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582354_1 | Campbell Delays Plans On Biotech Tomatoes | Cinnaminson, N.J., in return for various marketing rights. "We have no current products and we have no plans to market any bioengineered products," said Mr. Stalter of Campbell, which is based in Camden, N.J. He did not rule out such products, but said they would have to have complete Government approval and respond to consumer demand. A report Sunday in The San Francisco Examiner said the company was backing away from its agreement to market the Calgene tomato. Mr. Rifkin said that Campbell had marketing rights outside the United States for Calgene's Flavr Savr tomato in its fresh form as well as processing rights in the United States. "The bottom line is Campbell Soup has pulled the plug on their own product," he said. But he also said his group would proceed with a boycott of Campbell products unless the company severed all financial ties with Calgene and other biotech concerns. Roger Salquist, Calgene's chairman and chief executive, said that his company's relationship with Campbell Soup had not changed. "Calgene is proceeding on schedule with the planned 1993 introduction of its Flavr Savr tomato into North American fresh produce markets," he said. Calgene decided last week to seek Food and Drug Administration approval of a marker gene as a food additive even though the agency said no such approval was necessary. A merker gene is used to differentiate the altered cells used in the production of the Calgene tomato. The move by Calgene was widely viewed in the biotech industry as intended to quell efforts by Mr. Rifkin's organization to block sales of the tomato. Actions of Stocks The stock of Calgene fell $1.25 in over-the-counter trading yesterday, closing at $16.625. DNA Plant shares rose 12.5 cents, to $5.125. Campbell shares on the New York Stock Exchange gained 50 cents, to $40.75. DNA Plant announced today that it had developed a marker gene derived from plants. This could circumvent some criticism of the Calgene marker, which is derived from bacteria and works by making cells resistant to an antibiotic, kanomycin. There has been speculation, but no proof, that people who consume vegetables containing the gene would become resistant to kanomycin. Mr. Rifkin said he was less worried about fruits and vegetables containing transplanted plant genes than genes derived from animal sources, but that his group still believed that all genetically engineered foods should be pre-market tested, federally regulated and labeled. |
583909_0 | Patents | AFTER spending a decade trying to turn garbage into energy economically -- but mainly burning money in the effort -- the founders of Waste Conversion Systems Inc. think they've finally got it right. Waste Conversion, which is based in Englewood, Colo., last week patented a "biomass burner," which company officials say efficiently ignites anything from newspaper to old tires and can be used as an alternative fuel source for conventional oil and gas boilers. Company officials said the burner, which operates at temperatures of 1,800 to 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, has several virtues. First, it requires only a tiny amount of external energy because it relies on the heat produced by garbage once the process gets under way. Second, the process produces a clean, torchlike flame and separates the few components that will not burn without creating a molten mess. The new burner is based on a two-stage process invented in the early 1980's by two brothers, David and Calvin Hand. Early versions of the burner could accommodate only wood and paper and were thus of limited use. Though the company raised money through a penny-stock offering about five years ago, it has yet to turn a profit. But the new patent covers a burner that the company said is twice as efficient and can burn almost anything. The process begins by heating solid wastes, like old tires, in an oxygen-starved chamber until most components are turned into gas. Because the chamber contains little oxygen, the components do not actually burn. In the case of tires, the rubber quickly turns to gas, at about 800 degrees, while components like metal, dirt and nylon simply drop to the bottom of the chamber. Stan E. Abrams, president of Waste Conversion Systems, said the process of turning solids into gas produced a huge amount of heat that was used to superheat air in a second chamber that ignited the gas. Once the incineration begins, Mr. Abrams said, it is sustained as long as waste material is added. Mr. Abrams said the new burner was more automated than the original. To improve gasification, solids are agitated on a grate in much the way a person shakes popcorn kernels. The new burner features a liner that retains more heat, making it more efficient and enabling it to produce higher temperatures, he added. The systems sell for $300,000 to more than $10 million, depending on size. Mr. |
583862_1 | Northern Ireland Talks Are Expected in Dublin | the unrest has killed 3,033 people. Three people, two Catholic and one Protestant, have been shot to death by gunmen from paramilitary groups since Wednesday. Last year, 85 people were killed; so far this year, five have died. Expressions of Hope Talks on Northern Ireland that had taken place intermittently for more than a year collapsed in November without significant progress as several key differences went unresolved by the negotiating sides -- the Irish and British Governments and Protestant and Roman Catholic political leaders of the British province of 950,000 Protestants and 650,000 Catholics. The appointment of Mr. Spring produced some expressions of hope among Northern Ireland leaders that progress was now possible in talks with the Dublin Government. Ken Maginnis, a member of the British Parliament and senior leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, one of several Protestant parties, said, "I think we expect a more up-to-date and reasonable approach to the whole question of Northern Ireland and, of course, the constitutional claim on Northern Ireland." This was a reference to Article 2 of the Irish Constitution, which states: "The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas." The northern Protestants want Dublin to guarantee that it will soften that language in a national referendum. Dublin has refused, insisting that Britain must first change the law that created the province of Ulster from the 6 northern counties in 1922, when the 26 other counties became independent Ireland. While the program of the new Dublin Government is not specific on this point, it supports "the legitimate rights and aspirations of both communities and a willingness to discuss all constitutional issues." Meanwhile, the stated policy of Ireland and Britain remains intact, as part of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement: that no political change will be made in the north unless it is approved by a majority vote there. The agreement is opposed by the outlawed Irish Republican Army, whose campaign of violence is intended to force the British Army out of the north and to end British political power there, despite the will of the Protestant majority to remain part of Britain. Clinton Policy Is Factor Officials here and in Belfast and London are also waiting to see what the Northern Ireland policy of the Clinton Administration will be. In his campaign, President-elect Clinton indicated that he favored sending a special envoy to Northern Ireland |
583842_0 | World Economies | |
581067_0 | BUSINESS DIGEST | Companies Steven P. Jobs may have found a way to move Next Inc., his struggling work station company, to center stage in the desktop computer industry. Next is said to be in talks with Hewlett-Packard about licensing its Nextstep software technology. [ Page D1. ] Citibank is altering its lending rules and procedures in hopes of cutting its loan losses. [ D1. ] NEC will introduce personal computers at about half the price of its current models. [ D1. ] Digital's second in command announced his retirement. John F. Smith, senior vice president of operations, had once been considered a successor to the founder, Kenneth H. Olsen. [ D4. ] Microsoft tapped a top software executive at Apple to head up its data base applications business. [ D4. ] Apple will become the first large computer maker to introduce a computer keyboard designed to reduce hand injuries from typing. [ D4. ] A.T.& T. acknowledged that its Videophone cost too much, saying it would cut the price by a third. [ D4. ] Chrysler publicly displayed a prototype of its first all-new full-size pickup truck in 22 years. [ D5. ] R. H. Macy reported a $33.6 million loss in November, but its cash flow was better than expected. [ D5. ] Boeing and Deutsche Aerospace plan to work to determine the feasibility of a giant 550- to 800-passenger airliner. [ D5. ] Calgene has asked the F.D.A. to approve as a food additive a gene implanted in tomatoes to retard spoilage. [ D4. ] The Economy The president of New York's Federal Reserve Bank will quit in August. E. Gerald Corrigan served 25 years with the Fed. [ D1. ] Ronald H. Brown will disqualify himself from decisions involving some companies, if he is confirmed as Commerce Secretary. [ A14. ] The head of the House Banking Committee introduced legislation to hold the central bank more politically accountable. [ D6. ] The corrosion that led Portland General Electric to retire its Trojan nuclear plant will affect more reactors, experts say. [ D5. ] Markets Investors moved into cyclical and technology issues, and the Dow industrials fell 1.35 points, to 3,307.87. [ D6. ] An avalanche of new issues is waiting to fall on the corporate bond market, but it is not clear whether the crush of new securities will overwhelm investors, forcing prices lower. [ D14. ] The British |
581036_1 | Before We Let World Bank Squander More | $140 billion loan portfolio (led by Willi Wappenhans, World Bank vice president) showed that, according to the bank's own criteria, 37.5 percent of recently evaluated projects are failures, up from 15 percent in 1981. The most alarming aspect is economic: according to the Wappenhans report, nearly four-fifths of the financial conditions in World Bank loans -- 78 percent -- are not complied with. The bank's economic appraisal is viewed by many staff, according to the same report, as a "marketing device for securing loan approval," and confidential surveys of bank professionals show that "only 17 percent of staff interviewed felt that analytical work done during project preparation was compatible with the achievement of project quality." World Bank water projects, such as the infamous Narmada dam in India cited in your Nov. 12 article, are among the worst offenders. According to the Wappenhans report, 42 percent of continuing water supply and agriculture projects are encountering serious implementation problems. But the bank is preparing to finance still more of these losers on a gargantuan scale. Witness the number of dam and water projects in the pipeline: the Bangladesh flood action plan, the outer islands power project in Indonesia, the Lesotho Highlands water projects in South Africa and possibly the titanic Three Gorges Dam in China. There is little concrete evidence in the bank's practice and priorities that critical habitats or the rights of poor and tribal people will be better protected in future projects. Most of these dam projects will create hundreds of thousands of new poor and homeless by forcibly displacing people from their lands. Millions of people have been left worse off economically after World Bank-financed projects than they were before. To dump $18 billion more into the lap of such an institution, without total reform and housecleaning from top to bottom, is financial folly. The world's poor do need Bill Clinton to promote their interests and those of United States taxpayers by refusing World Bank demands for more funds without serious structural reforms. Furthermore, we hope that the new Administration will appoint an environmentally and socially aware representative to the World Bank's board of executive directors, who will make institutional reform, project quality and financial accountability top priorities, rather than increased lending. DEBORAH MOORE BRUCE RICH, LORI UDALL Washington, Dec. 23, 1992 The writers are, respectively, staff scientist, director and staff lawyer in the Environmental Defense Fund's international program. |
581098_0 | Tomato Gene Is Submitted For Approval | Bowing to pressure from consumer advocates and celebrity chefs, Calgene Inc. said today that it had asked the Food and Drug Administration formally to approve as a food additive a gene implanted in tomatoes to retard spoilage. The request came in spite of a May ruling by the F.D.A. that genetically engineered foods do not require special approval or labeling. But that ruling, and the imminent marketing of Calgene's Flavr Savr tomato, created a storm of protest, including a petition signed by 1,500 chefs across the country, and a threatened boycott of bioengineered foods. Calgene's tomato, which will be marketed by its Calgene Fresh subsidiary in fresh form and by the Campbell Soup Company in processed forms, contains a gene that slows the ripening process plus the kan(r) gene, which serves as a "marker" to help differentiate the altered product. A Company's Complaints "We have elected to ask the F.D.A. to formally apply the comprehensive standards of food additive review to our kan(r) submission, because of continued misrepresentation and public misunderstanding of the scope and rigor of F.D.A. review of new food products," said Roger Salquist, Calgene's chief executive. Jeremy Rifkin, a longtime challenger of the biotechnology industry, hailed Calgene's decision as a victory for his side. "Now the F.D.A. will treat this as a food additive, which is what we wanted all along," he said. "This will be a precedent in that every company will now have to go to the F.D.A. and the F.D.A. will have to review every gene insertion." But Eric Flamm, an F.D.A. staff microbiologist, said Calgene's move would not establish a legal precedent. He said the agency was reviewing Calgene's materials and had not determined whether the inserted gene constituted a food additive. Mr. Rifkin said he planned to continue his campaign against the tomato and other genetically engineered foods, regardless of whether the F.D.A. deemed them safe. He has written to Campbell Soup, he said, to indicate that the boycott will extend to the company's soups unless it severs its relationship with Calgene. "Frankly, for us, Campbell is a more important target than Calgene," he said. A Review Might Aid Product Some analysts said a formal review by the F.D.A. could go a long way toward easing consumer fears about genetically engineered food products. "I consider this shrewd," said James McCamant, editor of the Agbiotech Stock Letter, an industry newsletter. "The chefs are |
583130_3 | Islamic Militants, Pushed Aside, Express Anger in Somali Port | they were repressed, along with other dissident groups, under the authoritarian Government of the longtime dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. A Western diplomat here said that intelligence reports indicated that the Somali fundamentalists received "substantial" help from the Islamic Government in Iran, and later from the fundamentalists who took over the Sudan. The Islamic militants stayed out of the armed uprising that toppled Mr. Siad Barre in 1991, concentrating on developing an internal network that is now strongest here in Merca and in the towns of Las Anod, Luuq and the capital, Mogadishu. But until the Americans arrived, the Merca port was the only place they controlled. Much of the resentment felt by the hard-liners in Merca can be attributed to a single act: the American takeover of the port, which, until Somalia was torn apart by anarchy and clan violence, was one of the busiest on the Horn of Africa. With the coming of the civil war, gangs of thugs took it over, looting shipments and making it virtually impossible for relief food meant for Somalia's millions of starving people to come through. Port Is Seized But 18 months ago, in a bold stroke that placed militants here in the forefront of a national movement, members of the Islamic Union decided to impose some order on the chaos: armed with guns and swords, they attacked the bandits and seized the port. The fundamentalists also established a strict security system based on sharia, the penal code derived from the Koran, which, among other things, calls for the amputation of limbs for theft. "By all accounts, security in Merca was better than in most places," said Ms. Omaar, the human rights campaigner. The militants also moved quickly to fill the vacuum created by the disintegration of Somalia's central Government. Schools, for example, closed since the civil war began two years ago, were reopened as Koranic academies. Shops and street stands operated by fundamentalists sold despeately needed goods. And perhaps most important, the fundamentalists helped get food to neighboring towns hard hit by the famine. As the militants saw it, providing services would help swell the movement's ranks with new adherents. And as the movement here grew, so in theory would it expand across the country, with Somalia ultimately becoming the world's newest Islamic republic, joining such countries as Iran, Mauritania and the Sudan. But while support for the fundamentalists here appears widespread, |
583424_7 | Scenic Byway Links the Past To the Present | growth, in the winter for snowy landscapes, and even summer has its share of traffic. "It's well traveled, that's for sure," agreed Mrs. Patenaude's sales clerk, Laurie B. Blanchette. "There's always a lot of Sunday drivers." "It's one of those roads that really make you feel like you're out in the country," Ms. Blanchette said. "It's especially nice when you see the deer crossing the road, climbing up the snowbanks on the other side." Farther north along the road is what used to be a Catholic girls' school, converted to a training center for Data General; the property, 144 acres with 7 buildings, is again for sale. Marty and Valerie Ennis, who own Woodstock Variety, know the scenic highway well. Mrs. Ennis used to live in Canterbury, exactly 19.6 miles south, a distance they traveled several times a week while they dated for two years, before marrying last June. "I never got tired of driving it," Mrs. Ennis said. "I enjoy traveling this road. There's a lot of character to it." Mr. Ennis said the road was certainly worthy of the scenic designation, but it worried him. "Does the fact that this is a scenic highway mean we start getting Howard Johnson motels and McDonald's restaurants? If that's what it brings, I'd rather not have the recognition." Victorian Pink House North of their store is a ski area, fire station, school, town hall, and the Pink House -- a Victorian-style house painted bright pink and seeming a bit out of place among the Colonials and Cape Cods of Woodstock. Past some more decrepit old chicken coops, built when poultry was more profitable, are barns with silos that lean like the Tower of Pisa. Just up the road Mason S. Beldon was working in his barn. He gave his age as "77 or 78, but I feel 102." He grew up in central Connecticut, and moved to Woodstock 20 years ago. "I was sick and tired of the congestion," Mr. Beldon said. "This was really quite something in 1973. Course you didn't have the road like this then. This is a speedway now." In 15 minutes, two cars went by. Mr. Beldon, a retired state wildlife manager, said spring was his favorite time of year along Route 169. "You get out of the winter doldrums," he said. "New life is coming out of the ground, the birds are back, you don't |
583556_0 | Reaffirm Our Commitment to World's Children | To the Editor: Now that the hearts of many Americans have been touched by the devastating images of starving children in Somalia, the release of Unicef's "State of the World's Children 1993" report is a timely reminder of the plight of children around the globe. Approximately 35,000 children worldwide die each day from largely preventable disease and malnutrition. Almost 60 percent of these 13 million annual deaths are caused by just three diseases -- pneumonia, diarrhea and measles -- which can all be prevented or treated at very low cost. At the United Nations world summit for children in 1990, 159 countries agreed to a set of global goals for this decade: reducing child deaths by at least one-third, halving maternal mortality and child malnutrition, providing families universal access to clean water, safe sanitation and family planning services, and providing children access to a basic education. These goals could be realized if only 20 percent of worldwide international aid and 20 percent of government spending in developing countries were allocated to human needs. The Presidential inaugural and State of the Union Message would be opportune for President-elect Clinton to highlight poverty alleviation as a foreign policy goal and to reaffirm American commitment to the goals of the world summit for children. As James Grant, executive director of Unicef, states in our 1993 report, "to refuse to do what could now be done to combat malnutrition, disease and illiteracy is tacitly to acquiesce in the verdict of a world that says that these children do not matter because they are the children of the poor." CELESTE J. FREGARA Princeton, N.J., Dec. 27, 1992 |
583705_0 | Linked | THIS WEEK |
583584_2 | Driving Is Safer Than Ever, Since Sobriety Sank In | the steering wheel in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other," Mr. Dorgan told a hearing of the Commerce, Science and Transportation committee last week. Another improvement reflects the rate of seat-belt use, which increased to 62 percent last year from 12 percent in 1982, partly because of state laws. Only eight states have no requirement that drivers use seat belts. Income Drops, So Does Social Travel Joan Claybrook, the president of the consumer group Public Citizen and a former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said the economy also played a role. "When the economy's in the sink, the death rate goes down because discretionary driving is reduced," she said. "People drive less for social reasons, and this includes teen-agers." At the same time, Ms. Claybrook said she regarded the increase in highway safety as a vindication of programs she has long championed, including the use of seat belts, airbags and antilock brakes. "A huge number of efforts to reduce the death and injury rate are beginning to pay off," she said. Half the cars sold in 1993 will have airbags, Ms. Claybrook said, and all new cars are required by law to have them beginning with the 1996 models, which become available in the fall of 1995. Beginning this fall, all cars that have driver-side airbags must also have them on the passenger side. Ms. Claybrook said all states now have laws requiring automobile restraints for children. By the mid-1990's, all new cars and large trucks must have antilock brake systems, improved roof structures to protect against head injuries and rollovers, booster seats for children 5 to 8 years old and side-impact protection. "The public interest campaign for safety has finally been bought by the automobile industry," Ms. Claybrook said. "For once, the consumers are selling the industry a product that both will buy." Tom Carr, vice president for technical affairs of the Automobile Manufacturers Association, which represents domestic car and light truck makers, agreed that the industry has made big strides in safety. "Our cars have antilock brakes, airbags and better headlights, windshields, tires, heaters and defrosters, steering and air conditioning, which reduces driver fatigue," Mr. Carr said. "We also have better roads, better road signs and better lighting, all of which contributed to driver safety." But unlike Ms. Claybrook, who expects the improvements to continue, Mr. Carr believes the advances have |
585574_2 | Patents | energy always produces a corresponding amount of infrared radiation, he explained, and the thermometer essentially works like a camera. The handheld device looks like the instruments used by doctors to examine ears, but it has a shutter and a lens. Instead of film, it uses an infrared sensor and a microprocessor to calculate a person's temperature. After meeting with many potential investors, Mr. Fraden secured financial backing for the product. He started Thermoscan Inc. of San Diego in 1988, but he did not try to run the business himself. Instead, he assumed the role of head of research and let his financial backers assemble a team to handle jobs like product design, marketing and manufacturing. "I'm a pretty good inventor, but I'm a lousy businessman," he said. The first product, for doctor's offices and hospitals, was introduced in 1990. The company is now trying to crack the consumer market, no easy task for a $100 device that must compete against thermometers that cost much less. To make the device more reliable for home use, Mr. Fraden has patented refinements to compensate for a shaky hand. The improved thermometer takes two readings, and selects the higher one, which is typically more accurate. For the improved product, Mr. Fraden received patent 5,178,464. Enzyme Reduces Rabbits' Cholesterol Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have patented an enzyme that could help people to lower their cholesterol and reduce their vulnerability to heart disease. Robert S. Langer, a professor of chemical and biomedical engineering and one of the inventors, said the enzyme reduced cholesterol levels in rabbits by 40 percent within 70 minutes of a blood treatment. If the enzyme was used in humans, it could be administered through a blood-cleaning process akin to kidney dialysis. Other possibilities include an implant or an injection. The enzyme is called phospholipase A2 . Dr. Langer said it modified low-density lipoproteins, which store cholesterol, so that the body breaks them down many times faster than normal. With the enzyme, the half-life of the lipoproteins plunges to about 30 minutes from about 12 to 14 hours, he said. The technology has been licensed to W. R. Grace& Company, which financed the original research. Dr. Langer and the other researchers, Robert S. Lees, Regine Labeque and Claudy J. P. Mullon, received patent 5,178,864. Patents are available by number for $3 from the Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C. 20231. |
585652_0 | World Economies | |
