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958479_3 | communal kitchen: three cooking stoves, three water pumps with solar panels and tin roofing, along with an outboard motor and three first-aid kits. Criticism has come from the nearby Sioni tribe and international environmental groups like the Rain Forest Action Network, which asserted that Occidental took advantage of the Secoya, whose language has no words for numbers, to overrun their land for ''trinkets and beads.'' The company, based in Bakersfield, Calif., has defended the deal, saying it addresses the Secoya demands directly, instead of patronizing the tribe. ''The perception that they're unsophisticated, don't know what they're doing, like children, couldn't be further from the truth,'' said Larry Meriage, a spokesman for Occidental. ''They have a very clear picture of what they want.'' He acknowledged that the costs to Occidental had so far been ''insignificant,'' but said the company would negotiate a second deal if it decided to begin pumping. But the Secoya are reacting to the losses behind them, not the ones that may lie ahead. Those on this side of the border say their plan to reconnect with the rest of their tribesmen is part of a larger effort to resuscitate their culture, which they undertook in 1987. In their schools, they fought to have Secoya teachers replace Ecuadorean ones, and the curriculum is now focused on teaching the tribe's Western Toucan language and history. The Secoya in Ecuador say they may well disappear -- not so much physically as culturally -- if they cannot connect with their Peruvian cousins. ''They still practice shamanism, wear the traditional tunics, and they're well painted, in the proper style of a Secoya,'' Alfredo Payaguaje said. Right now, seeing relatives on the Peruvian side of the border involves a rain forest version of circling the planet to get next door. Secoya here say they must rent a boat to go up the Aguarico River to the border with Colombia, and from there travel down the Putumayo and through a network of rivers in Peru. The trip takes three days. Fabian Valdiviezo, director of frontier development at the Ecuadorean Foreign Ministry, said the Secoya proposal was under study in Quito. Whatever decision Ecuador made, though, would only affect the Secoya on this side of the border. In the delicate atmosphere of Peruvian-Ecuadorean peace talks going on in Brasilia, the hopes of the Secoya are a minor point that has never reached the negotiating table. | San Pablo de Cantesiaya Journal; Across Jungle Iron Curtain, Cousins Yearn to Meet |
958890_0 | Two years ago, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund objected to a $700 million water diversion project planned for the Animas River here and proposed a $264 million alternative. This summer, Ute Indian leaders, the project's proponents, reluctantly bent to Washington's budget-cutting mood and announced a $257 million plan. Then the defense fund countered with a new proposal for a $115 million dam. ''Double-crossing'' was the adjective used by editorial writers for both of Denver's dailies to describe the way environmentalists moved the goal posts on what may be the West's last big water project. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Republican Senator from Colorado and the lone American Indian in Congress, joined the fray, saying: ''The enviros have never been interested in a compromise. They just simply want to stop development and growth. And the way you do that in the West is to stop water.'' The wrangling in Durango over what is now a medium-sized reservoir project highlights the death throes of a dam-building and water-diversion culture that in this century built 600 dams and reservoirs across the West. Cheap, subsidized water allowed the growth of great cities and the growth of cheap food to feed the new populations. Without piped water, Los Angeles might still be a provincial coastal town, and Las Vegas might be a gas station in the desert. But with the growth of environmental opposition to tinkering with the West's natural plumbing, the number of new dams slowed greatly in the 1970's and then finally stopped in the 1990's. ''Big subsidized water projects are on their way out,'' said Robert B. Wiygul, a lawyer for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, the new name for the Sierra Club's fund. Rejecting the ''double-crossing'' label of the Denver newspapers, he said, ''The idea that we should embrace the first compromise thrown out by the proponents is just outrageous.'' The West's water paralysis is most evident in this southwest Colorado town, just north of the Southern Ute Indian Reservation and the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation. In 1868, Kit Carson negotiated a deal with the Utes: they would give up claims to Colorado's western half in return for a permanent home in the new territory's far southwest corner. This dry, semi-desert reservation land was arguably the worst in Colorado for farming, but the 1868 treaty stipulated Government aid. Later, courts ruled that this assistance included water. With Indian water rights a | Battle of What May Be the West's Last Big Dam |
958908_0 | Defying Western objections that it was restricting religious freedom, Russia's Parliament today passed a bill that protects the Russian Orthodox Church from competition from other Christian denominations. Passed by an overwhelming vote of 358 to 6 in the legislature's dominant lower house, the bill was warmly received by President Boris N. Yeltsin's Government, which had rejected an earlier draft on the ground that it failed to protect religious minorities. But critics said the new law was little different from the previous version, and the action drew an immediate protest from the United States. While some details have been changed, this bill still gives special status to any religion recognized 15 years ago, when Russia was part of the Soviet Union. By that definition, the traditional Orthodox Church qualifies, as do Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. But Catholics, evangelical Christians and dissident Orthodox sects have a questionable status. The restrictions allow the established religions to own property, control radio and television stations and receive tax exemptions, while newer groups would be subject to time-consuming annual registration with the government and would be prevented from some activities, including running schools and distributing religious literature. Critics from Russia and abroad complained that Mr. Yeltsin had yielded to pressure from the Russian Orthodox establishment, which views the other Christian groups as newcomers threatening the Orthodox hierarchy's increasing influence in post-Communist Russia. ''There is no essential difference between the two bills,'' said Lawrence Uzzell, the Moscow representative of the Keston Institute, which monitors religious freedom in former Communist Europe. ''It grossly violates Russia's Constitution, which says that all religious associations are equal under the law.'' Evangelical Christians and Hare Krishnas demonstrated against the vote outside Parliament. Catholics, Pentecostals and Seventh-day Adventists also protested the bill in a letter to Mr. Yeltsin. In Washington, the State Department spokesman, James P. Rubin, assailed the bill as inconsistent with Russian promises to respect religious freedom. And Vice President Al Gore will press Russia to reject the bill during a trip to Moscow that begins on Sunday, American officials said. In terms of procedure, there is still a chance that the bill can be blocked. To take effect, it needs approval by the upper house of Parliament, a move that is considered to be largely a formality, and then would have to be signed into law by Mr. Yeltsin. But a decision by the President to repudiate the new bill | RUSSIANS PASS BILL SHARPLY FAVORING ORTHODOX CHURCH |
958947_1 | infant will not do,'' she wrote in a 1993 article for the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs. ''We need programs designed to provide a safety net for the parent with mental illness, the offspring at risk and the family under stress.'' Her program accepted referrals of pregnant women and parents with emotional and mental disturbances like postpartum depression, schizophrenia, severe anxiety and personality disorders and dual diagnosis with drug abuse. They would be welcomed together with their children, from birth through age 5, who were at risk of slow development, disturbances or disabilities. Initially financed as a pilot project in 1986 by the New York State Office of Mental Health, Dr. Munk's program drew referrals from private and public agencies in all five boroughs of New York City. She provided help for more than 1,000 poor and ethnically diverse mothers and their children. Nearly half the children were less than a year old. One child, Owen Green, came to Dr. Munk's attention through the city's Child Welfare Administration when he was 7 months old. His parents were paranoid schizophrenics who fought constantly, she wrote in one of her case studies. Placement in foster care was a real possibility for Owen, she said. But her team of clinical social workers arranged for Owen and his mother to stay with Owen's grandmother, preserving Owen's caretaking environment and family connection, she said. While Mr. Green was separated from the family, Owen, his mother and grandmother received continuing treatment. As a result, she said, Owen had a normal physical development, indicated a high intellectual potential and an endearing capacity to relate to others. Dr. Munk, who was born in Berlin in 1925, studied at the Hamburg University School of Medicine and at the University of Neurology and Psychiatry in Hamburg. She completed her residency in Child Psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital in 1959. She was a psychiatric consultant to the Brooklyn Juvenile Court, the Max Planck Institute in Munich and the New York Foundling Hospital and was a clinical associate professor and supervisor in child psychiatry at New York University Hospital. She served on the board of the Puerto Rican Family Institute for more than 30 years and on the New York Council on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for eight years. Dr. Munk is survived by two brothers, Dr. Peter Munk and Dr. Klaus Munk, and a sister, Dr. Rosemarie Hoffman, all of Berlin. | Barbara Munk, Child Psychiatrist, Dies at 72 |
954509_2 | test is likely to set off a race for new space weapons that will ultimately endanger the nation's own satellites. A1 Dispute Over Medieval Text For more than half a century, the whereabouts were unknown of a rare 12th-century compendium of medical knowledge that was once in the possession of the National Library of Medicine. But now that the manuscript has been found, a West Coast dealer and the august library are locked in a struggle over who owns it, a struggle whose origins apparently began with a cataloguer at the library. A10 A New Voice in the Drug Debate A group of 34 scientists, drug policy experts and public officials is moving to stake out a middle ground in the debate on drugs. Although they contend that illicit drugs should not be made legal, they also assert that the policies adopted to prevent their use have sometimes done more harm than good. A10 Marijuana Seizure in Idaho A joint force of Federal, state and local law-enforcement officials have confiscated about 76,000 marijuana plants in raids in a rugged part of Idaho better known for beef than illegal agriculture. About 44,000 of the plants were being grown on Federal land. Experts said the discovery illustrated a national trend in which growers were setting up increasingly sophisticated outdoor and indoor growing operations to supply millions of pounds of marijuana for American consumption. A11 NEW YORK/REGION B1-5 Concern for the Hearing Of Whales at Sea The din created by the engines of whale-watching boats and other powered vessels could be harmful to whales' hearing, and that, some researchers theorize, might prove fatal. ''A deaf whale is a dead whale,'' said a bioacoustic researcher, Peter M. Scheifele, who is planning a study of the situation with experts from several institutions. ''If you're in the ocean and you rely on hearing for navigation, and to avoid predators and to find your mate, I don't think nature's going to let you live too long deaf.'' B1 Ridin' and Ropin' in Brooklyn Brooklyn may seem an unlikely setting for either a county fair or a rodeo. But not to Philip M. Meissner, who organized Brooklyn's first county fair, or to Dr. George E. Blair, left, chairman of the Black World Championship Rodeo, who brought his troupe to the fair. B1 Reclaiming a Tribal History The Pequot Indians did not disappear in the 17th century when, ravaged | NEWS SUMMARY |
955425_0 | The rate of cancer of the brain and central nervous system for women living near hazardous waste sites in Bergen County was nearly double the state average over a 17-year period, according to a joint Federal and state study released yesterday. The study focused on 15,000 residents living in Maywood, Lodi and Rochelle Park, near sites that were contaminated by the former Maywood Chemical Works. Most other cancer rates were comparable with state figures, with the exception of lung cancer, which occurred less often among women than might have been expected, The Associated Press reported. The study recorded 17 cases of brain and central-nervous-system cancers for women from 1979 through 1995, compared with the state average of 9.2 for that group. New Jersey Daily Briefing | High Cancer Rates Reported |
955401_1 | made famous by Ernest Hemingway, said there were no injuries from the small bomb, which damaged furniture. The Cuban Foreign Ministry said that bomb attacks were part of a campaign of terrorism organized by Cuban exiles living in the United States, with the intention of damaging the Cuban economy. There were two bombings in July in Cuban tourist offices. A State Department spokesman here, James Foley, said the United States had no idea of who was behind the bombings, and that the Cuban Government ''has not responded to our repeated requests for substantive information or evidence to support that contention'' of American involvement. ''We reiterate our commitment to investigate if the Cuban Government provides substantive information or evidence, which they have not done to this date,'' Mr. Foley said. Another American official said that Washington had told Havana that the United States was opposed to terrorism everywhere, and would act to punish Americans responsible if evidence was provided that proved Havana's assertions. But the bombings ''are hard to fathom in such a tightly controlled society,'' the official said, remarking that ''it's odd that the Cubans haven't trotted anyone out'' as responsible. Given the level of police and Interior Ministry control, violent crime is low in Cuba. There were numerous theories about who was behind the bombings, the official said, including internal dissidents opposed to the Government, nationalist Cubans offended by the prostitution and glitz of the tourist trade and even the Cuban Government itself in an act of provocation to keep anti-American feeling and national solidarity at a high level. The Cuban Foreign Ministry blamed Miami-based devotees of the ex-dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, who was supported by the United States but was overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959. The bombings took place on the anniversary of a 1933 coup that first brought Mr. Batista to power, the Foreign Ministry noted, but American officials said the dates could be purely coincidental. Cuba's tourism industry has become its fastest-growing economic sector and has attracted foreign investment, overtaking sugar exports as the main source of hard-currency income. The bombs seemed aimed at damaging Cuba's efforts to promote tourism and show the island to be a safe place for foreigners. In Havana, the Interior Ministry said it was ''taking the necessary measures against these cowardly and repugnant acts,'' but provided no details. Pope John Paul II is due to visit Cuba in January. | Cubans Blame Exiles in U.S. for 4 Bombings in a Single Day |
960724_2 | of Israel said he would continue building in the Jewish enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza to accommodate natural population growth. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright had asked him to freeze such settlements until relations with Palestinians improved. A3 NATIONAL A7-10, A16 Senate Debates the Limits Of Campaign-Finance Laws The Senate opened debate on rewriting the country's campaign-finance laws, arguing about whether there was too much or too little money in the system now and about what kind of changes could be made without violating the First Amendment. A1 Hours before he was the big draw at a $600,000 fund-raising dinner for the Democratic Party, President Clinton castigated politicians who are not sincere about curbing the influence of money in politics. A8 Against the backdrop of mounting fund-raising scandals, the Democratic National Committee opened a two-day meeting in Washington deep in debt and searching for ways to get its message out -- but at a much lower cost than before. A9 Aides Link Carey to Scheme Aides to Ron Carey, president of the teamsters union, have told Federal prosecutors and a Federal election overseer that he had general knowledge of a fraudulent scheme in which union money was donated to several liberal groups that, in exchange, had their donors contribute to his campaign, officials involved in the investigation said. A1 Bill Would Aid Immigrants Illegal immigrants would get a three-week reprieve to file paperwork in their fight to stay in the United States under legislation the House plans to consider next week. Immigrants across the nation have been concerned about the expiration next Tuesday of a measure that has permitted illegal immigrants to file for legal status in the United States instead of at consulates abroad. A9 Schools Bilked of Millions School districts across Pennsylvania face the loss of more than $70 million that they had invested with a financial adviser who secretly ran up big trading losses, Federal regulators said. A16 Father Convicted in Murder A state jury in Decatur, Ga., convicted a man of felony murder in the death 26 years ago of his girlfriend's infant son, who had been left in his care. Prosecutors said that at the time, the man, Jan Barry Sandlin, blamed his girlfriend's two-year-old daughter, Tracy Rhame, for the baby's death. The case was reopened after Ms. Rhame, now 27, began looking into the circumstances of how her brother died. A7 | NEWS SUMMARY |
960685_1 | the fires coincide mainly with areas of commercial logging on Borneo and Sumatra. Indigenous farmers use the same environmentally sound farming methods they have for centuries, rotating between plots of family land. The problem is the logging companies, which often show up unannounced, cut the trees, burn the stumps and set up plantations of oil palms or eucalyptus and acacia trees for paper and pulp -- usually all without compensating the farmers. To compound the tragedy, the precious tropical hardwood is then turned into virtual garbage. Most of it is milled into plywood and particle board, largely used in Japanese construction sites as a disposable mold for concrete. About 10 percent of Indonesia's plywood comes to North America, where it is used in construction and cheap shelving. The export of logs is illegal in Indonesia, so they are milled first. The plywood trade is a cartel controlled by Mohamad (Bob) Hasan, a billionaire who is President Suharto's golf partner. Though the Government has vowed to prosecute the companies that set the fires, the record is not promising. Loggers can pay local forestry officials to look the other way, and powerful friends of the Suharto family have remarkably few legal problems. Indonesia is not alone. Deforestation is more pronounced on the Malaysian part of Borneo, and is widespread in Cambodia, Thailand and other countries. In Indonesia, however, the devastation of commercial logging is compounded by the Government's policy of subsidizing migration, which until 1986 was supported by the World Bank. Farmers from the crowded island of Java are encouraged to move to the forests of Borneo and Sumatra. Unfortunately, they bring their old techniques, which do not work outside Java's rich volcanic soil and are eating up the forest. Some good can come of these tragic fires if they persuade Southeast Asia and the nations that import their products to take forest protection seriously. The United States should begin by banning plywood made of tropical hardwood, or requiring country-of-origin labeling on wood products so consumers can refuse to buy them. Japan, often the buyer of products created by ruinous environmental practices, also needs to rethink its import policies. In the end, however, Southeast Asia's environmental practices will not greatly improve until corruption and authoritarianism diminish. There is too much money to be made by powerful people, and too little attention paid to those groups trying to bring sanity to reckless growth. | Asia's Forest Disaster |
