id stringlengths 5 10 | title stringlengths 0 2.44k | text stringlengths 0 2.9k |
|---|---|---|
629423_0 | Dangers To Forests Seen From Warming | Global warming poses just as much of a threat to tropical rain forests, which are already shrinking because the land is being cleared for farms and timber, as it does to the polar ice caps, the World Wide Fund for Nature said today. The group, based in Switzerland, issued its opinion in a report as officials from more than 100 countries met in Geneva to fine-tune the Climate Change Convention, a landmark treaty adopted last year at the Earth Summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro. So far, only 31 nations have ratified the pact, but it requires 50 ratifications to go into force. The most conspicuous absentees from the ratification list are the 12 European Community members, which are embroiled in a dispute over the adoption of "carbon taxes" as an incentive to cut back on the burning of fossil fuels. The United States ratified the agreement about a year ago, and was one of the first countries to do so. The two-week Geneva meeting is the eighth round of negotiations on the framework convention. The meeting will focus on the financial and scientific rules for the treaty when it eventually goes into force. United Nations officials say they hope that the convention will be ratified by the necessary 50 countries by the end of this year. Under the treaty, industrialized nations would aim to stabilize their emissions of carbon dioxide, the main "greenhouse gas," at 1990 levels by the year 2000. Call for Drastic Cutbacks But the World Wide Fund for Nature and another major environmental group, Greenpeace, said today that the industrialized world would have to cut carbon dioxide emissions substantially, not just stabilize them, to salvage the planet's delicate environment. They singled out the European Community for special criticism because those nations have failed to ratify the treaty even though they publicly backed it before the summit meeting last year. "They said three years ago that they're going to be a leader on climate change, but they've done nothing since." said a Greenpeace spokeswoman, Desley Mather. "They're rapidly losing all credibility on climate issues." Ms. Mather was speaking as Greenpeace set in motion a specially designed carbon clock to keep track of the 42,000 tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere each minute from burning oil, gas and coal. When the clock began running, it started at 22 billion tons, which is the amount of carbon |
629430_7 | Biologists' Deaths Set Back Plan to Assess Tropical Forests | one end of a designated study plot while a bulldozer cutting the path for a road knocked down the other, the felled trees crashing dangerously close by. The job has many risks besides that of a plane crash, most especially to health. Dr. Emmons contracted bubonic plague from forest rats, and Dr. Foster had both malaria and hepatitis. The team's studies have been revealing, as a sampling of findings indicates. Along the Pacific coast of Ecuador, for instance, the biologists found that up to 20 percent of the plant species on most sites and 20-to-40 percent of bird species exist nowhere else in the world. In the same region they discovered a genus of trees, the Exarata, that is new to science. It was described in the team's report as "a large, locally common tree well known to local people. Indeed, we even ate our meals while sitting on sections of a trunk of this species." In Bolivia, the team discovered that the region north of La Paz, from the high Andes to the mouth of the Rio Heath in the lowlands, probably harbors more bird and mammal species than any comparable area of the country, and that possibly 1,000 species of birds, "or an amazing 11 percent of all bird species on earth," live there. The rapid assessment team identified a similar area of high conservation value in Guyana: the Kanuku Mountains, where the surveys indicated that more than 60 percent of the country's bird species and 80 percent of its mammal species live. And in Belize, they found 15 species of plants, 22 percent of the country's known total, not known to exist there before. In terms of conservation results, the program was just beginning to move, said Dr. Mittermeier, and Mr. Parker, the team leader, was undergoing something of a metamorphosis. "Ted had gone from a hard-core field ornithologist to an international conservation bio-politician," said Dr. Mittermeier, referring to Mr. Parker's efforts to see that the team's findings were put to use. The most concrete results so far have come in Bolivia, where several million acres of "the most diverse habitat on the planet" are in the process of being set aside as a national park, according to Dr. Adrian Forsyth, Conservation International's director of conservation biology. Other countries are less far along, but there is movement in them, too, he said. While the deaths of the |
968061_1 | A New Approach to Bigger, Juicier Apples | ReTain for the last two years. He said the cost of application was about $300 per acre. Apple watchers say growers will undoubtedly take their time to judge the new product. ''Apples grow slowly,'' said Robert Belding, a pomology expert with the Rutgers Cooperative Extension. ''This is a very old business. Apples usually lead the horticulture industry in new ideas, but they move slowly.'' No. 14 among the nation's apple producers, New Jersey leaves mass-market wholesaling to the giants, like Washington State and California. Instead, to stock its farm stands and markets, it goes for variety. And the apple breeding program at the Rutgers Cooperative Extension has made New Jersey a leader in the development of new varieties, for flavor as well as disease resistance. New Jersey's expected harvest of 65 million pounds includes an array of varieties: the tried-and-true Red Delicious, Rome Beauty, Staymen, Winesap and McIntosh; the Macoun, available mostly at farm stands, and newer types like Gala, Ginger Gold, Fuji, Jonagold and Sun Crisp. Joseph Goffreda, the director of the Rutgers Fruit Research and Extension Center in Cream Ridge, said the Sun Crisp, which was developed there, appeals to the modern palate, which tends to eschew mild sweetness. The Sun Crisp, he said, is a hybrid of the Cortlandt and Golden Delicious apples, blended with an English apple, Cox's Orange Pippin. ''The flavor is very intense,'' he said. ''It's very high in both sugar and acids, so it is well balanced.'' The Gold Rush variety, into which disease-resistant genes have been planted, ''have an incredible crispness and flavor, and a keeping quality that's unsurpassed.'' In a shared effort with Purdue University and the University of Illinois, the Rutgers extension has come up with apples resistant to several common scourges: fire blight, apple scab and cedar apple rust. Two other problems, Pattery mildew and sooty blotch disease, are still being researched. Win Cowgill, a professor at the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Hunterdon County and a county agricultural agent, says ReTain, developed by Abbott Laboratories, is a similarly powerful tool for growers. By lengthening the harvest period, it can reduce the number of necessary laborers as well as increase yields. It improves harvests of varieties that tend to drop off the tree too early, like McIntosh, and allows many varieties to grow larger on the branch before harvesting. In addition, Mr. Cowgill said, treated apples remain crisper in storage. |
967898_3 | The View From: White Plains; Down Syndrome Proves No Match for Volunteer | that the Marcheses were willing to take in a Down syndrome baby. Someone who had just given birth to one in New Jersey called and begged them to take that baby as well. Mrs. Marchese could not say yes, but she could not quite say no, either. She made dozens of phone calls until she found the child a permanent home. Since then, Mr. and Mrs. Marchese -- who charge no fees -- have placed 4,000 Down syndrome children. They have arranged adoptions for prominent families, even celebrities, and for impoverished ones, too. The children range from infants to a 17-year-old girl who functioned at the physical and mental level of a 1 year old. The chromosomal disorder, they explained, can result in everything from severe to mild impairment. The organization, A Kids Exchange, is just that: an exchange. Adoption agencies must legally handle the actual adoptions, but Mr. and Mrs. Marchese act as matchmakers, often finding homes when social workers and others in the bureaucracy of the child-care system fail. Mrs. Marchese takes 50 to 100 calls a day from birth parents contemplating abortion after learning through amniocentesis that their child will have Down syndrome, from mothers who have just given birth to Down syndrome children, from potential adoptive parents and social workers, doctors and others frantic for help. She has run out on Easter Sunday to get a baby from the hospital and on Christmas Eve. ''I'm driven,'' she said. ''I cannot say no. I don't have control over it. I have no choice but to try to do something. Once I hear of a situation, I have to do at least something to help solve it.'' Sometimes, that means holding her tongue. Although she tries not to be judgmental, Mrs. Marchese concedes that she finds it difficult not to feel critical of ''certain middle- and upper-middle-class couples who are not indigent, not poor, who are not single parents -- people who have lots of advantages but simply cannot fit it into their lives to have a child with problems.'' Nor does she like it when people tell her they are giving up a baby for adoption because it will be ''better for the child himself or his siblings.'' ''I tell them, 'don't flower things up, don't make it pretty, tell the truth.' '' With those people, she explained, the goal is to get the baby another home |
968254_0 | Irish Take Heart as Peace Takes Hold | After 28 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, peace is quietly settling across this British province. The violence -- between Roman Catholic republicans who want an end to British rule and Protestant unionists who want Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain -- stopped three months ago, when the Irish Republican Army renewed a cease-fire. More than 3,200 people have been killed in the conflict in Northern Ireland since 1969, but none have died since the cease-fire. The July 20 cease-fire cleared the way for the I.R.A.'s political wing, Sinn Fein, to enter formal peace talks here with most of the other political parties and the British and Irish Governments. To the cautious relief of officials and residents, Protestant and Catholic political leaders are now in their second week of discussing the contentious issues that have divided their communities. ''The war is over,'' said Mari Fitzduff, director of the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity, a privately financed peace group. ''It's just the compromises that are going to take some time.'' ''The anger that stimulated the war in the first place is significantly diminished,'' she added, referring to the Northern Irish Catholic minority's grievances against Protestant officials and the British Government. ''Most of the inequalities have been dealt with, and Catholic children feel they can gain a place in the sun.'' People are taking heart from the fact that Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party, the largest political organization in the province, are sitting at the same negotiating table -- at least listening to each other. But there are many extremely difficult issues on the table, and a new outbreak of violence could cause the talks to collapse. So people in Northern Ireland have their fingers crossed in hope and are holding their breath, waiting to see if a permanent peace is really coming. Police and army patrols are rarely seen these days on the streets of Belfast, where much of the killing has taken place. In increasing numbers since the cease-fire, people are coming to downtown Belfast to shop, visit restaurants and pubs, and even to make ''Porgy and Bess'' a sellout at the Grand Opera House, which was devastated several times by I.R.A. bombs before the current peace effort began four years ago. The streets of Belfast are now officially considered safe enough, physically and politically, for a visit scheduled for Oct. 31 by Hillary Rodham |
968156_0 | Clean Car's Wrong Turn | To the Editor: Re ''In a Step Toward a Better Electric Car, Company Uses Fuel Cell to Get Energy From Gasoline'' (news article, Oct. 21): Federally sponsored research into this promising technology is veering off course. Fuel-cell vehicles powered by alternative fuels like hydrogen could soon deliver the zero-polluting, high-efficiency answer to air pollution and global warming. But the Government's proposal to cram gasoline into fuel cells makes them dirtier, more complex and expensive. Powering a 21st-century technology with 20th-century fuel seems anything but visionary. Limited Federal finances would seem better aimed at breaking down barriers to new fuels that unleash the full potential of fuel cells rather than facilitating the longevity of petroleum dinosaurs. JASON MARK Berkeley, Calif., Oct. 23, 1997 The writer is a transportation analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists. |
967855_32 | Pregnant With Complications | 50. ''That is when nature usually shuts down a woman's reproductive system,'' he says. ''We choose to stop there, too.'' Doctors who think like Scott cite three basic reasons for turning postmenopausal patients away. First, these pregnancies risk the mother's health. In 1995, Dr. Mark Sauer, director of reproductive endocrinology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, reported that 47 percent of these women suffered health complications, including hypertension, preterm labor, gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia. The study was necessarily a small one -- it looked at only 17 pregnancies -- but it was enough to confirm what many doctors suspected. The second reason is concern about the welfare of the child. Isn't the unborn baby the doctor's patient, too? When that baby becomes a teen-ager, is it in his best interest to have elderly parents? ''It's not good public policy to make orphans,'' Arthur Caplan says. Daniel Callahan, a biomedical ethicist at the Hastings Center in Westchester County, N.Y., makes much the same argument: ''Most of this 'progress' has been for the benefit of parents, not the benefit of children. Does anyone think that one of the problems people have identified in society is that there aren't enough older mothers?'' Third, there is the argument that the eggs these women need to become pregnant are a scarce resource. ''We have a waiting list'' of recipients seeking donors,'' says Dr. Frederic L. Licciardi, director of the donor oocyte program at the New York University Medical Center. ''Under those circumstances, an age limit is necessary and appropriate.'' Added to all this is a fourth reason, one rarely expressed directly -- the vague sense among many doctors that it is just plain unnatural. In its 1996 statement on postmenopausal pregnancy, the ethics committee for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine came close to saying this outright. ''Just as fertility is the norm during the reproductive years,'' the committee said, ''and treating physicians are justified in their efforts to correct deficient reproductive functions ... infertility should remain the natural characteristic of menopause. Because of this, and the physical and psychological risks involved, postmenopausal pregnancy should be discouraged.'' Those who draw the line at 50, however, are not comfortable with it. It's not where they've drawn that line that troubles them, but the fact that they have had to draw it at all. ''Any time a physician limits care for patients, that's not a good |
965083_1 | As Washington's Attention Wanders, Brazil Plays a Quiet Catch-Up Game | America has been a sorely neglected backyard. Mr. Clinton is the first President in a quarter-century to put off his first visit to South America until his second term. Political analysts here said that even though it now appeared that he might well win fast-track authority -- which would allow him to negotiate trade agreements that Congress must vote on without amendments -- little progress toward creating a free trade area is likely by next year's economic summit meeting in Santiago. Argentina, where Mr. Clinton goes after leaving Brazil, has been without a United States ambassador for six months, and no one has been nominated. The American Ambassador to Brazil, Melvyn Levitsky, will be going home a few months after Mr. Clinton's trip, and no successor has been announced. For much of the century, the only serious challenge to Washington's dominance in South America came from the Soviet Union. Brazil was easily overlooked. Despite a population of 160 million, abundant natural resources, and territory nearly the size of the continental United States, the old saw about Brazil's being the country of the future, though the future never comes, held true. Internal disarray characterized by a roller-coaster economy, a 21-year military dictatorship and weak government institutions kept Brazil from assuming what would have appeared to be its natural role. To be sure, despite impressive starts in reforming primary education, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has made only slight dents in many of his country's deep domestic troubles: rampant corruption, unchecked burning of the Amazon rain forest, police violence, lack of a credible judiciary, labor conditions that are tantamount to slavery in some parts of the country and vast disparities in the distribution of land, wealth and power. The end of 2,500 percent annual inflation, however, has taken some of the lunacy out of everyday life in the country with the world's eighth-largest economy and opened the way for greater trade and investment. In just two years, direct foreign investment in Brazil has soared from $1 billion to $16.5 billion, thanks largely to the privatization of vast government-run industries in mining, electricity and telecommunications. The regional grouping's trade has grown to an estimated $17 billion this year from $6.2 billion five years ago. And Brazil has become an important customer to its neighbors, spreading its purchasing power around by buying $1 billion a year in oil from Argentina and another $1 billion from |
965049_0 | Blair Meets With Adams, I.R.A. Figure, In Belfast | In a highly charged gesture meant to symbolize his commitment to peace talks in Northern Ireland, Prime Minister Tony Blair met today with Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. The meeting, in Stormont in East Belfast, was the first between a British Prime Minister and a Sinn Fein leader in 76 years and seemed, however tentatively, to signify a new era in Northern Ireland's troubled history. Reporters were not allowed into the meeting. But a report emerged that Mr. Blair shook Mr. Adams's hand. The symbolic move infuriated members of Northern Ireland's Protestant majority, who saw the gesture as conferring unwarranted legitimacy on Mr. Adams and on the often-violent I.R.A. Fully aware of the historic significance of his handshake, Mr. Blair nevertheless seemed almost to play it down when speaking to reporters afterward. ''I treated Gerry Adams and the members of Sinn Fein in the same way I treat any other human being,'' Mr. Blair said as he emerged from the meeting. ''I think what is important about the situation in Northern Ireland is that we do actually treat each other as human beings.'' The Prime Minister urged people on all sides of the Irish question -- the Protestants Unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain, as well as the Catholic republicans, who want the province to be part of a united, independent Ireland -- to support the peace talks and to put an end to decades of sectarian violence over the province's future. ''We can continue with the hatred and the despair and the killing, treating people as if they were not parts of humanity, or we can try and settle our disagreements by negotiation, by discussion, by debate,'' Mr. Blair said. Referring to leaders of unionist groups, or Loyalists, with whom he also met today, Mr. Blair added: ''That's what's important -- whether it's with Gerry Adams or the Loyalist people I met or anyone else.'' Some politicians praised his move as a brave step forward in the bumpy road to Irish peace. But it was immediately denounced by Protestant groups, which see Mr. Adams as a terrorist, plain and simple, and are furious that the I.R.A. has so far refused to lay down its arms. The group has called a cease-fire, allowing Sinn Fein to take part in the peace talks for the first time, |
965057_7 | How to Make Big Rubles? Invest in a Comrade's Debt | money flow of the company is carried out in cash,'' said Sergei Chirkasov, who heads Krasnoyarsk Tire's i.o.u. activities. Over the last 18 months, he said, the company has more than doubled its use of i.o.u.'s. It plans to use them to pay its workers' wages. Because Krasnoyarsk i.o.u.'s are generally redeemable only for tires, they are transformed into money through the alchemy of trading. The chain can take the i.o.u.'s across the country and back. Krasnoyarsk, for example, uses tire i.o.u.'s to buy raw materials from Rosshina, a Moscow company. Rosshina exchanges them for electricity with a Siberian electric company called Tyumenenergo, part of Russia's nationwide power distributor, Unified Energy Systems. The electric company then trades some of the tire vouchers with Gazprom, to which it owes money for raw fuel. At some point, the tire i.o.u.'s end up in the hands of a company that takes them back to Krasnoyarsk Tire and uses them to buy tires. Serious investors say they usually trade only in i.o.u.'s redeemable for cash. Many big issuers of i.o.u.'s are banks, which sell their own to raise short-term capital for lending. But even those can be enormously risky. In July 1996, a Moscow bank called Tveruniversalbank abruptly went bankrupt because it had issued far more i.o.u.'s than it could afford to pay off. When it collapsed, it left about $160 million in obligations. Earlier this month, the daily Izvestia reported that counterfeiters in the Russian Far East had begun selling fake i.o.u.'s. The paper said the swindlers had produced convincing copies of i.o.u.'s issued by Sberbank, one of Russia's biggest banks, and were planning to sell more than $40 million worth. The gang, which included Defense Ministry workers, was caught when Sberbank officials spotted early forgeries. Hoping to avoid further catastrophes, the Russian Central Bank has clamped down on the volume of i.o.u.'s that banks can issue. Meanwhile, companies that issue i.o.u.'s have formed a self-regulatory organization called Auver, which has created more formal ground rules and is trying to develop a system like those used to trade stocks and bonds. Many experts predict that i.o.u.'s will fade into disuse as Russia's economy becomes more stable and as companies learn to borrow money in more conventional ways, by getting bank loans or by selling bonds. But that may take years. Until then, or until another scandal erupts, veksels are moving full speed ahead. |
963299_1 | NEWS SUMMARY | Oil Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, who had several hours of talks with the French Defense Minister, said any action the United States takes against a French oil company's decision to invest in Iran would not disrupt relations between the United State and France. The United States is concerned that the oil transaction would help Iran pay for arms. A5 In France, Right-Wing Muscle The southern French town of Vitrolles, one of the few municipalities governed by the far-right National Front, has shut down a cafe that had become a center for young critics of its policies. The Government in Paris denounced the move. The closing came days after about 4,000 people attended a concert to raise money for the association that runs the cafe. (Reuters) $8.5 Billion in Nazi Gold A study for the World Jewish Congress concluded that Nazi Germany looted $8.5 billion in gold from 1933 to 1945 and for the first time, it estimated an amount -- nearly a third -- that came from private individuals and businesses rather than banks. It also estimates that more than $2 billion of the privately owned gold ended up in Swiss banks. A8 Bush Fires Rage in Australia The worst bush fires in memory burned out of control in northwestern Australia, the agency that fights the fires said. Some of the fires have burned for weeks in an area the size of Great Britain, and have destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of pasture and blanketed the area in smoke. (Agence France-Presse) NATIONAL A14-23 White House Officials Find More Fund-Raising Tapes As White House officials tried for a second day to explain their failure to turn over to investigators long-sought videotapes of President Clinton at 44 coffees with wealthy supporters, they acknowledged that even more tapes of political events and Presidential fund-raisers had surfaced and that they were likely to find still more. A1 Clinton Line Vetoes 38 Items President Clinton used his new line-item veto power to pinpoint and strike out more than three dozen military spending items cherished by Senators and Representatives who said projects in their districts were essential to the national defense. A1 Ex-Radicals Face Spy Charges Three onetime student radicals at the University of Wisconsin were charged with spying -- with mixed results -- for Communist intelligence services since the 1970's. A1 Nobel Awarded for Prion Work The Nobel Prize in physiology or |
963242_5 | Breast Cancer Awareness May Carry Its Own Risks | likely to have, and these additional pregnancies further protect her breasts, as does prolonged breast feeding. Reducing the Risk Women do not always have a choice about when -- or if -- they give birth and nurse babies. But there are other factors that can raise the risk of breast cancer over which women do have control. According to Dr. Graham A. Colditz and Dr. A. Lindsay Frazier of Harvard Medical School, preventive efforts should be focused on girls because it is young breasts that are most vulnerable to the molecular damage that can accumulate over the years. Two habits that often start in the teen-age years are especially dangerous: alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking. The Nurses' Health Study, based at Harvard, found that compared with nondrinkers, women who consumed more than one drink a day faced a 2 1/2-fold increase in breast cancer risk. Other studies have indicated that this risk is limited almost entirely to women who start drinking before age 25. As for smoking, a large Danish study found a 60 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer among women who had smoked cigarettes for more than 30 years. Smokers also tended to develop cancer at younger ages than nonsmokers. The Harvard researchers noted that among women who smoked more than 25 cigarettes a day, those who had started to smoke before they were 16 faced an 80 percent increase in breast cancer risk. On the other hand, vigorous physical activity in adolescence and young adulthood is protective, perhaps because it can delay menarche and, like pregnancy, reduce the number of ovulatory menstrual cycles. But even after menopause, exercise is likely to be helpful because it reduces body fat, where estrogens are formed from other steroids. As you might guess, weight gain in adulthood increases the postmenopausal breast cancer risk. As for diet, women would be wise to eat more fiber and less fat. Women on high-fat diets have higher levels of estrogen in their blood, which can spur the growth of breast cancer. However, in a new study of premenopausal women by Dr. David Rose of the American Health Foundation, wheat bran -- one cup or two servings of a whole-bran cereal daily -- diminished blood levels of estrogen. Studies at Tufts University have indicated that dietary fiber from vegetables and fruits, legumes and cereal brans can lower the risk of breast cancer. PERSONAL HEALTH |