586806_2 | Too Many Plastic Pots, Too Few Uses | obvious answer would be reuse. The first application of reuse would be in the home. The pots are essential for raising seedlings, potting up transplants or rooting cuttings. If you have more plastic pots than you need, perhaps a neighbor could use some. Sometimes nurseries will take them back, sometimes they will not. Surveys of local nurseries indicate many pluses as well as many minuses on this point. Comments ranged from "Sure we are glad to have them" to "We have more than we can use now and don't want any more." Some nurseries solicit the return of plastic pots by putting out bins to accept them. Only clean pots are desirable because old soil or dried roots may contaminate any reuse of the plastic, either for replanting or recycling. (And, of course, they hope that those making the trip will also venture inside the shop and buy something.) Some municipal recycling centers will accept plastic pots, others will not. It is essential to know what the local rules are before venturing out with clean plastic pots. One of the problems with recycling in general is the glut of materials. The market has not yet caught up with the enthusiasm for recycling and many recycled materials have become a cumulative problem. Manufacturers, too, have not yet found a marketable product for all of recycled plastic materials, although some uses have been developed. Acceptance of plastic products has spawned a huge industry, but now the public must learn to accept recycled products instead of those made from virgin materials. Writing in a recent issue of Buzzworm, an environmental journal, Christopher Juniper points out, "Successful establishment of markets for recycled materials continues to be the Achilles' heel of successful community recycling efforts." The ideal is to find a sustainable reuse for the plastic pots. Not all of them can be stuffed with plants. A pioneer for practical reuse is a small company, Obex Inc., in Stamford, Conn. The company president, Celeste Johnson, has found a way to melt the plastic mixture and form it into plastic building materials that can be used for landscaping projects. She was recently on her way to Alaska to tell others how she does it, but she took time out to say: "We can use all kinds of pots. But they must be clean so they do not contaminate." The company's phone number is (203) 975-9094. GARDENING |
586764_6 | COMMERCIAL PROPERTY: The Gulf ands Western Building; Twisting in the Wind On Columbus Circle | is not the only Manhattan office tower to have trouble with the wind, but it is perhaps the one that has received the most notice. Its problem is an unhappy legacy of a change in architectural design that began in the 1950's, when architects started to replace the rigid steel frames of skyscrapers with lighter, more flexible frames of stronger steel. As a result, some of those buildings began swaying in the wind. The swaying occurs, engineers say, when walls, floors, stairwells and glass exteriors designed for more rigid buildings are put in ones with the flexible frames. The sway at Gulf and Western created cracks in the interior stairwells and core walls, and workers began complaining that the building's movement made them queasy. Concern about the sway was a significant part of court papers filed in connection with the bankruptcy proceedings by the building's second largest tenant, BDO Seidman, an accounting and consulting firm. Lawyers for the firm said that conditions in the building were "nightmarish" and that the owner had "failed to take steps to remedy major structural and other problems." "The entire skin of the building is defective and must be redone," the lawyers said. "This and the sway of the building causes the window seals to crack, resulting in leaks when it rains. The debtor also has failed to repair large cracks in the concrete of the building and there are problems with the building's exterior columns. The entire building is now surrounded by scaffolding which has remained long beyond any reasonable period of time." In its response to the court, the owner called the assertions "nothing more than a blatant, last-minute attempt" by BDO Seidman "to avoid its legitimate obligations under leases with above-market rents, in order that it might capitalize on the current weak commercial real estate market in New York City by relocating to newer quarters at a more favorable rental rate." Jerry Walsh, a spokesman for BDO Seidman, said the company would have no further comment. But 15 Columbus Circle Associates itself, in its original papers seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, acknowledged as significant liabilities "the alleged presence of asbestos and certain structural defects," such as "the twisting of the building in the wind, penetration of rain and gaps in the elevator shafts." A report on the condition of the building's facade prepared after an inspection on Sept. 26, 1990, said it |
586810_2 | Too Many Plastic Pots, Too Few Uses | obvious answer would be reuse. The first application of reuse would be in the home. The pots are essential for raising seedlings, potting up transplants or rooting cuttings. If you have more plastic pots than you need, perhaps a neighbor could use some. Sometimes nurseries will take them back, sometimes they will not. Surveys of local nurseries indicate many pluses as well as many minuses on this point. Comments ranged from "Sure we are glad to have them" to "We have more than we can use now and don't want any more." Some nurseries solicit the return of plastic pots by putting out bins to accept them. Only clean pots are desirable because old soil or dried roots may contaminate any reuse of the plastic, either for replanting or recycling. (And, of course, they hope that those making the trip will also venture inside the shop and buy something.) Some municipal recycling centers will accept plastic pots, others will not. It is essential to know what the local rules are before venturing out with clean plastic pots. One of the problems with recycling in general is the glut of materials. The market has not yet caught up with the enthusiasm for recycling and many recycled materials have become a cumulative problem. Manufacturers, too, have not yet found a marketable product for all of recycled plastic materials, although some uses have been developed. Acceptance of plastic products has spawned a huge industry, but now the public must learn to accept recycled products instead of those made from virgin materials. Writing in a recent issue of Buzzworm, an environmental journal, Christopher Juniper points out, "Successful establishment of markets for recycled materials continues to be the Achilles' heel of successful community recycling efforts." The ideal is to find a sustainable reuse for the plastic pots. Not all of them can be stuffed with plants. A pioneer for practical reuse is a small company, Obex Inc., in Stamford, Conn. The company president, Celeste Johnson, has found a way to melt the plastic mixture and form it into plastic building materials that can be used for landscaping projects. She was recently on her way to Alaska to tell others how she does it, but she took time out to say: "We can use all kinds of pots. But they must be clean so they do not contaminate." The company's phone number is (203) 975-9094. GARDENING |
586807_2 | Too Many Plastic Pots, Too Few Uses | obvious answer would be reuse. The first application of reuse would be in the home. The pots are essential for raising seedlings, potting up transplants or rooting cuttings. If you have more plastic pots than you need, perhaps a neighbor could use some. Sometimes nurseries will take them back, sometimes they will not. Surveys of local nurseries indicate many pluses as well as many minuses on this point. Comments ranged from "Sure we are glad to have them" to "We have more than we can use now and don't want any more." Some nurseries solicit the return of plastic pots by putting out bins to accept them. Only clean pots are desirable because old soil or dried roots may contaminate any reuse of the plastic, either for replanting or recycling. (And, of course, they hope that those making the trip will also venture inside the shop and buy something.) Some municipal recycling centers will accept plastic pots, others will not. It is essential to know what the local rules are before venturing out with clean plastic pots. One of the problems with recycling in general is the glut of materials. The market has not yet caught up with the enthusiasm for recycling and many recycled materials have become a cumulative problem. Manufacturers, too, have not yet found a marketable product for all of recycled plastic materials, although some uses have been developed. Acceptance of plastic products has spawned a huge industry, but now the public must learn to accept recycled products instead of those made from virgin materials. Writing in a recent issue of Buzzworm, an environmental journal, Christopher Juniper points out, "Successful establishment of markets for recycled materials continues to be the Achilles' heel of successful community recycling efforts." The ideal is to find a sustainable reuse for the plastic pots. Not all of them can be stuffed with plants. A pioneer for practical reuse is a small company, Obex Inc., in Stamford, Conn. The company president, Celeste Johnson, has found a way to melt the plastic mixture and form it into plastic building materials that can be used for landscaping projects. She was recently on her way to Alaska to tell others how she does it, but she took time out to say: "We can use all kinds of pots. But they must be clean so they do not contaminate." The company's phone number is (203) 975-9094. GARDENING |
586813_2 | Too Many Plastic Pots, Too Few Uses | obvious answer would be reuse. The first application of reuse would be in the home. The pots are essential for raising seedlings, potting up transplants or rooting cuttings. If you have more plastic pots than you need, perhaps a neighbor could use some. Sometimes nurseries will take them back, sometimes they will not. Surveys of local nurseries indicate many pluses as well as many minuses on this point. Comments ranged from "Sure we are glad to have them" to "We have more than we can use now and don't want any more." Some nurseries solicit the return of plastic pots by putting out bins to accept them. Only clean pots are desirable because old soil or dried roots may contaminate any reuse of the plastic, either for replanting or recycling. (And, of course, they hope that those making the trip will also venture inside the shop and buy something.) Some municipal recycling centers will accept plastic pots, others will not. It is essential to know what the local rules are before venturing out with clean plastic pots. One of the problems with recycling in general is the glut of materials. The market has not yet caught up with the enthusiasm for recycling and many recycled materials have become a cumulative problem. Manufacturers, too, have not yet found a marketable product for all of recycled plastic materials, although some uses have been developed. Acceptance of plastic products has spawned a huge industry, but now the public must learn to accept recycled products instead of those made from virgin materials. Writing in a recent issue of Buzzworm, an environmental journal, Christopher Juniper points out, "Successful establishment of markets for recycled materials continues to be the Achilles' heel of successful community recycling efforts." The ideal is to find a sustainable reuse for the plastic pots. Not all of them can be stuffed with plants. A pioneer for practical reuse is a small company, Obex Inc., in Stamford, Conn. The company president, Celeste Johnson, has found a way to melt the plastic mixture and form it into plastic building materials that can be used for landscaping projects. She was recently on her way to Alaska to tell others how she does it, but she took time out to say: "We can use all kinds of pots. But they must be clean so they do not contaminate." The company's phone number is (203) 975-9094. GARDENING |
586805_2 | Too Many Plastic Pots, Too Few Uses | obvious answer would be reuse. The first application of reuse would be in the home. The pots are essential for raising seedlings, potting up transplants or rooting cuttings. If you have more plastic pots than you need, perhaps a neighbor could use some. Sometimes nurseries will take them back, sometimes they will not. Surveys of local nurseries indicate many pluses as well as many minuses on this point. Comments ranged from "Sure we are glad to have them" to "We have more than we can use now and don't want any more." Some nurseries solicit the return of plastic pots by putting out bins to accept them. Only clean pots are desirable because old soil or dried roots may contaminate any reuse of the plastic, either for replanting or recycling. (And, of course, they hope that those making the trip will also venture inside the shop and buy something.) Some municipal recycling centers will accept plastic pots, others will not. It is essential to know what the local rules are before venturing out with clean plastic pots. One of the problems with recycling in general is the glut of materials. The market has not yet caught up with the enthusiasm for recycling and many recycled materials have become a cumulative problem. Manufacturers, too, have not yet found a marketable product for all of recycled plastic materials, although some uses have been developed. Acceptance of plastic products has spawned a huge industry, but now the public must learn to accept recycled products instead of those made from virgin materials. Writing in a recent issue of Buzzworm, an environmental journal, Christopher Juniper points out, "Successful establishment of markets for recycled materials continues to be the Achilles' heel of successful community recycling efforts." The ideal is to find a sustainable reuse for the plastic pots. Not all of them can be stuffed with plants. A pioneer for practical reuse is a small company, Obex Inc., in Stamford, Conn. The company president, Celeste Johnson, has found a way to melt the plastic mixture and form it into plastic building materials that can be used for landscaping projects. She was recently on her way to Alaska to tell others how she does it, but she took time out to say: "We can use all kinds of pots. But they must be clean so they do not contaminate." The company's phone number is (203) 975-9094. GARDENING |
586814_2 | Too Many Plastic Pots, Too Few Uses | obvious answer would be reuse. The first application of reuse would be in the home. The pots are essential for raising seedlings, potting up transplants or rooting cuttings. If you have more plastic pots than you need, perhaps a neighbor could use some. Sometimes nurseries will take them back, sometimes they will not. Surveys of local nurseries indicate many pluses as well as many minuses on this point. Comments ranged from "Sure we are glad to have them" to "We have more than we can use now and don't want any more." Some nurseries solicit the return of plastic pots by putting out bins to accept them. Only clean pots are desirable because old soil or dried roots may contaminate any reuse of the plastic, either for replanting or recycling. (And, of course, they hope that those making the trip will also venture inside the shop and buy something.) Some municipal recycling centers will accept plastic pots, others will not. It is essential to know what the local rules are before venturing out with clean plastic pots. One of the problems with recycling in general is the glut of materials. The market has not yet caught up with the enthusiasm for recycling and many recycled materials have become a cumulative problem. Manufacturers, too, have not yet found a marketable product for all of recycled plastic materials, although some uses have been developed. Acceptance of plastic products has spawned a huge industry, but now the public must learn to accept recycled products instead of those made from virgin materials. Writing in a recent issue of Buzzworm, an environmental journal, Christopher Juniper points out, "Successful establishment of markets for recycled materials continues to be the Achilles' heel of successful community recycling efforts." The ideal is to find a sustainable reuse for the plastic pots. Not all of them can be stuffed with plants. A pioneer for practical reuse is a small company, Obex Inc., in Stamford, Conn. The company president, Celeste Johnson, has found a way to melt the plastic mixture and form it into plastic building materials that can be used for landscaping projects. She was recently on her way to Alaska to tell others how she does it, but she took time out to say: "We can use all kinds of pots. But they must be clean so they do not contaminate." The company's phone number is (203) 975-9094. GARDENING |
587141_5 | Shaw, the Eternal Schoolmaster, Can Still Be Wise | had cultural aspirations. By then I was teaching in the department of humanities at M.I.T., and I'd squeeze Shaw into a course whenever I could. Several times I ran a full semester seminar confined strictly to his plays and prefaces. Most of my students, committed as they were to future careers in science or engineering, embraced and enjoyed him. His sharp intelligence and utopian aspirations were exactly what they wanted. Besides, there was just enough absurdity in his plots to make him seem fresh and contemporary, not far removed from writers like Beckett and Ionesco, who were coming into vogue. Then gradually he slipped away from us. My students didn't buy into him as readily and I found myself apologizing for him in class. The prefaces seemed increasingly strident and tiresome, the tone of the plays themselves felt smug and self-congratulatory. And he was performed less and less on the stage. Now -- except for such star-studded triumphs as the recent London production of "Heartbreak House," the occasional revival tends to evoke bemused pats on the head from the critics, and no major stampedes. Why not? What happened? Part of the problem is that most of Shaw is expensive to produce. Economic considerations have a lot to do with whether a nonmusical play is done these days, and late-20th-century playwrights are as restricted by the balance sheet as Aeschylus once was by religious traditions. Even as popular a playwright as Neil Simon pretty much confines himself to a single set. But Shaw is different. Most of his plays call for sizable casts and a number of detailed, realistic settings. You can cut him a little, you can even try to eliminate a character or two (as the Circle in the Square did in a production of "Heartbreak House"), but to mess around with the scenery can be tricky because his sets so strongly reinforce his theme. The set progression in "Major Barbara," for example, as we descend from an upper-class drawing room through a Salvation Army relief center to a housing project for a munitions factory, reinforces his argument about the underpinnings of industrial society. In Chekhov, the characters seem to dissociate themselves from their milieu, and so, when his plays are revived today, the sets may be abstracted and simplified. Shaw's people, on the other hand, are very much committed to the environments they have made for themselves, and |
587029_0 | Is the G.O.P. In Nassau in Disarray? | You have had laudatory articles about the Nassau County Republican Party while the county is drowning in a sea of fiscal red ink and debt. There never seems to be a mention of the political infighting and turmoil, nor of the consequences of the actions of the Board of Supervisors in their handling of the county's fiscal affairs. In "Conservative and Independent Votes Crucial" [ Jan. 3 ] you say "voters signal their disgust with politics as usual," but completely ignore the fact that it was the Democratic Party that has ended the stagnating one-party boss rule that has brought the county to its present crisis. As a personal observation I am waiting for the time when you write that Oyster Bay Supervisor Lewis J. Yevoli received a vision from the great beyond that influenced him to vote with the Republicans and pass Mr. Gulotta's budget that he originally opposed. ALAN PALL New Hyde Park |
580493_2 | Caution: Ants at Work (Watch Your Step) | have wasp waists. In fact, they belong to that great insect suborder Apocrita, which is identified by their wasp waist. Ants, like bees, are social creatures and a great deal of any activity centers on their defense of the home base. In fact, their colony life closely resembles that of the bees, including a wingless queen and worker ants. Mating takes place on the wing, incidentally, after which the queen becomes wingless to carry out her nesting role. Anyone who has visited the tropics has usually seen the long parade of the army ants as they move rapidly across the jungle floor, by the thousands, so it seems. Just as fascinating are the leaf-cutter ants that carry pieces of leaves, usually appearing bigger than they are, back to their nests. A fungus is cultivated on these bits of greenery, which serves as a source of food for the colony. Those ants that eat the seed arils usually discard the seed on a sort of compost heap which, in turn, aids the seed germination and explains in part why the cyclamen are growing where they were not planted. One of the foremost students of the ant is the author and entomologist Dr. Edward O. Wilson, whose recent book, "The Diversity of Life," sounds the alarm about maintaining the heritage of natural diversity. In the book, Dr. Wilson points out that there are untold species of ants in the world. He described a visit to the Tambopata Reserve in southeastern Peru, where a study was made of the insects collected from a single leguminous tree in the rain forest. He found 43 species of ants in 26 genera "approximately equal to the entire ant fauna of the British Isles." Dr. Wilson explained that ants make up 70 percent of the individual insects found in the treetops. There probably are about 20,000 species of ants stretching from the top of the world at the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America. And how do you differentiate among species? Dr. Wilson again explains that "you can identify species and even individual ants by the shapes and arrangements of their teeth." Even though the research described occurred in South America, there are all kinds of ant discoveries being made in the United States. Just this fall a new tropical species of ant was discovered in the Washington, D.C., office of Kathryn S. Fuller, the |
580495_4 | L.I. Looks to Washington For Revival in '93 | to everything Long Island has seen for three and a half decades. And it will be a different type of job growth, different in the sense that the measurements will be different. They may no longer only be these great units of more jobs, more housing, more miles of highway, and then they go this way with lanes. What we will count as economic growth in the 1990's for a place like Long Island is very different. We look much more at income distribution, purchasing, reinvestment. We will pay more attention to income generally and types of investment, income as it is swung back through to the public sector, the so-called quality of life, the quality of the environment. We will have to change our measuring structure. We will begin to look at 1987 as being an unattainable level of growth. We will have to go back to some other measurement in the index that will become a more sensible way of measuring what constitutes growth. Employment Picture Q. Are we entering recovery, particularly in terms of employment? MR. HUTH It looks at this point like we have bottomed out, although not in any dramatic way. I do expect to see some slow, gradual improvement in 1993. I agree with Rosemary, in that I don't see dramatic employment growth. Even before this recession started, we talked about how it was going to be slowing down in terms of employment numbers. The high point for Long Island was actually 1985 in terms of really dramatic growth. I think it was something like 54,000 jobs gained in 1985. That's not only not going to happen. There is really no need for that to happen, because there is not the population growth to sustain that. The labor force has shrunk considerably. The number of people who are searching for jobs is down because of the slow population growth and the aging of the population -- fewer young people coming in. So we will be able to lower the unemployment rate more easily. Obviously we need job growth. But it will not have to be as dramatic as it has been in the past. What is important, while I am on that subject, is training, and not just training for dislocated workers, but training that advances skill levels. We have a dramatically changing workplace, in terms of the technology, forcing dramatic changes both in |
580492_2 | Caution: Ants at Work (Watch Your Step) | have wasp waists. In fact, they belong to that great insect suborder Apocrita, which is identified by their wasp waist. Ants, like bees, are social creatures and a great deal of any activity centers on their defense of the home base. In fact, their colony life closely resembles that of the bees, including a wingless queen and worker ants. Mating takes place on the wing, incidentally, after which the queen becomes wingless to carry out her nesting role. Anyone who has visited the tropics has usually seen the long parade of the army ants as they move rapidly across the jungle floor, by the thousands, so it seems. Just as fascinating are the leaf-cutter ants that carry pieces of leaves, usually appearing bigger than they are, back to their nests. A fungus is cultivated on these bits of greenery, which serves as a source of food for the colony. Those ants that eat the seed arils usually discard the seed on a sort of compost heap which, in turn, aids the seed germination and explains in part why the cyclamen are growing where they were not planted. One of the foremost students of the ant is the author and entomologist Dr. Edward O. Wilson, whose recent book, "The Diversity of Life," sounds the alarm about maintaining the heritage of natural diversity. In the book, Dr. Wilson points out that there are untold species of ants in the world. He described a visit to the Tambopata Reserve in southeastern Peru, where a study was made of the insects collected from a single leguminous tree in the rain forest. He found 43 species of ants in 26 genera "approximately equal to the entire ant fauna of the British Isles." Dr. Wilson explained that ants make up 70 percent of the individual insects found in the treetops. There probably are about 20,000 species of ants stretching from the top of the world at the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America. And how do you differentiate among species? Dr. Wilson again explains that "you can identify species and even individual ants by the shapes and arrangements of their teeth." Even though the research described occurred in South America, there are all kinds of ant discoveries being made in the United States. Just this fall a new tropical species of ant was discovered in the Washington, D.C., office of Kathryn S. Fuller, the |
