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615749_3 | Survey Finds Major Gains In Cutting Blood Cholesterol | part to the white population being older, on average, than the other groups. Cholesterol levels tend to rise with age. There has been a 54 percent decline in deaths from coronary heart disease in the last 30 years, he said, which has coincided with the drop in cholesterol levels, as well as declines in high blood pressure and cigarette smoking rates. Although no one can say how much a single risk factor played in the drop in mortality, he said, it is clear the combined reductions made a major contribution. Statistics from the health survey proved useful to a panel of experts who revised guidelines issued by the National Cholesterol Education Program on the testing, evaluation and treatment of high blood cholesterol in adults, said Dr. Scott M. Grundy, chairman of the revision committee. Dr. Grundy, director of human nutrition at the University of Texas's Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said the new recommendations were more aggressive than those released in 1988. New Recommendations Among the new recommendations are these: *Place more emphasis on changes in diet, particularly cutting total dietary fat and reducing saturated fat intake, in combination with physical exercise and weight loss, as the first line of treatment for high cholesterol. The diet of the average American derives about 38 percent of its calories from fat, down from 42 percent a decade ago. The dietary goal should be 30 percent or less, Dr. Grundy said. *Delay use of cholesterol-lowering drugs as long as possible, choosing drug therapy only when it is indicated by the patient's coronary heart disease status and other risk factors. Use of these drugs should be postponed particularly in the cases of most young adult men and pre-menopausal women who have otherwise low risks for heart disease. *Measure high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, the "good" cholesterol, at the same time that total cholesterol measurements are taken during a routine visit to a doctor. All adults over age 20 should be retested every five years. Dr. Grundy said some studies indicated that estrogen replacement therapy during menopause may hold down cholesterol levels. For menopausal women who don't respond to diet and exercise for cholesterol reduction, doctors may want to try hormone therapy before using anti-cholesterol drugs, he said. "All drugs have side effects, including cholesterol-lowering drugs," Dr. Grundy said, "The question has been raised that the side effects from these drugs may offset the value of their |
615618_3 | No-Smoke Ways to 'Burn' Wastes | walls of reactor vessels. The acids can be neutralized by adding a base, like sodium hydroxide, but this does not completely solve the problem, because the resulting salts are sticky and tend to gum up the system. Nevertheless, agencies of the Defense Department are intent on perfecting supercritical water oxidation to clean up cold war remnants like the five million rounds of chemical warfare ammunition that is slowly corroding in military warehouses. While some corporate scientists experiment with the watery demise of toxic waste, others are busily adapting an approach, first developed at United States Steel in the early 1980's, that destroys wastes by injecting them into a bath of molten metal, usually iron. The technology was inspired by the steelmaker's desire to lower energy costs by using waste items, like scrap tires, as fuel. Molten Metal Technology Inc. of Waltham, Mass., has come up with a system for injecting toxic materials into a pool of molten iron at 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Such treatment causes almost all compounds to break down into their constituent elements because of the intense heat and the catalytic effect of the metal. Hydrocarbons are rendered into hydrogen, which bubbles off the top of the bath, and carbon, which similarly boils off as carbon dioxide gas if oxygen is provided. As in supercritical water oxidation, the process occurs in a closed system, with minimal releases to the atmosphere. The company touts the process as recycling, and indeed some materials, like the gases, can be separated and recovered. Vastly more important is the regulatory reality that once substances are labeled as waste, a company is liable for them forever. If the materials can be broken down and the constituents re-used, however, nothing remains that could become a liability in the future. If the metal bath is installed in a plant as part of a manufacturer's production system, the material going into it, no matter how toxic, stands a good chance of being considered a "process intermediate" that will be rendered harmless before it leaves the factory. Thus no waste needs to be reported to regulators and a company's environmental liability is reduced. The process has some limitations. Because of the prohibitive energy costs of keeping the metal molten, the process cannot handle wastes with a high concentration of water, which would act as a coolant. That would seem to leave that part of the market to supercritical |
615675_0 | Women at the Top | Two more countries elected women as their Prime Ministers last weekend, but that's hardly news anymore. The list of women who head or have headed their governments grows by the year, and notably in countries where feminist movements are weak or nonexistent. Following in the giant footsteps of Israel's Golda Meir, Britain's Margaret Thatcher, India's Indira Gandhi, Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, Sri Lanka's Sirimavo Bandaranaike and still others, the current roster includes: Canada: Kim Campbell Turkey: Tansu Ciller Bangladesh: Begum Khaleda Zia Dominica: Mary Eugenia Charles Nicaragua: Violeta Chamorro Norway: Gro Harlem Brundtland Poland: Hanna Suchocka Like men in leadership, some women are strong, even tyrannical. But just the fact of their election in wealthy nations and poor ones speaks volumes for female power around the world. Canada already has a woman as its figurehead chief of state, Governor General Jeanne Sauve, but Kim Campbell, elected Sunday, will be the first woman Prime Minister. More remarkable was Tansu Ciller's election in Turkey. Even though women are traditionally subordinate in Muslim countries, Turkey is now the third led by a woman -- after Pakistan and Bangladesh. No less stunning was the earlier election and popularity of Hanna Suchocka in Poland, where Eastern Europe's macho tradition still thrives. Who knows? Maybe someday the United States, land of supposedly equal opportunity, will follow suit. Correction: June 17, 1993, Thursday Yesterday's editorial on women as prime ministers misidentified the Governor General of Canada. He is Ramon John Hnatyshyn. |
615635_1 | Personal Health; For Many, Air Travel Means a Trip to the Doctor. | start with the fact that passengers quickly disperse to many distant points. Also, it is often hard to separate the effects of forced contact with airborne infectious organisms from the immune-suppressing effects of travel-related stress, which leaves people more vulnerable to infection. But in 1979, influenza struck 72 percent of passengers on a flight to Kodiak, Alaska, after the plane had been held at its landing gate for four hours. The common source of their infection, hours of breathing contaminated air in the plane, was nailed down only because nearly all the sick passengers visited the same doctor in Kodiak. And on a 1986 flight from San Francisco to Hawaii, more than 100 of the 486 passengers and crew members had headaches and nausea, a problem attributed to poor-quality cabin air recirculated through dirty filters. Although correction of such problems lies in the hands of the airlines, there are many steps passengers can take to minimize their chances of arriving ill or achy at their destinations. Getting Comfortable The combination of cramped seats that forbid much movement and the pressure of seat cushions on the back of the thighs impairs circulation in the legs, often resulting in swollen ankles and feet and sometimes in dangerous blood clots in the lower leg that can, days later, break loose and lodge in the lungs. In 1988, doctors in New York and Britain described three cases of flight-related pulmonary embolisms in otherwise healthy middle-aged adults. To reduce the risk of this serious problem, they suggested that passengers on long flights sit in aisle seats -- or, if necessary, climb over seat mates -- and take hourly walks in flight. Other helpful measures include not smoking (smoking, still permitted on many international flights, thickens the blood), wearing nonconstricting clothing, not crossing your legs, wearing elastic or support hose, taking off your shoes and elevating feet by resting them on luggage or a stack of magazines or blankets. Also protect your neck and lower back by, for example, placing an inflatable U-shaped pillow in the crook of your neck and an airline pillow in the small of your back. Avoid Dehydration Dehydration, which also thickens the blood, can result in general discomfort, digestive problems, undue fatigue and exacerbated jet lag. With the humidity level typically about 10 percent, the atmosphere on planes is drier than the Sahara. Eyes become sore and red and upper respiratory |
617378_0 | A Convenience Born of Intolerance | WERE remote controls always so complicated? No, says the inventor of the first practical unit, Dr. Robert Adler. Dr. Adler, 79, retired as vice president for research at the Zenith Electronics Corporation in Glenview, Ill., and is a technical consultant to Zenith. "People accuse me of creating the Couch Potato, and I say, 'You're right!' " Dr. Adler said. "Remote controls are just logical. Since we do not watch TV at arm's length, something to switch channels has always been desirable." From the beginning of the television age, Zenith had pushed for remote controls because the company's founder, Eugene F. McDonald Jr., hated television commercials and wanted, in modern parlance, to zap them. In the early 1950's, his engineers developed a wired remote control called Lazy Bones, but families kept complaining about tripping over the ungainly cable. A similarly ill-starred Zenith device called Flashmatic used a flashlight and four photo cells, one in each corner of the television cabinet. But ordinary sunlight set off the device, and viewers kept forgetting which corner meant what. After Zenith engineers rejected the use of radio waves (they might set off a neighbor's set) as well as audible sound (household noise could be a problem), Dr. Adler suggested inaudible sound from rods, resembling tuning forks, that were struck by small hammers. In 1956, Dr. Adler's ultrasonic remote, the Zenith Space Commander, made its debut and immediately became an industry sensation. It made a click like a stapler, then hummed imperceptibly. Occasional problems arose: a dog's shaking the metal identification tags on its collar might change channels or a child's emptying a piggy bank might raise the volume. But variations of Dr. Adler's idea persisted until 1982, when infrared remote controls and electronic circuitry using fast and cheap computer chips gained dominance in the industry. By the way: Dr. Adler didn't even get a raise for his invention. |
616681_8 | Where Chinese Yearn for 'Beautiful' U.S. | to nearly everyone interviewed, the procedure for boat people who are returned is to detain them for a few days to make sure that they are not wanted for some crime. Then they are normally fined, based on what the police think the market will bear: a wealthy entrepreneur may be fined thousands of dollars, while an impoverished peasant pays virtually nothing. Some boat people are also sent to a labor camp for "re-education" for a few months, particularly if they are repeat offenders or seem to have a "bad attitude." The peasants suggest that few of the boat people are politically active, although one of the first things most learn about the United States is that they should claim to be pro-democracy campaigners facing prison if returned to China. For good measure, they learn to say that they have already had their quota of one or two children and face forced sterilization if repatriated. It is true that female peasants are often forcibly sterilized if they have had all the children they are allowed, but most boat people are men. Only in Sichuan Province is it quite common for men to face sterilization. Smuggling of Goods Is Big Business While the crackdown on the snakeheads is just beginning, the Government has been trying for more than five years -- without any success -- to stop the smuggling of cigarettes, computers, video players, cars, pornographic videotapes and other products along the Fujian coast. The authorities lose hundreds of millions of dollars each year in duties and taxes to the smugglers. Crooked police and customs officials play a central role in the smuggling operations, so perhaps it is not surprising that the police have been less than effective in eradicating the smuggling. Any crackdown in Fujian also runs against a tradition going back to the 17th century of emigration to start a new life abroad. Most of Taiwan's inhabitants trace their roots to Fujian, and large numbers of Fujianese now live in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries. One of the first things any Fujianese learns is that the world abroad is full of opportunity, and that those who go abroad often become fabulously wealthy and successful. For most of the Communist era, tight police controls made it impossible to flee, but in the last decade the boom in contacts with Taiwan and the proliferation of private boats have |
612513_6 | Scanner Pinpoints Sites of Thought as People See or Speak | of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, is exploring the auditory cortex, one of the least understood areas of the human brain. Using plastic air tubes to transmit sound to subjects, he plays pure tones, speech sounds and a mixture of sound frequencies called white noise just to see which cells are activated. In other experiments, subjects are asked to listen passively to the names of animals and to press a lever whenever a dangerous animal is mentioned. This action engages a wider network, including the frontal cortex, Dr. Binder said. The research is extremely exploratory. The same can be said for experiments on human memory. "We know a lot about a region called the hippocampus in memory because it's involved in global amnesia," Dr. McCarthy said. "But other regions may be just as important." In one classic test for memory recall, he said, the hippocampus does not light up in fast M.R.I. experiments. Applications in Medicine The new technique will find immediate applications in medicine, Dr. McCarthy said. For example, patients undergoing surgery for intractable epilepsy must now submit to a highly invasive brain mapping procedure using implanted electrodes -- done to spare critical brain areas from the surgeon's knife. Fast M.R.I. can do the same much more simply. But it is in psychiatry where the more fascinating challenges lie. The human brain has distributed networks of neurons involved in various functions sitting in a bath of chemicals, Dr. Breiter said. "Change the balance of chemicals and you get a different set of processes out of a neural network," he said. Change the anatomy of the network from birth or early childhood experience, he said, and abnormal processes can result. For example, patients with obsessive compulsive disorder may have an altered brain circuit for coping with dangerous, primitive thoughts. Instead of being filtered from consciousness, anxious thoughts invade everyday life. Some people wash constantly to avoid imagined germs. When Dr. Breiter puts such obsessive compulsive disorder patients into the fast M.R.I. machine and hands them a dirty pillow, they obsess. He watches their brain circuits light up. "Their circuits are different from normals," he said. Similarly, Dr. Breiter and other psychiatrists plan to study patients suffering from schizophrenia and dementia to trace their altered brain circuits. This work is just getting under way, as is research on the effects of addictive drugs in the brain. "We have seen the dreaming brain," Dr. |
612581_0 | China Makes Population Control an Ism | To the Editor: "China is a very big country with a very big problem: it has 7 percent of the earth's arable land -- and more than 20 percent of all its people. Today they number 1.17 billion. In several decades they will probably number 1.9 billion." Thus begins "China's Cruelty and Women's Rights" (editorial, May 21). These figures do not imply that there is a "big problem" or that there is any problem at all, for that matter. Two-thirds of China's arable land is not being cultivated. And improvements in crop yield and infrastructure can also significantly increase China's food supply. While decrying the cruelty involved in China's "tough family planning policy," you write comprehendingly that "China's population problem is indeed awesome." You may find China's large population awesome, but with a population density that is approximately equal to that of Pennsylvania, China is one of the least densely populated countries in East Asia, and it is by far the richest in natural resources. It is also inhabited by the Chinese, a people who are by no means renowned for their incompetence. Then why is China so much poorer than its neighbors? The disastrous social engineering projects inspired by Marxist economics did not improve matters. Now that the abject failure of these projects can no longer be denied, the Chinese planning bureaucracy must find a respectable ideology to justify its existence or, well, wither away. And what ideology could be more respectable than population control, originating as it did among bipartisan Anglo-Saxon elites, largely financed by American taxpayers and enthusiastically supported by the most illustrious defenders of democracy and human rights, like The New York Times. KENT GORDIS New York, May 22, 1993 |
612551_11 | Forsaken Frontier: Revisiting the Oregon Trail -- Last of three articles.; 150 Years Later, Indians Bitterly Cope With Results of Whites' Arrival | would allow it. "We're sitting here in what is probably the Mormon capital of the world and let me tell you they are dead-set against gambling," he said. Battling for Salmon The Snake River, traditional home of these people, used to teem with salmon that swam nearly 800 miles inland to spawn in the far reaches of Idaho, up to the Continental Divide. The Sho-Ban, as members of the tribes call themselves, may have lost two-thirds of the land promised to them, but they have used their 1868 treaty, in which the Government guarantees them perpetual access to salmon, as a powerful weapon of retribution. If the salmon runs are ever restored in the Northwest interior, environmentalists say they will have the Indians of the Fort Hall Reservation to thank. They were the ones who started legal action against the Federal Government, forcing nearly a dozen agencies to put together a plan for saving the fish. And if the salmon return, it will help the Umatilla, the Nez Perce, the Yakima, Chinook, Cayuse, the Shoshone and Bannock and dozens of other Indian bands that used to have a healthy fishing economy. But the Sho-Ban are not holding their collective breath that the great fat Pacific salmon runs can ever return to the desert country of the Snake River, bordering the Oregon Trail. They say they want just enough to revive a cultural ceremony that virtually every Northwest tribe celebrated: the First Fish ritual. A few salmon are caught and raised to the sky in prayer; it's a way of thanking God for a bounty that fed at least three millenniums of Indians. Biologists say they could be able to see enough fish to perform the ritual in three years. The Eagles Where Culture Is a Moneymaker Culture, the past as guide to the future, is what keeps the Eagle family going. Full-blooded Lakota Sioux, Bruce and Marie Eagle and their six children live in a trailer next to a farm bordering the dry channel of the Raft River, in southern Idaho. They live where the Oregon Trail forked, the southern route going to California, the northern way pushing to Oregon. The Eagles are farmhands on the ranch of Lyle Woodbury. On a hot afternoon, their pickup spitting up dust, they took a visitor out to the old fork, behind a fence on the Woodbury farm. Wagon ruts are still visible, |
613360_1 | Current Crop of College Graduates Finds Job Market Painfully Tight | engineering, health or other vocations. But college and university job placement officials say the outlook is grim. "In the past, there would always be some fields, like engineers, that did well, regardless of the economy," said Thom Rakes, assistant director of the planning and placement center at the University of Missouri at Columbia, "But the engineers are right there with everyone else at this point." Waiting Out Bad Times Mr. Rakes said many college graduates were taking lower-paying jobs to wait out the bad times. As the economy improves, even though unevenly and slowly, economists say, the job outlook will improve slightly. But long-term job prospects look less encouraging: corporate shrinkage is expected to continue through the 1990's and beyond. An estimated 24.6 million new jobs are expected to be created for the 15-year period ending in 2005, according to a projection by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from the 33 million new jobs created from 1975 to 1990. Among the occupations expected to grow rapidly through 2005 are nursing and other health-care specialties as well as computer programming and other computer-technology-related jobs, according to the bureau's projections. This year's graduates are increasingly filling jobs like sales representative posts in service industries, jobs that were filled by people with only high school degrees 15 years ago. These positions have been altered by corporate cutbacks, and these lower-rung employees are being given more responsibilities in many companies, Mr. Murnane said. The availability of a whole class of jobs, too, is declining, said the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those jobs include assembly-line work, clerical and support staff, and electrical and electronic equipment service. High school graduates normally fill these jobs, but now college graduates are competing for the dwindling number of positions. Even the encouraging job growth reported in May is unlikely to improve the immediate prospects for this year's graduates, economists says. Perhaps most disturbing to graduates is the salary outlook. Wage increases grew in the 1980's at annual rates of 2 percent to 3 percent, but economists say such increases are likely to be rare this decade. In 1990, the average annual salary for all workers was $29,912 as against $6,845 in 1967; when the 1967 sum is adjusted to account for inflation, it becomes $26,786. Expectations for continuing salary increase have been dashed, Mr. Murnane said, adding, "There is no evidence that is going to change very fast." |
613383_40 | Books for Vacation Reading | argues that the secular opposition to Communism must reconsider the reflexive anticlericalism of the left. DAKOTA: A Spiritual Geography. By Kathleen Norris. (Ticknor & Fields, $19.95.) A deeply moving book that is itself an act of devotion by a poet who is a married Protestant and also a lay member of a Benedictine community on the Great Plains. ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY: Fear of the Modern World. By Fatima Mernissi. (Addison-Wesley, $24.95.) With insightful flashes and no apologies, this Muslim woman argues for democracy in the Muslim world and looks at the growing fundamentalist movements there. LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children. By Jason Berry. (Doubleday, $22.50.) In his detailed investigation, Mr. Berry finds cases of child molestation by Catholic clergy members from New York to Honolulu, uncovers a pattern in the pedophilia and suggests that the church's sexual ethic is partly to blame. METAPHYSICS AS A GUIDE TO MORALS. By Iris Murdoch. (Allen Lane/Penguin, $35.) Echoing her novels, Ms. Murdoch teaches us to be wary when approaching any philosophy, including her own Platonic view that our moral sense depends on our imperfect apprehension of perfection. MY FATHER'S GURU: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion. By Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. (Addison-Wesley, $20.) Before he grew up and overthrew Freud, Mr. Masson lived a childhood of total immersion in his family's infatuation with a spiritual guide his father brought home from India. THE NEW COLD WAR? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State. By Mark Juergensmeyer. (University of California, $25.) This dispassionate comparative study of violent religious movements centers on a question: are we about to witness a geopolitical battle between zealots and Western secular societies? OUTERCOURSE: The Be-Dazzling Voyage. By Mary Daly. (HarperSanFrancisco, $24.) More radical cheek from the philosopher, theologian, mythologist, explorer, pirate, warrior, witch, fairy and leprechaun who gave us "Gyn/Ecology." RIGHTEOUS DISCONTENT: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920. By Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. (Harvard University, $34.95.) A sophisticated and inspirational study of the time when black women, in the interest of survival and resistance, made the Baptist church their institutional base. SHAME AND NECESSITY, by Bernard Williams. (Centennial/University of California, $25.) A clever, agile professor of philosophy argues that the Homeric Greeks may have been wiser than the great thinkers of Athens and possibly even wiser than we. THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING. By Sogyal Rinpoche. (HarperSanFrancisco, $22.) Tibetan |
613472_7 | Sailing to the Icy Top of the World | lightly can kill them. BACK on board, our entire group, binoculars in hand, was searching the rugged earth for polar bears. About 4,000 bears -- or about 10 percent of the world's polar bear population -- are to be found in Svalbard. We had finally entered territory where they might be spotted, and one member of the crew was relegated to standing for hours on the bow, looking across the ice through a scope. Late one afternoon a polar bear was spotted hunting seals on an iceberg off the port side. We got a glimpse from afar through binoculars before the bear tumbled into the icy water. At midnight we reached the icecap on Nordaustlandet, a surreal, 120-mile long, 60-foot-high sapphire ice carving. Violent waterfalls spilled over the ice, creating caves at the base that were dangerously inviting. We stayed on deck until 1 A.M. searching the horizon for more wildlife. The next morning the Zodiacs got us as close as we safely could to the ice cap; its craggy face looked as if it had been pared away with a chisel. Ivory gulls flew above us and ringed seals bobbed up and down in the water. We motored by jagged icebergs carved into sculptural forms by water and wind. Suddenly a mother polar bear and her cub were spotted in the distance. The Zodiacs quickly skirted the outer edge of the ice and headed inland. As we did, so did mother and cub and with extraordinary luck we arrived near the edge of the ice just as they did. Being that close to a polar bear is not a casual moment. Polar bears are big; they can weigh up to 1,400 pounds. They are aggressive -- and carnivorous -- and extremely powerful swimmers, often swimming up to 50 miles offshore in search of food. Even though they can only be shot in self-defense, our guides carried firearms at all times. The bears came closer. So did we. Everyone in the boat was hushed. Cameras clicked wildly and our guide nervously maneuvered our Zodiac into a position where we could retreat quickly. Finally the courtship ended when we were about 50 yards away. We studied each other for 15 minutes or so; then the mother led her baby away, hopping over holes in the ice. At the turn of the century, Prince Albert of Monaco sponsored many Arctic explorations and |
