paid employees in the United States Civil Service. Deployed at all major airports with incoming international flights, at post offices that receive international mail and at border crossings, they sniff luggage and packages in search of food, plants and animal products that might be on the Agriculture Department's hit list of potential disease or pest carriers. For each find, a beagle earns a tidbit to eat from its handler's belt pouch -- not to mention the intellectual satisfaction of solving a case. On an average day at Kennedy, the two beagles on duty will nose out about 200 pounds of contraband at each of the airport's five international terminals. By January the dog team will increase to five. Beagles, which were originally bred to hunt rabbits, may not look impressive, but they have two highly desirable qualities: a sharp sense of smell and a nonthreatening demeanor. "They are the first line of defense for America's agriculture," said Hal Fingerman, who created the Beagle Brigade in 1984 and now serves as one of three regional directors of the program. "If you're able to go to the supermarket and find something you |
638172_1 | China's Fix for Runaway Economy Is Falling Short | an unpredictable mess nonetheless. Partly as a result of the new austerity measures combined with the effects of unabated inflation, some of China's state-owned factories are having trouble meeting their payrolls, and others have been forced to cut production drastically. A General Motors Corporation joint venture to build light trucks in northeastern China saw its output wither by half in the first two months of the austerity program as bank credits dried up. Meanwhile, prices are still soaring. The cost of industrial raw materials is 40 percent higher than last year, as is the price of steel. Inflation in big cities is at a four-year high of more than 20 percent, and China's money supply, which no central authority seems to be able to control, has been expanding at a rate of 30 percent a year since early 1992. Still, with the steps that have been taken so far to stop wasteful investments, real estate speculation and an explosion of credit, Government economists like Fan Gang at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences assert that "the bubble" of speculation "has been stopped." But he acknowledged that "inflation is still not under control." A World Bank economist here, who said he might have agreed with the C.I.A. analysis three months ago, added that "we were very concerned that if measures were not taken," the Chinese economy would have revved up so high that the country's transportation, energy and raw material bottlenecks would have brought on a catastrophic gridlock and crash. 'Too Early to Tell' But now, he added, "I would not say the Chinese economy is running out of control." The evidence for this assertion, he said, is that "the tremendous growth in investment has slowed down, but it is too early to tell whether that will be sufficient." Since early summer, when China's leaders became so alarmed that they sacked the Central Bank chief and replaced him with Mr. Zhu, there has been an expectation that the acerbic former Mayor of Shanghai could somehow get the genie of money supply expansion and rampant speculation back in the bottle and China back on a footing for more rational growth. He sent investigators to the provinces to gather information and to bully local officials who were circumventing Beijing's commands. He found some provinces building so many bridges, highways, ports and skyscrapers on concurrent schedules that they were driving material prices skyward and |
639692_0 | After China's Nuclear Blast | President Francois Mitterrand of France had the right response to China's reckless test of a nuclear warhead this week: he urged other nuclear-armed states to "keep their cool" and not follow suit. President Clinton would be wise to take his advice. The spread of nuclear arms to states that don't yet have them would pose much more menace to U.S. security than would a new Chinese warhead. That's why ending the U.S. moratorium on testing would be a mistake; it would only weaken worldwide support for tighter restraints on proliferation. Unfortunately Mr. Clinton, in response to the Chinese test, ordered the Department of Energy to prepare for a resumption of testing next year. But he prudently deferred a final decision. A decision to test would take the heat off China, which faces rising global criticism for its explosion. Worse yet, American testing would embolden those in Russia who want to resume testing. And a new round of nuclear blasts would shatter hopes for a negotiated test ban and would cloud the climate for stronger anti-proliferation measures. There is no convincing rationale for new American tests. That's clear from a recent Navy report, which questions whether test detonations are needed to improve warhead safety, to assure that the warheads remain reliable or to assess the effects of nuclear explosions. American weapons laboratories contend that testing is needed to assure the safety of warheads on the Navy's Trident II missile and the Air Force's Minuteman III. But the Navy says concern about Trident warheads has been alleviated by loading missiles and warheads separately into its submarines. And the Air Force discounts the safety risk of its remaining Minuteman III warheads. The weapons labs also contend that warheads have to be tested to certify that warheads of slightly different manufacture will perform reliably without much variation in explosive force. The Navy report dismisses that concern, concluding that warheads are "comfortably tolerant of the small variations in materials and manufacture." As for weapons effects, experts say these can be gauged through simulations, based on the vast body of experience accumulated over the past 942 American tests. Findings like these persuaded Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary to favor continuing the moratorium. They should be just as persuasive to President Clinton. |
646174_1 | 7 DIE, 11 WOUNDED IN ULSTER ATTACK | in a village in the western part of the British Province, police said. A Protestant paramilitary organization, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, claimed responsibility for the killings, which it said were in retaliation for the deaths last Saturday of nine Protestants in a bomb detonated by the Irish Republican Army in Belfast. Police said early this morning that at least two of the dead in the Londonderry County shooting last night were Protestants, and that 11 people had been hospitalized. The attack last night was at the Rising Sun Bar in the village of Greysteel, near the city of Londonderry, some 70 miles west of Belfast. The dead ranged in age from teen-agers to people in their 70's, police said. Search Under Way Police set up roadblocks and began to search for the killers, but there were no arrests in the first several hours after the attack, which was at 9:45 P.M. Both Catholic and Protestant political leaders condemned it immediately. The deaths brought the total of those killed in sectarian violence in the last eight days to 24. A total of 74 have been killed so far this year and 3,102 since the guerrilla war involving the Protestant majority, the Catholic minority and the British police and army began in 1969. The killings came a day after the prime ministers of Britain and the Irish Republic had issued an appeal for an end to the violence, which could pave the way for peace talks that could include the Irish Republican Army's political wing, Sinn Fein. The goal of the I.R.A. is British withdrawal and a United Ireland. Protestant paramilitaries are not politically active and do not demand a place at peace negotiations. Their interests are represented by the two major Protestant unionist parties that seek to remain part of Britain. Condemned by Leaders John Hume, a Catholic who is leader of the moderate Social Democratic Labor Party, said that Saturday night's killings had been "another case of an eye for an eye, which leaves us all blind." The Rev. Ian Paisley, a Protestant who leads the Democratic Unionist Party, said that "the murder of innocent victims by Republican terrorists or loyalist terrorists must be equally condemned." "They come from hell and they lead to hell and must be equally heinous in the sight of God," he said. "This atrocity by the U.F.F. tonight is diabolical and must be totally condemned." |
645934_56 | David Gergen, Master of THE GAME | ring." When he speaks of the men he admires, he speaks of the legends of the city, the political players who became insiders' insiders and finally reached the apogee of success, the special status known as wise man. The names roll off his tongue -- Robert Strauss, the consummate deal maker; Bryce Harlow, the lawyer-lobbyist who worked for two Republican Administrations, and, of course, Clark Clifford, adviser to Democratic Presidents since Truman -- the city's eminence grise until, Gergen contends, "he was smeared" in the B.C.C.I. scandal. Gergen does not claim the wise man title for himself yet, but already he is talking like one. When he speaks of counseling the 47-year-old Clinton, he sounds a bit like a proud teacher noting the progress of a promising student. "He's evolving," Gergen says of the President. "I think he's got a much better grasp of the job." When Gergen first came to the White House in May, he says Clinton "had been buffeted so heavily in the early months that I felt he had lost his footing and wasn't as sure of what it is he wanted to be as I had seen in the past. And it seemed to me over the course of the summer, he was gaining it back." There are still problems, Gergen says: "He needs more time to think. We need to build more time into his schedule so he can think. . . . He's at his best when he's decided what he really thinks. He's not comfortable otherwise. I've seen this just again and again. On gays in the military -- he wasn't comfortable until he had a chance to really work his own way through it. He wasn't comfortable with Lani Guinier until he'd worked his way through it. He wasn't comfortable in Somalia until he had worked his way through it." In this ongoing process, Gergen sees his own role as "not to say, 'Here's what you must do in the next three days on this issue,' but to say: 'Here are your options. Let's talk about them and sort through what the consequences are. Let's think it through. Let's ask some hard questions. Let's look down around the corner. When the thing blows up in our faces, as it may, where do you want to be, and how are you going to feel about that?' " But even more important, Gergen |
646252_3 | Baggage Check: Weighing Risks | line had 32,093,224 passengers and said it had 3,031 claims for theft, one for every 10,588 passengers. Airline B had a higher rate. For 80,088,900 boardings in 1992, it said it had 12,809 claims for theft, one for every 6,253 passengers. For 1993 up to Aug. 31, it had 56,991,800 passengers and 8,486 theft claims, or one for every 6,716 passengers. Neither set of figures shows a 1993 rise parallel to the Port Authority figures. But the odds are not even. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is concerned with thefts from bags, particularly the possibility of theft rings among employees, because interstate commerce is involved. John H. Kundts, a spokesman for the F.B.I. in Washington, says that four American airports have been focuses for his agency's work: Miami, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles. Of those on the F.B.I. list, airline officials usually award Miami first place for luggage thefts, but say all three airports at New York -- Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark -- are also problems. In Chicago in 1989-90, the F.B.I. carried out a six-month undercover operation, with the cooperation of United and American Airlines, in which the agent ended up acting as the fence for the thieves. Bob Long, an F.B.I. agent in Chicago, said that $250,000 in goods was recovered, including 18 camcorders, three computers, $21,000 in currency and jewelry and fur coats. Sixteen people, 15 of whom were employees or former employees of Dynair Services, which provides ramp workers at airports, were indicted. All either pleaded guilty or were convicted. The airports, airlines and the F.B.I. all report that more sophisticated methods to protect luggage are now in place, including use of alarms in planted high-priced bags that tip off security people if the bags are opened. Tighter identification procedures for workers have been instituted. The Loot: A Teddy Bear Hearing the odds is no consolation if your bag is pilfered. Prof. Norm Sims of the University of Massachusetts was returning a couple of years ago from kayaking in Colorado. He threw his "wet, stinking boating gear" into a net bag and checked it through on United for his flight, which involved a change in Chicago. "My helmet cost $80, but someone must have thought it was a motorcycle helmet," Professor Sims said, because the net bag arrived without the helmet. He said it took 16 phone calls to resolve his claim. Tom Wessner's tale |
645981_1 | Finding Out What Happens To All That Recycled Material | the plant, which features three high-speed baling machines, a magnetic metal separator, a forced-air separation system and a vibrating screen for the removal of small contaminants. Mr. O'Rourke said that next year metal jar tops and aerosol spray cans would also be recycled here. Visitors to the education center can see poster-size cartoons explaining the principles of recycling and colorful displays showing the metamorphosis of objects from one form to another. Children may be surprised at the magic that turns detergent bottles into brightly colored ski jackets or vegetable cans into toy trucks and lunch boxes. While the displays created by High Camp Display and Designs of Chappaqua don't reveal how these transformations are made, they do tickle the imagination with the wonders of science. Visitors can also watch through tinted glass high above the warehouse floor -- called the tipping floor -- as mountains of plastics are prepared for separation and cleaning and truckloads of paper are loaded onto a conveyor belt. A video program in the education center shows every step of the recycling process, and John Yvars, program administrator of the recycling center, said school groups could also watch the plant's activities on closed-circuit television. The plant employs a staff of 40, some of whom work in prison-release programs from the County Jail or are from the Westchester Association of Retarded Citizens. Mr. Yvars said all the workers held full-time union jobs. Although the plant is operated by a central control unit, there is room for sorting the materials by hand if the system breaks down. While 200 tons of materials are now being processed here each day -- including 150 tons of newspaper -- the plant has the capacity to handle 350 tons a day, Mr. Yvars said. He said the county was working to bring about more effective recycling programs in urban areas, where large apartment buildings pose a greater collection problem than communities with single-family homes. High Demand for Aluminum Students of sociology may be drawn especially to the plant's conveyor belts, where an endless stream of empty containers passes by workers waiting to sift out unusable parts. The scene evokes a nether world portrait of a society constantly eating, drinking, laundering, buying and throwing things away. After the materials have been sorted and cleaned, they are crushed and baled for market. James J. Hogan, the county's director of resource management and solid waste, |
637798_2 | Cuban Officials Don't Foresee a Thaw With the U.S. Anytime Soon | improving limited cooperation in areas like immigration, narcotics control and telecommunications. He also said that the Cuban Government was studying ways of expanding "cultural, scientific, sports and journalistic" exchanges. A Three-Pronged Strategy Increasing cooperation in areas like these appears to be one part of a three-pronged strategy by the Cuban Government toward achieving eventual warmer ties with the United States. The other parts are increasing visits by Cuban-Americans to the island and rapidly opening up Cuba's economy to private investment from abroad and more free enterprise at home. By removing most restrictions on visits by Cuban-American exiles, senior Cuban officials have made no secret of their hope of winning the sympathies of parts of the exile community that are moved by nationalist sentiments or simply by the desire to help relatives back home. The emergence of more currents like this, they say, could eventually soften political opposition in the United States to a diplomatic relaxation. "This community is Cuban," Mr. Robaina said of the Cuban-American exiles. "No one can be more interested in these people than us. What have we told ourselves as we have made contacts with many segments of this community is that even if they dislike the program which we have carried out, they stand up for many of the same things which we defend." By opening up the Cuban economy, meanwhile, the Government feels that it is doing more than simply averting a disaster by stopping the free fall of a failed system of rigid central planning. At the same time, it hopes that the arrival of increasingly large investments from Spain, Canada, France and elsewhere will prompt American businesses to lobby for renewed access to a natural market of 11 million people that lies only 90 miles from Florida. Cuban officials are acutely aware that however bold their attempts to privatize the economy, foreign investment will be hindered by isolation from American markets for everything from tourists to agriculture and merchandise. Americans 'Penalized' "We are opening our economy and many companies are in, but the Americans themselves are being penalized" Ricardo Alarcon, a Communist Party Politburo member who also heads Cuba's National Assembly, said in a recent interview in Havana. "What I am sure of is that these steps and new steps yet to come will have a positive impact on Latin America and the Europeans. "What will happen in the U.S.? We would expect |