580583_1 | The Executive Life; Personal Statements Of the Computer Kind | screen savers is that in all but the most demanding office and laboratory environments, these programs are not necessary. "You would have to leave an image on your computer continually for a week before you'd see any real screen burn," said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies International Inc., a market research firm in Santa Clara, Calif. So why are thousands of these programs being sold to consumers and licensed to corporations each month? One reason, Mr. Bajarin said, is that "these programs are among the first products that really make the personal computer feel personal." Erfert Fenton, contributing editor to Mac World magazine and author of "The Art of Darkness," about screen savers, said, "They reduce stress; they are fun, decorative and they can be soothing after a long day." Others might disagree, especially when the program comes with synthesized sound effects. Ms. Roizen recalls touring as a developer with Apple Computer during that company's introduction of the Macintosh Classic LC. As she spoke to analysts, the best-selling Fish! screen saver, from Berkeley Systems Inc., was on the screen, complete with bubbling, burbling sound effects. "Twice the analysts had to excuse themselves to go to the bathroom," she said. "Finally one of them said, 'That noise. . . ." Recently, Ms. Roizen found herself at the most serious moment in a "pretty severe" employee review when her office computer went into screen saver mode and began quacking like a duck. "It ruined the whole flow," she said. Last February, Berkeley Systems, based in Berkeley, received a letter from a customer in Cedarhurst, L.I., who reported finding a raccoon scratching at the door, trying to get to the cricket sounds coming from the Nocturn screen saver playing inside. Berkeley Systems, with an estimated $50 million in annual sales, is the dominant designer of screen savers. Its ubiquitous After Dark program is the heart of as much as 90 percent of the installed market and the Starry Night, Fish! and Flying Toaster images that it runs are the most popular of all screen savers. The company even offers the flying toaster image on T-shirts, sweatshirts and ties. Berkeley's newest product -- Star Trek, the Screen Saver (an over-average $59.95) -- uses licensed images from the television series. Such licensing and after-market sales are becoming big business. While Flofazer (the creation of the rock musician Todd Rundgren, from Utopia Grokware) is no |
580400_6 | True Leadership for the Next Millennium | done to ease worries about long-term trends as against simply reacting to regional crises that are their manifestation? No doubt 100 different replies, involving policies, large and small, could be given in answer to those questions. The danger is that in trying to do everything at once an Administration's energies can become dissipated and attention become unfocused. It is far better to deal with only a few critical issues, giving them the attention they deserve and relegating other policies to a secondary order -- another sign of true leadership. What might the top four issues be? The first, admittedly long-term but arguably the most vital of all, is to encourage a reduction in the global population explosion, which is the cause of mass poverty and also feeds into social turbulence from Algeria to India. At a time when tens of millions of married women in the third world, already weakened by bearing three or four children, are desperate to gain access to benign contraceptives (like Norplant), it is unconscionable that our Government -- lumping sensible population-control measures with forced sterilization and abortion -- should continue to deny funds to assist efforts to reduce the demographic explosion. Improving the condition of women in developing countries, especially their access to education, would be the single most important move to bettering mankind's social condition. This will take time, so why not start now? Second, intelligent proposals are needed to head off the growing gap between the rich North and poor South, not just on humanitarian grounds but also because of urgent pragmatic reasons. It is inconceivable that Americans and Europeans, a mere 10 percent of the earth's population, will be able to exist as islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty and social strife as the next century unfolds. A North-South "grand bargain" that included environmental pacts, increases in overseas aid from today's pitifully low percentages, the maintenance of open access to the third world's exports and reduction of fuel use and greenhouse emissions is a fundamental requirement. Given the past record of failures and inefficiencies in development policies, selling such a deal to the public will be no easy task -- even if we have leaders willing to tell the nation that, while this will surely cost us large sums now, the results of neglect might be even costlier later. Third, there is need to address a more immediate and more |
580647_3 | Iraq Accused: A Case of Genocide | contained in 857 cartons of documents currently stored at a building of the United States National Archives at a location that, for security reasons, cannot be disclosed. The official Iraqi documents -- more than 14 tons of them, totaling more than four million pages -- provide a detailed picture of the day-to-day operations of the Iraqi Government and its security apparatus as they carried out what researchers now believe was genocide against the Iraqi Kurds. There are thousands of tattered files, often partly burned, torn or water-stained, held together in characteristic Iraqi fashion with shoelaces and sewing pins. The files contain reports ranging from the banal to the horrific -- routine vacation requests, administrative and personnel ledgers, payroll records of mercenaries and informants, intercepted letters and postcards -- and almost incidentally, page upon page of authorizations of "purifications," "liquidations" and other euphemisms for mass murder. Working in secrecy until now, Arabic linguists, computer specialists, social scientists and researchers from Middle East Watch, a private, New York-based human rights organization -- with logistical help from the United States Defense Intelligence Agency -- have been reading, sorting, collating, recording and analyzing the material. This highly unusual collaboration between a Government intelligence agency and a rights-advocacy group -- the two are normally at loggerheads -- is aimed at an even more unusual objective: information in these documents is being used by Middle East Watch to prepare the first case of genocide ever to be brought before the International Court of Justice, in The Hague. Peter Galbraith, a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who helped expose the Anfal campaign and whose committee is now the legal custodian of the documents, says the case against Iraq is strong. "I don't think we shall ever find a 'smoking gun document,' a paper signed by Saddam Hussein ordering the murder of three innocent shepherds," says Galbraith. "But neither did we ever find minutes of the meeting at Wansee at which Hitler ordered the eradication of the Jews. There never was a 'Final Solution' order as such. But we have physical evidence of horrific crimes in these documents, official Iraqi videotapes of interrogation sessions, torture, executions and rape, and in the grave sites of now autonomous Kurdistan. "What we have, in effect, are the individual receipts for murder, often in the driest, must bureaucratic language. There must be consequences for such institutionalized savagery." A case, |
580632_0 | No Headline | Dr. Frank J. Rauscher Jr., a former director of the National Cancer Institute who discovered one of the most-studied of animal cancer viruses, died on Thursday in a Nyack, N.Y., hospital. He was 61 and lived in Weston, Conn. Dr. Rauscher suffered a heart attack, said one of his sons, Dr. Frank J. Rauscher 3d. A scientist for the National Cancer Institute for 17 years beginning in 1959, Dr. Rauscher was appointed director in 1972 by President Nixon. He served in that capacity, and as the first director of President Nixon's "war on cancer," during a time when the disease became the subject of intense medical research as it was taking a fearful toll on American lives. Under his leadership, financing for the institute grew to $815 million annually from $377 million in 1972. In 1976, Dr. Rauscher resigned to become senior vice president for research at the American Cancer Society, a private group that was calling for an expanded campaign against cancer. During his 14 years as senior vice president, the society distributed $700 million for biology, cancer and AIDS research and disease control. Insulation Research Dr. Rauscher then became executive director of the Thermal Insulation Manufacturers' Association in Stamford, Conn., where he directed research on thermal insulation materials to replace asbestos. Born in Hellertown, Pa., Dr. Rauscher received his Ph.D. in microbiology at Rutgers University in 1957 and was widely published on issues dealing with viruses and cancer. While with the National Cancer Institute, he discovered a virus that produces a form of leukemia in mice and that became a valuable tool in cancer research because of the speed with which it acts in rodents. In addition to his son Frank Rauscher 3d, who lives in Princeton, Dr. Rauscher is survived by his wife, Margaret; two other sons, Michael P. Rauscher, of Ridgefield, Conn., and David Rauscher of Weston; two daughters, Mary A. Rauscher and Megan Brooks, both of Westport, Conn.; his father, Frank J. Rauscher Sr.; a brother, Kenneth Rauscher, and a sister, Lois Grigorauk, both of Hellertown, Pa., and two grandchildren. A funeral Mass for Dr. Rauscher will be offered at 11 A.M. Monday at St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church in Weston. |
584900_2 | British Air Buys 20% Of USAir | strong presence in the United States with the chance to send its passengers into USAir's domestic system even as USAir passengers gained access to British Airways' international routes. The first plan, submitted last July, would have given British Airways an effective veto over major business decisions. Since American law prohibits foreign control of United States airlines, the plan needed Transportation Department approval. The issue of foreign control of a United States airline was the primary one cited by the Transportation Department in its discussions of the first proposal. The deal has been changed to eliminate the British veto. The two elements that now require Transportation Department approval are the routine one of leasing and the potentially more sticky one of code-sharing, which allows a travel agent booking a passenger departing from, say, Cleveland on a USAir flight to use one code to take the passenger through a New York stop and on to London on a British Airways flight. Seth E. Schofield, USAir's chairman and president, said, "This investment does not involve any issues of control or special voting rights and is responsive to policy concerns expressed previously by the U.S. Department of Transportation." But if USAir's competitors raise objections, the future of the agreement could well be different. Four other United States carriers -- Delta, United, American and Federal Express -- campaigned hard against the first agreement, arguing that if the United States was to grant access to British carriers, Britain should grant access to American companies as well. The British Government had offered to grant American carriers greater access to airports, except those serving London. Stephen M. Wolf, chairman of United Airlines, said: "Today's announcement by British Airways changes nothing. British Airways' significant investment in a U.S. carrier must be carefully scrutinized by the U.S. Government and only sanctioned when the U.K. Government lifts the barriers to competition that preclude fair and equal access to and beyond the United Kingdom for U.S. flag carriers." Julius Maldutis, an analyst at Salomon Brothers, said: "Overall, the new agreement is identical to the July 1992 agreement in virtually all aspects except that it is phased in over several years. We expect U.S. airlines to vigorously oppose this agreement just as they did the old one." He said he thought the agreement would face significant delay but would ultimately be approved. USAir stock closed at $15.375, down 50 cents, on the New |
584888_2 | British Air Buys 20% Of USAir | strong presence in the United States with the chance to send its passengers into USAir's domestic system even as USAir passengers gained access to British Airways' international routes. The first plan, submitted last July, would have given British Airways an effective veto over major business decisions. Since American law prohibits foreign control of United States airlines, the plan needed Transportation Department approval. The issue of foreign control of a United States airline was the primary one cited by the Transportation Department in its discussions of the first proposal. The deal has been changed to eliminate the British veto. The two elements that now require Transportation Department approval are the routine one of leasing and the potentially more sticky one of code-sharing, which allows a travel agent booking a passenger departing from, say, Cleveland on a USAir flight to use one code to take the passenger through a New York stop and on to London on a British Airways flight. Seth E. Schofield, USAir's chairman and president, said, "This investment does not involve any issues of control or special voting rights and is responsive to policy concerns expressed previously by the U.S. Department of Transportation." But if USAir's competitors raise objections, the future of the agreement could well be different. Four other United States carriers -- Delta, United, American and Federal Express -- campaigned hard against the first agreement, arguing that if the United States was to grant access to British carriers, Britain should grant access to American companies as well. The British Government had offered to grant American carriers greater access to airports, except those serving London. Stephen M. Wolf, chairman of United Airlines, said: "Today's announcement by British Airways changes nothing. British Airways' significant investment in a U.S. carrier must be carefully scrutinized by the U.S. Government and only sanctioned when the U.K. Government lifts the barriers to competition that preclude fair and equal access to and beyond the United Kingdom for U.S. flag carriers." Julius Maldutis, an analyst at Salomon Brothers, said: "Overall, the new agreement is identical to the July 1992 agreement in virtually all aspects except that it is phased in over several years. We expect U.S. airlines to vigorously oppose this agreement just as they did the old one." He said he thought the agreement would face significant delay but would ultimately be approved. USAir stock closed at $15.375, down 50 cents, on the New |
584899_2 | British Air Buys 20% Of USAir | strong presence in the United States with the chance to send its passengers into USAir's domestic system even as USAir passengers gained access to British Airways' international routes. The first plan, submitted last July, would have given British Airways an effective veto over major business decisions. Since American law prohibits foreign control of United States airlines, the plan needed Transportation Department approval. The issue of foreign control of a United States airline was the primary one cited by the Transportation Department in its discussions of the first proposal. The deal has been changed to eliminate the British veto. The two elements that now require Transportation Department approval are the routine one of leasing and the potentially more sticky one of code-sharing, which allows a travel agent booking a passenger departing from, say, Cleveland on a USAir flight to use one code to take the passenger through a New York stop and on to London on a British Airways flight. Seth E. Schofield, USAir's chairman and president, said, "This investment does not involve any issues of control or special voting rights and is responsive to policy concerns expressed previously by the U.S. Department of Transportation." But if USAir's competitors raise objections, the future of the agreement could well be different. Four other United States carriers -- Delta, United, American and Federal Express -- campaigned hard against the first agreement, arguing that if the United States was to grant access to British carriers, Britain should grant access to American companies as well. The British Government had offered to grant American carriers greater access to airports, except those serving London. Stephen M. Wolf, chairman of United Airlines, said: "Today's announcement by British Airways changes nothing. British Airways' significant investment in a U.S. carrier must be carefully scrutinized by the U.S. Government and only sanctioned when the U.K. Government lifts the barriers to competition that preclude fair and equal access to and beyond the United Kingdom for U.S. flag carriers." Julius Maldutis, an analyst at Salomon Brothers, said: "Overall, the new agreement is identical to the July 1992 agreement in virtually all aspects except that it is phased in over several years. We expect U.S. airlines to vigorously oppose this agreement just as they did the old one." He said he thought the agreement would face significant delay but would ultimately be approved. USAir stock closed at $15.375, down 50 cents, on the New |
581974_4 | St. John's Clings to Classics | has led multicultural study groups, believes students can benefit from studying non-Western works. The Japanese novel "Tale of Genji," the Indian epic "Mahabharata" and African-American literature are among the subjects he has explored with students. "These are very interesting and important works and I think it's important for students to read them," Mr. Doskow said. "I can see where some non-Western books could be included" in the curriculum. Jennifer Council, a senior from Annapolis, Md., said she did not feel marginalized as a woman studying works primarily by male authors. Indeed, Miss Council said she believed her mind had been broadened by the St. John's curriculum. Jide Nzelide, a senior whose father is from Nigeria, said that although during his freshman year he thought the curriculum should be more inclusive, he had since changed his mind. Mr. Nzelide said the important thing was not diversity of subject matter but the diversity of opinions and ideas represented in the student body. He said that students at St. John's are not taught to believe that all Western ideas are right and good. The materials inspire open discussion and raise fundamental questions. "There are universal questions and the discussions about them are not in any way pointed," Mr. Nzelide said. "They're lively and dynamic, and students tend to disagree." And, he added, "Many students come out of St. John's being the biggest skeptics of any Western scholarly tradition." What Juniors Are Reading at St. John's Cervantes, "Don Quixote" Galileo, "Two New Sciences" Hobbes, "Leviathan" Descartes, "Discourse on Method," "Meditations," "Rules for the Direction of the Mind," "The World" Milton, "Paradise Lost" La Rochefoucauld, "Maximes" La Fontaine, "Fables" Pascal, "Pensees" Huygens, "Treatise on Light," "On the Movement of Bodies by Impact" Spinoza, "Theologico-Political Treatise" Locke, "Second Treatise of Government" Racine, "Phedre" Newton, "Principia Mathematica" Kepler, "Epitome IV" Leibniz, "Monadology," "Discourse on Metaphysics," "What is Nature?," "Essay on Dynamics" Swift, "Gulliver's Travels" Berkeley, "Principles of Human Knowledge" Hume, "Treatise of Human Nature" Rousseau, "Social Contract," "The Origin of Inequality" Adam Smith, "Wealth of Nations" Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason," "Fundamental Principles of Metaphysics of Morals," "Critique of Judgment" Mozart, "Don Giovanni" Austen, "Pride and Prejudice," "Emma" Hamilton, Jay and Madison, "The Federalist" Melville, "Billy Bud," "Benito Cereno" Dedekind, "Essay on the Theory of Numbers" Fielding, "Tom Jones" Tocqueville, "Democracy in America" Essays by Young, Maxwell, S. Carnot, L. Carnot, Mayer, Kelvin, Taylor, Euler, D. Bernoulli |
581973_15 | The Morning-After Pill: A Well-Kept Secret | let out. A typical Monday: this was the postweekend date crowd. IN CONVERSATION during a cross-country flight, a woman from Huntsville, Ala., remarked to her seatmate: "Our dog got into some trouble with another dog and my husband just rushed her down to the vet's for a shot, so she wouldn't have puppies. You mean they can do something like that for women, too?" Indeed, research on the morning-after pill in the 1960's was apparently inspired by results in animal husbandry. In 1973, the F.D.A. approved labeling for the first and only time for a morning-after pill -- a regimen of the estrogen diethylstilbestrol, or DES. The 25-milligram pill was eventually withdrawn from the market, about the same time as vaginal cancer increasingly began to afflict the daughters of women who had taken it. By the mid-1970's, doctors in Canada and the Netherlands published studies showing that lower combined doses of estrogen and progestin were as effective as DES, but had fewer side effects. The combined doses were in a birth-control pill called Ovral, made by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories. Wyeth-Ayerst received F.D.A. approval for Ovral as a birth-control pill in 1968 but never applied for permission to label and promote it for this additional use. "The primary reason is research priorities," says Audrey Ashby, a spokeswoman for the company. "We have not included the area of morning-after as a priority because the use of postcoital contraception has been shown to be unpredictable and may have a failure rate that may be considered unacceptable." She paused. "You can't do everything." In fact the efficacy and safety of the treatment is fairly predictable. "I don't know of any serious safety concerns," says Dr. Philip A. Corfman, the supervisory medical officer for fertility and maternal health drugs at the F.D.A. and one of the country's foremost experts on contraception. "At meetings I've said that we would be interested in applications for postcoital formulations to increase the option for women to control their fertility." But there are ample hard-nosed reasons why Wyeth, or indeed any maker of an oral contraceptive, would eagerly sidestep the pursuit of morning-after approval. According to Dr. Joseph A. DiMasi of the Tufts University Center for the Study of Drug Development, the clinical trials and agency review for a new drug take about 12 years and may cost as much as $231 million; getting approval for the supplemental use has taken |
581741_0 | World Economies | |
581807_0 | Father Earth | About 15 miles west of Taos, a road with no name tapers off into the flat tableland beneath the Tres Orejas, three small volcanic peaks. Soon the road disappears entirely. All that remains is a thick carpet of snow and a set of coyote tracks pitching toward infinity. But if you can envision an Alternative Republic here, you don't need a road. Thus, a frigid winter morning recently found Michael Reynolds, a one-man Monkey Wrench gang of architecture, barreling through the snowdrifts, his Dodge pickup swerving every which way, destined for an unsightly pile of tires and dirt, his new Atlantis: downtown Star. And so, as the New Year begins, changing the world has come down to this: a Taos morning blue with cold, a 47-year-old man with fly-away hair and a pickax pounding frozen dirt into used tires -- the detritus of 20th-century civilization and building blocks of a new utopia. Star is an acronym for the Social Transformation Alternative Republic, a 1,100-acre self-sufficient community for around 300 people that Mr. Reynolds, a renegade pioneer in the alternative-housing movement, is building on a sage- and pinon-flecked periphery of town. The houses at Star will be what Mr. Reynolds has christened "earth ships," dwellings made of rammed earth and tires that the architect has been perfecting in and around Taos for the last 20 years. His goal -- already realized at another project nearby -- is to be independent of the conventional power grid. Instead of being heated by electricity, the earth ships will use sculpted earth, tire walls and the sun, which also powers the photovoltaic cells that provide electricity. Rather than conventional plumbing, there will be catch-water roof systems to harvest and filter runoff from snow and rain. Used water from bathtubs and sinks will be piped into jungly planters where flowers and vegetables grow. There will be no sewers -- only solar toilets, an invention of Mr. Reynolds that reduces human waste to dust, dust that "may even be good for something," he said. Mr. Reynolds called Star a republic, rather than a housing development, and half jokingly threatened secession from the United States if Government authorities try to intervene. He talks fast and thinks globally. His main objective at Star, according to the community's articles of association, will be to "evolve humanity into an earthen harmony." The earthen harmony, he said, will be "half dictatorship, half |
582044_0 | Accord With Cree Will Allow Quebec Utility to Finish Dams | Hydro-Quebec, the provincial utility that is a major supplier of electricity to New York State, has signed an agreement with the Grand Council of the Cree and two Cree Indian communities on compensation payments for environmental damage, allowing the electric company to finish a giant hydroelectric project in the remote James Bay region. Under the agreement, which was signed in Montreal on Friday after two years of negotiations, the utility will pay the Cree $50 million "for various community and economic activities" including recreational centers and public works. The Cree will drop lawsuits that sought to block the project. The agreement allows the completion of two dams with a combined capacity of 1,152 megawatts, which is about the capacity of the largest nuclear reactor in New York State. The dams and associated power lines, which are already under construction, will cost about $4 billion (Canadian) and will be finished by 1998, according to Guy Versailles, a spokesman for the company. The power will serve Quebec's internal demand, he said. As a practical matter, however, the more electricity the province generates, the more it has available for export. Part of La Grande Project The dams are part of the La Grande project on the La Grande River, 600 miles north of Montreal. They are not part of the Great Whale project, which Quebec said last year it would delay because New York State canceled an agreement to buy more electricity. Environmentalists in New York had pushed for the cancellation because of fear of adverse effects on the Cree and on wildlife. Mr. Versailles said that Hydro-Quebec took the position that it had the contractual right to finish the project under agreements signed in 1975. But the 1975 agreement also provided that "we would negotiate with the communities for mitigation measures, remedial measures for negative impacts," he said. Of the $50 million, 73 percent will go to Chisasibi, which has a population of 2,500 and is the largest Cree settlement, and 17 percent will go to Wemindji, with a population of 1,000; the balance will go to the Grand Council of the Cree, the company said. |