960677_2 | traces its inspiration to July 14, 1833. On that date, when the Rev. John Keble preached a sermon at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, England, calling on the Church of England (and, by extension, the Episcopal Church, which grew out of it) to rediscover its Catholic heritage. Father Keble's sermon started the Oxford Movement, based on belief that the Church of England was a divine institution, that liturgy was central to worship and that social service work must be done to help the poor. At St. Mary's, there are four Masses on Sundays and two on weekdays, along with morning and evening prayers. Because the church views itself as within the Catholic tradition in its broadest sense, prayers are said for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox churches. ''It's probably the leading Anglo-Catholic parish in the Episcopal Church, or at least the best known,'' Bishop Richard F. Grein of the New York Diocese said. ''But at the same time, it has participated in diocesan life fully, unlike some other Anglo-Catholic parishes, who tended -- especially with the ordination of women -- to isolate themselves. ''But St. Mary the Virgin never did that,'' the Bishop said. ''Most of that is to be credited to Canon Wells.'' Bishop Grein will participate in a Mass there on Oct. 5, to re-dedicate the church after the restoration. When he arrived at St. Mary's, Father Wells said he did not support the ordination of women, because, he said, he saw it as causing ''damage'' to the Episcopal Church's relations with the Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, who do not ordain women. But, Father Wells said, ''I changed because I had to change.'' In 1995, when the Diocese of New York elected the Rev. Catherine Roskam as its first female suffragan bishop, Father Wells wrote a formal statement welcoming her. He then invited her to celebrate Mass at St. Mary's, which she did last year, becoming the first woman ever to preside at its altar. ''I guess my own ministry has been a kind of personal pilgrimage, which I would not have foreseen,'' said Father Wells, who will retire on Dec. 31 at 67. The church, through the restoration, has undergone a ''rebirth,'' said Mr. Camiscioli, the parishioner. ''Just to see it restored to its original beauty,'' he said, ''is really very, very moving.'' | Religion Journal; A Times Square Religious Landmark |
960704_0 | Spurning appeals from the United States, President Boris N. Yeltsin signed a new law today that protects the Russian Orthodox Church from competition with other Christian faiths. Western church leaders deplored the law, saying it threatens religious freedom in Russia. Mr. Yeltsin's move was also a setback for the Clinton Administration. During talks this week in Moscow, Vice President Al Gore had put his prestige on the line by imploring Russian leaders to modify the bill, but no sooner had he left Moscow than the upper house unanimously approved it. And today the Kremlin put out a terse announcement saying Mr. Yeltsin had signed the bill into law. The law creates a hierarchy of religious groups, with the Russian Orthodox Church firmly ensconced in the first and most privileged category while rival Christian groups are afforded a secondary status. Having failed to persuade Mr. Yeltsin to veto or amend the law, the Administration is now trying to influence how it is administered. ''We regret the fact that President Yeltsin chose to sign this law,'' said James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman. ''We intend to watch very closely how it is implemented and whether Russia lives up to its international commitments on freedom of religion and respects the rights of religious minorities.'' The Senate has passed a spending bill that would cut $200 million in aid to Russia in six months if the law proves to discriminate against minority religions. A House-Senate conference committee will consider the measure as early as next week, and it is expected to eventually win the support of both houses. Carrying out the law will largely be left up to the local authorities, making it likely that religious tolerance will vary greatly from region to region. Regulations specifying how the law is to be applied have yet to be written, and religious groups are also likely to challenge the restrictions in court. Critics acknowledge that some Western European nations have state religions. But Russia's Constitution prohibits a state religion. The Vatican warned today that the legislation could lead to discrimination against minority religions. So did the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. George Carey, who is the leader of the Anglican Church. ''It is the most sweeping legislative rollback of human rights since the birth of post-Soviet Russia,'' said Lawrence Uzzell, representative here of the Keston Institute, which monitors religious freedom in the former Communist | Irking U.S., Yeltsin Signs Law Protecting Orthodox Church |
960268_2 | $1.6 million. A graduate with a law degree or a Ph.D. takes in $2.1 million. Daniel Cheever, president of Simmons College in Boston, said he was pleased to see institutions moderate tuition rates but disturbed that the cost had increased at a rate higher than inflation or the growth in average family income, which is estimated at 1 percent to 2 percent. ''We've slipped back from the goal of making college affordable to nearly every family,'' Mr. Cheever contended. Asked if the rate of increase reflected the growing value of a college degree, Mr. Cheever responded: ''Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it. The market is bearing it today because students and their families are borrowing. ''Payback time will come in the next decade,'' he said, ''and we don't know yet whether the market can bear it because we don't know how the debts will affect those graduates who may not be able to buy houses or go into their field of choice or save for their children's education because of their debts.'' David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said many of the 900 institutions he represents have faced steep costs to computerize their campuses and increase the technical level of their laboratories. The College Board's report said that student financial aid was at a record high of $55 billion, an increase of 5.4 percent over last year after adjusting for inflation. It added, however, that most of the increase was in the form of loans rather than grants, and most of the increased borrowing was not subsidized. ''Headlines that scream about the inflation of tuition and fees only serve to inflate the fears of American families,'' Mr. Stewart of the College Board said. ''The United States continues to extend higher education opportunities to a larger percent of the population than any country.'' Mr. Warren of the association of independent colleges said he expected that by 2002, the rate of increase in college tuition would be in line with the rate of inflation. ''There is a lot of restructuring and downsizing going on'' to keep tuition costs down, he said. ''Colleges are making tough calls on which programs to keep.'' The cost of higher education has come under growing scrutiny because of a perception that it has gotten out of hand in recent years. Charles Clotfelter, professor of | College Tuitions Climb 5 Percent, Survey Finds |
960265_1 | violence. Sinn Fein was admitted to the talks as a result of an I.R.A. cease-fire in July, and Mr. Adams's pledge that his party was committed to nonviolence. Mr. Trimble said that the cease-fire was merely a tactic and that Sinn Fein had not truly renounced violence. But the unionist leader said he and his party would remain in the talks, negotiating with the other parties but not with Sinn Fein. His attack on Sinn Fein was an attempt to placate the province's Protestant majority, many of whom still fear Sinn Fein and believe, as do many Catholics, that it is virtually identical to the I.R.A., which Sinn Fein denies. The talks, which had been stalled for 15 months, are now set to take up difficult issues like the disarmament of the I.R.A. and Protestant paramilitaries. The negotiating teams of the 12 participants, including the two Governments, are expected to begin discussing such issues on Monday. The first issue is likely to be disarmament, on which Mr. Trimble has changed his position. A year ago, he said he would not enter the talks unless some disarmament had already begun. A few weeks ago, he was insisting that he would enter the talks if he was guaranteed that some disarmament would begin during the course of the talks, which are expected to last until next spring. Then the two Governments said they considered disarmament during the talks indispensable, but did not promise it would happen. Mr. Trimble said the assurance was satisfactory and entered the talks on Tuesday with a vehement attack on Sinn Fein. But his presence at a negotiating table with Sinn Fein was more significant than what he said about Sinn Fein. His presence marked the first time since 1922, when Ireland was divided into the Irish Free State and the British province, that a Protestant leader had entered negotiations with a Republican party. Sinn Fein and the I.R.A. want a united Ireland, free of British control, run from by the overwhelmingly republic to the south. Protestant leaders abhor this goal, wanting to remain British. The stated policy of Britain and the Irish Republic is that there will be no change in the status of the north without the consent of the majority, which is likely to remain Protestant well into the new century. This means Sinn Fein will not achieve a united Ireland at the current talks. | London and Dublin Reject Demand to Bar Sinn Fein From Talks |
958294_2 | a bipartisan board to conduct and monitor elections was considered a significant reform. Under a provision that was added to the State Constitution, the two major political parties were to run the agency. The idea was that such an arrangement would prevent election fraud. But many election specialists have come to believe that the board's composition rewards party loyalists and bogs down vote counting in bureaucratic rules. ''It's not a very efficient way to run a government office,'' said William C. Kimberling, the deputy director of the Office of Election Administration at the Federal Election Commission. ''There's a reason why that went out of fashion in most places.'' The trend across the country has been to have nonpartisan administrators supervise elections. Cities like Washington and Chicago have bipartisan boards similar to New York City's, but now leave the day-to-day operations in the hands of nonpartisan workers. Mr. Kimberling said that New York City remains ''virtually unique in terms of the degree that they employ patronage in the hiring of staff.'' Indeed, some of the last names on the board's roster are the same as those found on nearby pages of the Green Book, the official directory of city government. Vincent J. Velella, a Republican commissioner from the Bronx, is State Senator Guy J. Velella's father. Guy Velella is the Bronx Republican leader; the party leaders in each borough appoint commissioners. And the board's deputy director, Margaret Ognibene, is married to City Councilman Thomas V. Ognibene, a Queens Republican who is the Council's minority leader. ''The worst thing in the world is to have the parties controlling the vote counting,'' said Ronnie Dugger, a political writer who has been following the board for a book about computerized ballot tabulation. But Douglas A. Kellner, a Democratic commissioner on the board, said that the two-party system was still effective. ''I don't know a better way of doing it,'' he said. ''At least when you have the two parties in control of the process, everybody knows exactly what the partisan agendas are.'' In response to concerns about patronage at the board in the 1980's, Mayor Edward I. Koch created the New York City Elections Project to modernize election procedures. The procedure for registration was updated, though not for voting. In the meantime, other jurisdictions have moved toward new and more convenient ways of voting, including paper-punch ballots and various forms of computerization. Phoenix, for | A Creaky Vote System In the Computer Age |
958360_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-14 Thailand Ponders Reform In Midst of Economic Crisis A draft constitution stressing government accountability and civil liberties has become a flash point in Thailand, fueled by the nation's economic discontent. This frustration with the Government reflects an emerging social conflict in a nation where the political structure has not modernized along with the country's rapid growth. A6 Space Junk Just Misses Mir The Russian space station Mir narrowly avoided disaster when it almost collided with a United States military satellite, which had been taken out of service in 1994. The three crew members aboard Mir had sealed themselves into the Soyuz re-entry capsule to make a fast getaway in case of a collision. NASA officials estimate that about 10,000 pieces of junk are in orbit; the satellite had been used for a few months and then discarded. A14 Cold War Converts to Drug War A screening system, partly based on a technology developed to detect Soviet warheads during the cold war, will soon be deployed to detect narcotics being smuggled across the border from Mexico, the Clinton Administration's drug policy chief, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, announced. ''There is no question that this will work,'' he told reporters. A5 U.S. Seeks Mine Compromise The Clinton Administration scrambled to reach a compromise on a treaty to ban land mines, hoping to avoid international censure. Details of the new American position were not yet public, but other countries seemed opposed to amendments other than possibly agreeing to a delayed timetable. A6 A Bomb Explodes Near Belfast A bomb exploded in a town west of Belfast, disrupting the Northern Ireland peace talks in which Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, is taking part. Protestant political leaders blamed the I.R.A. for the blast, which damaged a police station, and demanded that Sinn Fein be expelled from the talks. The I.R.A. denied responsibility. A14 Protest Over Bosnia Elections Several senior officials working for the organization that administered the elections this weekend in Bosnia have threatened to resign because of the body's failure to annul votes cast for the ruling Serb Democratic Party in Pale. They say the party should not have been allowed to field candidates in the local elections because it is run by Radovan Karadzic, who is charged with war crimes. A14 Bodyguard in Crash Is Alert Trevor Rees-Jones, sole survivor of the high-speed crash that killed Diana, Princess | NEWS SUMMARY |
958281_1 | last week that it was not bound by the nonviolence pledge. David Trimble, head of the Ulster Unionist Party, the largest party in this predominantly Protestant British province, accused the I.R.A. in the blast. ''The overwhelming probability,'' he said, was that ''there's I.R.A. involvement.'' Referring to Mo Mowlam, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, he added, ''The Secretary of State should now seriously reconsider Sinn Fein's participation.'' Mr. Trimble also called on the chairman of the peace talks, former Senator George J. Mitchell, to expel Sinn Fein. Ms. Mowlam said the attack was ''pointless terrorism'' and ''may well have been a deliberate attempt to sabotage the talks process.'' Mr. Mitchell also denounced the bombing. A statement issued by his office said: ''It is obviously an effort to blow up not just a police station but also the talks process. It cannot be permitted to succeed. The participants to these talks are determined to make them work.'' But a decision to expel Sinn Fein, which would have to come from the British and Irish Governments, was considered unlikely. It would take direct evidence of I.R.A. involvement. Moreover, the British and Irish Governments have worked for three years to bring Sinn Fein and the Protestant parties together, and without Sinn Fein the talks would have virtually no chance of producing an agreement. Still, the bombing provided Mr. Trimble, and other Protestant leaders, with a reason to delay their own entry. On Monday, Mr. Trimble said he wanted to join the talks ''as soon as possible,'' and before the bomb went off at noon there were reports that he would begin taking part today or Wednesday. While that prospect now seems delayed, most officials felt that when the furor has subsided, the Ulster Unionists and two smaller Protestant parties with links to paramilitaries would take their places at the negotiating table. Five parties, including Sinn Fein, are already there. Mr. Adams said the Protestant leaders were using the bomb as a pretext not to face him and his party across the negotiating table. David Ervine, the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, which has links to the Ulster Volunteer Force, a Protestant paramilitary group, made it clear that he still expected to join the talks. ''I don't think you can make any decisions on the talks oblivious to this bombing,'' he said. ''But I'm not convinced it will change our minds | Bomb Explodes Near Belfast, Rattling New Peace Talks |
954992_8 | prisoners would remind the despondent that life expected something from them: a child waiting outside prison, work that remained to be completed. Prisoners taught one another not to talk about food where starvation was a daily threat, to hide a crust of bread in a pocket to stretch out the nourishment. They were urged to joke, sing, take mental photographs of sunsets and, most important, to replay valued thoughts and memories. Dr. Frankl said it was ''essential to keep practicing the art of living, even in a concentration camp.'' During his later years as a psychotherapist with severely depressed patients, Dr. Frankl said he pointedly asked, ''Why do you not commit suicide?'' The answers he received -- love of one's children, a talent to be used or perhaps only fond memories -- often were the threads he tried to weave back, through psychotherapy, into the pattern of meaning in a troubled life. After the war, he earned his doctorate in psychiatry, in 1948, and remarried after the Red Cross was able to verify that his first wife was dead. He and his second wife, Eleanore, had a daughter. In addition to his wife and daughter, Dr. Gabriele Vesely of Vienna, he is survived by two grandchildren. In the postwar years he wrote 33 other books on his theories of theoretical and clinical psychology, which he called logotherapy after the Greek ''logos'' -- meaning -- and contributed to the development of humanistic psychotherapy and existential philosophy in Europe and the United States. He was invited to serve as a visiting professor at Harvard, Stanford, Southern Methodist and other American universities and lectured in the United States and around the globe. But the application of his theories in a distinct school of psychotherapy was slow in coming. This was so, colleagues in Vienna and America said, partly because of the wartime interruption and the lingering effects of anti-Semitism in Vienna at a critical point in his career and partly because he concentrated more on writing and lecturing than in developing followers among his therapist contemporaries. Interest among other therapists increased after a fellow concentration camp prisoner, Joseph B. Fabry, who moved to America and became a successful lawyer, founded the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logography in Berkeley, Calif., in 1977. In 1985 Dr. Frankl became the first non-American to be awarded the prestigious Oskar Pfister Prize by the American Association of Psychiatrists. | Dr. Viktor E. Frankl of Vienna, Psychiatrist of the Search for Meaning, Dies at 92 |