642713_0 | Palmas Journal; Brazilians Rush West, to Citadel of Self-Reliance | Blueprints in hand, Walfredo Antunes de Oliveira Jr. watched officials lay this frontier city's founding stone and wondered nervously: What if we build a capital and no one comes? Then, looking across the table-flat savanna on that day in May 1989, he noticed dust plumes in the distance. Slowly, they converged on this patch of wilderness on the east bank of the Tocantins River. "There was one family with a bakery tied on the top of their truck; there was another family from Rondonia, where the soil had given out," Mr. Oliveira, an architect, recalled today. From 130 hardy pioneers less than five years ago, the youngest and smallest of Brazil's 26 state capitals currently counts its swelling population at 85,000. "The city recalls Brasilia at the end of the 1950's," gushed a reporter from a Brazilian picture magazine who recently trekked here from Brasilia, the federal capital, 400 miles south of here. An Ideological Gulf But red dust, a master plan, and dreams of taming Brazil's West are about all that this new city shares with Brasilia, Brazil's planned city of the 1960's. More than a generational gap, the difference is an ideological gulf. Designed by Oscar Niemeyer, a lifelong member of the Brazilian Communist Party, Brasilia celebrates supremacy of the state. Seeking to use architecture to create a new citizenry, Mr. Niemeyer initially ruled out private property and housed Government employees in Soviet-style apartment blocks. But in later years Brazil's central Government went broke. With inflation raging today at 35 percent a month and Government services deteriorating steadily, Brazilians expect less and less from the federal Government, and this new spirit of self-reliance is especially strong here on Brazil's agricultural frontier. While attention focused in recent years on Brazil's attempts to colonize the Amazon, a thriving farming and ranching region emerged in the midwest savanna states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul and Goias. To promote growth through investment in basic services like roads and electricity, Brazil's Congress in 1988 lopped off the northern half of Goias and created this state, Tocantins. With about one million people scattered over an area slightly larger than Colorado, Tocantins has an economy based on cattle ranching and on rice cultivation. Rice plantations here rank among the world's largest. Forging a new relationship between public and private sectors, Palmas, the new state capital, is being built without special federal aid. "Of |
642558_0 | World Economies | |
640617_6 | U.S. Prepares to Unveil Blueprint for Reducing Heat-Trapping Gases | would send the wrong signal to other countries. "It tells the Europeans you don't have to deal with your emissions from energy production, that you can offset that by measures on the sink side," said Alden Meyer, director of the program on climate change and energy of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which focuses on energy and environmental issues. In addition, they say, there is no guarantee the trees will not eventually be cut or burned. The Clinton plan is not expected to include any provisions for regulating energy use in transportation -- for example, stronger gas-mileage requirements for automobiles. Provisions like that presumably could be brought into play later if the initial proposals do not work. The question of whether and how greenhouse emissions are to be reduced further after the year 2000, a concern of many environmentalists, is expected to be discussed but not resolved in the plan. A panel of scientists advising the United Nations and parties to the climate treaty has said that stabilizing the overall atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide at today's levels would require a worldwide 60 percent cut in the 1990 level of emissions. Numbers Are Questioned Some environmentalists, like Dan Becker, of the Sierra Club, question the emissions estimates on which the plan is to be based. "The numbers are very squishy," he said. But Ms. McGinty said the plan "has really been put through the wringer any number of ways; the numbers are really solid." Dan Lashof, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he thought the general approach of "putting together a package of individual initiatives tied together by a commitment to keep track of how those are doing," plus the assurance that stronger measures could be applied if necessary, "is fine." But he expressed concern about "what the specifics are, what's in and what's out in terms of actual measures to reduce fossil-fuel consumption, and to what extent the plan may anticipate using credits from the forestry sector to offset growth in the fossil-fuel sector." Mr. Meyer's reaction was similarly equivocal. "I think the bottom line is mixed," he said. "There are going to be some individual measures we're going to applaud." But he said the plan, at least from what now appeared to be known, placed too much emphasis on voluntary measures, "with no prospect of hammers or sticks to bring us into compliance if those don't work." |
643053_0 | Estrogen and Breast Cancer | To the Living Section: In "Eating Well" (Sept. 8), Marian Burros correctly notes that many experts believe that the female hormone estrogen plays a role in raising a woman's risk of breast cancer and that the link between a high-fat diet and an increased risk of breast cancer may be that the diet increases estrogen levels. It is distressing, however, that she fails to note a single, more direct cause of increased estrogen levels, taking estrogen as a drug for contraception (the pill) or as hormone-replacement therapy at menopause. As the number of American women using estrogen rose from a few hundred in 1940 to more than 26 million in 1992, the incidence of breast cancer also rose dramatically among women of every age group, every ethnic and religious group, in every part of the country. By 1993, there is no longer any serious argument about the reality of a link between estrogen and breast cancer. The only questions left to answer are how strong a link? And for whom? CAROL ANN RINZLER New York Author of "Estrogen and Breast Cancer: A Warning to Women," Macmillan, 1993 |
641533_1 | Report Finds 20% of Students In New York City Carry Arms | were attacked. The study also found that those who carried weapons to school were more likely than others, by 48 to 20 percent, to believe that having a weapon was an effective deterrent to violence, and were more likely, by 68 to 43 percent, to believe their families wanted them to defend themselves, even if that meant using a gun or knife. Coordinated Efforts Sought The study also concluded that metal detectors, which are used daily in 41 high schools and at 20 others once a week randomly, are helping to lower the number of knives and guns carried into schools or to and from school, although it found the detectors had no apparent effect on the prevalence of threats or fights. By linking widespread school violence to attitudes among students and their families, the study suggested that solutions must be sought in joint efforts by schools and other public agencies, by community-based groups and especially by families, which play critical roles in forming students' values and attitudes. "Schools reflect their communities, and safe schools are not likely to exist in the absence of safe homes and neighborhoods," said Dr. Richard Lowry, an epidemiologist for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who coordinated the study. "It's important that school-based violence-prevention programs be coordinated with communitywide efforts that include parent groups, teachers, public health and other community agencies." Theme Sounded Recently The need for family and neighborhood involvement to fight youth violence is hardly a new theme, but it has received increasing attention recently, and was propounded in New York City earlier this week by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and by Schools Chancellor, Ramon C. Cortines. Mr. Jackson, warning at an appearance in Harlem that violence was wracking school systems across the country, said that 362 black people under the age of 21 had been killed by other blacks in New York City this year, and he called for mobilizing parents in a church-based program to attack the problem. And Mr. Cortines, calling the city a battleground where the lives of too many young people are being ended by violence, called on parents, students and elected officials to stem the increase in weapons and violence. The study called violence among high school students a national problem: homicide is the leading cause of death among youths 15 to 19 years old in New York City, and the second leading cause |
641493_4 | Breaking Down an Arms Buildup | developed a technique to use jets of water, exerting pressures of up to 10,000 pounds a square inch, to remove the fuel. Depending on the degree of the fuel's explosiveness, it can then be burned in an incinerator to produce energy or be processed back into ammonium perchlorate, a component of solid rocket fuel that can also be used in the production of paint or new fuel, Mr. Biagioni said. In July, Aerojet made the first successful test firing of a Minuteman 3 rocket motor that used fuel containing recycled ammonium perchlorate. Aerojet executives and Nevada state officials have also discussed the possibility of building a plant to process 10 million pounds of obsolete explosives a year, Mr. Biagioni said. "At those processing rates, we can make it cheaper than burning," he said. A Glut May Develop But the economics of recycling old weapons is far from proven. Like newspaper or plastics, there is likely to be a glut of commercial explosives as military contractors convert millions of tons of military ordnance to commercial applications. And because many contractors already produce explosives for commercial uses, they may wind up competing against themselves. Some weapons may also prove impossible to recycle. Pyrotechnic devices intended to fool missiles by mimicking the exhaust of an F-16 jet, for example, emit a 3,000-degree burst when detonated. "There were a lot of items that were never designed to be taken apart," said Mr. Malevich of Alliant Techsystems. For more conventional weapons, like bombs and artillery shells, alternative disposal methods are being developed. Mr. Malevich said his company had developed a process that uses high-pressure jets of water to cut shells and casings into pieces. The metals can be recycled and the explosives, which are washed out of the shells, can be used commercially or to produce fertilizers or synthetic fuels. "The Government believes it will cost about $500 a ton to demilitarize these shells and make them into bathroom fixtures," Mr. Malevich said. Just when the Federal Government will begin such work is not clear. In the case of solid-fuel missile motors, Defense Department officials said they hoped to decide by 1995 on the best ways to dispose of and recycle them. "The continental United States is now becoming a warehouse for weapons, and it is not something that you can abandon or walk away from," said Mr. Byrd of the Joint Ordnance Commanders Group. |
641382_0 | Diagnosing Realities of Health Care Reform; Parity for Mental Care | To the Editor: Health reform measures unveiled by the Clinton Administration offer real hope for better medical care for people with mental and emotional illnesses, but they will have to wait until the year 2001 for comprehensive coverage to become available. We applaud the Administration's bold movement toward coverage of mental illnesses on a par with physical illnesses, but questions remain why this parity cannot be achieved today. Full parity was determined to be too expensive despite the fact that cost estimates were based exclusively upon the use of 10-year-old data from the Health Care Financing Administration. According to the National Mental Health Associations, more timely data from many states and Fortune 500 companies -- representing the actuarial experience of millions of Americans already covered -- demonstrate that a comprehensive, flexible mental health benefit is cost-effective and predictable. Mental health care is a controllable benefit that can lead to significant national savings in overall care costs, and will reduce losses to the economy due to absenteeism and reduced productivity. Positive steps toward true health care reform include universal coverage, portability of benefits from job to job, and elimination of exclusions based on pre-existing conditions. The proposal also does away with lifetime caps on mental health coverage which forces many of the most seriously ill into state mental hospitals. However, the Administration proposal continues arbitrary limits on outpatient services, inpatient hospitalization and community-based health services that do not apply to physical health. Higher co-payments for mental health services will remain in place and continue to restrict access to care. Finally, the proposal adopts a cookie-cutter approach for adults and children, making no distinctions in mental health benefit. We are most saddened by the Clinton plan's failure to address the special mental health needs of children. Common sense tells us that if we offer intensive mental health and/or substance abuse services to kids in child welfare, special education or juvenile justice systems, we can reduce future problems among these very high-risk groups. Our children continue to be overlooked. Let's not leave them out of this landmark legislation, nor add them on as an afterthought. GISELLE STOLPER Executive Director Mental Health Association of New York and Bronx Counties New York, Oct. 6, 1993 |
639169_0 | Women Seeking Asylum | Do women who have been raped or have suffered other gender-related violence deserve special treatment when being considered for political asylum in the U.S.? Their claims ought to be heard with more sensitivity than they often get now. But increased sensitivity is possible without making gender a special category for asylum. In this area of refugee protection, the U.S. might well look to Canada, which offers a reasonable model. The U.S., like many other countries, has adopted internationally recognized standards for extending asylum to foreigners. Those standards cover people who were persecuted in their homelands because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political opinions. Persecution based on gender can be considered within these categories without carving out a new one. Increasingly, asylum officials are faced with cases of women who have been assaulted, raped or mutilated. Such acts have often been viewed as private transgressions with no political purpose, even when committed by government officers. That view is changing. The rapes of Muslim and Croatian women in Bosnia, for example, have been portrayed not only as sexual violence but as the war crimes that they are. Still, judges don't always display sensitivity when hearing asylum claims of women. An immigration lawyer in San Francisco recently described a courtroom scene in which a judge clipped his fingernails while a Salvadoran woman seeking asylum told of being gang-raped by guerrillas because her husband was an army informant. Earlier this year, Canada adopted reasonable guidelines for assessing women's claims within the existing categories of persecution. The guidelines urge that officials recognize the consequences for women who engage in political protest and activism when they come from societies in which they hold a "subordinate status." They also urge officials to recognize that some women who have been raped as a consequence of political activity may be ashamed to reveal their experience in a public forum and should be allowed to testify privately. Canada has not opened its doors to all women from countries where women are held in subordinate positions. No country could absorb all oppressed women. Instead, its guidelines urge officials to be more sensitive to the special persecution that women may experience for political activities. Canada's ideas for making the asylum process more accommodating to women ought to inform U.S. officials as well. |