613393_0 | Update; Cleanup of Abandoned Tires Beginning in New York City | New York is beginning a $200,000 program to collect and dispose of thousands of abandoned tires as mounds of them continue to grow in some of the city's neglected neighborhoods. Called the Waste Tire Management Program, the plan calls for the city's Departments of Transportation and Sanitation to collect junk tires from some 300 illegal dump sites in the five boroughs. Beginning in mid-July, about 150,000 tires are expected to be collected and placed on four city-owned lots for disposal by an outside vendor, city officials said. "Illegally dumped tires may not be our biggest cleaning and waste disposal problem," Mayor David N. Dinkins said in a statement, "but it is a serious one, and it has historically been a difficult one to resolve." As part of the plan, trash drop-off points called Self-Help Bulk Sites throughout the city will begin accepting junk tires, officials said. Vendors need not promise to recycle the tires, but must at least dispose of them in an "environmentally sound manner," said Kenneth J. Knuckles, the General Services Commissioner. Landfill managers are reluctant to accept whole tires because they are not degradable and tend to float to the top of garbage, breaking open the seals over landfills. |
613515_1 | Orff: Two Second Thoughts | with veiled antifascist allusions. In any case, Orff's experimentalism could not fully express itself until after the war. And here he encountered his second stigma: he did not play by the rules of the aggressively modernist composers who emerged in central Europe after Nazism, eager to make up for lost time. The entry on Orff in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, published in 1980, is typical of the prejudice that resulted. The author, Hanspeter Krellmann, defines Orff's esthetic as an effort to produce primitive spectacles, "to make the most immediate impression possible." His career evolved with "diminishing musical content and increasing metaphysical pretensions." His idiom was a reduction of Stravinsky's "Noces," but a comparison shows "just how much Orff has coarsened and vulgarized his model." Mr. Krellmann concludes, "Orff's success has been in proving the potency of barbarism, and its limitations." In the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, published last year, Erik Levi takes a new tack. Orff's intentions and music, now only "somewhat influenced" by Stravinsky's "Noces," are treated with respect. His legacy is seen to prefigure the entire range of Minimalism and accessible post-modernism of the late 20th century. Orff's preference for simple, blocklike harmonies, driving rhythms and bold orchestral colors had a philosophical basis (or a "metaphysical pretension"). He believed in music as an art that could communicate not only to children, who, he thought, had innate musical gifts, but also to adults in a fragmented modern society. His "spectacles" were attempts to rediscover roots, ancient traditions that could have meaning today. Greek tragedy was central to his search, as it has been to nearly all efforts to revitalize Western music theater over the last 500 years. "Antigonae" is a literal setting of Friedrich Holderlin's German translation of Sophocles' drama. For Orff, "Antigonae" needed no modernization, just restoration, to bring back its full, elemental power. Of course, any restoration is an act of modernization, however inadvertent. What Orff did in "Antigonae" -- and in its sequels, "Oedipus der Ty rann" (in German) and "Prometheus" (in ancient Greek) -- was set the words as cadenced chanting. The music is scored for opera singers, but they are asked to act, to invest recitativelike declamation with theatrical life. This score is part of a diverse 20th-century effort to rethink the relation of words and music in opera, from Schoenberg's speech-song to Richard Strauss's ruminations in "Capriccio," from |
613365_0 | Woman Is Voted Vermont's Episcopal Bishop | The Rev. MaryAdelia R. McLeod of West Virginia was elected today to serve as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont, making her the first woman in the nation, and the second in the world, to hold the office of diocesan bishop. Bishop-elect McLeod, 54 years old, was elected on the third round of balloting by both the clergy and the laity at a special convention in Burlington. Speculating that her election was probably part of the growing importance of women in the clergy, particularly the Episcopal clergy, Mrs. McLeod also said in a telephone interview from her West Virginia home that "the Diocese of Vermont voted for the person they thought they needed at the moment, and that person happens to be a woman." "I believe a great deal of prayer and hard work has gone into this election, and I thank them for that," she added. She said she "didn't really expect it, but I am so thoroughly delighted that people of God and the Episcopal Church have called me to spend my life with them." With her consecration, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 31, Mrs. McLeod will become the highest-ranking woman among the Episcopal clergy in this country. Two women, the Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris of the Diocese of Massachusetts and the Rt. Rev. Jane Dixon of the Diocese of Washington, are both suffragan bishops, in effect assistants to the diocesan bishop. Besides Mrs. McLeod, Bishop Penelope Jamieson of New Zealand is the only other female diocesan bishop in the world. The rules of the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont require that a majority of both the clergy and the laity, which vote separately, elect the same person on the same ballot, a requirement that often causes balloting to continue for several rounds, said Anne Brown, a spokeswoman for the diocese. In this case, Mrs. McLeod was one of five candidates; the other strong contender was the Rev. Benjamin Chase, who had worked in Montpelier, the state capital, before leaving to serve abroad. Mrs. Brown said Mrs. McLeod "showed strongly on the first ballot. The surprise was that it was so clear from the beginning. She and Ben Chase were the only two real contenders." Mrs. McLeod, who is married to a Episcopal priest and has five grown children, was born in Birmingham, Ala., and received her undergraduate education at the University of Alabama. She took her seminary |
615521_4 | Valuable Diploma or Meaningless Piece of Paper? | to do no better financially than someone with no diploma at all, and significantly worse than those with high school diplomas. "It amounts to nothing in labor-market earning," James J. Heckman, a University of Chicago economist who co-wrote a series of research papers on G.E.D.'s last year. Referring to the test itself, he said, "it is not a challenging examination." And the Army, the last branch of the armed services to accept G.E.D. graduates, last year stopped accepting recruits with G.E.D. diplomas because, it said, they failed basic training at twice the rate as recruits with traditional high school diplomas. But G.E.D. officials discount the Heckman studies, contending that their sample group of less than 150 all-male G.E.D. graduates was insufficient to properly represent the benefits of the diploma. The value of a G.E.D. should not be "determined solely on a person's income," said Janet Baldwin, director of policy research for the G.E.D. Testing Center in Washington. A Second Chance Despite the debate, the program is increasingly being viewed as an attractive alternative to high school in some neighborhoods, like the South Bronx. Many students, like Charisse Dangerfield, who have squandered their chances to graduate with their classmates, view a G.E.D. diploma as a safety net to rebound them into a productive future. And New York school officials count most young G.E.D. graduates as "successful completions," thus lowering the system's drop-out rates. A student who reads at the eighth-grade level can take three to six months of preparation for the test, G.E.D. officials in New York said. Ms. Evans-Tranumn attributes the sharp rise in G.E.D. students to several factors. As the number of dropouts has increased, schools have become better at tracking them and helping them find other methods -- like alternative schools and G.E.D. -- of getting diplomas, Ms. Evans-Tranumn said. In addition, new waves of immigrants settling in New York have helped to create a pool of slightly older high school students with special needs who have turned to the G.E.D., Ms. Evans-Tranumn said. And there are, she said, students with growing impatience who want "to get in college right away." Largest Single Group About half of the city's G.E.D. candidates are 16 to 19 years old, officials said. Every year, more than half a million people take the G.E.D. tests in the United States and its territories. About 33 percent of them are 16 to 19. It |
615577_1 | U.S. Rejects Notion That Human Rights Vary With Culture | win United Nations approval for a delay of democracy and political freedom. Foreign Minister Ali A. Alatas of Indonesia, the only representative of this group to speak today, rejected the charge that some countries were promoting a concept of human rights "based on some nebulous notion of 'cultural relativism,' as spuriously alleged by some quarters." But, without mentioning Bosnia and Herzegovina by name, he seemed to accuse Western nations of applying a double standard when he noted that "a few hundred kilometers from here, an entire nation is being subjected to brutal aggression, mass murder, systematic rape and the inhuman practice of ethnic cleansing." Statement of U.S. Policy In what was viewed as the Clinton Administration's first major policy statement on human rights, Mr. Christopher acknowledged continued violations around the world, but he also applauded recent successes, like the reversal of a coup in Guatemala and elections in Cambodia. He made only a brief mention of Bosnia, vowing that those guilty of "ethnic cleansing" there would be punished. But in sharp contrast to his scathing attack on the Serbs in February, today he referred only to "those who desecrate these rights." A key purpose of Mr. Christopher's speech, and of the United States role at the two-week conference, is nonetheless to defend the universality of human rights. And he pointed out that countries that respect human rights are generally the most peaceful and stable, while the worst violators are the world's aggressors and those who encourage the spread of arms. Specific Steps Urged Mr. Christopher, who promoted human rights as Deputy Secretary of State in the Carter Administration, also called for the appointment of a United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights and of a special United Nations envoy to investigate violence against women. The Administration, which has defined human rights as a focus of foreign policy, will also press for Senate ratification of four treaties -- to eliminate racial discrimination and discrimination against women, to protect the economic rights of the poor and to codify basic human rights and duties. The Administration seems to be developing a flexible carrot-and-stick approach, using incentives to modify the behavior of countries it considers capable of improvement, like Turkey and China, while punishing those it considers renegades, like Iran. Former President Jimmy Carter, who was in the audience when Mr. Christopher spoke, was more willing to provoke crises with countries that had poor |
615556_3 | Havana Journal; 43,412 Stricken Cubans, and Not a Single Answer | burns or smoke inhalation. Hoping to slow the spread of the disease, Cuban public health officials say they are distributing ordinary multivitamins to the entire population at a cost estimated so far at $40 million. The vitamins are not thought to be a cure, but rather seem to improve general health and increase resistance to the disease. That it would occur to the Cuban authorities here to distribute vitamins so widely is a reflection of the plummeting living standards in what had only recently been one of Latin America's healthiest and most affluent countries. Especially hard hit is the Cuban diet, with is limited by strict rationing. Little Resentment Evident Cuba's economic decline has resulted mainly from the collapse of the Soviet bloc and a three-decade American embargo. But the suffering has been aggravated by fierce storms that have destroyed crops and interrupted work on tourist hotels that were a leading economic priority. Soon after it became apparent that it had a major epidemic on its hands that would require international help, President Fidel Castro's Government seemed worried about the possibility that citizens would blame their leaders for the problem. Initially the Government even hinted that the illness could be the work of foreign sabotage. But there has been little evidence of strong resentment toward the Government over the outbreak itself. Health care is one of the few areas in which Havana has been able to maintain standards comparable to those that existed before the country's economic crisis began three years ago. One hypothesis is that substitutes used by individuals or state-owned producers for ordinary food ingredients have had a toxic effect. Because of the shortages, soy products are often substituted for meat, for example, and alcoholic beverages are often brewed at home. Even more worrying to many medical experts, some of whom who draw comparisons to the sudden appearance of AIDS, is the possibility of a new or recently mutated virus that could conceivably spread to other countries and affect health in ways that are still unknown. "There is enormous work to be done here before getting to the bottom of this, and the Cubans are in no position to do it all on their own," said Dr. Miguel Marquez, resident director of the Pan American Health Organization. "No one knows where this thing could appear next, or if we will be seeing deaths from it down the road." |
615401_1 | Gore Promises U.S. Leadership On Sustainable Development Path | of new actions and positions taken by the Clinton Administration on the international environmental front, Mr. Gore told the delegates that the United States was creating a 25-member President's Council on Sustainable Development to create new approaches for combining economic development with environmental protection at home. One of its functions will be to come up with a plan for the nation's role in fulfilling the Rio accords. President Clinton formally established the council this afternoon. Its members are to come from government, industry and environmental groups. The 12-day meeting here is "an opportunity for us to publicly resume the leadership that the world expects of us," said Timothy E. Wirth, a former Senator who is counselor to the State Department and is scheduled to become Under Secretary for Global Affairs. Recent Administration actions make it clear, Mr. Wirth said, that "we have sharply changed U.S. policy." In April, Mr. Clinton announced that the United States would go beyond the Bush policy on global warming by reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by the year 2000. The Bush Administration had rejected this timetable, advocated by the Europeans, and insisted that weaker provisions be included in a treaty negotiated before Rio but signed there. Treaty to Rescue Species Mr. Clinton announced that the United States would sign a treaty, signed by more than 150 other countries in Rio, and also negotiated in advance, to protect the world's dwindling stock of living species. In an action that perhaps more than anything else contributed to the Bush Administration's obstructionist image, the United States had been alone among large countries in refusing to sign the accord. The biodiversity treaty, as it is called, was signed here on June 4 by Madeleine Albright, the American representative to the United Nations. In April, the United States also overturned another Bush policy by declaring itself open to a broadening of an agreement to protect tropical forests exploited in the international timber trade. Developing countries, where the tropical forests are situated, want the agreement expanded to include forests in temperate countries as well. The tropical countries have protested that the existing agreement discriminates against them by excluding temperate forests. In early May, Mr. Wirth announced here that the United States, again reversing the Bush and Reagan positions, would put control of the exploding world population high on its agenda and would increase foreign aid |
617857_3 | A Therapeutic Program for Troubled Students | to be on a prescribed medication for their problem." One parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her family's privacy, said: "I know that these people have done tremendous things with my son. He was a wreck when he came out of Stony Lodge, and he would have relapsed if it hadn't been for the teachers and counselors. They focus on what the kids can do and build up their self-esteem. He'd still be very vulnerable without their support system." Stony Lodge is a private psychiatric hospital in Ossining. The 24 students who are currently enrolled in West-Prep reflect a diversity of backgrounds and abilities, with the alcohol and drug abuse and emotional disorder often the only common link. There are teen-agers with learning disabilities whose academic program focuses on remedial efforts, and there are those who can easily pursue college preparatory courses. Some students come from affluent homes in the county's wealthier communities while others live in group homes. Rain Forest as a Project Susan Taylor, who teaches math and science at West-Prep, said: "It's hard to get them motivated or focused if they've had a bad time at home. A lot of these kids have not had much success in school. Our main job is motivating them so they can get out of high school, so they don't lose their education and so they can be successful. We work with the school district in planning an academic program." One of this year's more successful projects was the creation of a living rain forest as part of the environmental science course and horticulture program. In a light-filled room cluttered with hanging plants, a replica of the rain forest -- complete with appropriate plants and insects -- stands as testament to the students' interest and dedication. Maxine Kaplan, a member of the expressive therapy department of the Psychiatric Institute, said: "We had done small-scale terrariums before. The kids built the entire rain forest." A Success Story Added Mrs. Taylor: "The important thing was that the kids got to do something that was successful." The combination of relentless reinforcement from teachers and therapists, small classes and positive peer pressure has apparently succeeded in keeping many of the students on a straighter path. "Before, I was not into school," said a 17-year-old girl from Pleasantville, Marie M., who agreed to be interviewed only if her last name was not |
617950_0 | Its Competitors Distracted, France Gets to Be a Power | PERHAPS the only thing that France dislikes more than bowing to American leadership is having to recognize Germany as Europe's main power. The collapse of the Soviet bloc thus gave it good reason to worry: The United States was left as the sole superpower, while united Germany seemed destined to dominate the new Europe. Yet France's fears of losing its clout appear premature. With the United States sending conflicting signals about its role in the world and Germany forced into introspection by economic and social problems, France has grabbed the chance to reassert itself as the only European power with global vision. Even the ouster of a Socialist government by conservatives in elections in March seems to have worked to its advantage. The meeting of European Community leaders in Copenhagen last week could well have exposed rifts between the Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand, and the conservative Prime Minister, Edouard Balladur. Instead, they spoke as one: France has a single foreign policy. Indeed, this policy has had the same objective since General de Gaulle decided in the 1960's that France should have its own independent nuclear deterrent: to convince Washington, Moscow and its European partners that France is a great power -- "une grande puissance." When this status was threatened by the cold war's end, the French elite was thrown into a tizzy. Now its proud image of itself is on the mend. Oddly, the crisis in the former Yugoslavia has helped France in this regard. By assigning 5,000 troops to United Nations peacekeeping forces there, it has done what neither the United States nor Germany has done, a point that it is not shy to recall publicly. This in turn has given France moral authority to define the international response to the conflict, working -- unusually -- in tandem with Britain, which has 2,500 of its own soldiers in the field, many of them also in Bosnia. Thus, when Washington contemplated air strikes against Serb artillery or, last week, when the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, echoed President Clinton's call for lifting the arms embargo against Bosnian Muslims, France and Britain swiftly objected: Escalation would turn their troops into easy Serb targets or, perhaps worse, force them to abandon their humanitarian mission by withdrawing entirely. Projecting Influence Far more than Britain, though, France seems intent on projecting its influence. It is participating in United Nations peace-keeping forces as far away as |
617935_4 | The Church Faces the Trespasses of Priests | and future. Church attitudes of the 1960's, when bishops kept accusers at arm's length and then reassigned priests after stern warnings and a bout at a retreat center, reflected the same cultural attitudes that shrouded rape and incest victims in silence and shame. In the 1970's and early 1980's, the church lagged when it should have recognized sexual abuse as a deep pathology rather than a moral failing and as something devastating to its victims." But unfounded beliefs about sexual abuse and its treatment were not limited to church authorities, who often received what, in retrospect, was very poor advice from the professionals they relied on. Press reports have tended to blur the time frames in which church actions should be judged -- perhaps as serious a shortcoming as the sensationalism so bitterly denounced by both the Pope and the bishops. The related problem is that the issue is often folded into a larger agenda. Liberals use it in arguments for allowing women and married men into the priesthood, or in their criticism of church hierarchy. Conservatives cite it as confirmation of their warnings about theological dissent and moral breakdown. One critical difference between them concerns celibacy. The priests' pledge no doubts adds to the revulsion, and public curiosity, when a priest is accused of sexual molestation. In reaction, church officals point out that most sexual abuse occurs within families and that it is also committed by non-celibate professionals working with youth. The points are well taken, but the requirement of celibacy is also too important a factor in determining who becomes a priest and in shaping the priestly life to be fenced off entirely from this discussion. A consensus is emerging that even priests who respond to treatment and continuing supervision after molesting young people should not be returned to parishes or assignments involving youth. But a debate continues about who should be barred from any return to ministry. Meanwhile, a priest whom Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh suspended from his duties had the action overturned by the Vatican's highest tribunal. Other priests are reported to be threatening to use American or Vatican courts to resist suspensions. All this added to the pleas made to the Pope by bishops who already felt that church law tied their hands in dealing with priest offenders. A joint Vatican-American commission established by the Pope is already searching for solutions. THE NATION |
618240_0 | Now a Round of Applause: And the Loser Is . . . | We all remember what Vince Lombardi, Leo Durocher and Billy Martin thought about losers, particularly good ones. Perverts, social retrogrades, drooling embodiments of Communistic values was what they were. "If there is such a thing as a good loser, then the game is crooked," is what Billy said. Today, yours truly, a bruised veteran of one of the worst high school football teams in history, the Clear Lake Lions, is here to say that losing is fine and the sense of shame I have carried like a 2-21-1 record for more than a quarter century seems, finally, needless. Why isn't exactly clear, but graceful losing -- meaning at the very least that the loser kicks no small children or kittens -- is all the rage. Indeed it may be a slick way to get ahead, though even the ancient Greeks gave no prizes for second place. The signs are everywhere. Stephen G. Breyer, the chief judge of the Federal appeals court in Boston, drags himself out of a hospital bed to come to Washington to accept what is said to be a guaranteed seat on the Supreme Court. Instead, he is left by President Clinton to twist in the wind until he is passed over in favor of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. His response has been smiles, an oh-shucks modesty about the joys of just being considered and a stoicism reminiscent of the day the Green Bay Packers center Jim Ringo played a complete game with something like a dozen boils on his derriere. The judge's grace has earned him tons of favorable mail, approving newspaper editorials, a box of candy from the corner newspaper vendor, a plant from his building's maintenance workers, and what seems a nice shot at any future Court vacancies. Then along comes basketball star Charles Barkley, the hoops hooligan who once spit on an 8-year-old girl though he swears he was aiming at a fan closer to his own age. He, too, is playing the good loser -- almost as well as he once played a lion tamer-in-training by chasing a referee with a chair. Last Sunday he seemed to be fighting back tears, his voice was barely audible and he stared at the ground after his team, the Phoenix Suns, lost the National Basketball Assocation championship to the Chicago Bulls. He evidenced none of the arrogance of interviews in the days before, when he |