582785_0 | COMPANY NEWS: But a Scant Market for the Empties; P.& G. Downy Bottles Shift to Recycled Plastic | The Procter & Gamble Company introduced a plastic bottle for its Ultra Downy fabric softener yesterday that is made of 100 percent recycled plastic. The company says the bottle will provide a use for at least 15 million pounds of plastic collected for recycling. But once it is empty, the Downy bottle itself will be much less recyclable than the translucent milk and water bottles made of high-density polyethylene that will be the source of the recycled plastic. That is because the Downy bottle is colored and there are far fewer markets for plastic made up of mixed colors than for clear and translucent containers. According to recent issues of Recycling Times, a publication that reports on recycling developments and tracks market conditions, prices paid for mixed colors of high-density polyethylene are only one-fourth of those paid for loads of clear. Finding buyers for plastic materials collected for recycling has been a major problem for cities and groups seeking to cut trash volume. P.& G. cited a survey by the United States Conference of Mayors that found that a shortage of markets was the biggest barrier to recycling. P.& G. says the Downy bottle has been made of increasing amounts of recycled plastic, starting with 25 percent in 1990. It says the bottle is the only laundry product container made entirely of recycled material. Owens-Brockway Plastic Products manufactures the bottles on the same equipment used for virgin plastic, P.& G. said. |
585857_0 | Carbon Monoxide Gas Is Used by Brain Cells As a Neurotransmitter | THE simple gas carbon monoxide is used by nerve cells to signal each other, researchers have found in a discovery that could open the way to a new understanding of how the brain operates. The discovery follows a finding that another simple gas, nitric oxide, can also signal nerve cells. Together the two gases break all the old rules on how neurotransmitters work. Neurobiologists have been finding neurotransmitters since the 1920's and thought they had the rules for nerve signaling in hand. Each substance was thought to be stable and specific. One nerve cell would release the transmitter and it would fit into the next cell like a key in a lock. But gases are volatile and nonspecific, and they diffuse into any nearby cells. Transmitters were also thought to be stored in small pouches in cells that made them and released when necessary. But gases are not stored and are made only when needed. Clinical Implications "It's a whole brand new signaling mechanism," said Dr. Charles Stevens, a neurobiologist who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institutes investigator at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif. The carbon monoxide discovery by Dr. Ajay Verma, Dr. Solomon H. Snyder and their colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore was reported this month in the journal Science. Dr. Stevens added that although it was too early to speak of clinical implications, they are bound to come. So far, he added, he is finding evidence that carbon monoxide might be used to cement memories in the hippocampus of the brain and that established memories might be erased when carbon monoxide is absent. Dr. Snyder said there were also suggestions that carbon monoxide might protect against excess neuronal activity, dampening nerves that are firing too much. In this way, it could counter some of the adverse effects of nitric oxide, Dr. Snyder said. For example, Dr. Snyder said, nitric oxide seems to cause damage in strokes, when nerve cells are stimulated to fire repeatedly. Carbon monoxide, he said, could counter that effect. In large concentrations, carbon monoxide is a poison. It binds so tightly to the heme chemical group at the heart of hemoglobin molecules that it prevents oxygen from binding. In the presence of carbon monoxide, red blood cells are unable to carry oxygen to body tissues. But it was this very ability of carbon monoxide to bind to |
585740_3 | Going Undercover in the Computer Underworld | are constantly working at ways to get around our controls. We liken it to a chess game." Bruce Sterling, a chronicler of the computer wars and author of "The Hacker Crackdown" (Bantam, 1992), concluded that while mischievous intrusions into computer networks were declining, "electronic fraud, especially telecommunications crime, is growing by leaps and bounds." This despite a crackdown by several agencies around the nation in 1990 that resulted in the seizure of some 40 computers and 23,000 floppy disks. Threat to Phone Companies To telecommunications giants like A.T.& T., M.C.I. and Sprint, the primary fraud is theft of long-distance calling-card numbers. But they have the technology to detect sudden changes in customer calling patterns and can invalidate a card within hours. More difficult to detect are break-ins to a company's phone system -- called a private branch exchange, or PBX. These thefts can afford free outside calling at the company's expense and can escape notice until the bill arrives. Among recent victims was the financially struggling New York Post, which suffered a $40,000 loss. Toward the end of a month, as the likelihood of their detection rises, "phreakers" often post PBX access codes on electronic bulletin boards, allowing wider exploitation and muddying the trail for investigators. The techniques for such electronic break-ins are widely disseminated on the bulletin boards. In addition, many experts say, the more secretive boards have become forums for pedophiles and other sexual predators who also inhabit cyberspace, that unfixable geography where disembodied strangers known only by their pseudonyms, or "handles," chat by computer and phone lines. Pornography, even moving pictures from overseas, are stored as files that can be downloaded by minors into home computers at will. Chief Alfred O. Olsen of the Warwick Township Police Department in Lititz, Pa., who has worked with the police high-tech crime group and its founder, said in a recent report that he became aware of the nefarious uses of some of the bulletin boards as a result of a rape case in which the suspect met victims through a computer bulletin board. To get onto a bulletin board, a computer user needs only a communications program like Crosstalk and a modem that will send and receive signals over a phone line. Each board has its own phone number and is usually maintained by its originator, a systems operator who sets the rules for access and coordinates the message traffic. |
585923_0 | No Mutant Tomatoes For Campbell Soup | To the Editor: In "Tomato Gene Is Submitted for Approval" (Business Day, Jan 6), which reports that Calgene Inc. is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval for its "FlavrSavr" tomato, you erroneously state that the tomato will be marketed "by the Campbell Soup Company in processed forms." Campbell does not market any bioengineered products and has no plans to do so. Further, we do not use any bioengineered ingredients in any of our products and have no plans to do so. Before any such use would even be contemplated, we would have to be assured that such use has full governmental approval and strong consumer acceptance. JAMES H. MORAN Group Director-Public Relations Campbell Soup Company Camden, N.J. Jan. 8, 1993 |
584660_0 | Scientists Set to Give Up on Galileo's Antenna | After repeated failures to jolt free the Galileo spacecraft's stuck main antenna, engineers have abandoned all realistic hope of deploying the antenna on the craft's mission to Jupiter. They have begun preparations to salvage the mission by making the most of a weaker, slower-transmitting small antenna. A disappointed Dr. William J. O'Neil, project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in an interview yesterday, "There is really nothing left for us to try." For three weeks, engineers turned the antenna's deployment motor on and off 12,320 times with double the usual force, striving to drive three stuck ribs free of the central shaft. This snag had prevented the full release of the 16-foot-wide main antenna, which should look like an upside-down umbrella with 18 ribs. "Although there has been some motion in the deployment system and in the antenna, the ribs have not yet been freed," project officials said yesterday. One last attempt to open the antenna completely will be made March 11 by spinning up the spacecraft to 10 revolutions a minute from its normal 3 revolutions a minute. But the officials conceded that there was little expectation that this would help. "We believe we have done all the right things, and they just didn't work," Dr. O'Neil said. He expressed confidence that modifications of computer instructions and tracking station receivers should enable the $1.4 billion mission to accomplish 70 percent of its goals. But the spacecraft will return only 2,000 to 4,000 pictures instead of the orginally planned 50,000. The Galileo spacecraft, launched in 1989, is scheduled to reach Jupiter in December 1995, sending a probe into the Jovian atmosphere and then going into orbit for at least two years of detailed reconnaissance of the giant planet and its large moons. No spacecraft has ever orbited the solar system's largest planet. "We're still going to have an excellent mission, but it's going to be a lot more difficult to execute than it would have been," Dr. O'Neil said. Scientists and engineers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have already drawn up revised mission plans. An official decision to proceed with this contingency plan must be made by March 1. But Dr. O'Neil said that since no one expected the last-ditch deployment effort to succeed work had already begun on both the preliminary design of new computer instructions to operate the modified mission and plans |
584182_0 | Rabbits Beware! Some Birds of Prey Hunt in Packs | THE majestic image of the lone eagle may often hold true. But scientists are also beginning to piece together a more complex picture of eagles, hawks and falcons as team players whose hunting tactics and cunning intelligence invite comparison with the wolf and the fox. Eagles, in fact, not only mount concerted and successful attacks on the fox itself; they also deceive monkeys, humans' close relatives, in the deadly game of predator versus prey. By acting together, they are even able to bring down big animals like deer, antelopes and African bushbucks. Diving, swooping and executing barrel rolls, peregrine falcons double-team rapidly darting swifts, birds that no single falcon could possibly outmaneuver. As the swift veers right and left in a horizontal plane, both male and female come at it from above. The male, smaller and more agile, reverses course once it is below the swift and attacks a second time, from beneath. The multiple assaults drive swifts to such distraction that they fly into obstructions or plunge into water, becoming easy pickings. And in the Southwest, family groups of Harris's hawks assemble each winter morning, divide into platoons and scour the countryside for rabbits. When one is found, the platoons converge and go on the attack. If necessary, one platoon flushes the prey from brush directly into the talons of the other. If a speedy jack rabbit leads them on a chase, the hawks pursue in relays that keep the quarry running till it drops. These hawks are "not one whit behind a wolf pack" in their hunting behavior, said Dr. David H. Ellis, an animal behaviorist and raptor expert at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service at Laurel, Md. As the grimly fascinating evidence accumulates, it is forcing scientists to reassess their longstanding treatment of raptors as solitary predators. Often the birds do hunt alone, and the difficulty of observing them at work has made it hard to discover other kinds of hunting behavior. But now, according to a study in the current issue of the journal BioScience, there are enough observations to suggest that eagles and their cousins command a wide repertory of predatory actions, including the most sophisticated. This command may be essential to the species' long-term evolutionary survival strategy. Raptors' newly appreciated prowess reveals "a high degree of intelligence," said Dr. Ellis, the primary author of the paper |
584178_4 | Recriminations Follow Debacle of Short First Flight of Earthwinds | help in many of the technical problems, and I had to work them out by myself," he said. "In just a seemingly simple matter, like picking the right color paint for a vital heat exchanger mounted outside the capsule, even the aerospace companies gave me conflicting advice, and I had to solve things on my own." Baron Hilton, president of the Hilton Hotels chain and a major financial backer of Earthwinds, expressed his confidence in Mr. Newman after the accident, and said he planned to continue his support. Besides Mr. Moses, a Hawaii-based builder and entrepreneur, and General Dzhanibekov, a veteran of several trailblazing Soviet space missions, some key members of the engineering and technical sections of the huge Earthwinds team said they were leaving the project. Several said they might try to design and build a new balloon of their own to try to beat Earthwinds in a round-the-world attempt this year. Too Heavy to Clear Ridge Although hundreds of measurements and calculations will be needed to make a formal assessment of what went wrong with Earthwinds, it is obvious that the balloon was simply too heavy to clear the ridge. Mr. Newman, in consultation with a team of meteorologists headed by Leonard W. Snellman, had decided to move the Earthwinds launching site from Akron, Ohio, where a launching attempt last February was aborted because of high winds, to Reno Stead Airfield, Nev., because of the generally low winds there. Mr. Newman had hoped to prepare Earthwinds for flight by setting it up in a specially built inflatable hangar, but two such hangars broke open and collapsed, once because of flawed fittings and once because of high winds. So Mr. Newman decided to set up the balloon in the open air. This meant that dead calm was essential during the difficult and risky process of inflating and rigging a fragile plastic balloon the height of a 20-story building. The weather experts could promise calm air only on the condition that there be an inversion of the air, in which a layer of warm air overlies cold air at ground level. Such an inversion, Mr. Snellman explained, acts as a cap over the ground layer, and blocks wind. A suitable inversion was forecast for last Monday night, but Mr. Snellman warned that only a few hours would be favorable for a launching, before a storm front from the Pacific moved |
615879_7 | After a Bombing, the Uffizi Begins Recovery | image were ruined. This is the case with the Sebastiano, where the damage is much more troubling because of the quality of the picture. There are gashes through the landscape in the background of the painting and less serious cuts across the main figures, but only one minor cut crosses a face. In the coming days, these paintings will be shipped off to conservators. Even though they will make the Uffizi a priority, the restorers may well need months to complete their tasks. As for when the damaged rooms can be reopened, that depends not on the museum's staff, but on outside officials in charge of construction and repairs on the city's architectural monuments. At the current pace it will take months, if not longer. It is precisely to avoid this sort of Italian bureaucratic quagmire that the Uffizi's energetic and politically savvy director, Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, has been loudly arguing for several years for the sort of unequaled independence for her institution that would mean answering directly to the Italian Cultural Minister rather than to layers of intermediaries. Although the Uffizi earns about $5.5 million a year in ticket sales alone, all of which it must turn over to the Italian treasury, the understaffed museum (which has only seven curators, including the director) must depend on local officials for its budget, and there have long been stories of staff members having to buy their own stamps. A Grand Plan The bombing may finally focus attention on the needs of Italy's pre-eminent museum, and perhaps even rally support for a longstanding expansion plan, a Grand Uffizi modeled after the Grand Louvre project, that had to be abandoned in mid-course because of indecision and lack of money. Beyond the uncompleted glass-enclosed exit, the plan would allow the Uffizi to put vastly more of its collection on view. It calls for turning an entire floor of the building, which was used to store documents until five years ago, into new galleries, effectively doubling the number of galleries, and creating permanent spaces for exhibitions. A recent exhibition of drawings, presented in rooms temporarily set aside for the purpose, was in fact the first international loan show the museum had ever done. The Uffizi has struggled to its feet after the bombing. It would be a paradox if the biggest setback in the museum's history ultimately helped to bring about its biggest stride forward. |
615938_1 | Charting a Course After Graduation | Review. "This book is holding people's hands through the process of doing what they have to do. Most of them haven't a clue." "How to Survive" joins more traditional views of life after college, such as "The Smith College Job Guide" by Elizabeth Tener (Penguin, 1991, $10.95) and "The Harvard Guide to Careers" by Martha P. Leape and Susan Vacca (Harvard University Press, 1991, $12.95). But the strategies and suggestions in "How to Survive" -- for such prickly tasks as finding an apartment and paying off student loans -- are often irreverent. On apartment hunting in a big city: "To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never has so much been paid for so little." On landlords: "Most will run a credit check on you before they let you sign the lease. If your credit or job situation looks shaky, they may demand that you get 'cosigners' -- i.e., your parents -- to guarantee the rent. "They will also expect you to write a check for first and last month's rent, and possibly a month's rent in addition, as a security deposit. This may be the first four-figure check you have written." On student loans: "The government gives you a six-month grace period to find a job and catch your breath, and then the bills start arriving." Most of the book tackles landing a job, and includes tips on mining connections, some of which can be tenuous, to say the least. An example? "My best friend's uncle knows this guy who goes out with the hairdresser of Madonna's personal manager." Mr. Martz also includes a chapter on employment agencies and career counselors, and another on classified advertisements. He navigates the murky maze of resumes and interviews. Mr. Martz describes an exchange better left unsaid: Interviewer: "Where do you see yourself in five years." Candidate: "In your job." But life is not all angst, and "How to Survive" brightens the job search with plenty of quirky work-related charts, including one that lists baseball players as having the shortest workweek, at 30 hours. After the graduate lands a job and signs a lease, comes the hard part: living independently. Suddenly, there's another set of adult concepts, like filling out W-2 forms and figuring out health insurance plans. Oh yes, the back cover offers a parting suggestion: "This book is printed on recyclable paper and can be burned for warmth if things get really desperate." Onward! |
615857_0 | Topics of The Times; Taming Toxic Goop | Who says New Yorkers don't recycle? On a recent blustery Sunday, 275 Brooklynites bearing hazardous waste arrived by car and on foot at an exquisitely appropriate site -- a parking lot overshadowed by the blackened smokestacks of the Greenpoint incinerator and sandwiched between the settling tanks of the Newtown Creek sewage plant. There they surrendered to the city's Department of Sanitation substances like oven cleaners and flammable solvents as well as seemingly innocuous garbage like household batteries, nail polish, art supplies and mothballs. When tossed in the regular trash, such products have been known to burn sanitation workers, set small fires in garbage trucks and seep out of the Fresh Kills landfill into surface water. Space-age figures in white plastic suits, electric-green gloves, goggles and masks converged on the cars and removed the cans and bottles and unidentified goop that people had been hoarding in their basements for years. Local high school students and professional chemists hired by Green Alternatives, the environmental company the city put in charge of the recycling, sorted motor oil to be re-refined, solvents to be sold as alternative fuels and paint to be repackaged and donated to community groups. A woman from Park Slope whose Chevrolet van was burglar-proofed with wire mesh and plastered with stickers that said things like "Fight crime -- shoot back" took a look around and said, "They should have done this decades ago." Others agreed. Candy Ruez of Bushwick said the 15-minute drive to Greenpoint was the first time she had gone out of her way for the environment. The Sanitation Department's collection effort has now covered four of the city's five boroughs. The last collection for the year is Saturday from 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. in the Bronx, next to the water supply building on Zerega Avenue between Bruckner Boulevard and Quimby Avenue in the Unionport neighborhood. |
615908_1 | Bishops Step Into Furor Over Translation of Mass | not to Jesus, the commission tries to avoid masculine pronouns for God; thus, the "glory of His name" and "the good of all His Church" becomes "the glory of God's name" and "the good of the Church." Critics Blame Feminists No votes on either the proposed language or the commission's operation are to be taken at the bishops' meeting, which starts Thursday. But the two-hour discussion should provide a forum for critics as well as defenders. The critics accuse the commission of slavishly following feminist dictates. The defenders say the changes are simply better translations of the original Greek and Latin, sensitive to a cultural shift in the understanding of language about men and women. "The bishops need an opportunity where they can ask direct questions and try to clear the air," said the Rev. Ronald F. Krisman, who is executive director of the bishops' Committee on Liturgy and also a member of the International Commission on Liturgy. With a small staff and headquarters in Washington, the commission enlists about 20 liturgists, linguists and musicians from around the world, in addition to other scholars on a more limited basis. It is overseen by a board of bishops from 11 English-speaking nations. Before any of the commission's proposals can be adopted, the bishops' board must approve them, then submit them to the bishops' conferences in the various countries. In turn, the conferences must approve any changes by a two-thirds majority and also get the Vatican's assent. 'Men' No Longer Generic The conferences need not always agree. Two decades ago, the bishops of New Zealand, India and Pakistan adopted a new interdenominational version of the Lord's Prayer that has been accepted by major Protestant churches, at least as an option. But it was rejected by the Catholic Church in the United States. Although conservative Catholics have been denouncing the retranslating project, the current effort was actually in response to earlier criticism that largely came from conservatives. The first generation of translations, the critics said, had misunderstood the function of ritual language and had sacrificed poetic or majestic tone for the familiarity of everyday speech. In the 1973 translation now in use, for example, the Latin prayer "Ecce Agnus Dei" inviting the congregation to receive communion began, "This is the Lamb of God" and ended, "Happy are those who are called to his supper." The commission's proposed new translation begins, "Behold the Lamb |
617519_0 | City Begins Effort to Clean Up Tire Dumps | |
617544_0 | Inquiry Will Check Air Quality on Airplanes | Transportation Secretary Federico F. Pena today ordered a preliminary inquiry into the air quality of airplane cabins. Airlines in the United States have been circulating less fresh air into the cabins of many newer airplanes to cut costs. As a result, flight attendants and passengers have complained of headaches, nausea and other health problems, especially after long flights. "We want to reassure the public that generally air quality is acceptable and that recent studies have generally shown that there is no unreasonable risk," said Richard Mintz, a spokesman for Secretary Pena. "But new aircraft designs and operations and some other recent concerns warrant a fresh look," Mr. Mintz said. "'We'd like to see what new information there is. We want to talk to some airline employees and people in the industry and see what the concerns are out there." Mr. Mintz said Transportation officials would be working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government health agencies to assess the levels and potential dangers of airborne toxins, viruses and bacteria. Studies have found that the less frequent circulation of fresh air exposes passengers not only to the respiratory problems of other passengers but also to higher levels of carbon dioxide, as well as to fumes from the materials used to build or maintain the cabins. These include cleaning agents, pesticides and gases like ethanol and benzene. Concerned that ventilation systems for airline cabins may contribute to the spread of contagious diseases, the C.D.C. is investigating whether some passengers with tuberculosis have infected fellow passengers on long flights. In one case, the agency found that two crew members tested positive for tuberculosis after a third was diagnosed with the disease. The C.D.C. linked the two cases to exposure to the infected flight attendant. Federal officials said today that no Government agency had the responsibility to set and enforce standards that would limit the levels of airborne toxins, viruses and bacteria on airline cabins. Jurisdiction Unclear The Federal Aviation Administration's mission is to insure flight safety and to promote the financial well-being of the airline industry. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration takes responsibility only for activities on the ground. The Environmental Protection Agency sets no standards for indoor air. Chris Witkowski, director of aviation safety for the Association of Flight Attendants, said, "Flight attendants feel that it's deplorable that there are no effective government standards mandating the quality |