639195_6 | Tremors in Cuba Bending Exiles' Hard Line | more, ship packages of food and medicine to Cuba. Under American law, exiles are permitted to send up to $300 worth of such items to close relatives in Cuba every three months, a loophole in the embargo that exiles exploit with a combination of relief and guilt. "You don't want to help Fidel, but you feel sorry for your family, and you don't want them to have to suffer," Maria Pinera Suttles explained as she left one such company recently. "It's like you are torn between two desires." Mrs. Suttles, 46, and her mother, Zoila Pinera, 86, said that as often as they were able, they sent packages containing sugar, cereal, coffee, vitamins, aspirin, toothpaste, powdered milk, peanut butter and beef jerky to Mrs. Pinera's two sisters in Cuba. But other exiles argue that it is wrong to put personal concerns above the national interest. "I won't send anything, not a single cent, to Cuba," said Aldo Schwerert, 65, a mechanic. "I have a 94-year-old father and two sisters still over there, and they've asked me, but I have sent them nothing because I am an anti-Communist. Those places are only playing Castro's game." Nevertheless, Mr. Schwerert made his comments after coming out of one of the same freight companies he said he would like to see shut. He said that despite his own opposition, his wife, Estela Martinez, insists on sending packages to her relatives, and that he had come to inquire about one such shipment. Hungry for hard currency, Mr. Castro this summer announced that Cubans could now own dollars and urged exiles to visit Cuba. Despite a campaign in Miami to discourage such trips, including bumper stickers that read "I'm Not Going to Cuba" and "No $ For Cuba," the first flights permitted under the new rules began leaving here in September, with every seat taken and a waiting list for future bookings. New Arrivals Versus the Old The debate over humanitarian aid and travel has intensified political differences among exiles. The exile establishment, which for the most part arrived here in the early 1960's, has done well in business, and generally has fewer close relations on the island. The newer arrivals, who tend to be poor and less educated, include the 125,000 refugees who fled Cuba in the Mariel boat lift of 1980, as well as the growing number of "balseros," or "rafters," who have resorted |
639042_0 | Initiative on Northern Ireland Stirs Optimism | A new initiative by two of the most influential Roman Catholic leaders in Northern Ireland has led to a feeling of optimism among many that fresh negotiations could get under way soon to try to resolve the sectarian violence that has killed more than 3,000 people in the last 25 years. Ten days after the initiative was announced, political leaders, diplomats and academic analysts agree that for the first time since the early 1970's a process is underway that seems to be leading to negotiations involving the Irish and British Governments and the outlawed Irish Republican Army, through its political wing, Sinn Fein. The violence between the Protestant majority and Roman Catholic minority of Northern Ireland has pitted the Irish Republican Army in a guerrilla war against British security forces, including 11,000 regular army troops. The violence grew from a Catholic civil rights movement that began in 1968. The new feeling of hope has grown from the unexpected announcement 10 days ago by the two Catholic leaders, John Hume and Gerry Adams, who are normally political enemies, that they had come to an an agreement on a new "peace process" after five months of private discussions. Mr. Adams, who is the president of Sinn Fein and refuses to renounce I.R.A. violence, and Mr. Hume, who is the head of the Social Democratic Labor Party and condemns the violence, said they had made "considerable progress," but declined to disclose details of their initiative. "This may be the most important political initiative since Northern Ireland was established in 1920," Paul Arthur, a professor of politics at Ulster University in Belfast, said. "It is the first initiative that tries to bring all the players in to play." Sinn Fein is excluded from the official peace talks because of its refusal to denounce the I.R.A. Mr. Hume is expected to meet the Irish Prime Minister, Albert Reynolds, in Dublin on Wednesday or Thursday, to give details of the initiative. Mr. Reynolds said on television tonight that he was "very interested" to hear Mr. Hume's report on the initiative. "There has to be a cessation of violence," he said. "When we're satisfied that it has taken place, there will be a seat at the table for Sinn Fein." He added, however, what he called "a note of warning" that there would not be a peace agreement "instantly or on short notice" and that "if we're |
639197_3 | WORLD MORATORIUM ON NUCLEAR TESTS IS BROKEN BY CHINA | any other nation detonated a nuclear device. Russia and Great Britain have said they would not resume testing unless the United States did. President Francois Mitterrand of France is awaiting a report from a panel of experts on whether French adherence to the moratorium would compromise France's nuclear weapons. Early indications are that such a request would face rough going in Congress, where there is growing sentiment that the United States should apply economic pressure on China, rather than resume testing. Officials say it is doubtful that the Administration would resume testing until sometime next summer, if at all. A letter to the President being circulated on Capitol Hill by Senator Paul Simon, Democrat of Illinois, asks that the Administration hold up granting an export license for a Cray supercomputer and other "sensitive sales of dual-use advanced technology" ordered by the Chinese until Beijing guarantees that it will not conduct more nuclear tests. Another letter circulated by Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and Senator Mark O. Hatfield, Republican of Oregon, was signed by 24 Senators. It said it would be "inappropriate and counterproductive" for the United States to conduct a nuclear test in response to the one by China. -------------------- Experts See Maneuvering HONG KONG, Oct. 5 (Special to The New York Times) -- A statement issued late today by the official New China News Agency confirmed the test, but provided no details. "It is entirely for the purpose of self-defense that China develops and possesses a small number of nuclear weapons," the statement said. China asked the nuclear powers to conclude a comprehensive test ban treaty by 1996, but also called for the commencement of a "parallel negotiation" to conclude a treaty in which nuclear powers would pledge no first use of nuclear weapons and not to use or threaten to use "nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states and nuclear-free zones." Western analysts said China's unwillingness to heed international pressure over the nuclear test fits a pattern of recent Chinese behavior that is assertive and unaccommodating in its international relations. A number of analysts attribute this behavior to the pending leadership succession in China, where the country's longtime senior leader, Deng Xiaoping, recently passed his 89th birthday and is reported to be increasingly frail. These analysts say they believe that the Chinese leaders under Mr. Deng are taking tough and uncompromising positions to demonstrate their qualifications to succeed him. |
639107_1 | What It Will Take to Develop the Super-Car | in America's, and his own, mythos. As Vice President Al Gore, the chief executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler and the heads of the nuclear weapons laboratories looked on, Mr. Clinton fondly recalled his youth as the stepson of a Buick dealer and remembered his own first car, a 1952 Kaiser Henry J. He also confessed to being "car crazy" over a 1967 Mustang convertible he has in storage in Arkansas. Of the belongings he left behind when he came to Washington, he said, that is the one he misses most. Though classics, neither the '52 Henry J nor the '67 Mustang approach today's autos. And yet both cars, in terms of engine and body type, are closer to current cars than today's cars will be to the energy-efficient car of the future. "We've had the steel-bodied car with the internal combustion engine for 80 years now," said Christopher Flavin, a car expert at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental organization based in Washington. "If we step out of that, it's a revolution." Weight Is Crucial The significance of the steel body is its weight, and the weight problem compounds itself in every element of overall car design. Whatever the weight of the body, the engine must be big enough to accelerate that weight from a standing start to highway speed in a few seconds. Today that means a very powerful engine, which itself is very heavy. And that heavy engine must lug itself around even though most of the time only a fraction of the horsepower is used. Heavy engines and bodies also translate to heavier tires, steering gear and brakes. Instead of steel, some other type of material would be necessary for the "super-car" body, some kind of composite or carbon fiber -- like "the stuff they make tennis racquets out of," Mr. Flavin suggested. Such materials are available now, but are not considered cost competitive with steel -- at least not in the conventional view. But the Rocky Mountain Institute, a research center in Old Snowmass, Colo., said in a recent study that composites could "emerge from the mold virtually ready to use." The result would be fewer parts and less labor than current car-body construction and, therefore, less cost. Safety Considerations Another issue is safety, but lighter need not mean flimsier, according to the institute. "Witness the Indy 500 drivers who routinely survive 230 m.p.h. crashes |
639466_0 | No Headline | A highly fortified air base deep in the Upper Huallaga Valley that serves as the center for United States counter-narcotics operations here has become obsolete and should be abandoned, American narcotics experts say. The base, which is known as Santa Lucia, has cost American taxpayers more than $100 million over the last six years. From its inception in late 1987, it has represented the forefront -- however ineffective -- of the United States effort to stop the cultivation in Peru of coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine. Built to withstand terrorist attacks, with sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment, 10 American helicopters, a paved runway and staffed by Peru's anti-narcotics police, the base has been the center of operations for agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. A team of about a dozen agents, who serve three-month tours, has used Santa Lucia as a staging ground for its Rambo-style raids. Dressed in jungle fatigues and toting M-16 rifles, the agents bust cocaine laboratories, seize airplane shipments of cocaine and arrest drug traffickers. But American drug enforcement experts here say that over the last two years Santa Lucia has become a white elephant and should be handed over to the Peruvians. Once in the heart of Peru's coca growing region, its presence has driven many peasants and most drug traffickers into areas beyond the radius of the helicopters that operate out of Santa Lucia. "What we have there is the best helicopter maintenance center east of the Andes, but tactically and operationally it is almost worthless, because from Santa Lucia they cannot reach the main areas where the drug traffickers are operating," said one American narcotics expert here, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The drug war has changed so much that we have to consider a different, more mobile strategy." Indeed, the fate of the air base is currently in the balance, not only because of the changing drug war, but because budget restraints on the Clinton Administration have sparked a change in strategy on how to fight narcotics. In appropriation bills now moving through the Congress, spending on drug interdiction in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia has been cut by almost 30 percent, to $100 million, down from $147 million in the current fiscal year. American embassy officials here say they will cut the budget of the operation in half to about $17 million. The cuts also come when there |
639485_0 | Albert Smith Bigelow, 87, Pacifist Who Tried to Halt Nuclear Tests | Albert Smith Bigelow, a pacifist who tried several times to sail into a nuclear testing area near the Marshall Islands in 1958 in a protest against nuclear weapons, died on Wednesday at a retirement home in Walpole, Mass. He was 87. His family said he had had a long illness. Mr. Bigelow, who served as a Navy lieutenant commander aboard destroyer escorts in the Pacific theater in World War II, became a Quaker and a follower of the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi in 1954. On Feb. 10, 1958, he and three fellow Quakers set sail from San Pedro, Calif., in a 30-foot ketch, the Golden Rule, for Eniwetok Atoll in the Western Pacific to try to halt nuclear tests that were to be held there two months later. After first being turned back by storms, they eventually reached Honolulu but were never able to reach their ultimate destination. Three attempts to reach Eniwetok were intercepted by Coast Guard cutters enforcing a Federal court injunction against entering the testing grounds. After the final attempt, the crew was jailed for 60 days. Mr. Bigelow, a graduate of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began his career as an architect in New York, helping to design buildings for the 1939 World's Fair. But he soon left architecture and became an artist, frequently painting seascapes and nautical scenes. After the war he was appointed housing commissioner of Massachusetts by Gov. Robert Bradford and helped build low-cost housing for veterans. But Mr. Bigelow's religious convictions led him to participate in a 1954 protest of chemical weapons at Fort Dietrich, Md., and later to take in, with his wife, two women who had been disfigured by the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in Aug. 6, 1945. That experience, he later wrote, "forced me to see that I had no choice but to make the commitment to live, as best I could, a life of nonviolence." Besides helping to organize and taking part in demonstrations against nuclear warfare, Mr. Bigelow was an ardent advocate of civil rights. In 1961, as a Freedom Rider in the South, he was one of several people who were badly beaten by segregationists at a bus stop in Rock Hill, S.C. He is survived by his wife of 62 years, the former Sylvia Weld; two daughters, Lisa Roberts and Kate Benton, both of Manhattan, eight |
639501_1 | Irish Chief Backs Peace Plan and Will See British | government," he said. "We'll consider how in our discussions with the British Government this can contribute to the building of a peace process." Mr. Reynolds's endorsement was crucial because, without it, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, would have been under little pressure to consider it. Protestant leaders, who want the province to remain part of Britain and fear the Hume-Adams initiative's overall goal of uniting the two parts of Ireland, have already charged that if Sir Patrick considers a proposal that Mr. Adams helped prepare, that would mean he was conducting negotiations with Sinn Fein. Britain's longstanding policy is to refuse to negotiate with Sinn Fein until it denounces the I.R.A.'s campaign of violence and the I.R.A. actually halts its attacks. Mr. Adams has refused to do this, saying that while he is for a political settlement, he understands the necessity for continuing an "armed struggle." 'Certainly Encouraged' Sir Patrick has said that while "I would be an idiot" if he did not at least look at anything the Irish Government passed on to him, there was no assurance that Britain would agree with anything in the proposals. Mr. Adams said in an interview today that he was "certainly encouraged" by Mr. Reynolds' statement. "This is the best hope to move forward in the last 20 years," he added. He acknowledged that a convincing I.R.A. cessation of violence is a condition for talks set by the British and Irish Governments. But he insisted, without explaining how, that at the end of the process proposed by him and Mr. Hume, "Sinn Fein will be at the table." -------------------- Pub Blast Linked to Plan BELFAST, Northern Ireland, Oct. 7 (AP) -- An outlawed paramilitary group that claims loyalty to Britain said today it killed a man to protest a peace initiative by the Catholic leaders. The Ulster Defense Association said the attack late Wednesday on a West Belfast pub was in "direct response" to the talks between Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, and John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party. Some Pro-British loyalists fear that such cooperation is aimed at uniting Northern Ireland with the Irish republic. Jason McFarlane, 20, was fatally shot while he was playing pool with friends late Wednesday. A second man was seriously injured, and a third was treated for shrapnel-like wounds. Later, a bomb caused minor damage to Sinn Fein offices. |