954995_0 | Congress faces another battle on international family planning, which is still mired in domestic abortion politics. The House is scheduled to consider a foreign appropriations bill today that includes an ill-advised amendment to restrict funding for overseas groups that provide abortions or abortion counseling. Sponsored by a Republican, Chris Smith of New Jersey, the measure would require overseas organizations to certify that they will not perform abortions except to save the life of the mother or in the case of rape or incest, and that they will not lobby to change the abortion laws in any foreign country. As a matter of existing law and policy, no Federal money can be used to offer information about abortion or to provide abortions abroad. The Federal aid that now helps finance family planning programs in more than 60 countries can only be used for contraceptives or other preventive measures or to provide technical assistance to local family planning organizations. Groups operating overseas that either perform abortions or provide abortion-related services like counseling must do so with private funds. What makes the Smith amendment so punitive is that it would deny Federal money to organizations that use private funds for these services. That would force these organizations to stop offering abortion advice or drop out of the foreign aid program. Some representatives will try to soften the Smith amendment, but the best course of action would be to reject it entirely. | Shackling Family Planning Abroad |
956292_2 | a daily basis,'' said John Hunter, chief operating officer of Solutia Inc., a maker of nylons and other high-grade plastics that just spun off from the Monsanto Company. Even the biggest fans of the new process acknowledge that such worries are premature. ''We're all still on the steep part of the learning curve,'' acknowledged Kevin Lynch, who runs the Union Carbide Corporation's polyethylene business. Still, if the initial promise pans out, those carloads of basic plastics may soon turn up in wrappers for fresh food, automotive dashboards, in-line skates and other products that until now were the purview of more costly plastics. ''This may let cheap plastics steal the lunch of much more expensive materials,'' said David Hunter, editor of the trade journal Chemical Week. That prospect, said Steven D. Ittel, manager of polymer catalysis research at E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, ''has turned polyethylene from a boring business into one of this industry's highest-tech, most competitive areas.'' For consumers, this could mean better products at lower prices -- say, a stronger trash bag or a less expensive desktop printer. For the chemical industry, the stakes are higher. Plastics made with the new process sell for less than the higher-tech plastics they hope to replace, but they command 5 or 10 cents more a pound than conventional basic plastics -- a huge amount for items sold in cargo loads. ''A penny a pound in our business is worth $50 million a year,'' said Irwin Levowitz, vice president for polyethylene at Exxon Chemical. ''Metallocenes will rejuvenate this entire market.'' Potentially lucrative new products are just starting to flow to market. Several companies have introduced new polyethylenes that can be made into stronger or more breathable packaging. The Dow Chemical Company and DuPont just formed a joint venture to sell a new, rubber-like chemical that can work in floor coverings, shoe soles and coatings. Exxon is offering a hardened plastic to compete against nylon in sports equipment like in-line skates and to package computer disks. And it is working on a product that it says will work well in medical garments, diapers and other personal-hygiene products. Dow, meanwhile, can now make styrene -- most familiar to consumers as Styrofoam cups -- rigid enough to use in automotive parts. And it is introducing a scratch-resistant plastic that it says works for linoleum, medical tubing, even utilitarian clothing like children's shorts. | High Technology Could Add New Life to an Old Product |
956231_2 | Dr. Wynshaw-Boris decided to knock out disheveled-1; he expected its absence to make the mice develop abnormally, as do fruit flies that lack the gene. He was surprised to find that the mice looked normal when they grew up. But after colleagues noticed the unusually bushy whiskers of the knock-out mice, a battery of behavioral changes came to light. One of the most interesting is an inability to screen out extraneous noise and focus on a single stimulus. This symptom, as well as abnormal social behavior, are found in several human psychiatric disorders, like schizophrenia and Tourette's syndrome. Abnormal social behavior is also a feature of autism. Schizophrenia is thought to have a strong genetic as well as environmental component because the disease is more common than usual among a patient's relatives. From analysis of family pedigrees, epidemiologists have identified several sites on human chromosomes where genes predisposing toward schizophrenia are thought to lie. Dr. Anne E. Pulver, an epidemiologist who studies schizophrenia at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said the finding was ''really fascinating and needs to be followed up.'' Although the finding has no immediate relevance to patients, she said, the discovery of genes that predispose toward schizophrenia would help pharmaceutical companies develop drugs, and the mice might be helpful in testing them. None of the present candidate regions on human chromosomes for genes predisposing toward schizophrenia includes the sites of the human versions of the disheveled genes. But there are probably several more such regions to be found, so the human disheveled genes are not excluded as possible causes of the disease, Dr. Pulver said. While there are obvious pitfalls in comparing humans with mice, especially in terms of behavior, the two species share a surprising amount in common at the level of their genes. Whatever its relevance to psychiatry, the new finding has fished out two ends of a very interesting chain, with the disheveled gene at one end and the array of complex behaviors at the other. The connecting links are at present unknown. ''We have no idea what the pathways are that go from the beginning to the end,'' Dr. Wynshaw-Boris said, ''or what goes on between the mutation and the social interactions.'' The function of the disheveled gene is unknown, other than that its product is one of the first members of an essential communication chain in which a cell signals | First Gene for Social Behavior Identified in Whiskery Mice |
956222_3 | for future biological exploration,'' said Dr. Michael H. Carr, a specialist in Martian geology at the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. ''Right now, there is virtually no information about the global mineralogy, so all this is going to be brand new.'' Although two Viking spacecraft orbited Mars for several years, beginning in 1976, they were not equipped to produce maps of the planet's mineralogy. Nor were their cameras able to reveal the texture of the Martian landscape in sufficient detail for planning landings of future craft. The Surveyor camera was designed to obtain pictures about 5 to 10 times more detailed than those from the Viking orbiters, showing objects at least six to nine feet wide and looking into the depths of dry river beds. The Vikings were the last craft to orbit and land on Mars before this year. On July 4, Pathfinder landed on a flood plain called Ares Vallis, near the Martian equator. Both Pathfinder and its roving vehicle, Sojourner, are operating normally and transmitting pictures and chemical data on surface rocks. Just as Pathfinder tested new descent and landing techniques and Sojourner has introduced mobility to a planetary surface, the Global Surveyor spacecraft will be trying something new. On each orbit in the early months, the craft is to dip briefly into the upper fringes of the thin Martian atmosphere and use the friction as an additional brake. This technique, known as aerobraking, should enable the craft to achieve a working orbit with a minimum of rocket fuel. By thus reducing the amount of fuel that had to be transported to Mars, mission planners were able to use a less expensive Delta 2 rocket to launch the spacecraft last November. At liftoff, the total spacecraft weighed 2,341 pounds, 854 pounds of which was fuel. Project officials said that aerobraking made Global Surveyor's navigation by far the most challenging for any planetary mission to date. Aerobraking was tested by the Magellan spacecraft in 1993 at the end of its radar mapping of Venus. Now its success will be critical at the start of Global Surveyor's explorations. With the firing of its main rocket at 6:31 P.M. (9:31 P.M., Eastern daylight time) on Thursday, the spacecraft should slow down and fall into a highly elliptical orbit, taking 42 to 45 hours to make one complete circuit of Mars. Maneuvering jets are to be fired to | Another Spacecraft Nears Mars For Orbiting Survey of Planet |
954835_0 | The 4-year-old French boy was waving to his parents on a path here in July when a 70-pound cougar pounced from the underbrush and dragged him off by the head. The boy was saved -- one ear had to be sewn back on -- and the cougar was shot. But three days later, a cougar attacked and killed a 10-year-old boy who had run ahead of his family on a trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, 50 miles northwest of Denver. Conflicts with cougars here are part of the growing numbers of clashes between humans and wildlife nationwide. The standard explanation for such clashes, that people are invading animal territory, does not ring true in this corner of southwestern Colorado. Archeologists studying the famous cliff dwellings here estimate that Indians first moved to this high-altitude plateau around A.D. 550. But at one time, fatal attacks were unheard of. Indeed, in 150 years of Colorado's written history, the only humans reported killed by cougars were the 10-year-old this summer and an 18-year-old jogger in 1991. Although a hiker in the Colorado Rockies is still far more likely to be killed by a rattlesnake or by lightning than in an attack by a cougar or other wild animals, some wildlife experts warn of such attacks. They say the attacks are becoming more common, a consequence of both a decline in hunting and a scaling back of predator-control programs that have brought wild animals into areas where they have not been seen for more than a century. ''In the United States and Canada, cougars have killed as many people in the last decade as in all of the previous century,'' said Paul Beier, a Northern Arizona University ecologist who studies historic kills by these hunters, also known as mountain lions. Mr. Beier predicted more attacks in Colorado, where schoolchildren study pamphlets like ''Living With Wildlife in Lion Country'' and rural dinner conversation focuses on how far to let children stray from the house. He said the public concern stemmed from ''that primal fear of being eaten by a carnivore.'' Around the country, wildlife is rebounding. Soaring deer populations account for half a million car accidents a year nationwide. Minnesota has 2,500 wolves, Virginia's bear population is now 3,500, and Florida has a million adult alligators, increases that have led to more attacks on people, pets and livestock. In Colorado, wild animals also pose | Too Often, Cougars and People Clash |
954869_6 | between. ''What about the guy who comes in and fixes the coffee machine?'' Mr. Kosters wondered. What about computer technicians? ''Does it depend on whether he fixes hardware or software?'' he asked. The Government reports quarterly on compensation of various occupations, dividing them into three categories -- white collar, blue collar and service. And while white-collar pay and salaries have grown fastest, both blue-collar and service jobs made bigger gains in this year's April-June quarter. All three did equally well when fringe benefits were included. It is too early to draw definitive conclusions. Still, Mr. Kosters said, the long-identified decline in the relative wages of less skilled workers ''maybe has run its course'' and might even be showing some reversal. Mr. Ilg, who divided the working world into three roughly equal-size groups by earnings, did find that job growth was greatest in the first half of the 1990's for the highest-paid and lowest-paid occupations. But the middle-earnings group, where most blue-collar workers are found, has recovered since the late summer of 1993 almost all the ground it had lost in the preceding four years. Another challenge to pessimism about blue-collar job prospects comes from ''Workforce 2020,'' a recent study conducted by the Hudson Institute, a research group based in Indianapolis. ''Technological change does not mean that blue-collar jobs and relatively low-skilled white-collar ones will disappear,'' it declared. ''In fact, about half of all jobs due to open up between 1994 and 2005 fit these descriptions. In this respect the conventional wisdom -- that such jobs are on the verge of extinction -- is deeply misguided. Blue-collar and low-skilled jobs may be growing much more slowly than white-collar positions, but they are not about to disappear.'' Mr. Niemira, the Wall Street economist, put it this way: ''Although blue-collar employment is unlikely to garner a substantially larger share of total employment than it already has, its worst days may be over.'' Still another study, by the Economic Policy Institute, while pessimistic about the wage prospects for working-class Americans, suggested a few years ago that more competition in once heavily regulated industries, like telecommunications, would lead to more blue-collar work as companies expanded into new fields and hired workers like those at Mr. Buttiglieri's Local 2101. ''Deregulation has spawned a lot of this,'' the union executive said. ''There's a lot more opportunity than there was years ago.'' The Rise of the Working Class | Blue-Collar Jobs Gain, but the Work Changes in Tone |
956462_0 | America Online's acquisition of Compuserve's customer base is a smart strategic move because it allows America Online to expand its reach while eliminating its chief rival. But the deal, which also includes the sale of America Online's transmission network, doesn't address looming hurdles. The most serious of these may be potential competition from bare-bones E-mail and Internet service providers. Buying Compuserve's on-line service from the long-distance phone company Worldcom will raise America Online's subscriber base to 11.6 million from 9 million. Though America Online says it plans to keep the two services separate for now, the company clearly expects advertisers to notice its combined numbers. Its closest rival, the Microsoft Network, has 2.3 million subscribers. The big question is whether America Online will be able to hold on to its subscribers over the long haul. In effect, America Online acts as a middleman between the World Wide Web and the operating system, or desktop, on a personal computer. That's appealing for some people, especially those who are new to the Internet. But as more people become familiar with navigating the World Wide Web, they may not feel they need America Online to organize what's out there for them. Moreover, they may choose to avoid the advertising they get on America Online, a barrage that is sure to increase, by signing up with a local basic Internet access provider instead. America Online now gets 15 percent of its revenue from advertising and commerce -- on-line hawking. Over the next few years, it wants to raise that share to 50 percent. But computer users who just want to check their E-mail may decide that they're just not going to wait for another advertisement to download. America Online maintains that what distinguishes it from other providers is that it offers exclusive content -- like on-line bookstores, magazines and financial advisers -- as well as a place to hang out. Some subscribers do sign on for those services. And by selling off its transmission network, America Online is sending a message that its main business will be media and entertainment, rather than telecommunications. But the fun house of novelties under the America Online tent -- the chat rooms, the treasure hunts, the celebrity ''appearances'' -- won't keep many of us. My computer-savvy friends laugh at me when I give them my America Online E-mail address -- or when I call them an hour after | What's Left for AOL? |
956500_1 | on July 20 restoring its unilateral cease-fire, the I.R.A. spoke of a ''cessation of military operations,'' but did not say that the cessation was permanent, or that it would be maintained regardless of the outcome of the talks. Mr. Adams was not pressed on this apparent difference at today's meeting in Castle Buildings in the Stormont area of Belfast. In the past, he has said that Sinn Fein and the I.R.A. are not the same, and that he cannot speak for the I.R.A., a statement considered disingenuous by many politicians and experts on all sides. Six weeks after the I.R.A. restored its cease-fire, the British Government said it considered the cease-fire genuine. That qualified Sinn Fein to enter the talks, once it formally accepted the principles of nonviolence. The central issues in the talks are the disarmament of the I.R.A. and Protestant paramilitary groups and Sinn Fein's ultimate goal of an Ireland free of British control, united with the Irish Republic to the south. Protestant leaders abhor this, wanting to remain part of Britain. If the talks are to succeed, there will have to be compromises on both disarmament and on a united Ireland. Both the British and Irish Governments insist that there will be no change in the political status of Northern Ireland unless it has the consent of the majority, which is expected to remain Protestant well into the new century. In a brief ceremony, closed to the public and to reporters, Mr. Mitchell read the principles he first proposed in January 1996. They say in part that all parties taking part in the talks must affirm ''total and absolute commitment'' to ''democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues,'' and ''to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organizations,'' and ''to renounce for themselves, and to oppose any effort by others, to use force, or threaten to use force, to influence the course or the outcome of all-party negotiations'' and ''to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree.'' Mr. Mitchell then asked Mr. Adams if Sinn Fein would adhere to the principles. Mr. Adams affirmed that his party would do so. Representatives of the four other parties in attendance welcomed him to the talks. All five Protestant-dominated parties were absent, protesting Sinn Fein's admission. On the disarmament issue, which has stalled the talks | Ulster Talks Resume With a Promise of Peace by Sinn Fein |