966119_4 | A Latinist Lover and a Hero Who's Lacking in Tact | a hiatus in the syllabus. What Achilles felt for Patroclus, or Theseus for Pirithous, or the poet Horace for an athlete called Ligurinus, or Socrates for dozens of young men, was regarded as criminal ''beastliness'' and bowdlerized or misrepresented. ''IF YOU CANNOT COMPOSE Greek and Latin verse, how can you hope to be any use in the world?'' asks the great Oxford academic Benjamin Jowett in the course of the play; yet when he translated Plato he took pride in ''rephrasing his depiction of pederasty into the affectionate regard that exists between an Englishman and his wife.'' Mr. Stoppard's sly inference is that it's even harder to sort out the moral confusions of the late 19th century than to make sense of a mangled Latin text. He has plenty of fun at the expense of the era's intellectual turbulence; yet, like Mr. Stoppard's ''Arcadia,'' the play is fundamentally somber. Though the two men never met, Housman overlapped at Oxford with Wilde and had enough fellow feeling for him to send him a copy of ''A Shropshire Lad'' while he was in prison for ''gross indecency.'' Here, they do have an encounter. It is beside the River Styx and it ends the play in the questioning, teasing manner Mr. Stoppard has always embraced: Which is the right way to ''invent love,'' as the title puts it, in a repressive, hypocritical society? Ostentatiously to fulfill yourself and then crash in flames, as Wilde did? Or to transform your heart into vellum and end up an eminent, respected man, like Housman? A century after the play's events, that still seems a good question. There is a lot of intricate, unwieldy material here, and Richard Eyre does well to cohere it into a whole, which, though somewhat lacking in momentum and tension, always holds and rewards the attention. On the face of it, Trevor Nunn's achievement is less remarkable, because ''An Enemy of the People'' is one of Ibsen's more straightforward pieces. Yet Thomas Stockmann, the medical officer who battles vested interests to close municipal baths he knows to be polluted, isn't just a valiant crusader for truth, health and morality. He is absurdly tactless and naive, and, once his fires are lit, as unstoppable as a steam engine without a governor. In the famous scene in which he denounces democracy, and gets branded a public enemy in return, you can't always tell whether |
966059_2 | Dos and Don'ts For Park Safety | many clinic visitors are suffering from chronic illnesses. But the follies mentioned on the T-shirt caused major injuries again this summer: the lake clinic reported two attacks by bison and a mauling by a bear and the Mammoth Hot Springs clinic treated severe burns on the foot of a visitor who left the boardwalk and broke through the crust into a thermal pool. One woman attacked by a bison was taking a picture at close range at twilight and set off a flashbulb in its face. The bison -- commonly called a buffalo -- charged, goring her and collapsing her lung. She was taken out by helicopter, treated in an Idaho hospital and survived. In the other bison case, Dr. Gaupp said the animals were roving around a cabin and the visitors threw rocks at them to get past. The animals charged. The visitors were treated and released. The National Park Service has been distributing black-on-yellow fliers warning that the bison can weigh 2,000 pounds and can sprint at 30 miles an hour: ''These animals may appear tame but are wild, unpredictable and dangerous. Do Not Approach Buffalo.'' But the cover of ''The Official Guide to Touring America's First National Park'' gives a different message, with a picture of three placid bison on the banks of the Firehole River. The bison now seem to rival Old Faithful as a symbol for the park; we saw dozens of drivers get out of cars to photograph them at close range. In the bear attack, the visitor was hiking alone in the back country, which Dr. Gaupp said was not wise: a minimum of four people, talking loudly or making other noise constantly, should hike together in bear country. A mother bear with her cub -- ''the worst situation,'' Dr. Gaupp said -- were on the trail and the bear charged him. He curled up and played dead, as is recommended. The bear went away and returned, chewing on his back. Then she tried to roll him over, clawing his thighs and creating ''wounds you could put your finger in.'' It took the solo hiker two days to get help. High Mountain Sickness Dr. Gaupp says that about a third of the patients he sees have injuries, usually hiking injuries, such as broken ankles or wrists resulting from falls. Rangers say that a novice hiker may fail to realize that the downhill trip |
966403_0 | Ideas & Trends; Modern Creed For Ancient Church | SOME have called it ''the greening of the Bible.'' In Europe they talk about ''eco-missionaries.'' In the United States, a recent magazine headline asked, ''Science and God: A Warming Trend?'' Across the West an alliance is linking theology and science, two forces that long ago diverged in their search for truth. What unites them is a concern over the destruction of nature and the recognition that each can use the other to rally to its defense. Sometimes their plans to protect the Creation unfold in unusual ways. A highly visible strategy session was held last month aboard a huge Greek ferry that circumnavigated the polluted Black Sea for seven days with 300 biologists, philosophers, economists, priests and a sprinkling of politicians and Jewish, Islamic and Hindu scholars. The host for this symposium was the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, since 1991 the spiritual leader of some 170 million Orthodox Christians. The Patriarch will arrive in the United States today for a 30-day visit. As the ferry called on ports of the six countries along the Black Sea's shores and other Orthodox patriarchs and their retinues boarded, the message became unmistakable: the Orthodox Church was speaking out on the environment. The Eastern Orthodox Church is not the pioneer of environmentalism. In 1971 the Anglican Church declared that abuse of nature was ''blasphemy.'' Since the late 1980's, in Europe and America, clergy of all the major faiths have talked with scientists about the need for action. Patriarch Bartholomew has now made the fight against pollution church policy. The Patriarchate has even declared abuse of nature a sin. In 1995, Metropolitan John of Pergamon, an influential theologian, spoke words approved by the Patriarch himself: ''Evil is not only a matter for human beings but affects the entire Creation.'' Many followers have been been surprised by the activism because they know their church more for its lengthy Byzantine rites and mysticism. It is a faith that has largely managed to avoid the impact of the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the political and industrial revolutions. A Cost to Humans Much of the Church's drive to embrace this modern creed comes from Patriarch Bartholomew, who is said to be troubled personally by the enormous health problems caused by pollution during the Communist years. He wants to modernize Orthodoxy but needs a consensus since the world's 15 Orthodox churches are self-governing. Church conservatives and nationalists have |
966180_0 | Bears Coming Back In Growing Numbers | CHERYL LAGO and her family were happy to see nature creeping up to their doorstep in rural Wolcott. The residents of quiet Spindle Hill Road tossed out cracked corn for a family of turkeys that regularly wandered into their back yard. Deer and pheasants were frequent neighbors. And then a young black bear rumbled around the neighborhood for a few days this summer, and the joy of communing with wildlife was quickly replaced by trepidation. After watching the bear lay waste to a neighbor's birdfeeder and munch its contents, Debbie Rainone didn't let her two young sons play in their yard until the animal had been gone for several weeks. ''Deer is one thing, but the bear is another story,'' said Mrs. Lago, the mother of a 3-year-old boy. ''It's probably just a stereotype, but I think you do kind of think of a bear as more capable of hurting or attacking a child. It was kind of a reality check, that they're here.'' That wasn't the case until about a decade ago. Though black bears are the most common species of bear in North America, they vanished from Connecticut in the mid-1800's, driven out by unregulated hunting and the state's precipitous deforestation, said Paul Rego, a wildlife biologist with the State Department of Environmental Protection. But conditions have gradually come to favor the bears return: hunting and trapping were outlawed in 1973, and forests sprung up again on land cleared decades ago for pastures and mining operations. Bears trickled in from western Massachusetts in the early 1980s, and they began to find habitat again in Connecticut's northwest corner about 10 years ago, Mr. Rego said. The state population now stands between 30 and 60. ''We're having more and more encounters with them,'' said Keith Schneider, a D. E. P. conservation officer. ''I'm happy to have them around. Every bear we get, we look at it as a positive thing because we didn't have them for a long time. Now they're back and we're going to have to learn how to live with them.'' That shouldn't be as hard as bear-wary residents might imagine. Contrary to popular mythology, black bears are not aggressive. Shy and secretive, they usually travel and feed at night and try to avoid human contact. ''Getting in your car and driving to work every day is probably more dangerous than having bears around your house,'' Mr. |
966466_0 | NEWS SUMMARY | INTERNATIONAL 3-15 Danube's Vast Wetlands Are Being Restored At the immense delta of the Danube River, engineers from several countries are trying to reverse one of the biggest land-grabs in recent history, when the previous Romanian Government tried to turn wetlands into farmland. They have punched gaps in dikes and dams and begun to let the river spill back over the land. 1 Cuban Pitches in World Series Cubans are thrilled by the exploits of Livan Hernandez, the 22-year-old who defected two years ago and now is a starter for the Florida Marlins in the World Series. Politics aside, he shows ''the high quality of Cuban baseball,'' exulted one fan. 1 Bittersweet Opening in Spain An acclaimed Guggenheim Museum opens today in Bilbao, Spain, but the festivities grew somber after terrorists killed a policeman. 8 Pledge on Global Warming Argentina's President endorsed joint restrictions on both developed and developing countries to prevent global warming. But he told President Clinton that the United States should bear the greatest burdens. 13 Secessionists Active in Serbia A guerrilla force suddenly active in southern Serbia, consisting of ethnic Albanians, appears ready to wage a secessionist war. 15 Lobbying in Lockerbie Crash Libya is said to be pressing families of those who died in the 1988 crash over Scotland to settle the case. 5 A New Patois in Japanese The Japanese language is a mishmash of foreign influences. And now young people are mangling English words to create a hip dialect. 3 NATIONAL 16-36 Rise in Health Premiums Of at Least 5% Is Expected After four years of near stability brought about by the spread of managed care, the premiums that most Americans pay for their health insurance are poised to rise significantly next year, industry groups and health care consultants report. Many say the average charge for health benefits, deducted from paychecks, will go up at least 5 percent, or more than twice as much as wages and inflation. 1 Interest Groups Join Debate A diverse array of civic, religious, business and labor groups -- including the American Heart Association, the Gray Panthers and the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association -- are actively taking part in the often-arcane campaign finance debate over unregulated soft money, issue advertisements and political action committees. Their effect on the issue suggests that the procedural votes the Senate held this month are unlikely to be the last word. 1 |
966248_2 | The High Noon Of Peter Stuyvesant | Stuyvesant was rowed ashore from the ship that delivered him. A local note-taker wrote that he arrived like a peacock with great state and pomp. He was more than a mere mayor, having been given jurisdiction over the whole Dutch colony, New Netherlands, and the island of Curacao, and he immediately styled himself Lord General, which was not something that warmed the heart of the populace. Stuyvesant had barely got settled when, two weeks later, he issued his first ordinances. On liquor, no serving on Sundays before 2, except to bona fide travelers and boarders and no serving after the town bell struck 9 in the evening. As for crime, there was a 100-guilder fine if you drew a knife and it was tripled if anyone got hurt. The law against selling intoxicants to Indians would be strictly enforced from then on. Stuyvesant, a devoted company man, came down hard on smuggling and on small trade that robbed the company of its monopoly. Traders would have to show their books, trappers could not go wandering off way inland without permission. The final indignity was a tax on wine and spiritous liquor to be paid by tavern keepers and retailers. Fur exporters would have to pay 30 cents a skin on what they shipped out. The devout new ruler planned on restoring the decrepit St. Nicholas Church and he favored flogging Catholics and ousting Lutherans. Jews? That's all we need, he complained when a shipload of 23 landed from Brazil, where they had well served the Dutch in their seizure of the countries north. Get 'em out, he advised the directors in Amsterdam. But the Jews had friends in the company and were allowed to stay, provided they did not worship in public or become welfare cases for the colony to support. The flurry of new management did not sit well with the town. Robbed of the freedom to drink and fight whenever they liked, deprived of the chance to make a little something on the side by fur smuggling and obliged to pay out their money in taxes, they grumbled loudly, Henri and Barbara van der Zee wrote in their history of Dutch New York, ''A Sweet and Alien Land.'' All chroniclers seem to agree that Stuyvesant was too high-minded, or too obtuse, to understand the way New Yorkers, or at that time, New Amsterdamers, react to authority, not so |
966510_0 | October 12-18; An Irish Handshake | Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, made a bold gesture in Northern Ireland, where peace talks are seeking a way forward for the troubled province. He met -- and shook hands with -- Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. Mr. Blair urged people on all sides of the Irish question -- Protestants who want Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain, and Catholics who want it to become part of independent Ireland -- to put aside their differences. ''We can continue with the hatred and the violence and the killing, treating people as if they were not parts of humanity, or we can try and settle our disagreements by negotiation, by discussion, by debate,'' he said. He was the first British Prime Minister to meet with a Sinn Fein leader since Lloyd George in 1921. SARAH LYALL |
966409_2 | Citizens; France Confronts Its Jews, And Itself | for pardon have been marked by extraordinary frankness for a country traditionally more inclined to the discretion of a church confessional than the public display of emotion, and which has long wrestled with its ''Jewish question.'' Until 1995 France portrayed Marshall Philippe Petain's Vichy regime as an imposed aberration that left unsullied the French Republic, an institution coeval and so eternally synonymous with the quest for equality and dignity. At the same time, the trial in Bordeaux of 87-year-old Maurice Papon, the first and almost certainly the last Vichy official to be prosecuted for the deportation of Jews from France, has confronted the French with an agonizing fact: Mr. Papon is not a monster, but everyman, a bureaucrat par excellence, a servant of the French state and a product of its meritocracy who prospered under both Vichy and the subsequent Gaullist Republic, whose views on the Jews in the 1940's were almost certainly quite average, neither rabidly anti-Semitic nor inclined to see the Jew as a citizen like any other. His trial is therefore that of a certain France, one whose death throes now appear to be in progress. These death throes involve different forms of absolutism that have at times blurred memory and fueled conflict: the infallibility of the church, the honor of the Republic, the doctrine of the glory of France itself. In their place, some now see a new France emerging: more tolerant, more pluralist, less dogmatic. Naturally this shift is not without opponents, particularly the rightist National Front, but a change is perceptible. That this transition involves Jews is perhaps inevitable. For the Jewish question in France has never been a peripheral one; it has occupied a place near the heart of what are sometimes called ''les guerres Franco-Francaises,'' the internecine struggles of the French. From the Revolution to the Dreyfus Affair, from Dreyfus to Vichy, and from Vichy to the contemporary National Front, the place of the Jews in French society has been a recurring issue. Its resolution would be a significant turning point. The Revolution of 1789 created the concept of a nation constituted by the will of its equal citizens, and those citizens included the Jews. French nationality became, in Ernest Renan's words, ''a daily plebiscite,'' an act of personal volition. Jew, Provencal and Longuedocien were all citizens, and citizenship was nationality. This, for the long-oppressed Jew, was deliverance. It opened avenues previously |
966447_0 | Accusation of I.R.A. Support Jolts a Sleepy Election in Ireland | The presidential election campaign here has erupted in a national debate over the outlawed Irish Republican Army and its political wing, Sinn Fein. Most people here in the Irish Republic fear and abhor the I.R.A. -- which long waged a guerrilla war to end British rule in Northern Ireland -- and are skeptical about Sinn Fein's commitment to an end of the sectarian violence. The I.R.A. has declared a cease-fire, but the ultimate goal of both organizations remains a united Ireland free of British control, and this is a major issue at the peace talks now under way in Belfast. Until this week, the presidential campaign had been maundering along with five candidates contending for the largely ceremonial post in the Oct. 30 election, all professing their dedication to the motherland. The four women candidates seemed to be imitating the style of Mary Robinson, who left the job after a seven-year term to become United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.. Some even sounded like they were using the high-minded phrases of Ms. Robinson, a former Senator and accomplished civil rights lawyer. Only one of the candidates, Mary McAleese, who is leading in opinion polls, is a college graduate, a law professor at Queens University in Belfast. The Irish Constitution permits any citizen of the island of Ireland -- North or the Republic -- to run. The one man, Derek Nally, 61, a retired police sergeant who is running as an independent, wore dark suits and white shirts but sparked no fire in what most people felt was a soporific campaign. Then he found the issue that has brought the campaign to life. Mr. Nally charged, in effect, that Ms. McAleese, 45, was a closet supporter of the I.R.A. and Sinn Fein. This is a volatile charge in the Irish Republic, where Sinn Fein receives only 2 percent of the national vote. Mr. Nally's charge was based on a memorandum written by Dymphna Hayes, a Foreign Affairs Department official who had spoken to Ms. McAleese last summer. It said that Ms. McAleese seemed sympathetic to Sinn Fein, approving of its election gains in Northern Ireland, even before the I.R.A. restored its cease-fire on July 20. The cease-fire cleared the way for Sinn Fein to enter the broad-based peace talks in Belfast -- the first time since Ireland was partitioned 75 years ago that the largely Roman Catholic Sinn Fein has |
966419_0 | Computers and the Disabled | To the Editor: ''Technologies That Enable the Disabled'' (Sept. 14) offered much-needed information about the valuable tools now available. I would add that computers in our schools play vital roles in helping many individuals with disabilities successfully complete their educations. I would also add two names to the list of resources offered to readers. These groups provide useful information on computer technology, particularly in the workplace: Closing the Gap, in Henderson, Minn., is an organization that publishes a directory of information about virtually all the known computer devices available to make computers accessible for individuals with disabilities (507 248-3294). The Job Accommodation Network, in Morgantown, W.Va., is an international network and consulting resource that provides information on employment issues, the Americans with Disabilities Act and possible employment-related accommodations to employers, professionals, and workers with disabilities (800 232-9675). VICTOR H. MARGOLIS Manhattan, Sept. 15 The writer, professor emeritus at Nassau Community College in Garden City, N.Y., is the former coordinator of its services for students with disabilities. |
964819_2 | A major force in marketing to college students steps up its activities on the Internet. | abilities. ''We took a good look at all the ways we use to touch students,'' said Robin Bruen, marketing director for college student marketing at AT&T in Basking Ridge, N.J. ''They're very important to us because they're decision makers right now on all our products and services as well as in the future.'' Student Advantage is part of an AT&T ''Back to School Package,'' which Ms. Bruen described as indicative of a strategy ''to offer students only products of value because they're so price-sensitive and sophisticated today.'' Another element of the promotion is a free ''call organizer'' telephone bill that uses code numbers to help roommates figure out who makes which calls. In addition to Web ads, AT&T is promoting its agreement with Student Advantage in a newspaper campaign by the Foote, Cone & Belding unit of True North in New York and a direct mail campaign by Bronner Slosberg Humphrey in Boston. And AT&T has been joined as an advertiser on the Student Advantage Network by marketers like the American Honda Motor Company, the Microsoft Corporation, the Procter & Gamble Company and the Sony Corporation. Student Advantage, in forming its Web network, has moved two services from the Main Quad site. U-Wire, which compiles articles from more than 100 college newspapers in 47 states, is now at a separate site (www.uwire.com). And Extreme Resume Drop, offering job-seeking help, has left Main Quad to become part of Bridgepath (www.bridgepath.com), a career site operated by Bridgepath Inc. that belongs to the network under a partnership agreement with Student Advantage. Another student-oriented site, Loci (www.loci.com) -- operated by a group including the Boston University College of Communication -- is a member of the network under a similar agreement. ''Our feeling is that a lot of people are under the misimpression that students sit on line for hours,'' Mr. Sozzi said. ''But we believe that because they're so pressed for time, students go in for specific reasons -- services, information, as a tool for research -- and then get out. So we want to aggregate, through acquisitions and partnerships, the best sets of content sites.'' AT&T's on-line ads account for a fraction of its annual spending, which totaled almost $1.1 billion last year, according to the trade publication Advertising Age. There was speculation last week among executives at agencies on and off the AT&T roster that the company was poised to announce cost-cutting |
966840_6 | In a Step Toward a Better Electric Car, Company Uses Fuel Cell to Get Energy From Gasoline | of gasoline to the fuel cell, said Jeffrey M. Bently, a vice president of Little, and the fuel cell turns most of that energy into electricity. In contrast, an internal combustion engine loses more than 80 percent of the energy in a gallon, either as heat out the tail pipe or friction in the drive train. One use for a fuel-cell system, which Chrysler has been pursuing even in advance of the new development, is to perfect an electric car without a breakthrough in battery design. Such a car might still carry a few batteries, for quick starts and for recapturing energy when a driver brakes the car, but existing battery designs could handle that easily. ''This blows the doors off any battery-powered electric vehicle,'' Mr. Bently said in a telephone interview. Batteries take hours to charge, he said, but this car could be re-fueled ''with a five minute fill-up anywhere in the free world.'' A major jump in efficiency could be a big step in fighting global warming, Mr. Pena said. He predicted that third-world countries that hope to add cars by the hundreds of millions in coming decades could move directly to cars powered by fuel cells. ''They can leapfrog us like they did with cell phones,'' he said, referring to countries that skipped the older technology of phones tied to copper wires. Even before cars, though, the new system could be used to make electricity for houses, according to the Energy Department and companies involved in the research. Such a system could run on propane or natural gas, two hydrocarbons that are widely available in homes. Plug Power, a joint venture between DTE Edison, which is the parent company of Detroit Edison, and Mechanical Technologies Inc., a 36-year-old technology company in Albany, N.Y., says it will have demonstration units available within a year and units for commercial use in two years. Plug Power says it will install the units in homeowners' basements and sell the electricity at a price below what is paid by about 25 million households. The package would be ''roughly the size of a small dishwasher,'' said Gary Mittleman, president and chief executive of Plug Power. ''You won't have to pay a penny for the device,'' he said, but it will have an electric meter on it, charging for power at 8 to 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, depending on the price of hydrocarbon fuel. |
966824_1 | Hints of a Nuclear Test In Russia Are Disputed | claim we cannot tell if it was a blast or an earthquake.'' Advocates of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty contend that it can be policed; its opponents say it cannot. The treaty's goal is to halt the development of new weapons of mass destruction by imposing a global ban on nuclear detonations. One of the treaty's main tools is an emerging global network of hundreds of seismometers, both public and private, that track ground vibrations. These rumbles are carefully studied to try to find underground nuclear blasts hidden among the natural din of earthquakes small and large that occur regularly. The treaty has been signed by 146 nations, including the United States, Russia, China and the other declared nuclear powers. The Administration recently sent the treaty for ratification to the Senate, which is not expected to act any time soon. In late August, the Clinton Administration said it had evidence that Russia might have detonated a nuclear weapon on a remote island in the Kara Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean, and that it was investigating the matter and seeking an explanation from Moscow. Russia later denied that it had conducted a nuclear blast and reaffirmed its commitment to the test ban. Yesterday, an intelligence official who spoke on condition he not be identified confirmed that the Government is still divided about the event's nature. ''We haven't reached a conclusion on whether that event was an explosion or an earthquake,'' he said. ''The data is rather ambiguous.'' A civilian scientist recently briefed by the Central Intelligence Agency on the event said that the agency was stretching the truth to the breaking point. ''They've labeled it an enigma to save face,'' said the expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ''They've spun out bizarre scenarios of deception and cheating.'' He accused the agency of failing to retract early assessments when accumulating evidence all but ruled out a blast. By all accounts, the event was worth worrying about at first. On Aug. 16 in the vicinity of Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic island where Russia maintains a site for underground nuclear testing, the ground heaved and alarm bells quickly went off in Washington. The Government's interest was already high because it was remotely monitoring a series of experiments at the site, which Moscow later said were small-scale tests of warhead reliability similar to those conducted by Washington at its underground testing |