637995_1 | As Mormon Church Grows, So Does Dissent From Feminists and Scholars | Voices In the last decade or so, a flurry of independent Mormon publications and groups have emerged in Salt Lake City, including the Mormon Women's Forum, a feminist group that says it has about 2,000 members. Its president, Lynn Kanavel Whitesides, was one of the six disciplined by the church authorities. She was "disfellowshipped," which means the loss of certain privileges like receiving sacraments. The other five were excommunicated, a more severe penalty, and their names were removed from church rolls. Don LeFever, a spokesman for the Mormons, said that the church never discussed its actions but that anything that caused harm to Mormonism would be grounds for discipline. While women sometimes deliver sermons and lead prayers, they are not allowed to baptize, bless or distribute the sacraments, or lead congregations. It galls some Mormons that boys as young as 12 can become deacons, an office within the priesthood, and distribute the sacraments. At 16, boys can baptize. In their early 20's, men typically become bishops, the equivalent of priests or ministers in other Christian denominations, an office that is closed to women, as are other positions of authority within the church. Motives Are Discussed "We are not trying to tear the church down," said Ms. Whitesides, who has called for leadership roles to be opened to women. "Instead, we are trying to give Mormon women a reason to stay in the church." She said she believed that she had angered the Mormon hierarchy by organizing a protest when two liberal professors at Brigham Young University were denied tenure. The university is owned by the church. She later appeared on a Salt Lake City television program and warned church leaders that they would be unable to quell the rising tide of feminism in the Mormon ranks. "If you excommunicate one of us, there will be 10 more to step up and take her place," she said. "Excommunicate those 10 and there will be 100 to take their places." A long-established doctrine of Mormonism, not widely known outside the church, gives the debate a tantalizing twist: the belief in a female as well as a male deity as the spiritual parents of humankind. In recent years, Mormon feminists have pointed to a female diety as logical grounds for opening leadership to women. Indeed, some women have begun praying to "our Mother in heaven" as well as "our Father." Leadership Point of |
637993_1 | Japan Hails Clinton's Approval of Tokyo's Plutonium Project | are currently scheduled. The initial shipments from France were intended to fuel a $5 billion prototype breeder reactor that both consumes and produces plutonium. By the end of the decade Japan plans to open a large reprocessing facility of its own that would convert nuclear waste into more plutonium. U.S. Sold Nuclear Fuel In a statement on Tuesday, the Japanese Government hailed the Clinton policy, saying it had "reaffirmed" American commitments to permit the conversion of ordinary fuel into plutonium. Because the United States sold Japan the original nuclear fuel, it retains control over how it is used. Critics of Japan's ambitious energy plans argue that even if the plutonium is used solely for power production, it will add tremendously to the world inventory of plutonium at a time of vast oversupply. The main fear is that Japan's fuel would pose a ripe target for terrorists or aspiring nuclear powers. The United States abandoned plutonium production for civilian power plants in the 1970's, and has concentrated its nuclear power efforts on reactors that use uranium, which is more difficult to use in weapons. Some of Japan's neighbors have also expressed fear that the stockpiles of plutonium would give Japan a ready supply of bomb fuel if it ever abandoned its pledge never to possess nuclear weapons. Japan has dismissed such charges as ridiculous. "Obviously, it is a program that we are not enthusiastic about, and we hope that the Japanese will find a way out," a senior State Department official handling relations with Japan said. "But that will have to be their decision." Japan May Scale Back Program There are already some signs that the Japanese Government is thinking about scaling back the program, though not abandoning it. When the program was first conceived, plutonium was considered a relatively low-cost fuel, but today it is 5 to 15 times more expensive than conventional uranium fuels. As a result, Japanese utilities have been resisting Government pressure to invest heavily in the new technology, even if it promises greater energy independence. The harsh criticism Japan faced late last year, when its shipment from France was dogged by Greenpeace volunteers and banned from the territorial waters of some countries along the route, has also forced changes here. Japanese officials are discussing an international program to manage the plutonium, and allay fears about how it may be used. In a speech on Monday in |
645753_0 | Ireland and Britain Offer Plan for I.R.A. Talks | The Prime Ministers of Britain and Ireland conferred today in Brussels on Northern Ireland and issued a statement promising that "new doors could open" for peace talks on the British province if the Irish Republican Army ended its campaign of violence. The Prime Ministers -- John Major of Britain and Albert Reynolds of Ireland -- said in a statement after their meeting that once "a renunciation of violence has been made and sufficiently demonstrated, new doors could open and both Governments would wish to respond imaginatively to the new situation." The statement indicated clearly that there would be a place at the negotiating table for Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A., if the campaign of bombings and random killings ended "for a period of time." "That's language that has not been used before to my knowledge," Mr. Reynolds said in an interview in Brussels, where he and Mr. Major were attending a European Community meeting. Talks Have Been Rescheduled Similar statements have been made in the past by officials of both Governments, but today's was the first issued jointly by the heads of the two Governments in recent years. The statement came at a time when sectarian violence has been increasing in the north. The latest round of violence caused the postponement of talks between British and Irish officials. Those talks have been rescheduled for next week. Although the communique after today's meeting was also directed toward Protestant paramilitary groups, who have never sought a place at peace negotiations, it was clearly aimed at the I.R.A., which wants Britain to leave the province and allow the incorporation of the six counties of Northern Ireland into a unified Irish state. "They cannot bomb or push the British out of Northern Ireland," Mr. Major said. "They have to indicate that they will repudiate violence. That has to be evidently demonstrated for a period of time." The proposals covered points that were also the stated goals of a new initiative advanced a month ago by John Hume, a member of the British Parliament and the Catholic leader of the moderate Social Democratic Labor Party, and Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein. The Prime Ministers praised Mr. Hume for his efforts today, but did not mention Mr. Adams. They said they would not endorse the Hume-Adams initiative. Britain has already been attacked by Protestant leaders for even agreeing to consider the |
645723_0 | NEWS SUMMARY | International 3-5 GLOOM AS EUROPEAN CHIEFS MEET A meeting of the European Community was intended to celebrate the start of its treaty on unity, but instead it was dampened by anxiety about the economy. 1 TALKS ON BELFAST: OFFER TO I.R.A. After talks on Northern Ireland, the Prime Ministers of Britain and Ireland said "new doors could open" for peace talks on the British province if the Irish Republican Army ended its campaign of violence. 4 MONDALE/JAPAN: BALANCING ACT Japanese seem to agree with a newspaper's assessment of Ambassador Walter F. Mondale: "He could also bring new methods, completely different from the existing framework of the bilateral relationship." 1 NORTH KOREA EASES ATOM IMPASSE North Korea continues to block thorough inspections of suspected nuclear-weapons sites, but will allow the resumption of routine maintenance of surveillance cameras. 3 U.N. ENVOY SEEKS NEW HAITI TALKS The United Nations envoy to Haiti called for new talks with its military leaders and renewed demands that they soon comply with a negotiated agreement restoring democracy or face a rapid cutoff of trade. 5 CLINTON AND 'OUR NEW FRONTIER' At a ceremony for the opening of a museum at the John F. Kennedy Library, President Clinton said the U.S. could not turn away from global economic commitments that he said constituted "our new frontier." 5 BRAZIL STUNNED ANEW BY SCANDAL A former budget director in Brazil has disclosed a system of payoffs that diverted millions of dollars in taxpayer money to Congress and has implicated 32 politicians. 5 DOUBTS CAST IN CAIRO ATTACK The gunman who killed two Americans and a Frenchman in Cairo may not have been acting alone, because one of the wounded said the gunman was accompanied by someone who gave him instructions. 3 The United Nations mission in Somalia was extended for two weeks. 3 Novosibirsk Journal: A hotbed of anti-Yeltsin sentiment. 4 National 6-9 CHOPPY ECONOMIC RECOVERY Economists say the economic recovery will not be smooth and prolonged. Instead, the economy will be choppy, with solid expansion alternating with anemic growth. 1 DIVIDED OVER TRADE PACT In Baltimore's Third Congressional District, a microcosm of the nation in terms of international trade, a Congressman and his constituents are deeply ambivalent about the free trade agreement. 1 DUMMY'S FATE IN VOTERS' HANDS Along with school vouchers, sales taxes and city charter revisions, voters in San Francisco will decide whether to allow a veteran |
640281_4 | CLINTON CARE PLAN MAY CUT BENEFITS TO SOME CHILDREN | of thousands of New York children will lose the specialized services they now get under Medicaid. These children do not get cash assistance now, but as Medicaid recipients they receive an enriched package of benefits far more comprehensive than the basic benefits package offered under the President's plan." 'Some Gaps in Coverage' Education officials say they are concerned because many people in special education classes are also enrolled in Medicaid, which helps pay for medical and social services they need to attend school. Under a Federal law passed in 1975 and strengthened since then, children with disabilities are entitled to "a free appropriate public education" in the least restrictive setting. An aide to Secretary Riley said: "There are some gaps in coverage for children with disabilities. We will work with the White House to resolve this because children could lose a lot under the plan as it now stands." Under current law, states must screen Medicaid recipients under 21 for medical and dental problems, and they must provide all services needed to correct or ameliorate such problems, even if the services are not covered for adults. The law explicitly requires states to provide hearing aids for children on Medicaid who need them. But under the Clinton plan, hearing aids are not covered for children or adults. Dr. Feder, the senior White House health adviser, said that Medicaid recipients could get all the services they need as part of "the mainstream health care system" that Mr. Clinton would create. The President, she said, would pump money into community health centers, public clinics and programs for poor people. Payments Limit Services Under current law, Medicaid recipients theoretically have access to a broad array of medical and social services. But in reality, Dr. Feder said, Medicaid payments are so low that doctors often refuse to take these patients. Suzanne M. Hansen, a policy analyst at the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions, said: "The Clinton plan covers many services also covered by Medicaid. But the Clinton plan has limitations that Medicaid does not have." For example, the Clinton plan covers rehabilitation services like physical therapy and speech therapy -- but only to restore abilities impaired "as a result of an illness or injury." Mental retardation is not an illness or injury, said Ms. McGinley of the Association for Retarded Citizens. People with this condition may not qualify for rehabilitation services under |
640413_0 | World Economies | |
640319_0 | British Statement Restarts Debate on Ulster | The debate over a new peace initiative for Northern Ireland accelerated today after the British Secretary for the north, Sir Patrick Mayhew, explained the conditions under which he would negotiate with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the outlawed Irish Republican Army. In the first elaboration of British policy on the initiative since it won the approval last Thursday of the Irish Prime Minister, Albert Reynolds, Sir Patrick said in a radio interview on Saturday that only an unconditional guarantee from the I.R.A. that its campaign of violence had ended would lead to a negotiating role for Sinn Fein. A temporary cease-fire would not suffice, he said. The initiative was disclosed, without details, on Sept. 25, as a way to restart negotiations on the north, where more than 3,000 people have been killed in violence between the Protestant majority and the Roman Catholic minority in the last 25 years. Sinn Fein and its president, Gerry Adams, have been excluded from British-sponsored peace talks because they refuse to denounce I.R.A. violence. |
645517_0 | NEWS SUMMARY | International A3-11 MEXICAN SUGAR AND TRADE PACT Fears of sugar imports from Mexico illustrate the kind of pressure Congress faces in the trade accord, because if Mexicans switch from sugar to corn syrup in their soft drinks, they could export more sugar. A3 ARISTIDE URGES A TOTAL EMBARGO The exiled President of Haiti urged the United Nations to impose a total trade embargo on his country to force its military leaders to resign and said he would not return until they surrendered power. A6 Haiti's Prime Minister said he would stay put for the time being. A6 President Clinton said he would keep pressuring Haiti's military. A6 U.S. TO SHIFT FUNDS IN DRUG FIGHT The Pentagon plans to cut spending on the interception of illegal drugs and to emphasize helping Latin American countries attack drug trafficking organizations. A6 GERMANY PROSECUTING IRANIANS A reputed agent of the Iranian secret police and four accused accomplices went on trial in Germany for the murder of an Iranian dissident. Prosecutors say Iran ordered the killing, but Teheran denies it. A8 THE DEPTH OF JAPAN'S SCANDAL An ex-mayor in Japan admitted to accepting $1 million in cash in what prosecutors have charged was a bribe to steer construction contracts to several contractors. A7 RENEWED WAR IN SOMALIA FEARED Rising tension and sporadic clashes in Somalia are being reported as Mohammed Farah Aidid tries to widen his power base beyond Mogadishu, the United Nations says. A8 ISRAEL SEEKING DEAL WITH QATAR Israeli officials say they have talked to Qatar about bringing natural gas to Israel and then exporting it across the Mediterranean to Europe. But Qatar's Oil Minister denied that a deal was in the making. A10 SAUDI ARABIA AND FOES IN ACCORD For suspending their activities abroad against the Saudi Government, Shiites can return home safely, and the authorities are to release detained opposition figures and reissue passports to others. A11 Washington condemned Croats for a massacre of Muslims. A9 London Journal: Whither Britain's vaunted tradition of oratory? A4 National A12-22, D17 GROWTH UP, INFLATION DOWN The Government reported that the gross domestic product expanded at a 2.8 percent pace while inflation slipped to 1.8 percent, the lowest for a quarter since 1986. A1 'COWBOYS' WITH GOLDEN SPURS Western senators filibustering a plan to raise grazing fees on public land say it would "do those old cowboys in." But "those old cowboys" include some of |
645585_2 | Engineers Give Shape to Tire and Vehicle Fragments at Trade Cente Trial | but nothing has been reported so far that would be unmistakably exculpatory. The portions of the transcripts made available to The New York Times show Mr. Salem talking of Mr. Salameh and Mr. Abouhalima in connection with the World Trade Center bombing plot. Over the last few weeks, the prosecutors in the trade center case have introduced into evidence dozens of tire fragments, bumpers, pumps, pulleys, frame rails, hinges and other vehicle parts recovered from the post-blast wreckage. Yesterday engineers from the Bridgestone-Firestone tire company and the Ford Motor Company gave each of the parts a name and an identity. All of them "are consistent," as the prosecutor had it, with a Ford 350 Econoline van with a 6-cylinder, 4.9-liter engine of exactly the sort that the authorities say Mr. Salameh rented from a Ryder agency in Jersey City. No Direct Link Despite the moves toward a fuller picture of the evidence, Judge Duffy, who has expressed annoyance in the past with the slow pace of the trial, noted at the end of the day that 58 witnesses have been called to the stand so far, yet there has been no evidence directly related to the roles in the bomb plot that prosecutors say were played by the four men on trial. "At some point," he said, "you're going to have to finish putting parts together and get down to the case against these defendants," he said. The lead prosecutor, J. Gilmore Childers, replied that the defendants' names would be coming in the trial very soon. Two witnesses were on the stand yesterday in what had the appearance at times of a technical seminar on the identification of tire and automobile parts. Shards of Tire The first was James B. Gardner, an engineer from Bridgestone-Firestone Inc., who showed the jury how he reconstructed two tires, one a Bridge stone, the other a Firestone, from the pieces of rubber and steel belting found in the search of the rubble. Mr. Gardner said that he matched the shards of tire with a whole, undamaged tire, which he called the "exemplar tire." He said that he used the fracture lines of the fragments, the pieces of lettering and variations in the tread elements to figure out what part of a whole tire each of the fragments came from. He placed the exemplar tire atop the defense table, almost directly in front of Mr. |