956524_0 | As peace talks opened in Belfast, Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, committed itself to peaceful methods in efforts to reach an agreement on Northern Ireland, and the Clinton Administration suspended deportation proceedings against five I.R.A. veterans who have settled in the United States. Articles, pages A12 and B1. | Peace Talks Resume; Sinn Fein to Join In |
956516_2 | Miami two decades ago to seek his fortune, prospered, and recently decided ''to do something good for his home community'' of La Gonaives, as one official put it today. His 61-foot boat, air-conditioned and with a television, began service between his home island of La Gonave and this fishing and market town late late month. Mr. Dorival insists that no more than the legal limit of 265 tickets were sold for the ferry trip that ended in disaster. Residents and police officials say that Mr. Dorival had alienated the operators of the other boats plying the same route. Not only was his vessel larger and more modern, but it left an hour earlier than those of his competitors, which quickly gave him a lion's share of the traffic. Today, the story circulating among the townspeople watching the search operations was that the embittered boat operators had turned to voodoo, Haiti's traditional religion, to humble Mr. Dorival, who the police said has been questioned but not yet charged with any offense. ''Your boat is going to sink,'' a rival is said to have warned him a few days ago after consulting a houngan, or voodoo priest. By official count, Monday's ferry boat sinking is the sixth such disaster in the past five years in this country, and by no means the largest. In February 1993, the Neptune, with an estimated 1,000 people on board, sank in deep water two miles off the southern peninsula. While an official toll was never announced, as many as 700 people are thought to have drowned. Among the onlookers here today, there was bitterness and anger, directed largely at the Government that such calamities are still occurring. For years, residents have been clamoring for the Government to build a pier here, so that passengers on the ferry boats that are a convenient form of transportation of the poor would be able to walk ashore, instead of having to make a risky and uncomfortable transfer to the beach aboard rickety rowboats. The ferry is believed to have overturned Monday when passengers surged to the side heading for the rowboats. ''This is terrible, a catastrophe, and we can do nothing about it,'' said Elider Dorleans, a 22-year-old student. ''I am praying, and what I pray for is that the Government respects its responsibilities so that no more people will die.'' Perhaps anticipating such a backlash, President Rene Preval | On a Beach Lined With Ferry's Dead, Haitians Mourn |
959643_2 | the nation's most popular camping area. The lake fuels an annual local tourist economy of half a billion dollars. Lulled by these numbers, few people took it seriously last year when David Brower, the founder of the Sierra Club, proposed that the lake be drained. If that were done, he said, the flooded scenery of Glen Canyon would be recovered and a wild river habitat would be restored for endangered fish in the Grand Canyon, 40 miles downstream from here. To many people's surprise, the plan has gained momentum. Last November, the executive board of the Sierra Club, an organization with 600,000 members, unanimously endorsed the plan. The Glen Canyon Institute, a Utah group whose main goal is to see the lake drained, last year tripled attendance at its annual convention, to 1,500 people. Organized opposition to the plan has formed only recently. ''People are only now beginning to wake up to this threat,'' said Larry E. Tarp, a retiree here who two months ago organized Friends of Lake Powell. ''If they get rid of this dam, they would go for the next one, and then the next one.'' On Tuesday, Mr. Tarp is to testify in Washington at hearings on the lake-drainage proposal called by Representative James V. Hansen, Republican of Utah. Mr. Brower, 84, who has spent half a century battling the Government over environmental issues, plans to testify about the lost beauty of Glen Canyon. ''That dam destroyed one of the most magnificent places on earth, in order to have flatwater recreation,'' he said in a telephone interview from his home in Berkeley, Calif. For 40 years, Mr. Brower said, he has felt guilty about dropping opposition to the Glen Canyon dam in the mid-1950's as part of a tradeoff that prevented construction of a dam that would have flooded the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado. ''I was in a position to stop it,'' said Mr. Brower, who was the Sierra Club's executive director at the time. ''But we softened, and Glen Canyon dam was built.'' Critics say that Mr. Brower has personalized the battle, his ego obscuring the fact that the dam was built after a vote by Congress and cost $272 million and the lives of 17 workers. ''David Brower's ego problem is such that he believes he was solely responsible for the dam,'' Mr. Tarp said from his home in Greenehaven, a residential development | In the Balance, the Future of a Lake; Arizona Town Battles Environmentalists Over Drainage Plan |
959665_0 | Just how personal is the personal computer? A little too personal, when it comes to using the PC on the job these days -- at least in the eyes of many bosses. Employers, whether in the Federal Government or the private sector, are cracking down on the use of computer games, personal E-mail and recreational Web surfing, which they see as undermining the productivity that the PC was supposed to bring to the world of work. The management measures include monitoring employees' computer files, tracking their electronic footprints across the World Wide Web and even sponsoring Congressional legislation that would ban PC game-playing in Federal offices. Many workers, meanwhile, are devising retaliatory measures of their own. Consider Don's Boss Page, available on the World Wide Web and offering features like '' 'Stealth Surfing: secret tips and tricks from the pros on how to look busy at work while you're cruising the Internet. No bosses allowed!'' Don Pavlisch, a graphic designer who created the site and acknowledges browsing his favorite on-line magazines as a way of unwinding on the job, sees the issue as a matter of worker rights in the digital age. Bosses ''can crack down, they can get tougher, but ultimately people always have a need for recreation,'' Mr. Pavlisch said. ''Surfing the Internet allows the mind to relax.'' Luckily for Mr. Pavlisch, his own employer, Nicholson NY, a Manhattan-based Web site design firm, is indulgent on such matters. But Joanne Capritti, speaking on behalf of many of the bosses of the land, frames the issue a bit differently. ''It's an evolution in the perception of computers,'' said Ms. Capritti, a director at the American Management Association. ''Your PC is something you get real intimate with and you really do think of as yours. But the reality is: It isn't.'' After a decade of scurrying to equip white collar workers with desktop computers that could crunch numbers and process words at ever faster speeds, management America is beginning to view with alarm the time-wasting potential of its high-tech tools. And as employers clamp down, an old tug-of-war with employees over the management of their time and work is shaping up in a new form. The fight has even reached Capitol Hill. Senator Lauch Faircloth, a North Carolina Republican, became so incensed earlier this year when he saw members of his staff playing games on their office PC's that he | On the Office PC, Bosses Opt For All Work, and No Play |
959664_0 | Asian Crisis Likely to Slow Economic Liberalization American officials at the annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were confronted by angry Asian leaders who contended that foreign investors set off Southeast Asia's financial crisis. The most extreme accusation came from Malaysia's Prime Minister, who charged the ''great powers'' -- a clear reference to the United States -- with manipulating Asian currencies to knock them off as competitors. Few Asians at the meeting have endorsed the Malaysian call to outlaw currency trading. But several indicated that they plan to slow economic liberalization. $(Page A1.$) The Malaysian leader squared off against the billionaire George Soros. The weapons: currency and influence. The stakes: Malaysia's prestige and, by some accounts, the global financial system itself. $(A6.$) Help Securing Child Support Enforcement of child support obligations enters a new era on Oct. 1, when the Federal Government will start operating a computerized directory showing every new hire by every employer in the country, so investigators can track down parents who owe money to their children. $(A1.$) Crackdown on Electronic Diversions Government and private-sector employers are cracking down on computer games, personal electronic mail and recreational Web surfing. Management measures include monitoring employees' computer files and tracking their electronic footprints on the World Wide Web. Workers are devising retaliatory measures. $(A1.$) McCann-Erickson Will Reorganize McCann-Erickson Worldwide, the world's second-largest advertising agency, is undertaking its most comprehensive reorganization in almost four decades. The plan spotlights the increasingly prominent role of marketing services. Stuart Elliott: Advertising. $(D12.$) Low-Priced Computers Snapped Up When computer makers cut the price of PC's to less than $1,000 earlier this year, consumers flocked to stores in search of deals. As a result, sales of such low-priced workhorse machines have skyrocketed. $(D4.$) Fretful TV Season Begins For network executives, the season that starts tonight is D-Day of sorts: a long-planned invasion marked by excitement and fear. Programmers always worry about specific offerings, but never before have so many been worried about the future of the entire business. Bill Carter: Broadcasting. $(D9.$) Turner Hopes to Avoid Stock Sale Ted Turner, the ebullient billionaire who last week pledged to give United Nations agencies up to $1 billion over 10 years, said Friday that he wanted to find a way to give the money away without selling his 58 million Time Warner shares. Mr. Turner has set his investment team to looking | BUSINESS DIGEST |
961155_0 | After 75 years of sporadic sectarian violence between Northern Ireland's Protestant majority and its Roman Catholic minority, political leaders from both sides will face each other for the first time on Monday in formal negotiations over disputes that have divided the British province into mutually suspicious, often hostile communities. The delegates entered the same room last week, a historic and histrionic event, and engaged in politically motivated squabbles over procedure. But the real work on substantive issues begins on Monday in the drab Castle Buildings office in the Stormont area of Belfast, Ulster's capital. Progress is not expected to be swift. The last obstacles to the opening of the peace talks were overcome in the last two weeks. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republican Army, was admitted to the talks on the basis of its pledge of nonviolence after the I.R.A. called a cease-fire in July. The predominantly Protestant Ulster Unionist Party, the largest political group in the North, also entered the talks after failing in a last-ditch attempt to have Sinn Fein expelled. Eight other parties and the Irish and British Governments also plan to participate. The goal is an agreement, by next May, to put a permanent end to the violence that has killed 3,225 people since 1969. ''We are leaving behind us the bitterness of history,'' Ray Burke, the Irish Foreign Minister, said this week. Some of the strains are likely to come on matters that have been pushed aside in the months since the talks were convened by disputes over disarmament of the I.R.A. and Protestant paramilitary groups. When the talks began in June 1996, they slid immediately into a dispute over disarmament. Now that issue has been pigeonholed, at least temporarily, by a resolution approved on Wednesday night. The truce on disarmament opens the way, though, for the discussion of other basic disagreements. Among these are Sinn Fein's objective of creating a united Ireland, free of British control, run by the Irish Republic. While Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, will argue for a united Ireland and British withdrawal from the North, he will have to settle for closer administrative links between Dublin and Belfast. This is because the official policy of Ireland and Britain, affirmed in three formal documents and repeated by the Prime Ministers of both countries in recent weeks, is that there will be no change in | Old Ulster Enemies Face Each Other for First Time in Talks |
960813_13 | decentralized machines. As these personal devices proliferate, it's becoming impossible for political leaders to censor information. Africa's leaders can control newspapers, but citizens in remote villages are now getting uncensored news from Africa Online. And as information becomes central to economies, the incentives for tyrants to wage war are diminishing. Military conquest of foreign lands made a certain amount of sense when the victors acquired manpower and resources from farms, mines and factories. Access to scarce natural resources was vital -- in the Middle Ages, armies fought wars over salt. Today wealth is based more and more on information, not natural resources, which is why the Congo is poor despite its vast mineral reserves, and why Hong Kong is rich even though it must import food and drinking water. The Beijing autocrats may have acquired title to Hong Kong's real estate, but they haven't conquered it. They can't seal its borders or appropriate its wealth. If they try to stop Hong Kong's telescreens from communicating, computer keyboards around the world will respond, and Hong Kong's money will start to flow away, followed shortly by its populace. Now that the specter of Big Brother is receding, today's critics of technology have been focusing on the opposite danger: too much freedom. Conservatives worry that traditional values are threatened by on-line crudity; liberals worry that social injustice and selfishness will prevail in the unregulated realm of cyberspace. The critics correctly see that governments are losing some of their power to impose laws and moral standards, but that doesn't mean we're doomed to chaos and cruelty. Humans developed sociable rules and moral codes long before the era of centralized governments. The Internet may look like a dangerously anarchic world, but it's actually fairly similar to the ancient environment in which humans evolved to become the most cooperative, virtuous creatures on earth. The original Information Revolution occurred during the Pleistocene, a decentralized era if there ever was one, when hunter-gatherers on the African savanna developed a powerful new computer: the human brain. The brain evolved to its large size because its information-processing capacity enabled humans to band together and increase their chances of survival. The size of a primate's brain correlates directly with the size of its social group, and the formula worked out by scientists indicates that the human brain is sized for a group of about 150, which by no coincidence is the | Technology Makes Us Better; Our Oldest Computer, Upgraded |
961164_0 | EXPERTS warn that road rage is at epidemic levels on America's highways. In a recent study, the American Automobile Association found a 51 percent increase since 1990 in incidents of motorists behaving in an overtly hostile manner. Crazy drivers, one might say. Precisely, says Dr. Arnold Nerenberg, a clinical psychologist in Whittier, Calif., who has a weekly radio program in which he discusses road rage as a certifiable mental illness. With advocates like Dr. Nerenberg and help from state and Federal research grants intended to combat the increase in highway fatalities attributed to aggressive driving, road rage may be a disorder whose time has come. Dr. Nerenberg and other therapists firmly believe that road rage is on its way to certification as an official mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Hundreds of Disorders The D.S.M, as insiders call it, is the 886-page clinical bible put out by the American Psychiatric Association and used by psychiatrists and other therapists to identify a set of behaviors as a mental illness. If road rage is ultimately included in the revisions of the D.S.M. that are now being reviewed, it will join more than 300 other disorders certified as mental diseases. The D.S.M., currently in its fourth edition, classifies serious mental illnesses like psychoses and schizophrenia, but critics say it also medicalizes many behaviors once considered traceable to character flaws. Many new disorders develop powerful lobbies in the therapeutic and political worlds, critics say, because of the D.S.M.'s far-reaching influence on health-care spending. ''Inclusion in the D.S.M. is the key that opens the strongbox; you cannot bill for treatment without using it,'' said Dr. Thomas S. Szasz, a Syracuse psychiatrist and the author of ''The Myth of Mental Illness,'' the landmark 1961 book that argued that psychiatry consistently expands its definition of mental illness to impose its authority over moral and cultural conflict. Americans spend nearly $1 trillion annually on health care, and the mental health industry is lobbying the Federal and state governments to require health insurers and health maintenance organizations to cover treatment for mental disorders on a par with physical disease and injury. Critics maintain that the D.S.M. is a powerful marketing machine that slices off ever-greater chunks of money from overall health care spending. ''There is a clear motive for defining new mental disorders and marketing psychotropic medications for adults,'' said Herb Kutchins, a professor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; You're Not Bad, You're Sick. It's in the Book. |
960946_5 | and vandalized, with broken glass and graffiti. In 1914 vandals tried to burn it, and 300 demonstrators, led by the anarchist Carlo Tresca, tried to take over an annual celebration of Garibaldi's birth and put up a red flag before they were arrested. Such strife was apparently common; according to a 1940 account, in 1932 police severely restricted gatherings at the memorial. By the 1940's the protective dome was itself failing, and photographs from the 1950's show it open to the weather and bare of paint. In 1956 the National Order Sons of Italy, which had controlled the memorial since 1919, demolished the dome but opened the house as a museum. In 1985 the museum hired its first full-time curator and completely renovated the cottage. For the first time artifacts like Garibaldi's shirt and Meucci's models of his telephone were catalogued and conserved. Last year the museum replaced the Victorian cast iron fence around the property -- which had been knocked over by Italian protesters in 1914 -- with a modern $20,000 fence of hollow metal bars. A large chemical plant now blocks the building's view of New York Harbor, and the wooden building's perch on a giant concrete platform surrounded by a lawn makes it look like a display-case object. Joseph Sciame, chairman of the Sons of Italy's national board of overseers, said that the museum has an annual budget of $150,000 and that there were about 6,000 visitors last year, half of them schoolchildren. Of the balance, many came for Italian celebrations, such as an Italian music festival on Sept. 14. Cultural events -- concerts, film programs and Italian language classes -- rival in importance the museum's collection. Lena Papalia, a museum volunteer, said that only 100 people had been expected on Sept. 14 but that 400 showed up. ''There's more and more interest'' in the events, she said. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 1 to 5 P.M. Admission is $3. Information: (718) 442-1608. The museum struggles with its tiny exhibition area -- four small rooms. The space shortage was behind an unrealized 1980 proposal to build a much larger underground exhibition space around the cottage. Mr. Sciame said that a more modest plan is for an atrium, 50 feet long and 15 feet wide, connected to the house. ''We've got so much stored away,'' he said, ''and there's only so much we can exhibit.'' | Streetscapes/The Garibaldi-Meucci Museum in Staten Island; 4-Room Tribute to the Hero of Italian Independence |