967671_1 | Assisi Holds Its Breath, and Rebuilds Treasures | of dedicated restorers, many of them volunteers, flocked here to start piecing together bits of fallen frescoes, some the size of bread crumbs, to mend the broken faces of saints painted by 13th-century masters like Cimabue and Giotto. For it is here that the most delicate of rescue and restoration efforts has been mounted -- a 20th-century effort with cranes and support beams and plastic foam to hold together the majestic but battered basilica of St. Francis, and those treasures inside that have survived but need protection from future shocks. Even the mattresses placed on the floor betray lingering fears for the frescoes above. For those in Assisi, the night of Oct. 7 was one of the worst, when yet another earthquake rippled through the rocky ground beneath the basilica, sending more chunks of masonry crashing to the ground. The jolt -- measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale -- widened and deepened the hole at the triangular apex, or tympanum, of the facade of the basilica's left transept, even as the rescue teams were planning their latest efforts to shore up what remained in place. ''Before Oct. 7, the situation of the tympanum was dangerous,'' recalled Giorgio Croci, an Italian engineer who has performed expert surgery on endangered monuments from Rome to Samarkand. ''Then it became tragic.'' Galvanized by the spreading wound on the left transept's tympanum, the rescue team met late into the night of Oct. 8. By the next morning, they had the plan for an elaborate and tricky operation that, almost miraculously, would be executed one week later, several hours before the next big quake struck at 5:25 P.M. on Oct. 14. The key to the mission was a triangular structure of metal rods and joints, a giant Erector set that was to be fixed to the wall of the transept's facade, shoring up the tympanum. Constructing the triangle was the easy part. The hard part was getting it up off the ground and onto a 120-foot-high basilica that is surrounded on its southern flank by a series of cloisters and courtyards that would block access for a crane. The team considered using helicopters that could have lowered the 4.7-ton structure into place. But that option was rejected, for fear that the swaying metal structure, or the vibrations of the rotor blades, would cause further damage. Instead, the team used a double-crane approach -- a big one |
967665_1 | As Turmoil Builds, Thai Leader Shuffles Cabinet | to find a replacement for the Finance Minister, who quit last week. On Tuesday the Prime Minister was reported to have been dissuaded at the last moment by his top general from seizing more powers by declaring a state of emergency that would have sent the country's financial markets into further disarray. Calls for Mr. Chavalit's ouster have gained momentum in the press, which has begun calling him a ''madman,'' and among the demonstrators in the streets. Now, supporters of the Prime Minister are threatening to bus farmers into the city for counter-demonstrations that raise the possibility of a violent confrontation. ''The Prime Minister is trying to get away with not changing anything,'' said Montree Sornpaisarn, a leader of the anti-Chavalit demonstrations. ''We think it's time for the Thai people to help their country.'' In the midst of this tumult, Government action on the economic crisis has come to a virtual standstill. ''You start to wonder what is going to happen and when will something happen and how quickly will they move to actually do something,'' said Daniel King, an American political scientist who found himself out of work when the local bank where he was working shut down. ''The decision-makers seem unwilling and incapable of making decisions and carrying out the plans they have promised to implement,'' he said. ''We are at a standstill, and there is not much to point to to say Thailand is complying with the I.M.F. program.'' So far the Government has raised the sales tax and made plans for spending cuts that will halt a number of projects like highways and rail lines that are essential to further growth. But when it took the difficult step of raising fuel taxes last week to meet a budget target demanded by the I.M.F., it quickly rescinded it in the face of public resistance. Economic analysts generally agree that with quick, effective action, Thailand, like other ailing nations in Southeast Asia, can recover and resume its growth in two or three years or less. Without such action, they say, the pain will increase and recovery will take much longer. ''If the right measures are not taken, this could well be a five- to seven-year recovery,'' said Roy Ramos, an economist with Goldman Sachs in Singapore. ''Part of the problem in Thailand was that there was a denial of the problem and procrastination. You can't solve a problem |
967690_6 | Internet's Value In U.S. Schools Still in Question | to be first in line,'' said Charlotte Hanna, director of education programs for a local community development group. ''It used to be kids could use the computers to work on resumes and applications,'' Ms. Hanna said. ''Now they can get on a college Web page and get a feel for what the school is like. They really get excited about it.'' Meanwhile, the Oakland school district, despite having a high proportion of low-income students, has already managed to connect all but three of its schools to the Internet, thanks to volunteer efforts like Net Day. And trips to cyberspace can be particularly valuable when money for field trips is scarce. For example, the University of California at Berkeley's Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology has a large collection of California Indian artifacts that Oakland's Laurel Elementary School wants to incorporate into a unit on the Yahi tribe. Unable to hire school buses for the outing, the school plans to tour the museum's World Wide Web site instead. Oakland's schools benefit from help by Berkeley's School of Education, which received $2.5 million in a Federal grant and matching funds last year to administer several pilot projects, like City Bugs and more than a dozen others. The Berkeley project is seeking to capitalize on the Internet's apparent potential to inspire volunteerism among the technically inclined. For now, though, teachers like Victoria Deardorff at Allendale Year Round, an Oakland elementary school, are mainly left to experiment for themselves. During a unit on sea animals, the third grade teacher recently instructed her students to type in ''manatee'' on Yahoo, a widely used Internet search engine. Up came a long list of highlighted items, including a link to The Manatee Hunters site, Manatee Ray's Restaurant, the Manatee County, Fla., sheriff's office, and several sites actually containing information about the manatee. At the computer terminal, Dianne Larios, 8, looked slightly confused at these semi-random research results. ''I think this can be a great tool for them,'' Ms. Deardorff said. ''There's so much information out there. But I'm just learning it myself.'' Correction: October 30, 1997, Thursday A front-page article on Saturday about Net Day, a volunteer effort to provide Internet access to the nation's schools, misstated the number of students who graduated last year from McClymonds High School in Oakland, Calif. It was 71 of the 81 students in the senior class, not 16 of 150 seniors. |
962329_0 | Big Opening Is at Risk In Chicago | The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is to christen Symphony Center, its new $110 million home overlooking Grant Park here, with a gala performance on Saturday night, but a labor dispute has left in doubt whether it will play at all. With the baton of Daniel Barenboim virtually poised in the air, the musicians and the orchestra management continue to wrangle over a new three-year contract. Negotiations resumed late today, and the musicians are set for a vote on Saturday morning that will decide whether they perform. ''There are three scenarios,'' said Stephen Belth, a spokesman for the orchestra management. ''They will settle, they'll decide to play and talk, or they'll strike.'' In addition to inaugurating its new home this weekend and showing off the improved acoustics of the central concert space, Orchestra Hall, the Chicago Symphony is scheduled to open the Carnegie Hall season in New York on Monday, a performance that is also in jeopardy. The current contract expired on Sept. 14, and though both sides say most issues have been resolved, they are still at odds over salary and pension provisions. The 105 orchestra members earn a base salary of $78,000; with overtime and recordings, they earned an average of $112,018 last year. The pension plan calls for members, upon retirement, to receive $48,000 annually or about 60 percent of their base salary. Ed Ward, president of the Chicago Federation of Musicians, the union representing the players, said management had offered an increase in salary but a smaller one than offered in the past. Neither he nor Mr. Belth would specify what was offered. The new Symphony Center, under construction for three years, enlarges and improves upon a building that opened in 1904 and was last remodeled in 1966. It is far more luxurious than its predecessor, for patrons and musicians alike; it includes new rehearsal spaces, practice rooms and improved backstage space. But most attention has been focused on the change in acoustics. ''To withhold our services for what management feels is the opening night of the next century is something we'd have to weigh very heavily,'' Mr. Ward said. |
962427_0 | Tropical Forests Are Ravaged by Free Trade; Indonesia's Progress | To the Editor: To call for a ban on products from a developing country as you did in your Sept. 27 editorial ''Asia's Forest Disaster'' will hamper the significant progress Indonesia has made in the management of some of the world's largest forest resources. Every possible effort is being made to end the fires burning out of control in several parts of our country. Recent catastrophes, including drought, earthquakes, a tragic plane crash and forest fires, along with a financial crisis, have brought deep grief to many Indonesians. Your editorial's judgments do nothing to help those who suffer the effects of these disasters daily. DARMOSUTANTO BUDIMAN Deputy Chief of Mission Embassy of Indonesia Washington, Oct. 2, 1997 |
962431_4 | Days Before Slaying, Parents Of Suspect Pleaded for Help | institutionalization, his parents had to seek a court order if he was to be committed. ''They were crying out for assistance,'' said a lawyer for the parents, Michael Critchley, of West Orange. ''They were doing what parents who love their children do. They were trying to get him help.'' The parents, identified by investigators and court papers as Nicholas and Dolores Manzie, decided on Monday, Sept. 22, to seek treatment for their son, Samuel Manzie. A day or two earlier, the youth had suddenly decided to stop helping Monmouth County authorities develop a case against Stephen P. Simmons, of Holbrook, on Long Island. Mr. Simmons, twice convicted of pedophilia charges, had at least four sexual encounters with Samuel after meeting him through computer conversations on the Internet. In late August, the authorities had installed electronic monitoring devices in the family's home, apparently on the telephone to record conversations between the boy and Mr. Simmons. At first, the youth consented to help with the investigation, but abruptly changed his mind between Sept. 20 and Sept. 22, the Monmouth County prosecutor, John Kaye, said Thursday. The youth smashed the monitoring device with a hammer and ruined its tape, Mr. Kaye said. Today, court records revealed the boy also threw a remote control device at his father at about the time he destroyed the devices, officials said. On Sept. 22, the parents asked for additional help for the boy at the Shoreline Behavioral Health Center in Toms River, where he had started receiving outpatient therapeutic care in late August or early September after they learned that he was involved with Mr. Simmons, documents show. The center called a psychiatric emergency screening team at the Kimball Medical Center in nearby Lakewood, and the parents took him there, according to the documents. He was admitted and spent the night, but he was released the next day after a psychiatrist at Kimball said he was not a threat to himself or others, according to court records. On Tuesday, Sept. 23, the parents took the boy to Ocean's Harbor House, a private shelter for runaways and troubled teen-agers in Toms River. He spent the night there, but the next morning the shelter's counselors recommended that he be returned home and continue the outpatient treatment at the Shoreline Center, the records show. After the parents left the shelter with their son, they and officials at Shoreline contacted a |
962375_3 | Vancouver Journal; Over the Airwaves: All-Whale Radio | us, but unfortunately for believers there really is no evidence to support any of that,'' he said. A few years ago Dr. Ford placed a single underwater microphone in Robson Bight. It was hooked to a speaker in the home of a local resident who agreed to record the whale sounds he heard. One night when there was an extraordinary number of whales, he called Dr. Ford and simply held the phone to the speaker. Dr. Ford, 250 miles away in Vancouver, was amazed that the sounds coming over the telephone were so clear he could identify which whales were making noise. That gave him the idea of designing a new system where a computer differentiates whale calls from boat noises. When it recognizes whale sounds the computer uses a solar-powered cellular phone to call Dr. Ford's office, where the sounds are recorded. But Dr. Ford came to realize that the background noise of passing ships was important too. As whale watching has become more popular, the number of boats at Robson Bight has shot up. One summer day in 1996, 107 boats were in the area following 21 whales. Dr. Ford believes that noise from the boats can interfere with the whales' own signals. He decided that a continuous feed from the microphone back to his office was required. But that meant sending a radio signal from the listening station 10 miles through rough country to the village of Telegraph Cove on Vancouver Island, which had existing phone lines to relay the information to Vancouver. But instead of confining the radio signal to the research project, Dr. Ford decided to give whale watchers the chance to listen in, and perhaps better understand how their presence affects the whales. He had to file an application with the federal Government for the broadcast license. ''In one place they asked if the principal language was English, French or other,'' he said. ''We checked other and wrote in: whale.'' [Regulators approved Dr. Ford's application on Oct. 2. Testing on the station, 88.5 FM, will start in October, but Dr. Ford said rough winter weather might force him to wait till spring to begin full programming.] While the first broadcast is still some time off, Dr. Ford's whale top-40 is already generating plenty of interest. Stephen L. Dennis, who owns four whale-watching boats in Tofino, a small town on the west coast of Vancouver |
962426_0 | Tropical Forests Are Ravaged by Free Trade; New York Resolution | To the Editor: ''Asia's Forest Disaster'' (editorial, Sept. 27) mentions North America's involvement in the Southeast Asian forest fires because of our large-scale use of the plywood that results from the logging of rain forests in Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries. All of us in North America must restrict all our wood use to only those products that come from operations independently certified as well managed. Less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the tropical woods exported to North America come from such operations. If they are not labeled as such, we should avoid them. The New York City Council has introduced legislation to restrict the city's use of tropical hardwoods only to those from independently certified sources. The Council needs public support to pass this forest-saving measure. TIM KEATING Director Rainforest Relief Brooklyn, Sept. 30, 1997 |
962362_2 | Earthquake Damage in Italy Strikes at Its Cultural Heart | Assisi or Florence or Paris or New York. International attention has inevitably turned to the basilica in Assisi, where, in a sense, Italian Renaissance painting began. After the first quake on Sept. 26, four people inspecting damage to the upper part of the basilica were killed by falling debris from a second quake. The accident increased the focus on the building and the condition of its historic frescoes by Cimabue, Giotto and others. Cimabue's fresco on the ceiling depicting St. Mark collapsed along with a ceiling fresco of St. Geronimo, a work sometimes attributed to Giotto or his followers. Aftershocks have continued to shake the church, not to mention local residents' sense of security. The quake today was felt as far away as Florence in neighboring Tuscany. News reports said that it damaged part of the typanum and the left transcept and that a cloud of dust was blowing through the closed wood portals. A team of engineers is busily deciding how best to secure the upper basilica. Firefighters are meanwhile zealously preventing visitors from entering the building, making it difficult to know the extent of the damage. In the first hours after the second quake, while bodies were being removed from the rubble at the basilica, looters grabbed fragments of fallen fresco and tried to sell them. Now all of the debris is gathered in tents in front of the church; works from the church museum have been moved to the friary for safekeeping. Large chunks of the homely frescoes of saints in the council room of Assisi's city hall litter the floor, and the building is full of fissures. Officials scrambling to cope with the damage become irate when anyone ventures into the shaky hall. In Foligno, the initial earthquakes opened an ugly gash between the facade of San Salvatore, a Renaissance church, and the rest of the building. The tip of the cathedral's bell tower has crumbled, prompting officials to cordon off the ghostly town center, strewn with bricks. The cracked top of the the city hall's ancient tower also tilts precariously, like a cup falling from its saucer. Officials were preparing today to knock it down. Many of the paintings and other works from the municipal museum, which is being renovated, are stored just below the tower, an area that is not safe to enter now. ''We're not talking about restoring a fresco here or there |
963698_4 | Vichy Figure Goes on Trial in Deportation of Jews | that President Jacques Chirac first acknowledged the responsibility of France for crimes committed by the Vichy regime, which his predecessors had always argued was illegitimate and therefore no stain on the postwar Governments. Last month, the French Catholic Church asked God and the Jewish people for forgiveness for the silence of most of its bishops on the regime's anti-Semitic measures, and on Tuesday, France's biggest police union similarly asked the ''Hebrew people'' to forgive the French police who did most of the Nazis' dirty work during the Occupation. After France was liberated from the Germans in 1944, Mr. Papon said he had joined the Resistance, and his claim was accepted. With support from Resistance leaders he became the top police official in Paris in the 1950's and 1960's and Government Budget Minister in the early 1980's, until the charges against him were made public by one of the foreign-born Jews he had ordered arrested for deportation. It took French authorities 16 years to decide to charge him after a panel of Resistance heroes assembled at his request in 1981 vouched for him but concluded that he should have resigned his office in July 1942 nonetheless. A judicial inquiry that was about to indict him in 1987 was annulled on technical grounds; a second inquiry that dragged on until last year seemed at one point, Mr. Papon said, to be nearing the conclusion that he was innocent but finally recommended that he go on trial. In all, some 140 witnesses are expected to testify, including former Prime Minister Raymond Barre and former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, under whom Mr. Papon served as Budget Minister; Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Robert O. Paxton, the Columbia University historian and expert on Vichy France. The only other Vichy figure to have been tried for crimes against humanity, as opposed to treason, the crime for which Prime Minister Pierre Laval and thousands of others were executed after the war, was Paul Touvier, chief in Lyons of the Militia, a thuggish organization modeled on the Nazi SS that operated throughout France during much of the Occupation. He was hidden by friends in the French Catholic Church and others for 17 years before being arrested in 1989, was convicted in 1994 of ordering the execution of seven Jews near Lyons 50 years earlier, and got a life sentence. He died in prison last year. |
963788_6 | AIDS Research in Africa: Juggling Risks and Hopes | a possibility to save my daughter, I had to try.'' For other mothers who took part in the test, the confusion was far more profound. Some acknowledged that they understood little. ''I don't remember exactly what they told me,'' said Valerie, a frail 28-year-old seamstress. ''They said that it would help my child, and that it would ease my childbirth too.'' Several Ivorian doctors objected to the ethical questions being raised over the tests, saying outsiders consider Africans incapable of weighing their own interests. ''One has the impression that foreigners think that once white people arrive here, they can impose what they want and we just accept it in ignorance,'' said Dr. Toussaint Sibailly, one of the doctors in the project. ''If that was once the case, those days are long past.'' Still, though the testing here was reviewed and approved by an official Ivory Coast board of ethics, a senior health official seemed surprised when told that a test like the one underway in Abidjan could probably not take place in the United States. ''If the country that is paying for the study cannot accept conducting it, then we can't be expected to accept it either,'' said Dr. Issa Malick Coulibaly, the senior health official with oversight over the AZT research. An American scientist with the project said later that the Ivory Coast had never been told that this type of research could be performed in the United States, only that the experiment was designed according to the strictest American and international standards for medical research. American scientists involved in the experiments were told by the United States Embassy not to speak on the record about their work. The women taking part in the study seemed to have a sense of obligation when they were told that the trials are meant to find an affordable drug regimen that can save tens of thousands of lives in the future. ''If the scientists say that it has to be this way, then I can only agree with them,'' said a mother named Salimata, who spoke as she clutched her tiny 4-month-old daughter. ''People are trying to help us, and if a bunch of people have to die first, I am ready to risk my life too, so that other women and their babies can survive. ''If I got the placebo, that will hurt, for sure. But there is no evil involved.'' |
962104_4 | AUTOS ON FRIDAY/Technology; A Chrysler for Developing Nations | its plastic can be turned into more CCV's; the rest can be recycled into products like park benches. Plastics have the long held the advantage over steel of being lightweight, which is crucial for fuel efficiency, and they are resistant to dings and dents. But the material has been expensive, although the cost has been reduced by using recycled plastics and new processing methods. The parts are molded in color -- baby blue, in the case of the CCV -- eliminating the need for a costly paint shop in the auto-assembly complex. At an average cost of $350 million, paint shops are among the most expensive parts of an assembly plant, and their emissions are troublesome. The rest of the assembly operation would also be quite simple. A Neon requires 75 to 100 stampings into its metal body structure. But as Chrysler envisions the CCV's manufacturing operation, plastic would be injected into giant molds and the resulting panels could immediately be bonded with adhesive. The CCV would have only 1,100 parts, compared with 4,000 for a conventional vehicle, and it would take only 6.5 hours to build one, compared with 19 for the Neon. Because there would be no paint shop or body-assembly area, a CCV plant would require less land. While the Neon manufacturing operation occupies two million square feet of space in several buildings, the CCV could be built under a single roof in 300,000 square feet. ''The manufacturing concept is innovative but feasible,'' said Jim Harbor of Harbor & Associates, a manufacturing consulting firm in Troy, Mich. Mr. Moore, the Liberty manager, said that once the process was perfected, it could be used on other Chrysler vehicles. But first, cars with the molded bodies must satisfy safety regulators in Europe and North America. In addition, Mr. Moore said consumers in Western countries, accustomed to glossy paint, might not like the panels' matte finish. ''We're trying to figure out a way to create a shiny surface using the same process,'' he said. And although the panels are easy to repair -- the damaged section can be cut away and replaced with another piece of plastic -- the result is quite noticeable. The long-term durability of the large pieces of bonded plastic is also unknown. For now, the CCV offers a promising opportunity for Chrysler in emerging markets like India and China. It could be in production by 2000. |
962134_0 | Realism Unvarnished For Gluck's Bonded Males | Paul Kellogg, the artistic director of Glimmerglass Opera, knew he was in for some tough criticism this summer. It was July, and the summer company in Cooperstown, N.Y., had just unveiled its production of Gluck's ''Iphigenie en Tauride.'' With a Greek princess held in captivity by a leering, leather-clad Scythian king, and bloody human sacrifices in a temple to Diana that looked more like a grim high-security prison, the production was certain to provoke people. Mr. Kellogg suspected that for some, the production's most upsetting element would be the portrayals of Iphigenie's brother Oreste and his companion Pylade as classically beautiful, passionately bonded Greek friends who spend a great deal of stage time stripped down to loincloths and chained together. ''Sure enough, we had many patrons, and some critics, who found an agenda in the production,'' Mr. Kellogg said recently. ''Other subscribers were genuinely disturbed, without being able to tell me why,'' he added. But just as many people, a solid majority, Mr. Kellogg estimates, were passionately affected by the performance, reacting, he believes, to ''an honesty and depth of feeling that is seldom seen on the stage.'' No doubt audiences will be provoked again when, starting tomorrow evening, the production, directed by Francesca Zambello, comes to the New York City Opera, where Mr. Kellogg serves as general director. Both companies, Mr. Kellogg asserts, strive to present opera ''as exciting theater,'' and he remains unapologetic about pushing boundaries. ''If we are going to reach contemporary audiences with contemporary reactions and contemporary feelings,'' he said, ''then we have to do things in a contemporary way. This will require education. Innovation always does.'' In this case, it was more than modernistic stage direction and gritty scenery that unsettled the audience: it was the unabashed use of the male body, and the homoerotic depiction of the central male relationship. Boldly sensual male content is now common in the theater. Recently, full frontal nudity in gay-themed Broadway plays like ''Angels in America'' and ''Love! Valour! Compassion!'' was deemed essential to the storytelling. And few objections were voiced. But opera companies have been far more reticent about using the body as an element of drama. Two sopranos bared it all for the Dance of the Seven Veils during productions of Strauss's ''Salome,'' Catherine Malfitano at Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1990 and Maria Ewing at the Royal Opera in London in 1991. But steamy realism is |