645538_3 | Trade Pact Passage May Hinge on Mexican Sugar | allowed to export to the United States would rise to 25,000 tons six years after of the pact goes into effect. The quota would disappear entirely after 15 years. But the accord says that if Mexico can produce more sugar than it consumes for two consecutive years, it can start shipping as much sugar to the United States as it wants as quickly as seven years after the agreement takes effect. A wholesale switch to corn sweeteners in Mexican soft drinks would mean under the current terms that Mexico could ship as much sugar north as now enters the United States from the entire rest of the sugar-producing world. According to a study last fall by the United States Department of Agriculture, the Mexican soft-drink industry used 1.3 million metric tons of sugar in 1991, and the amount continues to grow. The United States sugar quota for all foreign imports this year was 1.2 million metric tons. In a letter on Tuesday, Senator John B. Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat who is a leader in the Congress on sugar matters, urged Mr. Salinas to accept a formal "clarification" of the trade pact so that Mexico could not export sugar to the United States without actually producing more than it now uses. And at a meeting with Senator Breaux and House leaders on Friday, at least a dozen representatives indicated that they might vote for the trade pact if such a clarification were made, three people familiar with what happened at the meeting said. For the moment, Mexico's sugar industry does not appear to be much of a match in the political maneuvering for its American counterpart. Nearly four years after the Government began selling off its network of sugar mills to private investors, many of the operations are still antiquated and inefficient. Mexico's own sugar imports declined after a bumper harvest this year. But they are expected to rise again next year as stocks are depleted, and to continue rising as the domestic sugar market grows. Many of the privatized mills went to soft-drink bottlers. That ownership and Mexicans' taste for things sugary, officials say, make it unlikely that soft-drink companies will switch from sugar anytime soon. Mexican soft-drink bottlers generally agree, even though the high-fructose corn sweeteners will get less expensive as the Mexican tariffs on them fall under another provision of the trade pact. Experimenting With Raw Sugar In |
644440_3 | Airline Seats: Not Always First Come First Served | September showed 17 of the unsold seats in a cabin of 137 seats were marked "preferred." Mr. Monroe said that three or two weeks before a flight, particularly one popular with vacation travelers, as this one is, virtually all the preferred seats should still be available. But 17 seats represent 12.4 percent of all the seats, higher than Mr. Monroe's estimate on preferred seating. I was on the flight, and it was packed, so the "P" seats must have been distributed in the last 10 days or at the airport, while I was standing behind the door. Any high-level frequent flier who reserves direct with Delta far in advance will be given a seat in the open area unless he or she specifically asks for a preferred seat, Mr. Monroe said. An hour before departure, it's open season on all remaining seats, he added, so the crowd in the back can ask to be moved from their assigned seats to better ones. Northwest Airlines began its "preferential advance seat assignment" for domestic flights on May 31. The airline says aisle and window seats in the front of the coach section totaling 15 to 20 percent of the coach seats are set aside. Those eligible are passengers who paid a full coach fare; gold-level Worldperks members, who are among the most active 1 percent of the line's frequent-flier members, and Worldperks members who traveled 50,000 miles with the line in the previous year. It doesn't matter if the passenger paid with cash or mileage. Jane Nachtigal, a Northwest spokeswoman, said that seats could be reserved 60 days before departure, and boarding passes were available then. Open season for all unbooked seats, and for seats selected by no-show passengers, is 15 minutes before flight time for a domestic trip, 30 minutes before a trip to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean and 60 minutes before an international flight. United Airlines would not specify how many aisle and window seats in the front of the coach section were held aside for the Premier Seating plan, introduced in August 1992. John Kiker, a spokesman for the airline, said it was a "floating" group depending on the flight history. The seats may be claimed only by Mileage Plus members who flew 25,000 miles in the previous year, not simply by anyone who paid an unrestricted fare. The frequent flier may have paid cash or may be |
644193_3 | Debate on Race And Adoptions Is Being Reborn | placements. A similar measure is pending in the United States Senate. Authored by Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, the bill states that while same-race adoptions are preferable, race cannot be the sole consideration in making foster care and adoption placements. Any agency found to be unduly delaying or unwilling to consider transracial adoption would lose Federal adoption funds. The act was unanimously approved by the Senate Labor and Human Resources committee Oct. 6, and will be going to a vote before the full Senate. 'The Welfare of a Child' Senator Metzenbaum said he was motivated to write the bill by the large numbers of children waiting for years in foster care. "I'm so outraged at the fact that anyone would give priority to any issue over the welfare of a child," he said of social workers who discourage such adoptions. "I do not understand it, and I resent it. If a child can find a loving family, what a great advantage that is rather than moving from one foster home to another." Though the bill has the support of Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, an Illinois Democrat, and Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund, both of whom are black, it has sparked concerns among such groups as the National Association of Black Social Workers and the North American Council on Adoptable Children who contend transracial adoption would not be necessary if more efforts were made to find black adoptive parents. Against this backdrop are the white parents and black children who are living together day by day. Twenty years ago, experts say, these couples were often academics, clergy, and people in service professions. Then, like now, many may have initially wanted a white infant, but upon discovering they might wait for years, chose to adopt a child of another ethnicity. Others though, caught up in the spirit of the civil rights movement, wanted to make a contribution toward integration and racial unity. Today, experts say, such parents come from a broader range of backgrounds but are still often spurred by a similar sense of idealism and purpose. "Many of the people are simply saying it's a shame for a kid not to have a family," Mr. Pierce said. "We're talking about people whose view of the world is based on idealism and religion." Scrutiny on Both Sides A white couple adopting a black child today will often |
644153_3 | Airline Seats: Not Always First Come First Served | in September showed 17 of the unsold seats in a cabin of 137 seats were marked "preferred." Mr. Monroe said that three or two weeks before a flight, particularly one popular with vacation travelers, as this one is, virtually all the preferred seats should still be available. But 17 seats represent 12.4 percent of all the seats, higher than Mr. Monroe's estimate on preferred seating. I was on the flight, and it was packed, so the "P" seats must have been distributed in the last 10 days or at the airport, while I was standing behind the door. Any high-level frequent flier who reserves direct with Delta far in advance will be given a seat in the open area unless he or she specifically asks for a preferred seat, Mr. Monroe said. An hour before departure, it's open season on all remaining seats, he added, so the crowd in the back can ask to be moved from their assigned seats to better ones. Northwest Airlines began its "preferential advance seat assignment" for domestic flights on May 31. The airline says aisle and window seats in the front of the coach section totaling 15 to 20 percent of the coach seats are set aside. Those eligible are passengers who paid a full coach fare; gold-level Worldperks members, who are among the most active 1 percent of the line's frequent-flier members, and Worldperks members who traveled 50,000 miles with the line in the previous year. It doesn't matter if the passenger paid with cash or mileage. Jane Nachtigal, a Northwest spokeswoman, said that seats could be reserved 60 days before departure, and boarding passes were available then. Open season for all unbooked seats, and for seats selected by no-show passengers, is 15 minutes before flight time for a domestic trip, 30 minutes before a trip to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean and 60 minutes before an international flight. United Airlines would not specify how many aisle and window seats in the front of the coach section were held aside for the Premier Seating plan, introduced in August 1992. John Kiker, a spokesman for the airline, said it was a "floating" group depending on the flight history. The seats may be claimed only by Mileage Plus members who flew 25,000 miles in the previous year, not simply by anyone who paid an unrestricted fare. The frequent flier may have paid cash or may |
644441_3 | Airline Seats: Not Always First Come First Served | September showed 17 of the unsold seats in a cabin of 137 seats were marked "preferred." Mr. Monroe said that three or two weeks before a flight, particularly one popular with vacation travelers, as this one is, virtually all the preferred seats should still be available. But 17 seats represent 12.4 percent of all the seats, higher than Mr. Monroe's estimate on preferred seating. I was on the flight, and it was packed, so the "P" seats must have been distributed in the last 10 days or at the airport, while I was standing behind the door. Any high-level frequent flier who reserves direct with Delta far in advance will be given a seat in the open area unless he or she specifically asks for a preferred seat, Mr. Monroe said. An hour before departure, it's open season on all remaining seats, he added, so the crowd in the back can ask to be moved from their assigned seats to better ones. Northwest Airlines began its "preferential advance seat assignment" for domestic flights on May 31. The airline says aisle and window seats in the front of the coach section totaling 15 to 20 percent of the coach seats are set aside. Those eligible are passengers who paid a full coach fare; gold-level Worldperks members, who are among the most active 1 percent of the line's frequent-flier members, and Worldperks members who traveled 50,000 miles with the line in the previous year. It doesn't matter if the passenger paid with cash or mileage. Jane Nachtigal, a Northwest spokeswoman, said that seats could be reserved 60 days before departure, and boarding passes were available then. Open season for all unbooked seats, and for seats selected by no-show passengers, is 15 minutes before flight time for a domestic trip, 30 minutes before a trip to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean and 60 minutes before an international flight. United Airlines would not specify how many aisle and window seats in the front of the coach section were held aside for the Premier Seating plan, introduced in August 1992. John Kiker, a spokesman for the airline, said it was a "floating" group depending on the flight history. The seats may be claimed only by Mileage Plus members who flew 25,000 miles in the previous year, not simply by anyone who paid an unrestricted fare. The frequent flier may have paid cash or may be |
644294_2 | Actions of Japan Peacekeepers in Cambodia Raise Questions and Criticism | forces asked for -- and usually received -- in exchange for their participation in the 22,000-member peacekeeping operation, which was sent here under a 1991 United Nations peace treaty intended to end Cambodia's long civil war. Many Abandoned Posts They were angrier over the fact, largely unpublicized until now, that many Japanese abandoned their posts during the peacekeeping operation, apparently out of fear for their safety and with the tacit approval of the Japanese Government. "This has not been an impressive performance by the Japanese," a Western diplomat said. Japan was not alone in making special demands of the United Nations. French peacekeepers, for instance, were initially assigned to the relative safety, but relative obscurity, of the jungles of northeastern Cambodia. After lobbying by Paris, the French soldiers were transferred to a high-profile assignment in the southern province of Kompong Som, along the Gulf of Thailand, where many of the troops spent off-duty hours tanning on the palm-fringed white sand beaches nearby. But the concessions to the Japanese went much further. Combat Is Prohibited First, there was the question of where the Japanese troops would be stationed. To avoid violations of Japanese law, which bars its soldiers from involvement in hostile action, the United Nations sent most of the Japanese soldiers to the southern province of Takeo, one of the safest areas of Cambodia because it is far from the camps of the Khmer Rouge guerrillas. The Japanese forces arrived relatively late in Cambodia and were allowed to leave early. Although the United Nations will maintain a military presence here until at least mid-November, the Japanese began pulling out in July. Then there was the question of living arrangements. To house their troops, the Japanese built this luxurious base camp -- Camp Takeo -- about 45 miles south of Phnom Penh. The camp created a good deal of envy -- and almost as much derision -- among peacekeepers from other nations who had none of the same comforts. Japanese officials say that it would have been foolish to house the soldiers in anything less than homey surroundings given the presence of so many Japanese news-gatherers in Cambodia, and the Japanese public's misgivings about the operation. Armies From News Agencies Japanese newspapers, television networks and news agencies sent their own armies to Cambodia, hundreds of reporters, editors, cameramen and photographers with orders to watch every move made by the Japanese peacekeepers. |
644250_1 | I.R.A. Bombing Kills 9 in a Shopping Area of Belfast | since the latest round of violence began in 1969. Police Patrol Streets The Ulster Freedom Fighters said it was calling all its units to active duty. By nightfall the streets of Belfast were heavily patrolled by the police and British Army troops. The attack's political effect was believed certain to impede seriously if not destroy a peace initiative for Northern Ireland advanced a month ago by John Hume, the head of the moderate Social Labor and Democratic Party, and Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A. The initiative involved a proposal to allow Sinn Fein to take part in peace negotiations in return for an end of I.R.A. violence. Prime Minister John Major of Britain said that today's attack was "sheer bloody-minded evil; There is no other way to describe it." Speaking in Cyprus, where he was attending a British Commonwealth conference, Mr. Major did not link the attack explicitly to the peace initiative, but added: "It does no good. It doesn't help towards peace. It brings comfort to no one. The vast bulk of the people in Northern Ireland will have nothing to do with these people." 'Appalling Act' Mr. Hume called the attack "an appalling act" and said it made the pursuit of his peace initiative even more urgent. Mr. Adams issued a statement expressing "deep concern." Prime Minister Albert Reynolds of Ireland, who is to meet Mr. Major on Friday in Brussels where they are expected to discuss the Hume-Adams plan, condemned the bombing today, but did not link it to the peace initiative. "The path of violence leads nowhere," Mr. Reynolds said. Support for the Hume-Adams proposal had been growing both here in the Irish Republic and, to a much lesser degree, in Northern Ireland, where leaders of the Protestant majority believe that talks would lead eventually to the British Government's leaving the province. That is the goal of the I.R.A and Sinn Fein, who want a unified Irish state. Although the Irish Republic Government pays lip-service to the idea of a unified Irish state, many people here fear the economic and political costs of incorporating into the overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland some 950,000 fearful if not hostile Protestants. Britain has said it no longer has any economic or strategic reason for being in the north, which is economically the weakest corner of the United Kingdom, and that it would leave if |