617852_1 | Graduates Bring Their Ideals to a Battered World | High School in Bedford last week, described as "a generation of children of working parents, kids who had to learn early on to be independent." But Jennifer, who plans to attend Columbia University, and other members of the class of 1993 rejected the notion that they were a nameless or faceless generation. They said that they had their work cut out for them in the world and vowed to distinguish themselves by addressing the issues of the day. They chided the generation of their parents and teachers -- that of the 1960's and 70's -- for preaching love but bequeathing to succeeding generations a world where the legacy of racism and intolerance still prevails in many areas. And they criticized the baby boomers, the high-earning and big-spending generation, for leaving behind a fragile economy and the worry that when the class of 1993 graduates from college in four years, there still may be too few jobs to go around. Also, the students talked about AIDS, Bosnia, Somalia and domestic issues in the United States. School principals, sending off the class of '93, characterized the graduating seniors as ethically and morally concerned about the world they were entering as adults, and more intent upon righting wrongs than making money. "They're concerned about human issues," said Daniel A. Woodard, the principal of White Plains High School. "Our generation made a mess of things, and they want to turn that around." At Mount Vernon High School, Vice Principal Brenda L. Smith said: "Many say they don't know what this generation is, but I cling to some hope that they will find themselves, given the problems that exist in society. I tell the students not to underestimate their ability to influence, for the better, the lives of others." A 1992 national study of incoming freshmen, which was conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles, showed that the observations of school principals in Westchester and the graduating high school seniors in the county reflected concerns and attitudes of young adults throughout the country. Social Values a Major Concern The university's 27th annual national survey of 213,630 incoming freshmen at 404 colleges and university showed that the percentage of students for whom "helping to promote racial understanding" was either an "essential" or "very important" goal rose to an all-time high of 42 percent in 1992, up from 33.7 percent the year before. Also, 85.1 |
618241_0 | Now a Round of Applause: And the Loser Is . . . | We all remember what Vince Lombardi, Leo Durocher and Billy Martin thought about losers, particularly good ones. Perverts, social retrogrades, drooling embodiments of Communistic values was what they were. "If there is such a thing as a good loser, then the game is crooked," is what Billy said. Today, yours truly, a bruised veteran of one of the worst high school football teams in history, the Clear Lake Lions, is here to say that losing is fine and the sense of shame I have carried like a 2-21-1 record for more than a quarter century seems, finally, needless. Why isn't exactly clear, but graceful losing -- meaning at the very least that the loser kicks no small children or kittens -- is all the rage. Indeed it may be a slick way to get ahead, though even the ancient Greeks gave no prizes for second place. The signs are everywhere. Stephen G. Breyer, the chief judge of the Federal appeals court in Boston, drags himself out of a hospital bed to come to Washington to accept what is said to be a guaranteed seat on the Supreme Court. Instead, he is left by President Clinton to twist in the wind until he is passed over in favor of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. His response has been smiles, an oh-shucks modesty about the joys of just being considered and a stoicism reminiscent of the day the Green Bay Packers center Jim Ringo played a complete game with something like a dozen boils on his derriere. The judge's grace has earned him tons of favorable mail, approving newspaper editorials, a box of candy from the corner newspaper vendor, a plant from his building's maintenance workers, and what seems a nice shot at any future Court vacancies. Then along comes basketball star Charles Barkley, the hoops hooligan who once spit on an 8-year-old girl though he swears he was aiming at a fan closer to his own age. He, too, is playing the good loser -- almost as well as he once played a lion tamer-in-training by chasing a referee with a chair. Last Sunday he seemed to be fighting back tears, his voice was barely audible and he stared at the ground after his team, the Phoenix Suns, lost the National Basketball Assocation championship to the Chicago Bulls. He evidenced none of the arrogance of interviews in the days before, when he |
617927_0 | New Approaches To Menopause | All too often Long Island women with troubling menopausal symptoms, and even those with no symptoms at all, are automatically advised by their physicians to begin hormone-replacement therapy, in effect, a lifelong program of medication. As the article points out, there are healthful alternatives. Why are so many physicians ignoring these alternatives, opting instead for drugs? Last month I was privileged to attend a lecture by the renowned herbalist and women's-health specialist Susan S. Weed, author of "Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way." In her book and her talks Ms. Weed asserts that 90 percent of women can find complete relief from menopausal symptoms without drugs and, further, that diet and exercise can not only stave off, but also increase bone mass in postmenopausal women. BARRIE SUE ZEICHERMAN Roslyn Heights LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
618072_6 | Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Shock Therapist | to economic regulation that protected the elites and blocked the free market. "If you think you can do it," challenged one official, "come to Bolivia and prove it." He did, and quickly persuaded the newly elected Government to go along. Within weeks, hyperinflation was only a bad memory. And after months of tense negotiation, the country settled its mountain of debt to international lenders for about 11 cents on the dollar. "What Bolivia showed," concludes Sachs, "is that stabilization is doable, possible, sustainable." As Sachs is the first to admit, what later become known as shock therapy was not plucked whole from thin air -- similar approaches had more or less worked in Germany after both world wars. Sachs's special insight was that the logic could apply to economies with no collective memory of free markets or history of evenhanded rules of contract law and property rights. In fact, he is confident that revolution is the natural means of economic change. "If you look at how reform has occurred, it has been through the rapid adaptation of foreign models," he concludes, "not a slow evolution of modern institutions." Poland's success in stabilizing its currency and jump-starting growth is potent evidence that Sachs is right. But no test could be tougher -- or more important -- than the effort to transform the Russia of Stalin, Brezhnev and Gorbachev into a prosperous, consumer-driven economy in a single generation. THE PRESSURE IS ON this morning in Sachs's temporary Moscow headquarters, a tiny suite in the Ministry of Labor that he and his assistants share with a group from the London School of Economics, two quietly efficient translators, a welter of computer equipment and a few empty pizza boxes. (Yes, they deliver in Russia.) A more comfortable home in the Ministry of Finance is still weeks away. Topic A is the new agreement between the Finance Ministry and the Russian Central Bank, intended to tame the inflation that is running at 20 to 30 percent a month. It is, in Sachs's view, a cancer on the economy that is close to metastasis. Sachs has been deeply frustrated by the fatalism and political drift over the past year that has brought the economy to the brink. "Nobody says that 26 percent a month inflation is deeply ingrained in the Russian soul," he scoffs. In most successful economies the central bank acts as a bulwark against |
618059_4 | In Cleaner Harbor, Creatures Eat the Waterfront | D. Turner, the curator of mollusks at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology, who wrote her first paper on the worms almost 50 years ago.) The creatures claimed two of Christopher Columbus' four wooden galleons in Panama during his last voyage to the New World. And in 1833, the New York City Board of Aldermen, frustrated by demands to protect waterfront structures, passed a resolution declaring that "piers and wharves, as now constructed of timber, are temporary, and generally endure only from 14 to 17 years before they are destroyed by worms." The waterfront was saved by pollution. It killed most marine life in the inner harbor and seemed to relegate the borers to a footnote in New York City's history. Andrew Willner, the American Littoral Society's baykeeper for the New York and New Jersey Harbor Estuary, noted that some areas like Newtown Creek had so much tar and oil in the water that skippers used to sail into them as a cheap way of caulking their boats and plugging leaks. But water quality has improved steadily since the 1972 passage of Federal Clean Water Act, allowing countless marine species to return to the area. While some sediments remain polluted with toxics and heavy metals, many fishermen now swear that the city has some of the best fishing in the world -- an argument that was bolstered last year when a new world record was set near the Battery for a striped bass landed with light tackle. "When I haul my boat in every Spring, I have barnacles on any metal surface that isn't covered with bottom paint," Mr. Willner said with delight. In the early 1980's, marine biologists began noticing an increase in the numbers of one type of borer, a shrimp-like, quarter-inch-long creature, Limnoria lignorum, known as a gribble. It attacks the surface of the wood and gives pilings their characteristic hourglass shape. But that caused little alarm, since the damage they cause is superficial and readily apparent. But in 1983, another type of borer -- called the shipworm, even though it is a mollusk of the Teredinidae family -- was again detected in the inner harbor. The worms drill into the wood and, in the South Pacific, grow to six feet. The two types of borers, working in tandem, make a double-barreled attack. In tests around the harbor, researchers found that the voracious mollusks made soft pine |
629074_2 | With Talks Idle, Sinn Fein Stumps in Ireland | denounce such violence in his speech at a Dublin Hotel, his first public appearance in Dublin in eight months, but declared that people in the 26 counties of the Irish Republic had nothing to fear from the I.R.A. Using the I.R.A. euphemism for the violence, he said: "Armed struggle has no place in the 26 counties, and there clearly is no I.R.A. campaign against the 26-county state. Sinn Fein does not advocate violence. We understand why the conflict continues and why there is armed resistance by the I.R.A. to British rule in our country. The onus is on those who claim that there is an alternative to the I.R.A.'s armed struggle to prove that this is the case." He also suggested that President Mary Robinson of Ireland, who shook his hand on a visit to Belfast in June, did not support the anti-Sinn Fein policy of the Government of Prime Minister Albert Reynolds. He noted that polls showed wide public support for her gesture, and no support for what he called "the policy of marginalization" of Sinn Fein by the Irish and British Governments. He did not mention that the gesture outraged the leaders of the Protestant majority in the north. Mr. Adams appeared to be taking advantage of a lull in violence in Northern Ireland, where 3,068 people have died in the strife since 1969, although Protestant guerrillas shot to death the 21-year-old son of a Sinn Fein city councillor in Belfast a week ago, firing 30 bullets into the family's living room as they watched television, and the British Army defused a 3,000-pound bomb near Belfast that the I.R.A. claimed was one of theirs. "This killing campaign," Mr. Adams said, referring to the slaying last week, "cannot be divorced from the climate of demonization, vilification and censorship which is the predominant ethos in politics in Ireland today." In the Irish Republic, he said, the anti-Sinn Fein attitude was encouraged by the Government. While Sinn Fein is a legal party in Ireland, its members are barred from radio and television. Correction: August 18, 1993, Wednesday Because of an editing error, an article on Sunday about Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political arm, misstated the percentage of Northern Ireland's population that is Roman Catholic. It was 38.4 percent in a 1991 census, and according to unofficial British estimates it has risen to 43 percent; it is not 28 percent. |
629062_1 | Spies in the Battle for the Environment | police revolvers handy because they never know when a harmless-looking dumper may turn out to be someone more menacing. From the time the sanitation police force was established in 1937, no officer has been wounded in the line of duty, sanitation officials said. Every year thousands of tons of garbage, from heaps of automobile tires to reeking mounds of rotting fruit rinds, are illegally left in New York streets and vacant lots, city sanitation officials said. Much of it is dumped by haulers who fatten their profit margins by charging to pick up refuse and then dumping it in vacant lots, by small contractors looking for an easy way to rid themselves of building waste and by residents not willing to wait for sanitation workers to pick up household bulk, like old furniture, said Anne Canty, a spokeswoman for the Sanitation Department. A Cat-and-Mouse Game Because of cuts in the sanitation budget, there are now only 19 sanitation police officers, down from 79 in 1991, Ms. Canty said. Consequently, say many sanitation police officers, the authorities are forced to play a cat-and-mouse game with illegal dumpers when the cat has been reduced to skin and bones. For instance, the number of vehicles impounded in illegal dumping dropped to 663 last year, from 1,474 in 1990. Nevertheless, said Mr. Lassen, the beefier member of the team, he is proud of the work he and his partner do to stem a crime that can transform poor and working-class neighborhoods overnight into landscapes of the broken, smashed and decayed. "I think we do a damn good job considering the manpower," Mr. Lassen said recently as he and his partner eased their Ford van down to what appeared to be a dead-end street in Hunts Point. It was actually a street blocked by a mound of discarded automobile parts, tires, sofa pillows and a chunk of a kitchen sink. "They clean it quite a bit," he said of his colleagues who ride sanitation trucks. "But it's a losing battle." "It's just a shame we can't catch these guys," Mr. Montalto, 49, said under his breath as he walked slowly around another pile, freshly discarded stacks of wooden skids. "I've got a general idea where they come from," said Mr. Lassen, 52, who is retiring this week after 21 years with the department. Watching and Waiting Backing the van between a nearby wall and a |
628908_2 | In America; Violence And the Young | two young men riding around on a bicycle (one was on the handle bars) shot two people to death and wounded a third on Tuesday night. Over and over we are hearing the lament of Joanne Ackie, who cried out, "I can't believe this is happening" after her 17-year-old son Kareem was shot in the back and killed in Harlem last month. On Wednesday President Clinton announced his effort to put more police on the streets and tighten gun-control measures. It will not accomplish much. The truth is, law enforcement alone cannot stem the ferocious tide of violence in the United States. A much more comprehensive approach -- a national campaign against violence -- is necessary. Last Sunday the National Medical Association, which represents 16,000 black physicians, held a special session at its convention in San Antonio on "violence reduction in the African-American community." The consensus, according to the association's president, Dr. Leonard Lawrence, "was that we've really got to teach our young people that there are alternative ways of problem solving," and "that there is some value in being disciplined." The doctors did not want to understate the degree to which poverty, poor schooling, racism, drug and alcohol abuse, the availability of guns and other factors contribute to violence among the young. But you can get a handle on violent behavior, Dr. Lawrence said, "if you begin to teach youngsters the positive aspects of discipline at a very early age, teaching them how to achieve, how to learn, how to interact with other people." Adults -- parents and others -- have to spend more time with youngsters, he said. And he urged successful African-Americans to serve as mentors to boys and girls struggling to grow up in difficult environments. There is no reason to limit the consensus of the doctors to the black community. Young people everywhere are full of energy and enthusiasm and the desire for excitement. There is always danger when that energy is not channeled by adults. Tougher law enforcement is essential but it's not nearly enough. By the time the police are called, something terrible has already happened. The black physicians are on to something, and others have reached similar conclusions. There are many programs operating around the country to defuse violence. A national campaign against violence would find out what is working best and what more is needed. Right now it's a lot more. |
629083_3 | Bosnian Sees His Hope For West's Help Vanish | at a news conference Friday, Mr. Izetbegovic sounded ready to reach a peace accord, though he stressed that the constitutional structure of the new "Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina" would be valid only if a "fair" agreement is also reached on the borders of the three republics. The constitutional document seeks to guarantee democracy, human rights and protection against racial and religious discrimination, and it also allows citizens in the union to live in the republic of their choice. But the republics still need to be defined. Mr. Izetbegovic said that since the country is to be partitioned ethnically, all Muslim-populated territory should be in the Muslim republic. He estimated that this would give the Muslims 40 percent of the land, but he said it was more important to identify the territories and then to work out the percentage. Proposals for Division International mediators -- Lord Owen of the European Community and Thorvald Stoltenberg, the United Nations envoy -- have proposed that the Muslims, who now control around 10 percent of the land, be given at least 30 percent, while the Serbs, who control 70 percent, would be left with 52 percent. The Croats, who occupy 20 percent now, would be given 18 percent. Although Muslims accounted for 44 percent of Bosnia's pre-war population of 4.3 million, the Serbs and Croats -- as well as the mediators -- have argued that the 30 percent share proposed for the Muslims would in fact be the richest part of the country, including all major cities as well as key industries and resources. Any final accord will also have to insure overland communication between Muslim enclaves and the main body of the Muslim republic and provide the commercial outlet to the Adriatic Sea as well as the River Sava to the north. But the biggest obstacle to agreement could be Sarajevo itself. The Serbs want to divide the city to incorporate traditional Serbian districts. The Muslims insist that it be united under their control, and the mediators have suggested that it may have to remain a United Nations "safe area" for a year or more until a permanent solution can be found. On Friday, however, Mr. Izetbegovic said the status of Sarajevo should be discussed and resolved as part of a package "because I believe the conditions of living in Sarajevo have reached a critical point in terms of physical and mental existence." |
629066_3 | Brazil Seeks to Return Ancestral Lands to Descendants of Runaway Slaves | deeper into the forest, portaging their possessions around river rapids. Today, these same rapids attract the attention of companies that want to build two hydroelectric dams in the area, and descendants of these Amazon quilombos are fighting for titles to lands used by 7,000 people in 25 villages. "Community representatives are now walking and marking the limits of their traditional lands," said Leinad Ayer de Oliveira Santos, an anthropologist. In Brazil's central savanna, slaves fled the gold mines of Goias in the 18th century for rugged hill country above Bezerra Falls on the Parana River. Today, about 4,000 descendants live in 41 villages scattered over 780 square miles. "When I first went there in 1982, there were no roads," said Mari Baiocchi, an anthropologist. "The only way in was by donkey." Later, as Brazil's agricultural frontier stretched west, dirt roads reached into the territory and plans were made to block Bezerra Falls with a hydroelectric dam. Although Goias State registered the lands as historic patrimony in 1991, about 60 mining, ranching and farming companies moved into the blacks' ancestral lands. "There are serious land conflicts in the region, characterized by the systematic invasion of lands and the expansion of existing ranches," read a recent report by Furnas, the power company. Historically, political support for the land rights of Brazil's rural blacks has been weak or nonexistent. But in one exception, about 1,000 descendants of a quilombo in Maranhao State won legal protection of their area in 1990. At the time, a Maranhao native, Jose Sarney, was Brazil's President. "In Maranhao there are 10,000 families living in 400 black communities," said Alfredo Wagner, an anthropologist who in 1989 conducted a survey financed by the Ford Foundation. "But five years after the Constitution went into effect, no quilombo has won official recognition. Today, Maranhao is a champion of agrarian conflicts." Music Groups Give Blacks Influence But Brazil's rural blacks are winning new allies -- the Roman Catholic Church, the Workers' Party and an urban black rights movement, bolstered by popular Afro-Brazilian music groups like the internationally famous drum corps Ile Aiye and Olodum. "I had been to Brasilia 15 times, but I never got a reception like the one I got last May," Mr. de Souza said as fellow workers gathered under the shade of a mango tree here to hear him tell the story once again. "Those boys from Ile Aiye |
631134_0 | Nor Will Trade Pact Aid Mexicans Much | To the Editor: "The Trade Pact Is Our Best Deal" (Op-Ed, Aug. 17) by Carla A. Hills makes highly questionable assertions in support of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Ms. Hills says that we sold almost $41 billion in goods to Mexico last year and that per capita purchases from the United States amounted to $477 in 1992. She must know that Mexican trade data, more detailed than our own, paint a totally different picture. Their data show United States exports to the Mexican consumer market constituted less than 20 percent of the total reported exports. Of the $40.6 billion in reported United States exports to Mexico in 1992, according to Mexican data, $14.1 billion were shipped to the "maquiladora" programs of United States plants on Mexican soil, employing Mexican labor at Mexican wages. Details are lacking for the share that went to free trade zones, which perform the same assembly and processing functions as the "maquiladores." More complete Mexican 1990 data show these two account for more than 50 percent of reported United States exports to Mexico. None of the products they produce are allowed to enter Mexico's consumer market. Mexico also reports that 35 percent of 1992 United States reported exports to Mexico were capital goods. The overwhelming share of these went to United States plants, which assemble United States-made parts. The finished product is re-exported to the United States. Thus, more than 80 percent of reported exports to Mexico represented United States companies trading with themselves. Mexican trade data for 1992 show that less than $9 billion in United States exports entered the Mexican consumer market. Dividing that figure by 90 million Mexicans shows per capita Mexican imports of consumer goods of less than $90, not Ms. Hills's $477. HERMAN STAROBIN Research Director, Intl. Ladies' Garment Workers' Union New York, Aug. 17, 1993 |
631121_1 | Death in the Rain Forest | their ability to communicate with outsiders remains limited. But Brazilian authorities believe that earlier this month gold miners illegally prospecting on the Yanomami reservation sadistically massacred 73 Yanomami men, women and children with machetes and guns and burned down their village -- Brazil's worst such incident in nearly a century. Journalists have been barred from the scene while the investigation continues, a worrisome sign given Brazil's long record of indifferent protection of Indian rights and its failure to punish any culprits in 16 previous Yanomami massacre incidents. Five million Indians are thought to have been living in Brazil before the Portuguese arrived. Only 250,000 remain. The worst damage they suffered was inflicted not by massacres but by the introduction of European diseases, by enslavement and, during this century, by exploitation of the vast Amazon rain forest. The great majority of Brazilian tribes have been wiped out. The case of the Yanomami is among the best known and most poignant of those that still survive. When the Yanomami were first encountered by other Brazilians, they lived in a virtual stone-age culture. Two decades of unsought contact with miners, missionaries and scientists have taken a cultural and physical toll. More than 15 percent of Brazil's Yanomami have succumbed to diseases introduced from outside. As recently as five years ago, Brazilian Governments were still encouraging miners and others to push the Yanomami aside in order to exploit their land. Under international pressure the tide began to turn in the early 1990's. The Government of Fernando Collor de Mello expanded the Yanomami reservation over fierce local opposition. Both Mr. Collor and his successor, Itamar Franco, the current President, have used federal forces to evict wildcat miners from the area. This week Mr. Franco summoned Brazil's military leaders to respond to the latest massacre. But time is running out, as disease and other enemies of the Yanomami do their deadly work. Mining and ranching interests and the powerful political forces aligned with them are pushing for constitutional changes later this year that would severely restrict Indian land rights. The miners too are poor and desperate, but that must not become an excuse for genocide. No country in the New World can be proud of its record involving indigenous peoples. But if Brazil shows itself able to respond vigorously to this massacre and protect Yanomami lives and culture, it can bring some pride to its present. |