969285_6 | Reconsidering A Trade Equation; Why a Stronger Dollar Hasn't Brought a Drop in Exports | only trade but the nation's other overseas transactions -- tourism, investments, services, brokerage fees, international phone tolls, even dollars sent by immigrants to families back home -- reached $148 billion last year. And this year, it could exceed $150 billion. That is close to the record current-account deficit of $168 billion, also set in 1987, although still much less as a percentage of the nation's annual income. Fortuitously for the American economy, the strong export performance this year -- totaling $447.5 billion through August in merchandise alone, or 11 percent ahead of last year -- acts as a brake on this rising deficit. Service-sector exports help, too. They are much smaller, but rising fast. A decade ago, the national wail over the big deficit in the nation's international transactions held that Americans were, in effect, borrowing abroad to pay for a profligate life style, and that the next generation would have to repay the accumulating bill, reducing its own living standard to do so. Such talk is all but forgotten today. The bulging deficit is billed as more of a blessing than a curse. The old profligacy issue -- that Americans were spending wastefully beyond what they could afford on their own -- has given way to a more hopeful view of how the money is being used. Now the foreign money flowing into the country is said to be stimulating investment in American factory operations and other productive facilities. The Clinton Administration subscribes to this optimistic assessment, and there is evidence of it in Government statistics. ''The earnings from these investments mean that going forward we will have the wherewithal to pay back the foreign debt,'' said Janet Yellen, who heads the President's Council of Economic Advisers. A decade ago, the flood of imports meant, to many, that higher-paying manufacturing jobs were shifting abroad as imports replaced goods made here. That is still a popular view; the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington research group, for example, concluded in a new study that imports are shutting down some domestic production, forcing workers into lower-paying service jobs. Many experts, however, argue optimistically that imports, far from crowding out domestic production, are a necessary and welcome supplement for an economy that is close to fully employed. The imports, in this view, make up the shortfall. ''At a time of full employment, it does not make sense to think of the trade deficit |
963914_5 | Review/Fashion; A Versace Looks Ahead, Through Tears | the thinnest patent leather bra straps peeking from sheer knits; the straps like G-strings holding up low-slung trousers. Skirts were demure, to the knee. Luxury was often hidden -- a coat lined in glistening crystals, for instance. Taking a slatternly pose, models walked on the straps of sling-back shoes, as if the shoes had slipped off the back of their feet; this confused most viewers -- not good for a designer whose image depends on his steely confidence in pulling things off. A handbag attached like a choker at the neck looked like an invitation to death by purse snatcher. These touches were styling tricks from another collection entirely, in a show pragmatically oriented to filling holes in wardrobes. Whether this was an important collection depends on what it leads to next season. Much of Mr. Ford's best work is about posing, a veneer of worldliness, of jet-set jadedness. If this collection leads to a crack in that veneer, a glimpse of the soul beneath the sexuality (even prostitutes can have hearts of gold), that would be a positive change. If the hints of post-modern expression -- like a 60's-style pink satin coat with a bow at the front over decidedly 90's lean trousers and sheer shirt -- lead to a less predictable borrowing from the past, that would be welcome, too. So much of what passes for new today, quite simply, is so old that it would take a complex, curious mind to move beyond it. Mr. Ford has such a mind. Both Mr. Ford and Ms. Prada attributed their inspiration, in part, to a sense of optimism. But if Mr. Ford created the familiar and then took it out of context, Ms. Prada quite simply worked to create the unfamiliar, in her best show yet. Her accomplishment was in conceiving something that the visually saturated fashion insiders had not seen before. Designers often seem trapped in mundane references, as if they are all consulting the same five books. Whatever those five books are, Ms. Prada doesn't use them. Instead, she seems to be commenting wryly on her place as an outsider in fashion, with painted flowers like outsider art, or with the cutting of the fabric looking intentionally as if it had been inexpertly done by hand. Her groundbreaking collections have snapped the stranglehold that a handful of designers had on Italian fashion for years. And she accomplished |
967042_0 | Educational Testing Service Opens a Security Review | Educational Testing Service officials said yesterday that the company would hire an international corporate investigations concern to conduct the first outside review of its security procedures for tests. Kroll Associates, a leading investigations company based in New York City, will take a broad look at security matters, including the development of test questions and the administration of tests, to determine whether new steps are necessary to protect against cheating and other forms of fraud. ''Cheating is absolutely unacceptable to us,'' Nancy S. Cole, the president of E.T.S., said in an interview, ''and we are constantly looking for ways to improve our procedures to make sure that no one has an unfair advantage on a test.'' Mrs. Cole also said a team of senior E.T.S. managers had been created to examine test security and business practices. E.T.S., a 50-year-old nonprofit organization, is the world's largest independent testing service. Articles in The New York Times last month prompted the outside review by Kroll and the creation of the management team, officials said. The articles described security problems with several nationwide tests administered by E.T.S. and raised questions about its willingness to respond aggressively to cheating. The articles also questioned aspects of the organization's nonprofit status, like its increased competition with for-profit rivals, and reported a lawsuit's accusations that E.T.S. was part of an effort to monopolize the market for computer-based testing. The testing service, based outside Princeton, N.J., administers nine million tests a year, including the S.A.T. for college-bound high school students, graduate-school examinations and professional licensing and certification tests in 34 fields. In internal publications, E.T.S. has criticized the articles in The Times as unfair, saying they overstated its difficulties. In a letter to employees earlier this month, Mrs. Cole wrote, ''We did not learn new information on cheating or security from the articles, but we were reminded of their great importance to insuring the fairness of the testing process to all test takers.'' In the interview, Mrs. Cole again dismissed the significance of the articles, but she said they had prompted the organization to hire Kroll Associates to make certain that its security procedures were as good as they could be and to spot any potential vulnerabilities. ''Kroll's charge is to look at our procedures from A to Z, from the time questions are developed to the way tests are delivered externally, to look for any places that are vulnerable |
967067_0 | Sports of The Times; Amateurism: The Myth Is Upheld | AFTER Mike Utley broke his neck playing for the Detroit Lions in a National Football League game in November 1991, he received workers' compensation for his injuries, which have rendered him a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair. He gets $533 a month, nurse's care five days a week, and rehabilitation paid for. Kent Waldrep sustained a similar injury in a violent collision in a football game for Texas Christian University in 1974. He gets nothing. And on Monday he got more of the same. Waldrep lost a jury trial in a Texas state district court in Dallas in his suit against T.C.U. seeking workers' compensation. Waldrep's spinal cord injury left him paralyzed from the neck down; he has since regained use of his arms. Donald Loria, a workers' compensation lawyer in Detroit, represented Utley, as well as hundreds of other athletes who have suffered disabilities. He did not represent Waldrep, but he carefully took notice of his case. ''I don't see any difference between a football player like Waldrep at a major college, and a pro football player like Utley in that they are both employees,'' Loria said. Waldrep contended that he was indeed hired by T.C.U. to play football. The school and its insurance carrier, the Texas Employers Insurance Association in Receivership, argued that Waldrep was a ''student-athlete,'' an ''amateur,'' and the jury, in a 10-2 decision, bought it. And so the mean myth of amateurism in so-called ''revenue-producing'' college sports took another step forward. ''Minor league baseball players are protected, and a college football player is in essence a minor league football player,'' Loria said. ''College is his training ground for a potential pro career. He can't go anywhere else.'' To be sure. A baseball player can go from high school into professional ball -- usually the minor leagues -- with hopes of making the major leagues. A football player can't and, except in the rarest of instances, neither does a basketball player. This is a nice little subterfuge for the colleges as well as the pros. They benefit mutually from this body that assumes the risks. Of course, youths like Waldrep get an athletic scholarship which allows them to take advantage of a college education, but virtually all are recruited to play ball. ''A depressingly low number of athletes actually graduate from college,'' Loria said. ''The time constraints necessary to work for the team are a real |
966930_0 | Critic's Notebook; Intense, Artistic, All the Rage? Must Be Disgusting | It is almost impossible to write about disgust without being disgusting. Words like squishy, sticky, squirmy and slimy can hardly be used without hints of a grimace. Others, like pus and phlegm, bring on anticipations of full-scale offense. So reader, be forewarned. The disgusting is our subject: items that cause us to feel repulsed, even contaminated, by their very thought; behaviors that inspire intense revulsion and horror, experiences that even in memory inspire a shudder. Which should make us feel right at home. For the disgusting has become commonplace in culture. It has become the subject of scholarly examination in at least two new books. Sometimes it even seems a welcome companion. Adventure and horror films seduce with rotting corpses, slithering layers of snakes, cannibalistic criminals, rank swamps and even (in ''Men in Black'') juicy, exploding cockroaches. Lollipops encasing worm larvae are a favorite candy for children. Body piercing and puncturing have become mainstream fashion. The daytime talk shows and best-seller lists are filled with chatty tales meant to inspire shock and, yes, disgust. Disgust is even courted on the artistic scene. The avant-garde often deliberately tests the boundaries of the disgusting. (What, after all, was the scandal about that crucifix dipped in urine a few years ago but its deliberate invocation of disgust?) In politics, disgust may be more potent than legal niceties. (Which is likely to cause a more immediate emotional reaction: a pubic hair on a Coke can or political fund-raising on Federal property?) We cultivate disgust as a moral reaction, to be invoked as an extreme weapon, proclaiming a particular disagreement to be beyond argument. Indeed, the disgusting may have even become so commonplace that it no longer seems outrageous: one of the remarkable aspects of the literary reputation of the Marquis de Sade, as Roger Shattuck argues in ''Forbidden Knowledge'' (St. Martin's Press), is that his writings have ceased to disgust us. This preoccupation with disgust, though, does not seem accompanied by an increase in the quantity of disgust we are exposed to. The disgusting, with its implications of decay, disease and death, was far more prevalent in the days before plumbing and modern medicine; a stroll down some of 18th-century London's less savory streets would probably turn the modern stomach. Middle-class America is more protected from common sources of disgust than any society in history. But that makes our preoccupation with disgust still more |
967043_0 | 3 Buildings Are Declared Landmarks | One has just turned 30. Another is slightly older, and the third is comfortably middle-aged. All are old enough to have the last laugh, winning recognition in circles that once maintained they had ruined the skyline. The three buildings -- the Ford Foundation Building at 321 East 42d Street, the CBS headquarters building at 51 West 52d Street and the Chase bank branch at 510 Fifth Avenue at 43d Street -- were designated landmarks yesterday by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. They are not the first structures from the 1950's and 1960's to be given the title: Lever House, at 390 Park Avenue, and the Seagram Building, at 375 Park Avenue, have been landmarks for years. But Jennifer J. Raab, the chairwoman of the commission, said that the three were noteworthy choices because they symbolized ''our ongoing effort to designate worthy modern buildings as they become eligible'' for landmark status. Buildings must be 30 years old before the commission will consider them. ''These three new landmarks are striking expressions of the varying possibilities of modernism,'' Ms. Raab said. ''Although one thinks of Beaux-Arts architecture when it comes to landmarks, we're pleased to recognize that modern architecture is an equally important part of our cultural heritage.'' Of the three, only the Ford Foundation Building, completed in 1967 -- a 12-story cube built of steel designed to rust as it aged -- was given landmark status inside and out. The interior designation recognizes the building's widely copied atrium, surrounded by offices with full-length windows. By contrast, the CBS building -- completed in 1965, and nicknamed ''Black Rock'' for its dark-gray granite and dark tinted windows -- was remarkable for its reinforced concrete structure, the commission said. It was the only skyscraper designed by the famous modernist Eero Saarinen, and is an austere, 38-story counterpoint to the steel-and-glass towers a few steps away on the Avenue of the Americas. The bank branch, built for what was then Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, was nicknamed ''Glass House'' when it opened in 1954. A five-story glass box, it revolutionized the design of banks with floor-to-ceiling windows that made it strikingly different from the traditional fortress style of most banks, the commission said. The commission also took note of its huge safe, which is visible to gawkers on the sidewalk. Some architects said they hoped the designations would mark a turning point for the preservation |
968538_2 | Saving the Salt Flats to Make Utah Safe for Drag Racers | then filtered for potash, lithium and magnesium carbonate, which are primarily used for fertilizers. The process leaves behind a huge amount of salt, which is considered useless and is left to accumulate in the ponds. Some of that salt will be returned to the flat once the restoration plan gets under way in mid-November. Reilly Industries will mix it with water and then, using giant pumps, pour up to 6,000 gallons of the saline solution per minute onto the flat through miles of new canals. The process will mimic the annual winter floods here, which leave several inches of standing rainwater on the surface. This water regenerates the flat by drawing salt up through the water table to the surface, where it is deposited as a hard salty crust when the water evaporates. Scientists predict that the restoration effort will leave up to a half-inch of salt per year over 28 square miles of land. The project is scheduled to continue for five years, but it may be extended if monitoring by the Bureau of Land Management shows that it is successful. ''A million and a half tons of salt a year sounds like a big number,'' said Clarence Prentice, director of engineering for Reilly Industries, referring to the amount of salt that is expected to be deposited. ''But you may not be able to see it in any one spot until several years. The wind and the rain may blow it around.'' The company's voluntary restoration effort is both a gesture of good will and a way to avoid future lawsuits and limits on its mining operation. It will also allow the company to empty some evaporation ponds for future use. Few places on earth allow such straight, long and level drag strips, where a car has nothing to run into if it spins out of control at 600 miles per hour. So most land speed records of this century have been set at the Bonneville Speedway. Recent attempts to break the sound barrier in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada have been the exception, primarily because the new generation of jet-powered cars have aluminum wheels that perform more efficiently on dirt than on salt. Racers at Bonneville must frequently move their drag strip as a result of the salt's poor condition and have sometimes had to shorten the length of their runs. Even then, portions of the track |
968515_3 | Cyberspace and You: The Golden Rules of Order | communities can exist sealed away from reality'' -- she consistently underplays its perils, while celebrating its utopian possibilities. The Net offers people the chance ''to design a world that is more open, more accessible to everyone and just a nicer place to live in,'' she writes. By facilitating communication and feedback, she suggests, it empowers individuals, making them (in theory at least) more active and concerned citizens. Such optimistic visions are not based on any persuasive evidence. They are simply predicated upon the naive assumption that most users of the Net will be smart, well-intentioned people and that the dynamics of free market competition will somehow separate the reliable from the shoddy. Ms. Dyson assumes that ''the glitz and artificial stimulation offered by the electronic world will ultimately cause people to value human company and attention more,'' rather than encourage them to spend more time in isolated and solipsistic on-line worlds. She similarly insists that the Net will give employees ''more control over their own lives,'' even though she acknowledges that some employers will read their workers' e-mail and peruse (true or untrue) allegations about them on the Net. ''Any sensible employer,'' she cavalierly observes, ''will measure the proportion of favorable versus unfavorable remarks, and can probably distinguish malice from truth.'' How can people sift out truth from opinion on the Net, facts from misinformation? What should be done about genuinely dangerous information (bomb-making instructions, say, or maps of security installations) that may be found in cyberspace? How can users protect their own privacy? How can they avoid being deceived and cheated by on-line con men, hiding behind a cloak of anonymity or an assumed name? Obviously there are no simple answers to such questions, but Ms. Dyson's ''design rules for living'' on the Net turn out to be woefully inadequate: ''use your own judgment,'' ''contribute to the communities you love or build your own,'' ''assert your own rights and respect those of others,'' ''don't get into silly fights,'' ''be generous,'' and ''always make new mistakes.'' Similar words of wisdom, of course, have been used repeatedly in the real, nonvirtual world by all sorts of self-help gurus and spiritual cheerleaders, and they haven't exactly resulted in a utopian paradise. What makes Ms. Dyson think that they can help us ''do a better job with the Net than we have done so far in the physical world''? BOOKS OF THE TIMES |
968597_0 | Science in the Rough: Bears, Winter Dark and Bitter Winds | ONE blast on the Des Groseilliers' powerful horn announces meal time and brings scientists in from the surrounding ice camp for a tasty French Canadian meal. But five short blasts warn that a polar bear has been sighted from the icebreaker's bridge. Bears are among the complications of conducting a multinational scientific expedition called Sheba, or Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean. The yearlong series of measurements is directed from the Des Groseilliers, an icebreaker frozen into a drifting floe in the Arctic Ocean. Polar bears, which have been known to attack and eat animals as large as beluga whales, are a potential menace, although they are rare. Only one bear wandered onto this floe in Sheba's first two weeks of operation in October, and it moved off without causing mischief. When winter closes in, however, bears will face starvation, and they have been known to regard people as food. Each scientific party working more than a few dozen yards from the ship is required to carry a rifle. ''Sometimes you can chase them away with a toot on the ship's horn or one of the plastic bear whistles we carry,'' said Dr. Donald Perovich, Sheba's chief scientist, as he checked on activity in the ice camp from the ship's bridge. ''At times, you can chase them off with a snow tractor. People have tried throwing flares at them, but some bears are as curious as kittens -- they play with the flares, batting them around until they get bored.'' As she turned her back to the wind and tried to rub some circulation back into her nearly frozen fingers, Catherine A. Russell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said: ''None of us ever wants to shoot a bear. We just hope they leave us alone. It's really cold up on this meteorology tower, where we have to tighten fittings with our bare hands. When you're very cold, you can't react to trouble very fast.'' Bears are not the only animals the scientists must worry about.As Jacqueline Richter-Menge of the Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory wired empty fruit juice cans over the tops of sensors embedded in the ice, she explained that Arctic foxes were expected in the area. ''They get hungry and go for the cables that carry data to the recording system,'' she said. ''At some Arctic sites, I've seen them devour insulation and |
968535_4 | Spy Tools Let Civilians Eavesdrop On Earth | site but rather dozens of miles southeast of it, in the Kara Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean. Moreover, the scientists found that its seismic signature matched those of known earthquakes in the region. The pivotal evidence for that finding came from a seismometer operated by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology at the Kevo nature park in northern Finland. The device is one of more than 100 around the globe run by the Research Institutions group in concert with the United States Geological Survey. The network, meant primarily for geological research, is also increasingly used by civilian scientists for test-ban monitoring. ''This is a triumph,'' Dr. van der Vink of the seismology consortium said of the recent independent analysis. ''And it's just the tip of the iceberg'' in terms of the number of global seismometers that can address the threat of clandestine nuclear blasts, he said. Dr. van der Vink said the world now had more than 10,000 seismic stations, with hundreds of new ones added every year. In December, the public scrutiny of arms treaties and military forces is expected to begin to increase sharply as the first of a new generation of commercial spy satellites is carried into space. The launchings will end a monopoly that advanced nations held for nearly four decades in orbital espionage. Rivaling military spy craft in the sharpness of their photos, the new American-made satellites are meant to see objects on the ground as small as a yard or so in diameter, like jeeps, tanks and missiles. John R. Copple, head of Space Imaging Inc., based in Denver, one of the new breed of spy-satellite companies, said individuals ''will be able to form their own opinions'' for the first time about whether foreign governments were living up to global accords and standards. Dr. Christopher Simpson, an expert on space reconnaissance at American University in Washington, said photographs from lower-powered civilian satellites had already helped arms control. In one case, he said, a public-interest group found in 1993 that China was preparing to conduct a nuclear test. That allowed the group to publicize the detonation quickly when it occurred, which helped build political pressure for the adoption of the Comprehensive Test Ban. ''Public scrutiny has had a very positive effect because it holds governments accountable for what they do,'' Dr. Simpson said. ''And there's every reason to think it's going to accelerate.'' |
964255_1 | Thrill-Seekers' Natural Wonder | the dock, an elephant looms in the dusk, ripping branches from a tree at the river's edge. As several captains maneuver so their guests can get a closer look, there is a near-collision. The signs of a booming tourist industry in Victoria Falls are easy to see, from the crowd around the Wimpy's fast-food restaurant, which charges a minimum to sit at its tables, to the packed zebra-striped tour buses whizzing past the dusty four-block area some might refer to as downtown. The main draw, of course, is downstream from the sunset cruises: One of the world's biggest and most dramatic waterfalls crashing into the gorges between Zimbabwe and Zambia and kicking up a mist that rises 1,000 feet into the air and can be seen from miles away. It is a spectacular sight and remains relatively unscathed, apart from the narrow concrete path built so tourists can meander through the miniature rain forest created by the mist. The only fence that keeps you from plummeting over the cliff is a thigh-high tangle of thorn-tree branches. In some places, not even that exists. An untended child can walk right over the edge. But lie down -- not on the flowers, please, like some people -- and peek over that edge, into the Boiling Pot below the falls. You will likely see swarms of orange life jackets and blue helmets far below -- tourists clambering onto rafts to ride the whitewater. Or roll over and look up, and any time after 7 A.M. you may see two helicopters criss-crossing the sky. It's $65 for a 15-minute ride. And what a ride. But when it dips sideways to afford a stomach-churning view straight down into the cauldron, the thwok-thwok of the rotors carries for miles. ''You can wake up and think you're in Vietnam,'' said Vanessa Weissenstein, a project manager for an interior design firm in Cape Town who spent three months last year in a hotel near the falls. A Victoria Falls vacation these days is a cross between visiting a nature preserve and an amusement park. You can jump off a 93-year-old bridge tied to a bungee cord. You can take a short, thrilling whitewater ride or make it a three-day expedition downstream. You can go ''river boarding''-- shooting the rapids on a surfboard. In addition to taking a helicopter ride, you can fly over the falls in a small |
964708_0 | NEWS SUMMARY | INTERNATIONAL 3-15 Two Orthodox Churches Fight for Place in Russia Russia is undergoing a religious war, pitting the Russian Orthodox Church, the dominant faith in Russia and an ally of the Yeltsin Government, against the small breakaway Free Orthodox Church, which describes itself as the true heir of Russia's religious legacy. At issue is control over churches, seminaries and schools. 1 Cuba Toes Communist Line Meeting for the first time in six years, Fidel Castro and the Communist hierarchy rejected China's model of economic liberalization and endorsed policies to maintain the status quo for as long as possible. 10 Slovakia Plan to Redraw Border Slovakia is viewed as Central Europe's outcast, and now its leader has begun to talk about rewriting its border with Hungary, to exchange hundreds of thousands of ethnic Slovak and Hungarian minorities. Hungary's Prime Minister said he reacted indignantly to the idea. 3 Chinese Bishop Is Missing China has reportedly detained a bishop, Su Zhimin, a leader of the underground Catholic movement. He has repeatedly defied Government efforts to control religious worship. 6 Rough Politics in Australia The Prime Minister has been forced to dismiss three Cabinet ministers, and a member of the opposition tried to commit suicide, all because of embarrassment over travel allowances given to Government officials. 12 75 Dead in Crash in Uruguay An Argentine airliner crashed and exploded in Uruguay, killing all 75 people aboard, the authorities said. The jet had changed course to try to avoid a fierce storm. 5 NATIONAL 16-36 Rate of Property Crimes Is at a 17-Year Low in U.S. With little public notice, property crime in the United States has fallen sharply since 1980, data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation show, with burglary rates down by almost half. That gives New York a lower burglary rate than London, and Los Angeles fewer burglaries than Sydney, Australia. 1 Crisis Over Release of Tapes The belated discovery of videotapes of President Clinton mingling with donors at White House coffees exposed vulnerabilities of the White House and Justice Department. For both, the videos created crises of confidence and credibility. 1 A Town May Ban Tobacco Winthrop, Mass., is considering a ban on the sale of all tobacco products. The proposal has turned the town of 18,000 people into a new front in the tobacco wars, with a proposal that both the American Cancer Society and Tobacco Institute officials said |