644442_0 | Neighborhood Report: Harlem; The Playground That Plastic Built | A new school playground on 134th Street has 20,000 plastic containers and 34,000 aluminum cans, according to its donor. But it is a proud count: recycling has turned the castoffs into the makings of a jungle gym and slide. Even the mats to cushion children's falls are fashioned from old tires. The playground, at P.S. 175, was donated by Lever Brothers, which makes cleaning products like All, Wisk and Snuggle. The company is using the playground, and similar ones in six other cities, as an example of what recycled materials can do. "Plastic was getting such a bad rap that we were looking for ways to turn it into a positive idea," said Melinda Sweet, Lever's director of environmental affairs. "Recycling isn't just putting the stuff outside or at the end of the driveway." The playground equipment, built by Landscape Structures, features a special lamination that keeps plastic surfaces from being slippery when wet, as it was on Wednesday, when the playground opened. Children climbed up stairs and ladders processed to look like wood or hung from bright red aluminum monkey bars. Lever Brothers has given money to P.S. 175 before, to pay for an environmental education program. It includes a curriculum developed by Keep America Beautiful called "Waste in Place," which teaches how to make recycled paper and what the recycling numbers on plastic containers mean. The program has also included a "Success Garden" across the street from the school. Three years ago the garden was a vacant lot piled with garbage, but the school, with the help of the Department of Sanitation and the Parks Council, a nonprofit group that creates community gardens, fashioned a place where students can work and play. Other lots on the street are now being cleared for more gardens, some led by community groups inspired by the Success Garden. EMILY M. BERNSTEIN |
641901_1 | PRESIDENT ORDERS SIX U.S. WARSHIPS FOR HAITI PATROL | missile crisis in 1962. But as in his speech on Somalia earlier this week, the President's manner was more subdued than his words. Haiti's defiant military and police leaders, who were scheduled to step down today under an accord brokered earlier this year by the United Nations, refused to do so. A White House aide said that at a meeting in Port-au-Prince with Lawrence A. Pezzullo, President Clinton's special envoy, the military leader, Gen. Raoul Cedras, "yielded not a single centimeter." [ Page 4. ] U.N. Monitors Moved As a precautionary measure, the United Nations pulled its human rights monitors, scattered around the Haitian countryside, back into the capital, where conditions are considered a bit safer, and began to evacuate them. "The ships and troops have an important symbolic function," a State Department official said. "We want these people to realize that we are willing to back up our words with force. Maybe they will think twice before they resort to bad behavior again. Conceivably we may even save a few lives." At a brief news conference that came 24 hours after the assassination of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Justice Minister, Guy Malary, Mr. Clinton said he was "very concerned about the safety of Americans there." He also declared a broad United States interest in "promoting democracy in a place where such a large number of Haitians have clearly expressed their preference for President." Father Aristide, who won the Haitian presidential election in 1990, has been living in Washington since being deposed by a military coup in September 1991. Today's steps by the United States and other countries, intended to supplement the United Nations sanctions voted on Thursday and due to take effect on Monday, are part of an effort to return him to power by Oct. 30, the deadline set by an agreement reached by Father Aristide and the military government in July. To encourage other countries to join in the naval action, the United States asked the United Nations to authorize member governments to do whatever was necessary to enforce the embargo, "and in particular to halt inward maritime shipping as necessary in order to inspect and verify their cargoes and destinations." The Chinese delegation, which has a veto in the Security Council, asked for a delay to seek instructions from Beijing, and a decision on the request was put off until Saturday. Father Aristide wrote today to the |
641864_0 | The Politics of Food | The old view of U.S. farm policy is that it strikes an unconscionable blow to the poor: It jacks up food prices so that Congress can funnel billions to a rich and well-organized constituency. The new view of farm subsidies -- which follows from a series this week in The Times -- is that the old view was much too kind. Dean Baquet and Diana Henriques expose the Department of Agriculture as the handmaiden of powerful agribusiness. The department oversees programs to subsidize food exports. Yet the subsidies haven't done much to increase exports; nor have they done much to help family farmers, the supposed beneficiaries when supporters in Congress argue for more ill-deserved support. Subsidies do enrich a small group of wealthy growers, those earning more than $100,000 a year, and multinational corporations. The department has zealously protected these powerful constituents, even permitting companies caught rigging bids for supplying school lunches, and those who defrauded Federal loan programs, to remain eligible for Federal subsidies. Apparently, protecting miscreant growers was more important than protecting consumers, taxpayers or schoolchildren. Farm subsidies have been riddled with corruption and deception. Foreign companies masquerade as American to win eligibility for Federal subsidies. Tobacco companies take Government-backed loans to export foreign tobacco because it is cheaper than home-grown tobacco. U.S. exporters use subsidized loans to bribe foreign officials. And dairy companies collude to keep prices high on the school lunch subsidy program. Yet the department continues to do business with several of these companies. Complicity between the Agriculture Department and agribusiness compounds the folly of U.S. policy. Farmers are paid not to grow crops and to send food abroad; meanwhile they are allowed to hide from foreign competition behind tariffs and quotas. The direct cost of these policies to taxpayers exceeds $10 billion a year. Consumers pay another $10 billion or so in higher food prices. That's a cruel blow to the poor, who are forced to pay about 10 percent more for cheese, milk, fruit, sugar and peanut butter. Since non-farm families typically earn less than a fourth of what the average full-time farmer takes in, the policy amounts to reverse Robin Hood. One observer labels farmers the nation's richest welfare recipients -- with reason. The sugar program alone has put millions into the bank account of each of the nation's 12,000 sugar growers. Eighty percent of the nation's export subsidies go to agriculture |
638986_1 | A Snapshot of the Continent's Flora, Invaders and All | are hundreds of botanists at 30 institutions in the United States and Canada. The work, consisting of 14 volumes to appear over 12 years, is being published by the Oxford University Press and will also be made available on Internet, the global computer network. The first volume traces the epic evolution of North America's flora through a series of alternating tropical and deciduous phases that started 65 million years ago. Once, for instance, tropical evergreens reached into Canada. Later, vast forests of deciduous trees like oaks, elms and maples carpeted the continent. By two million years ago today's more varied botanical pattern of cold-weather coniferous forests, sunny grasslands, dark deciduous woods, swamps, marshes, beaches and deserts was more or less in place -- only to be transformed within a 500-year blink of the eye by a wave of exotic plants that followed human migrants from other parts of the world. Since then the global climate has remained relatively cool. Changes in the face of the continent, including the rise of mountains, conspired with climate to create the provinces of today's flora. The deciduous woodlands, remnants of a temperate-zone belt that girdled the globe 10 million years ago, shrank to their present-day domain in the East. Grasslands appeared in the "rain shadow" cast by the Rocky Mountains. Cold-tolerant coniferous forests developed in the North. The pattern is maintained today by the interplay of major air masses in the Arctic, over the Pacific Ocean and over the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic. Their average positions over time largely determine what vegetation grows at a given latitude in different parts of the continent. The Arctic air mass, for instance, does not generally extend far enough south for conifers to dominate the New York region. This wide variety of environmental influences allowed most of the world's major plant formations to flourish in one region or another of presettlement America. Arctic ecosystems accounted for 19 percent of the continent; northern coniferous forests, 28 percent; grasslands, 21 to 25 percent; Eastern deciduous forests, 11 percent; coastal plain ecosystems, 3 percent; desert ecosystems, 5 percent; Western mountain coniferous forests, 7 percent; tidal wetlands, 1 percent; Mediterranean scrub lands and woodlands (for example, in California), 1 percent, and beach vegetation, less than 1 percent. Species diversity generally decreases with distance from the equator, and like other temperate and Arctic areas North America is far poorer in |
586552_0 | L. Van Norden, 78, Lawyer Who Led Opera Association | Langdon Van Norden, a lawyer and a former chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera Association, died on Wednesday at Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut. He was 78 and lived in Greenwich. He died of a heart attack, said his son, Langdon Jr., of Manhattan. Mr. Van Norden, who joined the opera association board in 1955, was its chairman from 1975 to 1977, when he became honorary chairman. In 1979 he was named an honorary director, which he remained until his death. He was also president of the Metropolitan Opera Guild from 1953 to 1967. A native of Manhattan, Mr. Van Norden attended the Choate School and graduated from Princeton University in 1937. In 1940 he graduated from Yale Law School, where he was editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal. He was an associate with the law firm of Davis, Polk & Wardwell in the early 1940's. During World War II he served as a Signal Corps captain in Italy and worked with the Ultra Organization in Bletchley Park, England, breaking German codes. Host of Civic Activities He was a partner with H. A. Caesar & Company, a factoring firm, in New York City from the early 1950's until the mid-1970's and of counsel to the law firm of Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts until he retired in the mid-1980's. Among many civic activities, Mr. Van Norden also was a former president of the National Orchestral Association, president of the Yale Law School Alumni Association and chairman of the Greenwich Land Trust. Besides his son, Mr. Van Norden is survived by his wife, the former Gloria Barnes, and a sister, Jeanie Van Norden of Manhattan. |
586461_0 | Scientific Evidence Doesn't Tell Whole Story | To the Editor: The Supreme Court has decided to rule on what scientific evidence juries can hear, you report (front page, Jan. 2). Your account gives much attention to Peter Huber and his book "Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom," which contends that courts are awash in crackpot testimony and unproved claims. Ironically, Mr. Huber's book about good and bad science is very unscientific. Mr. Huber's thesis is that unjust verdicts in many tort cases are caused by a combination of the law's search for the party that could have avoided the loss most cheaply and the relaxation of rules of evidence to permit the admission in court of "junk science" presented by phony experts. Mr. Huber's book describes cases that turned on proof of causation submitted by phony experts. For instance, he cites "trauma cancer cases," in which a defendant negligently inflicted trauma to a part of the plaintiff's body, and a cancer later developed at the site. In these cases, some judges and juries agreed with the plaintiff's expert witnesses and found the blow to be the cause of the cancer and awarded damages. Mr. Huber condemns such verdicts as based on anecdotal and coincidental evidence, not epidemiological evidence of cause. If trauma causes cancer, why do not football players have more cancers than other people? Yet Mr. Huber's own thesis is also supported by only anecdotal evidence. He puts himself forward as an expert qualified to testify about the causes of illness in the tort system. However, Mr. Huber has never published his thesis in a peer-reviewed legal journal or any journal, for that matter, as he would require scientific experts to do to show that their theories or methods are "generally accepted" in the scientific community. This is the test embodied in the 1923 Frye rule, which Mr. Huber says has been abandoned and which the High Court will re-examine. Moreover, Mr. Huber's thesis is supported only by cases he does not like and testimony by certain scientists, ignoring variables other than expert testimony, which could be responsible for plaintiffs' recoveries. His thesis is not supported by empirical, statistical data. Mr. Huber makes no attempt to determine out of all tort cases how often junk science testimony is offered or how often it succeeds. Nor does he demonstrate how strong is the association between undesirable verdicts and permissive rules of evidence. The Frye rule is |
582125_6 | China Builds Its Military Muscle, Making Some Neighbors Nervous | Chinese leaders are trying to assuage the concerns. China's Ambassador to Great Britain, Ma Yuzhen, declared last month that it is "absolutely not true" that China is "filling the vacuum left by the superpowers." For now, China's military forces are still regarded as second or third rate by Western experts. Fighter pilots have only about 80 hours of air training a year, less than half the level in NATO countries, and it is said that China had to ask Russian pilots to bring the Su-27 fighter jets to their new home bases because the newly trained Chinese pilots were not good enough. "In general, China is no better equipped than Iraq was," said Keith Jacobs, an expert on the Chinese military who is based in the United States. However, Mr. Jacobs added, by 2000 China may be in a much stronger position than it is now. New Post-Soviet Missions The Chinese military, like that of the United States, has been struggling to redefine its mission after the collapse of its prime potential enemy, the Soviet Union. The goal the military has come up with, at least tentatively, is two-fold: repression of internal dissent and guarantees for Chinese commercial interests in disputed regions. Most experts believe that the South China Sea is the likeliest spot for a conflict to erupt, in part because it is claimed in all or in part by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei. Vietnam and China have fought several brief naval battles in the area over the years, as well as a ground war in 1979. The Army has published a new book, "I Love the Spratly Islands," that seems aimed at dredging up nationalist sentiment for the claims to the area, which includes the Spratly archipelago. For now there is no sign that China will interfere with international shipping, but Beijing might, for example, ban Japan from shipping plutonium through the sea. The principal territorial dispute with Japan is over the Diaoyu Islands, known in Japan as the Senkakus, which lie northeast of Taiwan. These are uninhabited and for now, neither Tokyo nor Beijing seems ready for a military confrontation. As for India, which China fought in 1962, much of the common border remains in dispute but for now both countries seem intent on focusing instead on how to improve diplomatic and economic relations. Likewise, China fought border skirmishes with the Soviet Union |
582148_1 | Amgen and Miles Sign Small Biotech Concerns | purchased a 10 percent stake in Sugen, which is privately held. Sources close to the deal said the price was about $10 million. The announcement of the alliance is planned for the Hambrecht & Quist Life Science Conference, an annual event where biotech companies make presentations to analysts and industry experts, to be held here this week. On Wednesday at the conference, Viagene Inc. and Miles Inc. are scheduled to declare their own collaboration to develop a gene therapy product for treatment of Hemophilia A, a blood disorder characterized by the lack of a protein that causes clotting. Under the terms of the agreement, Miles would provide as much as $9 million up front, research support and additional payments as certain research milestones are met. The Amgen-Sugen collaboration is to focus primarily on a compound to stimulate the production of platelets, a key blood component that is sometimes deficient following chemotherapy or immune-system disorders. Such a compound would complement Amgen's two existing products, Epogen and Neupogen, which stimulate the production of red and white blood cells, respectively. Drugs discovered by Sugen, of Redwood City, Calif., would be produced by Amgen, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., and marketed by both companies. Unlike Amgen and other first-generation biotech companies that produced drugs by cloning naturally occurring therapeutic proteins, Sugen and other new companies seek to produce drugs by identifying receptors on cells that are implicated in specific diseases. They then seek to produce molecules with complementary shapes that can bind with the receptor, thus halting the disease mechanism. Blood-Clotting Protein Approved The Viagene-Miles alliance follows the approval last month by the Food and Drug Administration of a genetically engineered version of the blood-clotting protein Factor VIII, produced by Genetics Institute Inc. and Baxter Hyland. Miles is also working on a genetically engineered Factor VIII, in a program with Genentech Inc., which could be approved soon. The collaboration with Viagene would explore using retroviral vectors to treat hemophilia. A retroviral vector uses genetically engineered viruses as a carrier vehicle to deliver a therapeutic gene into a living cell; the gene then prompts the production of a desired protein. Viagene, of La Jolla, Calif., would provide its expertise in the production of retroviral vectors, while Miles, of Elkhart, Ind., would provide the Factor VIII gene, which it has licensed from Genentech. Miles would acquire worldwide marketing rights, and Viagene would gain the right to manufacture. |