626757_1 | Test Sales of New Tomato Called a Success | today at $5, up 37.5 cents, in Nasdaq trading. More Stores and More Acreage DNA Plant said its tomato, sold under the brand name Freshworld Farms, achieved an average 15.8 percent market share during its first three months of test sales in Philadelphia and Columbus, Ohio. The sales began in April. DNA Plant said this acceptance meant it would now increase the number of supermarkets carrying its tomato from 41 to more than 500 by the end of 1993. The company, based in Cinnaminson, N.J., is now planting more acreage to meet this goal. "Our excellent test-market results confirm what previous taste tests and other consumer panel data have indicated," Robert Serenbetz, president and chief executive, said in a statement. "With our upcoming market expansion, we look forward to duplicating our successful results on a broader scale." DNA Plant's Freshworld Farms tomato is currently available at selected Kroger supermarkets and Big Bear Stores in Columbus, Ohio, and at selected Acme and Superfresh supermarkets in the Philadelphia and southern New Jersey area. 'This Is Further Confirmation' "This is further confirmation of the potential of the tomato market," said James McCamant, editor of the Agbiotech Stock Letter. He noted that Calgene Inc., another company working on genetically engineered produce, had test-marketed a naturally bred premium tomato in the Chicago area with considerable success. "There's a willingness, even during times when you can get decent tomatoes, to pay a premium to get a better tomato," he said. DNA Plant's tomato is a vine-ripened variety that stays fresh for 10 to 14 days, compared with most vine-ripened tomatoes, which have a shelf life of 3 to 7 days. DNA Plant said it had developed its new breed of tomato to have improved taste, a heartier texture, a deep red color and to be available on a year-round basis. Developed through a patented breeding technique that allows the company to accelerate the breeding process and select for new improved varieties of tomatoes, the tomato is 100 percent natural. Mr. McCamant said much of the tomato's advantage came through more careful handling and more rapid transport to markets, both of which raise costs and require a premium price. "I think over the next 5 to 10 years we'll see a big increase in branded produce," he said. Though uncommon today except in bananas, brand names "help people know it is worth paying a premium." COMPANY NEWS |
626774_2 | U.S. and Cuba Team Up Against a Pilot | that is much beyond his reach." The Government's decision to proceed with the case has enraged Cuban-Americans here, many of whom risked their lives aboard boats, rafts or planes to flee the Communist regime of President Castro and consider Mr. Cancio a hero. His arrival here in December was greeted with jubilation in Little Havana, where his fellow exiles exulted at Mr. Cancio's declaration that he had been able to embarrass Mr. Castro. He remains a celebrity in the Miami area, and Cuban-Americans often approach him to congratulate him on his feat. Now, however, alarmed exile groups and Spanish-language radio stations here have attacked the prosecutors as unjust and have suggested that the Clinton Administration is softening its position on Mr. Castro. "There was no crime committed, and to single out this man is an outrage," Manuel Vazquez, another of Mr. Cancio's lawyers, said in an interview. "I don't think they have a leg to stand on regarding air piracy. A pilot cannot hijack his own plane, and the relevant international conventions make that clear." Waving protest placards and shouting insults at Fidel Castro, scores of Cuban-Americans demonstrated outside the Federal Courthouse here this morning. The Cuban-American National Foundation, the most influential exile group here, has urged its supporters to write letters to President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno "asking that they stop this injustice and do not permit the U.S. Government to become an accomplice to the crimes of Fidel Castro." Asked to comment, Andres Rivero, a spokesman for United States Attorney Roberto Martinez, would say only that the case against Mr. Cancio remains open. "It would be inappropriate to comment on any matters that may or may not relate to a grand jury investigation," he said. "The entire episode relating to Mr. Cancio's diversion of the flight from Cuba will be considered solely on the facts and the law." Mr. Cancio was piloting a turboprop plane from Havana to Varadero on Dec. 29 when friends and family members flying with him immobilized two other crew members, enabling him to divert the flight to Miami, where he and all but five of the people on board requested political asylum. The Cuban Government immediately condemned the incident as a terrorist act of aerial piracy that violated international hijacking agreements. View of International Law But Mr. Cancio and his lawyers argue that he was acting within his authority as captain |
626685_0 | Sleuths at Sea | Many weekend sailors would sooner put into shore than toss a beer can or plastic cup overboard. Regrettably, no comparable sense of environmental stewardship burdens the corporate managers and captains of some of the huge cruise ships that ply America's offshore waters. Conservation groups estimate that of the seven million tons of waste illegally dumped into the oceans, 15 percent can be traced to cruise ships. Lately, however, tourists with a strong conscience and a talent for undercover work have offered hope. An article in The Times last week reported that Princess Cruise Lines recently paid a record $500,000 fine after pleading guilty to illegal dumping. The crucial evidence was supplied by a Michigan couple, Alvin and Marilyn Levett, who videotaped the crew of the Royal Princess hurling plastic bags into the sea off the Florida Keys. Under a Federal whistle-blowers' program, the couple received half the fine, or $250,000. Two other similar cases are now under Federal investigation. These amateur sleuths have been welcomed by the Coast Guard, which recently expanded its jurisdiction over ocean dumping to include any violation within the U.S.'s exclusive economic zone, extending 200 nautical miles from shore. Given that huge expanse to patrol, it's virtually impossible to catch a violator in the act and nearly as hard to prove the origin of the garbage if and when it washes ashore. The 1987 Marine Plastic Pollution, Research and Control Act established rules for disposing of all ship-generated garbage and flatly banned dumping plastics, which take 400 years to decompose and kill an estimated one million birds and 100,000 sea mammals and turtles every year. Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, whose interest in the problem is kept alive by regular visits to the Jersey Shore, hopes to eliminate incentives for ships to dump illegally. Ships now pay a separate fee to dispose of garbage in port. These fees can run as high as $500 per cubic yard of compressed garbage. Mr. Lautenberg wants to fold that fee into the general docking fee that all ships pay anyway, making it a routine cost of doing business instead of a separate cost inviting illegal behavior. Perhaps the best antidote, however, would be a general raising of the environmental conscience aboard ship. Errant captains and furtive crew members could study the estimable example of Patrick Kane, a California engineer and amateur golfer who had hoped to spend his |
626739_2 | Theodore Parker, Alwyn Gentry, Biologists, Die in Airplane Crash | firsthand what others only theorized." Peter Seligmann, chairman of Conservation International, said both scientists were "pioneers" who together constituted "an unmatchable reservoir of knowledge." The nonprofit organization, which specializes in research in tropical countries, seeks to find ways in which nature and people can better coexist. The organization's Rapid Assessment Program was to survey the biological diversity. Adapting Field Techniques The survey program, established by Mr. Parker four years ago, blends traditional field techniques with the latest technology to survey a region's system of plants and animals and then recommend ways to protect them. Much of the program's attention in recent years has centered on so-called tropical hotspots that are being threatened by encroachment or destruction. The program's first pilot survey was conducted in a remote rain forest in the northern region of Bolivia in 1991. Brent Bailey, a program manager for the survey, said that when he and Mr. Parker took off in a small airplane in Bolivia, "He turned around and said to me, I have the best job in the world." Mr. Bailey said that both men pioneered aerial surveys of uncharted regions and that both were aware of the risks such flights posed. "They knew, but it never stopped them," he said. Mr. Parker was born in Lancaster, Pa., and graduated in 1977 from the University of Arizona. Beginning in 1988, he conducted ornithological surveys in just about every Latin American country, from Peru to Caribbean grasslands and remote Amazon jungles. Combing Through Trees In his book, "Prowling Through Peru Seeking Birds to Name," Gerald Gold described the adventures of Mr. Parker and a colleague as they combed through trees and bushes for exotic species. Mr. Parker is survived by his parents, Theodore and Dorothy Parker, of Lancaster, and by a brother and sister. Dr. Gentry was born in Clay Center, Kan., and received degrees from Kansas State University and the University of Wisconsin. He received a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. In a paper published in 1988 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he reported that the tropical rain forests in the upper Amazon may contain the world's greatest diversity of tree species. He also took part in studies designed to save the natural forests of Paraguay in general and in particular in its Mbaracayu region. Dr. Gentry is survived by his wife, Rosa Ortiz de Gentry, two daughters, and |
625315_4 | A Woman's Ordeal Helps Her Become A Better Pastor | are 19, 20 and 21, live with Ms. Crewdson, a massage therapist, in Tolland. The women share a covenant union, described by Ms. O'Donovan as a commitment before God and the community of faithful that was celebrated in 1984 in a service at the Storrs Congregational Church. The couple have known each other for 23 years. Their sexual orientation became public when the church they belonged to learned of their relationship and refused to recommend Ms. O'Donovan for a scholarship to Hartford Seminary. That "threw us out of the closet," she said. "We decided to turn that liability into an asset and to be fully open." She completed her studies at Hartford Seminary and graduated in the spring of 1988 from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. As far as she knows, Ms. O'Donovan said, she is still the only openly gay woman to be ordained in the state. The United Church of Christ, formed in 1961 by the merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church with Congregational Christian Churches, is the only mainstream Protestant denomination that ordains openly gay and lesbian clergy. Some Positive Changes Although gays and lesbians are still not accepted in much of mainstream religious life, some positive changes have taken place in the five years since her ordination, Ms. O'Donovan said. "I don't feel so lonely because I may be the only one who has gone through the ordination process. There are more lesbian and gay clergy out there and we're there for each other in some important ways." Some churches in Connecticut are taking steps toward welcoming openly homosexual members through what is called the Open and Affirming process, by which some United Church of Christ congregations becomes sensitive to gay and lesbian issues. Seven of 273 United Church of Christ congregations in Connecticut have Open and Affirming status, Ms. O'Donovan said, and about 12 more are addressing the issue in sermons, workshops and discussions. Ms. O'Donovan draws support from lay and ordained members of the United Church Coalition for Lesbian-Gay Concerns, an organization established 10 years ago in the state to insure that lesbian, gay and bisexual Christians are able to participate fully in their churches. She tries to raise awareness of homophobia and other lay and lesbian issues through the articles she writes and the workshops she leads. 'Justice Preacher' But her sermons express equality for all. Calling herself a "justice preacher," |
625363_2 | Cruising the St. Lawrence, Era by Era | passengers diverted themselves with a scavenger hunt, bingo, cards and the seemingly eternal shuffleboard tournament. The flat green farmland of the shore was distant and unremarkable until the hazy blue outline of the Adirondacks appeared in the south. At Coteau du Lac, pylons of a hydroelectric power plant dwarfed a steeple in the town, a fitting image of the old religious Quebec alongside the new technological society. We climbed through three locks and passed lake freighters hauling millions of bushels of grain from the Canadian prairies toward an ultimate destination in Russia, and an empty molasses barge heading to the West Indies for its cargo. The Canadian Empress is 108 feet long and 30 feet wide, a small ship compared with most cruise liners. Launched in 1981 by St. Lawrence Cruise Lines Inc. of Kingston, she is modeled after the steamships that cruised the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence from the early 19th century to the late 1940's. A twin-propeller drive has replaced the paddlewheel and plows through the river at a quiet 10 miles an hour. There's room for 66 passengers and 14 crew members. The upper, outside deck is dominated by the shuffleboard court and a game of giant checkers (which was mostly ignored during my five days on board). About four dozen deck chairs are aligned at the sides. On the sole breezy day, the waitresses passed around bouillon to passengers sitting on the deck; on hot days, they delivered lemonade. The bottom deck contains 20 staterooms, four slightly larger suites and a small store. The interiors have been decorated to simulate a 1908 steamship, with brass imitation gaslights and painted stamped-tin ceilings in every stateroom. The staterooms are simple but reasonably comfortable. Each contains a private bathroom (with shower) and an air-conditioner. The vinyl-clad walls are thin and easily transmit the rumble of the neighbor's air-conditioner (although each stateroom has two screened windows so an air-conditioner isn't really necessary at night). The middle deck has four more staterooms, two small observation decks fore and aft and the Grand Saloon, a combined dining room, bar and entertainment room. Its pine trim, brass fixtures, piano and portraits of Queen Victoria and Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, are intended as flourishes for an Edwardian drawing room. A small bar is tucked into one corner. The nostalgic effect is not altogether convincing: the burgundy velour valances |
625479_4 | Technology; A Better Way for the Wireless Caller? | so that conversations do not overlap. With C.D.M.A. as many as 20 conversations can occur simultaneously on a channel, because each is coded with an electronic label that allows the call to be broken into fragments and reassembled on the receiving end. In C.D.M.A., in short, the radio channel is a multi-lane freeway, compared with T.D.M.A.'s narrow country road. Cellular phones get their name from the honeycomb network of cell sites, each with a low-power radio transmitter and receiver known as a base station. Whether driver or pedestrian, a cellular customer crossing from one cell to another is "handed off" to the next cell, typically without interruption. C.D.M.A. uses a "soft" handoff rather than the "hard" handoff employed in T.D.M.A. In a soft handoff, two radio transmitters are tied up in the call's transfer rather than one transmitter in the time-division system. "I am concerned that if C.D.M.A. equipment is as complicated, and therefore as expensive, as T.D.M.A. equipment," said Mr. Nelson of McCaw, "my operating costs are going to be doubled." Craig Farrill, vice president of technology planning for Pacific Telesis's cellular business, acknowledges that C.D.M.A. requires more equipment. But any added costs, he says, are outweighed by the much greater network capacity. The Los Angeles market will provide an interesting test case of the competing digital formats. McCaw, in partnership with BellSouth, plans to introduce T.D.M.A. there as early as September, while Pacific Telesis will not be able to begin offering C.D.M.A. in Los Angeles until 1995. As the nation's freeway-and-car-phone capital, Los Angeles will provide an especially good test bed for one of the other unresolved issues of digital cellular technology: "power control," or the tendency of a mobile telephone to transmit too little power to a radio transmitter when it is blocked by a building and too much power when the obstruction is passed. The problem is especially acute for car phones, because a vehicle traveling at 60 miles an hour might be "handed off" to another cell site once every minute. The industry's solution is to equip phones with a series of power levels, so that transmission levels can be continually adjusted. As a measure of relative complexity, T.D.M.A. phones have only 7 power levels; C.D.M.A devices require more than 90. Not to worry, say C.D.M.A. advocates like Mr. Farrill of Pacific Telesis. "These are minor operational issues," he said. "We can deal with that." |
629875_2 | Long-Secret Navy Devices Allow Monitoring of Ocean Eruption | the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Navy system that the scientists relied on is known as the Underwater Sound Surveillance System, or Sosus, which for decades has been used exclusively to track the ships and submarines of potential enemies. Started in the 1950's, it now girdles the globe with a vast network of underwater microphones that are tied to Navy shore stations by some 30,000 miles of undersea cables. The system is estimated to have cost $15 billion. In its espionage work, the Navy filters out the sounds that geologists find most interesting -- the super-low-frequency vibrations made by sea quakes and undersea volcanoes. At 1 to 50 Hertz, or cycles per second, these lie far below the range of human hearing and are far removed from the higher-frequency noises made by most ships and submarines. Scientists in Newport, Ore., at the Hydrothermal Vents Program, which is part of the oceanic agency, approached the Navy about examining such low-frequency signals and were allowed to do so for the first time in 1991. That data was stored on magnetic tapes and examined later. The system's sensitivity was such that agency's researchers in 1992 detected more than 7,500 seismic events in the Pacific Northwest, most of them in the ocean. In contrast, geologists using land-based instruments during that same period detected only 300 events. Starting on June 22, the agency's scientists began getting the data piped directly over a telephone line to the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Newport, so that they could monitor undersea events as they happened. This meant the sounds could be used to guide researchers at sea into making rapid on-site observations of geological events. "I honestly expected to spend months or years looking for an eruption," Dr. Christopher G. Fox, one of the agency's scientists who set up the system, told the news conference. "It only took four days. That's probably fortuitous. But it also may illustrate how active those systems are out there." The section of the sea floor that erupted is part of the Juan de Fuca Ridge, which extends hundreds of miles off the West Coast from Oregon to Vancouver Island. The ridge has been extensively studied by scientists in recent years. Geologically, it is the junction of two oceanic plates that are moving apart at a snail's pace, one westward and one eastward. Where they meet, molten rock from the earth's interior |
629884_2 | Miners Kill 20 Indians in the Amazon | unable to locate the camp in the remote, mountainous rain forest. Today, a Funai offical, Wilt Celio da Silva, reached the village and radioed a report back to Boa Vista, the nearest city. Concerned that the toll could mount, Justice Minister Mauricio Correa and Attorney General Aristides Junqueira flew to Boa Vista today. "I don't have any doubt that this can be classified as a genocide," Mr. Junqueira said after arriving. Pressure on World Bank The negative international impact could be just as great. A familiar figure worldwide, Davi Kaponewa Yanomami, the leader of Brazil's 10,000 Yanomami, met with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit in Washington in May and with Vice President Al Gore, then a United States Senator, in Rio during the Earth Summit last year. Last month, during Congressional hearings in Washington, Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, proposed that the United States help protect Brazil's Indians by putting pressure on the World Bank and the Inter-American Bank. Sensitive to international concern over the Yanomami, the World Bank announced in late June a $330,000 loan to improve Government health care for the tribe. In the late 1980's, about 1,500 Brazilian Yanomami died of imported diseases. Of 8,131 Yanomami tested this year, 20 percent had malaria, according to the Committee for the Creation of a Yanomami Park, a private Brazilian group. "If Brazil wants to talk to the World Bank about support for new directions in the Amazon, they will have to show a minimal concern about human rights," said Stephan Schwartzman, a visiting anthropologist for the Environmental Defense Fund, a Washington group. Debate in Brazil Is Bitter The killings and the international pressure are expected to polarize Brazil's increasingly bitter debate over the Yanomami. In Roraima, unemployed gold miners say they feel abandoned by their Government. Forced out of the reserve, thousands emigrated to southern Venezuela and Guyana. In recent months, both countries forcibly repatriated dozens of miners. Miners, local politicians and the Army say it is unrealistic to try to stop a gold rush and to lock up billions of dollars in mineral wealth in order to shelter 10,000 Yanomami in an area the size of Portugal. Amazon politicians refuse to recognize the Yanomami reservation. In October, when Brazil's Congress is to start reviewing the Constitution, Amazon legislators plan to seek to open Indian lands to mining and to revoke the presidential decree creating the Yanomomi reserve. |
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629281_0 | Cellular Phone Had Key Role | Much like regular phone calls, cellular phone calls can be traced by law enforcement authorities, only faster and more easily in some instances. In announcing the arrests of two men for the murder of James Jordan, Michael Jordan's father, the local authorities in North Carolina said yesterday that phone calls made from the cellular telephone in Jordan's car after his killing were instrumental in leading to the arrests. Officials for the cellular carriers in the Lumberton, N.C., vicinity that presumably cooperated with the police could not be reached. As with regular telephones, the phone carrier's record of calls made on a cellular phone can be disclosed to authorities under court order. Such records are kept as a normal part of monthly bill collection. "If a suspect calls his girlfriend from a stolen cellular phone, there will be a record," said Charles M. Parrish, a GTE executive familiar with wireless telephone technology but who could not immediately verify whether GTE was involved in the case. "Then the police can ask the girlfriend, 'Has anyone called you at such and such an hour?' " Moreover, because of increasing cellular telephone fraud, carriers are especially vigilant about trying to weed out illegitimate callers. Cellular telephones transmit phone calls with radio signals instead of by electric current over copper wires. Callers are thus essentially talking into an open microphone. When a cellular customer begins a call, the phone broadcasts two electronic codes -- a mobile identification number that identifies the subscriber and an electronic serial number that identifies the phone. Whether the two men charged with Jordan's murder were traced through phone records was not immediately known. |
629232_1 | Brazil Opens Its Borders to Goods From Abroad | here. Brazil "is becoming increasingly attractive to United States companies," he added, with inquiries by United States exporters up by an estimated 40 percent this year over last. For decades, American exporters wrote Brazil off as a closed shop. In the 1960's and 1970's, successive Brazilian Governments sought to stimulate local industrial production by banning the import of more than 1,000 products and by imposing tariffs as high as 205 percent on other products. But in 1990, the list of banned imports was abolished, and the average import tariff has dropped steadily. From 78 percent in 1984, it fell to 14 percent last month in a final scheduled reduction -- and duties could fall even further. Brazilians now find that their tariff levels are near Latin America's norm. Argentina and Chile impose average external tariffs of 11 percent. Mexico's average tariff is 12 percent. In the United States, the average import duty on industrialized products is 5 percent. "Fernando Collor was criticized for many things, but he really opened the country up," Soumo Kabakian, trade director of Flowlevel Controls, said of the Brazilian president who resigned last December under a corruption cloud. Mr. Kabakian estimated that his company's annual imports of American and Canadian industrial-control instruments would rise to $500,000 this year -- 10 times the 1989 level of $50,000. Pent-Up Demand Importers here sense an enormous pent-up demand for imported goods despite Brazil's poor economic situation -- a long-term recession and 32 percent monthly inflation. [ On Friday, the president of the central bank, Paulo Cesar Ximenes, resigned and was to be replaced by Pedro Malan, who will become Brazil's fourth central bank president in a year. The new foreign debt negotiator is Andre Lara Resende. ] "Miami Mania" blares advertisements for a national electronics store chain, Photo Mania. Each store now has an imports corner, hawking imported telephones, toaster ovens, stereos, radios and microwave ovens. Last October, a 10-year ban on imported computers was lifted, and the impact was evident last month at the stands of Fenasoft, Brazil's largest annual computer show. "The American presence at Fenasoft must have increased this year by 50 to 70 percent," said George Zelenjuk, a director of ABC Dados Informatica S.A., a major importer here of data communications equipment. In addition to cutting tariffs, Brazil has helped imports by improving its bureaucracy. 'Simply Dreadful' "We had a customs that was simply dreadful |
630708_3 | Female Gerbil Born With Males Is Found To Be Begetter of Sons | up affecting the sex ratio of the gerbils' offspring when they reach adulthood. Scientists propose that an excess of androgens or estrogens somehow influence the character of the female's eggs, changing the thickness or permeability of their membranes and making them more susceptible to penetration either by sperm bearing a Y chromosome -- the hallmark of maleness -- or an X chromosome. Alternatively, hormonal exposure in the womb may affect the character of the female's uterus, making it more hospitable to either male or female embryos. And while the work has no immediate relevance to people, Dr. Clark and others pointed out that physicians are just beginning to wonder if, among humans, exposure in the womb to potent hormones may have an impact extending beyond a single generation. For example, the children of mothers in the 1950's and 1960's who took diethylstilbestrol, or DES -- a synthetic estrogen -- while pregnant have had a host of health problems, from an increased risk of rare cancers to fertility. As the children of DES children begin reaching reproductive age, it remains to be learned whether they may suffer any lingering effects from the medication their grandmothers had taken. In experiments performed over the last 15 years on different species of rodents, Dr. Vandenbergh and many others have observed the startling impact of androgens on female fetuses. Male fetuses begin generating testosterone and related hormones early in development to aid in sculpturing and refining their own masculine forms, but if a female is very close to the male she, too, may be exposed to noticeable amounts of the androgens. Female rats squeezed between brothers end up with brains that are somewhat masculinized, particularly in the certain parts of the hypothalamus, a region known to differ between males and females of many species and now the site of a ferocious debate over the origins of homosexuality in humans. Mingling Folklore and Fact The female rodents also end up with a more masculine style of behavior, roaming larger distances and marking a greater area as their territory than do most females. However, they mate happily with males and are perfectly competent mothers. Scientists have made many attempts to understand sex ratios in animals. Among many amphibians, reptiles and fish, temperature is a key to gender. For example, in the Atlantic silverside fish, larvae that develop in cold water become females, while those that grow in |