964330_1 | A Tropical Rain Forest Provides the Setting | waitress appeared out of the mist of hanging vines, flowers and Spanish moss. She shouted a warm greeting to us ''guys'' and apologized for being hoarse ''tonight and every night.'' She is one of an army of 400, many equipped with walkie-talkies and headsets, who effectively control the nightly crush of patrons that pour into Rainforest through a towering 3,500-gallon archway of tropical fish (aside from the fish and a parrot on duty in the lobby, all the authentic-looking wildlife is animated). Somewhere deep in this high-tech jungle there is a kitchen churning out a never-ending parade of casual American favorites with some Italian, Asian and Mexican twists. The names of the dishes (African wind, Rasta pasta, Rumble in the Jungle) sound far more exotic than they are. Most menu items fall into the pizza-burger-sandwich-salad-steak-pasta-chicken category. There are no bargains here. Very large appetizer portions that can be shared by four diners are probably the best buy. Among them is a do-it-yourself Amazon bruschetta ($6.99), about a dozen pieces of toasted Italian bread sprinkled with olive oil surrounding a bowl of spicy chopped Roma tomatoes, and Amazon flatbread ($7.99) or four-cheese pizza with spices. The crisp, thin-crusted medium-sized pizza is first class. The very respectable bruschetta would be better with more olive oil on the bread and more onions with the tomatoes. Tinier tomato cubes that are easier to spoon onto bread would help too. Jungle chowder ($4.50), presented with soggy pita, is a hearty tomato-based soup loaded with sausage and vegetables and crowned with bowtie pasta and airy shredded Parmesan cheese. But Mojo bones ($7.99), or four meaty ribs saturated with a zesty smoky barbecue sauce and served on a generous bed of crispy fried onions, was the most memorable starter. An entree called Congo Magambo ($12.99) is linguine in a pallid Alfredo sauce with peas added for color and tender butterflied shrimp mixed in for interest. Jamaica, Me Crazy ($14.99), a Rainforest specialty, sports two tasty, though tough, grilled (they need to be braised) pork chops over a spirited amalgam of Cajun red beans and rice. Edge of the Forest ($10.99) is no more than old-fashioned fried chicken with super-soft mashed potatoes and gravy. The excellent Plant Sandwich ($10.99), another specialty, is much like a portobello burger on a roll with zucchini, roasted red peppers, spinach and a bed of flavorful Caesar salad. The mushroom though, described as |
964233_3 | Malling the Amazon | rain forest cause.'' Time and again, O'Connor is struck by how differently the Amazon is seen from the inside and from the outside. In the northern city of Boa Vista, a wealthy frontier boss tells him that the Yanomami Indians welcome the gifts of food and knives brought by the gold miners; in the Yanomami villages, he finds the Indians deeply resentful of the gold miners, who are polluting their land and rivers and chasing away wildlife. In Brasilia, the choice may appear to be between integrating the Indians into Brazilian society or preserving them as ''noble savages''; in the rain forest O'Connor finds the Indians eager to hold on to their customs, yet forced to come to terms with ''civilization.'' The author's eye -- his camera -- keeps him close to the ground, but he knows he must serve as a bridge between the Amazon and very distant television viewers. At times, the gap seems too wide: he wants to recount a complex process, such as the emergence of authentic Indian spokesmen, but news editors want shots of bodies. At other times, as with the Indian Woodstock that took place after Mendes's death, the world's news media, environmentalists and human rights activists show almost too much interest: ''I step off the stage and into a crowd of photographers. They are firing off shots at a dozen Kayapo warriors standing like stoics with war clubs and bows and arrows. The Indians pose compliantly in the direction of the photographers, who are eager to manipulate the Kayapo into the expected, sanctioned image of the native warrior.'' No less grotesque scenes occur at the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples paralleling the 1992 Earth Summit: ''For every indigenous leader here, there seem to be at least two or three photographers colliding, cursing, tripping and shoving, all of them trying to get the best angle. Given the current climate of interest in tropical forests, images of indigenous people are hot-ticket items.'' Once the Earth Summit was over, outside interest in the Amazon evaporated. But O'Connor kept returning and found the story ever more complicated. A new Government expelled most gold miners from the Yanomami reserve, but by then malaria was endemic. And some Kayapo, Sting's main allies in saving the rain forest, were themselves trafficking illegally in mahogany. During O'Connor's last trip to the Amazon, one incident became a metaphor for his whole experience. |
964286_0 | Special Education Is Not A Scandal | Special education is a scandal and Brent Staples points to why. When the ''whole language'' craze jettisoned the drill-and practice component that 40 percent of American children need to learn reading,'' the growing ranks of poor readers created a huge pool of learning-disabled ''customers'' that has become increasingly expensive to service. The edu-cational juggernaut now proposes ''mainstreaming'' more severely disabled children to cut costs. Can't we just bring back phonics, and quickly? Owen Bowman Westhampton, Mass. |
964747_0 | NEWS SUMMARY | INTERNATIONAL 3-15 Two Orthodox Churches Fight for Place in Russia Russia is undergoing a religious war, pitting the Russian Orthodox Church, the dominant faith in Russia and an ally of the Yeltsin Government, against the small breakaway Free Orthodox Church, which describes itself as the true heir of Russia's religious legacy. At issue is control over churches, seminaries and schools. 1 Cuba Toes Communist Line Meeting for the first time in six years, Fidel Castro and the Communist hierarchy rejected China's model of economic liberalization and endorsed policies to maintain the status quo for as long as possible. 10 Slovakia Plan to Redraw Border Slovakia is viewed as Central Europe's outcast, and now its leader has begun to talk about rewriting its border with Hungary, to exchange hundreds of thousands of ethnic Slovak and Hungarian minorities. Hungary's Prime Minister said he reacted indignantly to the idea. 3 Chinese Bishop Is Missing China has reportedly detained a bishop, Su Zhimin, a leader of the underground Catholic movement. He has repeatedly defied Government efforts to control religious worship. 6 Rough Politics in Australia The Prime Minister has been forced to dismiss three Cabinet ministers, and a member of the opposition tried to commit suicide, all because of embarrassment over travel allowances given to Government officials. 12 75 Dead in Crash in Uruguay An Argentine airliner crashed and exploded in Uruguay, killing all 75 people aboard, the authorities said. The jet had changed course to try to avoid a fierce storm. 5 NATIONAL 16-36 Rate of Property Crimes Is at a 17-Year Low in U.S. With little public notice, property crime in the United States has fallen sharply since 1980, data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation show, with burglary rates down by almost half. That gives New York a lower burglary rate than London, and Los Angeles fewer burglaries than Sydney, Australia. 1 Crisis Over Release of Tapes The belated discovery of videotapes of President Clinton mingling with donors at White House coffees exposed vulnerabilities of the White House and Justice Department. For both, the videos created crises of confidence and credibility. 1 A Town May Ban Tobacco Winthrop, Mass., is considering a ban on the sale of all tobacco products. The proposal has turned the town of 18,000 people into a new front in the tobacco wars, with a proposal that both the American Cancer Society and Tobacco Institute officials said |
964334_5 | A Look at Perils The Internet Poses to Children | and businesses that say they have training and software to enable parents to protect their children, and even themselves, from the worst of the Internet. The group, which uses a double ''r'' because a computer search using an ''i'' accessed a pornographic site, offers low-cost classes. Ms. Berke said one easily learned method let parents view sites that their children had visited. Browsers, the programs that access and read Web pages, kept the records of sites accessed, she said. ''We will teach you, even if you don't know a thing about the Internet,'' said Dolly Nielsen of Valley Stream, a member of Webgrrls and the owner of a public relations company. Ms. Nielsen said that Internet users could learn how to access so-called remailers, a technique used to hide the sources of messages and that could help them prevent being inundated by junk e-mail. Such spam mail involves mass postings to offer products, and, in some cases, pornography. Ms. Ellison of Home PC, published by CMP Media, said her spam mail regularly had offers of pornographic material. ''I find it terribly offensive,'' she said. ''There will be '800' numbers for hot talk and offers to visit such and such a site for nude photos. The people who send this out have no idea who I am or how old I am. I'm just an e-mail address.'' Ms. Ellison, who posed as a 14-year-old in connection with an appearance on ''Oprah,'' said she had heard alarming accounts from children in a testing laboratory that her magazine had organized, recalling: ''All of the kids said they had some experiences on line that were questionable. In the vast majority of cases it was that they received e-mail with links to pornographic sites.'' Software manufacturers on Long Island say they are paying increasing attention to such problems. Two weeks ago Eshare Technologies of Commack held a seminar, ''Stomping Out Cyber-Smut,'' on ''safety, security and wholesomeness on the Internet.'' Bascom Global Internet Services of Farmingdale offers schools a list of Internet sites that educators have approved. The list deletes pornographic and similar sites, but lets officials override the exclusions. The company president, Peter Cirasole, said Bascom was developing services to make it easier to block material without installing filters. Such programs, Mr. Cirasole added, could be eventually offered by Internet service providers. Software that blocks objectionable material is already available. Some service providers, including America |
964678_1 | France's Bishops Apologize | myth was felled as France's Roman Catholic bishops gathered in the Paris suburb of Drancy -- once an internment camp from which 76,000 Jews were deported east to their deaths -- and made a full and anguished apology to the Jewish people for the church's silence during French collaboration with the Nazis. The Declaration of Repentance asked forgiveness of the Jewish people for the church's silence. ''The vast majority of Church officials . . . stuck to an attitude of conformism, caution and abstention,'' the declaration said, in part because of ''constantly repeated anti-Jewish stereotypes.'' The declaration's plain truths are all the more remarkable because both France and the Vatican have resisted acknowledging their history during the Holocaust. For years, French leaders maintained the fiction established by Charles de Gaulle that the Vichy Government was the creation of the Germans and a small group of French extremists, while the French people actively or passively supported the Resistance. President Francois Mitterrand, who revealed right before his death that he had been a minor Vichy bureaucrat before he became a Resistance fighter, always insisted that France bore no fault for Vichy's sins. It was left to his Gaullist successor, Jacques Chirac, to say in 1995 that France held heavy responsibility for the deportation of Jews. Last week in Bordeaux, a trial opened that may encourage more exploration of the French role in Vichy. Maurice Papon, accused of ordering the deportation of 1,560 Jews, is the highest-ranking French Vichy official to be tried for crimes against humanity, and only the second since the war. After the war, his career flourished, and he was France's Budget Minister in 1981, when his past was discovered. Relations between the church and Jews have improved greatly since 1965, when the Second Vatican Council condemned anti-Semitism and announced that the Jews had not killed Christ. Pope John Paul II, who was a teen-ager in Nazi-occupied Poland, has worked hard to build ties to Jews. Yet he has not yet apologized for the behavior of the church during the war. Pope Pius XII kept silent when he was given credible reports of the genocide and, after the war, helped Nazi war criminals escape justice. The Vatican has been studying the possibility of an apology for some years now. It is time to follow the French bishops, who have honored the truth, and in so doing have honored the church. |
965967_1 | NEWS SUMMARY | Review Algerian Killings The French Government announced that it would open secret archives relating to the killing of dozens of Algerians in Paris in October 1961 after Maurice Papon, then the police chief in Paris, denied that police were responsible for the bodies fished from the Seine and city canals. Mr. Papon is on trial in Bordeaux, accused of organizing the deportation of 1,690 Jews to German concentration camps during the war. A5 New Prime Minister for Poland A former anti-Communist activist, Jerzy Buzek, was named Poland's new Prime Minister. Mr. Buzek, 57, will lead a coalition of two parties, the union-based Solidarity Election Action and the market-oriented Freedom Union, which combined to defeat the former Communists in elections last month. His desire for Poland to enter the European Union has elicited opposition from protectionist force in Solidarity. Poland also ushered in a new Constitution that dilutes the president's powers. A4 Mexican Police Embarrassment Mexico City's police chief disbanded an elite motorcycle unit after 12 members were arrested on charges related to the deaths of three youths detained last month. The chief reassigned 135 officers from the ''Jaguar'' unit to traffic duties; they used to patrol the streets in groups of six, wearing bullet-proof vests and toting machine guns. (Reuters) Singapore Mops Up Oil Spill Crews in Singapore struggled to contain the damage from the spill of 7 million gallons of oil off the coast. Two ships collided on Wednesday, eight miles south of Singapore. (AP) NATIONAL A8-11, 16 States Move to Regulate Uses of Genetic Testing Concerned that the Federal Government is acting too slowly to protect the confidentiality of genetic information, states are passing their own laws to regulate the use of genetic test results and to prevent discrimination by insurers and employers. Insurers contend that the laws will force them to raise premiums, while drug companies say the restrictions will make it harder to conduct research. At least 26 states have adopted such laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Typically, the measures prohibit insurance companies and health plans from requiring genetic tests or using the results to deny coverage or increase premiums. A1 Racial Change in Minneapolis Minneapolis has long boasted a tradition of generous social programs and enlightened views on American race relations even though only a tiny percentage of blacks actually lived in Minnesota. But the migration of blacks and other minorities |
965960_0 | At Syracuse, Ivory Tower Gets Wired for Cable | To the Editor: Congratulations to Syracuse University and its S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communication on establishing the Center for the Study of Popular Television (Arts pages, Oct. 15). Critics of the center must never have studied history. When philosophers were the only teachers -- before knowledge was specialized -- they followed their own interests and spun off now recognized fields of study: geometry, zoology, literary criticism, theology and calculus. History, law and medicine also came from philosophers pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Where would society be today if philosophers were forced by their peers to stick only to the primal forces of earth, wind, fire and water instead of expanding and evolving? Television helped create the global village, economy and culture. Why not study it? LEO J. MCKENZIE Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Oct. 15, 1997 The writer is chairman of the department of communication at Marist College. |
966661_0 | Amazon Rain Forest Is Global Responsibility; Fast-Track Destruction | To the Editor: Your Oct. 15 editorial on the fate of the Amazon rain forest doesn't expose the paradox of the situation. President Clinton is touring South America to promote expansion of international trade and investment, but rules guiding those activities make it impossible for countries to manage their resources sustainably. Protections for forests in the three North American Free Trade Agreement countries -- Canada, Mexico and the United States -- have been rolled back by measures designed to boost competitiveness. Expanding Nafta to the Amazon will insure destruction of the planet's most important reservoir of biological diversity. Moreover, President Clinton's proposed fast-track rules prohibit our trade negotiators from getting what even pitiful protections for labor and the environment they got under Nafta. Cattle ranching, which has encouraged destruction of the rain forest, will skyrocket as the United States grants new market access for Brazilian beef. Small farmers will be further displaced onto marginal lands, burning their way into native forests. Under globalization's pressure to open up access to natural resources, constitutional protections for indigenous reserves are being dismantled and Brazil's 39 national forests are being privatized. Perhaps most troubling is President Clinton's comment to Brazilian leaders that they ''share our basic values'' -- expanded trade, democracy and environmental protection. Evidence shows that economic globalization undermines democracy and the environment. VICTOR MENOTTI San Francisco, Oct. 15, 1997 |
966555_0 | Many users of commercial on-line services are getting a steady diet of 'spam.' | Make Money Fast By Sending Unsolicited Commercial Advertisements on the Internet! Explore Your Sexual Fantasies, Wearing Only a Credit Card! Learn How YOU Can Make $$$ Running Pyramid Schemes Via E-Mail! Such is the tenor -- or nearly so -- of millions of unsolicited, commercial E-mail messages sent each day to the electronic mailboxes of Internet and on-line service subscribers. Computer users, especially those on popular services like America Online, complain that junk E-mail has overtaken their systems. Internet service providers confirm that the problem is getting worse, with the volume of unsolicited commercial E-mail, especially the indiscriminate, automated bulk mailings known on the Internet as ''spam,'' growing at an exponential rate. ''At the time the Federal Trade Commission held its workshop on unsolicited commercial E-mail in June, I was receiving three or so unwanted messages a day,'' said Deirdre Mulligan, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public interest group in Washington. ''Now, I'm getting 15 to 20 a day, and I'm not even on AOL.'' George Vradenburg, vice president and general counsel at America Online, said that on some days, as much as 30 percent of the eight million to nine million E-mail messages arriving at America Online from the Internet were spam. Last Friday, the company filed suit against Prime Data Systems of Bowling Green, Ky., which it said not only spams but also sells software tools that permit others to send millions of unsolicited messages a day. Aside from annoying many people, the real problems with spam, some Internet experts say, involve the traffic jams and computer crashes it can cause. The problem has grown so acute that even some of the most vociferous opponents of Government regulation of the Internet are now hoping for legislative relief. Four bills intended to ban or regulate junk E-mail have been introduced in Congress in the last six months. Among the states, more than a dozen bills, including one in the New York Senate, have been offered. And the Federal Trade Commission and has commissioned a study of possible solutions. Some Internet service providers have begun to refuse to relay messages originating from certain computers known to be heavy extruders of spam. But the tactic threatens to alter the very nature of the Internet, which grew into a powerful communications medium on the fundamental premise of computers on the network freely handling and forwarding one another's |
966660_0 | Amazon Rain Forest Is Global Responsibility; What City Can Do | To the Editor: Your Oct. 15 and Sept. 27 editorials have done much to publicize the ongoing destruction of the world's tropical rain forests. New York City uses rain forest timber in its boardwalks, park benches and other structures. I have introduced legislation that would prevent New York City from purchasing rain forest timber unless it is certified to have been harvested in a sustainable manner. New York City has always been a global leader. On this issue we should act locally. A. GIFFORD MILLER Council Member, 5th Dist., Manhattan New York, Oct. 16, 1997 |
966659_0 | Amazon Rain Forest Is Global Responsibility | To the Editor: ''A Rain Forest Imperiled'' (editorial, Oct. 15) speaks of national responsibility. Yet many of the forces you mention operating in Brazil have an international component. Demand for agricultural products in the West encourages the conversion of Brazil's forests. Development and logging are financed with international money. Two weeks ago the United Nations held the latest meeting on sustainable forest management. Yet the governments attending appeared to have lost any commitment to achieving results. The governments are talking of the need for policies to promote increased private investment and to expand trade in forest products by reducing tariffs. GARY P. BURNISKE Exec. Dir., Rainforest Fdn. Intl. New York, Oct. 16, 1997 |
966596_3 | Cuba's Unwanted Refugees: Squatters in Havana's Teeming Shantytowns | here, but also are subject to immediate deportation and hefty fines if they are found to be living in the capital without authorization. At the same time, new restrictions have been placed on the ability of those legally residing in apartments or houses here to supplement their income by renting out rooms to the newcomers. ''These new laws have been murder on us,'' said Angel, a solderer from Santiago who arrived in Havana three years ago. ''To rent something decent would cost me 400 pesos a month, which is twice what most of us make, and now we have to worry that the police can pick us up on the streets at any time and send us away if our papers aren't in order.'' Diplomats here said the measures seem aimed primarily at restoring control over what is viewed as an unchecked, and therefore dangerous, trend in a highly regimented society. But Esteban Lazo Hernandez, the Communist Party's first secretary in Havana, said they were necessary to preserve public order and the gains of the Cuban Revolution. ''Everyone wants to come to the capital, and so we confront a serious migratory problem, that of illegality,'' he said at a news conference this month. ''That merely worsens the social situation of those already living here.'' Mr. Lazo also complained that the migration was ''negating the efforts of the revolution'' in the countryside. The Government for years spent a lot of money improving housing and schools in rural areas, he said, often at the expense of the capital, which has seen much of its housing stock deteriorate. But the migrants say that living conditions in Havana are better than in the rural areas they come from. In addition, they argue, jobs in the capital are more plentiful and less onerous. ''Cutting sugar cane, which is really exhausting work, I earned just 118 pesos a month,'' said Jorge. ''Here, I work for the sewer authority, which isn't as hard a job, and I make 240 pesos a month. That's not enough either, but it's better than anything I could find back east.'' Anther migrant, a woman named Niurka, pointed out that quotas for rationed foodstuffs like rice, sugar and beans are slightly higher in Havana than elsewhere. ''Many products that are distributed here from time to time on the ration card are not available at all there, such as seafood and eggs,'' she |
961740_0 | Colina Journal; Latin America's Disabled: Unsafely Hidden Away | At a morgue in this suburb of Santiago, 20 bodies lay unclaimed today, a poignant illustration of how this society treats the mentally and physically handicapped. They were among the 30 children and adults who died when fire engulfed Los Ceibos home for the mentally retarded. By late today relatives of only 10 of those killed had come forward to claim the bodies. In Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, people often react to the disabled with a sense of shame, distance and helplessness, leading many families to abandon them in institutions operated by well-meaning but overburdened private foundations and church groups. Governments provide little money for such programs. ''They deposit these poor, helpless children in institutions as they would a check at a bank,'' said Sergio Prenafeta Jenkin, executive secretary of the National Fund for the Disabled, a Government agency. ''The only problem is that many never come back to see them, and they remain in these facilities for the rest of their lives.'' Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition on Monday shortly after midnight when an overheating electric lamp set off a raging fire that quickly engulfed a building housing the most severely disabled residents of Los Ceibos. Many were heavily medicated or in wheelchairs and could not escape. The fire left three other residents injured. Some relatives of the victims at the home, operated by a nonprofit group called the Limited Child Assistance Foundation, said the eight attendants on duty the night of the fire had not been enough to oversee the 140 residents. While many industrialized countries discourage warehousing the disabled in institutions and have passed laws to help them integrate into society, less developed nations like Chile still consider the mentally handicapped an aberration or embarrassment who should remain hidden from society. Disasters involving the disabled have not been unique to Chile. Argentina has been debating the quality of its health care system for the mentally impaired since a suspicious fire in a mental hospital killed 79 people in 1985 and 30 patients died from malnutrition in a Government-run women's psychiatric hospital in 1990. In the United States, the disabled have never been more visible, taking part in everything from work to organized sports. In Chile and other Latin American countries, they are rarely seen in public. When they do appear, people often point, giggle or treat them as if they should have |
961670_0 | FOOTLIGHTS | NEWS Heartache Greece was buzzing yesterday with reaction to a much-anticipated memoir by Dimitra Liani, the widow of former Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, a towering figure in his country's politics for more than two decades. Some 6,000 copies of the 400-page book, ''10 Years and 54 Days,'' were snapped up within hours after stores opened, and Livanis, the publisher, rushed to restock shelves. But Athens newspapers panned the memoir, with the liberal daily Ethnos saying in a banner headline on page 1 that Ms. Liani had reduced a ''great leader to a soap opera star.'' Ms. Liani, now 42, was an Olympic Airlines flight attendant when she met the married Mr. Papandreou on a flight. Their affair shocked the nation. He died last year at 77. History Revised Oliver Stone has apologized to the Syracuse Police Department again. The filmmaker, in Syracuse to publicize his novel ''A Child's Night Dream,'' said the police were wrongfully depicted in his 1989 film, ''Born on the Fourth of July,'' as brutalizing Syracuse University students during a 1970 anti-Vietnam War protest. Shortly after its release, Mr. Stone sent a letter to city officials, saying the police ''did not, in fact, hit any students over the head.'' Thomas Sardino, then Police Chief, had threatened to take legal action against Universal Studios, which distributed the film. Shock of Recognition A film about a serial killer who preys on young women will not play in some theaters in a part of central Virginia where three girls were abducted and slain. Investigators believe the murders to be the work of a serial killer. RC Theaters, based in Reisterstown, Md., says it will not show ''Kiss the Girls'' in its Fredericksburg-area theaters after complaints from a resident that the movie strikes too close to home. In the film, based on a novel by James Patterson, Morgan Freeman stars as a Washington police detective whose niece has disappeared from college. When he arrives in Durham, N.C., to investigate, he learns that the police already are investigating the deaths of seven other young women and are searching for two more. ''Kiss the Girls'' is scheduled for national release on Friday, although it has had previews for several weeks. Of Man and Myth Hercules may be tough, but in the 20th century, he's only human. Kevin Sorbo, 38, star of the television series ''Hercules: The Legendary Journeys,'' has been forced by an |