582167_3 | Patents; Increasing Production Of a Virus | the only way to harvest these proteins is to crack open the genetically engineered cells and then laboriously separate them through elaborate filtering processes. Or, if the cells are programmed to secrete the proteins, they get mixed up with the rich nutrients used to feed the cells and must also be separated through sophisticated processing. The new patent covers genetic instructions that cause the cell to encapsulate the proteins in tiny "buds," made from the same protein as the membrane of the cell itself. These buds keep the proteins distinct from surrounding nutrients, making it possible to separate them just by whipping them in a centrifuge. The invention -- which has been assigned to Research Corporation Technologies, a licensing company in Tucson, Ariz. -- will not work on bacteria or yeast cells, which are used to produce many drugs, but the inventor contends it does work for any mammalian cells that are being used to produce components for many vaccines. He received patent 5,175,099. A New Device For Faster Freezing Instacool Inc. of North America, a small company in Rancho Cordova, Calif., has patented a new device to freeze anything from blood plasma to food far more rapidly. The advantage of quick-freezing, within a matter of minutes rather than hours, is that proteins are much less likely to be damaged by the process. Instacool, a four-year old company with about $2 million in sales from freezers to chill plasma, has pioneered fast-cooling techniques that use special low-temperature liquids rather than air. Philip H. Coelho, president of Instacool and one of the inventors, said cold liquids generally soak up heat about 10 times faster than gases. But rapid cooling requires liquids with freezing points far lower than water, and most of these leave unacceptable chemical residues on whatever they touch. To avoid that problem, Mr. Coelho and a colleague invented a very thin membrane that lets the cold come through but prevents whatever is being frozen from touching the liquid. "The material is soft like a latex glove but 100 times as tough," he said. The membrane is already being used in freezers for plasma, and will soon be incorporated into a line of much bigger freezers used for the bulk storage of food. Mr. Coelho and a company researcher, Terry Wolf, received patent 5,168,712. Patents are available by number for $3 from the Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C. 20231. |
582082_0 | World Economies | |
582102_8 | Castro's People Try to Absorb 'Terrible Blows' | sugar (four pounds), although it usually took more than one trip to find even that. Monthly rations of cooking oil (about two cups), soap (half a bar per person), coffee (four ounces) and Chinese toothpaste, which is sometimes used as a detergent substitute, rarely seem to arrive on schedule. Since the 12-ounce monthly rations of chicken have dried up, the family's butcher has sold them only four items: eggs (four per person each week), small frozen fish, tomato puree and a concoction of soy, gristle and meat remains that is euphemistically called "soy hamburger." Why Everyone Is Not DeadZ "If you look at the ration book and you look at what is in the stores, you have to wonder why everyone is not dead," a diplomat said. "The reason is that the black market is flourishing." In some neighborhoods, the black market -- known as the bolsa, or "exchange" -- is merely the under-the-counter sale of items that are usually rationed over the counter but are skimmed off or otherwise procured by the grocer. Food is often sold surreptitiously from aged delivery trucks, and travelers returning from the countryside are often searched for food bought from farmers. But everyone, it seems, has "contacts." Many Cubans have some savings in pesos. But since there is so little to buy and demand has risen so sharply, underground prices have spiraled upward with the black-market currency-exchange rate. With the dollar now trading at more than 40 times its official equivalency to the Cuban peso, a $2.75 chicken can cost about the monthly minimum wage of 108 pesos, and a $10 case of beer four times that. To overcome the obstacles to consumerism or survival is to engage in the fundamental activity of Cuban life: resolviendo, or "resolving things." One might "resolve" a few liters of gasoline from a relative who works at a service station. A piece of beef might be "resolved" from a pregnant friend who receives it as part of a special ration. But when one's jewelry, tennis shoes and other effects have been sold off, one generally must hustle the currency with which to resolve. 'Turned Us All Into Thieves' "They have turned us all into thieves," a 28-year-old engineer complained as he hid in a dark corner of a party. The man, who seemed distraught and slightly drunk, described himself as a committed socialist. But he said he had |
586679_4 | Health Claims Cause Turmoil In the Cellular-Phone Market | to cause cancer and birth defects, like X-ray radiation. Making a Comparison A researcher on radio frequency hazards suggested an analogy: Imagine someone going to the top of the Empire State Building and firing a high-powered rifle into a street crowded with passers-by. The probability of a bullet fatally striking a single pedestrian is quite high. X-rays are like that, knocking electrons from the molecules of the human body and leading to mutations in the cells that could produce cancer and other diseases. Now, imagine someone going to the top of the Empire State Building and dropping a ton of Ping-Pong balls onto the crowded street. The Ping-Pong balls would certainly annoy. "But how many people would the Ping-Pong balls kill?" asked John M. Osepchuk, a consulting scientist on radio frequency hazards at the Raytheon Company, maker of Amana brand microwave ovens. "The answer is nobody. By the very nature of the electromagnetic fields of cellular telephones, they are more like Ping-Pong balls than they are bullets." Cellular phones work at comparatively low frequency, under 900 megahertz, and at very low power, less than half a watt. That leads many scientists to insist that the phones are unlikely to cause much harm. The devices are, however, held right up against the head, and there have been several disturbing studies that have helped roil the waters. Laboratory Results In one set of experiments, Dr. Stephen F. Cleary and his colleagues at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond found that if they took cells from human brain tumors, grew them in lab dishes and exposed them for two hours to microwave radiation, the cells grew 30 percent faster than they had before, and the effect continued for days. The same growth-promoting effect could be seen when normal human blood cells were isolated in lab dishes and exposed to microwave radiation. But the wattage used in those experiments exceeds that emitted by cellular phones. Nor do scientists know if the same things that happen to cells in dishes also happen in living bodies. The danger of an electromagnetic field is defined by its frequency (and the ability of the human body to absorb the radiation), its power (hence its ability to penetrate human tissue) and its proximity to people. A microwave oven cooks foods because it is at the right radio frequency, at sufficiently high power, and the microwave energy is confined. |
581432_0 | Trump Project Adds to Sewage Problem | To the Editor: Although the fate of Donald J. Trump's Riverside South project on Manhattan's West Side has been resolved with a favorable vote in the New York City Council (news article, Dec. 18), the question of what happens to the project's sewage has not. The plan calls for the more than 1.4 million gallons a day of sewage to be piped to the troubled North River treatment plant, which has been plagued by capacity and odor problems almost since it opened in 1986. Ironically, Mr. Trump and the project sponsors offered to pay for construction of a small sewage treatment facility on the site of Riverside South. But the idea was rebuffed by city environmental officials who have insisted, with the flimsiest of evidence, that the long-term sewage flow and capacity problems at the North River plant have been solved. Unfortunately, the foul odors wafting through the North River plant's open arches continue to permeate the air in the adjacent Harlem community. Neighbors complain of eye, throat and lung irritations. Many have abandoned their terraces and have taped windows closed, even during summer. To end this continuing nuisance, community residents, West Harlem Environmental Action and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit last spring. Mayor David N. Dinkins is no doubt sincere in his desire to see North River's problems solved once and for all. So why won't the administration sit down with the community and plaintiffs to come up with an enforceable agreement for the added flows from Riverside South and for abating the foul smells from the North River plant? ERIC A. GOLDSTEIN Senior Attorney Natural Resources Defense Council New York, Dec. 24, 1992 |
581514_2 | Poland Acts to Curb Abortion; Church Seeks Ban | to open a Catholic chapel at Parliament have stirred similar debate, and Cardinal Glemp energetically attacked Church critics this week as purveyors of "contemporary paganism." With the advent of democracy, the church hierarchy began to push for a social agenda that included religious education in the schools and the end of abortion. Church supporters said the changes were a just reward for the hierarchy's unstinting support of the Solidarity labor movement. A 1956 law permits unfettered abortion in Poland, but Health Department regulations in 1991 made it more difficult in practical terms, and an ethics code for doctors, which took effect in May 1992, prompted virtually all state-funded hospitals to end abortions. But Poland was unique among Communist nations for its substantial number of private gynecologists who performed abortions, and prices for private doctors tripled and quadrupled, ranging now from $200 to $800. Many women also went to Ukraine and Czechoslovakia. The debate over abortion and the church's role in politics has touched off an anticlerical backlash. Public opinion surveys showed more than 18 months ago that the church had been replaced by the Army as the country's most respected organization. Ninety-five percent of Poles identify themselves as Catholics, but surveys have repeatedly found that most Catholics disagree with the church on abortion, divorce and contraception. More than a million Poles have signed a petition demanding a referendum on abortion. But the church said this amounted to an impermissible vote on morality, and Parliament refused today to allow a referendum. Terms of the Bill Today's vote was portrayed by the Christian National Union, the leading pro-church party, as a compromise. Lawmakers dropped provisions that would have imposed criminal penalties on women who abort themselves and eliminated a ban on prenatal testing. But they retained two-year prison terms for doctors who perform illegal abortions and added requirements that the Government promote the distribution of contraceptives. They also instructed the Education Ministry to resume sex education. "I'm pleased that the extremes lost," said Piotr Nowina-Konopka, a leading member of the Democratic Union Party, which is heir to Solidarity's intellectual wing. "We are trying to cut off abortion in 98 percent of cases." If the lower house had approved the most restrictive version, he said, "the result would have been nothing but social unrest." But Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, a former Prime Minister, found the decision to approve abortion in some cases "completely illogical." |
580988_0 | Nuclear Waste Crisis Grows in Our Backyard | To the Editor: "Shoreham Fuels Nuclear Proliferation" (editorial, Dec. 13) criticizes the decision by the Long Island Power Authority to ship Shoreham's contaminated fuel to France for reprocessing for future use in other nuclear power plants. While your concern for reprocessing is understandable, your criticism misses the mark. The Long Island Power Authority is concerned about reprocessing and whether or not Shoreham's fuel might set a precedent for increasing trade in plutonium. That is why we continue to explore alternative options to dispose of Shoreham's highly contaminated fuel rod bundles. Our decision to enter into a reprocessing agreement with Cogema, a French nuclear company, was necessary to protect Long Island Lighting Company ratepayers should our limited fuel-disposal options -- shipping the fuel to a utility for reuse or on-site storage at Shoreham -- fail to materialize. What is surprising is that you fail to criticize the real culprits in the Shoreham fuel fiasco: the Federal Government for failing to come up with a permanent disposal site for high-level radioactive waste, and Lilco, which contaminated Shoreham in 1985 in a foolhardy effort to try to force the opening of the plant on Long Island. In reality, the Long Island Power Authority is only being asked to clean up the mess left by the nuclear industry, which misled the American public into believing that a long-term disposal facility for highly contaminated nuclear waste would be ready well before the more than 100 nuclear facilities were decommissioned. Many critics of Shoreham and other nuclear facilities urged the Atomic Energy Commission and its succcessor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to deny nuclear facility operating licenses until the waste disposal issue was resolved. Our contentions of the 1960's and 70's that no waste disposal system would be ready to handle nuclear waste was on target. The Shoreham fuel-disposal issue, as complicated as it is, will pale compared with the problems utilities will face all around the country as they prepare to decommission their nuclear units and discover that there's no place to ship the used fuel and other highly contaminated materials produced after years of use. The Federal Government's abysmal performance in siting a waste facility will cost electric ratepayers billions of dollars in storage costs until a site is chosen, or is ever built at all. As for Shoreham, Lilco ratepayers are faced with this expensive problem because Lilco, with the undying support of you |
580855_0 | With Hint of Scandal, New Social Values Are Sold | A 13-year-old bride in India refuses to consummate her marriage, saying she wants to become a lawyer before she has children. A Filipino man crouches over the grave of his wife, who died delivering their 13th child, and apologizes for not helping to plan their family better. A Pakistani doctor tells a woman who has had four daughters that she will be committing suicide if she continues to try to bear a son. The stories are melodramatic -- not surprising, since they are all from the plot lines of popular soap operas, made and aired in recent years in third world countries around the globe. The shows were produced in part through a New York City-based organization that tries to promote family planning with a multimedia approach. Population Communications International is housed in a small office on 44th Street across First Avenue from the United Nations. Its five staff members negotiate with government officials, religious leaders and television producers to create dramas in countries overwhelmed by population growth, and its activities now cover 10 nations. David Poindexter, the organization's executive director, has traveled the globe for the last 10 years, working in countries like Brazil, Kenya, India, Pakistan and China to spread the idea of socially responsible television and radio programs. The premise is simple: People will not use family-planning clinics simply because they are built; people's attitudes toward family planning must change. And the most effective way to help change those attitudes is through the media: newspapers, radio and, primarily, television. "If a big company like McDonald's was going into a third world country, they would saturate the air waves or the television or whatever was out there, until all you heard about was McDonald's hamburgers," Mr. Poindexter said. "If we want to sell this family-planning idea, we have to push the education and the motivation of the product and the why of the product. That's what we are about." Sonny Fox, a Hollywood television producer and president of Population Communications' board, said television is the key to the organization's vision. "If you wanted to change attitudes, it used to be the printed word that was most effective," Mr. Fox said. "Today that has passed to television. Television is the world's most powerful medium for change today." Mr. Poindexter originally lobbied American television producers to include family planning in their television shows. His most notable success was in the |