612999_1 | Finding the Rhythm of the Road, at 10 Miles an Hour | but actually a little run-down. And more to the point, the closest motel is almost 20 miles away, in Enfield, at the exit off Interstate 91. Now, if you are in a car and tired of driving, 20 more miles to go is an irritation. On a bike, it is evil itself, the essence of unfairness. So. As if on cue, a beautiful afternoon had suddenly grayed over. It was nearly 5, maybe two and a half hours before dark. I drank two bottles of grape Gatorade (a relatively new flavor, really good, I think) and, having no choice (I wasn't carrying a sleeping bag), pedaled on. People tend to ask why I like to ride a bicycle over stretches more frequently traversed by planes, trains and automobiles. I usually say I like the idea of the bicycle as an implement of travel rather than of simple recreation. The old saw about traveling by bicycle is that it's seeing the world at congenial speed; at 10 miles an hour, exposed to the elements, you're connected with the road and the scenery in a way you can never be in an automobile. All that's true. On a bicycle you can count roadside mailboxes and judge the quality of the hand-painted ducks and hunting dogs on them. Animals -- skittering chipmunks, barking dogs, grazing horses, the occasional fox or deer peering curiously from the woods at roadside -- become compatriots. I talk to them: "Hi, pal"; "Shut up, you ugly mutt!" Once, on a whim, I delivered Marc Antony's funeral oration at a herd of stupefied cows. (You feel worse about road kills, flattened raccoons and opossums, than you do in a car.) But beyond that, leaving the house on a bicycle, I've always liked the idea of ending up somewhere else, traveling toward a place rather than circling back to where I began. And I've never been much of an advance route planner, preferring the love-hate relationship one develops along the way, in myriad foldings and unfoldings, with that cold bearer of both good news and bad, the road map. There's something random and idiosyncratic about a trip like this, a series of solitary experiences tied together with a ribbon of road; even if they're mundane, they're singular and personal. And it's titillating; it feels a little unsafe. You can have an adventure and then, when it's over, you can actually |
614173_4 | Costly Relic, Nuclear Unit Sits Ready for Atmospheric Tests | The tests created some of the worst radioactive contamination in the world. Most children born in the Marshalls in the 1950's suffered serious health problems, Mr. Ray said, including thyroid abnormalities and cancer. Poisoning the Land In the era of atmospheric testing, 125 smaller blasts north of Las Vegas sent radioactivity drifting downwind in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The Soviet Union also conducted more than 200 atmospheric tests, some far bigger than Bravo, and poisoned its own land with fallout. Then, 30 years ago this week, President Kennedy announced talks with Moscow on a limited nuclear test ban treaty. He said the nation would halt nuclear tests in the atmosphere if the Soviets would stop too. In exchange for endorsing the limited test ban, the Joint Chiefs of Staff insisted on four safeguards: continuing underground tests, maintaining weapons laboratories, staying ready to resume atmospheric testing and improving intelligence monitoring of Soviet tests. The third of these was Safeguard C. The United States, the Soviet Union and Britain agreed to the limited test ban in 1963. China and France did not. In all, those five nations exploded 525 nuclear weapons over the world's oceans and deserts: the United States, 217; the Soviet Union, 214; France, 50; China, 23; and Britain, 21. The last was a Chinese hydrogen bomb detonated on Oct. 16, 1980. Some of its fallout drifted over the Pacific to the United States. How High a Cost? During the cold war, "hundreds of scientists, engineers, logisticians and military people had some significant responsibility for Safeguard C," Mr. Ray said. Now the group has dwindled to fewer than 200 people. "A modest expenditure of money and effort to retain that capability -- even though we would dread using it -- is just damn good insurance," said Mr. Ray, now 71 years old and retired from the nuclear weapons-testing business. "I imagine we would use it if we were forced to. But I wouldn't relish it a bit. It cost us. It cost us in insults to the environment. It cost us in lives." The cost is too high, said Philip Morrison, a co-creator of the first atomic bomb and professor emeritus of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The principle behind testing is this: if you test nuclear weapons, you remind people that their security depends on the readiness to use them," he said. "That is a profoundly false idea." |
614077_0 | Review/Theater: Playland; South Africa's Conflict, Boiled Down to 2 Men | "The whole world is me and you. Here! Now!," says the white man to the black man in "Playland," the new drama written and directed by Athol Fugard. "Forgive me or kill me. That's the only choice you've got." With those few sentences, Mr. Fugard not only delivers the crux of his play at the Manhattan Theater Club Stage II but also sums up the crisis in South Africa now that apartheid is finally crumbling. In "Playland," as in so much of his canon, this great writer boils down his country's tragedy to the simplest theatrical essentials: a couple of actors, a barren setting, a single confrontation, one act. It's a welcome return to solid artistic ground for Mr. Fugard after the groping of such recent efforts as "My Children! My Africa!" and "A Place With the Pigs." Having arrived there, he now needs to loosen up a bit and repossess the terrain. Unlike such masterworks as "A Lesson From Aloes" and "Master Harold . . . and the Boys," "Playland" can be reductivist to a fault. Although South Africa's present is chaotic and its future far from clear, this 100-minute piece is almost fanatically tidy. It's as if Mr. Fugard felt he could contain his society's messy, careening history and, even more miraculously, push it to a hopeful denouement by maintaining rigid control over everything that happens on a patch of stage. The atmosphere is so thick with paradigms and metaphors that at first it is hard for either the players or the audience to breathe. The setting, a traveling broken-down amusement park promising escapist pleasures, is all too patently a stand-in for reeling white South Africa. The characters, a dignified black night watchman (Frankie R. Faison) and a guilt-ridden white former soldier (Kevin Spacey), meet by chance and confess on cue, only to prove perfectly matched archetypes with complementary dark secrets in their pasts. As if this were not schematic enough, the date of their meeting is New Year's Eve 1989, weeks before the release of Nelson Mandela and the onset of F. W. de Klerk's reforms. The action begins during an apocalyptically blood-red sunset and ends just as portentously at the dawn of a cheery new day. Within this framework, and once a numbing 45 minutes of declamatory exposition is out of the way, Mr. Fugard provides some meaty, at times searing arias for both men. The |
612914_0 | Schools Can't Segregate Handicapped Children | To the Editor: As the parent of a handicapped child, I was gratified by "When Disabled Students Enter Regular Classrooms" (front page, May 19). However, you omit a problem I have seen time and again in my local schools. There still are quite a number of school principals who shun the presence of multiply handicapped children in their schools, a prejudice not easily set aside. The children, though allowed into the school to satisfy the law's requirements, are treated as though they were living before the civil rights era: they are banished to a classroom that is isolated from the main part of the school and their peers. Their classroom is usually the smallest, most cramped quarter in the building, more often than not a converted lounge without windows and without sufficient space to maneuver wheelchairs and walkers. This depressing atmosphere, perpetuated by the principal, determines the attitude of the staff, so that handicapped children are segregated, kept out of sight and treated as separate but not equal. Without commitment and leadership from the school principal, any attempt at integrating handicapped children into regular classrooms is doomed. NANCY J. HERIN Darnestown, Md., May 24, 1993 |
616992_1 | Are Gene-Altered Plants an Ecological Threat? Test Is Devised | prototype of a general method for testing the ecological impact of transgenic plants, thereby transforming an argument that has often rested more on assertion than evidence. Test Seen as Milestone By providing a rigorous way to assess the ecological risk posed by transgenic plants, the pioneering British study will bring the debate "into the realm of rational discourse," Dr. Peter Kareiva, an ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, wrote in a commentary in Nature. The experiment itself was reported by Dr. Michael J. Crawley, an ecologist at Imperial College on the outskirts of London, and four colleagues. Dr. Kareiva called the report a "landmark paper." "You go to conferences and people just argue and argue" about the impact of transgenic plants on natural ecosystems, Dr. Kareiva said in an interview. "This shows you can answer the question with a good experiment." The report comes at a fortunate time for the United States, he said, since the Department of Agriculture recently published a new set of guidelines requiring that before a transgenic crop can be approved for the market, firm evidence must be produced that it poses no greater risk than the unmodified plant from which it is derived. Although more than 370 permits for field trials of transgenic plants have been issued, no such crop is yet on the market. One, the "Flavr Savr" tomato created by Calgene Inc., a biotechnology company in California, has been approved for the market by the Agriculture Department. The tomato has been genetically altered to slow the ripening process and retard spoilage, Calgene hopes to market the tomato this year, but is waiting for the Food and Drug Administration to approve it as safe for consumers. Dr. Crawley and his colleagues set out to test the invasive properties of transgenic plants directly. They sowed some 2,000 seeds each in the spring of 1990, 1991 and 1992. The sowings took place in Cornwall in southwest England, where winters are mild and the growing season starts early; in Berkshire in southeast England, where winters are cold and summers dry, and in Sutherland in northeast Scotland, where the growing season starts late and summer days are long. In each locality, four habitats typical of the region were selected for the experiment -- Cornish heath, for instance, and Scottish moors and Berkshire grassland. The habitats were selected further to provide contrasts of sun and shade, wetness |
616915_5 | Pope Endorses Bishops' Attempts To Rid Clergy of Child Molesters | Catholic Church in Canada as well in the United States. During the past year, the bishops of England and Wales issued a letter lamenting such behavior. Many experts in sexual disorders and church leaders, too, feel that the apparent frequency of cases coming to light in these countries, as opposed to continental Europe and elsewhere, is due more to aggressive media attention and to the growing willingness of victims to speak out rather than to any actual difference in the extent of misconduct. A Distorted Image? Sensationalism, the Pope said, "leads to the loss of something which is essential to the morality of society. Harm is done to the fundamental right of individuals not to be easily exposed to the ridicule of public opinion; even more, a distorted image of human life is created." The Pope wrote that sensationalism might "open the door to evil in the conscience and behavior of vast sectors of society, especially among the young." He called on the bishops to exercise responsibility to limit the impact of sensationalism on society, "to halt the trivializing of the great things of God and man." The Pope did not suggest particular ways to do this, beyond an ardent closing appeal to prayer. The Pope's letter clearly referred to the scandals involving molesting of minors: he cited the Gospel passage in which Jesus warned that it would be better for someone "to be drowned in the depths of the sea" than to cause the downfall of "the little ones." Other Kinds of Scandals But the letter could apply as well to other sexual scandals, such as the reports of affairs with several young women that recently led Archbishop Robert F. Sanchez to resign as archbishop of Santa Fe, N.M. "The vast majority of bishops and priests are devoted followers of Christ, ardent workers in his vineyard," the Pope wrote. "That is why I am deeply pained, like you, when it seems that the words of Christ can be applied to some of his ministers of the altar." In recent years, the hierarchy has steadily toughened its approach to the problem of priests who commit sexual offenses. On Sunday, John Cardinal O'Connor of New York spoke at St. Patrick's Cathedral about a new document outlining archdiocesan policies on sexual misconduct by priests. The document will specify inappropriate behavior that priests must avoid and the penalties that sexual misdeeds would entail. |
617046_0 | China Breaks Ground for World's Largest Dam | THE bulldozers are scooping out the yellow earth along the Yangtze River in preparation for the world's largest hydroelectric project, a dam that will create a lake 350 miles long, fuel China's industrial revolution and save millions of people from the constant threat of flooding. Or perhaps the project will simply create the world's most colossal mud pie. Critics say that silting behind the dam may result in a $30 billion bog that would inundate China's finest natural scenery and stand as one of the most monumental and vexing legacies of Chinese Communism. The disagreement is no surprise, for people have been debating the merits of the Three Gorges Dam since the idea was proposed in 1919. But while the debate seems endless, one thing has changed: work on the dam is finally beginning. "The way things look right now, I don't think it can be delayed any more," said Jiang Xueyuan, the white-haired spokesman for the Three Gorges Project office here in Yichang, the nearest city to the dam site in central China. Mr. Jiang, like many other engineers who have spent their careers designing the dam, is delighted that the supporters finally seem to have won the battle. Those whose homes, farmland and heritage would be flooded are naturally less enthusiastic. Among the 1.2 million people being forced to move to make way for the project is a furniture vendor in Wanxian, a grimy Yangtze River port. "None of us want to leave, because our lives depend on this port," said the man, who identified himself only as Mr. Gao, between efforts to interest a foreigner in a $4 wicker chair. "Officially, everyone has to support it, but no one wants to go. What'll happen to us?" A five-day journey down the Yangtze, through the area that will be flooded, found not everyone so opposed to the project, with some peasants so poor that they seem happy to move. The more optimistic -- or perhaps credulous -- believe the Government's promises of fertile new farmland, prosperous new factories, fancy new homes and lucrative new jobs. The Three Gorges Dam, sometimes described as the most important construction project in China since the Great Wall, was formally approved last year. It involves a 607-foot-high dam stretching 1.2 miles along the third of the Yangtze River's three famous gorges. The gorges, which are as famous in China as the Grand Canyon |
618374_0 | World Economies | |
614344_2 | Administration Rethinking Mental-Health Coverage | Detroit, said: "It's just too painful. Most people with serious emotional problems avoid long-term psychoanalytic treatments because they find it too disturbing to confront unconscious conflicts that originated in early childhood. They prefer short-term treatments that provide support, counseling and advice." Richard C. Surles, the Mental Health Commissioner of New York State, said that only 6 percent of the state's 2.8 million Medicaid recipients used mental health services last year. "Claims that a comprehensive mental health benefit will break the bank are not correct, based on our experience, and our Medicaid program has the most liberal mental health benefits in the country," Dr. Surles said. Under the proposal recommended by Mrs. Gore, described in confidential work papers from the President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform, treatment would be guaranteed to all people with a diagnosable mental disorder that "poses a serious risk for functional impairment in family, work, school or community activities." The disorder would have to meet criteria in the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association. Robert O. Boorstin, a spokesman for the task force, said mental and physical illnesses should be covered under the same rules. But he said, "There's a real problem because health economists and actuaries disagree over how much mental health benefits will cost." Because of the uncertainty about cost and financing, Administration officials are considering several alternatives that would set limits on mental health coverage. Under one proposal, they said, mental patients would have hospital coverage for 30 days at a time, with a maximum of 90 days a year. For a certain number of visits to the office of a psychotherapist, perhaps 10 or 15, patients would have to pay 20 percent of the cost, the same proportion as for the treatment of physical illnesses. But for additional visits, patients would have to pay 50 percent of the cost. Federal officials are also considering limits on rehabilitation services, which help people with severe mental illnesses adjust to life in the community. Chris Koyanagi, a lobbyist at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, said: "That's a very short-sighted approach. Without such services, people deteriorate and need more expensive and intensive care in hospitals." The proposal for comprehensive coverage assumes that existing Federal and state mental health programs will be blended. Moreover, it assumes that state and local governments will maintain current levels of spending in a new health-care system to |
615288_0 | World Economies | |
617807_2 | Beliefs | years ago, he wrote an article pointing out that as the numbers of priests and nuns decreased, the religious future of these institutions would depend on whatever consensus emerged among the next generation of lay faculty. To help forge that consensus, Mr. Landy persuaded the Lilly Endowment to support the first three years of Collegium summer institutes with a grant of nearly $500,000. Collegium offers an approach to the problem from the ground up. In April, Georgetown University sponsored a major symposium on what is the approach from the top down. In 1990, Pope John Paul II issued "Ex Corde Ecclesiae," a rich but ambiguous document on Catholic higher education. It explicitly recognizes academic freedom and institutional autonomy as essential to Catholic higher education. But it also seems to insert the church hierarchy into the academic community at crucial points, including the oversight of theological teaching. At the Georgetown symposium, the conviction that "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" was addressing a genuine problem competed with the belief that any effort to impose Catholic identity from outside the university would backfire. The impulse had to come from the bottom up, not the top down. Of course, the two approaches could reinforce one another rather than collide. A draft of the "ordinances" that will apply "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" to the American reality tries to respect the line between church and university authorities. But it has often done this by discreet silences and ambiguous phrases. How, for example, does it handle the largely dormant provision in church law that all Catholic professors of theology should have a "mandate" from the local bishop indicating their suitability for the job? The draft, produced by a committee of bishops, treats this as something that a theologian would personally request from the bishop. It avoids spelling out any obligation by the university if the theologian refuses to make the request or the bishop refuses to grant it. At the Collegium gathering, Alfred Grindon, a doctoral candidate in moral theology at Yale, spoke thoughtfully about the responsibility of Catholic theologians to "be accountable to the tradition." But, he added, "We need a more creative model of accountability that is not cashed out as rote obedience nor, at the other extreme, as cursory." Would Mr. Grindon consider teaching in a Catholic university? Yes, he said. Would he teach in one where theologians were embattled with the bishop about getting mandates? No. |
617806_2 | Beliefs | years ago, he wrote an article pointing out that as the numbers of priests and nuns decreased, the religious future of these institutions would depend on whatever consensus emerged among the next generation of lay faculty. To help forge that consensus, Mr. Landy persuaded the Lilly Endowment to support the first three years of Collegium summer institutes with a grant of nearly $500,000. Collegium offers an approach to the problem from the ground up. In April, Georgetown University sponsored a major symposium on what is the approach from the top down. In 1990, Pope John Paul II issued "Ex Corde Ecclesiae," a rich but ambiguous document on Catholic higher education. It explicitly recognizes academic freedom and institutional autonomy as essential to Catholic higher education. But it also seems to insert the church hierarchy into the academic community at crucial points, including the oversight of theological teaching. At the Georgetown symposium, the conviction that "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" was addressing a genuine problem competed with the belief that any effort to impose Catholic identity from outside the university would backfire. The impulse had to come from the bottom up, not the top down. Of course, the two approaches could reinforce one another rather than collide. A draft of the "ordinances" that will apply "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" to the American reality tries to respect the line between church and university authorities. But it has often done this by discreet silences and ambiguous phrases. How, for example, does it handle the largely dormant provision in church law that all Catholic professors of theology should have a "mandate" from the local bishop indicating their suitability for the job? The draft, produced by a committee of bishops, treats this as something that a theologian would personally request from the bishop. It avoids spelling out any obligation by the university if the theologian refuses to make the request or the bishop refuses to grant it. At the Collegium gathering, Alfred Grindon, a doctoral candidate in moral theology at Yale, spoke thoughtfully about the responsibility of Catholic theologians to "be accountable to the tradition." But, he added, "We need a more creative model of accountability that is not cashed out as rote obedience nor, at the other extreme, as cursory." Would Mr. Grindon consider teaching in a Catholic university? Yes, he said. Would he teach in one where theologians were embattled with the bishop about getting mandates? No. |
617738_0 | PANEL ON ECOLOGY SHOWING PROGRESS | The commission created to translate the environmental accords of last year's Earth Summit into action wrapped up its first substantive session on an upbeat note today, with tension between rich countries and poor ones uncommonly relaxed and the United States winning praise for leading a new effort to bridge the gap between North and South. At a high-level ministerial session on Thursday, the United States announced that it was joining with Colombia, the current head of the 129 developing countries calling themselves the Group of 77, in a special effort over the next year to work out a vital issue that has divided the global haves and have-nots: how technology aimed at improving the environment should be transferred to the developing nations. The move was characterized by Timothy E. Wirth, who announced it as head of the United States delegation, as evidence of an American commitment to "muffle the noise of confrontation, to ease the differences in geographic perspective and to join as a world partnership." One of the first specific targets of technology transfer under the new alliance may be the improvement water quality throughout the world. The necessary technology is readily available, many environmentalists and diplomats believe tangible progress should be possible. U.S. Stance Praised Given the United States' obstructionist image at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, its stance here was praised by environmentalists and key representatives of developing countries alike. "Perhaps next to Rio, this is the most important thing that's happened," Kamal Nath, India's Environment Minister, said adding that "for the first time, the United States has talked about a partnership" with the developing world. The American performance at the 12-day meeting of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development "signaled an intent of the U.S. to reassert itself as a major and constructive player on the international environmental stage," said Scott Hajost, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. In the alliance between the United States and the Group of 77, "we saw for the first time a clear illustration of what cooperation can be between the countries of the South and the countries of the North," Razali Ismail, the Malaysian who is chairman of the commission, said today. Of the new American role and position, he said, "I don't want to be melodramatic, but it's a sea change." No longer, he said, is it "the developed versus the developing world." Financing Undelivered |
613888_3 | Kenya, Calling for Aid, Fights Falling Economy | out reforms. "The rules of the game have changed," said Stephen O'Brien, the World Bank's chief of mission in East Africa. "There is less aid money out there, and if the developing countries want to continue to play the game, they have to comply. The rules are tougher now." The situation was not always so grim. Until the early 1980's, Kenya, a country of 24 million people, was viewed as a model for development in Africa where, as a Western diplomat put it, "things worked." Thriving coffee, tea, sugar and cereal production and export dominated Kenya's economy, which was more than 70 percent agricultural. But by the 1980's, coffee tea and other exports dropped in price. The economy was further strangled by increased state ownership, extensive corruption and high population growth, all aggravated by a worldwide recession. No Longer Self-Sufficient Since a severe drought in 1984, Kenya has not been self-sufficient in food production, and there was another severe drought in 1992. Kenya was somewhat cushioned from these effects because it remained high on the list of Western aid donors as cold war tensions grew more acute in the 1980's. Foreign aid jumped from $200 million in 1986 to $1 billion in 1989. Kenya first responded to outside pressure with modest liberalization programs in the 1980's, but in 1991 donor nations suspended the equivalent of $350 million in balance of payments aid, demanding elections and the cleanup of the banking system, devaluation of the currency and cuts in the budget and the civil service. One of Kenya's major problems is the difficulty of earning hard currency from exports because of the declining world prices of its products. The small amounts of currency earned by exporters used to be taken by the Government, which Western economists said made the problem worse. In February, Mr. Moi's Government introduced "retention accounts," which allowed exporters to retain foreign currency earnings instead of remitting them to the central bank. But Mr. Moi revoked the reform in March, accusing the World Bank of pushing "suicidal" policies. Treated Like 'a Beggar' "The treatment suits a beggar, not a customer, and we feel let down," a Government official said of the World Bank pressure. Inflation in Kenya is said by Western economists to have resulted in part from the election in December, when Mr. Moi was handing out benefits in his campaign. At one point, according to Western |