630629_0 | Consider What Star Wars Accomplished | At a meeting not long ago, I asked Ambassador Vladimir Lukin, chairman of the Supreme Soviet Foreign Relations Committee in the 1980's, what role U.S. policy in general and the Strategic Defense Initiative in particular played in the Soviet Union's collapse. His answer was straightforward: "You accelerated our catastrophe by about five years." Remarkable. More than remarkable in that an investment of about $26 billion saved us and our allies at least five years of much higher defense budgets -- certainly more than $100 billion -- not to mention ending an era in which all humankind lived under a balance of terror. But today the subject of "Star Wars" is raised not in the context of its strategic worth but rather for its potential for scandal -- an interesting comment on our political and social values. Even allowing that the American contribution to the collapse of Marxism was relatively small, that role is no less striking. Anything that shortened an ideological change of such immense consequence is worth serious study. In 1982, 25 years into the missile age, the U.S. had just about lost the struggle to maintain a strategic military balance based on offensive deterrence. It was clear that the Soviet Union would always be able to put more missiles in the field; it was not inhibited by an elected Congress or competing social demands on the treasury. The U.S. would have to compensate with superior quality, and for a time we did. But by the end of 1982, when I was deputy national security adviser, two things seemed clear to me. First, we had squeezed just about all the comparative advantage we would find out of our technology, at least in offensive terms. Second, the American people and Congress were getting worried about a strategy that relied on building more and more nuclear weapons. But what to do? We had to find a way either to get the Soviet Union to reduce the number of its warheads or to increase ours until we could fashion a new strategy. Unfortunately, we didn't have much leverage. The value of defensive technologies -- the ability with confidence to destroy incoming missiles before they come close enough to do damage -- seemed attractive for many reasons. We had made a serious effort in the late 1960's to develop an effective anti-missile missile but were forced to conclude that the state of the |
630705_0 | The New-Age Mailbox Now Sits on Your Desk | ELECTRONIC mail, messages sent from computer to computer directly or through a company network or commercial intermediary, is becoming an indispensable tool of business, education and government. In a strong indication of the role that E-mail is taking, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled on Aug. 13 that the Federal Government must preserve such messages. But E-mail is also personal, as many letters used to be. A recent request for anecdotes about E-mail, printed with this writer's access codes for MCI Mail, Compuserve and Genie, inspired more than 50 responses within a few days. Compuserve provided the largest number, with MCI Mail a strong second and Genie a distant third. A notably large number came to Compuserve from the Internet, the system that links perhaps 12 million people around the world. There are, of course, many other connections, including America Online, Delphi and Prodigy, but one can't spend all of one's time in cyberspace. (Michael Fraase notes in "The Mac Internet Tour Guide," published by Ventana Press that John Perry Barlow describes cyberspace as "where you are when you're on the telephone.") Alice E. McLerran, an author in Oregon, said that she chats "essentially every day with a couple of writer friends, and also with my computer 'niece' -- a fictive but very important relationship of several years' duration, going back to Prodigy times." She went on: "The extended family on line now stretches from my aunt Jean (well over 80 years old) down to my grandchildren, and laterally to include my cousins and some of their children; frequent mass mailings go from Massachusetts to Hawaii, from Alaska to Arizona. My godson Duncan is on line, as is my sister-in-law's mother. I can exchange news with our dear friend Mitya in St. Petersburg, and our Korean 'son' Chisup in Seoul. "Thanks to E-mail, my social network is always rich, accessible and active." Nat Raskin, a clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at Northwestern University, said: "E-mail is definitely my preferred way of corresponding, because of its ease, immediacy, economy and constant availability, and the way it lends itself to spontaneous expression and having a series of exchanges. At the same time, I like the opportunity to compose my messages and say exactly what I wish." That can be a problem. As Michael Trigoboff, of MLT Software, wrote: "E-mail has always been |
631805_3 | U.S. Tries to Restore the Once-Friendly Skies | carriers is threatening their continued success," said Kenneth P. Quinn, a Washington lawyer and former chief counsel to the Federal Aviation Administration. Shift in Traffic Officials at foreign airlines note that when the bilateral agreements were written, most international passengers were American. That is no longer true, so the agreements are not relevant, they say. When the United States signed its bilateral agreement with occupied Japan in 1952, for example, there was no Japanese airline that flew international routes. Now the number of Japanese flying to the United States is more than three times the number of Americans flying to Japan, but American carriers lay claim to 69 percent of the traffic. Susumu Yamaji, chairman of Japan Airlines, traveled to Washington in May to lobby for a new accord with Japan that offered 50-50 sharing of routes. The two countries' relationship is likely to be further strained by what American officials say is a Japanese effort to limit access by United States carriers to a new airport in Japan scheduled to open in 1994. A similar market-share imbalance prompted France to renounce its 46-year-old pact with the United States in May. The United States airlines share of flights to France has grown from about 45 percent in 1978 to about two-thirds now. Germany Opposes Added Flights Relations with Germany were strained earlier this year when Northwest Airlines added flights from the United States to Germany through Amsterdam on planes operated with Northwest's partner, KLM. The German Government decided that Northwest-KLM flights represented additional United States traffic that was not authorized by the two countries' agreement. Lufthansa, a carrier that is majority-owned by the German Government, won an order from a Frankfurt court demanding that Northwest stop advertising the connecting flights as seamless trips from the United States to Germany. The dispute turned on a technical point. The German Government argued that Northwest did not have formal approval to operate the shared flights; Northwest contended that nothing in the agreement required it to get approval. This argument has resulted in two letters from Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany to President Clinton insisting on a new agreement that would limit the growth of American carriers' access to German cities and beyond. Lufthansa, a high-cost carrier, would benefit from such limits. But many industry analysts say a marketing alliance between Lufthansa and either United or American Airlines is imminent, and that could broadly |
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627056_3 | This Just In: We're Not as Wise as Plato | be puzzled, too, by Bloom's apparent endorsement of Montaigne, who thought friendship, because voluntary, a far higher connection than those of blood and marriage, both of which the French philosopher, like many moderns, regarded as a big nuisance. The reader who sticks with "Love and Friendship" will note that in exalting his eight writers (six, actually -- he's rather impatient with Flaubert and Tolstoy, which takes a lot of nerve), Bloom has stacked the deck of his argument. How could we moderns not look stupid and shallow when the past is shown through the lens of great literature and the present through snide references to talk shows and cocktail party chitchat? It isn't fair to contrast Rousseau with a sex manual or unnamed -- and, I suspect, imaginary -- "radical feminists." A real battle of the books would mean a serious consideration of, say, Simone de Beauvoir, but Bloom waves her away in a patronizing phrase. Similarly, his attack on modern fiction for its neglect of eros mentions almost no books or authors -- not even those of his close friend Saul Bellow, for whom love as longing and imagination is, of course, a major subject. Even when explicating his favored authors, Bloom loads the dice. You will not learn from him that Aristotle (whose view of marriage as household management Bloom finds plausible, if a bit chilly) thought that women were biologically defective males, incapable of higher thought; or that Rousseau, the big romanticizer of bourgeois marriage and sentimental parenthood, lived with an illiterate chambermaid and consigned their five children to an orphanage. Although in his introduction Bloom boasts that he is not going to be silenced by modern pieties, he seeks support for his chosen writers by soft-pedaling precisely those of their views most readers would find offensive or bizarre. I doubt, for example, that any feminist alive or dead believed more devoutly than Rousseau that relations between the sexes are a power struggle. This was, after all, a man who argued in "Emile" that women must be "subjugated" (his word) within the family lest they overwhelm, and even kill, men with their insatiable sexual demands. No doubt "Love and Friendship" will be praised by the conservative think-tankers who admired Allan Bloom's earlier book. I wonder how many of them will get all the way through it. Bloom counts irony as one of the many good things that |
627281_2 | Even Castro Sees the Possibilities of Enterprise in Cuba | and food. Beyond those, the Cuban economy presents a long list of needs waiting to be filled by longer-term investments in areas from housing to manufacturing. Many of the best deals, however, are already being locked up by competitors in Europe, Canada, Mexico and Jamaica. Plums Already Plucked "Almost all of the hotels in Havana are already gone," said Arlene Alligood, a Washington-based consultant who publishes the newsletter Cuba Business. She noted a Spanish company's recent takeover of the former Havana Hilton. "Once the major investments are taken, they are taken for a generation or more. American companies are going to wake up and find themselves at a disastrous disadvantage." If many plums have already been plucked by European and Canadian interests, the scope of Cuba's needs and its proximity to the United States would present both countries with an unusually rich blend of opportunities. A recent study by Johns Hopkins University estimated that the United States could expect to do $2 billion in business with Cuba in the first year of an economic opening, a figure that could rapidly rise to $7 billion annually or more. "You are talking about a semi-industrialized country of 11 million people that is 90 miles away from Florida and that desperately needs to be brought into the 21st century," said Joseph Strain, chief of the Jacksonville Port Authority, who has visited Cuba twice to scout opportunities there. "That means rebuilding railroads, phone systems, electrical systems, you name it. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of merchandise." Mr. Strain said that an opening of the Cuban market to American commerce would mean that the rate of growth of Florida's ports in terms of the value of goods handled would easily double. Experts say there would be other important opportunities beyond commerce -- for example, insuring the safety of Cuba's nuclear energy program. The United States has expressed concerns about a half-built Soviet-designed nuclear power plant at Cienfuegos, which the Cuban Government says it is committed to completing to alleviate severe energy shortages. Strapped for capital and hard-pressed to proceed alone, however, it has also said it would welcome American participation in the plant's management; that would help to guarantee that international safety standards are stringently observed. Similarly, American companies could help market Cuban-designed pharmaceutical goods currently unavailable in the United States, from meningitis and hepatitis vaccines to livestock drugs. Although Cuba |
627092_4 | Tragedy Highlights Perils of Croton Dam | surrounding valley. "It's a very popular dam," Sergeant Wisker said. "People do visit it quite frequently in the day and evening, but like any secluded spot you're going to get teen-agers congregating, and on any summer night you're going to end up with a handful of teen-agers around the spillway. Our view on this is basically 'When the sun goes down, there's really nothing to see, so move along.' " Landmark Status There are plans to repair parts of the Croton Dam system, including some of the masonry facade, beginning in 1997. In the wake of the two accidents, special attention is being given to safety considerations. To rescue Benjamin Vinci, volunteers from the Croton Fire Department had to cut through locked metal doors to gain access to the spillway. Renovation plans include installing an alarm system at the gates. Keys will also be given to the local police for use in emergencies. But no decision has been made on improving the fencing around the dam, said Ian Michael, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. The dam is designated a civil-engineering landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Mr. Michael said that any fencing changes would have to conform to the architectural integrity of the dam. And there may be no amount of protection sufficient to guard against a combination of alcohol and youthful recklessness. 'You Don't Need a Sign' "Any reasonable person should know that if you're climbing on a structure 90 feet over a gorge, on a roof of a building with no railing, you're doing something that shouldn't be done," Sergeant Wisker said. "You don't need a sign. You don't need a fence to know you shouldn't be up there." When he was released from Westchester County Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized after the accident, Benjamin Vinci went back to visit the dam with Mr. Sarcone. Mr. Vinci said that looking up from the gorge to the spot where he slipped gave him a real sense of the distance. He said he did not remember the actual fall and tried not to think about it much. "I remember waking up after the fall and yelling," Mr. Vinci said. "I knew some of the firemen and policemen who came to get me off. I kept hearing them say: 'I can't believe he's alive. I can't believe he's alive.' " |
627093_0 | Gunk-Holing in the Pacific Northwest | OFF the coast of Washington and British Columbia, tucked away like so many hidden jewels, are the San Juan and Gulf Islands, at once civilized and untrampled. To explore them in a way that was free of structure and ferry schedules, last summer we chartered a sailboat and set out for a week of gunk-holing. Gunk-holing is a kind of nautical meandering, dipping in and out of coves and inlets. The San Juans and their sister archipelago to the north, the Gulfs, turned out to be an ideal place to do it. A trip through those islands can be anything you choose to make it. In keeping with the concept of gunk-holing, we did not have a particular agenda, except a vague notion that we would like to see how far north we could get while sticking to a leisurely pace. One of the delights of the trip was that we could spend part of a day sailing, then drop anchor at the nearest island and, depending on what was there, hike, take a run or just sit at a local cafe on shore overlooking a harbor and stare at a fiery sunset. My husband and I were eager but unschooled sailors, for whom a sheet is something that belongs on a bed. So we put ourselves in the capable hands of good friends Marv and Ardy Dunn, who have sailed these waters before and raced extensively on the Columbia River near Portland. We chartered our boat out of Bellingham, a port city 85 miles north of Seattle, and a popular point of departure for boats headed into the San Juans. Marv had done the boat shopping and settled on a charter company called Intrepid. Our vessel was the Lyric, a 35-foot French-made Beneteau Oceanis 350. To gain permission to disappear with the company's boat for a week, Marv had only to submit a sailing "resume," listing his experience. Marv had raced on larger boats, but had never skippered a boat quite as large as the Lyric. That didn't seem to faze the people at Intrepid -- they happily signed us up. When we arrived at Squalicum Harbor in Bellingham on Saturday morning, one of the Intrepid skippers came to inspect the boat and see us off. He did a thorough check of the boat's inventory, and showed us how to operate the engine, the anchor, the head and the |
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630573_0 | Starting the Climb -- A periodic look at summer interns; Career Preview Also Works As Mirror for the Job Hunter | As the time to return to classes fast approaches, summer interns, seasoned by two or three months of working at jobs in New York, share two realizations: it's a tough world out there, but they are a step ahead of the game. "A job isn't going to fall in your lap," said Brett Grossman, an intern with the Avrett, Free & Ginsberg advertising firm. "You're going to have to work on it, and you get a lot of rejection." The brutal employment situation is reflected in a new survey by the Hanigan Consulting Group, which showed that hiring by major corporations fell 55 percent from 1989 to 1993. This follows the annual Lindquist Endicott Report by Northwestern University, showing a tiny improvement in prospects compared with 1992 but still representing what the report's author, Victor R. Lindquist, terms "the worst situation in 20 years." 'A Step Ahead' Participants in summer internships fare much better than others. The Northwestern survey of 258 corporations showed that 17 percent of those hired immediately after graduation this year had been interns or the equivalent. Of interns, 37 percent are offered jobs, and 49 percent of those accept. "You're kind of a step ahead of people who didn't do one," said Amy Luberto, an accounting student who has spent the summer as an intern at KPMG Peat Marwick. She said interns who were hired permanently by the same employers could "pick up from where they left off and be a step ahead." Fully half of employers say they plan to increase their internship programs. One of them is the Union Carbide Corporation, which plans to raise the proportion of interns to half of its new hires in technical fields, from 40 percent. It attaches so much importance to the effort that it is identifying potential interns as early as freshman year for internships more than two years in the future. "Junior year is too late," said Don Gatewood, Union Carbide's recruiting manager. When Union Carbide finds a good freshman prospect, a company representative stays in contact, showing an interest in the student's progress. With minority students, who are much in demand, this effort is particularly important. Companies say the expense is far less than the expense of hiring unknown people less apt to fit in. As summer interns being profiled in this series of articles met for the first time recently to discuss their job |
630566_1 | Navy Listening System Opening World of Whales | cold war as the Navy starts to share and partly unveil its global network of underwater listening gear built over the decades to track the ships and submarines of potential enemies. The system is estimated to have cost $15 billion. Geologists announced at a news conference last week that they had used the system for closely monitoring a deep-sea volcanic eruption for the first time and that they planned similar studies. Other scientists have proposed to use the network for tracking ocean currents by listening to the beeps of drifting buoys, measuring changes in ocean and global temperatures by watching for shifts in the speed of sound in water and receiving acoustic data from remote sensors designed to detect such things as tsunamis and chemical spills. The Navy, in a statement, called the surveillance system "an unmatched acoustic observatory" for studying the world's oceans, adding that it had "tremendous potential to contribute to a variety of national agendas, both military and civilian." Overwhelming Endorsement Scientists who have tested the system heartily agree, often describing their experiences in hushed, slightly awed tones. Dr. Christopher G. Fox, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who helped monitor the recent undersea eruption, said last week that the Navy system could detect a blast as small as that from two pounds of high explosive at a range of thousands of miles. "It's a whole new world," he said in an interview. The speed of sound in water is roughly one mile a second -- slower than through land but faster than through air. Most important for eavesdropping, different layers of ocean water can act as conduits for sounds, focusing them in the same way a stethoscope does when it carries faint noises from a patient's chest to a doctor's ear. This focusing is the main reason that even relatively weak sounds in the ocean, especially low-frequency ones, can often travel thousands of miles. Finding Characteristic Sounds The Navy, from the earliest days of the cold war, worked hard to exploit such properties. The effort evolved into the listening system known as the Underwater Sound Surveillance System, which consists of long chains of underwater microphones planted on continental shelves. The physical separation of these undersea ears allows analysts and computers on shore to estimate the bearing, depth and distance of a source of sound. A computer usually translates the sound into a picture |
631704_0 | Questions Raised in Amazon Killings | Brazilian gold miners relentlessly pursued the inhabitants of two Indian lodges through the Amazon jungle, killing dozens in a series of ambushes and skirmishes from early July through early August, according to survivors' accounts compiled here. But 10 days after the first reports of the massacre filtered out of the forest 180 miles west of here, there is still confusion over such basic facts as the death toll and whether the attacked lodges were in Brazil or Venezuela. After 72 survivors emerged from hiding this week, a backlash erupted from white residents of this frontier town, who charged that the massacre was a "fraud." President Itamar Franco was so incensed over contradictory accounts of the killings that he nearly dismissed the president of Funai, Brazil's Indian protection service. Diplomats Are Expelled Rising beyond this remote corner of the Amazon, the massacre has become an international issue. On Monday, Brazilian Army officers expelled from the Yanomami Reserve two foreign diplomats -- Diana Page of the United States and Alain Latulippe of Canada, two specialists in human rights issues attached to their respective embassies in Brazil. The two had been flown on a Funai plane to observe the Brazilian investigation first hand. On Wednesday, as pickets at Brazilian consulates in the United States protested the massacre, a high State Department official called the killings "a tragedy of great proportions." "We expect the Brazilian Government to arrest the delinquents, the guilty, and to punish them," Alexander Watson, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, told a Brazilian television interviewer. Concerned about reports that Brazilian Yanomami are migrating to Venezuela for safety, Venezuela's Acting President, Ramon Velasquez appointed a special Yanomami protection commission on Friday. Also on Friday, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of the United Nations extended his "heartfelt condolences" in a statement addressed to the Yanomami. President Creates Amazon Post Sensitive over the growing international outcry over the issue, President Franco named Brazil's Ambassador to the United States, Rubens Ricupero to a newly created post, Special Minister for Coordination of Amazon Action. Overruling protests by Amazon politicians, President Franco also established a 18,919-square-mile Menkragnoti Indian Reserve in Para State. Money for surveying the reserve was raised by Sting during a world concert tour. But condemning the creation of the reserve as "socially unjustifiable," Jader Barbalho, Governor of Para, published advertisements in Brazil's major newspapers vowing to take legal action to block it. |
631668_0 | Brazilian Justice and the Culture of Impunity | ACCORDING to Brazilian legend, a 16th-century Portuguese bishop coined a novel recruiting pitch to lure skeptical colonists to settle in faraway Brazil. Addressing his devout flock, the cleric decreed: "No sin exists south of the equator." Almost five centuries later, modern Brazil at times seems to have incorporated this motto as its moral cornerstone. Impunity is a common thread that runs through a year-long series of horrors and outrages that culminated last week with the news that gold miners hunted down and killed dozens of Yanomami Indians deep in the Amazon forest 180 miles west of here. The spate of crime without punishment began last October, when the military police in Sao Paulo killed 111 inmates in a heavyhanded response to a prison uprising; to date no officer has been convicted in the worst massacre carried out by the police in Brazil's notorious prisons. In February, the condemned killers of Francisco (Chico) Mendes, the renowned environmental champion of the Amazon, made a mockery of Brazil's justice system by walking out of jail and disappearing without a trace. In July, Paulo Cesar Faries, the aide to President Fernando Collor de Mello whose extortion racket helped bring down his boss, mysteriously vanished minutes before an arrest warrant was to be served. And in July, a long-running series of crimes against Rio de Janeiro street youths suddenly erupted across front pages worldwide when eight youths were shot and killed as they slept on downtown sidewalks. Survivors have identified three military policemen as the killers. Many Brazilians are wondering whether such brazen episodes are symptoms of a flawed social fabric peculiar to this vast land. Encompassing a striking spectrum of both teeming modernity and undeveloped natural wonder, Brazil is perhaps enduring the worst of both worlds. In the densely populated coastal regions, where inequities abound and the legal system and social services are both severely strained and eroded by corruption, individual rights and due process are more often the province of the better-off. In the sprawling, undeveloped Amazon interior, a Wild West frontier spirit prevails, and the lawlessness that that often implies. In addition, since Brazil's long era of military rule ended only in 1985, democratic traditions have barely had time to take hold. "Impunity in Brazil is part of a culture that doesn't have a tradition of allocating responsibility," said Roberto da Matta, a Brazilian anthropologist. To many Brazilians, the nation's traditional tolerance |