963054_2 | Computers Let Japan's Drivers Play in Traffic | for car navigators. Golf programs provide tips on the game and guide a driver to the course of his choice. A program called ''Places where Girls Choose to Feel Romantic'' offers information about and directions to dating spots and hotels. Some disks offer quiz games. But the newest effort is in transmitting information to the car navigators for display on the screen. The Vehicle Information and Communication System, or VICS, the first system of its kind in the world, transmits information on the latest traffic conditions to navigators by radio waves and light beacons. Congested roads show up on the screen colored in red. Navigators can then automatically plot a course to avoid the worst congestion. VICS, supported by Japan's Government and numerous companies, is available in the Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya regions and has about 250,000 users. The ability to receive VICS information adds about $500 to the cost of a navigator but there is no charge for the traffic information. Coming next are two-way systems, allowing users to request more customized information. Starting this fall, the Mercedes-Benz unit of Daimler-Benz is equipping all its S-class cars sold in Japan with a navigator that will use a cellular phone to automatically dial an information service every five minutes, retrieving not only the latest traffic updates for the area the driver wants, but also weather, fishing reports, airline flight information and schedules of events. The system will be able to estimate the driver's time of arrival based on the latest traffic congestion information. Similar systems will be introduced in Germany in 1998 and in the United States probably about 1999, said Hermann Gaus, senior vice president of Daimler-Benz. The Toyota Motor Corporation established a company in July that also aims to use cellular phones and car navigators to provide drivers with information on traffic, news, weather, gas stations, restaurants and parking. Honda Motor has just announced a navigator, available as an option on the Japanese version of its new Accord, that will allow drivers to tap into the Internet, a step toward transforming the car into an office on wheels. Toshiba, with 12 other companies, is looking at developing a satellite broadcasting service aimed at cars and other mobile users. Instead of the big dish-shaped antennas needed to receive existing satellite broadcasting services like DirecTV, the Toshiba system would be designed to be received by a pencil-shaped antenna only four |
963056_6 | France Amasses Bitter Evidence Five Decades After the Holocaust | when a German guard at the zonal boundary turned to light up a cigarette instead of checking their papers as they drove through. The Vichy police made French Jews wear the yellow star in the occupied zone, and they carried out deportation orders on 74,721 of the 330,000 Jews who were living in the country before the war. Nearly all of those deported died. It was not until two years ago that a French President, Jacques Chirac, could finally bring himself to acknowledge that when the Vichy police, at Nazi instigation, rounded up thousands of Jews in the Velodrome d'Hiver stadium in Paris on July 16 and 17, 1942, it was not just Vichy but France itself that had committed the unpardonable. Previous leaders, from de Gaulle to Francois Mitterrand, the first postwar Socialist President, had insisted that Vichy was not France. Among the foreign-born Jews swept into the Velodrome d'Hiver that July was Srul Gheldman, Berthe's husband, who went with her on the fatal transport to Auschwitz. ''I was born French and have lived in France all my life,'' their son, who worked for Air France as a steward before he retired, said in his second-floor walkup apartment in a western suburb of Versailles the other day. ''I feel as French as Mr. Tout-le-Monde. But I will never understand how French people could do what they did to my parents, even with the Germans breathing down their necks.'' Reluctance to ask that question, let alone answer it, may explain why it took so long to bring Mr. Papon to trial after Michel Slitinsky, the son of another deportee from Bordeaux, and the lawyers Serge and Arno Klarsfeld first published evidence against him. He was first indicted in 1983, and then again in 1984, but the investigation was annulled for technical reasons in 1987. A second investigation procedure led to an order early this year to go to trial. ''Papon was an executant,'' Serge Klarsfeld said in an interview, ''the French official responsible for Jewish questions in the Gironde, put in the position of being expected to help the Germans get the Jews. But he came from a rich family; he didn't need to stay in his job to survive. He could have resigned. He is a symbol of a French administrative system that was concerned mainly about its own professional survival. We say that resistance started with saying no.'' |
968388_2 | Mount Athos Monasteries Unveil Hidden Treasures; Byzantine Works Displayed for the First Time | are the classic, flattened figures, suspended on a gold background, yet vivid and direct and possessed almost with a magnetic force. It is this emphasis on the spiritual rather than the historical that most distinguishes ''Treasures of Mount Athos'' from the ''Glory of Byzantium'' show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York earlier this year. While that show focused on the apex of the Byzantine Empire between the 9th and the 13th centuries, it presented far fewer objects, gathered from 117 collections in 24 nations. The only items the Met obtained from Mount Athos were three illustrated books, a curator of the New York show said. Preparations for the Salonika exhibition were far from easy. Talks began more than 10 years ago and heated up when it became known that Salonika would be designated this year's cultural capital of Europe. ''The monks did not see the point,'' said Dimitra Gouryioti, one of the show's designers. ''They made it clear that the entire holy mountain is a treasure for them. They felt the objects could not talk outside their own surroundings.'' In the end, historians, theologians and even politicians persuaded the monks that showing their way of life and spirituality was valuable for the Orthodox faith. Moreover, the monks are responding to a renewed interest in Orthodoxy in Greece that is drawing visitors, seeking cultural roots or spiritual guidance, to monasteries all over the country. In its heyday, Mount Athos had up to 40,000 monks. By 1970, that number had dwindled to 1,145 aging men. Today, the monastic community appears to be reviving with an influx of young, university-educated people. Just in the last decade, 600 new candidates arrived at Athos, and today the community has some 2,000 members. The success of the show has impressed even the monks, who ''told us they were touched and honored,'' Mrs. Gouryioti said. The exhibition has already drawn some 350,000 visitors from across the Balkans and other countries with Orthodox Christians, far more people than the small, new museum can comfortably handle. Organizers are now lobbying the monks to allow the show, due to close on Dec. 31, to remain open till March 31. What differentiates ''Treasures of Mount Athos'' from other trophy shows of this decade is that, for all its scale, the exhibition conveys a sense of intimacy and even mysticism. The goal, as requested by the monks, was not |
968374_3 | Patents; An algae food rich in omega-3 fatty acids is fed to chickens so they pass it up the food chain. | So Mr. Barclay said his company had devised a way to provide the elements of sea water the algae need to thrive while eliminating its corrosive effects. Mr. Barclay recently presented a paper on research done by his company, Omega Tech of Boulder, at a conference on the fatty acids last month in Washington. Another company, Martek Biosciences of Columbia, Md., also participated in the conference and is already selling an omega-3 pill supplement for humans made from another type of algae. Omega Tech has licensed its patent to the Monsanto Company to develop products that could be directly consumed by humans. Monsanto said it was only looking into using the algae in vitamins and to fortify food or infant formula, which unlike human breast milk does not contain any of the omega-3 fatty acids. Mr. Barclay's most recent patent is 5,656,319. Preventing Cavities In Babies' Teeth Studies suggest that as many as 12 percent of infants suffer from tooth decay. ''I used to tell parents what I was taught in medical school, which is not to put the kid in the bed with a bottle,'' said Jeffrey S. Caso, a dentist in Merrick, N.Y. ''The formula has a lot of sugar in it and the sugar causes these rampant cavities in the front teeth.'' But then Dr. Caso had his own child four years ago. ''I found I was doing exactly what I told my patients not to do just to get though the night,'' he said. This inspired Dr. Caso to invent a hybrid bottle and pacifier. The small bottle is accordion-shaped and contains about an ounce of fluoridated water. At one end is a nipple and at the other a pacifier ring. As the child sucks, the water is secreted slowly and the bottle folds up into a pacifier. Dr. Caso said after they had finished eating, children prone to cavities could be given the bottle pacifier, which would clean their teeth while soothing them. Dr. Caso, who received patent 5,662,684, is looking to license the patent. Battery Lamps For Tombstones What if graveyards, instead of being dark and spooky, were lighted at night? Alexander J. Arcadia, of Douglassville, Pa., and Theresa P. North, of Burlington, N.J., have patented a gravestone illuminated by a battery-powered lamp. The inventors received patent 5,564,816. Patents are available by number for $3 from the Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C. 20231. |
968456_1 | Conundrum at Cornell: Pumpkin's Lofty Perch | has been abuzz with speculation about the skill, technique -- and, arguably, bravery -- needed to place it there. ''This is much better than a prank,'' said Gould Colman, who recently retired after 26 years as Cornell's archivist. ''This is first-rate stuff, the best that I've seen. What a clever accomplishment to get this pumpkin up there.'' Giving a sense of the risk involved, Linda Grace-Kobas, the director of the Cornell News Service, said the university would use a tall crane or erect scaffolding around the tower if it needed to service the roof. The student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, has been printing a daily pumpkin watch on its front page, and last week published theories from students, faculty and staff on how the pumpkin was placed on its lofty perch. Ellen Ingersoll, a librarian, suggested, ''One of the students got a helicopter from their father and borrowed it overnight.'' Ed White, 30, a graduate student from the Ithaca region who is studying English, suggested that Hunter Rawlings 3d, the university's president, who is 6 feet 7 inches tall, ''put it there to distract people from the real issues -- so that we look at the pumpkin there instead of the pumpkin heads on the board of trustees.'' And last weekend, at a meeting of the board, Mr. Rawlings joined the banter. ''It was me,'' the former college basketball player said. ''I stood on my tippy-toes.'' The historic bell tower, which houses the oldest continuously played set of chimes on an American college campus, can be seen for miles and has become a widely recognized symbol of Cornell. Its image is printed on university stationery. Ms. Grace-Kobas said university officials considered removing the pumpkin ''out of fear of that it would fall and become a lethal weapon,'' but they later decided to let nature take its course. ''We'll let the pumpkin ooze down the side of the tower, rather than risk someone's life or go to a great deal of expense just to retrieve a pumpkin,'' she said. So far, no one has come forward with any information about the identity of the prankster. Ms. Grace-Kobas said, however, that at least one of the tower's locks near the roof had been cut, and that the campus police were investigating. Still, Cornell officials did not seem too upset. ''We admire the ingenuity of whoever put it there,'' Ms. Grace-Kobas said. |
968462_0 | Air Couriers Face Changes In Regulations | The Transportation Department has announced a review of controls over baggage shipped via air courier services after an incident earlier this month in which pesticide shipped as passenger baggage leaked aboard a jetliner. The department announced the review on Friday, two days after Federal agents in Miami raided an American Airlines office in their investigation of the pesticide case. The department said that for the next few weeks it would ''perform intensive oversight inspections of accompanied commercial air courier shipments.'' In such shipments, couriers hired by freight companies travel on commercial airlines, checking a cargo as passenger baggage. The department will check that courier services are declaring and documenting all shipments and that shippers are ''properly packaging, marking, labeling and documenting all hazardous materials.'' On Oct. 1, a courier in Miami checked 10 bags of pesticide, rewrapped to conceal the warning labels, aboard an American Airlines flight to Ecuador. One bag broke open as it was being loaded into the cargo hold of the Boeing 757 and released toxic fumes. Another plane continued the flight. The president of the company that hired the courier was arrested several days after the incident. Federal prosecutors said the company, Executive Freight Consolidators, had included paperwork in Spanish that labeled the 10 bags as containing 50 pounds of sulfur each. On Wednesday, 60 agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Department confiscated computers and records at the airline's office in Miami. A spokesman for American, John Hotard, said the airline had been cooperating but had not been told what the subject of the investigation was. ''We do not know if it's directed toward us, or the people with whom we deal,'' Mr. Hotard said. A spokesman for the United States Attorney's office in Miami declined to comment on the raid. Companies like Executive Freight Consolidators are called ''indirect air carriers'' by the F.A.A., and like the carriers themselves, they are supposed to have security programs that the F.A.A. has approved. The agency's office of civil aviation security said soon after the incident that it would review whether existing rules were adequate. |
965231_2 | A Rain Forest Imperiled | The fires are increasing despite Brazil's efforts in the past few years to protect the forest. The Government ended its ruinous subsidies to the cattle ranchers, and now requires that settlers keep 80 percent of their land forested. Brazil has also set aside about 20 percent of the forest as parks, protected areas and indigenous reserves. But the ranchers keep on burning, and the laws are not enforced. Brazil's environmental protection agency has only about 80 enforcement officers in the whole of the Amazon. Worse, Brazil's courts have ruled that the agency does not have the authority to enforce the law, which means that it cannot even collect the fines it levies. A bill giving the agency authority to punish environmental criminals has passed the senate and is now before Brazil's lower house. It is a bill the Amazon obviously needs. Tough enforcement is especially important now. There could be a major drought this year or next, leading to widespread fires, if the climate-altering weather pattern known as El Nino strikes as expected. A graver danger may come from industrial interests. President Cardoso favors cutting roads and blasting waterways through large swaths of the forest. This could provide a new transportation network for big farmers who want to clear land to grow soybeans for export to Europe. New roads could also lead to increased logging. Already companies from Malaysia, China, Korea and other nations, many of which use clearcutting in Asia, are beginning to log part of the forest. As these companies pave roads deeper into the jungle, cattle ranchers may follow. The roads may make clearcutting economically viable and tempt Brazil to sell off the rain forest for hard currency. Although a muscular environmental agency is Brazil's most pressing need, it is not the only one. If Brazil goes ahead with the plan to improve Amazon transportation, it must simultaneously address environmental concerns and earmark more land for conservation. A worthy program to set aside indigenous areas, which both preserves the forests and protects Indian tribes, is only half-completed. Brazil must finish the job, which would protect 10 percent more of the Amazon. The country also needs to develop zoning laws for the forests and to adopt sustainable logging practices. More broadly, Brazil, like the United States and Asia's forested nations, must abandon the view that the rain forest is only a commodity to be exploited for private gain. |
965305_0 | Topics of The Times; Historic Handshake In Belfast | Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was right Monday to confer the legitimacy of a meeting and a handshake on Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, despite complaints from Ulster Protestant Unionist politicians. Though Mr. Adams and Sinn Fein have a history of condoning I.R.A. terrorism, they have met the reasonable conditions set by the British and Irish Governments and the American mediator, George Mitchell, for full participation in the Northern Ireland peace talks. The last time a British Prime Minister met with Sinn Fein leaders was in 1921, when all of Ireland was still ruled by London. Shortly after those meetings, two of the Irish leaders involved, Eamon De Valera and Michael Collins, bitterly fell out over Mr. Collins's acceptance of a compromise peace that split Ireland into a British-ruled North and an independent South. Civil war and Mr. Collins's assassination by an anti-partition sniper quickly followed. Partition, and the status of Ulster's large Roman Catholic minority, have remained explosive issues ever since. The renewed violence that began in 1969 has cost 3,200 lives so far, most of them victims of I.R.A. terror. Mr. Adams cannot escape his share of responsibility for those murders. But he is also responsible for persuading the I.R.A. to commit itself to the present cease-fire and for bringing Sinn Fein into peace talks premised on the principle of majority consent to any change in Northern Ireland's status. Thanks to Mr. Adams's persuasion, the responsible moderation of the Unionist leader, David Trimble, and most of all the energetic leadership of Prime Minister Blair, Northern Ireland has its most promising chance for peace since 1921. |
964152_2 | Iranians Warily Await Reforms They Voted For | died in 1989. But in exercising power, he faces competition from the religious establishment, whose dominant role in politics has been constitutionally guaranteed since the revolution. Mr. Khatami formally took power on Aug. 3. So far, as the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other powerful conservatives have begun to flex their formidable muscles, his tenure has been marked mostly by caution. ''All we can say now is that Khatami has complicated rather than clarified the balance of power in this country,'' a senior Western diplomat said. ''You already had several centers of power, and the election of Khatami has created a new center of power without replacing any of the old ones.'' For now, it is impossible to know how far even Mr. Khatami would like to carry his own vague quest for change. He resigned in protest from a previous Iranian Government, but he is an outsider only by Iranian standards. He has never questioned the basic premise of the system: that the supreme leader should not be chosen by the people, but anointed by a panel of clerics to be God's representative. He himself wears the black turban of a hojatolislam, the second-highest rank within the Shiite Muslim clergy. And as all political candidates in Iran must be, he was approved by the Council of Guardians, whose task is to protect Ayatollah Khomeini's legacy against the impious. Still, the election this year was the first time since the revolution that Iranians were given a real chance to choose as President anyone besides an obvious heir apparent. That so many voters, many of them young, chose Mr. Khatami over that heir apparent, Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri, suggested at least a broad discontent with Iran's current course. ''We have two different aspects beneath the politics of this country,'' said Gholam Hussein Karbaschi, an ally of Mr. Khatami who is the Mayor of Teheran, in the bluntest assessment offered by an Iranian political leader of the strains beneath the surface. ''One of them is a very advanced political Islam, which has to do with everyday life.'' The other school, he said, ''is stagnating in the old traditions. ''Even Imam Khomeini couldn't carry out the revolution with the same thoughts as before,'' said the Mayor, ''and now we can't either.'' Election Victory Came as an Upset Until Mr. Khatami's election, power in Islamic Iran passed more or less seamlessly from one |
964149_4 | THE FINE PRINT: Of Arms and Cruise Ships; In a Bill's Shipbuilding Provision, Some See a Floating Pork Barrel | appear hopeful the provision will pass. Analysts who follow American Classic's stock said its 70 percent rise since August was due in large part to Congressional passage of Senator Inouye's proposal. But Mr. McCain is not alone in criticizing the prospect of granting a lengthy monopoly to a company. Lawrence J. White, professor of economics at the New York University Stern School of Business and former chief economist in the antitrust division of the Justice Department, said Mr. Inouye's provision was symptomatic of the protectionist nature of the Jones Act, which he called outdated in a global and deregulated economy. ''This is a terribly inefficient way for a dynamic U.S. economy to be behaving in world markets,'' Mr. White said. Senator Inouye has said his provision will offer a preference, not a monopoly, to American Classic because the company will face competition from other forms of tourism in Hawaii, including cruises on foreign-built vessels that stop only once in Hawaii en route to a foreign port. Mr. Zell and his company have donated $3,500 to Mr. Inouye's campaign in recent years, and Federal records show Mr. Zell tends to give relatively small amounts to candidates of both parties. Although Mr. Inouye's provision does not name American Classic, it clearly states the company need not worry about a direct competitor for decades. The proposal states that a company operating cruises among the Hawaiian islands on the date of enactment will commit to buying two United States-built cruise ships. It adds that the first ship will be delivered before 2005, and the second before 2008. It also states that another company may not operate any cruise ship accommodating at least 275 passengers among or between the Hawaiian Islands for the life of the ships, which is at least 25 years. It further provides for a waiver from the Jones Act to allow the company to operate a foreign-built ship until 24 months after the second American-built ship is delivered. For that two-year period, American Classic could be operating as many as four ships in Hawaii. Ms. Brown of the American Shipbuilding Association said that four of its members would be most likely to bid for the contract to build the two ships: Avondale Industries in New Orleans; the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego; Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va., and the Ingalls Shipbuilding division of Litton Industries, based |
968856_0 | Routine Flight Information Is Sought for Study on Safety | The Federal Aviation Administration will soon propose a rule under which airlines that voluntarily provide detailed data on routine operations will be given immunity from prosecution for minor violations that data reveal, the Administrator of the agency, Jane Garvey, said today. Ms. Garvey said a second rule, which will soon follow, would seek to make the data immune to the Freedom of Information Act, and off-limits to people who sue airlines after plane crashes. The agency will pursue only the most serious violations it found in the new data, she said. ''We need a new safety model, one where Government can be both a partner and, when necessary, an enforcer,'' Ms. Garvey said in a speech to the Aero Club of Washington. ''Yes, we need compliance, but to make further breakthroughs in safety, to lower the accident rate, we must collaborate.'' But lawyers for crash victims object to such secrecy, and airlines are still wary of sharing information. For several years, the aviation agency has been trying to establish a way for American carriers to emulate the European practice of routine data analysis to prevent crashes. British Airways and S.A.S., for example, routinely download data from a recorder that saves flight data just like a ''black box'', but is more detailed and would not survive a crash. In newer planes, operated with the help of computers, the data can be extremely detailed, including not only basics like speed and altitude but also the precise location of the plane. But here, the data are not retrieved unless there is an accident. The F.A.A. said an analysis of dozens of flights might reveal, for example, that pilots at one location were prone to be at the wrong altitude. Rather than penalizing pilots, said Eliot Brenner, a spokesman, the agency's response would be to determine whether there was a problem with air traffic control procedures. |
968874_2 | Rescue Plan for Neglected South Side of Ellis Island | two-story building housing pharmaceutical laboratories, a pharmacist's apartment and a doctor's office had been chosen for the demonstration repair project because it was damaged in ways typical of the other buildings. The repairs should take two weeks, she said. Representative Nita M. Lowey, a Democrat from Queens on the House Appropriations Committee, tried unsuccessfully in June to get $1 million in emergency financing for repairs to Ellis Island. All that Congress has done so far, aides to Ms. Lowey said, is to direct the National Park Service to produce a short- and long-term plan for the south side of Ellis Island by the end of the year. In 1992, preservationists defeated a Park Service proposal to let a developer demolish 12 buildings and build a hotel and conference center. Others, however, have questioned the historical importance of the buildings on the south side. The Landmarks Conservancy has put together a team of nine private contractors who are contributing about $30,000 worth of materials and labor. Loews Hotels, a New York company that has contributed to the World Monuments Fund, a preservation group, requested that $10,000 of its donations be earmarked for the project, said Bonnie Burnham, president of the fund. The conservancy added $10,000 of its own, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation contributed $1,000. Raynor R. Rogers, an architect at Lehrer McGovern Bovis, the construction firm overseeing the project, said contractors would seal windows and doors, patch holes in the roof, install new copper flashing, gutters and leaders, lay plastic matting to prevent weeds from growing, repoint the brick masonry and salvage interior fixtures. ''Our hope,'' Ms. Breen said, ''is that through continued stabilization, the south side of the island will be opened again, and the public will be able to go over there to experience this part of the story. It's the sad side of Ellis Island, but Americans should be very proud of the public health programs that began there. Important history occurred there.'' Correction: November 14, 1997, Friday An article on Oct. 29 about a campaign by preservation groups to restore part of Ellis Island misstated some of the amounts raised by two groups. Loews Hotels requested that $20,000 of the money it has contributed to the World Monuments Fund, not $10,000, be earmarked for the project. And the Landmarks Conservancy raised about $20,000 worth of materials and labor, not $30,000, from nine private contractors. |