960806_0 | There's an argument to be made that the defining characteristic of human life is not language or tool use but the development of remote control. Not in the narrow sense, of course. Only a true misanthrope would argue that channel surfing is what distinguishes us from other animals. Besides, there's no solid experimental evidence that other animals would stick to watching one show at a time if we let them hold the remote. In the broad sense, however, remote control involves much more than television, including but not limited to radio-controlled model airplanes and cars, robots operated by remote control, spacecraft controlled by radio waves -- in short, all forms of action at a distance. Other species use tools; some may even be capable of rudimentary language. But the deep fascination with touching things you can't touch, the desire to have one's reach literally exceed one's grasp, whether in the service of shooting skeet or changing channels, is peculiarly human. This summer there was an extraordinary demonstration of how far we've come, in time and distance, from what I imagine to be the first achievement of action at a distance, a thrown rock. Pity the poor marmot, or marmotlike creature, that first discovered there was danger even if that scruffy hominid was too far away to grab it. Thwock! And the world changed, for marmots and hominids. It continued to change as hominids moved from rocks to crossbows to antimissile lasers. Then, this July, in one more small step, scientists in Pasadena sent instructions to a tiny sport utility vehicle on Mars, telling it which rock to snuggle up to. The rover, called the Sojourner, was sent to Mars as part of the Pathfinder mission. The launching of the spacecraft itself was much like throwing a rock at a marmot. It just required more force and more calculation and took a lot longer to hit its target. Talking to the Sojourner once it got to Mars and making it roll from Barnacle Bill to Scooby Doo required a more abstract kind of action, communication by means of radio waves. We take radio communication for granted, but probably not one person in a hundred on the Long Island Expressway (one in a thousand on the Santa Monica Freeway) could explain how exactly their cell phones work, and why it is sometimes easier to reach Mars than New Jersey. Of course, most | Technology Makes Us Closer; The Intimate Reach of Remote Control |
961066_1 | the process -- to make a list, to make quick comparisons about location, size or majors.'' That is just how the guides should be used, according to the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, which represents 6,400 high school counselors and university admissions people. ''The handbooks have a great value in providing factual information,'' said Mark Milroy, the group's chief officer for programs and services. ''We don't endorse any rankings.'' Guides that rank schools remain popular, however. For the second year in a row, the top-rated handbook in the Wooster poll -- involving 517 freshmen from 37 states this year -- was ''America's Best Colleges,'' a guide by U.S. News & World Report that ranks 1,400 schools. Another popular resource was the World Wide Web. About 47 percent of the students in the Wooster poll said they went to the Internet for help, up from 17 percent last year. Of those, almost 90 percent said the sites' college information was as least as useful as that in handbooks. ''I think the Web is going to have a real impact on the guides,'' Mr. Hanna said. There are scores of college guides out there -- some slim and specialized, others thicker than the Manhattan telephone directory. They cost anywhere from $5.95 to $25, though some are available at public libraries and schools. Following is a brief look at a few of them: FACTS AND STATS ''The College Handbook'' (The College Board, $23.95) is one of the big books -- a compendium of academic, demographic and financial facts about schools coast to coast. In a McDonaldized marketing touch, its cover boasts of ''over two millon copies sold,'' and one reason for the book's success may be its useful and somewhat unusual indexes. Readers can look up colleges by ''environment'' -- small and urban or large and suburban, for example. There is also a list of schools that accept applications very late in the year. Historically black colleges are indexed, too, as are schools with services for learning-disabled students, but these categories pop up in other books, too. Another good touch: a brief rundown of the early-decision policies at 330 schools that accept students before the yearly rush. The book's Web site offers, among other things, sample P.S.A.T. questions (www.collegeboard.org). 3,200 PAGES ''Peterson's Guide to Four-Year Colleges'' (Peterson's, $24.95) is another comprehensive guide -- a wrist-wrenching 3,200 pages to carry around. Aside from | Guides for Making the College Try |
961022_1 | their first language.'' Ms. Earley advised potential teachers to look for programs accredited by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education and by their state education agencies. Although each state has its own licensing requirements, graduates of approved programs, she said, are more likely to be accepted for licensing in other states. Like other educators, Ms. Earley cautioned students to be wary of too-quick certification plans. Some school districts, she said, offer licenses that may not be recognized elsewhere, and may be valid for just the year in which the teacher was hired. ''If a program promises you a license in a few weeks, I'd run away from it as fast as I can,'' she said. Programs vary widely in cost. Some of the quicker plans are offered free by school districts, but a student can often attend longer, more intense programs without cost, too, because many are underwritten by states, foundations and industries. Many of the best programs are expensive. The 15- to 21-month program at the University of New Hampshire costs $12,000 for New Hampshire residents and $22,000 for others. Because of the program's intensity, most students don't hold outside jobs. Sometimes, career switchers can take advantage of part-time certification programs. San Jose State University in California offers such a plan for scientists who work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. But because the scientists go to school only at night, when they're not working, the program takes 24 months to complete. For some potential teachers, simply catching up on prerequisite courses can eat up precious time. For example, Dave Moss of Sandy, Utah, a recent career switcher, spent nine months taking courses in college algebra, the history of education, educational psychology and ethnic minority teaching theory before starting his certification program several years ago. A directory of certification programs sponsored by states and school districts is available for $35 from the National Center for Education Information at (202) 966-8922. A directory of programs offered only by colleges and universities can be ordered from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education at (202) 293-2450. Information on how best to pursue a new career in teaching is available from Recruiting New Teachers, a nonprofit group in Belmont, Mass., at (800) 458-3224, or through the organization's World Wide Web site at www.rnt.org. Recruiting New Teachers also provides a free career counseling service for people | Where the Need for Mr. Chipses, and Ms. Chipses, Is the Greatest |
960452_7 | him a murderer and warning that justice for Mr. Pinelli's death would be meted out not in the courts, but ''on the streets.'' When Mr. Calabresi was gunned down, it was not surprising that many thought the blame lay somewhere in Lotta Continua. And yet until Mr. Marino came forward 16 years later, there was nothing to link the case to Mr. Sofri. ''We wrote what we wrote,'' Mr. Sofri said, ''but in 1972, if you had asked a police officer whether I had been the instigator, they would have laughed. It only became plausible later.'' Yet Mr. Sofri acknowledged that the protest movements, with their aggressive talk of revolution and proletarian justice, did carry the seeds of future violence. ''In those days, we were deliberately careful to consider compassion a weakness,'' he said. ''All humanitarian arguments were seen as alibis for the rich, for the exploiters, and so we made an effort to change the way we were. Even the songs we sang at the time, if taken at their face value, incited to violence. One spoke of Vietnam and said, 'Why speak of peace?' There was great hypocrisy.'' The campaign against Mr. Calabresi was ''a verbally violent campaign,'' Mr. Sofri said, ''although I don't know to what point that violence leads to responsibility for murder.'' ''In one sense it was my responsibility because I was the dominating father figure of Lotta Continua, and in that sense I assume all responsibility,'' he said. Accepting any responsibility at all for the violence has set Mr. Sofri apart from many former comrades, who argue that the violence by the left was justified because it was defending itself from the attacks of a corrupt state. To Mr. Sofri, sitting in jail in Pisa, the debate over a pardon is academic. Not only would it not apply to his case, but in his view, no bill reducing the sentences is likely to win the two-thirds majority needed in Parliament. He said the debate had shown that the old divisions, which 20 years ago caused some Italians to turn to violence, are still there, even if in a milder form. ''Acts of terrorism took place when ideologies were at their most extreme,'' Mr. Sofri said. ''The modern left and right have witnessed the collapse of those ideologies, but that has not diminished the animosities between them. In fact, it has only exasperated the hate.'' | Dispute in Italy Is Conjuring Up Its Terrorist Past |
957604_0 | After years of fitful preparation, negotiations for peace are set to begin in earnest tomorrow in Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army has declared a new cease-fire, the British and Irish Governments seem committed to ending the violent conflict and the largest unionist party, though hesitating, seems likely to participate in the talks in some form. If so, all sides would be present. Whether the citizens of Northern Ireland get the permanent peace they dearly want and clearly deserve depends on whether Protestant and Catholic leaders alike are willing to settle for something less than their ultimate goals. The great effort required to remove the obstacles to these talks has obscured the difficult task ahead, which is nothing less than negotiating an end to the civil strife that has killed 3,200 people in the last 30 years. The talks are scheduled to end in May, although this date may slip if agreement is close. A peace accord would require ratification by the British Parliament and approval of voters in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. The opening positions seem irreconcilable. Protestant leaders, who represent the majority of Northern Ireland's citizens, insist that the union with Britain be maintained and that the I.R.A. permanently stop terrorism. Catholic leaders, including the Sinn Fein representatives now at the negotiating table, have long demanded that the ties with London be severed and Northern Ireland reunited with the rest of Ireland. To break free of this straitjacket, the negotiators should begin by searching for small steps to build confidence and trust. The most urgent is for the nationalists to reassure unionists by relinquishing some of the I.R.A.'s huge stockpile of arms. Sinn Fein was admitted to the talks with the tacit understanding that this would happen as talks proceeded. But last week, the I.R.A. announced that it would not give up any arms until a final settlement was reached. Eventually all sides must disarm. If some early progress can be made, the outline of a possible settlement is visible in a series of documents issued by the British and Irish Governments since 1985. It would keep Northern Ireland part of Britain, while guaranteeing Catholics more equal treatment and closer ties with Ireland. The changes would begin with the devolution of power from the British Parliament to a new local parliament in Northern Ireland, which is also happening in Scotland and Wales. Voting would be weighted | Architecture of an Irish Peace |
957537_3 | years after becoming the world's first national park, Yellowstone was a battleground as the Nez Perce fled Army troops. Had the park been established during the war, perhaps Indian wars could be claimed as a traditional use. When Teddy Roosevelt designated the Grand Canyon a monument in 1908 -- on the very site Mr. Clinton chose for his announcement for the red rock country, the canyon had active mines. But they didn't belong there, Mr. Roosevelt said. ''Leave it as it is,'' he said. ''The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.'' Man-Made Vistas From some cliffs of the Escalante, visitors can see Lake Powell, protected by a national recreation area on one side, a national monument on the other. Some may think the scenery is close to what John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran, saw as he floated the Colorado River filling in the last blank spot on the map of the West. But in fact the lake named for him is a reservoir, created by a dam that many conservationists consider an act of monumental government vandalism. Two of Utah's most-loved tourist destinations, Capitol Reef and Arches national parks, were once national monuments carved from land scarred by mining, cattle grazing and archeological poaching. All of those activities are prohibited now. But visitors to the Utah canyon parks have increased 300 percent in the last decade, and so the land may have been ''saved'' from miners and poachers but it is still heavily used, plenty trampled by what the writer Edward Abbey called industrial tourism. One of the biggest land fights in the West is over what to do with more than five million acres of Federal land in the Southwest. It isn't wilderness, county officials in Utah say, and to back up their point they have bulldozed new roads and designated cattle crossways as major transportation byways. If rural counties keep tearing at the land, environmentalists say, the land won't be worthy of the formal designation of wilderness, defined by statute as ''a place where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.'' Of course, given the way the counties dependent on mining and cattle are going, the communities at the heart of the dispute may soon become ghost towns. The tricky part, for designators of natural treasures, is establishing at what point nature has sufficiently reclaimed them. | The Nation; Wide Open Spaces, but Hardly Untouched |
957484_1 | around, we have some holes we need to fix,'' a Bell Atlantic spokesman, Howard Waterman, said in a cell-phone interview. ''We're not establishing some huge network. We've already got that.'' He said that, pending approval, installations could begin as early as next spring. Each antenna will be three feet long and connected by a wire cord to a bulky case about the size of small ironing board, weighing a total of about 230 pounds. The contract limits widespread installation to smaller, as yet undeveloped models. The city would receive $100 per month for every lamppost, $250 for every traffic pole and $750 for each highway sign, plus bonuses if the devices are installed quickly and a small percentage of the delivery system's market value. The total, city officials say, could amount to millions of dollars. The contraptions, painted to match the host pole, will be some 20 feet above the sidewalk, and some New Yorkers contend that is dangerously close to the street and street-side windows, because the antennas emit microwave radiation. ''These things could be sitting 10 feet from your bedroom window,'' said Peter Hudiberg, a founder of the Cellular Phone Task Force, which is fighting the contract. ''We are extremely concerned about people getting sick and not knowing why.'' While recent health studies conducted for the Federal Communications Commission have found no evidence of danger from radio transmissions, especially the new low-power antennas, Mr. Hudiberg cited studies conducted in Switzerland, Latvia and Australia showing ailments from sleep disorders to childhood leukemia in people who had prolonged exposure to radio and television transmitters. Last week, Mr. Hudiberg's group picketed and circulated petitions in front of City Hall to try to kill the deal. The group has collected some 2,000 signatures and is considering filing a lawsuit, said Curt Rogg-Meltzer, its lawyer. City health officials say that while they understand people's fears, they see no public health risk. ''Clearly, people are concerned when they see something like that appear,'' said a Department of Health spokesman, Fred Winters. ''But these things, these antennas, are safe.'' JESSE McKINLEY NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: NEW YORK UP CLOSE Correction: September 28, 1997, Sunday An article in the Neighborhood Report on Sept. 14 about cellular telephone antennas referred incorrectly to Peter Hudiberg, a member of the Cellular Phone Task Force. He is not a founder of the group. It was founded by Arthur Firstenberg and Pelda Levey. | City May Grow More Wired Still |
957575_0 | Prospects for the Northern Ireland peace effort were clouded today when the largest Protestant party refused to say whether it would attend talks scheduled to start in Belfast on Monday. The hesitation of the Ulster Unionist Party, led by David Trimble, was caused by the refusal of the Irish Republican Army two days ago to pledge to refrain from violence during the talks. They are aimed at a settlement of sectarian fighting, which has killed 3,225 in Northern Ireland since 1969. The I.R.A. refusal came two days after its political wing, Sinn Fein, pledged itself to exclusively democratic, nonviolent methods of attaining its goals at the talks. The I.R.A. and Sinn Fein, both overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, say they are separate organizations, but most people, both Catholic and Protestant, believe the two groups are virtually one in the Republican movement, which wants a united Ireland, free of British control, run by the Dublin Government. Protestant leaders want Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain. The I.R.A. statement meant, in effect, that if the group disagreed with any position reached at the talks, it would be justified in resuming its bombings in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland. On Tuesday Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, promised the chairman of the talks, the American former Senator George J. Mitchell, that he and his party would oppose violence and threats of violence during and after the talks. Then, on Thursday, an I.R.A. spokesman said that the outlawed guerrilla organization had ''problems'' with the nonviolence principles and would not disarm until a final settlement had been reached. Still, the I.R.A. praised the position of Sinn Fein and urged all Republicans to support it. Protestant leaders insist that disarmament begin during the talks. The difference between the positions of the I.R.A. and Sinn Fein was widely seen as proof that they were continuing their familiar two-pronged tactic, one group using violence while the other pursued peace efforts. The I.R.A. statement was also seen as an attempt to provoke the Ulster Unionist Party into boycotting the talks. Smaller Protestant parties have already said they will not attend, and a total Protestant boycott would permit Sinn Fein to claim that although it was ready to negotiate, the Protestants were not. Even so, Mr. Adams did say today that the timing of the I.R.A. statement was ''probably unfortunate.'' On Friday Mr. Trimble, alluding to Mr. Adams and | Unionists, Stung by I.R.A. Move, Hesitate on Attending Talks |