585185_1 | Hussein Rebuilds Iraq's Economy Undeterred by the U.N. Sanctions | industrial complex bombed by the allies show the damage inflicted and how it has been mended. But the most powerful symbol of Iraq's determination to rebuild after the Persian Gulf war and keep the country from collapsing into starvation, economic chaos and rebellion under the weight of sanctions is the Third River. The river, actually a canal, flows 350 miles from near Baghdad to the Persian Gulf at Basra, running between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Working 24 hours a day for nearly a year, teams of engineers dug the canal using more than $2 billion worth of commandeered construction equipment and material left behind by foreign companies after sanctions forced them out of the country. The canal will drain water used to wash the salt out of some 3.5 million acres of saline land, allowing it be farmed this summer to increase Iraq's domestic food output and beat the international sanctions. Many say they suspect that the canal is also intended to help the Iraqi Army by draining marshlands that are home to Shiite Muslim rebels. Max van der Stoel, the United Nations human rights monitor for Iraq, recently described the canal and the possibility of disrupting the marshland, as "the environmental crime of the century.". The embargo imposed by the Security Council in 1990 prohibits all trade and financial dealings with Iraq except for food, medicine or humanitarian assistance, and bars Baghdad from selling oil, its major export. In addition, the Security Council ordered the elimination of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and its nuclear program, and said Baghdad must compensate victims of the Kuwait invasion. During the embargo, the Government has tried to protect ordinary people against much of the pain of soaring food prices by providing everyone with a basic ration that insures a reduced but adequate level of nutrition. Rations Are Increased United Nations studies suggest that this monthly ration -- which was increased in October to 16 pounds of flour, 3 pounds of rice and sugar and smaller quantities of other goods -- provides adults with a daily intake of only 1,417 calories, but that the average Iraqi's diet, augmented by private purchases, contains a more acceptable 2,189 calories. This month the Government announced further ration increases of up to 20 percent and promised an increase in the allowance for families with small children as well as pay raises for Government employees and members |
585245_0 | Paris and Bonn Wrestle With New Roles in Post-Cold-War Europe | Early in 1963, with the wounds of World War II still healing, President Charles de Gaulle and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer met in the Elysee Palace to sign a French-German cooperation treaty that the French leader predicted would put an end to "centuries of rivalry." Yet this week, when they met to mark the 30th anniversary of the treaty, President Francois Mitterrand and Chancellor Helmut Kohl were at pains to stress that rivalry between their nations was not resurfacing, that their special relationship would survive any passing differences. In reality, they had much to celebrate. The 1963 cooperation treaty put the seal on postwar reconciliation between the historical enemies and gave birth to what has become known as the Paris-Bonn "axis," an alliance that has repeatedly set the agenda for new stages of European integration. Intertwined Destinies Yet it was also a treaty built on the premises that Germany was divided, that France was the dominant partner, that the cold war would go on indefinitely. After these founding pillars began to crumble in 1989, Paris-Bonn ties were tested in ways General de Gaulle had never anticipated. "Something difficult to define is in the process of disintegrating between France and Germany," Franz-Olivier Giesbert, editor of Le Figaro, wrote this week. "Worthy successors of Adenauer and de Gaulle in this area, Kohl and Mitterrand are courageously trying to reverse the trend." As much as looking back with pride in Bonn this week, the French and German leaders seemed eager to reassure each other as well as their European partners that their countries still saw their destinies intertwined and that the world could still expect them to speak with one voice. Tensions Begin Surfacing In practice, though, almost from the moment the Berlin Wall fell, the relationship came under pressure, not least when President Mitterrand was unenthusiastic about the prospect of quick German unification and criticized Mr. Kohl's delay in recognizing Germany's post-war border with Poland. More recently, France was upset at having to bow to German demands that the European Community recognize Croatia and Slovenia and at the effect of high German interest rates on the French economy. Bonn, in turn, was disturbed by the criticism of Germany that preceded a French referendum on a European union treaty last September. However, behind these occasional tiffs, which Mr. Mitterrand and Mr. Kohl have always rushed to patch up, there is the far more complex |
585205_1 | SETTLING IN: Abortion Policy; Protest and Praise Over Clinton's Orders | United Nations said the President's reversal of the ban on Federal aid for domestic and foreign programs that provide abortion counseling would result in more family-planning services for low-income women. Abortion-rights advocates said the new Administration's actions would have profound effects worldwide, and would also enable the United States to resume a leadership role in family planning programs worldwide. Scientists said they expect a surge in research to result from Mr. Clinton's lifting of the ban on Federal funding of medical research using fetal tissue. At the Planned Parenthood Federation and other family-planning agencies, officials said Mr. Clinton's action removed the threat that they would lose tens of millions of dollars in Federal money and be forced to close dozens of clinics. Effect on Foreign Programs "Overturning the gag rules literally saves the ability of low-income American women to have family planning and deal with unwanted pregnancies," said David J. Andrews, acting president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "Otherwise we would have had a public health disaster on our hands." Nafis Sadik, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, said the repeal of the ban on aid to international family-planning programs involved in abortion-related activities was a major step toward rejoining the U.N. program. This, she said, would probably mean that the United Nations would receive money to expand the number of clinics in Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda. Officials from population-control groups said Mr. Clinton's decision to back international family-planning programs would give impetus and new leadership to such programs. "What we're seeing is the United States returning to the fold, and that's very important," said Sharon Camp, senior vice president at Population Action International, a research and advocacy group in Washington. "For almost 20 years before President Reagan came into office, we were the leading voice for world population efforts, and when we left the dance floor, it had a very chilling effect on global efforts." Others May Follow U.S. In the mid-1980's, the Reagan Administration withdrew almost all aid to United Nations family-planning activities and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Family-planning experts say they hope that the resumption of American contributions to these other organizations will prod other countries to increase their contributions as well. "The most dramatic difference is it re-establishes the leadership role of the United States in the policy arena," said Duff Gillespie, director of population at the Agency for International |
585449_3 | Building the Electronic Superhighway | only to elite scholars. Someone with a personal computer could ask a supercomputer far away to help solve a complex problem. Health care could become more efficient because computerized patient records, containing not just words but X-rays and other medical images, would be instantly available to any hospital or clinic; a faraway specialist, for example, could therefore make recommendations in a local case. Scientists, engineers or product developers far from each other could collaborate because their computer screens would become a sort of electronic blackboard for everyone to work on. A couch potato could summon any movie ever made by pushing a button. Working at home could become a snap because one's personal computer could retrieve and manipulate information just as fast as the office work station; communicating with fellow workers would be far more natural because the network could handle videophone conversations. The data superhighway will also alter the way manufacturers work with customers and suppliers by allowing the huge volume of orders and records that now go back and forth on paper to be exchanged electronically. Mr. Gore also thinks dozens of information industries will be spawned, promoting economic growth. "What we are talking about is nothing less than a revolution in the way we communicate," said Lawrence H. Landweber, a University of Wisconsin computer scientist who has been a leader in developing an early version of the data superhighway. "The complexity of the task is so great that it is absolutely essential that government and industry work together." An Existing Version A primitive form of the data superhighway already exists. Construction began in 1969 when the Department of Defense financed the design of a computer network to link a handful of universities, research laboratories and military bases. Since then, that has mushroomed into a matrix of more than 9,000 interlocking networks communicating over existing telephone lines and touching down in 102 countries. Today, most of these networks are still used by the Government, universities and research laboratories to communicate and share information. But there is also a rapidly growing number of businesses offering information services and electronic mail to companies and individuals. Although there are no accurate estimates, it is widely thought that more than 10 million people are connected over the global network, which has come to be called the Internet. Some estimates indicate that the number of people connected is now doubling annually. What Is |
584288_0 | Ocean Traffic Control Would Reduce Spills | To the Editor: Re: "Scottish and Labor Officials Fault Government on Oil Spill" (news article, Jan. 7): Navigation by supertankers is a scandal that requires urgent attention. Every day, tankers attempt the equivalent of landing on a fog-bound airport without airport lights, without air traffic control and with only the most primitive navigational equipment. We can know the position of racing yachts at any moment, but local Coast Guard officers often do not know the position of tankers loaded with millions of gallons of oil. All the recent groundings would have been avoided if the local Coast Guards had been able to follow, on their desks, the movement of tankers near land. In the Shetland Islands, local officers would have ordered the tanker to round the north of the island at least 50 miles from land. Instead, the captain gambled on negotiating a 22-mile narrows at the height of a gale. Had his engine failed 50 miles north of land, as it did in the narrows, there would have been days to get the ship under control again before it drifted on the rocks. A satellite positioning system on every tanker and in every local Coast Guard station, at a cost of thousands of dollars, would prevent most groundings, which million-dollar double hulls cannot prevent. Such a system would allow local Coast Guard officers a similar degree of control over the much slower oil tankers that we have considered essential in air traffic for 50 years, but at a tiny fraction of the cost. Considering the billion-dollar consequences, this is the least we can expect. GERHARD STOHRER Larchmont, N.Y., Jan. 7, 1993 |
584296_0 | CHRONICLE | Dr. WALTER H. MUNK, a geophysicist whose research has led to new understanding of the oceans, waves and tides and the rotation of the earth, will receive the Vetlesen Prize at Columbia University tomorrow evening. The $50,000 award, which has been called the Nobel Prize of earth sciences, was last given in 1987. It is awarded by the trustees of Columbia in association with the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation, established in 1959 and named for a founder of the Scandinavian Airlines System. The award will be presented to Dr. Munk by MICHAEL I. SOVERN, president of Columbia, at a dinner in Low Memorial Library at the university. Dr. Munk, 75, is a professor of geophysics at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California at San Diego. Describing himself as a "jack-of-all-trades," having worked on waves, tides and currents, Dr. Munk said yesterday that his most recent research involved "acoustic methods of monitoring and measuring the ocean, to understand why it works the way it does." For three years he has been a leader of the Heard Island experiment, in which acoustic signals were transmitted underwater near an island in the south Indian Ocean. "We want to see if oceans are warming in response to the greenhouse effect," Dr. Munk said, explaining that in water, sound moves faster as the temperature rises. "A year and a half ago at Heard Island," he continued, "we determined that we could get good acoustic transmission over long distances -- we went halfway around the world in sound, both east and west. Now we will do lengthy continuing studies that will take many years before we can recognize with any degree of confidence that changes are related to the greenhouse effect or are just changes that have always taken place." On Friday, he will give a lecture at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., titled "Concerning an April 1944 Prediction by Maurice Ewing and Joe Worzel." "I chose a title that was sufficiently meaningless so that people will come," Dr. Munk said. "It refers to the fact that they first . . . No I can't tell, that would spoil the surprise." |
582273_2 | Cuba's Economy, Cast Adrift, Grasps at Capitalist Solutions | that a similar proportion of the work force holds only marginal jobs. By some measures, Cuba's per capita national product now ranks just above that of some of the poorest nations in Latin America. At the end of the 1980's, Cuba was counting on Communist-bloc countries for 85 percent of its imports and sending them 81 percent of its exports. As the country's moratorium on servicing a $6 billion debt in 1986 severed its access to Western credit, Cuba's debt to the Soviet Union -- now estimated at roughly $17 billion -- continued to mount. In some years, Cuba earned nearly 40 percent of its hard currency by reselling part of its subsidized Soviet oil abroad. By 1992, however, the island's trade with its former Communist partners had shriveled to 7 percent of its former value. Its imports had plunged to an estimated $2.2 billion from $8.1 billion in 1989, a decline of 73 percent. While Cuba was getting ready to lose annual Soviet-bloc subsidies estimated at $3 billion to $4.5 billion, the world market prices for Cuban commodities like sugar and nickel were falling steadily. And now the United States has stiffened its 30-year-old economic embargo by prohibiting the growing business being done with Cuba by American subsidiary companies abroad. After decades in which economic rhythms were set by five-year exchange agreements, Cuba found itself in 1991 without even a one-year pact. It signed a new trade protocol with Russia last November, but the deal is largely a sugar-for-oil swap and may bring little of the spare parts, maintenance and technology that the country needs. The effect is clear on the outskirts of Cienfuegos, where horse-drawn carts have replaced some cars and oxen plow in place of the crippled Soviet-built tractors. A major new oil refinery is without anything to refine, and construction has been at least temporarily abandoned at a $2-billion nuclear energy plant that is already more than 70 percent complete. Cuba's Hopes High For Biotechnology To cope with the shortages, Cubans have been encouraged to improvise. In provincial towns, people turn discarded cans into drinking cups and dried banana peels into sandals. On state farms, managers are trying to substitute manure and other substances for imported fertilizer and pasture grass for cattle feed. Sensitive to assertions that the loss of Soviet support has sent the country back in time, officials argue that their plan for economic |
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