968866_1 | Panel on Aviation Disasters Calls for Emergency Data | say they will issue a dissent from the recommendation on emergency contacts. In a test in May and June of this year, several airlines tried asking passengers for that information but encountered problems, said James L. Casey, the vice president and deputy general counsel of the Air Transport Association, the trade association of the big airlines. Mr. Casey said: ''You ended up getting into a dialogue with a passenger, who said: 'Why are you asking me this? What's it going to be used for? Is there a problem with the flight?' '' The report will say that in the hectic period after a crash, having the information would speed notification. The airlines suggested recording only a contact number, and not a name, but the report says that ''awkward situations could result that could make notification difficult and time-consuming.'' Airlines would be required to ask for the information, but passengers would not have to provide it to board the plane. The recommendation could be made binding on the airlines by the Transportation Department. The study group also called for the airlines to release information even before they are sure who was on a plane. Most airlines will not tell relatives whether an individual had a reservation until the airline is certain that the person boarded. The airlines argued that they did not want to present any ''unverified'' information that might turn out to be wrong. Some of the report's 61 recommendations deal with aspects of crashes that have become bitter points for relatives. It calls for airlines to go to greater pains to return victims' personal effects to their families. The report also says that family members have accused airlines of asking them ''questions regarding the habits and life style of the deceased, ostensibly for purposes of identifying the remains,'' when the real reason was to prepare for a court case in which the passengers' life expectancy is at issue. ''Questions relating to smoking, drinking, drug use or sexual habits'' should be made inadmissible in such trials, the study group said. The report said reporters should respect the privacy of families after a crash. It noted that a relative of a passenger on T.W.A. Flight 800 said a reporter tried to pass herself off as a family member at the accident site. A woman who was hospitalized after another crash said a photographer sneaked in to try to take her picture. |
968852_3 | What to Make of Wave That Started Over There; U.S. Businesses Can Shrug Off Asian Tumult | amounted to just $30 billion in the first eight months of this year, less collectively than exports to Canada, Japan or the European Community individually. And some of the nation's largest consumer products companies say the turmoil in the Asian markets will have little effect on their businesses. The companies, including Procter & Gamble, Gillette and Colgate-Palmolive, say Asia represents less than 10 percent of their sales, which minimizes their vulnerability to wild market swings and declines in consumer demands that might follow currency devaluations. To Colgate, for example, Southeast Asia, including Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, represents just ''5 percent of our sales, and the populations of those countries represent a small portion of all the countries we serve,'' said Robert A. Murray, a Colgate spokesman. A number of companies questioned said they had also taken actions in the currency markets to hedge against the risk of wide fluctuations. Moreover, the $8 trillion United States economy is so substantial and diversified that weakness in any region of the world is not enough to divert it significantly from its path. ''Slow growth in Japan since 1991 has hardly put the brakes on Wall Street or the American economy,'' Mr. Fishlow said. If the potential for collateral damage from a recession in Southeast Asia has been exaggerated, the potential for indirect gains has been all but ignored. One reason American business has enjoyed seven fat years is that growth in much of the world has been tepid. For while slow growth abroad dulls America's export performance, it also prevents the sorts of production bottlenecks that lead to inflation -- and recession. World commodity prices, measured in dollars, are virtually unchanged from 1990 levels. In the last year, crude oil prices have actually fallen by 20 percent, rubber prices by 32 percent and timber prices by 27 percent. Moreover, with both Japan and Europe running in slow motion, America's huge appetite for manufactured goods has been easily satisfied by foreign producers. And with growing excess production capacity in Southeast Asia as well, more signs point to deflation than to inflation. By the same token, economic trauma in Asia reduces the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates anytime soon. With Hong Kong's once rock-solid currency under pressure, Latin America deeply worried about contagion and stock markets around the world still on edge, the Fed will be in no mood to |
967258_1 | I.B.M. Gives More to Put Technology In Schools | research capabilities to the task of reinventing public education, Mr. Gerstner said. Over the last year, Bell South, the local telephone company for most of the Southeast, has donated $25 million worth of Internet hookups, World Wide Web access and E-mail service to 6,300 schools, said Pat Willis, president of the Bell South Foundation. To allow teachers to assess the effectiveness of the programs, the company has also provided a third of the teachers with a year's service at their homes. The first round of I.B.M. grants, awarded in 1995, provided 10 districts with the technical assistance to help solve what they identified as their biggest challenges. The Philadelphia schools worked with I.B.M. to create a voice-recognition computer that can correct children as they read. And the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina established Internet links between housing projects and classrooms, letting parents browse their children's work. In the second round of grants being announced today, I.B.M. is giving the districts and education departments the opportunity to tailor the same technological innovations to their needs. ''The business community, in the past, has tended to give money to schools to support the status quo: adopt a school, pay for a school lab, send along some computers,'' Mr. Gerstner said in an interview yesterday. ''What we are doing with these grants is working with whole districts to create systemic change.'' The Houston public school system intends to use its $850,000 grant to implement the Philadelphia reading program. But Houston will turn it into a diagnostic tool to evaluate students' abilities in reading and adapt it for Spanish-speaking students. Susan Scalfani, chief of staff for educational services in the Houston Public Schools, said the district had been searching across the country to find computers that do those things but had been unsuccessful. New York City plans to use its grant to create digital portfolios of student work -- with software originally developed by I.B.M. and the Vermont Department of Education -- to measure progress on standards being drafted for the early grades. A spokeswoman, Karen Crowe, said that 2 of the city's 32 community school districts would eventually be selected for a trial. Around New York State, the Department of Education is planning to emulate the experiment begun in Charlotte, but with a twist. Instead of enabling teachers to communicate by E-mail and over the Internet with parents, the state will arrange for teachers |
967248_3 | The French Memory and the War | and gained a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Similar arguments over contemporary judgments of the past have surfaced in the courtroom in Bordeaux, where one question rises repeatedly: Whether a jury made up largely of people born after the war can judge the decisions a man, like Mr. Papon, made under the extreme pressure of German occupation. Mr. Sequin insisted, ''The Republic never ceased to exist, and France has nothing to be ashamed of during the period from 1940 to 1945.'' His statement was a direct contradiction of Mr. Chirac, who said in 1995 that ''France committed the irreparable'' by rounding up Jews for deportation in 1942. It seems clear that Mr. Seguin, whose father was killed in 1944 during the Allied push to the Rhine, has not forgiven Mr. Chirac for placing the blame squarely on ''France,'' for if Vichy was all of France, what did his father die for? Others, including the Interior Minister, Jean-Paul Chevenement, a Socialist, have also criticized the President recently for his statement -- suggesting how the Papon trial is putting political nerves on edge. ''The President of the Republic can be wrong,'' Mr. Chevenement said on Sunday. ''One cannot accept the idea that Vichy was France.'' The trial has compounded the problems of the Gaullist movement, the center-right political force that has long held a central place in post-war politics. Gaullism was already in trouble before the trial began. Its patriotic thunder had been stolen by the rightist National Front and its authority undermined by the errors of a Gaullist President, Mr. Chirac, whose decision to call early parliamentary elections last June led to a surprise socialist victory. But the trial has deepened these difficulties. The National Front took 15 percent of the vote in June, almost the same as the Gaullists. And Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front, poured scorn equally on the trial -- describing it as ''judicial coercion to impose a new historical truth'' -- and on a Gaullist party he sees as destined for extinction. Of de Gaulle, he remarked acidly that, ''It was easier to resist in London than in Paris.'' Officials said that relations between the Gaullist movement and the President remain tense because of the embarrassment of the June defeat, a humiliation ascribed to Mr. Chirac's political ineptitude. The divisions have only made the Gaullists more vulnerable, particularly to the National Front. |
967308_3 | Whitman Seen Gaining Favor Of Black Clergy | in the clergy were upset that Mr. Jackson was leaning toward endorsing Mrs. Whitman. ''There is a political sophistication running through our ranks that says we should not put all our eggs in one basket,'' Mr. McKinney said. ''But I feel we're obligated to stand for what is right and what is righteous.'' Mr. McKinney, according to Democratic Party officials, is organizing another event to rally support among ministers for Mr. McGreevey. The black vote is considered crucial if the race is close, as public opinion polls indicate may be the case. A strong turnout among black voters is essential if Mr. McGreevey is to score an upset, and he needs 85 percent of black voters who do vote to support him, political analysts say. Mrs. Whitman, on the other hand, knows that a weak turnout of black voters will bode well for her. In 1993, for example, only 8 percent of the 2.5 million people who went to the polls in New Jersey were black. Not only was the turnout among blacks weak that year but also Mrs. Whitman was able to attract 25 percent, or a total of 50,000 votes, from those blacks who did go to the polls. Mrs. Whitman beat the Democratic incumbent that year, Jim Florio, by just 26,000 votes. If the turnout among blacks is low again, or if Mrs. Whitman once again gets such a relatively large percentage of blacks to vote for her, it could make a difference in a close contest, according to Walter Fields, a Democratic political consultant. ''The Governor, right now, understands that she benefited from two things in 1993: a low turnout among blacks and a large percentage from those who did turn out,'' he said. As a result, besides the black ministers, Mrs. Whitman has spent significant political capital on big cities and the mayors who hold sway over these traditionally Democratic strongholds. In Newark, she opened a campaign headquarters, the first time in years that a statewide Republican candidate had done so. And shortly after Trenton's Democratic Mayor, Douglas H. Palmer, said he would stay neutral in the race for governor, Mrs. Whitman announced that the state would provide money to help build a hotel and convention complex for which Mr. Palmer had long lobbied her for help. But unlike elected officials, most black ministers are not as accustomed to being so heavily courted. Although campaigning |
961966_2 | Paris Journal; Gasping for Air, the City of Light Takes a Breather | buildings and monuments, and even private landlords are obliged by law to clean their facades every 20 years. But debates about clean air, separating one's garbage or using detergents without phosphates are widely seen as newfangled ideas that get in the way of normal, civilized routine. To be sure, compared with that of other large cities, the Paris air is more often acceptable than not. But if the western breezes die down or turn, car fumes are trapped in thermal inversions in winter or make for a soupy summer smog. Just a decade ago, Paris authorities thought things looked pretty much under control. The dirtiest industries had been forced to close or install filters. Power plants were equipped with scrubbers or replaced by nuclear reactors. Inspectors checked out sooty chimneys in homes. But as industries left the Paris region, offices entered and the city itself lured more and more commuters to come by car by building more and more underground parking space. Almost every boulevard and square has cars hidden underneath. As a result, in the past decade, car traffic has more than doubled, with some three million cars a day entering and leaving this city of two million inhabitants. Behind the exhaust pipes of these cars lies another French story, that of the influence of the national car industry. Eager to protect its interests and to save costs, the industry succeeded in delaying the installation of catalytic converters, although new cars now include them. Manufacturers have also fitted a large proportion of cars with diesel engines, which consume less fuel but produce far more soot. To keep French cars more competitive, the manufacturers pressed successive governments to keep diesel fuel cheap. In neighboring countries, on the other hand, pollution taxes on diesel are high. ''We tried to tax diesel, but the pressures against it were very strong,'' said Corinne Lepage, the previous Environment Minister. Even as the peaks of smog became more frequent in the 1990's, and even as doctors complained of a rise in illnesses, the Paris authorities denied there was a problem. But three years ago, the Green Party forced the issue into the open by leaking studies showing the rising health problems linked to traffic pollution. It also embarrassed the authorities by taking its own measurements and announcing that France was violating European norms. Since then, Paris and its suburbs have installed a network of detectors |
963522_2 | Business Travel; A special cell phone lets users far away tap into data from their own PC's and the Internet. | Called Golden Circle, the program has three levels of participation, with the top two levels requiring 10 and 25 annual stays, respectively. All participants stay on designated floors and have special check-in and checkout procedures. The amenities include continental breakfasts; fresh fruit; newspapers; free stays by spouses, and credits in frequent-flier programs, which vary according to level of participation. Second-tier members receive other benefits, including 6 P.M. check-out; guaranteed room availability for reservations made 72 hours in advance, and refreshments upon arrival, like milk and cookies, beer or chocolate. Top-tier members are also eligible for 8 A.M. check-in; a free suite upgrade, if available, and wine or champagne. Robert Hutchinson, Shangri-La's senior vice president of marketing, said the company had delayed starting a loyalty program until it had upgraded its reservations system so that it could track guests' personal preferences. Guests at Shangri-La through the end of this year will receive a membership application on arrival. Open enrollment via a direct-mail campaign will begin in January. Airline Update For a few weeks, participants in T.W.A.'s frequent-flier program will receive two miles for each dollar spent using an American Express card to buy full-fare coach, business or first-class tickets on the airline. In effect from next Wednesday through Nov. 15, the promotion coincides with T.W.A.'s entry into the American Express Membership Rewards loyalty program. U S Airways now permits users of Priority Travel Works, its personal on-line reservation service, to redeem frequent-flier miles on line for travel in the continental United States. Air New Zealand has introduced in-flight amenity kits for passengers in the business and first-class sectons. The kits provide several aromatherapy products, including five gels, an eye compress and a facial spray mist. United Airlines, part of the UAL Corporation, is now offering electronic ticketing on all of its nonstop flights between the United States and London. Tickets can be bought directly from the airline or from a United States-based travel agency. Check-in, security and customs procedures are the same as for passengers with paper tickets. Holders of electronic tickets must check in with their passport and ticket receipt and with the credit card used to purchase the ticket, if it was booked by phone with the airline. United is also issuing duplicate receipts and itineraries, if desired, as well as a copy of the Warsaw Convention articles that govern international travel, information that normally appears on paper tickets. |
963518_1 | Surprising Voices for Irish Peace | men who have served time in prison. Their members and leaders are not part of Northern Ireland's white-collar class that has dominated Protestant politics. All these factors could have helped tie the two parties to violence, but instead have increased their commitment to peace. The parties began as armed groups formed to protect working-class Protestant neighborhoods from Irish Republican Army violence. This protection often took the form of bombings, shootings and beatings. David Ervine, the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, served five years in jail for possession of explosives. His colleague Billy Hutchinson served 15 years for driving the getaway car for a gang that murdered two Catholics. Prison gave them time to think. They became angry at Northern Ireland's traditional Protestant leadership, which many felt was using the working class as cannon fodder. ''They weren't leading us to better times, just holding onto what they had, thinking they didn't have to do anything,'' Mr. Ervine says. The need for peace was more palpable to residents of their neighborhoods, devastated by violence and loss of jobs, than to many traditional political leaders. When the I.R.A. called a cease-fire in 1994, the loyalist groups replied with one of their own. The man who announced it, Gusty Spence, founded the first Protestant paramilitary in 1966 but converted to peace while in prison. He offered ''abject and true remorse'' to all victims' loved ones -- an apology that has yet to be heard from the I.R.A. The loyalist groups have formally maintained their cease-fire to this day, although they are widely believed to be behind unclaimed killings of Catholics. The two parties now hold seats in the peace talks, which are going better than many dared hope. All sides are now present. The fear was that the refusal of violent groups to turn over their weapons would block all progress. But negotiators passed right over the issue, agreeing to aim for disarmament but to deal with it as the talks proceed. The two small loyalist groups are more influential than their membership rolls might indicate, in no small part because they hold most of the Protestant guns and can always threaten to resume hostilities. But their recent history and their many points of agreement with the Catholic nationalists, such as a desire for a bill of rights for Northern Ireland and due process for those arrested for terrorism, are reason for optimism. |
963427_1 | Eating Well; For Organic Food, a Moment of Eloquence | -- less than 1 percent -- but the business is thriving, having grown at least 20 percent each year in the last seven years, estimates agree. In 1996, annual sales were approximately $3.5 billion. Even Wall Street is taking notice. Katherine de Matteo, the executive director of the Organic Trade Association, said most major investment houses now have an analyst who concentrates on the natural and organic food industry. The dinner was given by the association, which represents all segments of the organic industry in the United States and Canada. Ten years ago it could not have afforded an event of such elegance. The upbeat mood of organic food's fans comes just as the Federal Government is about to publish the first uniform definition of what organic food is. Although there is some trepidation about what the standards will permit, it did not dampen the harvest dinner celebration. The champagne and hors d'oeuvres -- pot stickers and sushi -- were abundant as farmers, chefs, food manufacturers and journalists mixed before dinner. With the exception of the champagne, which was made with both conventionally and organically grown grapes, all the ingredients in the dinner, down to the sugar and the flour, were organic. The meal began with an ambrosial goat cheese and potato soup, the cheese coming from Brier Run Farm in Birch River, W.Va. Stan Frankenthaler, the executive chef and owner of Salamander in Boston, streaked the soup with roasted corn puree and bits of sun-dried tomatoes, adding notes of sweetness and acidity. The sound of spoons scraping the bottoms of bowls could be heard throughout the room. A 1996 Muscadet Sur Lie from Domaine de l'Ecu in the Loire Valley of France hit just the right note with the soup, crisp and light. The salad, a creation of Peter Hoffman, the chef and an owner of Savoy in New York, was a delightful combination of portobello mushrooms and romano beans on a bed of red lentils dressed with a puree of roasted peppers, basil and capers. The accompanying Headlands chardonnay from the Napa Valley was appropriately earthy. Nora Pouillon, owner of the restaurant, a Washington favorite since 1979, provided the luscious heirloom tomato salad with an unusually flavorful dressing of balsamic vinegar and pumpkin-seed oil. Even though there is no Federal definition of organic beef, that's what the perfectly tender, perfectly cooked tenderloin from Walnut Acres in Penns Creek, |
969107_4 | Study Discounts DDT Role in Breast Cancer | skeptical of the hypothesis from the beginning. They noted that DDT and PCB's are very weak estrogens present in minuscule amounts in the body. Studies on animals led to contradictory results: in some the compounds were found to cause breast cancer, in others they protected against it. Moreover, plants have so many naturally occurring estrogens and anti-estrogens that they might overwhelm any conceivable effects of environmental chemicals. For example, Dr. Safe said, the amount of biologically active plant estrogens in a single glass of red wine is 1,000 times greater than that of all the environmental chemicals that a person gets from pesticides in a day's food. ''And that's just in glass of wine, never mind beans, carrots, and all the other vegetables,'' he said. Dr. Hunter said that perhaps it was time to question the assumption that much breast cancer is caused by unknown environmental agents. A recent study, for example, found that the high rate of breast cancer in the San Francisco Bay area can be completely attributed to known risk factors like a woman's age when she starts to menstruate, has a first child and when she begins menopause. On the other hand, Dr. Hunter said, his new results by no means exonerated all environmental chemicals. Dr. Zahm agreed, saying, ''Even if we suspect one chemical and the evidence doesn't bear it out, that doesn't negate the entire argument.'' In fact, said Dr. Wolff, who did the chemical analyses for Dr. Hunter's study, it does not even negate the DDT and PCB argument. Dr. Wolff said it was premature to abandon the DDT and PCB hypothesis. ''It may be important in some groups of women and it may be not only how high the levels are but the time of life in which they occur. Maybe it's even different for different kinds of breast cancer, like premenopausal and postmenopausal.'' Julia Brody, the executive director of the Silent Spring Institute in Newton, Mass., a group studying links between women's health and the environment, said the new study was ''definitely not the last chapter.'' After all, Ms. Brody said, ''this is a study of two chemicals out of 80,000.'' Dr. Safe said those who believed in the hypothesis would always want ''another study, another study.'' ''For advocates, it's never-ending,'' he said. ''But for other people, there may be times when we want to spend our money on other things.'' |
962537_2 | One Hundred Years of Adolescence | is likely to be sexually active before the age at which her great-great-grandmother began to menstruate. Yet since there has been no equivalent acceleration in psychological development, these sexually mature youngsters are still little girls, children who are given scant help in coping with such a confusing mismatch. Brumberg demonstrates that society's protections of young women have withered away, leaving girls prey to manipulation by pop culture, advertising and peers. She divides ''The Body Project'' into four central chapters offering social histories of menstruation, complexion, breasts, thighs and virginity. This is the kind of glorious inside dope that your history teacher never told you. In the chapter titled ''Perfect Skin,'' for example, Brumberg explains how the proliferation of mirrors, the rise of dermatology and the middle-class dreams of immigrants inspired our current morbid fixation on girls' acne. It is no surprise that Brumberg discusses body size, which she wrote about in her previous book, ''Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa.'' But her chapter on ''Body Projects'' also includes a riveting narrative on the brassiere, from French hankies to Wonderbras. (She leaves out the sports bra, which I'd wager did as much for women's athletics as Title IX.) As the century progressed, consumer culture began to drive insecurities and vice versa. A reader marvels at how easily lingerie makers -- egged on by doctors! -- persuaded parents to sexualize their little girls with training bras (training for what, exactly?). Or that Procter & Gamble recently spent $11 million on market research to convince teen-agers that using Oil of Olay would ward off wrinkles while there was still time. There is a mystifying omission in ''The Body Project.'' Brumberg ignores the effect of legal access to abortion, which clearly has been one of the most profound and controversial influences on adolescent girls' bodies in the 20th century. Another slight: there is no discussion of the evolving view of girls' athletics. Brumberg concludes with a call for women to participate actively in girls' comings of age. Instead of trotting off to the mall for tampons, a new lipstick and a bikini wax, she envisions groups of girls engaged in frank, multigenerational discussions about sexuality, intimacy, pleasure and exploitation. The plan is shy on particulars. But perhaps, as a beginning, women and girls should read this fine book together. Peggy Orenstein is the author of ''Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap.'' |