628111_1 | Food Notes | New York City residents) to Callaloo Press, P.O. Box 845, Brooklyn 11230. A Melon Debut For years, the only Galia melons sold in America were imported from Israel, where the variety was first developed about 15 years ago. These delectably sweet, fragrant melons with golden netted skin and pale green flesh were small and costly. They are extremely popular in Europe, where melons tend to be the size of grapefruits, not of bowling balls, as they are in the United States. The first crop of Galia melons from Arizona and California, grown to American-size in the 2- to 4-pound range, are now on the market. They still have the rich fragrance and nectar-sweet flesh of the smaller ones. Shoprite and Pathmark supermarkets in New York, New Jersey and Long Island are selling them for 69 cents to 89 cents a pound. Produce managers in several of the stores said they carried them intermittently because of a lack of demand. The melons, especially the Tradewinds brand, are more consistently ripe and delicious than the typically underripe honeydews now available. They will be in season through October. Sweet Peppers, Sun Dried It was inevitable. Sun-dried sweet peppers in olive oil have made their debut. Assorted green and red peppers are cored and seeded but not skinned before drying, making them slightly chewy, with an intense, herbaceous taste. They are not as sweet as sun-dried tomatoes, and are excellent slivered or diced to season pasta dishes, risottos and vinaigrette dressings for salads, seafood, poultry and vegetables. Fratelli Ravioli, 494 Hudson Street (near Christopher Street), has ones imported from Italy for $12.99 a pound. Fresh Juice 'n' Things Just Pik't, a company that sells freshly squeezed juices (orange, grapefruit and others) and iced tea frozen and ready to thaw and drink without diluting, has just introduced frozen orange-juice bars. The labeling on the package suggests that the bars contain only juice. But anyone reading the fine print will discover that the bars contain corn and cane sugar, carob-bean gum, natural fruit flavor and pectin, ingredients similar to those found in other fat-free frozen-fruit bars. What distinguishes the Just Pik't bars is that they are made from fresh frozen juice, not from concentrates or pasteurized juice. The bars are refreshing, but on the sweet side, and do not taste particularly like fresh-squeezed juice. The 2.5-ounce bars, with 66 calories each, cost $2.89 for six at |
629957_0 | Tax Changes Shake Reliability of Trusts | The new tax law sharply increases income taxes on the trust funds commonly used by families to set aside money for minors and young adults. The change, which has received little attention, raises questions about whether it makes sense to create a trust and how existing trusts should be managed. For many years, trusts carried important tax benefits. Earnings often could accumulate at considerably lower tax rates than if the money was held by the grantor of the trust or transferred directly to the beneficiary. Much of that tax advantage was wiped out by tax revision in 1986. But the new law goes further, often putting trusts at a tax disadvantage. Many people will find that the income retained by a trust will now be taxed at a higher rate than if it is held by the grantor or beneficiary. "It simply won't be worthwhile to accumulate much income in a trust," said Thomas Hakala, a partner in the personal financial planning practice of KPMG Peat Marwick. "The beneficiary is likely to be in a lower bracket than the trust." The tax rate has nearly doubled for some trust income. Previously, the first $3,750 was taxed at 15 percent, and the maximum tax rate was 31 percent. Under the new law, which is retroactive to Jan. 1, the tax rate jumps to 28 percent on trust income of more than $1,500 with brackets all the way up to 39.6 percent. Parents who put money in a trust fund when a baby is born and who make regular contributions over the years in anticipation of high college and graduate school costs might easily find their funds in the highest tax brackets. "Trust income taxes used to be a very fertile ground for aggressive tax planning," said Byrle M. Abbin, a senior partner specializing in trusts at the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen & Company. "You still may have nontax reasons for setting up trusts," he said, "but you have to do it with much more forethought now." Typically, money is put in a trust to be invested for the financial gain of a beneficiary. A grandparent, for example, might want to help provide for the education of a grandchild. Or a parent might use a trust to support a child in adulthood, albeit with some strings attached. "The most important reason for having a trust is to avoid putting substantial amounts |
628494_2 | Sailing's New Course: Multihulls | a bow in a wave, or sail like a hobbyhorse over choppy seas. And they still tend to be faster than a monohull of equal size. Hugh Taylor of Martha's Vineyard, Mass., had sailed monohulls for 32 years, then switched to a 50-foot catamaran last year. His brother, the singer James Taylor, still sails a traditional wooden boat, but Hugh Taylor wants nothing of it. He charters his new catamaran, a custom design by Chris White of South Dartmouth, Mass., taking tourists to nearby islands accessible mainly by boat. In the winter, he plans to take the cat to the Bahamas for his own use. "I'll never go back," Mr. Taylor said recently about his fondness for catamarans over monohulls. "Catamarans are fast, and don't take on any water. They are dry and stable. The stigma of them being capsizing boats is wrong." An Increase in Popularity Mr. Taylor is one of a growing number of boaters enamored with the multihull. Sally Helme, a spokeswoman for International Marine Holdings, a consortium of marine accessories companies, which is based in Stamford, Conn., said her group had seen an increase in the popularity of multihulls in the last five years. Ms. Helme said fewer than 10 percent of the 14,510 new sailboats built in 1988 were multihulls, compared with 12 percent to 15 percent of the 10,583 sailboats built in 1992. More significant than the numbers was the shift in the size. In 1988, at least 97 percent of the multihulls built were less than 20 feet long. In 1992, new multihulls were larger, with fewer than 60 percent in the 20-foot range. Corsair Marine, of Chula Vista, Calif., went into business in 1986 for the sole purpose of producing trimarans. At that time the boating market was beginning to show the signs of a nose dive, a plunge that went off the deep end in 1989. But Corsair has weathered the slump comfortably. It has sold 500 trimarans since then. They vary from a $40,000 24-foot boat to a $58,000 27-foot trimaran fully outfitted. The boat design includes a unique system for folding the two outer hulls, or amas, into the center hull so they collapse like gull wings when the trimaran is transported by trailer. Sailboats make up 3 percent to 4 percent of the boats sold in the United States, according to the National Marine Manufacturers Association, based in |
629779_0 | Third World Economic Gains Give a Lift to U.S. Exporters | The third world is giving the American economy an unexpected and much-needed lift, by increasing its imports of American goods by almost one-third over the last two years, with another large jump anticipated this year. American sales to the nonindustrialized world rose to $167 billion last year, up 14 percent over the previous year and largely offsetting weak demand from Europe and Japan, both plagued by economic slumps. Exports to the third world jumped to more than 37 percent of total United States exports last year, from 32 percent in 1990. Several Factors Cited Administration officials attribute the export boom to several factors. The rapidly industrializing countries of Asia are growing at a phenomenal pace, enabling them to purchase more American metal-cutting machines and Madonna records. Mexico, Argentina and other Latin American countries have recently lowered many tariffs and removed other trade barriers, while the region's growth is picking up after years of stagnation. American exports have also been helped by the drop in the dollar's value since 1985 and the increased competitiveness of American companies. The Clinton Administration has hailed the trend, using using it as ammunition to argue for trade liberalization -- in particular the North American Free Trade Agreement, which would tie Mexico, Canada and the United States together in a giant free-trade zone. The Administration is also seeking closer political and economic ties with Asia in the hope that these moves will provide an even greater boost from sales to the third world. To the Administration, the argument is simple: more exports mean more jobs. "For the first time in a long time, the less developed nations will grow considerably faster than he industrial world over the next decade and their markets are becoming much more open so there is much more opportunity there," Lawrence A. Summers, Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, said. "Nafta is an important first step in capitalizing on that opportunity," he said. "It's time we start of thinking of these countries more as an opportunity and less as a problem." But some economists, especially those who oppose the trade accord, view this export boom as a mixed blessing. They argue that the surge in exports causes some job losses because the purchases often come from companies that move their factories overseas and then import American machinery and components to make them run. Commerce Department figures show that a large |
629777_3 | NEWS SUMMARY | Prudential Insurance, Johnson & Johnson, Time Warner, McDonald's and Nationsbank -- announced they will study ways to use recycled paper. A1 JUDGE GRANTS TEEN-AGER'S WISH A Florida judge ruled that Kimberly Mays, the teen-ager who was switched at birth with another child, has no obligation to maintain contact with her biological parents. A16 S.A.T. SCORES RISE AGAIN For the second straight year, the average scores of students taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test have risen, prompting optimism about continued improvement. A16 NBC NEWS MAGAZINE IS SUED AGAIN "Dateline NBC," whose producers admitted faking fires in G.M. pickups, now faces a lawsuit from a North Carolina eye clinic that it accused of performing unnecessary cataract surgery. A16 RESTORER TURNS RAZER The cheers that greeted the fashion designer Gianni Versace's plans to restore an Art Deco building in Miami turned sour as he announced plans to demolish a hotel. A20 TEACHING CHILDREN NONVIOLENCE At the John Muir Elementary School in Seattle, mailboxes that hold students' complaints about each other symbolize a new strategy to deal with classroom violence. B11 An experimental rocket makes a vertical landing. A20 Metro Digest B1 INQUIRY FAULTS DINKINS AIDES Senior members of the Dinkins administration repeatedly granted special access to a data-processing company that was seeking a $150 million contract to run much of New York City's efforts to collect fines for parking tickets, city investigators said yesterday. A1 THE BENEFITS OF INCUMBENCY While elections two years ago brought striking changes to the New York City Council, in this year's elections few incumbents face tough fights to regain their seats. A1 Business Digest D1 Home Section C1-10 Building a house to withstand a hurricane. C1 On Sesame Street set with Zoe. C1 Magazines remake the family, and vice versa. C1 Arts/Entertainment C11-18 Restored tax break to benefit museums. C11 Europe's passion for Baroque music. C11 "Searching" is still looking for an audience. C11 Music: Classical Music in Review C12 Books: Oxford collection of fairy tales.C15 Television: Critic's Notebook C16 Sports B13-20 Obituaries B12 Robert G. Engel, retired executive of J. P. Morgan & Company. Editorials/Op-Ed A22-23 Editorials The Star Wars hoax. The end of the B.C.C.I. case? G.M. and VW: a summer laff fest. Letters William Safire: The Court's Greatest Hits. Robert C. Byrd: The perils of peacekeeping. Charlie Hauck: Why would a star buy sex? Why not? Milton Viorst: Share Jerusalem. Bridge C15 Chronicle B11 Crossword C10 |
629677_1 | Russian Hardball: Rutskoi Accused of Corruption | who has been Acting Justice Minister, said Mr. Stepankov and his office were "responsible for complete failure in the struggle against crime" and could not be trusted. So commission documents would be turned over to the Moscow city Prosecutor General instead. Mr. Makarov, a lawyer who led the Government's case defending its banning of the Communist Party, also waved a white document bearing two red seals, which he said proved Mr. Rutskoi's connections to the Swiss bank account. But he did not make it public. "We have found a Swiss bank account, a concrete account to which millions, I repeat millions, of dollars have been transferred," Mr. Makarov said. "To my sorrow, I must say there's no doubt of a connection between this account and the Vice President." Mr. Kalmykov said the account contained "large sums of state money." He said the commission would ask the Constitutional Court to "consider the behavior of Vice President Rutskoi." In Parliament today, Mr. Rutskoi asked, "In what kind of country can a committee of rascals make such declarations?" Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, the Speaker of Parliament, stood beside Mr. Rutskoi and called the accusations "a child's game." He said the commission, which reports directly to Mr. Yeltsin and which met with the President earlier today, was illegal. Mr. Stepankov reports to Parliament. Mr. Yeltsin said today, "As President, I intend to use a firm hand in establishing order not only in the fight against crime, but in all other spheres of life." Bitter Fight in Parliament Two years after the failed hard-line Communist coup that cracked the Soviet Union apart and made Mr. Yeltsin a hero, he is in a bitter fight with Parliament over a new Constitution and the possibility of early elections. Charges of corruption have become important weapons in the struggle. Mr. Kalmykov did say that the commission had uncovered serious violations of the law at the ministries of Economics and Foreign Economic Affairs, and that the Deputy Minister of Economics, Yuri Olkhovikov, was dismissed on Tuesday. The oddest accusation came from Mr. Makarov, who said he had "overheard a conversation" at 6 A.M. on July 22, "in which a plan for my murder was discussed" by Mr. Stepankov and an emigre Russian businessman. "I can read out the text of this conversation," Mr. Makarov said. "We could also present a cassette of this conversation where Stepankov's voice is clearly audible." |
629684_0 | Brazil's Army Casts U.S. as Amazon Villain | If Brazilian newspaper headlines were to be believed last week, the United States Government was plotting the biggest land grab since the Louisiana Purchase. "U.S.A. Builds Two Military Bases in the Amazon Region," one headline read. Another announced, "U.S. Bases Surround the Amazon." What was really going on, political analysts say, is that Brazil's military was flexing its political muscles, seeking to win support for a plan to extend air traffic control over the Amazon. Last week, President Itamar Franco unexpectedly called the first meeting in five years of Brazil's National Defense Council at which he unveiled the long dormant "Amazon Vigilance System" -- and won unanimous approval for it. Today, seeking to quell press speculation that the military could threaten Brazil's democracy, President Franco addressed a gathering of generals. In a nationally televised speech, he warned that "perverse rumors, coming from obscure sources, about a coup against democracy in our country, can only serve the builders of chaos." Last week, the army sent two generals to brief a defense committee of Brazil's Congress about the $600 million radar project. According to published accounts, the generals charged that the United States was building military bases in Colombia and Guyana and had conducted joint military maneuvers with nations around the Brazilian Amazon. The American Ambassador, Richard Melton, called the reports "totally erroneous" and said that aid to Guyana in a recent joint training exercise "was limited to building toilet facilities, a small footbridge, and repairing roofs." After initial headlines subsided, Brazil's press became increasingly skeptical of the conspiracy theory. The military, Geraldo Cavagnari, a strategic studies expert, told the newspaper Folha of Sao Paulo, "want to depict a concrete threat, to define an enemy in order to justify more money for their budget." But in a measure of the military's growing shadow over Brazilian politics, three politicians seen as presidential candidates paid lip service to the idea in Sunday's newspaers. "The preoccupations and proposals of the armed forces merit the solidarity of the Brazilian people," wrote Leonel Brizola, Governor of Rio de Janeiro State. "North American bases in South America represent, without a shadow of doubt, an expansionist lunge of inacceptable domination." Jose Sarney, an Amazon Senator who ranks in opinion polls as Brazil's most popular former President, wrote: "If we want to have sovereignty over our territory, we have to watch it. It would have been better if the United |
629667_0 | U.S. Embargo of Cuba Has a Human Cost | To the Editor: Cuba's epidemic of optic neuropathy, which has resulted in the visual and neurological impairment of thousands of Cubans, marks a new and dangerous point in the United States embargo of Cuba. As of June, total reported cases had reached 45,584, which is considerable for Cuba's population of 11 million. Although the epidemic is in no way related to the embargo, it is evident that the resulting lack of medicines has had a further negative impact on the health of Cubans. At the same time, the embargo has caused Havana to increase control of dissidents. During the 30-year embargo, Cuba had achieved among the best health indicators in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its infant mortality rate fell from 65 deaths in 1,000 live births in 1960 to 11 in 1991, and its life expectancy in 1991 reached 76 years. The marked reduction in mortality rates caused by infectious and parasitic diseases has resulted in children's mortality rates comparable to developed countries. Cuba has also reached a high level of scientific achievement despite considerable restrictions on scientific books and materials as a result of the embargo. Illiteracy, which in 1960 affected 30 percent of the population, has now been practically eliminated, and Cuba's educational system is a model for other Latin American countries. All these medical and social advances now run the risk of being reversed. The embargo, the lost economic support from former Soviet bloc allies and the Cuban Government's economic mismanagement have combined to bring the standard of living to subsistence level. Although some food products normally unavailable can be obtained in the black market, their price is prohibitive. More than 300 medicines and basic medical supplies are lacking, and so are laboratory reactives and surgical and X-ray materials. Surgery is done only selectively, and there are limitations on ambulance services and biomedical research. Paradoxically, the United States embargo is also hurting many American citizens who could benefit from successful treatments by Cuban doctors, such as for the skin condition vitiligo or for retinitis pigmentosa, which affects eyesight. The way out of this quagmire is through negotiations between the two countries, an option Havana seems interested in pursuing. The time has come to put United States-Cuba relations on a more rational, intelligent basis. CESAR CHELALA, M.D. New York, Aug. 12, 1993 |
629640_5 | Schools Try to Tame Violent Pupils, One Punch and One Taunt at a Time | researchers who have examined the childhood path that is typical of violent youths. It is already showing signs of paying off, although the program, which is meant to continue through middle school, now extends only up to third grade. Children in the program who had been disruptive when they entered first grade showed improved behavior by the end of that grade. When compared with similar children who did not go through the program, those children had 20 percent fewer fights on the playground, were more aware of their feelings and how to handle them, and were evaluated as 25 percent better at handling aggression and 32 percent more popular among their playmates. Children who are at risk of violence typically come from families where parents are poor at disciplining because they are indifferent, neglectful or too coercive or they use harsh physical punishment. Sometimes children at risk of violence come from chaotic homes or from families where the parents fight or abuse the children. While poverty does not necessarily lead a child to violence, growing up in a crime-ridden neighborhood heightens the risk. And some children have temperaments that are hard to handle. When children at risk of violence enter school, they are often already disruptive and disobedient, and they have trouble getting along with playmates, even in first grade. By second or third grade, many do poorly in school; they frequently have difficulty with reading and get labeled -- and rejected -- as "dumb" by other children. Often these children make few friends, misinterpret social cues, pick fights and end up as social outcasts by the fourth or fifth grade. In the middle-school years, they typically gravitate to others like themselves, forming a defiant band on the rim of schoolyard society. It is a short distance from there to violence and arrests. By intervening early and giving those children more positive experiences, social skills and expertise in handling troubling feelings, the classroom programs seek to put them on a track toward a more peaceful future. "Classrooms are a wonderful place to start preventing violence," Dr. Prothrow-Stith said. "Kids go home and bring this new approach to their families. But we're asking kids to do the impossible unless we also deal with changing the larger picture: the ethos of the school and neighborhood, and a culture that glorifies violent heroes. Otherwise kids will master conflict-resolution skills that no one values." |
629687_3 | New Era in Design Materials | if the materials feel cold, the colors are subtle, complex and warm. Imagine glass in 600 colors. A year and a half ago the Monsanto Company in St. Louis introduced Saflex Opticolor, a lamination system that can create 600 different colors in glass by combining four plastic layers chosen from three primary colors plus black or translucent white. The laminates, 15 one-thousandths of an inch thick, come in rolls. Pieces from the rolls are inserted between layers of glass. "In the past, you could get any color glass you wanted, but it was mass pigmented and a factory had to make thousands of square feet of it," said Dallas Meneely, a spokesman for Monsanto. With Opticolor, he said, colored glass can be made in small batches. A glass shower door can be the same shade of tourmaline as the bathroom tiles. Subtlety of color is de rigueur in materials like ceramic tile and slate. Jeff Green of the Design Supply/ Stone Source said limestone and slate are popular now "because they are nonreflective natural materials, that are more austere and warm than polished marble and granite." In the last three years, Stone Source has been importing slates from Africa, India, China and Brazil whose colors make American slate, which ranges from gray to green, with a little purple in between, look drab. From Africa, for instance, there are slates streaked with purple, black and a bit of silver. In the era of recycling, the novelty of some new materials lies in their use of old materials. Moonstone is a celadon ceramic tile, which is 70 percent recycled glass, made by Stoneware Tile Company in Richmond, Ind. A rubber tile in black or a warm red-tinged brown is made from recycled tires by Carlisle Tire and Rubber Company, in Carlisle, Pa. The tile is popular for patios, since it drains water rapidly, but it can be used inside, too. Finally, there are old materials made new again, by rediscovery and by a new-found ecological consciousness. Since 1899, Forbo, of Richmond, Va., has been making linoleum from oxidized linseed oil, natural resins, wood or cork flour and pigments. When vinyl tiles were introduced, sales of linoleum decreased. "Seventy-five percent of our products are vinyl," said Cornelius Kan, product manager of the linoleum division at a factory in the Netherlands owned by Forbo. "But the linoleum is the most promising." The natural materials |
629686_2 | Vatican Hopes to Widen Influence With U.S. | the Administration would welcome a move by the Vatican to bring its "moral authority" to bear in pursuing common goals. "Both sides are pretty keen on a new relationship," said one United States official, who spoke in return for anonymity. The upbeat tone marked a shift away from the strains caused by the Vatican's criticism of the Bush Administration's policies in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the Clinton Administration's actions in Somalia. It also reflected the Pope's desire for new international political arrangements after the cold war. When he met Mr. Clinton last week, he spoke of the "privileged position" of the United States in world affairs and urged the creation of "more effective structures for maintaining peace and promoting justice." While the United States and the Vatican share broadly similar views on some issues, especially the need for peace in Bosnia, Somalia and the Middle East, the mechanics of a new cooperation are far from clear. Vatican officials made clear that the Pope was not looking for a "seat at the table" in any peace negotiations under way, but instead saw his role as a moral voice that might reinforce arguments for peace in a more general way. While the idea may have some appeal among Vatican officials worried by the unchallenged dominance of the United States in world affairs after the cold war, diplomats familiar with church matters said the Vatican faced restraints in its own diplomacy. Constraints on the Vatican In the Middle East, for instance, where the Pope is concerned to protect Christians and their places of worship, talks on establishing full diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel are progressing slowly. And the Vatican's influence in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union is limited by the religious undercurrents of conflicts pitting Orthodox Christians, like the Serbs, against Muslims at a time when the Roman Catholic church still has deep and unresolved differences with Orthodox leaders. In broader terms, the idea of a new diplomacy is complicated by the fact that, since the end of the cold war, religion has changed its role in many places, ceasing to be a rallying point against Communism and becoming a marker of identity in ethnic conflicts from the Caucasus to the Balkans. A diplomat familiar with United States and Vatican thinking said, "The big problem will come when the United States asks the Vatican to condone violence." |