957242_0 | Morris, a former philosophy professor turned corporate consultant, is the author of If Aristotle Ran General Motors. Q: You've spoken to companies like Merrill Lynch, Coca-Cola and Bayer about using Greek philosophy in big business. How does that work? A: I tell people to use the four foundations of excellence -- truth, beauty, goodness and unity -- as a new lens through which a company views a new policy initiative. I tell them to ask: Will this bring about unity or will it bring about disunity? Are we honoring truth here or keeping truth from the people? Bayer had me help them roll out a new ethics and compliance program for 26,000 employees. Q: If a philosophy professor can consult to Fortune 500 companies, can a philosophy major now at least get a job? A: At their best, philosophy majors can be very powerful, creative employees. But in a command-and-control organization -- the model that, for better or worse, most companies still follow -- who wants a creative employee? Q: So? A: Not yet. SUNDAY: SEPTEMBER 14, 1997: QUESTIONS FOR | Tom Morris |
955982_0 | To the Editor: Re your Sept. 3 news article about the attacks by cougars in Mesa Verde National Park, Colo.: We are experiencing a painful growth here, building additional homes and commercial projects in the mountains. Because of the rash of construction, cougars and black bears have been forced from their natural habitat in search of food. Bear sightings are a daily event here in Boulder. The bears are tagged and released the first two times they invade our Dumpsters, but they are killed under a ''three strikes'' program if they return again. The cougar that killed the 10-year-old boy in Rocky Mountain National Park in July was pregnant and starving. The boy was on the cougar's turf at the wrong place and the wrong time. These are very dangerous animals, but more dangerous are the human beings who are trying to disrupt wildlife in its natural surroundings. MATTHEW B. KAUNE Boulder, Colo., Sept. 3, 1997 | Cougars and Humans Can Peacefully Coexist |
955855_0 | Faced with a 150-pound cougar, what is a 50-pound child supposed to do? In Denver's mountain suburbs, children are learning the answers in school from pamphlets like ''Living with Wildlife in Lion Country.'' After years of explaining cougar attacks on humans with tut-tutting about people intruding into cougar habitat, it is dawning on Westerners that the cougar population is hitting a historic high and the cats are returning to areas long ago taken from them. In Colorado in July, a cougar attacked a 4-year-old boy in Mesa Verde National Park, an area settled by Indians around 550 A.D. A few days later, a cougar attacked and killed a 10-year-old boy in Rocky Mountain National Park, where as long ago as 1933, park records show, nearly 300,000 people toured the park. In Colorado's roughly 150 years of written history, the only two fatal attacks on people by cougars have taken place in the 1990's. And while cougars in the state killed an average of 60 sheep a year in the 1980's, today they kill about 1,200 a year. Cougars live primarily off deer and elk, which have increased in numbers to 800,000 in Colorado today, from 80,000 in 1900. The mountain lions are estimated to have increased at least 10-fold, numbering about 3,000 now. And they have followed the deer and elk into suburbia. In Boulder, residents report cougars studying their backyards. In Evergreen, parents arm children with whistles and discourage them from going into the pine forests alone. So what is a child supposed to do, facing a cougar? Don't run -- that triggers the cat's attack reflex. Back away slowly. Make a lot of noise. And throw up your jacket and arms to look bigger. JAMES BROOKE August 31-Sept. 6 | Big Cats Make a Comeback |
955751_1 | talking is so loud she cannot hear her messages. And while the speech is distinct, the language used by the speakers is unknown to her, so that she cannot understand what is being said. Perplexed and also a bit annoyed, Ms. Lagunoff recently decided to do a little detective work, logging the times when most of the interference took place and then looking out of her window to see what, if anything, was happening at those hours. She thus discovered what she thought might be a correlation: taxis clustering at a small grocery across the street, near the Avenue of the Americas. A closer look determined that most of the drivers appeared to be Indian or Pakistani, which would explain why she might not be able to understand what they said. But still, she wondered: Why would there be voices on an answering machine and nowhere else? (She has a cordless phone that is not affected. She does not know if any neighbors have had similar experiences.) Could the cabbies really be the solution to the mystery? Yes, Liza, indeed it could. According to Scott Wells, the technical manager at E. C. Electronics, a Sony-authorized repair shop in midtown, the drivers are by far the most likely culprits. He said he had heard about this problem many times before and that he had even heard comparable voices on his television set. ''Many taxi drivers use citizens band radios,'' he said. ''And many of these have their power boosted illegally by linear amplifiers.'' Noting the many New York cabs that sport long telltale whip antennas attached to their trunks, he said it was not uncommon for them to broadcast at 15 or even 50 watts. The legal limit is 5 watts, Mr. Wells said, but it is rarely enforced. As a result, ''Anything that's electronic can pick up the signals,'' Mr. Wells said. Variables determining which appliance get the signal include the placement of the device, the length of the power cord connecting it and the degree to which it is shielded. A trip to 16th Street last week confirmed the presence of the taxis, some with the antennas Mr. Wells described. But the cabdrivers gathered nearby wouldn't admit or deny that they used CB radios. In fact, they didn't want to talk at all. At least, not without their radios they didn't. BERNARD STAMLER NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CHELSEA -- NEIGHBORHOOD MYSTERY | The Case of the Ghostly Answering Machine |
955775_0 | FIVE years of work -- writing, producing, directing and selling my independent feature film, ''Delinquent'' -- was finally coming to fruition early last month. Just a few weeks remained before the premiere, barely time to complete a distinguished site on the World Wide Web, conduct interviews and begin grass-roots promotions in New York and Los Angeles. Fade into nightmare: WEDNESDAY, AUG. 6 I click on Earthlink, my Internet service provider, but the system fails to recognize my password. When I call customer support, a supervisor tells me curtly that my account has been closed and that E-mail sent to me is being returned. But why? ''You know what you did,'' he replies. ''You illegally accessed another provider's server.'' I gradually elicit that Earthlink's ''abuse'' section has flagged me as a ''spammer'' (someone who sends vast amounts of unsolicited E-mail) and that I have compounded the offense by illegally tapping into America Online's equipment. The abuse section, he says, cannot be reached by phone or fax. I am shut down, even though all my letterheads and business cards invite people to send me E-mail via Earthlink. In other words, my communications, my Web site and my work are all in jeopardy. But Earthlink has blamed the wrong party. Although my family tree includes Cyrus W. Field, who linked Europe and America by telegraph, I have never even logged onto a bulletin board. In June, Earthlink reproved me for soliciting too much technical support. Now it thinks I'm a wily hacker? My further calls provoke a demand to stop ''wasting'' the company's time, but I get the name of my accuser and send him an overnight letter. I also call Wired magazine and detail my problem to a reporter for Wired News, its daily Internet report. By now I've begun to wonder why Earthlink is so certain of my guilt. The message I supposedly sent must somehow implicate me. Has someone hacked into my mailbox and spammed a phony promotion for my film? I can't sleep. THURSDAY, AUG. 7 Wired News telephones me to say that the abuse-section official is awaiting my call. At last, I think, Earthlink can investigate and restore my service before more damage occurs! But the official seems delighted to have nabbed me, and flatly insists that I spammed America Online at 3 A.M. Aug. 1. As I protest and plead, he snaps: ''This is an F.B.I.-level problem.'' | They Shut Down My E-Mail: Diary of a Virtual Prisoner |
955899_0 | Three years ago, the Irish Republican Army put into effect the cease-fire that eventually led to the British Government's historic decision last week to invite Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political wing, to take part in formal peace talks. The invitation to the talks, which are to resume Sept. 15, was immediately accepted, raising hopes across this British province for a peaceful settlement of the violence between the Protestant majority and the Roman Catholic minority that has killed 3,225 people since 1969. There was no overt elation in the streets as the news spread. But many more people than usual seemed to be staying late in downtown Belfast -- shopping, dining, strolling apparently without fear that Protestant or Catholic marauders would be out looking for someone to kill. The possibility of renewed violence, though, still hovers over Northern Ireland, where the historical pessimism often prevails. People remember that the I.R.A. broke its 17-month cease-fire in January 1996 and did not restore it until July 20 this year. Many are aware that with the British invitation, the I.R.A. representatives will be at the negotiating table for the first time since the violence erupted 28 years ago. But many also know that the last Irish Republican leader to make a deal with the British was Michael Collins. He had masterminded the violent anti-British campaign that resulted in the 1921 treaty that gave southern Ireland independence, while leaving the six counties of the North under British sovereignty. For his troubles, as people here say, Collins was shot dead by a sniper in the Irish civil war, fought after independence, because the Sinn Fein leadership felt the treaty establishing partition was a sellout. Today's Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, is aware, of course, that if he makes a deal with the British this time, he may be a target for hard-line Republicans. They feel he has sold out the Republican cause, the ultimate goal of which is to force Britain to relinquish power here. Mr. Adams promises to press at the talks for a united Ireland free of British control, run by the Dublin Government. But he knows that he will not achieve this in the coming negotiations. In a recent Belfast radio program a caller told Mr. Adams he would be ''over the moon'' with joy if Mr. Adams were killed. With grim humor, Mr. Adams responded that the caller would have | The Peaceful Face-Off in Ulster |
955647_4 | features that can make the door locks pop up and and the trunk pop open remotely, from the outside, then you've got something. The ability to start your engine remotely is also becoming very popular. You can stand up to 50 feet away from your car, push a button, and the engine starts itself. In the winter, when your car's outside, you can warm the engine for 10 or 15 minutes before you leave. The heater is left on, and the car is warm and comfortable when you get in. It's the same in the summer with air-conditioning. These features are all incorporated in alarm systems today. Q. How did you enter the cellular telephone business? A. Back in late 1983 people started talking about these new cellular telephones that were manufactured by Motorola. We were heavily involved in the auto-sound business, but we could see it was going to have a limited future because, increasingly, manufacturers were shipping cars with complete accessory packages. We thought the cell-phone business was a natural for us, because in those days all of these phones were for the car. There were no portables until six or seven years ago. And who was best suited to install phones in cars? The guys who were installing the radios. They had facilities -- the garages, the installers. I'd always thought cars and communications were the two things Americans were most in love with, and here was a perfect setup. So we went to Japan and established a relationship with Toshiba. In 1985 they started supplying phones under the Audiovox brand. Now we work with Toshiba and other overseas manufacturers. Q. How many Americans own cell phones? A. Right now there are 45 million subscribers, and that number is expected to reach or exceed 50 million by the end of this year. Ninety percent of cell phones sold today are portable, not car phones, though we still carry both products. Q. How much do they cost? A. In the very beginning cell phones sold for around $3,000. They came down quickly, to $1,500, then $1,200. Today we sell some mobile units for as low as $115. Cell phones are the only product in the world whose retail price is less than the manufacturing cost, because phone companies are willing to subsidize the price to get you to sign on for a one-year contract. So they will buy | With a Fine Eye for Trends in Electronics |
955964_0 | THE United States Tennis Association is preparing to play Robin Hood, taking $31.4 million of its profits from the corporate shrimp-eaters in the luxury boxes and teaching the masses to play. The officials hope to play Johnny Appleseed to segments of the American population not normally associated with tennis. The words ''diversity'' and ''minority'' come to mind. Meanwhile, the last two standing Yanks in the United States Open happened to be an African-American and a Chinese-American -- as red white and blue as soul music and sesame noodles. Tennis must be doing something right, to have long outdistanced the country-club image. It may take a village to raise a child, but the fact is that the two Yanks who made it to the final weekend are products of the most tennis-friendly unit there is -- the family. Venus Williams, who plays Martina Hingis of Switzerland in today's women's final, has a strong family behind her. So does Michael Chang, who was bounced by Patrick Rafter of Australia, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4, in yesterday's second men's semifinal. All players need somebody in their corner. This came home to me the other day watching a friend escort her daughter through a junior tournament, keeping track of details: Are you O.K.? When is the next match? Will you eat something? Who is going to look at that callous? And say, ''I'm proud of you, win or lose.'' The Williamses and the Changs also did it the old-fashioned way, with supervision and rules and values. (Note to Dan Quayle: Family values can come from one person. Quite often do.) What the last two Yanks have in common, beside coming from identifiable minorities, is their mental and emotional strength. Oh, yes, and their religious faith, in this case Christian. Much has been made of the eccentricities of the Williamses. The patriarch of the clan, who likes to be called King Richard, has been home in Florida, teaching tennis to other black children and apparently appearing at a dog show on Friday. He labeled his daughter's resourceful 163-minute victory over Irina Spirlea ''a victory for the ghetto.'' However, King Richard did nobody proud yesterday with his claims that the collision between his daughter and Spirlea on Friday was a racial incident and he called Spirlea ''a big tall white turkey.'' If this is part of his values, it is not attractive. Venus was accompanied by her mother, | Where Are Brewster And Buffy? |
958772_1 | that Mr. Gigante, 69, is mentally competent to be sent to prison and that he has long feigned insanity. The 18-page report on Mr. Gigante's mental condition was prepared by Dr. Peter M. Barboriak, a staff psychiatrist at the Federal prison hospital in Butner, N.C., where Mr. Gigante, who was not at the hearing in District Court in Brooklyn, has been confined since his conviction, and by Dr. Mark Hazelrigg, a consulting psychologist there. The report says the results of Mr. Gigante's six-week examination point to ''moderate to severe impairment in memory functioning'' and other mental limitations that are ''indicative of dementia of mild to moderate severity.'' But citing two caveats, the report says, ''The diagnosis of dementia is made provisionally.'' ''In addition to manifesting genuine cognitive deficits,'' it says, ''we believe that Mr. Gigante also periodically exaggerated the degree of his impairment during the course of this and probably previous hospitalizations.'' In fact, the report adds, some of Mr. Gigante's responses during evaluations were ''consistent with a diagnosis of malingering,'' which they defined as intentionally producing ''false or grossly exaggerated psychological symptoms motivated by external incentives, in this case avoiding criminal prosecution.'' The doctors also noted that the cognitive defects that they observed could have been caused by Mr. Gigante's use of sleep and anti-anxiety medications. A lawyer for Mr. Gigante, Michael Marinaccio, said after the hearing although ''one would almost term this report schizophrenic,'' and although ''there is a lot of hedging by the Government doctors,'' the report largely supports the defense argument that Mr. Gigante has severe mental illness and needs treatment. But at the court hearing, an assistant United States attorney in Brooklyn, Daniel Dorsky, read from the part of the report that details possible malingering to support the prosecution's argument. The differing responses by the defense and the prosecution reflected a continuation of a seven-year battle over Mr. Gigante's mental fitness. The clash was renewed yesterday as the judge in the case, Jack B. Weinstein, began a series of hearings in connection with Mr. Gigante's scheduled sentencing, which he said would be on Nov. 6 if he ruled that Mr. Gigante was competent to be sent to prison. The judge noted that Federal guidelines called for a term of 22 to 27 years, but that he could impose substantially less than the minimum based on ''physical and other considerations.'' Mr. Gigante has severe heart ailments. | Federal Doctors' Report Appears to Say Gigante May Be Mentally Ill |
958675_2 | erase all the old dividing lines: between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art, not to mention art and life. That said, change in art never really comes about because barriers are broken but rather because they are gradually nudged out of the way. And the show prompts the thought that we might actually want to rephrase Rauschenberg's achievement, which hasn't been so much to undo what came before him as to recognize how it could be elaborated on. This doesn't mean only the works of Duchamp, Schwitters and Cornell, the obvious suspects. It also means artists whom he is often said to have rejected, even vandalized, like de Kooning and Barnett Newman. ''Automobile Tire Print'' of 1953, for instance, is the result of Cage's driving the inked tire of a Model A Ford over 20 sheets of white paper, connected like a Chinese scroll. Was Rauschenberg mocking Newman's famous ''zip'' paintings? Or was he expanding on Newman's art, which, to grasp properly its scale, demanded that a viewer walk past it, as if it were sculpture? I think the tire print can be imagined as neatly representing this movement across the picture, transforming Newman's zip, an abstract line with spiritual pretensions, into an artifact of everyday culture, which, for Rauschenberg, had its own transcendent dimension. A restless man with a compulsion to see the world, Rauschenberg made images of cars and spaceships, even real tires and bicycles, into leitmotifs of his art. And gradually he carried the notion of movement to its logical but unforeseen conclusion in dance and performance. His black paintings and red paintings of the early 50's suggest another kind of evolution. They are monochromatic, improvisatory pictures with roiling, bubbled surfaces made from the torn scraps of newspapers embedded in paint. People call them parodies of de Koonings or Pollocks, though before Rauschenberg, de Kooning, himself a parodist, had incorporated bits of newspapers as flotsam in pictures, and Pollock stuck cigarette butts to canvases. The gap between what they did and what Rauschenberg did wasn't really so big, until, of course, he took the mix of collage with Abstract Expressionism to the extremes of ''Canyon'' (attaching a stuffed bald eagle to a canvas), ''Monogram'' (the notorious stuffed Angora goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel) and ''Bed'' (quilt, sheet | Clowning Inventively With Stuff Of Beauty |