962773_3 | Those Shiny New M.B.A.'s Get Signing Bonuses, Too | expanded. Investment banking and consulting firms have offered bonuses during the last decade, but the incentives are also popping up in the automotive, consumer goods and chemical industries, said Mr. Adams of the Wharton School. When Mr. Kanarios graduated from Duke, he had offers with signing bonuses from Procter & Gamble, Chrysler and General Motors. Mr. Kanarios accepted a job with G.M. as a senior financial analyst. Like Mr. Dunkelberg, he said, he saw many other graduates getting signing bonuses and expected it would be part of a package. ''There's an expectation,'' he said. ''If someone didn't offer one it could be somewhat of an insult, but it's not a deal-breaker. It does help you when you're coming out of school.'' Placement officers said many students used the bonuses to pay off debt from M.B.A. programs that have usually cost them more than $20,000 a year. Money may also give a psychological charge to the employee. ''They are even more psyched up coming into the job,'' Mr. Dunkelberg said of the recipients. ''Money creates loyalty. It's extra incentive.'' Interestingly, to students like Mr. Kanarios, the bonus or even the salary is often not the most important issue in job hunting. ''You are thinking more of where you're going to be a few years down the road,'' Mr. Kanarios said. ''You don't want to go somewhere that you'll get pigeonholed.'' In his survey of 600 students last year, Mr. Nagy found that less than half accepted the job offer with the highest compensation. When Mr. Nagy and Mr. Adams have asked students to rate what is most important, money does not come in near the top. Part of the reason, they say, is that most of the offers are fairly comparable financially, but most workers are now more concerned about the responsibilities associated with a job, its location, career opportunities, the corporate culture and life-style issues. ''We meet with hundreds of students every year and it's rare we talk about weighing a decision based on salary,'' Mr. Adams said. Ms. Carlson said people in information technology and software development were often most interested in ''who is using the latest technologies.'' ''People will take a lateral move to get new adventures,'' she said. ''These are people who are up all night because they are working on something at home. It's a passion, and more money does not fix the problem.'' EARNING IT |
962678_0 | The Task of Finding Viable Alternatives To the Automobile | THE signs are as clear as a flashing neon light or a brick wall signaling the end of the road. The equation of the suburbs with the automobile is as out of date and self-defeating as a wobbly old tire on a new Mercedes. Westchester County is undergoing a painful separation, if not yet a divorce, from its relationship with the car and the cherished notion that solo transportation is an inalienable right. Call it maturity, or a growing awareness that to protect what one values, be it one's pocketbook or a particular grove of trees, one must make sacrifices. Although more cars than ever are on the roads, traveling alone by automobile is no longer politically correct. But if the parkway cowboy is an anachronism, made obsolete by clean-air laws and congestion, what's next? The county's planners, environmentalists and transportation officials are trying to find ways to entice people from their cars to public transportation or to join car pools to the office. While major changes have occurred in air and surface travel in Westchester in the last two decades, changing the face of the county in the process, the automobile is still paramount. Traffic has especially increased in northern Westchester, which has seen rapid development in recent years. From 1980 to 1990, an additional 27,000 Westchester residents drove to work, according to the State Department of Transportation. The number of people using public transportation also increased: 1975 to 1995, the county's bus line registered an additional 7 million rides, and the Metro-North Commuter Railroad added 18,000 passengers. Construction and repair projects in the region have caused frequent traffic tie-ups in recent years, while more chronic congestion has resulted in a new ailment: road rage. But while many endure gridlock in exasperation, others no longer regard highways as sacred cows. Maureen Morgan, a board member and past president of the Federated Conservationists of Westchester County, is among those working toward a more forward-looking transportation system for Westchester, one that makes driving just one of the options. ''What we have done in the past doesn't work anymore, but we have not yet established what the new phase will be,'' she said, listing possibilities like developing a light-rail system, adding shuttle routes and making automobile travel more expensive. Some of the highway issues facing Westchester as it approaches the 21st century include bottlenecks at the Tappan Zee Bridge, where truck traffic |
962990_1 | Singles | hagiographer's fiction; that the hermit life (provided one is truly called to it) can heal body, mind and spirit, dissolve selfish fixations and make one better able to serve others. A convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, France takes the eremitic tradition at face value. He refrains from hunting for subtexts, letting the hermits of history speak for themselves. Here is the Cynic philosopher Diogenes (''Socrates gone mad'' Plato calls him) meeting Alexander the Great. When Alexander asks what he can do for him, Diogenes answers, ''Get out of my sunlight.'' Here are Lao-tzu (if he ever existed) jettisoning Confucian propriety for a hobo yoga, and Ramakrishna, the Bengali holy man, emerging from a six-month trance bearing the message that we are all drenched in divinity. Here are Moses the black slave, Arsenius the Roman aristocrat and John Colobus the dwarf fleeing the decadence of late antiquity for the wild places of Egypt. Here is Charles de Foucauld, refashioning himself from a self-indulgent 19th-century aristocrat into a wiry St. Francis of the Sahara who gave and ultimately lost his life to the Tuaregs. And here is Thomas Merton, leading 20th-century champion of eremitism, torn by desires for solitude and sociability, silence and self-expression, monastic obedience and beatnik spontaneity. Reading them, one cannot escape the impression that the hermit sages possess skills of discernment unrivaled by anything psychotherapy has to offer. The soundest are unimpressed by ascetic exertion; as the desert fathers say, going without food and sleep is the easy part. The real trial is acquiring humility and offering hospitality to pilgrims clamoring for practical advice. Those who can endure isolation without going mad turn out to be ideal arbiters for a fractured world. Even the confirmed worldling, France shows, finds hermits irresistible. The Enlightenment, with its cult of reasonableness and sociability, failed to dampen the attraction Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky felt to their hermit saints. For the 18th-century English gentry, the ''ornamental hermit,'' complete with hourglass, Bible and skull, was a coveted garden accessory. France quotes a Lancashire gentleman advertising ''a reward of 50 a year for life to any man who would undertake to live seven years underground without seeing anything human; and to let his toe and finger nails grow with his hair and beard.'' Two literary hermits are featured: Thoreau, ornamental hermit of the Transcendentalists, and Robert Lax, minimalist poet and friend of Merton's, now living alone on Patmos. |
962575_1 | A Floating Playground | the subculture of the cruise boat itself. Cruising the Caribbean with kids -- and there were hundreds of children on our trip over the spring school vacation -- was at times noisy, chaotic, frustrating and full of wondrous charms. The scenes of island and shipboard life -- from the villagers in St. Lucia who paddled out in their rafts to sell coconut and conch to the snorkelers, and the women in Barbados who braided our faux dreadlocks, to the volcanic plume from Montserrat that dusted our ship with ash as we passed -- were doubly amazing when my wife, Frances, and I could see them reflected in the eyes of our children. And our kids liked the ordinary stuff of the boat just as much if not more. Elevators can be fun, for example, when you push the buttons then run for the stairs in a scrambling race to the next deck. So can staying up late to eat at the midnight buffet just because you can. And, besides the two pools, there was the hot tub, which, for mysterious reasons, often seemed filled with giggling preadolescent girls intent on splashing my sons with water. Purely by chance we had selected the perfect time to try this particular kind of vacation. The boys were old enough not to need supervision and, within the safe confines of the ship, could come and go pretty much as they pleased. But they were still young enough to want to be with us, too. There was plenty of room for all of us. The 624-foot ship, with 10 passenger decks, was immense -- and cruise officials announced during the trip that the ship would be lengthened further in 1998 through a surgical dry-dock procedure that would add another 130 feet. The rooms were small, but not claustrophobically so. Our cabin had space for a tiny couch and sitting area facing a lovely large window, which, at our price range at least, offered a view of the lifeboats and little else. Crucially, we made the extra financial stretch of getting two staterooms (though this option was considerably less than the cost of a suite). In theory it meant that according to the ship's roster, Frances and I were staying in separate cabins, since the rules require one adult per stateroom. What it really meant is that after a long day hiking and swimming and exploring |
965413_5 | From the Land of Private Freeways Comes Car Culture Shock | of these Macintosh-mobiles. Salvation, if that's what it is, is not just around a smart corner. ''Most of this stuff is 25 to 30 years away,'' said Christopher W. Cedergren, the managing director of Nextrend, a consulting firm to the auto industry and based in Thousand Oaks, northwest of Los Angeles. ''Plus, people seem to forget California is still broke. I find it humorous we're talking about smart highways, and we can't even afford to put some asphalt in the potholes.'' AT the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, the chairman of transportation design, Ron Hill, says his students aren't interested in what the middle-aged men of his generation -- an alarmingly apt description of the leaders of Detroit's Big Three -- would consider a good-looking car. ''They're interested in more quirky and individualistic cars, almost deconstructed or fragmented,'' he said. ''It's not a slick, smooth, sculptural look -- it's more fragmented, more hostile and aggressive.'' Though there is no consensus on what the future will look like, there seems to be a critical mass forming around smaller, stockier vehicles with lots of interior space. ''The container space is not going to shrink because human beings are not shrinking,'' Mr. Hill said. ''But as components become smaller, the shell may get smaller.'' The one part that no one has yet figured out how to reduce is the rechargeable colossus needed to get the current generation of electric cars out of their charging bays. Earlier this year, General Motors began leasing the first commercially available fleet of its battery-powered EV1 car model. The reaction so far has been underwhelming, with only about 245 of the 2,500 Citroen-like vehicles G.M. had hoped to lease now on the road. And there is very little conviction that anyone more famous than Alexandra Paul, a former ''Baywatch'' star, is likely to drive one soon. Until the car's range -- about 80 miles between charges -- improves drastically, the technology will be perceived as a Band-Aid. Yet this temporary fix is an attempt to meet strict, new clean air regulations that will take effect in 1999. The state is scrambling to find ways to reduce airborne pollutants by 100 tons a day, and it has taken aim at many of the old clunkers on the road with a program called Smog Check II. That has prompted a predictably moderate response in a state where driving |
965485_0 | Aghalee Journal; The Story of Bernadette: Ulster's Ultimate Victim? | Drive up and over the bowed stone bridge, pass by Ballycairn Road on the left and the Lock-Keeper's Inn on the right, and you are in a blink's bend in the lane called Aghalee. It has a store, a gas station, a pub and the unwanted distinction of being the last place where someone died in the sectarian violence that has cost more than 3,220 lives since 1969. In the early morning of July 15, a man presumed to be from a Protestant paramilitary group shot and killed Bernadette Martin, 18, a Roman Catholic, as she slept in the farmhouse of the family of Gordon Green, 19, her Protestant boyfriend. The day after her funeral was the day that the Irish Republican Army resumed a cease-fire that has so far halted the killing in Ulster. With peace talks now under way in the imposing Castle Buildings in Belfast, 20 miles away, this modest village stands a remote chance of becoming the place where the last person ever died in the 28-year-old ''Troubles.'' ''It would be a fitting tribute to Bernie,'' said Rodney McCafferty, personnel manager of the food processing factory in nearby Lurgan, where the teen-agers met and fell in love. ''There are innocent victims and innocent victims, but she was a totally, totally innocent victim.'' Bernadette was so detached from the violent politics of Northern Ireland that she once asked her father whether the I.R.A. were Catholics or Protestants. Avondale Foods, where Bernadette ladled spreads onto sandwich slices of bread and Gordon dried vegetables for prepared salads, was a ''mixed'' workplace, an oasis from the intolerance outside the plant gates that might have bred in them a misleading sense of security. There have been four sectarian killings in two years now in this outwardly pastoral area of cornfields, grazing cows, children on bicycles and country roads flecked with wind-tossed thistledown. Hadn't it occurred to Gordon and Bernadette that their Romeo and Juliet relationship might provoke the paramilitary thugs who are known to inhabit this deceptively peaceful region? ''It never crossed my mind,'' the sad-eyed young man said, sitting in the living room of the house where she was shot dead. He showed a visitor a picture of the two of them playfully kissing. Five miles away, in her house with its tidy entrance way garden of begonias and roses, Margaret Martin said she had been concerned for Gordon's safety |
965511_1 | Vichy on Trial | like members of Vichy's ''militia,'' a parapolice squad. In general, civil servants and businessmen, who had cooperated with the Germans on a day-to-day basis, were spared punishment, because they also claimed to have worked for the French Resistance. In reality, the Vichy Government helped the Nazis. In 1940, the Nazis wanted only to dump German Jews into unoccupied France. Yet the Vichy Government went further and registered its Jews, excluded them from jobs and forced many foreign Jews into camps. By 1942, when the Nazis began their extermination program, the French Jews were vulnerable. After the war, the Government decided to continue the myth that nearly all French citizens supported the Resistance, because it desperately needed the Vichy civil servants to help revive France's crippled Government and economy. Gen. Charles de Gaulle hesitated to hand such responsibilities over to Resistance heroes, many of whom were Communists and better with dynamite than with budgets. Attitudes began to change after the student demonstrations of 1968. The students, who were protesting the Vietnam War and the bourgeois establishment, also began to question their parents' role in the war. In 1970, ''The Sorrow and the Pity,'' a documentary by Marcel Ophuls, vividly portrayed a France more collaborationist than resistant. By then, Jewish survivors, who in 1945 had preferred not to call attention to themselves, decided to tell their stories. And new archival research proved that Vichy France was the only Western European country under Nazi occupation that enacted its own measures against Jews. But this evidence wasn't enough to persuade French leaders to bring Vichy officials to trial. In the 1980's, they quietly blocked cases against Vichy officials from proceeding. For example, President Francois Mitterrand delayed the prosecution of Rene Bousquet, the police chief most responsible for official French assistance to the Nazis. Mr. Mitterrand preferred to sidestep the issue, having himself (like so many others) served the Vichy regime before joining the Resistance. It took a new generation of French leaders to let the trials proceed. The changing of the guard took place with the election of Jacques Chirac as President in 1995. Soon after his inauguration, Mr. Chirac, who was only 12 years old in 1944, publicly recognized the state's responsibility in abetting the deportation of Jews. A majority of French people are finally ready for justice to be done. Robert O. Paxton is the author of ''Vichy France and the Jews.'' |
965489_1 | Director of Ban on Chemical Arms Warns Russia to Ratify Pact | along Ukraine, Iran, Pakistan, others. It would have an impact in the Middle East.'' If Russia is not part of the organization, he added, other critical countries might not join, a fear expressed during Senate debate on approval. The treaty, which the Senate approved in April, is stalled in the Russian Parliament, which has been preoccupied with domestic issues. Australia and several European governments have asked President Boris N. Yeltsin to urge immediate action on the treaty, which Russia signed with the support of the military. Only some questions remain about how Russia will pay for inspections, with some legislators demanding financial support from the United States. In Washington, officials have taken the position that once Russia ratifies the convention, the costs of putting it into effect can be settled fairly easily. But although American officials have been in constant touch with their Russian counterparts to press for ratification, the White House has not been willing to apply the President's personal influence on Mr. Yeltsin, said Dr. Amy Smithson, senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a research organization in Washington specializing in arms control. She said that with a cold-war mentality still prevalent in some circles in Russia, communications between the ''big boys'' might have a galvanizing effect. ''Chemical weapons are the most widely proliferated, easily accessible and widely used method of mass destruction,'' Dr. Smithson said in an interview today. ''These are the weapons terrorists most likely would get hold of. Why doesn't the Administration pay attention? It is extremely frustrating.'' Russia acknowledged in 1994 that it had 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons agents. The United States has the world's second-largest horde, at about 31,000 metric tons, but these are gradually being destroyed. Ninety-nine countries have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, including all five declared nuclear powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- and India, which admitted to a chemical arsenal it had long denied existed. Sixty-seven of them have not yet ratified it, including Iran, Israel and Vietnam, and a number of other Asian and African nations. If Russia does not ratify now, Mr. Bustani said, it will have little incentive to do so later, when the nations that have met all the treaty's conditions will dominate the group, leaving little room for Russian appointees. Beside losing credibility, Mr. Bustani said, the danger is that the treaty itself would be doomed. |
965501_2 | With Cool Energy, Ex-Vichy Official Defends His Past | promises to be a significant and singular history lesson for the French, and it was a day rich in insights into the character of this eminently successful bureaucrat. Mr. Papon is the first, and in all likelihood will be the last, ranking official of the Vichy government, which ruled France at the sufferance of its German occupiers, to be prosecuted for his part in the Holocaust. Over the next two months, the plaintiffs' lawyers say, they will expose in detail Mr. Papon's performance during the war as a high-ranking official dealing with the ''Jewish question'' in Bordeaux and the surrounding Gironde region. Their exposition, the lawyers say, will demonstrate the efficient complicity of Vichy bureaucrats in the ''Final Solution.'' Mr. Papon's signature is at the bottom of numerous wartime documents dealing with the deportation of Jews, carried out here in this conservative mercantile city for a longer period of time and with more efficiency than in most other French cities. Even Mr. Papon's defenders, among them some Resistance members, have reproached him for not resigning when the anti-Jewish measures began in earnest. But today Mr. Papon said coolly, in another context: ''It is not my custom to resign. Resigning is deserting. I have always done my duty.'' Today's questioning was focused mainly on Mr. Papon's remarkable ascent after the war, when the Government rewarded him with ever more responsible posts. He moved effortlessly from the Vichy government to the service of President Charles de Gaulle. In the 1950's, Mr. Papon was prefect in an Algeria riven by the independence struggle and the brutal methods used to suppress it. Later, he was the prefect of police in Paris when men under his command savagely repressed demonstrations against the war there. These matters have nothing to do with the charges against Mr. Papon. But the plaintiffs' lawyers put him on the spot over them nonetheless. Asked about torture during his watch in Algeria, Mr. Papon said that Algerians had called him the Mahdi, or the wise and just one. Questioned about the notorious repression of a demonstration in Paris in October 1961, when the bodies of dozens of Algerians were fished out of the Seine, Mr. Papon declared angrily: ''It is unimaginable, unimaginable to accuse the police of that. First of all, it was not their style, it was not their way of doing things.'' He said that the Algerians were killed |
900498_0 | Big Study Finds No Link In Abortion and Cancer | In a study that may put to rest a longstanding concern, Danish researchers who reviewed the fates of more than 1.5 million women found no overall increased risk of breast cancer among those who had had induced abortions. The Danish study, being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, is far larger, more comprehensive and based on more reliable data than any investigation conducted in the United States of a possible link between breast cancer and abortion, said experts who reviewed the data. The study showed that even women who had two or more abortions were no more likely than those who never had an abortion to develop breast cancer later, strongly suggesting that abortion has no biological effect on the risk of developing the disease. A debate on the issue has raged since 1980, when a theoretical concern was raised that interrupting a pregnancy could leave many cells in the breast vulnerable to cancer because the hormones of late pregnancy had not caused them to mature. Dozens of studies had produced inconsistent results, with some showing a small increase in the risk, some showing a slightly decreased risk and others showing no effect. Despite the conflicting evidence, about 10 states had considered legislation requiring that women seeking an abortion be informed that the procedure could increase the risk of developing breast cancer. Montana enacted such a law. In an editorial accompanying the report, Dr. Patricia Hartge of the National Cancer Institute wrote that the Danish study ''provides important new evidence to resolve a controversy that previous investigations have been unable to settle.'' By using data from mandatory registries of births, cancer cases and abortions maintained by the Danish Government, the researchers were able to eliminate a serious potential reporting bias inherent in nearly all previous studies of a possible link. Most earlier studies, some of which suggested that having an abortion raised a woman's risk of breast cancer by as much as 50 percent, relied on interviews with breast cancer patients and comparable groups of healthy women. These reports, called case-control studies, were subject to bias introduced by women's well-known unwillingness to admit to having had an abortion. Researchers had long suspected that cancer patients were more likely than healthy people to be forthcoming about potentially embarrassing factors that might have contributed to their illness. Then in 1991 a Swedish study confirmed that women with breast cancer |
903586_0 | Experts Take Up Divisive Issue: Mammograms for Women in 40's | Hundreds of people doctors along with advocates for women who have breast cancer -- crowded into a basement auditorium at the National Institutes of Health today to hear the opening arguments in a two-day meeting on one of the most divisive issues in women's health: Should women in their 40's have mammograms? The question is not whether mammograms are useful for anyone: all agree that breast X-rays can save the lives of women over the age of 50, when risk of the disease rises and detection of a cancerous tumor is easiest. At the same time, it is widely accepted that regular mammograms are not appropriate for most women under 40. But whether breast X-rays provide benefits to women between 40 and 50 is murkier. It has been excruciatingly difficult to prove any benefit among them, and some experts point to the risk of unnecessary biopsies and treatments resulting from false alarms in mammogram results. The matter has divided radiologists and breast cancer patients, who generally support mammograms for women in that age group, from public health specialists and some feminists, many of whom do not. It has split scientists into opposing camps. And it is fraught with emotion, because it bears so directly on the disease that women fear most. Now the National Cancer Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health, is trying to settle the issue in the most dispassionate way it knows. It is bringing in evidence on both sides and asking disinterested medical experts to sort it all out. The meeting is a ''consensus conference,'' a sort of science court. The 12-member jury is made up of doctors, scientists and women's health advocates. Their foreman is Dr. Leon Gordis of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. Their charge is to listen to 32 speakers, today and on Wednesday, and assess the evidence. Then, on Thursday morning, the group will issue a statement that answers these specific questions: *Do mammograms save women in their 40's from dying of breast cancer? *If so, how many of them can be saved? *What are the drawbacks of mammograms for women under 50? *Is there any reason to believe that women who are at high risk for breast cancer -- because of family history, for example -- would benefit from mammograms more than others? The cancer institute tried to weigh in on the mammogram question three |
905057_3 | Tax-Free Savings Plans Urged in Albany for College Tuition | said. ''They're escalating beyond the reach of many families.'' Mr. Bruno said he hoped that it would be possible to reach a compromise with Democrats who have offered similar measures and to pass the bill this year and make it effective on Jan. 1. ''I think the chances are very good,'' he added. Such tuition savings plans have been widely promoted as inexpensive ways to help many families, particularly in the middle class, shoulder the growing burden of college costs. With tuitions averaging more than $3,000 a year at public universities and more than $20,000 a year at some private colleges, higher education is often the second-largest expenditure a family makes, after buying a house. ''This is the wave of the future,'' said Brian Fitzgerald, staff director for the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance in Washington. For more than 20 years, tuitions for public and private colleges have risen faster than the rate of inflation, making college educations less affordable to many students. At the same time, state legislatures have cut financial aid to students and raised tuitions at public universities, which tends to hurt lower-income students the most. This month, Mr. Pataki proposed a $400 tuition increase at the State University and the City University, as well as cuts in state tuition aid for students who also receive Federal support from Pell grants. Many students have turned to loan programs to help pay for college. But concern is growing over the heavy debt that many students have taken on. And lower-income families are less likely to take out loans for college. Not everyone, however, sees the new-style aid programs as a good idea. Edward C. Sullivan, Democrat of Manhattan and chairman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee, expressed concern over the potential costs to the state. ''It's a potential ripoff,'' Mr. Sullivan said. ''No one knows what tuition is going to be in 18 years, and this is a commitment of money for future legislatures. Talk about passing the buck.'' More affluent people, he said, are in the best position to take advantage of tax-free savings plans. ''Is this really what we are going to do with taxpayer money, give Donald Trump a subsidy?'' Mr. Sullivan asked. Although the proposals would rely heavily on individual savings, the programs would cost the state money. Mr. Bruno estimated that by 2003, the two plans would cost $61 million a year. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.