631003_1 | Dow Gains 13.13 to Reach Another High | at record highs yesterday, withstanding a bout of selling near the end of trading. Buying momentum from Tuesday, when the Dow gained 32.98 points, supported prices, analysts said, but some profit taking tempered the carry-over. Nasdaq Index Off Volume on the New York Stock Exchange was strong, with 301.7 million shares traded, up from 270.7 million on Tuesday. The number of advancing issues led decliners by 1,108 to 865. The Nasdaq composite, the only major index to decline, was off 1.48 points, to 733.66. Harry W. Laubscher, senior vice president and market analyst at Tucker Anthony Inc., sounded a cautionary note on the market advance. "With industrials, utilities and bonds all at new highs, the market has gotten overbought and could pause to digest recent gains," he said. He saw the high-technology sector as an example of overbuying, saying that while prices could still move higher, "time is running out on this cycle and investors are urged to move to seats near an exit." "But if investors must buy," he said, "they might consider oil and telephones as a somewhat defensive position." Bond prices were initially weakened by a report that sales of existing homes improved in July. But bonds rallied and interest rates fell after the July report on durable goods orders showed weakness in manufacturing. Low interest rates make the potential returns from stocks more appealing to investors. "The bond market says the economy is dead and the stock market sees it recovering by buying cyclicals," David Shulman, chief equity strategist at Salomon Brothers, said. "It will be interesting to see how this all plays out." Effects of Cable Ruling Airline and cable-television equipment stocks were among the bright spots yesterday. Shares of cable-equipment makers surged amid expectations of ballooning sales to telephone companies, which were freed by a Federal court ruling on Tuesday to enter the cable television business. Broadband Technologies was up 6, to 40 3/4. Scientific-Atlanta rose 3, to 36 1/4; DSC Communications was up 4 3/8, to 65 3/8, and General Instrument climbed 3 3/8, to 49 1/2. Delta Air Lines gained 2 1/4, to 55 1/2, on an upgrading of its stock by Paul Karos, an analyst at First Boston, to buy from hold. AMR, parent of American Airlines, was up 1 3/4, to 67 5/8; UAL, parent of United Airlines, gained 2 3/4, to 149 1/8, and USAir rose 1/4, to 16. |
630946_0 | Terrorist Acts Can't Stop Quest for Peace; Israel and Dublin | To the Editor: Regarding Ireland's reluctance to let an Israeli embassy open in Dublin (news article, Aug. 17): Ireland's legitimate concerns regarding its troops in southern Lebanon have been misdirected. The Irish soldiers in the United Nations peacekeeping force remain there because Palestinian, pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian and Lebanese terrorist groups continue to operate there. If Syria and Lebanon would sign a peace agreement with Israel, there would be no need for the Irish peacekeepers. Dublin should direct concern for its soldiers to the appropriate parties and grant Israel's request to establish an embassy. ABRAHAM H. FOXMAN Director, Anti-Defamation League New York, Aug. 18, 1993 |
631334_1 | Religion Notes | The church, given air time to respond, called Mr. Exoo's commentary "uninformed, inappropriate" and "meddlesome." Ceci Sommers, a radio station vice president, says some churches take the criticism to heart. For example, Mr. Exoo applauded one church for offering great music and great preaching but faulted it for not reaching out to the larger community. Soon after his commentary, the church put up a big sign saying that all were welcome. At another church, he said that the choir had a weak tenor section. A week later, the choir added two tenors. Mr. Exoo, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, said the time is right for church criticism, since so many people are shopping around. "People are looking for places that are spiritually enriching and practically useful, places of belonging," he said. The most challenging question to critics goes something like this: If you are so smart, why don't you do it yourself? Mr. Exoo handled it with equanimity. He said he is indeed talking with a Pittsburgh church about leading a service, something he has not done regularly since he left full-time parish work 15 years ago in Charleston, S.C. If he takes the job in the church, however, it will be on Saturday nights, he said, adding, "I can still rove on Sundays." Poll of Female Rabbis A new nationwide survey of female rabbis indicates that 70 percent have experienced sexual harassment in connection with their work. Among the incidents reported were unsolicited touching or closeness, requests for sexual favors and receiving letters of a sexual nature. Of those reporting the harassment, 60 percent said it had come from lay people and 25 percent said it had come from other rabbis. The results of the survey of 140 female rabbis -- 43 percent of the approximately 325 female rabbis nationwide -- will appear in the October issue of Moment, a monthly magazine of Jewish interest published in Washington. The survey was conducted by the American Jewish Congress earlier this year. No margin of sampling error was given. The results are similar to those found in a survey of female ministers in the United Methodist Church three years ago. Seventy-seven percent reported sexual harassment, 41 percent from other ministers. The rabbinical survey also had some bright spots. The women expressed a high level of satisfaction with their careers and told of growing acceptance. One rabbi related an incident in |
631295_2 | Low Birth Rate Is Becoming a Headache for Italy | 15 million retirees, some of whom legally draw more than one. Italy is not the only European country confronting the repercussions of an aging of society. But, according to Italian Government figures, the strains are already greater here than elsewhere on the Continent: for every retiree drawing a pension in Britain, for instance, there are 2.3 active workers. In France, the figure is 2.5. In Italy, by contrast, the ratio of contributors-to-beneficiaries has already slipped to around 1 to 1.3, and it is destined to slide further. A Long-Term Problem "By the year 2000, Italy will have five million fewer children under the age of 15 than it did in 1970, and five million more people aged 65 and up," said Massimo Livi Bacci, a sociologist who bases his assessment on figures released by a private research institute. The trend, he said, was "manageable in the short term, but untenable in the long term without a profound and traumatic change in the rules" covering social services. While overpopulation is one of the major problems facing the poor nations of the world -- women in the developing countries bear nearly twice the number of children as women in industrialized countries, 3.6 to 1.9 -- the opposite could become true for the richer nations. But why the flight from large families? Some have suggested that, like laboratory specimens, Italians have responded to their ever-more-crowded-suburbs and cramped apartment houses by curbing procreation. Fabrizio Menchini Fabris, a medical specialist at the University of Pisa, said the stresses of modern society have created widespread infertility. Many more, though, see the reduction of family sizes as the result of an assertiveness among women who, having tasted independence by going out to work, do not want to lose it. Money Over Machismo By this account, the men -- who once equated procreation with virility, but now prefer cash in their pocket to children in the crib -- have simply gone along with the women's decision. What it all boils down to, said Franca Fossati, editor of a feminist magazine called Noi Donne -- We Women -- is that "the women have changed very quickly" after the expansion of schooling and urbanization while "the men haven't" in certain ways. "So there's very little division of domestic work between men and women," she said. "Working as well as looking after the house makes it virtually impossible to have a |
631277_1 | Observer; Man Here Can't Jubilate | fiber doesn't matter after all? Too many scientific studies going on. Scientists always complaining the country doesn't give science enough money to keep up with Japan, or someplace like that. So where's the money come from for all these scientific studies? Why is this newspaper story so excited about a revolution in communications? Revolution's been turned into just another blah blah blah word. Constant stream of revolutions going on. Afterward everything is just like before the latest revolution, only worse. Before the sexual revolution there was venereal disease, family breakup, illegitimate births. After the sexual revolution: deadlier venereal disease, death of the family, so many illegitimate births that street gangs are substituting for parents. Revolution in communications probably means even more television, more phone calls, more incentives to madness. Sample pre-revolutionary phone call: "Hello, Nicholas, how are you today?" "I'm napping." "You're mopping?" "Napping! I was napping when you phoned. Who is this anyhow?" "This is Jack Wolf representing Famously Advertised Brokers & Company. I understand you're interested in the activity of the stock market." "You're misinformed. I absolutely never buy stocks, bonds, commodity futures or dabble in foreign exchange, considering the entire field of activity as being on a par with and just as corruptive of character as casino gambling, which I am sorry to see the noble red man now, alas, pursuing to the inevitable and predictable detriment of . . ." "Ah well, go back to your mopping." End of pre-revolutionary communication experience. Maybe it's neither fiber, optics nor wires that are incubating the revolution in communications. Maybe it's the cellular whatevers that go into those phones you see people ostensibly talking into while driving automobiles. What are those whatevers that make the thing cellular? Fibers? Optics? Could look it up. Could even read the excited newspaper story again. Might explain it all right there. Not worth it. Important question is not about fiber, optics or cellular whatevers. Important question is why people want to talk on telephones while driving. Calling Jack Wolf maybe? Why? To find if stock market has made them millionaires since they finished mopping and took the car out to give it a little exercise 10 minutes ago? Real revolution in communications would eliminate blah blah blah on phone and TV, not expand it, not deliver more faster. Real revolution would suppress and destroy all communication not interesting or important to communicatee. Real |
630076_1 | A Multitude of Sins and Egocentric Traits | raises some interesting questions: Why are these quintessentially human traits labeled as sins? Why was despair added to the list? Actually, the deadly seven can be construed as derivatives of primitive adaptations of our ancestors to prehistoric conditions in the wild. In the competitive struggle for limited resources, egocentric behaviors fostering survival and reproduction were favored by evolutionary pressures. With its emphasis on individual fitness, a kind of master genetic program directed and rewarded (by conferring pleasure) the expression of the prototypes of what we now call sin. Thus the acquisition of resources (for example, food) would be served by avarice and gluttony; the competitive struggle would be sharpened by pride over success and envy over others' success; conservation of energy would be facilitated by rest (sloth), and reproductive success would obviously be served by lust. Anger would be crucial for individual protection. Similar "sinful" characteristics can be discerned among nonhuman primates. Why are these evolved traits and be haviors regarded as sins? Simply stated, the egocentric dispositions that serve one individual can hurt others. The excessive expression of one's own evolutionary strategies (for example, feeding, fornicating and fighting) deprives or injures other people. Preoccupation with personal satisfactions (for example, pride and sloth) vitiates cooperation and reciprocity. Thus, to preserve the social order, society has imposed sanctions on these biologically based behaviors, particularly when flagrant. But despair seems to be out of place in this group. It certainly does not detract from other people as does, say, gluttony or pride, nor does it seem to be an evolutionary strategy. However, analogues to despair can be found in the animal kingdom: a dethroned dominant male chimpanzee will display behavior similar to human depression -- withdrawing from the band and then returning after a considerable period of time. In humans, mild or time-limited depression could be adaptive in forcing a reconsideration of one's goals and strategies. The problem with despair is the same as that posed by the other asocial traits: they are detrimental when excessive. Despair could result in irrational suicide (found only in humans, by the way). The elimination of a key member of a group hurts the entire group. Thus, despair (when excessive) could conceivably be listed with the other seven "sins" after all. When excessive, despair hurts other people, but, like the other sins, it can be modified with social and psychological assistance. AARON T. BECK, M.D. Philadelphia |
630127_0 | A MILD CASE | My husband and I recently returned from Israel, where we visited our 16-year-old daughter, who is attending a summer high-school program, along with 250 teen-agers from across the United States. She, too, was diagnosed as having mild cerebral palsy when she was 7 months old, and we experienced many of Jack Hersch's fears and anxieties. Our concern about her environment led us to consider selling our multi-level suburban home, until she began to crawl the steps when she was 2. Today, she skis, power-walks and is a member of the high-school mock-trial team. After years of physical and speech therapy, there still are unanswered questions and obstacles to face. We learned to deal with them one at a time. SHEILA OKIN Rye Brook, N.Y. |
630432_6 | 2 Months of Downpours and Surging Rivers Redraw Map of Midwest | the Mississippi River changed channels in 1881. It has been an island village, with a population of 125 people protected by a 52-foot-high levee, until last month, when it went underwater. State officials are not ready to say if they will try to bring the town back in some form. If not, Kaskaskia will become another of the Mississippi's ghost towns. The structure of 28 locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River remains intact, the Army Corps of Engineers reports, though it will be months before all the telephone polls, tree trunks, roofs and gymnasium pieces are pulled from the locks. They were built, like the levee system, over the last century in an effort to open up navigation on the river. They accomplished that task, creating a system that moves nearly two billion tons of goods a year, tying together markets from 41 percent of the United States. But the engineers' grand scheme cannot control wild river channels in a flood of the magnitude of this year's surge. As a result, the barge industry is losing up to $4 million a day, with only a handful of boats on the water. Many goods are traveling by truck and rail. More than 25 percent of the nation's rail freight runs through the flood zone. The industry had 100 miles of track washed away by the flood, and another 400 miles was still underwater. Nevertheless, trains moved along alternate routes and carried goods seemingly without delay. Meanwhile, the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers are trying to cut new channels near Glasgow, Mo., at the confluence of the two rivers near St. Louis and north of Cairo, Ill. More than 20 percent of the flow in each of those river bends has surged into a new channel. Army engineers are proud of their levee system, noting that only 2 of the 229 systems built by the Government were breached; another 39 were seriously damaged. But most levees on the Mississippi floodplain were privately built by farmers' co-operatives or municipalities. The Corps of Engineers estimates that 70 percent of 1,100 private levees failed. Most of them will not be rebuilt in time for the winter freeze; others will crack with freeze and thaw cycles, or breach again from the saturation of the last six months. It is the land that was most dependent on levees that will be most changed by this flood. |
630482_0 | IN SHORT: NONFICTION | CIVIL RIGHTS NO PITY People With Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. By Joseph P. Shapiro. Times Books/Random House, $25. "No Pity" is a quick-paced, informative series of reports from the most recent civil rights front: the campaign to insure that the estimated 43 million disabled Americans have the help and opportunity they need to deal with physical, mental or emotional impairments. Joseph P. Shapiro, a senior editor at U.S. News & World Report, tracks the disability movement from its beginnings, on California college campuses in the early 1960's, to the public protests and lobbying that helped pass the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990. "Pity oppresses," declares one former March of Dimes poster child, now a magazine editor. "The poster child says it's not O.K. to be disabled. It plays on fear. . . . It says, if you just donate some money, the disabled children will go away." Other activists attack the Special Olympics and the Jerry Lewis telethon for perpetuating negative stereotypes. The movement's alliances often defy political expectations: the Americans With Disabilities Act had heavy bipartisan support. Mr. Shapiro writes sympathetically about the issues while refusing to say that all have easy resolutions. Whatever the friction of change, "No Pity" teaches that we cannot afford the measureless frustration that has been the cost of doing nothing. |
630390_2 | Environmentalists Try To Move the Markets | likely to be built unless a business sees potential customers for the products and figures a way to make money producing them. When a company that produces one billion magazines a year, as Time does, says it wants to buy recycled paper, that represents a business opportunity for the paper mill that installs recycling equipment and a risk for those that do not. The Environmental Defense Fund, which got its start saving ospreys on Long Island from the ravages of DDT, struck up another, similar corporate partnership three years ago, in a joint undertaking with the McDonald's Corporation to study trash disposal. At the time, the fast-food chain was under siege by grass-roots environmental groups because of the supposed wastefulness of its packaging. The target of the most ire was the company's plastic foam hamburger box, which after its short useful life would persist by the side of the road or in a landfill. McDonald's had been stoutly defending the box, but a few months after the joint study began, the chain agreed to drop it in favor of a much less bulky paper wrapper. The two went on to produce a report on how the company could reduce its packaging waste and take other environmentally friendly actions. Today McDonald's trash volume is down 90 percent from its 1990 level. It has done other things, like substituting brown, unbleached takeout bags made of 100 percent recycled paper for bleached white bags made of virgin fiber. "We used to think the customer associated white with purity," said Bob Langert, the company's environmental affairs director. But then McDonald's found that customers liked recycled bags even better. The learning took place on both sides. "We learned the power of a major purchaser" to influence suppliers to produce less bulky packaging, Mr. Ruston said. McDonald's has returned to join the Environmental Defense Fund in the new project. The other members are the Nationsbank Corporation and Duke University. Some environmentalists say the key to the third wave is finding solutions to environmental problems that use the power of the market more than the legislative mallet. Cooperation is just one approach. Another is disclosure. One of the most effective tools for reducing industrial pollution in recent times has been the requirement that companies report their emission of several hundred toxic chemicals each year to the Environmental Protection Agency. The emissions are all within legal limits. But |
627848_0 | Ecologists Improve Production in Chinese Farming Village | BY examining the flow of nutrients and energy in a typical Chinese farming village, scientists have found ways to increase production while reducing dependence on synthetic fertilizers. In a paper published recently in The Journal of Applied Ecology, the scientists described an experiment conducted by Dr. James Y. Guo, now at the University of Singapore, that treated Zhang Zhuang, a small farming village in Jiangsu Province, as an ecological system that could be enhanced through proper management. The village grew rice in the summer and wheat in the winter. The more than 2,300 residents also raised more than 1,500 pigs a year for their own consumption and for sale. The village, typical of many in China, had been a self-sustaining farming system for more than 2,000 years. But a population growth of one-quarter of 1 percent a year for 40 years put a strain on the farming system. Even small crop fluctuations caused tremendous problems for the people. They turned to synthetic fertilizer rich in nitrogen, the use of which doubled over a 10-year period. And fertilizer leaching and soil erosion damaged the environment, particularly the fish ponds and water channels running through the village. Dr. Guo's team grew grasses in the land around the fish ponds and planted water vegetation in the irrigation canals. The team also dug out the fish ponds to bring in more light so more algae would grow. The new vegetation was fed to the fish and the pigs. The researchers also made an effort to recycle the wastes from the crops, pigs and fish to fertilize the fields. And they dug wastes from the bottom of the ponds to add to this manure mixture. There was no substantial difference in the amount of crops produced or the number or size of the pigs raised. But the yield of fish increased 370 percent in the deepened ponds. And the village cut back on its use of synthetic fertilizer by 46 percent, and was able to eat better and sell more produce as a result of the new system. "It is an analysis of traditional efforts that reminds us that it is possible to have intensive agriculture which is totally balanced and which can, if properly managed, go on for 5,000 years," said Dr. Anthony D. Bradshaw, a retired professor from the University of Liverpool in England who published the study with Dr. Guo. "I believe |
627670_0 | Biomechanics Corp. reports earnings for Qtr to June 30 | *3*** COMPANY REPORTS ** *3*Biomechanics Corp. Qtr to June 30 1993 1992 Revenue 548,000 253,000 Net inc 48,000 b325,000 Shares outst 9,913,000 9,366,000 6mo rev 1,071,000 613,000 Net inc 71,000 b769,000 Share earns .01 - Shares outst 9,733,000 8,661,000 b-Net loss and incliuded a loss from discontinued operations of $ 57,000 in the quarter and $ 245,000 in the 6 months. |
627853_0 | Q&A | Distant Channels Q. Why can you occasionally get a television signal from a very distant city? A. A wide range of conditions, mostly in the upper atmosphere, affect how far a television signal travels. The carrier signal for the television picture is in the AM range, and the sound signal travels by FM. When the signal radiates into the atmosphere and hits the ionosphere, it may reflect back to a distant place. Radio and television engineers call this the "skip," and according to the "Radio Amateur Handbook," published by Watson-Guptill, they exploit it when they can, calculating single and double "hops" according to a wide range of variables. Only part of the television signal, called the ground wave, radiates horizontally from the station antenna. The rest travels at other angles in small amounts, and it is this radiation that "skips." Occasionally, the reception of a distant signal can be even better than that of a local signal. The ionosphere, the part of the upper atmosphere that the sun's radiation hits first, becomes more or less reflective depending on the season, the time of day, the cloud cover and the sun's own cycle of radiation. As soon as the sun hits it, the ionized air becomes more reflective; the height of the reflective part changes with the season and weather, and with it the angle of reflection. The skip may be especially long just before a snowstorm, for example. Swallowed Batteries Q. What should you do if you swallow a hearing aid battery? A. Call your local poison control center or the National Button Battery Hotline immediately and prepare for a trip to the emergency room or doctor's office for an X-ray, said Dr. Toby Litovitz, a specialist in toxicology for the emergency number, which also reaches the poison control center for the Washington, D.C., area. Your local poison center's number can be found inside the front cover of the phone book, she said. The 24-hour button battery number, (202) 625-3333, is sponsored by battery manufacturers. It is for emergencies involving swallowed batteries only. The X-ray is necessary to make sure the battery is not lodged in the esophagus, Dr. Litovitz said. "If the battery gets beyond the esopahagus, it almost always passes out of the GI tract in the stool in a couple of days," she said, "but a battery in the esophagus can wreak havoc in four to six |
631954_1 | Basic Gear Gives Access To Network of Networks | telephone network. The most basic Internet service is electronic mail, and many commercial on-line services now offer electronic mail gateways to the Internet. An electronic letter sent from your on-line service will be automatically routed to any other Internet user anywhere in the world. All of the leading on-line services -- including Compuserve, MCI Mail, America Online, Genie and Prodigy -- now offer Internet electronic mail as part of their basic service. Pricing varies. MCI Mail, for example, charges 50 cents per short message, in addition to a $35 annual fee. America Online charges $9.95 as a monthly fee, which includes five hours of network time. The Federal Government is also sponsoring an information service known as the Internic, for Internet Network Information Center, that provides introductory materials and a listing of commercial services and pricing options. Further information about the Internic is available at (800) 444-4345. For those who wish to tap the Internet's information services directly, subscribing to one of several other commercial providers will give a customer access to data bases and other on-line communications services, which include such diverse offerings as on-line access to the Library of Congress card catalogue, satellite weather maps and "news group" bulletin boards on topics like Australian prairie fires. Many of these providers are also offering services that permit customers to connect their computers directly to the Internet. These companies include Uunet Technologies Inc. of Falls Church, Va., (800) 488-6383; Performance Systems International Inc. of Herndon, Va. (800) 827-7482; Advanced Network Services Inc. of Elmsford, N.Y. (914) 789-5000; Sprint's Sprintlink in Herndon, Va. (703) 904-2230, and Netcom ofSan Jose, Calif. (408) 554-8649. There are also hundreds of smaller on-line systems, like the Well of Sausalito, Calif., (415) 332-4335, which offer local computer conferencing as well as an electronic pipeline to the Internet. Wireless connections to the Internet are also possible. Radiomail of San Mateo, Calif., (415) 286-7800, offers a radio data service that works in most major United States cities for an $89 monthly charge. This permits users to send messages whether or not they are near a telephone connection. COMPANY NEWS Correction: September 1, 1993, Wednesday A brief article in Business Day yesterday about ways of connecting to the Internet, the network of personal computer networks, misstated a telephone number for a data base provider, Advanced Network Services Inc. of Elmsford, N.Y. Its numbers are (914) 789-5300 and (800) 456-8267. |