613830_0 | World Economies | |
613752_2 | SMUGGLED TO NEW YORK: The Homeland; High Hopes, and Stakes, For China's Boat People | migrants come from Fujian province, a hilly coastal region opposite Taiwan. The boldest people of Fujian have been emigrating since the 17th century, when the first waves began sailing for Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Even today, Fujianese dialects are common in Singapore and Hong Kong, and the southern Fujianese dialect is dominant in Taiwan. President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan and Corazon Aquino, the former president of the Philippines, are among the many overseas Chinese who traces their roots to Fujian. Today Fujian is richer than many other parts of China, but it is still clear to any Fujianese peasant that those who migrate do better than those who stay behind. Unrealistic Expectations The yearning to flee is compounded by unrealistic expectations about what life abroad can offer. The snakeheads tell prospective migrants that ship conditions will be comfortable and the journey easy, that it is simple to make a fortune in Meiguo, "the beautiful country," as the United States is called in Chinese. The phenomenon of the boat people is a consequence of the economic liberalization in China, and of the Communist Party's diminishing control over the population. Private boats used to be rare, wealth was difficult to hide, and peasants were stuck in their own villages. But these days, the economic boom and loosening of Government policies have resulted in a profusion of private boats and far greater mobility for peasants. No one notices or complains if a peasant disappears from his village, or if a worker resigns from his factory job. And the Fujian coastline is dotted with boats that since the early 1980's have done a thriving business in smuggling goods from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Boom in Smuggling Smuggling takes place on a huge scale -- more than 90 percent of the videocassette recorders sold in China are smuggled in -- and has resulted in growing corruption among the police. It has also led to the emergence of Mafia-style criminal gangs that have contacts in Taiwan and in Chinatowns in the United States and Hong Kong. Starting in the late 1980's, the snakeheads began to smuggle Fujianese peasants into Taiwan, and that business is still going strong. But in the last few years, the boom has been in the smuggling of Fujian peasants to the United States. Taiwanese ships are usually used, partly because individual mainlanders still have mostly fishing boats rather than ocean-going cargo ships. |
616830_0 | Health Agency Investigates Airplanes and TB Infections | Concerned that ventilation systems for airline cabins may contribute to the spread of contagious diseases, Federal health officials are investigating whether some passengers with tuberculosis have infected fellow passengers on long flights. The Government is seeking to determine whether the recirculation of air in the cabins of airliners would allow the transmission of tuberculosis, a bacterial disease that is spread through the air by patients in the active stage of the disease. The disease caused three million deaths worldwide last year and infected eight million more people. Health officials say that worldwide 1 person in 3 is infected, although in the vast majority of those cases the disease is latent and cannot be transmitted. One Federal study, begun this month, seeks to track down and examine all passengers aboard a domestic and an international flight in March that had passengers with active tuberculosis. A second new study seeks to examine the circumstances under which at least one flight attendant on a separate flight acquired the disease. Health officials were informed of the cases by state health departments. First Tuberculosis Studies The officials said that the data were still being collected and had not been fully analyzed. They declined to disclose any preliminary findings. "We have been very much concerned with the transmission of respiratory diseases in airlines," said Dr. Walter R. Dowdle, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which is conducting the studies. Dr. Dowdle said the two studies were the first that the centers had undertaken about the possible transmission of tuberculosis in airline cabins, although the agency had previously studied other infectious diseases that were probably transmitted as a result of poor airliner ventilation. Dr. Mark Miller, a public health physician in charge of the first tuberculosis study, said in an interview, "An airline cabin is a closed, confined space, and we're trying to determine what the risk factors are." He added, "We make the assumption that the more frequent the air exchange, the better it is for not acquiring tuberculosis." Less Air in New Planes To save money cooling the air, which comes into ventilation systems through the engines, airlines in the United States are circulating less fresh air into the cabins of newer planes. Older aircraft built before the mid-1980's provided cabins with 100 percent fresh air that was circulated every three minutes, a rate far greater than that required |
616825_0 | At Old A-Plant, One Sure Thing Is the Volatility | On a windswept patch of desert plateau here, a barbed-wire fence surrounds the hole where workers are supposed to be building a factory to solve what could be the most serious environmental problem in the country. The plant would take radioactive and explosive wastes from nuclear-bomb production out of leaking tanks and immobilize them in glass, which is relatively inert and hence better than liquid for such storage. But the plant is being delayed, so for now all the fence does is collect tumbleweed. The Department of Energy promised four years ago to get the worst of the waste out of the explosion-prone tanks and start putting them in solid form by the end of the century. But exactly which wastes will be processed, and what their final form will be, has not been agreed on. Consequently, very little progress is being made toward putting the chemicals into a safer, easier-to-store form. A Consensus of Dismay Perhaps most important, as a consensus has gradually emerged that the department should do more in the way of a cleanup, the result has been to delay starting work even on what everyone agrees should be done. Over the years, the Department of Energy managers have stretched deadlines and expanded budgets for almost everything having to do with the production of nuclear weapons. But now, just when the department is supposed to be on the verge of a solution, officials are realizing that they barely understand the problem. The biggest environmental problem facing the Government, and the only one labeled urgent by Federal health officials, is not quite back at square one, but the final steps have now receded to the point that they are all but impossible to see. Four years ago the Energy Department promised the State of Washington and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency that solidifying the waste would begin on the last day of this century, Dec. 31, 1999. Starting From Scratch? But now the department and its management contractor, the Westinghouse Hanford Company, want to eliminate all deadlines beyond the most immediate ones, and to spend the next six months discussing "re-baselining," or starting the planning over again for what they had estimated would be a $57 billion, 30-year cleanup project. Roger F. Stanley, the official at the Washington Department of Ecology responsible for enforcing the agreement with the Energy Department, said he was terribly disappointed. "They're not doing |
616807_0 | World Economies | |
616835_3 | Bolivia's Rain Forest Falls to Relentless Exploiters | the rivers each year. In southern Peru, migrants panning for gold have stripped entire river systems of vegetation and sent untold amounts of silt downstream. Hundreds of tons of toxic mercury, used to extract bits of gold from the sand, are dumped into the waters. But perhaps the most destructive element in Colombian, Venezuelan and Bolivian forests are the agribusinesses and armies of colonizers who clear-cut large jungle tracts every year in a rush to plant crops in the tropical soil. Within a few seasons, the soil, which is weak in nutrients, is often so depleted that the farmers are forced to move on to another tract. 500,000 Forest Acres Lost Every Year To be sure, the destruction here and in other countries is not yet on the scale seen in some parts of Brazil. This is mainly because the populations of these Amazon basin countries are dwarfed by that of Brazil. Moreover, the forests in the basin are far from major shipping points, making the building of huge plywood and pulp mills, which consume all kinds of jungle timber, unprofitable. But the rates of deforestation are still striking and Bolivia, according to some calculations, is among the most exploited countries. Researchers for the Inter-American Development Bank have estimated that more than 11 percent of its forests have been either wiped out or damaged by logging and agribusinesses, compared with 5 percent in Brazil. Forestry experts say that up to 500,000 acres of native forest are being cleared every year in Bolivia. For its size, that is only slightly below the rate of deforestation in Brazil. Around Santa Cruz, the country's southern boom town, which is thriving on agricultural exports, giant tractors working in tandem drag huge chain links along the forest floor, pulling down swaths of tropical growth. The bulldozers then pass by again, pile the trees and other vegetation into endless rows and set them on fire. The cost is negligible for developers, who are able to buy land at less than 25 cents an acre. "You drive the distant roads and suddenly find an area of two and five kilometers completely cleared from one week to another," said Christopher R. Carden, an agronomist in Santa Cruz. "We are at the headwaters of the Amazon and are destroying it." Groups of Mennonites who have migrated here have established farms that look like the countryside of Pennsylvania or Ohio, |
616840_2 | PART OF THE UFFIZI IS BEING REOPENED | Scores more were nicked or torn by shards of glass. About 250 more were removed for safe-keeping after the sky-lights blew out, exposing them to the weather. Many Works Still in Storage So what visitors saw today was limited to the gallery's first 24 rooms, including the Botticellis, and the Leonardos and the Giottos. Only three works removed from the damaged west wing went on display -- Michelangelo's "Doni Tondo," Caravaggio's "Bacchus" and Titian's "Flora." The gallery's full collection of works by those artists and others, including Rubens and Rembrandt, remain in indefinite storage. To show people the gravity of some of the damage, restorers displayed all they had been able to repair of a 17th-century still-life by Bartolomeo Bimbi. The explosion had shaken all the pigment off the canvas, and even after restoration there were gaping holes where the pigment had disintegrated. The debris has been cleaned up by 150 Uffizi workers who have labored at all hours since May 27, in part out of pride and in part in response to the loud urging of hotel owners and other business executives dependent on tourism. "I would not have thought it possible that the Uffizi would reopen barely 25 days after the bomb," said Antonio Paolucci, the city's cultural director, in an article today in La Nazione, the Florentine daily. "Instead, a miracle has happened." Banned, Vendors Are Angry From the standpoint of conservators and restorers, he may be right. Outside the Uffizi today, though, Flavio Parenti and his fellow vendors were less appreciative. Mr. Parenti is one of 23 stall-holders who used to sell bric-a-brac and souvenirs under the arches of the museum's central courtyard. They have not been allowed to return, and the city authorities have not offered a comparably lucrative spot for them. Indeed, such has been the alarm about the effect on tourism that the city's tonier designer stores agreed to contribute 2 percent of their net profits to the cost of reopening of the Uffizi -- although the size of the donation suggested that they were striking a fine balance between the art and their balance sheets. "On the day of the bomb we were worried" that tourists would flee the city, said Franco Cervelin, of the hotel managers' association. "But we saw how tourists reacted, and those who were here stayed for the most part. A few left. But there was no exodus." |
616276_1 | Bishops Pass Resolution Warning Against Abortion in Health Plan | specialized care. "In communities across our land, we serve the sick and pick up the pieces of a failing system," the bishops' resolution said. Emphasis on Universal Care The resolution did not offer any specific health-care plan but proposed broad guidelines for evaluating what emerges from the Administration and Congress. The bishops emphasized the need for universal access to health care, placing a priority on services for the poor. They also stressed the need to restrain costs and to incorporate a variety of public and private health-care providers in the system. Finally, they insisted on respect for human life "from conception to natural death." Two groups that favor Government financing for abortion, the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights and Catholics for a Free Choice, disputed the bishops' assertion that a national health plan should not require abortion opponents to pay taxes for something they morally oppose. "To withhold funds for abortion is to interfere with women's decisions about reproduction, and most religious Americans don't want the Government to interfere," said Ann Thompson Cook, executive director of the coalition, which represents 36 national religious groups and church agencies. Room for Maneuvering The resolution will guide the bishops' testimony and lobbying when Congress takes up the Administration's health-care proposals. But it does not specify what stance bishops should take on a health-care proposal that includes abortion coverage. "We don't try to bind the hands of those who do Congressional liaison" for the conference, said Bishop Edward J. O'Donnell, the auxiliary bishop of St. Louis. Bishop O'Donnell, who served on the committee that drafted the resolution, said the document provided "parameters" and was not meant "to be so precise we don't have room for maneuvering." The bishops also elected Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston as the conference's new secretary. He replaces Archbishop Robert F. Sanchez, who resigned as archbishop of Santa Fe, N.M., following charges of sexual misconduct with young women. In other actions today, the bishops granted dioceses wide latitude in setting the age for confirmation, and they passed a resolution expressing their impatience with Rome's delay in approving an English translation of the new Catechism of the Catholic Church. The delay was reported to be a result of differences over the traditional use of masculine nouns and pronouns when both men and women were indicated. Much of today was spent in discussions and workshops on the state of religious orders. |
616251_2 | Airlines' Passengers Waging Guerrilla War to Trim Fares | executives say that such gamesmanship is difficult to measure, but they contend it has added tens of millions of dollars to their recent annual losses. And travel agents agree that the flying public is hunting for deals with more determination than ever. "Consumers always wanted to get the lowest possible fare," said Donald J. Carty, American Airlines' executive vice president for finance and planning. "But more and more people are looking for it." The trend is partly fed by the legions of business travelers who are trying to squeeze more flights from their travel budgets, said Severin Borenstein, a professor of economics at the University of California at Davis who studies the airline industry. In their search for fare bargains, Mr. Borenstein added, many travelers comb magazines and newsletters that serve frequent travelers and scroll through home-computer networks like Prodigy and Compuserve that allow consumers to check fares. The big carriers say they are fighting back, trying to tighten up the loopholes in their fare structure. Their sophisticated computer systems enable them to improve their monitoring, they say, and employees at airports are checking tickets more carefully. Some airlines, like USAir, confiscate tickets if they catch a passenger using hidden-city or back-to-back fares. But others, including Delta and Continental Airlines, say they tolerate back-to-back ticketing because the practice technically breaks no rules. Pressure on Travel Agents Many airlines exhort travel agents not to write hidden-city or back-to-back tickets. But travel agents say customers will simply take their business elsewhere if their request for such service is rebuffed. "It puts us in a very difficult position," said Estelle Lessack, president of Travel Trends in Fort Lee, N.J. "The whole structure is ridiculous." The airlines argue that consumers enter a type of contract with the airlines to be flown to a certain destination, and the fact that their flight stops briefly at a hub city is immaterial to their agreement. By beating the system, they add, passengers hurt those who play and pay by the rules. "It is clear to me that the customers are misrepresenting themselves," said Bill Brunger, vice president of revenue management at Continental Airlines. But many passengers reject that argument. They see an airline ticket not as a contract but more like a ticket to a baseball game. If ticket holders want to leave the game in the seventh inning, they have every right to do so, and |
614933_0 | Learning More About Learning Disabilities | I want to commend the article ("What 'Learning Disability' Means," May 30) and Beryl Kaufman for further informing the public about learning disabilities. Because those individuals with learning disabilities are of at least average intelligence, it should be emphasized that they can learn as well as their average intelligent peers and should be given every opportunity to do so. We all have different learning styles. Each of us uses a variety of strategies with which we receive, store and retrieve information in order to learn about and evaluate our environment. People with learning disabilities do not have these strategies at their finger tips. Strategies for learning need to be systematically introduced to these students, and have to be rehearsed and continually applied to specific learning situations in order to foster automaticity. Along with the awareness of the need for strategies intervention, educators must be made aware of the importance of providing the much needed educational accommodations discussed by Ms. Kaufman. As a member of the Connecticut Association for Children With Learning Disabilities, my experience has shown that this organiszation has gone to great lengths to educate parents, educators and the community-at-large about the specific needs of indivduals with learning disabilities through its seminars and other media. It is additionally important that those of us who are knowledgeable in the field communicate this information to colleagues and friends. I wish to expand upon Ms. Kaufman's statements about how we might best help our children who have learning disabilities. We need to be supportive, as Ms. Kaufman suggests, but along with that support we must offer our children opportunities for maximum success. Many of these children experience frustration and set-backs along educational and social paths. We need, therefore, to capitalize on that which they do best, and encourage them to take one step at a time into new territory, when they have mastered previous steps. There is an important key to success that was not mentioned in this article. As important as it is to advocate for our children, students and employees with special needs, it is even more important to teach them to be their own advocates. By helping them to recognize and accept their own strengths and weaknesses, and by teaching them to recognize and verbalize their needs for special educational accommodations, we can help them to achieve their goals through self-advocacy. NANCY R. DIAMOND Greenwich |
614887_7 | French Movies Offer Tickets To Controversy | to know." One of my more arresting moviegoing experiences was seeing Jean Marboeuf's "Petain" in the afternoon and Claude Chabrol's "Oeil de Vichy" ("Eye of Vichy") the same evening. Both deal with France during the German occupation but in entirely different ways. "Petain" is historical fiction of the sort that demands the eye and the ear of a George Bernard Shaw, neither of which Mr. Marboeuf has. Yet the subject rivets. One is inclined to sit through it, mind alert. Jacques Dufilho gives a waxy portrayal of Petain, the hero of Verdun who, for whatever misguided reasons, agreed to head the French Government during the occupation. As Pierre Laval, the man responsible for France's most infamous dealings with the Nazis, Jean Yanne is sweaty and evil from the start. The Chabrol film is something else: a documentary composed almost entirely of cheery newsreels and propaganda films turned out in France during the occupation. The film has been criticized for not showing what was really going on at the time the newsreels and propaganda films were made, though Mr. Chabrol's own voice-over narration bridges most of those gaps. The existence of the European Community has stiffened the resolve of member nations, including France, to protect local film makers and their films. Americans clearly are disturbed by French threats to enforce quotas that demand that 40 percent of films shown on television here be French. This is one of the reasons Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, was in attendance at the Cannes film festival. France remains a vital market for American movies, on television as well as in theaters. The French seem to regard Mr. Valenti's charm as a lethal weapon because of his success as a negotiator on behalf of the American companies. At Cannes, I was told, the word went out never to leave him alone with Jacques Toubon, the new Minister of Culture and successor to Jack Lang. As they say here, nous verrons. FILM VIEW Correction: June 27, 1993, Sunday An article on June 13 about French films referred incorrectly to the director Jean Aurenche. With the movie's director, Jean Delannoy, Mr. Aurenche was co-adapter of the Andre Gide novel on which "La Symphonie Pastorale" was based, and he wrote the screenplay with Pierre Bost. He collaborated again with Bost on the screenplay for "Devil in the Flesh," directed by Claude Autant-Lara. |
614916_1 | The Creative Ferment Behind the Glass Boxes | Though many recall this period chiefly for producing tall glass boxes and short concrete bunkers, these writings reveal a time seething with creative ferment. As World War II winds down, the modern movement regroups under the leadership of CIAM (the Congres Internationale d'Architecture Moderne). But now, instead of projecting a modern utopia onto the screen of the future, architects turn to the task of building it. The pioneers of the modern movement (Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe) are still active and vocal, but they are joined in the forum by younger colleagues with ideas of their own (Peter and Alison Smithson, Louis Kahn, Aldo van Eyck). While the idea of modernism remains intact, it becomes increasingly fluid under the pressure of intense internal debate. Are monuments appropriate to modern life? How should the unique character of places be preserved? Should organic architecture replace rationalism? What are the uses of tradition? Ultimately, the pressure proves greater than the movement can stand. By 1959, CIAM has collapsed in disarray. Polemics by Jane Jacobs and Mr. Venturi hold modernism up to ridicule. Finally 1968 erupts (Columbia's architecture school was one of its riot-torn hot spots), signaling a crisis in the liberal culture to which modernism has been allied. The record Ms. Ockman has assembled (with the collaboration of Edward Eigen) goes far toward dispelling a set of myths long associated with this period. Apparently, postwar modernism had not hardened into a rigid style. It had not become a brain-dead movement, content to carry out an agenda formulated in the 1920's. Postwar modern architects were not a group of arrogant egos, indifferent to popular needs and tastes. They were not immune to the beauty of buildings from the past, nor opposed to learning from them. These negations of conventional wisdom are not exactly a revelation. Ms. Ockman has not uncovered a secret history of modernism, unsuspected by earlier scholars. It is the accumulated weight of documents that gives her book the power of a contemporary manifesto. What we have here is a set of trial exhibits from which we must deduce the prosecutor's case. It is not a difficult deduction to make. For those common myths about modernism were, of course, the foundation on which post-modernism was founded. By exploding those myths, Ms. Ockman exposes the weakness of that foundation. If the core values of post-modernism had already been established by 1968, |