957058_0 | Under the old law, children could qualify for disability payments if they suffered from a single extreme disability, like an I.Q. below 60, or from a combination of less extreme problems, like an I.Q. in the 60's along with cerebral palsy, rendering the child incapable of functioning like other children of the same age. Congress concluded that these functional standards were lax and, despite Government studies to the contrary, many critics also believed the standards were subject to fraud and abuse. The Administration interpreted some loose language in last year's law and the accompanying conference report to mean that only children with extreme disabilities could qualify. It expects the new rules to knock out about 135,000 of the 260,000 children whose status will be reviewed. In answer to critics who charge that the new rules are overly harsh, the Administration points out that it expects to disqualify 50,000 fewer children than the Congressional Budget Office expected. But Jonathan Stein of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, an advocacy group for low-income families, points to chilling anecdotes. Under the new rules a child suffering from cerebral palsy, learning problems and depression was disqualified, as was a mentally retarded child infected with the AIDS virus and suffering from chronic multiple infections. Social Security officials say these decisions, if wrong, do not reflect bad rules but rather aberrant judgments that are the unavoidable consequence of reviewing hundreds of thousands of cases in a matter of months. Even if that were true in these particular cases, there are compelling reasons for the Administration to rethink its rules. For starters, key senators from both parties, including John Chafee of Rhode Island and Tom Daschle, the minority leader, have written the Administration to challenge its interpretation of the welfare act. Nowhere, they point out, does the act say that children must have extreme disabilities to qualify for cash aid. Many senators say that the 1996 law called for eligibility criteria tougher than the old law's, but less tough than the Administration's. Another disturbing fact is that about 70 percent of the families that have appealed decisions to strip them of disability aid have won their challenges. That suggests the review process is riddled with error. Unfortunately, too few families take advantage of their right to appeal. Mr. Apfel, once confirmed, needs to quickly decide if further reviews should be put on hold while his office checks what | Mercy for Disabled Children |
959127_0 | Before congress intervened, public schooling for disabled children ranged from dismal to truly barbaric. As recently as the 1970's, they could be found strapped into their chairs and screaming, in conditions reminiscent of the Dark Ages. The picture changed with the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 -- since renamed the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act -- which ordered the states to provide disabled children with ''a free, appropriate public education.'' The effort to comply has been hellishly expensive, and disabled students still fail or drop out more often than they succeed. But even with its problems, special education is spectacularly better than in the bad old days. Children who would once have been institutionalized or shut out of school are now educated under conditions that are enviable -- even by affluent suburban standards. In New York City, for example, classes for regular students routinely exceed 35 students, with an overtaxed teacher who finds it difficult enough to learn the students' names. Depending on the disability, special-education classes can have as few as six children, tended by a teacher and as many as two teacher's aides. Children for whom public special education is judged to be inadequate -- or whose parents have sued the school for failing to follow Federal law -- are frequently sent to excellent private schools, with tuition and transportation costs paid by the state. Faced with skyrocketing costs and wildly uneven results, nearly two-thirds of the states are sketching out plans to limit special-education spending. Most hope to save money by pushing disabled children out of the small, specialized classes that many of them need to succeed and into crowded, ill-equipped classrooms where they will compete with nondisabled peers. The process -- often called mainstreaming or inclusion -- is being justified by the civil rights notion that segregation of any kind is damaging and that diversity is an indisputable social good. Researchers have yet to prove that mainstreaming is beneficial -- or even that it does no harm. Still, educators who have watched children flourish in specialized settings are being urged to send them into regular classes. By dragging these children indiscriminately into the mainstream, we may actually be discarding them again -- only this time in full public view. About five and a half million children -- between 11 and 12 percent of the school population -- are categorized as disabled. The U.S. | Special Education Is Not A Scandal |
947139_0 | FROM 1948 to 1971, nearly five million pregnant women in this country were treated with a synthetic estrogen-like drug, DES (short for diethylstilbestrol), in the mistaken belief that it would help prevent miscarriages and premature deliveries. The legacy of this misguided treatment for the girls born of such pregnancies has been well established through studies conducted over more than a quarter-century. First came the shocking finding in 1971 of a rare vaginal cancer occurring in young girls exposed prenatally to DES. Further studies linked the drug to a number of anatomical abnormalities in the daughters of treated women that could cause menstrual dysfunction, infertility, ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, premature births and stillbirths. Women treated with DES have also been found to face a small but significant increase in their risk of developing breast cancer. But what about the one million to three million boys born to mothers treated with DES during their pregnancies? Perhaps because the effects on boys of prenatal exposure to DES are less dramatic than a thousandfold increase in cancer risk or readily apparent fertility problems, relatively little research has focused on the health of those offspring. In fact, most men who were exposed to DES in utero have never been told about it; for many, it may be too late to find out. Can the memories of their mothers, if they are still alive, be relied upon? If not, can the medical records of the pregnancy be obtained? Further studies of DES sons could help provide answers to questions about the effects on unborn children of environmental estrogen-like compounds because millions of pregnant women are unavoidably exposed to such substances. Could these be at least partly responsible for the declining fertility of American men and their increasing risk of genital cancers? Effects on DES Sons In 1992, Congress appropriated funds for research and public education on the effects of prenatal DES, which led to the publication of eight consumer education booklets under the auspices of the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. At long last, a ninth booklet, called ''DES Sons,'' has been issued. It summarizes the known and suspected hazards of prenatal DES exposure for men, who now range in age from their mid-20's to late 40's. ''Many people, including some doctors, do not know that men can be affected by DES exposure before birth,'' the booklet says. It | Personal Health |
945633_1 | is a new State Department report on the persecution of Christian groups abroad. The study's emphasis on religious intolerance is heartening. But the purpose of the project has less to do with changing American policy toward repressive countries than scoring political points at home. The suppression of Christian groups is an important problem that has received insufficient attention from Washington. As the report makes clear, the exercise of religious freedom, and Christian beliefs in particular, is discouraged in numerous countries. China is a leading offender, but the roll call of nations that lack full religious rights includes Russia, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia, to name only a few. The State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has provided an unsparing description of abuses against Christians, including the banning of worship services and the arrest of church leaders. While China gets extensive treatment and a deservedly harsh evaluation, the report by no means rests predominantly on its China section. American friends like Saudi Arabia and Russia are criticized, and even Germany and France are tweaked for hostility toward Christian sects, including Jehovah's Witnesses. Boris Yeltsin yesterday courageously vetoed a new law that would severely limit religious freedom in Russia. Unfortunately, the whole exercise is diminished by the transparent politicking that surrounds it. The review was ordered by Congress to satisfy politically influential Christian groups. The report opens with a grandiose summary of executive branch actions to promote religious freedom abroad that seems primarily intended for the same domestic audience. Now that one faith has been singled out for review, others may press for similar treatment. While much may be learned from these reports, there is a practical limit to how many studies of this kind the State Department can conduct. Washington's human rights reports are themselves a form of pressure on abusive governments, but they cannot substitute for more direct action. It is one thing for Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to reaffirm the vital importance of religious freedom, as she does in a foreword to the Christian report. It is quite another matter to use American diplomatic and economic leverage to press for human rights and religious tolerance, something the Clinton Administration has not always done, especially with China. Having gone to the trouble of assembling all this information, it would be nice if the Administration unequivocally made human rights a centerpiece of American foreign policy. | Diplomacy and Religious Tyranny |
942957_2 | given the opportunity to create a situation resulting in major civil disorder with a possible loss of life.'' Tonight Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, said of the Orange statement, ''I welcome this decision; I wish it had been made sooner.'' In Dublin, the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, said that the decision was a ''very positive gesture'' and that he hoped Catholic leaders would respond in kind. Sir John Alderdice, head of the Alliance Party, a 60-40 mix of Protesants and Catholics, said the decision required courage. ''A profound sigh of relief will go across every responsible voice in Northern Ireland,''he said. There was no immediate reaction from the Catholic community groups opposed to the parades. Generally, the groups are led by men who have close ties to Sinn Fein and, in two cases, by former I.R.A. men who have served time in British prisons for terrorist crimes. Normally, they alter their tactics to reflect Mr. Adams's attitude. Last Sunday a Protestant parade through a Catholic area of Portatown, southwest of Belfast, provoked three days of violent Catholic protest throughout the province. Dozens of police officers and civilians were injured; trains, buses and private cars were hijacked and burned; Catholic demonstrators threw hundreds of flaming bottles of gasoline at the police, who responded by firing heavy plastic bullets. Property damage was estimated at $30 million. Catholics attributed the rioting to the British Government's decision to permit the Portadown parade; they rejected the reasoning of the head of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Ronnie Flanagan, who said the permit was intended to save lives. Mr. Flanagan implied that many Catholics would have been endangered by Protestant attacks if he had canceled the parade. Britain's Secretary for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, declined to cancel the parade and supported Mr. Flanagan, and was villified by local Catholic community leaders. Catholics who live along Lower Ormeau Road, in the south of Belfast, had been particularly adamant that ''no orange feet'' would march past their houses this Saturday. The residents recalled that at the parade five years ago, passing Orangemen taunted them by holding up five fingers as a reminder that Protestant paramilitaries had once murdered five Catholics, not during a parade, but at the Sean Graham bookmaking office, which is a few yards from the route. Last year, security forces imposed a virtual curfew on the area until the parade passed, without serious incident. | Protestants in Ulster Call Off Parades in Catholic Areas |
944057_0 | In a deal that allies two of the most influential families in the nation's sugar industry, Savannah Foods and Industries announced yesterday that it would merge with the domestic sugar operations of Flo-Sun Inc., the private holding company of the Fanjul family of Florida. The resulting public company, to be called Florida Crystals, will have annual revenues of about $1.5 billion, assets of about $1 billion, and a grip on the sugar market that will reach from cane fields in Florida to sugar canisters in kitchens across America. No valuation was put on the deal, which remains subject to approval by Savannah Foods shareholders. If yesterday's stock market reaction is any indicator, however, some of those shareholders took a sour view of the deal. The stock lost $2.9375 a share to close at $15.75 on the New York Stock Exchange, Though the value of the stock swap remained uncertain, some professional investors complained that the deal did not adequately reflect the inherent strength of Savannah Foods, whose stock price had been deflated by erratic earnings and a lack of Wall Street analyst attention. One of the largest sugar refiners in the country, Savannah Foods is perhaps best known for its Dixie Crystals sugar brand, which has a market share of more than 80 percent in the Southeastern United States and 20 percent nationally. The company was founded by Benjamin Oxnard and Dick Sprague, sugar planters who moved their refining business from Louisiana to Savannah, Ga., in 1917. William W. Sprague 3d, the current president and chief executive, is the eighth generation of the Oxnard and Sprague families to be involved in company management. As president, he succeeded his father, an influential spokesman for the sugar industry as chairman of its trade organization from 1976 to 1981. Flo-Sun, founded in 1960 by an exiled family that had dominated the sugar industry in pre-revolutionary Cuba since the 19th century, also brings a substantial business and potent political connections to the marriage. The company's domestic sugar business, based in Palm Beach, encompasses more than 180,000 acres of cane fields in Florida, three sugar mills and a rice mill to handle the rice produced as a rotation crop for the sugar fields. The family's sugar operations and resort property in the Dominican Republic and some domestic property are not included in the proposed merger. Two sons of the founder of the United States operation, | Sugar Families Plan Merger Of Flo-Sun and Savannah |
944035_0 | OEDIPUS ON THE ROAD By Henry Bauchau 240 pages. Arcade. $24.95. In this novel, translated from the French, the Belgian writer Henry Bauchau imagines the chapter in the story of Oedipus left unwritten by the divine Sophocles. The Athenian playwright, of course, carved two great plays from the Oedipus story: one, the searing revelation in Thebes that Oedipus was his father's murderer and the husband of his mother; and the other, his moral resurrection in Colonus many years later. In between came the years of wandering, the self-blinded Oedipus, abandoned by everyone but the faithful Antigone, driven from Thebes, and that is the part of the story told by Mr. Bauchau. Along the way, Mr. Bauchau, a psychoanalyst as well as a novelist, depicts the fallen king demonstrating his heroic qualities and forging once again mystic chords of human attachment. His Oedipus rages against the elements, stumbling ahead despite his blindness, driven by the overpowering desire for an escape into solitude. Slowly, in Mr. Bauchau's account, he accepts the love of Antigone, his daughter-sister, and becomes powerfully attached to a second companion, a Hercules-like warrior named Clius who like Oedipus himself suffered a grim fate he did not deserve. Besides Jean Cocteau, who wrote the libretto for Stravinsky's operatic Oedipus, few writers of lasting importance have taken up Sophocles' great story. Mr. Bauchau's effort attracts attention merely for his temerity in undertaking the challenge. But it must also be said that any writer who sets out to reinterpret so canonical a tale needs to be very good, and in this respect Mr. Bauchau does not measure up to the grandeur of the task. Part of the problem is that the writing in ''Oedipus on the Road,'' which was translated by Anne-Marie Glasheen, is pedestrian to the point of tediousness. The ordinariness of the writing suggests another failing of the book, which is that it does not provide much in the way of a deeper understanding of the titanic themes of the Oedipus story: fate and freedom, character and responsibility, loyalty and expediency. Mr. Bauchau starts with Oedipus, his eyes ''beginning to heal,'' having a dream in which an eagle swoops down on its prey, the prey being Oedipus himself. He decides to escape the political intrigue at Thebes in which his brother-in-law, Creon, and his sons, Eteocles and Polynices, are plotting against him. Mr. Bauchau quickly establishes the bleakness of | Oedipus Complexities: Filling In Sophoclean Gaps |