626038_0 | Court Bans Impropriety In Promoting a Drug | In an attempt to combat corrupt practices among drug company salespeople, the Food and Drug Administration went to court today and got an injunction barring a New Jersey pharmaceutical company from illegally promoting one of its drugs. The company, Kabi Pharmacia of Piscataway, agreed to pay $85,000 to the F.D.A. to cover the cost of the investigation and to put $300,000 in escrow to cover the cost of a campaign to correct misinformation the company's salespeople had spread among doctors, the F.D.A. said. In a consent decree in Federal District Court in New Jersey, the company agreed to the corrective measures without admitting any violations of the law. Kabi makes Dipentum, a drug used to treat ulcerative colitis, an illness in which ulcers form on the inside of the bowel. The drug sometimes causes diarrhea, which limits its usefulness because that is also a main symptom of the disorder. Because of that, the drug was approved by the F.D.A. for use only in patients who cannot take a more effective sulfur-based drug, called Sulfasalazine, and for use only when the disorder is in its inactive phase. It is not approved for use in children at all. F.D.A. Accusations But the F.D.A. contended in Federal Court documents that Anders Wiklund, the president of the company, had instructed the company's salespeople to tell doctors that the drug was good for the treatment of active colitis, for use in children and for use with other bowel disorders. Dr. David A. Kessler, the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, said in a telephone interview today that using the drug for those purposes could make patients much worse, not better. Dr. Kessler said the enforcement action was the first of a number of actions expected against drug company salespeople. He said he hoped that the case would send a message to the drug industry that salespeople must stay within the law when trying to persuade doctors to prescribe their drugs. Drug salespeople visit doctors frequently to hawk their company's wares, and they have long been suspected of deceiving doctors by minimizing side effects and suggesting that drugs are useful for conditions for which they are not helpful. The salespeople -- called "detail men," even though not all are men -- are the single greatest promotional expense by drug companies. It is estimated that drug companies spend about $12 billion annually on promotion, more money than is |
626060_4 | Despite Gaps, Data Leave Little Doubt That Fish Are in Peril | and working on the population dynamics of the target stock, let alone relating it to interrelationships with other species and oceanographic changes," Ms. Harwood said. "Since then, we've learned that there's more and more information that you need to make an intelligent decision about what the natural resilience of the stock is, and what a safe level of harvesting might be." But the difficulties of stock assessment are myriad, experts say, beginning with the simple fact that fish in their natural element will not stand still long enough to be counted. There are also, many note dryly, a vast number of fish still scattered over 70 percent of the Earth's surface. The Food and Agriculture Organization conducts yearly surveys on 995 commercial marine species -- everything from tuna and swordfish to squid and shrimp -- from 227 spots, ranging from coastal nations to tiny administrative or political entities like the Norfolk and Christmas Islands. Although some of the data are gathered by the agency's own regional fisheries groups, much of the information on catch sizes comes from fishing nations themselves, and it is not always reliable. This is in part because many countries, particularly in the developing world, lack the money and staffs necessary to conduct accurate surveys of fishing activities along thousands of miles of coast, much of it in remote areas. Moreover, some data are faked by fishermen who are trying to evade conservation measures by underreporting their catch. Keeping Track Despite such obstacles, "our knowledge of the state of many stocks is building up," said Dr. Zbigniew S. Karnicki of Poland, a diplomat and fisheries technology expert who is vice director of the International Council for Exploration of the Sea. "The problem is that for individual nations, it is very costly to conduct research." Many developed nations with large fleets of huge trawlers, like China, Russia, Japan, Peru and the United States, cut research costs by stationing scientists aboard fishing vessels. "To actually go out and find out about a stock without fishing it would be unbelievably expensive," Ms. Harwood said. "The source of a tremendous amount of stock analysis comes from basic information like catch rates -- particularly catch per unit effort, changes in the catch according to the amount of fishing, and so on." Fisheries experts say the most frustrating situations develop when fishing nations conduct huge operations and fail to collect and share data. |
625948_0 | Cuban Dissident, in the U.S., Says Embargo Is a Mistake | In ardently spoken five-minute bursts, Cuba's most prominent political dissident often finds himself railing these days against the disaster he says is looming over his country. But rather than attacking the Government of Fidel Castro, a target of his criticism for more than two decades, the dissident, Elisardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, has spent much of his time during a rare visit to the United States reproaching Washington for what he sees as its immutable determination to isolate his country through a 30-year-old economic embargo. With Cuba facing its worst economic and political crisis since President Castro's revolution in 1959, Mr. Sanchez says, it is time for Washington to expand its long-frozen ties with Cuba to better influence events there. "Cuba is like a volcano waiting to explode," said Mr. Sanchez, who repeatedly used similarly dark images in an interview in the Miami offices of an exiled friend and colleague in the country's human rights movement. "If the United States policy is not less simplistic and more farsighted, when the explosion comes you can multiply the turmoil that you have seen in Haiti by 100 to get an idea of what things will be like there." Touring the United States, Europe and Caribbean countries, Mr. Sanchez has sought to convince all who will listen that a violent tragedy could unfold in Cuba if the economy is encouraged to unravel while Mr. Castro, 66, clings to power. "We are only 90 miles away from you, and whatever happens in Cuba will have serious national security consequences for the United States," he said. "It is time to realize that by maintaining open hostility, the United States is helping Castro. The external enemy is the best friend of the totalitarian dictator." Mr. Sanchez said the United States should encourage change in Cuba just as it does in China, through commercial ties and expanded contacts between citizens, while continuing to apply diplomatic pressure for observing human rights and for political changes. In Miami, where opposition to Mr. Castro among Cuban-American exiles often edges toward hatred, many have received Mr. Sanchez's message with suspicion. Some ask why it is that the 49-year-old dissident is only now receiving an exit visa from his Government five years after applying for one. Having spent nearly 9 of the last 12 years in Cuban jails and suffered a severe beating in December by police agents who raided his home in |
626047_7 | SCIENTIST AT WORK: Graham Hawkes; Racing to the Bottom Of the Deep, Black Sea | changed abruptly when he met Dr. Earle. She was scheduled to dive off Oahu, Hawaii, in one of his suits for the filming of an ABC television special, "Mysteries of the Sea." Mr. Hawkes was hired as a consultant to oversee the dive. She hotly criticized the suit's clumsiness, not knowing he had designed it. He politely explained the challenges of marine engineering. Slowly, over the course of days, months and eventually years, the shy inventor and the bold biologist began a collaboration to perfect new kinds of submarine gear and to push back the frontiers of the deep-ocean exploration. In 1982, the duo founded Deep Ocean Engineering, based in San Leandro, Calif., on San Francisco Bay. The small company quickly gained a reputation for innovative undersea robots. In 1983, the company launched Bandit, a two-armed goliath weighing nearly a ton, which was designed to perform heavy work for the oil industry. It costs $750,000. When oil prices collapsed, the company produced the pioneering Phantom, a diminutive robot that costs as little as $20,000 and has became a runaway best seller. More than 250 are now used around the world for tasks like scientific research, bomb retrieval, ship hull inspection, police searches and treasure hunts. All the while, the pair also advanced the state of tiny deep-diving submarines. Deep Rover, the one-person plastic bubble, was launched in 1984. At Dr. Earle's insistence, it was made simple to operate, increasing its appeal for scientists. The business partners were married in 1986. Through it all, Dr. Earle lobbied hard for vehicles that would go deeper than Deep Rover, whose maximum depth was 3,000 feet. "Graham was the skeptical engineer," she said in an interview. "I kept prodding him: 'I want to go. How can we not go?' It was inconceivable to me not to have access to such a unique environment." Mr. Hawkes said the goal appealed to his sense of adventure and a desire to build something that would be "elegant and simple, and that didn't have to be handed over to a customer." The first sketches of a winged vehicle were made around 1984. It was soon dubbed Deep Flight. The idea was for it to be naturally buoyant, with the wings driving it down. Its buoyancy is a safety feature because in the event of engine failure or other kinds of problems, it will rise to the ocean surface |
627424_0 | World Economies | |
627546_0 | Recycling Then Cycling: Youths Rebuild Old Bikes | For many children here, the price of a brand-new bicycle is just too high. But in a makeshift workshop supported by the city and community groups, they can get their wheels by working. Since 1990, an organization called Recycle Ithaca's Bicycles has collected unwanted bikes, matched them to prospective owners and, after teaching the young people some rudimentary cycle repair, watched with satisfaction as bicycles were overhauled and returned to the streets. So far, 500 bicycles have passed through the program, which has the support of Mayor Benjamin Nichols, community organizers, Cornell University and the Green Party. Tony Poole, director of the Southside Community Center, which joined the program at its inception, said that fixing bicycles was only part of the project's appeal. "The benefits are so clear," he said. "It gets bicycles to people who don't have them. It spreads the concept of community service. People work in exchange for receiving bikes. They become aware of volunteerism. It reduces theft of bicycles. This program has reached out to a whole host of people we'd never have reached, from all walks of life, and all colors." Idea Gains Momentum The idea for bike recycling began with Gregory Rolle, an Ithaca native who has become active in community programs to help young people. "There were a lot of kids, poor kids, who didn't have bicycles," Mr. Rolle said. "They would be riding double and triple, and stealing each other's bikes, and getting into a lot of arguments about who would have the bike. So I came up with the idea of having bikes donated." Mr. Rolle took the idea to Paul Sayvetz, another community organizer and Green Party member, and before long, the idea became a program of Southside center, an agency that provides day care and after-school activities. With support from City Hall (which eventually helped find rent-free workshop space), the Green Party (which linked Mr. Rolle and the community center) and Cornell University, a workshop was set up in the spring and summer of 1990. Volunteers spent months collecting and sorting through old bicycles, negotiating for storage and work space, and doing initial repair work before the first batch of bicycles changed hands in the spring of 1991. "I brought some bikes to the Community Center and it mushroomed from there," Mr. Sayvetz said. "Kids came running." The program outgrew its first home, and a second location was short-lived |
627584_0 | NewTel Enterprises reports earnings for Qtr to June 30 | *3*** COMPANY REPORTS ** *3*NewTel Enterprises Qtr to June 30 1993 1992 Revenue 73,127,000 72,068,000 Net inc 8,877,000 6,842,000 Share earns .49 .38 Shares outst 16,453,000 15,782,000 6mo rev 144,365,000 143,705,000 Net inc 15,088,000 11,768,000 Share earns .81 .68 Shares outst 16,381,000 14,809,000 Results are in Canadian dollars. |
626176_0 | When Britain Forced Partition on Ireland | To the Editor: Re "I.R.A. Deserves Place at Ulster Peace Table" (letters, July 21): Reading your letters about the fighting in Ireland over the last years, I am always amazed at how each side presents its view. What the history books and all the letters I have seen published fail to mention is the election of 1918. On Saturday, Dec. 14, 1918, an election was held in Ireland -- the whole 32 counties. The issue: for or against independence from Britain. The result: 1,207,151 for independence; 308,713 against. That is 80 percent to 20 percent -- a clear majority. The Irish Republican Army representative, Michael Collins, went to London to sign for what the majority had voted -- an independent Ireland, separated politically from Britain. Winston Churchill threatened the Irish delegation members that unless they accepted 26 counties, there would be a more severe war in Ireland. Under this type of duress, Collins signed, saying as he did so, "I have a feeling that I am signing my own death warrant." He was right. Within three months, he was dead from the resulting civil war in Ireland, which broke out following his accouncement in Dublin of what he had done in London. It is not surprising that Northern Ireland contains a majority for Britain, as P. M. Innes of the British Information Service says in his letter. A. J. P. Taylor, the late British historian, told his Government it should get out of Northern Ireland, but it refused to listen to wisdom. The violence continues. Who is right? History is clear. THOMAS C. CULLINANE Bayside, Queens, July 26, 1993 |
626182_0 | No Need for More Unemployed College Grads | To the Editor: "Workers of the World, Get Smart" by Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich (Op-Ed, July 20) perpetuates the dangerous myth that demand for college-trained workers is limitless. Mr. Reich argues that if we can simply train enough workers with "problem-solving skills," we can have both high wages and high employment. Yet America is suffering from too many college-educated workers. Unemployment of Ph.D.'s is high, college graduates are experiencing the worst prospects for landing college jobs, and the last recession witnessed large-scale white-collar layoffs. The Labor Department's own Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that about 20 percent of college graduates work in occupations that do not require a college degree, such as secretary, retail sales clerk and factory production worker. Since the early 1970's, colleges and universities have poured out diplomas at a faster rate than the economy could absorb them. The percentage of graduates unable to land college jobs is expected to exceed 30 percent by the year 2005. Mr. Reich bases his argument on two "clues": wages of college graduates have been rising relative to those of lesser-trained workers, and unemployment is less among college graduates. Yet this ignores the large numbers of college graduates unable to find work in their chosen professions who downgrade and displace lesser-trained workers. In the 1980's, a degree became preferred, if not required, for many jobs for police officers, farm managers and managers of convenience stores. Mr. Reich presents this problem as afflicting all advanced industrial nations, yet only America has pursued a higher education policy that sends fully half of our youth to college. Japanese and European societies limit the number of students who can attend college. In most European countries, including the former West Germany, less than half as many students have an opportunity to attend a university as in the United States. These countries, however, offer apprenticeship, technical and on-the-job training programs to those who do not go to college. We cannot build dynamic apprenticeship programs if governmental policy makes it too easy to attend college. One-fifth of the country's state universities are required to accept any high school graduate who applies, yet Mr. Reich wants to make college even more accessible. Improving work-force skills is no longer compatible with increasing access to college. Perpetuating myths about the demand for college graduates forestalls movement towards effective apprenticeship and job-training programs. JIM BESSEN Wallingford, Pa., July 22, 1993 |
626291_2 | With Pennants and Prayer, Denver Awaits the Pope | a gunman firing at random. Gov. Roy Romer has called a special session of the state Legislature on Sept. 7 to discuss violence. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Service will guard the Pope, who was shot in Rome in 1981. More than 200 Army National Guard troops will patrol the park grounds during the Pope's Mass. The Pope chose to come to Denver for two reasons, besides the chance to visit a new region, Vatican officials say. As a relatively young city, Denver is a fitting metaphor for World Youth Day. And its large Hispanic population represents the fastest growing segment of the church in America. The Archdiocese of Denver, which covers 24 counties in the northern half of Colorado, has 335,000 registered parishioners. About 65,000 of those have Spanish surnames. But the number of Hispanic Catholics in the region is believed to be much higher, said Mr. Feeney, because many Mexican-Americans attend churches regularly without officially registering in the parishes, especially in poorer neighborhoods. About 250,000 Hispanic people, about 12 percent of the population, here. Spanish priests were celebrating Masses in Colorado as far back as 1540, but Denver, unlike big cities in the Midwest and East, was never a magnet for immigrants from Europe, who represented the bulk of the church's flock in America. Catholics today make up 14 percent of Colorado's population. Debate Over Sex Roles The Archbishop here, J. Francis Stafford, shares many of the Pope's conservative views on church teachings. Archbishop Stafford, a 61-year-old native of Baltimore, has spoken in defense of the all-male clergy, the ban on artificial birth control and the church's opposition to abortion. In a stand that angered some moderate Catholics here, Archbishop Stafford two years ago issued a "pastoral handbook" that underscored the church's opposition to girls as acolytes. The church bans women from "serving at the altar," although some other bishops around the country have ignored it, and a few parishes in Denver have altar girls. Although it drew little attention at the time, the handbook also included a strong policy on sexual misconduct by priests and other employees of the archdiocese. It was one of the first clear statements on the issue by any American diocese in a church that has recently been racked by accusations of molesting by priests. Catholic dissidents are planning to gather on the steps of the State Capitol |
626281_1 | Filipino Preaching Safe Sex Stirs Church's Ire | Dr. Flavier, a 57-year-old former country doctor, has been vigorously promoting a population program that seeks to curb the Philippines' 2.48 percent annual population growth, the second highest in Asia after Pakistan. By all indications, the Health Secretary is winning his crusade. He remains the most popular member of Mr. Ramos's Cabinet and recent surveys show that 80 percent of all Filipinos approve of his campaign to promote the use of artificial contraception. Dr. Flavier's jokes and his public visibility have partly to do with such high approval. The Health Secretary delivers his message everywhere he goes, from television talk shows to Rotary Clubs to basketball stadiums. Even in Manila's critical newspapers, he gets such good press that reporters joke that the initials at the end of Juan Flavier, M.D., stand for Media Darling. But he has also been badly bruised by wrestling with the church, which has been for centuries a powerful force in the Philippines. Catholic bishops warned recently that Dr. Flavier's population control program would lead to "the breakdown of families, the encouragement of pre-marital sex and the increased incidence of sexually transmitted disease." They also asked Catholics working in Government programs to refuse to promote contraception. But the Health Secretary has a staunch ally in Mr. Ramos, the Philippines' first Protestant President, whose candidacy in last year's elections was opposed by the Catholic Church. He also has the support of the younger generation of Filipinos demanding access to artificial contraception as well as Government planners and businessmen who worry about the Philippines' runaway population growth. With the bureaucracy in disarray, Dr. Flavier has had to rely on private voluntary groups to carry out his program. With Government backing, these groups have surveyed Filipino sexual habits, promoted AIDS education, even set up a factory manufacturing cheap condoms and a motorcycle delivery system for those who want their prophylactics discreetly supplied. It is a strategy that not only encourages popular participation but also deflects criticism away from Government-sponsored programs to limit population growth. Mr. Ramos backs his Health Secretary with a passion he rarely displays with other members of his Cabinet. "I asked the President how far he wanted me to go on population control," Dr. Flavier said in an interview. "He said, 'All the way.' " In a defiant response to the bishops' appeal to Catholics to subvert the Government's birth control program, Mr. Ramos dared Government |
626306_1 | COMPANY NEWS: On Track; Nike Finds a Use For Worn-Out Soles | into running tracks and tennis courts. Nike plans plans a two-day pilot recycling program for old Nike sneakers that will begin Saturday in Fort Myers, Fla.; an extended version of the program -- called Reuse-A-Shoe -- will start in Seattle on Aug. 12. Igloo-shaped bins will be installed in the Foot Locker shoe store in the Edison Mall in Fort Myers and the Foot Zone in Seattle, ready and waiting for 5,000 old pairs each. The stores will provide a $5 to $10 rebate to those who finally let go of their old sneakers. Nike, of Beaverton, Ore., has formed what it calls an "environmental partnership" with Atlas Track and Tennis, a company based in Tualatin, Ore., a suburb of Portland. Nike will give Atlas the rubber, leather, nylon and other textiles used in the shoes so the material can be turned into running tracks, according to Henry T. Chriss, a Nike chemist and manager of the company's Environmental Action Team. Running tracks are usually one-quarter of a mile in length, encircle a football field, and take 44,000 pounds of reground rubber from tires and other sources to construct. Mr. Chriss said Atlas would accept all the material Nike can give it. "We want to prove that there is common ground between business and the environment," Mr. Chriss said. "We could have jumped on the bandwagon and produced a 'green' shoe, something that's 'earth-friendly,' but that would still go into the landfill." Mr. Chriss said the shoes would be taken from Fort Myers and Seattle to a Nike facility outside Portland called the Central Defective Return Center, where a granulating machine called "Excalibur" would separate the "heavies," the hard rubber and leather soles, from the fluff, the lighter cushion material. The heavy material will then be shipped to Atlas. Mr. Chriss said Nike was still trying to figure out what to do with the fluff. "Maybe it will be filling for futons, or insulation," he added. A group of Nike employees came up with the idea for recycling about two years ago after they saw old shoes shoveled into a landfill, Mr. Chriss said. As for those who want to recycle other sneakers, Keith G. Peters, a Nike spokesman, said the company would accept other brands, though reluctantly. "We can't accept responsibility for everyone's garbage," Mr. Peters said, "but if you really twist our arm, we will take the Reeboks." |
629418_9 | 5,000-Mile Radio Telescope Set to Probe Depths of Time and Space | launch an orbiting radio telescope in 1996, and the observations of that instrument will be combined with those of the ground-based network. Russia is working on a similar project. Allure of Radio Waves Astronomers who once confined themselves to optical telescopes have become fascinated with radio-emitting objects, partly because radio telescopes can often reach far beyond optical telescopes into space and time. Because the universe is expanding, the more distant an object is the faster it is receding from Earth, thereby Doppler-shifting the light headed our way toward the red end of the spectrum. Beyond a certain recessional velocity, the light from the object is shifted out of the visible spectrum altogether, becoming "visible" only to instruments sensitive to the infrared or radio regions of the spectrum, which are invisible to the naked eye. Thus, many of the most interesting galaxies, pulsars, jets and other objects lying at immense distances in space and time from the Earth can be studied only by radio telescopes. Even as the V.L.B.A. observing program begins, its older cousin, the V.L.A., is embarking on new projects that are also expected to reap impressive scientific harvests. The V.L.A. will soon begin a radio survey of the entire sky, a tally expected to include some two million radio-emitting objects in a new catalogue that will be comparable to the one compiled for visible wavelengths by the Palomar Observatory. The V.L.A. is also about to turn its 27 antenna eyes on an object much closer to home than galaxies, pulsars and supernova remnants: Titan, a large moon of the planet Saturn. As the V.L.A. antennas focus on Titan, NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar, a dish antenna 82 feet in diameter at Goldstone, Calif., will send its 500-kilowatt microwave beam out to Titan. The V.L.A. will listen for the radar echo from Titan, and astronomers expect to use it in measuring the movement of one or more of Titan's geological features, allowing them to calculate its exact period of rotation. Relativity Playing Tricks With Perception As radio telescopes observe objects more than about seven billion light-years away -- that is, objects as they looked when the universe was about half its current age -- relativity begins to play tricks on perception. Normally, any object receding from one's eye appears to grow smaller as it moves away. But beyond about sevenbillion light-years, objects are receding from Earth at speeds so |
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