614976_3 | Running Away to Sea: A Brief but Shipshape Trip | that it is dangerous to ignore tradition at sea, so with the rest of the passengers, I scaled pancakes, missing badly. The man on the bridge threw his own pancakes and came closer. Once we reached Long Island Sound, Captain Eginton gave orders to hoist the Clipper's 5,000 square feet of sail. The passengers joined in hauling for a minute or two to raise the two larger sails. It was not quite 10 A.M., and we were left to our own devices. I was eager for distractions. In a pattern that continued throughout the journey, the other passengers were mostly paired off in what appeared to be married couples. They were all friendly enough, but conversations tended to resemble the banter at a table of a wedding reception where no one knew one another: "The ship is very beautiful, isn't she?" or "Did it take you long to get here?" Steerage Class, Too I chatted with the captain at the wheel, learning that on our course to Shelter Island we would be bucking tides and head winds. The routes, he said, were determined largely by weather conditions, with possible destinations including Block Island and Newport, R.I., and on the longer sails Martha's Vineyard. I learned that the ship was nine years old and had been built in Rhode Island on the model of a Baltimore coastal schooner similar to the kind used by Yankee privateers in the Revolutionary War. The design had been adapted especially for passengers and was certified to take as many as 56 overnight passengers. There were two other kinds of cabins in addition to ours: one a little larger that cost $269 a person for a weekend voyage, and two so-called owners' cabins, which have their own heads and showers, for $289 a person. There is also something like steerage class available in the dining hall, where 14 bunks flop down and can be curtained off to provide privacy. Such accommodations, which went unused on our sail, cost $229 a bunk for the two-day sail. After chatting, I began scanning the horizon. We passed New London, Conn., and I thought of Eugene O'Neill, who grew up there and wrote of "dat ol' davil, sea." We passed North Dumpling Island, where we saw a lighthouse and a recently built, scaled-down version of Stonehenge. Mr. Vandewater told me the island had been purchased by someone who had playfully |
614861_0 | U.S. Pushes for a Smoking Ban on Flights Abroad | Responding to complaints and new worries about the effect of second-hand smoke, the Clinton Administration is working to speed the day when smoking is banned on all international flights into and out of the United States. Currently, United States airlines allow smoking on all international flights, except to Canada. An international agreement adopted by a United Nations agency urges that smoking be banned on all flights between countries by 1996, but it has no enforcement provisions. So the Administration has begun trying to negotiate regional or bilateral agreements that would ban smoking for passengers and crew members without putting United States airlines at a disadvantage. About 87 million passengers fly into or out of the United States annually on 800,000 flights. About half of the passengers, and the flights, are American. "We're in the process of negotiating with various governments," said Mortimer L. Downey, Deputy Secretary of Transportation. "It seems a sensible direction to go. Lots of people express the view that they don't want to be captive of someone else's smoking. The confirmed smoker may find himself discommoded, but the bulk of the people will welcome the ban." Risks Comparable to Asbestos A study by the Environmental Protection Agency last January found that second-hand cigarette smoke posed as great a cancer risk as asbestos, arsenic and benzene, being responsible for 3,000 deaths annually. The study said second-hand smoke increased children's risks of asthma, bronchitis, middle-ear infections and pneumonia. Smoke also obstructs airlines' air-filtering systems, hindering the air circulation. Smoking has been banned on all commercial flights within the United States since 1990, and the International Civil Aviation Organization has endorsed a ban on smoking on international flights by July 1996. But that United Nations agency has no enforcement power, relying only on the pressure of public opinion, so the Clinton Administration is hoping to speed the process by revising its agreements with other nations directly. One such agreement is expected to be concluded shortly, said Don Newman, the United States representative to the international aviation organization. It would involve Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, Mr. Newman said, adding, "It looks like that's going into effect this year." Chris Chiames, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, which represents the major domestic airlines, said those companies support the United Nations effort to bring about a worldwide ban. "But they would not support an international ban only on |
615181_2 | Rum's Punch | to make more rum. French privateers competed with American and British vessels, using rum made in Bordeaux. Some rum is still made in New England. It is heavy, dark and pungent, and rarely drunk elsewhere. Bordeaux, too, still deals in rum, but theirs comes from Martinique and the African island of Reunion. American tourists, flooding into the Caribbean in the 1960's, discovered rum drinks and brought them home. But more often than not, the rum was obliterated by the sugar, the flavorings and the bizarre combinations of tropical fruits those drinks demand. That's still the case; we Americans use immense quantities of rum but almost exclusively as a mixer. It's usually clear, bland stuff that does little more than provide an alcoholic backdrop. What a pity. For, in spite of its shady past, rum on its own, or with a bit of lime and sugar -- the original daiquiri -- is a delightful drink. Rum is the simplest of all drinkable distillates. Others, like whisky, are made from starch, which must first be changed into sugar. Rum is made directly from sugar cane or, more precisely, from molasses, the residue of cane that's been crystallized. Old-style heavier rums are still made in pot stills, batch by batch. The slow fermentation can take as long as 12 days. Lighter rums, more delicate in flavor, are made in continuous operation stills in about a day. The caramel added for darkening doesn't affect the taste, however. Rum is, and always has been, a principal product of the Caribbean, though it is now made wherever sugar grows. Most rum drunk in America is distilled in Puerto Rico and shipped to Florida or other East Coast states, for bottling. Always a source of good rum, Puerto Rico became even more important after Bacardi moved there from Cuba. Each of the islands produces rum of a distinct character. Rum from Jamaica and Barbados is fuller-bodied than Puerto Rico's, which, like Cuba's, is light. One of the finest rums of all, Barbancourt, comes from Haiti, where a special yeast and chalky soil (resembling that of the Cognac region of France) produce a superb, medium-bodied, richly flavored drink. But Haiti's troubles have played havoc with its rum business. So have Cuba's. Once, its rums were world renowned. No more. And that good rum waiting for its owners to come of age: what happened to all those barrels? SPIRITS |
615015_3 | Two Areas Fight Radar-Tower Sites | for the Kennedy tower. "It is being considered," he said. "But in order for the radar to work effectively it needs to be 8 to 12 miles from the runway, and Floyd Bennett Field is closer to Kennedy than that. That is why we zeroed in on these particular sites in Roslyn and Bellmore." In 1990 in West Sayville the National Weather Service proposed a similar tower two to three times more powerful than the F.A.A. model. Residents opposed the plan, citing health and safety, and the tower was built on Federal land in Brookhaven. "We feel they are trying to shove this down our throats," Mrs. Jacobsen said. "How many planes go down at La Guardia? This tower is supposed to save the lives at the airport, but at what price to the lives of the people in the community?" Parents Against Radiating Our Kids, a group of residents from seven towns within two miles of the North Bellmore site, will brief residents tomorrow at 8 P.M. in the Saw Mill Road Elementary School in North Bellmore on the proposed towers. The speakers will include Richard M. Kessel, the state consumer official and Democratic candidate for Nassau County Executive, who was reared in South Bellmore; Nassau County Clerk Doreen Banks and Geri Barish, co-chairwoman of 1 in 9, a group that advocates increased studies of the causes of breast cancer. "My concern here," Mr. Kessel said, "is that we really don't know right now what the impact of electromagentic fields can be on health. And we may never know. Does it cause cancer? Does it have other negative impacts on health? Until there are guarantees that electromagnetic fields are in no way dangerous to public health I think these towers should not be allowed to be built. Public health and safety must come first." The principal engineer of the Doppler system, Mark Miglietta, said his office had received several calls from residents. He said there were two types of radiation, high-energy ionizing radiation like X-rays, which can alter genes, and low-energy nonionizing radiation used in heating like microwave ovens. Risk to Humana Minimized The towers on which construction is scheduled to begin in January 1995, would emit low-energy nonionzing radiation, which, Mr. Miglietta said, presents little risk to people. He said the main beam, which is in constant motion, would not point at schools or residential areas, but pass |
615103_0 | IN SHORT: NONFICTION | INTELLECTUAL HISTORY THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES Music, Science, and the Natural Order of the Universe. By Jamie James. Grove, $20.95. Jamie James, the New York music critic for The Times of London, argues in "The Music of the Spheres" that music and science were born of an ancient Greek obsession with understanding the order of the universe. Pythagoras' discovery that harmonic intervals, like octaves and major fifths, could be written as mathematical ratios meant that the divine harmonies of the cosmos could be deduced from the distances between celestial bodies. Mr. James maintains that this belief in an ordered and harmonious creation -- what he calls "the Great Theme" -- directly contributed to the rise of opera, higher mathematics and Freemasonry, and preoccupied Western thought until the 19th century. Mr. James exuberantly peruses Platonic texts, Hermetic legends, Renaissance mnemonic devices, a Schoenberg poem; but for all his wit and love of music trivia, the author never gives up his underlying polemic. The villain in this story is Romanticism, which he regards as a self-indulgent movement that worshiped musicians and composers who portrayed man caught in the throes of his own passions. When the Great Theme asserted itself again, in the 12-tone music of Schoenberg and Stockhausen, the 20th century was not willing to embrace it. Although the notion of a perfectly ordered cosmos is defunct, Mr. James suggests that if we could just turn our thoughts away from ourselves, we might at least be able to grasp the prominent place that the Great Theme occupied for so much of human history. |
618445_0 | Loss of Species Is Worse Than Thought in Brazil's Amazon | THE destruction of habitat and loss of living species as a result of deforestation in the Amazon basin of Brazil is much greater than had previously been believed, according to a new analysis of satellite photographs. But the same photographs also show that the annual rate of deforestation is lower than had been thought. The reason for the apparent paradox, say the authors of the unusually meticulous and detailed study, is that the disruptive impact of tree-cutting on plants, animals and microbes is not confined to the cut-over area but extends deep into the remaining forest, as well as into isolated "islands" of forest in the middle of otherwise denuded acreage. Past estimates have not taken these effects into account, but the authors of the latest analysis say that it more than doubles the area of ecological damage caused by deforestation itself. "The effect of deforestation on biological diversity and on habitat is much greater than the deforestation per se," said Dr. Compton Tucker, a biologist and tropical forest expert at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. He and Dr. David Skole, a physical scientist at the University of New Hampshire, reported their findings in the current issue of the journal Science. More than half the world's species live in tropical forests, and many biologists have been sounding an alarm about the forests' destruction. Preserving them has become a major point of contention between the developing countries of the tropics, which see the forests as important to their economic development, and environmentalists in industrialized countries who fear a mass extinction of species. Over more than two years, Dr. Tucker and Dr. Skole examined photographs of the Brazilian Amazon taken by the Landsat satellite and by weather satellites; they also studied vegetation maps of Brazil. Rather than take a broad-brush approach to assessing deforestation, they carefully identified and excluded from their count of forest acreage such features as open savanna, water and roads. They hoped in this way to get a more accurate estimate of the extent of forestation. Assuming that the "edge effect" of deforestation extends into the forest up to one kilometer (or a little more than six-tenths of a mile) beyond the forest perimeter, they identified all the edge areas they could find. These included clearings caused not only by deforestation for agriculture but those cuts made by rubber tappers, mine operators, airfield and road construction |
618443_5 | Researchers Track Pivotal Pathway That Makes Cells Divide | I ever was, if not more so." The initial work on the ras gene began around 1980, when scientists realized that the gene could contribute to cancer and thus merited a designation as an oncogene. Like most of the 50 other known oncogenes, the ras gene was named after the animal species and tumor type in which its nefarious effects were first discovered -- in this case, as the cause of a rat sarcoma, or connective-tissue cancer. Mutant versions of the ras gene were soon detected in human cancers. In one especially heady discovery, biologists discovered that the only difference between a robust version of ras that is vital to life, and the malevolent version that helps cause cancer, is a single subunit, or base pair, out of the many thousands of base pairs that make up the gene. Researchers also determined that this tiny flaw, or point mutation, had a startling impact on the ras protein. Normally, when the ras protein is in an inactive state, it clasps a small molecule called GDP. Upon being elbowed into action by a stimulant like a growth factor, the protein tosses away the GDP and picks up a more active molecule called GTP from the cell's own cache, an exchange that allows the ras protein to pass its excitatory message along toward the nucleus. Once its transmission chore is through, the ras protein obligingly switches itself off, using a bit of its own enzymatic machinery to transform the active GTP into the more sedate molecule, GDP. The point mutation destroys this act of self-control, leaving ras always gripping GTP and thus in an incessantly stimulated condition -- whether an external signal to grow is there or not. Yet for all their insights and enthusiasms, biologists soon hit a roadblock. They did not know exactly how the ras protein received the growth signal from the outside world, or which subsidiary proteins it communicated with once it was stimulated. The "ras pathway" became a coveted but elusive goal that sent many young researchers into spirals of despair. Series of Breakthroughs The breakthroughs began with the dawn of this decade, as scientists in disparate fields realized they were all working on the same problem. Experts in fruit-fly genetics discovered that a gene they had studied for its distorting effects on the development of the eye of the fly was somehow connected to the celebrated ras |
617173_7 | Suburban Visionary Has Big Plans To Improve Another Man's Project | the development of the rest of Long Island, before it's too late," said James Carroll, a Valley Stream man trained in suburban design who helped organize the conference. Nice but Unworkable The designers of Mr. Breslin's proposal say that while Mr. Blankman's design may look nice, it is unworkable. "A lot of what Norman addresses are fundamental issues that we all should be addressing," said Ralph J. Martin, Mr. Breslin's project planning consultant. "Creating open space and pedestrian connections, those are all wonderful fundamentals." But he added that neotraditional communities do not work on the larger scale of the Breslin plan, and that the concentration of all the dwellings on only a third of the property would be unacceptable to local residents, who are already objecting to the densities in Mr. Breslin's proposal. "It's a higher density that no one would find palatable," Mr. Martin said. Mr. Breslin believes that his plan already incorporates many of the ideas Mr. Blankman espouses and that his road system will accommodate the traffic generated by the development for the next 40 years at least. With its emphasis on affordable housing and its potential to draw young buyers, he sees it as a latter-day Levittown, with many more amenities and varieties of housing. "I mention Levittown and I get horrified looks," Mr. Breslin said. "But now we're 50 years later. We've got a better product." Still, some residents of communities surrounding the Breslin property say there are aspects of Mr. Blankman's proposal they would like to see adapted for Mr. Breslin's. Connie Kepert, who heads the Longwood Alliance, an organization of civic groups and P.T.A.'s in the area served by the Longwood School District, says she likes Mr. Blankman's emphasis on pedestrian access, and the close mix of shops, offices and homes. But whether Mr. Blankman's ideas will have any impact on the Breslin plan is unclear. Carole S. Swick, planning commissioner for the Town of Brookhaven, wrote to Mr. Blankman in May that she supported neotraditional communities, but that the comment period for the town's environmental review of the project had expired. She added, however, that "the town's analysis is ongoing." As far as Mr. Blankman is concerned, a positive reaction is a sign that people have had it with the status quo. "This is an opportunity for us to save hundreds of thousands of acres from going the same way," he said. |
617174_7 | Suburban Visionary Has Big Plans To Improve Another Man's Project | proposal say that while Mr. Blankman's design may look nice, it is unworkable. "A lot of what Norman addresses are fundamental issues that we all should be addressing," said Ralph J. Martin, Mr. Breslin's project planning consultant. "Creating open space and pedestrian connections, those are all wonderful fundamentals." But he added that neotraditional communities do not work on the larger scale of the Breslin plan, and that the concentration of all the dwellings on only a third of the property would be unacceptable to local residents, who are already objecting to the densities in Mr. Breslin's proposal. "It's a higher density that no one would find palatable," Mr. Martin said. Mr. Breslin believes that his plan already incorporates many of the ideas Mr. Blankman espouses and that his road system will accommodate the traffic generated by the development for the next 40 years at least. With its emphasis on affordable housing and its potential to draw young buyers, he sees it as a latter-day Levittown, with many more amenities and varieties of housing. "I mention Levittown and I get horrified looks," Mr. Breslin said. "But now we're 50 years later. We've got a better product." Still, some residents of communities surrounding the Breslin property say there are aspects of Mr. Blankman's proposal they would like to see adapted for Mr. Breslin's. Connie Kepert, who heads the Longwood Alliance, an organization of civic groups and P.T.A.'s in the area served by the Longwood School District, says she likes Mr. Blankman's emphasis on pedestrian access, and the close mix of shops, offices and homes. But whether Mr. Blankman's ideas will have any impact on the Breslin plan is unclear. Carole S. Swick, planning commissioner for the Town of Brookhaven, wrote to Mr. Blankman in May that she supported neotraditional communities, but that the comment period for the town's environmental review of the project had expired. She added, however, that "the town's analysis is ongoing." As far as Mr. Blankman is concerned, a positive reaction is a sign that people have had it with the status quo. "This is an opportunity for us to save hundreds of thousands of acres from going the same way," he said. Correction: June 26, 1993, Saturday Captions on Wednesday with illustrations of two competing Suffolk County housing plans were reversed in some copies. The larger illustration was of Norman E. Blankman's plan; the other showed Wilbur Breslin's. |
617201_0 | Food Notes | Tropical Tastes A muggy 85 degrees gave Monday, the first day of summer, a tropical feel. Inside the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, where 1,000 exhibitors were installed at the International Fancy Food and Confection Show, the temperature may have been cooler, but the taste was tropical. Mango, passion fruit, pineapple, banana, guanabana, carambola and guava are flavors of the moment in teas, cookies, juices, preserves, marinades, chips, ices and dried fruits. Harney & Sons of Salisbury, Conn., introduced mango and passion fruit teabags. White Coffee of Long Island City, Queens, has passion fruit tea and something called blue lagoon tea. Tropical teas in flavors like banana and mango were also displayed by companies from Sri Lanka, among them Dalcott, Queen's Empire and Standard Trading. One of the more intriguing tropical items was Clairine's star-fruit jam from Malaysia. There was also Juliana jackfruit butter imported from Jamaica by Marthel's Products of Bellmore, L.I. Paradise Farms introduced Hawaiian saltwater taffy in tropical fruit flavors, and Lost Acres of Ripon, Wis., was promoting its pineapple mustard. Tropical Blossom Honey Company of Edgewater, Fla., had several spreads, including key lime-coconut and papaya-mamey. Offering a change of pace from figs and raisins were richly flavored dried tropical fruits like bananas from Timber Crest Farms in Sonoma, Calif.; mangoes from La Samaria in Santa Marta, Colombia, and cape gooseberries from Caramba in Bogota, Colombia. The rain forest is a hot button. New candies using rain forest nuts are being made by From the Rainforest in New York and Rainforest Crunch in Montpelier, Vt. Flavors of the Rainforest marinades and salad dressings from Simply Delicious in Cedar Grove, N.C., and rain forest preserves by Lost Acres were also on display. These companies say they donate 1 to 5 percent of their sales to groups dedicated to preserving rain forests. Also in great abundance at the show, although not necessarily tropical, were salsas, Thai seasonings, chips, flavored cocoas and coffees, including hot and cold cappuccinos in cloying flavors. Many booths had single-serving bags of coffee, like a teabag, and pastas in crazy shapes like stars and Christmas trees. What? No dinosaurs? There were olive oils and olive-canola blends in a dozen fragrant flavors, like Consorzio's porcini oil and rosemary oil, Dal Raccolto's juniper oil and hot-pepper oil, Gorilla Gardens' herb-blend oil, Riz-Oli's tomato oil, Boyajian's orange oil, Loriva's Mediterranean herb oil and Perseus's bouquet garni oil. Tamarind |
617201_1 | Food Notes | flavored dried tropical fruits like bananas from Timber Crest Farms in Sonoma, Calif.; mangoes from La Samaria in Santa Marta, Colombia, and cape gooseberries from Caramba in Bogota, Colombia. The rain forest is a hot button. New candies using rain forest nuts are being made by From the Rainforest in New York and Rainforest Crunch in Montpelier, Vt. Flavors of the Rainforest marinades and salad dressings from Simply Delicious in Cedar Grove, N.C., and rain forest preserves by Lost Acres were also on display. These companies say they donate 1 to 5 percent of their sales to groups dedicated to preserving rain forests. Also in great abundance at the show, although not necessarily tropical, were salsas, Thai seasonings, chips, flavored cocoas and coffees, including hot and cold cappuccinos in cloying flavors. Many booths had single-serving bags of coffee, like a teabag, and pastas in crazy shapes like stars and Christmas trees. What? No dinosaurs? There were olive oils and olive-canola blends in a dozen fragrant flavors, like Consorzio's porcini oil and rosemary oil, Dal Raccolto's juniper oil and hot-pepper oil, Gorilla Gardens' herb-blend oil, Riz-Oli's tomato oil, Boyajian's orange oil, Loriva's Mediterranean herb oil and Perseus's bouquet garni oil. Tamarind Tree heat-and-serve vegetarian Indian dishes and Gelidia blood-orange juice imported from Sicily were delicious. They should be available in supermarkets soon. Among the more unusual items were Madia di Toscano truffled honey imported by Tartuferia of Weehawken, N.J., and pure duck fat from D'Artagnan of Jersey City. Unappetizing probably best describes the hollow chocolate apple with a gummy candy worm inside made by Thompson Candy in Meriden, Conn. Strawberry Festival Greig Farm in Red Hook, N.Y., is holding a strawberry festival on Saturday and Sunday. Among the features: picking contests, a chicken barbecue, strawberry confections, hay rides and post-Jurassic animals, all of them tame, for the children to see. Admission is free; the food isn't. Already picked strawberries will be on sale, or you can pick your own, for a fee. Information and directions: (914) 758-1234. Winning Recipe When the Mexican film "Like Water for Chocolate" was released, Miramax Films, its distributor, ran a contest for the best recipe inspired by the film. The winner, by Gwen Gulliksen of Charlottesville, Va., was grilled quail mole stuffed with apricots with a sauce of chipotle peppers, chocolate and prunes. Copies can be obtained by sending a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Kaufman/Widness, 350 |
617163_1 | For Some Catholic Girls, Dreams of Serving at Altar Are No Longer Just Dreams | visited Catholic churches around the nation for research on a book called "Holy Siege" (Harper San Francisco, 1992). By his estimate, 1 of 4 Catholic churches nationwide uses girls at the altar for at least some Masses. Even in a church where many women accept that they cannot serve as priests, Mr. Briggs said, they want their young daughters to have equal rights. By some estimates, the practice of allowing girls to serve may have declined somewhat from a peak a decade ago. In 1985, reflecting that movement, the Catholic bishops of the United States asked the Vatican to lift the ban on altar girls. While the Vatican has yet to act, most bishops tend to "look the other way," Mr. Briggs said. In some rare cases, like in Rochester, the bishop has publicly condoned their use. "This grows out of our experience and understanding of what we see as the role of the church," said the Rev. Michael F. Conboy, pastor of St. Joseph's. "There are times when the practice of the faith precedes the rules and regulations." Father Conboy has the support of the head of the Rochester Diocese, Bishop Matthew H. Clark. In New York City, however, where theologically conservative bishops hold sway, altar girls serve without fanfare, making it difficult to say just how widespread the practice is. On two occasions, reflecting an atmosphere of discomfort, priests who do allow altar girls asked that a reporter and photographer not visit. "We can't go public," one priest said. "If we do, we won't have altar girls anymore." Joseph G. Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, said the official policy of the archdiocese was that as long as the Vatican was opposed, altar girls were not permitted to serve in its 413 parishes. "If the Holy See were to change their position, then that would be a different situation," he said. Nonetheless, even an auxiliary bishop to John Cardinal O'Connor recently officiated at a Mass with altar girls at a Manhattan Church. Periodically, there are reports that the Vatican is reconsidering the ban on girls. The latest flurry came after the Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, acknowledged last month for the first time that the issue was under study. 'It Was Fun' By contrast, at St. Joseph's in Penfield, a church with 2,800 families, altar girls have long been an accepted fact. Even the boys don't |
614540_0 | China's Population Concerns the World | To the Editor: As Chinese scientists committed to research and training in population and health in the world's most populated country, we are seriously concerned by pressure to withdraw international assistance to China's family planning and research programs. China has made an unprecedented effort in the last two decades to control rapid population growth in a country that has to feed 22 percent of the world's population on 7 percent of the world's arable land under relatively poor economic and environmental conditions. The Chinese family planning program has faced great difficulties and challenges, and the Chinese people, especially Chinese peasants, have made great personal sacrifice for the collective interest of the country, which is considered as the greatest virtue in our culture. Mistakes in family planning policy can happen in a society that is still largely rural and economically underdeveloped and has a long tradition that emphasizes the collective interest at the expense of individual freedom. Family planning workers, who were brought up on values that emphasize collectivism and condemn individualism can act in a way that is not acceptable by international standards. But it is premature and unfair to condemn the entire program for some cases of human rights violation. As scientists, we value human rights and scientific integrity. We have observed many positive consequences of fertility decline. Chinese children, whether rural or urban, are better fed and clothed. They have a much better chance to go to school, attend a university and have a brighter future. The family standard of living has improved significantly. What if each of us had to support a family of six, instead of one or two children? What would be the world's situation if China abandoned efforts to control rapid population growth? China has provided better health and family planning services, developed and introduced better contraceptive methods, conducted advanced research and training in population and related areas, promoted public education and communication. The integration of China into the world community is important for world stability and is beneficial for the improvement of human rights within China. There is great danger in pressure on governments or international organizations to interfere with this vital process. Experience tells us that any attempt to force China to change by isolating it is doomed to fail. ZHAO BAIGE, TU PING GU BAOCHANG, GAO RESHEN Beijing, June 1, 1993 |
614606_0 | Sagunto Journal; Architects? They Could Be Thrown to the Lions | Over the centuries, as it lost sculpted columns and stone blocks to newer construction sites, the Roman theater in Sagunto slowly took on the appearance of a ruin. But, though badly scarred, its fine semicircular auditorium survived to remind people of 2,000 years of history. Today, the theater still stands on a hillside below a Moorish castle overlooking Sagunto, but it is no longer recognizable. Rows of stone seats that were once crumbling have been hidden by polished white limestone, while the traditional view of the auditorium has been blocked by a huge new stage front. Valencia's provincial government is clearly proud of its $6 million restoration. And with three years' work almost complete, it hopes Sagunto will soon join Orange in France, Verona in Italy and Merida in western Spain as towns that have become cultural centers thanks to their Roman theaters. But celebrations may be premature. Most townspeople, it seems, strongly dislike the radical face-lift given the theater. "I'm sure that with time they'll get used to it," Mayor Manuel Girona said. "But it's true that many people are upset because they are used to the old image." A still bigger headache is the doing of Juan Marco Molines. In 1990 the 59-year-old Valencia lawyer sought a court order to halt work on the theater and in May a provincial tribunal finally ruled in his favor. Now it is up to Spain's Supreme Court to decide if the entire "new" theater should be dismantled. A Debate on 'Rescues' "It's very imprudent to stop work so close to the end if you really care about conservation," said Manuel Portaceli, a Spanish architect who designed the project with Giorgio Grassi of Italy. "And if we're told to return it to its original state, does that mean hiding things we have found?" While Sagunto talks of little else, the dispute has also stirred interest beyond Spain because it touches on an issue that frequently divides museum curators, art historians, archeologists and architects: how far should science and design go when it comes to "rescuing" old paintings, sculptures and monuments? The question arose when I. M. Pei's glass pyramid was built in the main courtyard of the Louvre. It arose again when the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel exposed the "shocking" colors that Michelangelo originally used. Now, it seems, the debate is being stretched even further. "If one extreme is simple conservation, |
612753_0 | Genetically Altered Foods Need Regulating | To the Editor: The "cool look at genetically altered foods" in Jane Brody's May 19 Personal Health column is in our view a naive look. She describes much of genetic engineering's potential to benefit humankind. However, she mischaracterizes the Food and Drug Administration's regulatory approach, on which it is now seeking comment. That approach amounts to putting companies on the honor system to test genetically engineered foods for safety, and to come forward to the F.D.A. if they think there is a problem or if labeling is warranted. Ms. Brody appears sanguine that companies will perform needed safety tests. "Like traditionally bred foods," she states of genetically engineered foods, "they are being tested for growth characteristics, nutrient quality and taste before being marketed." Some certainly are, but can we be sure about all of them? In our view, it is naive, even irresponsible to assume that companies developing genetically engineered products will always carry out all needed tests for allergens and toxins in new varieties. Indeed, in the wake of health problems associated with Halcion, the Shiley heart valve, Dalkon Shield and breast implants, we must acknowledge that companies will occasionally make a deliberate decision to put a hazardous product on the market and to conceal that from regulators and the public to the extent possible. For these reasons, we believe that it would be prudent for the F.D.A. to engage in regulatory oversight of genetically engineered foods. There is no reason why society must accept the risks of new toxins or allergens in foods in order to reap the benefits of genetic engineering. Safety can be assured through several reasonable and relatively simple steps. The F.D.A. should require: (1) companies to notify it before marketing any genetically engineered food; (2) companies to submit data and studies demonstrating the safety of each product, and (3) labeling of all genetically engineered foods, so that consumers with allergies or cultural or religious concerns can make informed choices. JEAN M. HALLORAN MICHAEL K. HANSEN Yonkers, May 20, 1993 The writers are, respectively, director and research associate, Consumer Policy Institute, a division of Consumers Union. |
612679_0 | Wieden & Kennedy Co-Founder Resigns | David Kennedy, who co-founded Wieden & Kennedy 11 years ago and helped turn the iconoclastic agency into one of America's largest and most honored, will retire at the end of the year, the Portland, Ore., agency said yesterday. In a statement that confirmed a report this week in the trade publication Adweek, the agency said that Mr. Kennedy, 54, whose talents as an art director infused campaigns for clients like Nike Inc. with a quirky edginess, would not be directly replaced. "There's no way you replace a personality or a force like David Kennedy," Dan Wieden, the agency's president and creative director, said in the statement. Rather, he added, the agency's partners would assume his duties. Mr. Kennedy, who has served as the agency's chairman and creative director, said in the statement that he was retiring to return to school, adding that he would continue to work on a part-time basis on the agency's pro bono national account, the American Indian College Fund. Mr. Wieden said he and Mr. Kennedy had been "planning this for some time," adding that the agency's clients have all been notified of the coming change. THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING -- ADDENDA |
612692_2 | Riding Salsa's Coast-to-Coast Wave of Popularity | the market is nowhere near its peak. He projects that sales of Mexican sauces, which were $730 million in 1992, will double by the end of 1996. As the salsa market grows, so do the choices. The simplest salsas are based on chopped fresh tomatoes. Salsas are usually labeled according to the amount of firepower generated by the chilies, another necessary ingredient. They range from the mildest, which are no challenge to the timid, to the hottest, fueled with searing quantities of habanero chilies and sought after by people with asbestos palates. At their hottest, salsas provide a splash of accent in a dish, making all the flavors sing. But about 85 percent of the salsas sold are mild or medium, suitable for consuming by the bucket with tortilla chips (another growth industry) and beer or margaritas. Nutritionists howled when the Reagan Administration suggested that ketchup counted as a vegetable. What about salsa by the scoopful? The milder salsas can also be spooned onto grilled foods as a topping or served as a snappy condiment with eggs, seafood and vegetables. Salsas are one of the few popular snack foods that are fat-free or nearly so, which may contribute to their popularity. Many are also made without preservatives. A collection of 31 of them, all mildly spiced but in a range of styles, were assembled for a comparison tasting at The New York Times. The best offered complex, well-balanced flavor, with restrained spiciness. Textures ranged from uniformly fine (but never perfectly smooth) to chunky. Those that were not highly rated were often one-dimensional, tasting mostly of tomato and sometimes seeming more like tomato sauce than salsa. Although most salsas are tomato-based, the restless American palate, ever ready for some new tease, is showing signs of moving on. "Green salsas are starting to become more popular," said Ron Tanner, a spokesman for the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. For instance, a group of green salsas, or salsas verdes, are being introduced by D. L. Jardine in Buda (pronounced bee-YOU-da), Tex. The choices are cilantro and green olives, cactus, green chilies and green tomatillo. And Miguel's Stowe Away, one of 11 salsa makers in Vermont, of all places, is adding a green salsa to its line. Also becoming more visible are varietal salsas, which bear the name of the dominant chili, be it chipotle, habanero, cascabel, arbol or jalapeno. Appearing in |
612712_1 | Books of The Times; The Disabled Come Out Fighting | News & World Report, provides a useful history of the effort to give the disabled equality of access and opportunity. Its most original passages disclose the private feelings of the disabled in their own frequently bitter, and occasionally uplifting, words. Although some of the material in the book is needlessly repetitious and disorganized -- the details of the Disabilities Act are all over the place -- the reader does learn about the importance of such matters as choice of language. Disabled people resent words that suggest they're sick, pitiful, childlike, dependent or objects of admiration. They especially deplore any image that turns them into poster children, smiling through pain with fund-raising palms out. The word "invalid" is disliked; so is the phrase "afflicted with." Words like "brave" or "courageous" are not always appreciated because most disabled people aren't trying to be models of inspiration. Mr. Shapiro also finds that the disabled don't like such politically correct euphemisms as "the vertically challenged," the "differently abled," the "handi-capable" or the "physically amd mentally challenged." For a long time, the word "cripple" was considered derogatory, and it still is by many disabled people. But some have reclaimed "cripple," regarding it as a word that can stand for militant self-pride. President Roosevelt became the country's most famous disabled person. Americans admired his battle with polio and sent money to the March of Dimes, which he helped to found. In his time, families regarded the handicapped as abnormal. Even Roosevelt went to great lengths to hide the extent of his handicap; he was never seen in his wheelchair. Washington was a wheelchair-accessible city, with ramps at the White House, the Capitol and some of the public buildings. But it took legislation to make such access required by law. Disabled soldiers returning from the wars spurred Federal rehabilitation programs and called attention to other disabled Americans. The Paralyzed Veterans of America promoted medical care, and the President's Committee of the Handicapped, created during the Truman Administration, convinced employers to hire the disabled who had undergone rehabilitation. The new field of rehabilitation medicine and the institutes established by Dr. Howard Rusk and Dr. Henry Kessler were of major importance. Their rehabilitation centers expanded physical therapy to include occupational therapy. "The 1988 protest by deaf students at Gallaudet University was a defining moment for the disability rights movement," Mr. Shapiro writes. In that protest, students successfully insisted that |
614002_1 | Immigrant Dream of Plenty Turns to Misery and Regret | bountiful life all too often find themselves trapped in a bleak existence under the watchful eyes of criminals ready to resort to brutality against those who don't pay their full fare. The hundreds of Chinese who washed up on the shores of Queens early Sunday morning, following a horrifying journey aboard a rusting freighter called the Golden Venture, might do well to learn from the experiences of predecessors like Mr. Hua. "This is a modern-day slave trade," said Joann Lum, the program director at the Chinese Staff and Workers Association in New York, which organizes Chinese workers. Nonetheless, in the last two years, there has been a sharp rise in illegal immigration as ever-larger boatloads of Chinese are brought in by smugglers believed tied to organized crime. Several dozen ships have been intercepted at various American ports. Just Wednesday, two fishing boats loaded with about 300 illegal Chinese immigrants were seized south of San Francisco. A shot at the American dream does not come cheap. According to immigrants who have made the odyssey, the "snakeheads" or smugglers usually charge $20,000 to $50,000 for a one-way trip, forged passport and some counsel on what to do if caught. Pregnant women must pay more. One woman who refused to give her name said that smugglers with the best reputation for transporting people safely command the highest fees. Many immigrants sell their belongings to make a down payment, usually at least $1,500. The smugglers used to require at least 80 percent of the fare in advance, but immigrants said that competition has gotten so torrid that 10 to 15 percent down is now acceptable. The more relatives that one has in America to guarantee the fare, the less the deposit required. Once the immigrants land, those who cannot pay off the balance at once may be saddled with installment payments over several years. The voyage itself is arduous; inevitably, some die on the way. Hua Zhen boarded a freighter outside Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, where many of the group that landed in New York also originated. Mr. Hua was one of 220 immigrants accompanied by six "enforcers" working for the smugglers. One enforcer repeatedly threatened to kill Mr. Hua if his fare was not paid in full on arrival. "He told me, 'It costs $1,000 to kill someone in America,' " Mr. Hua said. " 'Your life is cheap.' " The |
613228_0 | Squaring Off Over Cigarette Taxes | Never friends, seldom respectful of each other, the tobacco industry and antismoking forces have renewed their hostilities over industry claims that a higher excise tax on tobacco products, as part of the Clinton Administration's health-care plan, would devastate large parts of the economy. Braced for the current tax of 24 cents a pack to at least double, and possibly amount to more than $2, tobacco interests predict those levels would cut consumption enough to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs in industries from farming to retailing, close businesses and deprive state and local governments of millions of dollars in taxes. Another Point of View Yet opponents cite the industry's own behavior of the last 13 years to dispute those arguments. Until April -- when Philip Morris announced price cuts of up to 40 cents a pack on Marlboro, and other cigarette makers followed suit -- the companies had raised prices 33 times, by more than 350 percent, notwithstanding a tripling of the Federal excise tax. Yet jobs did not disappear at nearly the rate the tobacco interests are now predicting they will. In fact, the companies have generated higher profits during those years largely by raising prices, importing greater amounts of less expensive foreign tobaccos for discount brands and improving technology. "The numbers being thrown around by the tobacco industry bear no relation to reality whatsoever," Matthew Myers, counsel to the Coalition on Smoking or Health in Washington, said. "In effect, the tobacco manufacturers cloak themselves as white knights, fighting the evil tobacco tax that would attack jobs. What they're not telling people is that their own decision to raise prices, to import increasing amounts of tobacco and to use ever more mechanized equipment has caused the loss of more jobs than could possibly be lost with the levels of increase being talked about." Black Market In either case, making cigarettes so much more expensive would likely expand the black market and could lead to increased crime. And such a big increase, if applied at once, could mean that past relationships of price, consumption and jobs no longer apply. A study by Price Waterhouse for the Tobacco Institute, the industry lobby in Washington, concluded that a 48-cent tax would eliminate 114,117 jobs -- or 5 percent of 2.28 million jobs in the growth, manufacturing and distribution of tobacco products -- and $3.33 billion in payroll losses. A $2 increase would |
613218_0 | Religion Notes | Studying Lifting a Ban Contrary to official policy, girls serve as, well, altar boys in many Catholic parishes around the United States, helping priests at mass with tasks like distributing the communion bread. Now there is talk that the Vatican may lift the prohibition against girls serving at the altar. The Vatican's official spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said this week that the policy was "under study," adding, "There has not, therefore, been any decision taken in this matter." His comment came in response to a report in Time magazine's "Informed Sources" column predicting that the ban would be lifted later this year. Mr. Navarro-Valls, however, made it clear that any change in the rules about altar girls would have no implications for a separate church ban on women serving as priests. The two issues are in no way connected, he said, because the question of who serves at the altar is a pastoral matter not involving church dogma or doctrine. Ruth Fitzpatrick, the national coordinator of the Women's Ordination Conference, a group that advocates full equality for women in the church, said that the announcement represented "a bit of a positive direction," and added, "The church, as always, is catching up with what the people are doing." Girls at the altar are a familiar sight in many Catholic churches, including some in the New York area. Either because altar boys are in short supply or because priests want to encourage children of both sexes to participate, parishioners say that the official policy is often ignored as bishops look the other way. Awarding Good Works A wheelchair-friendly mountain trail, Rain Forest Crunch candy and vegetable giveaways have received awards for socially conscious businesses from the United Church of Christ. The Corporate Social Responsibility Program, now in its second year, singles out companies for their public interest activities. A spokesman, Hans Holznagel, said the idea was an outgrowth of the denomination's long efforts to discourage what it viewed as corporate irresponsibility through actions like shareholder resolutions against companies doing business with South Africa. "Now we have sought to call attention to the good works being done," he said. In each case, local churches nominate the business, which range from small companies to multinational giants. The wheelchair-friendly mountain trail, for example, was nominated by United Church congregations in Utah. The half-mile scenic path through meadows and forest was created by Snowbird Ski Resort in |
615708_2 | Irish Begin to Liberalize Laws on Sex and Family | economic ones, with women fearing they would be deprived of property if their husbands left. Now, the Government is preparing laws that would guarantee wives' rights to property and pensions in the event of divorce. Once these laws are in place, Parliament is expected to put the divorce issue to the public. This month Parliament approved without a dissenting vote legislation that would permit the distribution of condoms in vending machines, which had been a volatile issue for decades. The Irish Times said the approval meant that Parliament "has finally come to see that its true Republican purpose is to legislate not for personal or private morality, but for the general public good." It added that the move "signals a kind of coming-of-age in the political life of this republic." The vote was the first parliamentary action on a series of revisions planned for this year and next by Prime Minister Reynolds, whose coalition with the Labor Party of Foreign Minister Dick Spring gives him a comfortable 37-vote majority. With such strength, the Government is seeking to bring law closer to public conduct without offending the powerful Catholic bishops. Traditional Defender of Church While some liberalization appears inevitable, opponents, including conservative priests and many ordinary Irish people, say the Government's plans amount to a dilution of Ireland's tradition as defender of Roman Catholicism. They feel that the revisions would damage Ireland's place as the country whose monks, transcribing the teaching of the early church fathers and the Gospels, as they did in the Book of Kells, preserved the faith during the Dark Ages. While 90 percent of Ireland's 3.5 million people are Catholics, and most of them churchgoers, it is an axiom of contemporary Irish life that people are increasingly disregarding church positions they find repressive. For its part, the church has not directly attacked the pattern of liberalization disclosed by the Government, sometimes commenting on a particular issue, sometimes remaining silent. The bishops are said by senior Government officials and others to be preparing a major attack on plans for the referendum next year on divorce. Mrs. Taylor, who is married and the mother of six children and grandmother of two, seemed to reflect the attitudes of many moderate Irishwomen and men when she said: "People want to be connected to the church, but they find it more and more difficult. The church is so rigid on contraception, on |
615735_0 | Adobe Ships Acrobat Amid High Hopes | Adobe Systems Inc. said today that it had begun shipping copies of Acrobat, a new software program that the Silicon Valley company hopes will have as broad an impact as its Postscript desktop publishing software had when it was introduced eight years ago. Acrobat is intended to let users transmit newsletters, annual reports, newspapers and even magazines via computer networks or as floppy disks. While it is now possible to exchange simple text messages or documents electronically, Acrobat includes a file standard that makes it possible to send an entire document or publication on a computer disk or via modem to a remote site and have it appear on screen exactly as it would on paper. Generations of Habit But in the early going, at least, Acrobat is intended to supplant some of the reams of paper that changes hands each day in the modern business office. In so doing, the software will need to overcome generations of established habit by small and large businesses that use paper as the standard mechanism for information exchange. Acrobat is intended to function as the Esperanto of computer document distribution, making it possible to send computer files from one manufacturer's system to another without having to translate them or print on paper. Such a standard for documents is missing in the computer world today, and as a result the investment of billions of dollars in office automation gear has meant an upward spiral of paper in the modern office. Adobe said today that 11 companies had committed to adopting Acrobat as a standard in a number of electronic publishing applications. The Lotus Development Corporation, for example, said that it would work with Adobe to make it possible for users of its Lotus Notes computer conferencing software to go beyond messaging to share entire documents -- illustrations and all -- in Adobe's format. Other companies that are developing applications based on Acrobat include Knight-Ridder's Presslink on-line computer service, Eastman Kodak, Multex Systems, R. R. Donnelley & Sons and Ventura Software. Multex said it would begin publishing its investment research documents using Acrobat software. 'Change the Way We Work' Adobe's executives have argued that by using Acrobat it will be possible for corporations to realize significant cost savings on everything from interoffice memos to paper filing systems and overnight delivery and courier services. "Acrobat can fundamentally change the way we work," John Warnock, Adobe's chairman |
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