944132_0 | After tinkering with computer models for more than a year, the Clinton Administration predicted today that measures to combat the growth of global warming by limiting the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat from the sun would have a far less dramatic effect on the economy than had been projected by industries opposed to restraints on energy use. The Administration's analysis opens what is expected to be a long campaign between now and the end of the year, when international negotiations are scheduled to conclude in Kyoto, Japan, to build support for a proposed binding treaty to limit the emissions of those kinds of gases. Any measures to reverse the steady growth in such emissions, mostly given off by burning fossil fuels to operate cars and generate electricity and heat, would probably involve the biggest Federal intervention in energy markets since oil-exporting countries raised oil prices substantially in the 1970's. But the Administration's computer models suggested that the economic side effects would be only half as severe as those projected in a recent study by economists at Charles River Associates for the American Petroleum Institute, a lobbying group for fuel producers. Critics who say the Administration is moving too fast on global warming have warned that mines and factories would close, inflation would rise and productivity would fall. But another school of thought holds that energy conservation can pay for itself and that new technologies can be found, offering major economic gains, not to mention the benefits of limiting global warming and its potentially serious effects. As the Administration tries to decide how fast and how far to cut those gas emissions, the question of the treaty's economic effect is being asked with increasing urgency in Congress, which has ultimate authority over the country's energy policy. In addition, any treaty would have to be submitted to the Senate for ratification. In a staff paper released today, the White House said tough action on such gas emissions might, over the next few decades, shave a fraction of a percent from the nation's economic growth, followed by a recovery -- or might, if implemented cleverly, have a barely discernible effect or even a net economic benefit. ''It just boils down to this,'' Janet Yellen, chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said at a hearing of the House Commerce committee. ''If we do it dumb, it could cost | White House Begins Push for New Global Warming Pact |
945814_0 | The main Protestant political parties voted today to reject a proposal by the British and Irish Governments on the methods and timing for disarming the Irish Republican Army and Protestant paramilitary groups. But British and Irish officials, who expected the decision, said that the setback would not kill Northern Ireland peace negotiations, pointing out that the largest Protestant party, the Ulster Unionist Party, has pledged to continue to work with the Government on a compromise. The cease-fire announced by the I.R.A., which went into effect Sunday, is expected to gain Sinn Fein, its political wing, a place in formal peace talks that are to reconvene on Sept. 15. Sinn Fein's position is that the I.R.A. will not disarm until a full political settlement is reached at the talks. But the Protestant unionists, representing about 57 percent of the population of this British province, wanted the I.R.A., which is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, to start to disarm once the talks began. The proposal the Protestant parties rejected today says only that the issue of disarmament would be discussed during the talks, with no guarantee of actual disarmament. The chairman of the peace talks, George J. Mitchell, a former Senator from Maine, said in an interview tonight that despite the setback, he thought a compromise on disarmament was possible. ''The Governments have made clear their determination to move to substantive negotiations by Sept. 15,'' he said. ''I think that will happen. The largest political party in Northern Ireland, which is also the largest unionist party, the Ulster Unionist Party, has made it clear that while it would not support the Governments on decommissioning today, they are nonetheless to remain in the talks and to try to move them forward. So while the failure of the Governments' plan to win approval today is a setback, I don't think it will have any long-lasting impact.'' Mo Mowlam, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, was also optimistic. ''It's not a disaster,'' she said. ''It's a setback.'' She said she would work for a compromise before talks reconvene. Voting against the proposal were the Ulster Unionist Party, led by David Trimble, the Democratic Unionist Party and the UK Unionist party. Two smaller Protestant parties, with links to paramilitary groups, abstained. The Social Democratic Labor Party, a predominantly Catholic mainstream party, voted in favor as did several smaller groups. Seamus Mallon, a Member of Parliament in Britain and a leader | Ulster Protestants Reject Disarmament Bid |
940780_1 | wolves in Yellowstone National Park. He solidified his reputation soon after arriving here by leading the Druids in a territorial raid on a longer-established wolf family, the Crystal Creek pack. The Druids killed the opposing alpha male and all his young offspring, banished the bleeding adult survivors to another part of the park and took over their den. They sealed the takeover with a group howl. Since then the pack has killed two more adult wolves, earning it nicknames like the Pack from Hell and the Dreadful Druids. ''They are a bunch of hoodlums,'' Dr. Smith said. But that is only one part of the continuing story of the Yellowstone wolves, a tale of family loyalty, clan warfare and over-all population expansion whose twists and turns will largely determine the future of this most charismatic of all endangered species in America. In an enterprise that has restored the only missing piece to Yellowstone's renowned array of big mammal species, 41 wolves have been transplanted to the park from western Canada and northern Montana since January 1995, and they and their offspring have produced an estimated 60 to 70 pups. (The exact number will not be known until early winter, when this year's pups are nearly grown and a better count can be made.) Since the program started, 10 pups and 10 adults have died from various causes. Here, on an open and easily accessible stage, the day-to-day struggles that determine long-term evolutionary dominance are on unusually clear display. And in this arena it turns out that for all their aggression, the Druids have so far been eclipsed by another group, the Rose Creek pack, and especially by its central figure. She is an aging, long-suffering, charcoal-colored alpha female,called Rosie by some, Mom or Big Mama by others, but simply Nine (the number assigned to her when she was transported from Canada in 1995) by most. Nine is the undisputed matriarch of Yellowstone wolfdom. With seven adult members, her pack is the largest of nine in and around the park. Only 30 months after the first wolves were transplanted here, there may be as many as 100 ranging freely hereabouts. If things keep going this way, Federal officials say, it may be possible to take the wolves off the Federal endangered list by 2001, ahead of the projected schedule. More than any other Yellowstone wolf, Nine is responsible for this success: | As the Wolf Turns: A Saga of Yellowstone |
940775_0 | WHILE conservationists have long worked to protect rain forests, they have tended to ignore their ragged edges, where scattered clumps of woodlands give way to neighboring habitats. But researchers have found evidence that these patchy transition zones between habitats, known as ecotones, may have an unrecognized value, possibly serving as the birthplace of the prized biodiversity of the rain forests. Based on a study of birds known as little greenbuls, in Cameroon, scientists report evidence that the patches of rain forest in these ecotones are evolutionary hotbeds, sites of intense natural selection that can drive the evolution of new forms of organisms that may eventually end up in the neighboring deep rain forest. By discovering what may be species-generating regions alongside the rain forest, researchers have provided a new scenario to explain the longstanding mystery of how the world's many tropical species in rain forests -- animals, plants and others -- evolved. And conservationists, who have assumed that by protecting tracts of continuous rain forest that they were also protecting the evolutionary forces that generated the species within them, may have to think again. ''This is a wake-up call,'' said Dr. Thomas B. Smith, an evolutionary biologist at San Francisco State University, who headed a team of four that produced the new study, published on June 20 in the journal Science. It is easy to dismiss these habitats as neither pure rain forest nor pure savannah, he said. ''But if we don't stop ignoring these transition areas, we may be preserving the pattern of biodiversity, but not the processes that produce it,'' Dr. Smith said. Calling the study ''convincing,'' Dr. Dolph Schluter, an evolutionary biologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said it was ''a significant step in the attempt to understand the generation of variation, the variety of biodiversity.'' Natural historians have long known that ecotones often harbor unusual forms of species. Dr. Smith learned the same thing himself in earlier work while capturing birds in forest patches in the ecotone and in the deep forest and noticing how very different the birds in these closely adjoining habitats appeared. To understand why ecotones were so often home to unusual looking populations in a number of species, Dr. Smith said he and his colleagues had begun studying the little greenbul, an abundant, dull-green, robin-sized bird that feeds on fruits and insects in the forest. They examined birds living | Rain Forest Fringes May Harbor the Engine of Evolution |
940862_0 | Under the cover of an October night in 1776, Benedict Arnold led a daring escape by a tiny colonial fleet that had been pounded hard by the British during a battle on Lake Champlain. Oars muffled with greased rags, his men rowed between blockading British vessels. One of the 15 ships, ''missing in action for 221 years,'' has been found on the lake bottom, Art Cohn, director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, announced at a news conference here today. Found with sonar, the gunboat has not yet been identified by name. Mr. Cohn said the ship was similar to the gunboat Philadelphia, which was found in Lake Champlain in 1935. That ship has been on display at the Smithsonian Institution since 1965. ''This is a Philadelphia-class gunboat,'' Mr. Cohn said in an interview. ''We know that two ships were lost during the nighttime retreat. One was captured by the British as a prize. The other sank, and this is it. It's sitting on the bottom just as if it were sailing. The main mast and the top mast are in place, although the top six feet of the top mast are broken and hanging down.'' What is more, he said, ''the bow gun, a 12-pound cannon, is still in place, as is the rudder, although the tiller is missing.'' The significance of the battle near Valcour Island, Mr. Cohn said, is that a British plan to split the rebellious colonies by invading from Canada was delayed a full year. When the invasion began in 1777, the Colonial Army was prepared, leading to the British defeat at the Battle of Saratoga. Arnold later switched sides, giving the British information about the colonists' plans. The ship was found as a result of a continuing sonar scan of the entire lake bottom, a joint project of the museum, Middlebury College and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, among others. The survey has turned up ''dozens of 19th-century shipwrecks as well as this 18th century vessel,'' Mr. Cohn said. The study has been given urgency by the proliferation of zebra mussels, a nonindigenous species that is infesting the lake, threatening municipal water systems and archaeological finds. Experts also expect an invasion of quagga mussels, another nuisance species. Mr. Cohn said that while the museumin the past had been in favor of leaving shipwrecks and other artifacts to be preserved in the cold, deep | Lake Yields a Benedict Arnold Gunboat |
944779_6 | is the poem's subject. Not all of Lombardo's gambles pay off, and his attention-grabbing colloquialisms sometimes undermine the force of the original. In a famous speech that is crucial for delineating Achilles' character -- and hence for defining the whole heroic code -- this straight arrow par excellence expresses his loathing of deceitfulness. (The irony is that he's talking to the notoriously slick Odysseus, whose casual approach to the truth gives the ''Odyssey'' its best moments.) In Homer's Greek, what Achilles says is that a deceitful man is as hateful to him as the gates of Hades -- as death itself, that is. But in Lombardo's ''Iliad,'' this powerful utterance gets lost in the general welter of heroic cussing: because it sounds so offhand, ''I hate like hell / The man who says one thing and thinks another'' doesn't convey anything like the grim force of the original. STILL, the success of so many of Lombardo's choices more than makes up for the false notes. The cumulative effect of his technical innovations, of the forthrightness of his verse, of the bleakness and even meanness of his heroes' language is to emphasize with special power the distinctive themes of the ''Iliad'': self-destructive pride and the cathartic allure of violence, the elusiveness of peace and, finally, the terrible costs of forgiveness. This is a poem that could easily go by the title of the photograph on its cover: ''Into the Jaws of Death.'' There are probably too many departures from the Greek text here, and too many blatantly ''contemporary'' resonances, for this to become the standard Homer of university classrooms. But in a way, those departures, those ruptures with philological exactitude, may make this ''Iliad'' an ideal vehicle for teaching the poetic tradition that we owe to its creator -- the oldest, deadest, whitest European male. In taking the existing text of Homer as a starting point for a brand-new performance of his own, Stanley Lombardo is following in the footsteps of the company of ''Homers'' who assembled that text to begin with -- not breaking with tradition but joining its powerful current. That his daring new ''Iliad'' is so specifically of and for our time reminds us -- and right now it's a point worth being reminded of -- that Homer's poem is for all time. Daniel Mendelsohn, a New York writer, is a visiting lecturer in classics at Princeton University. | Yo, Achilles |
944773_2 | the elderly and the young, who are unable to drive, have been transformed into virtual prisoners; that the United States gives automobiles at least seven times the subsidies it earmarks for public transportation; that improvements in emission controls have been canceled out by an increase in miles driven; that salt used on ice and snow causes trees and vegetation to wither; and that Americans are fat because they drive rather than walk. The problem with tires is perhaps typical. Although most of us never think about the 250 million tires we collectively discard every year, one observer says: ''You can't bury 'em. You can't put 'em in the water. No one will steal them. They're just there.'' Kay's second section, ''Car Tracks: The Machine That Made the Land,'' explains how the automobile evolved from 1908, when Henry Ford introduced the Model T amid predictions that it would reduce pollution by replacing the horse, to 1954, when the United States became a net importer of oil, to the present, when Americans collectively spend eight billion hours each year stuck in traffic. The third section, ''Car Free: From Dead End to Exit,'' points toward a future when, Kay hopes, the front porch, the corner grocery and pedestrian-friendly streets will be the norm rather than the exception. To her credit, Kay recognizes that the automobile is not the only culprit. She points out, for example, that Europeans have avoided many American problems not just because of high gasoline taxes and excellent public transportation systems but also because they regard land as a scarce resource to be controlled in the public interest rather than exploited by whoever happens to own it at a particular moment. Thus, European governments have traditionally exercised stringent controls over land development, and they have operated on the theory that the preservation of farms and open space is an appropriate national goal. In Dusseldorf, Germany, possibly the richest city in the world, truck farmers tend their crops within a couple of miles of the city's skyscrapers, not because alternative land uses would not yield a higher return, but because the law prohibits the very possibility of development. Although ''Asphalt Nation'' largely succeeds in proving that it is possible to get where we are going without destroying where we live, it does not offer a systematic argument, and it does not break new conceptual or methodological ground. Essentially, Kay has taken | Traffic Jam |
944864_0 | FOR decades they stood as familiar, and largely empty, landmarks along the stretches of Route 3 and the Garden State Parkway that run through Clifton and Nutley. Now plans are advancing to turn the commercial complexes, or their sites, to new uses, ranging from housing to retail and office space. Most of the properties are in the Passaic County city of Clifton. There, the former Shulton Industries site, where men's soaps and toiletries once were produced, is being targeted for housing. The old ITT and Automatic Data Processing (ADP) sites are planned to become a retail/enterainment center. And the former research building used by the BASF Corporation, the chemical conglomerate, is being recycled into a Class A office structure. In neighboring Nutley Township in Essex County, another ITT property is to become a town-house community. The site, now vacant, once housed the company's avionics and military and electronics division, including its 325-foot research tower. In nearly all cases, developers are responding to rezoning of the industrially zoned parcels for new uses. They are also trying to take advantage of the state's improving economy -- 250,900 of the 262,200 jobs lost during the recession have been regained, figures from the Labor Department show. Well-positioned former manufacturing sites are considered candidates for re-use. The Nutley and Clifton sites are rarities in northern New Jersey: large development sites near highways and job centers, including Manhattan, 15 minutes away. But the re-use of such tracts poses a delicate balancing act for the towns as they seek ways to expand their tax bases while preserving quality of life of their residents. A main concern, within and across town boundaries, is that the new developments do not strain municipal services, particularly roads and schools. In Clifton and Nutley the opportunity for redevelopment comes from the loss of industry, which has dominated the highways since they cut through those towns earlier this century. For over the last decade companies like Shulton shut down and others like ITT, which split into three companies in 1995, reconfigured its space needs, providing the towns with space to redevelop for the first time in many years. New Jersey, like the nation, has seen its manufacturing base erode. As of 1996 there were 610,600 manufacturing jobs in the state, down from 915,500 in 1979, according to data from the state's Department of Labor. ''We cannot wait for a single industrial user to | New Uses for Old Sites in Clifton and Nutley |
944797_0 | To the Editor: My review of ''The Big Ten,'' Jeffrey E. Garten's study of big emerging markets, observed that one of its central arguments is based on a wildly inaccurate claim about the markets' current economic importance to the United States. In his response (Letters, June 29), Garten counters my ''highly misleading'' claim that American exports to ''many'' of the Big 10 countries are growing relatively slowly by observing that in 1996 American merchandise sales to these markets collectively grew nearly twice as fast as sales to industrialized countries. But the aggregate figures he cites mask wide divergences among the Big 10. From 1988 to 1996, American merchandise exports to some Big 10 countries, like Mexico, Argentina, Poland and Indonesia, grew considerably faster than American worldwide merchandise exports -- which increased 94 percent. But exports to other Big 10 countries -- Turkey, India and South Africa -- grew considerably more slowly, and American exports to some of the fastest-growing Big 10 markets, like Poland, Indonesia and Argentina, are expanding from tiny bases. Moreover, the Big 10 aggregates are significantly skewed by Mexico, whose share of American merchandise exports to these countries grew from 37.3 percent in 1988 to 40.3 percent in 1996. In fact, Mexico accounted for more than 42 percent of all the American merchandise export growth to the Big 10 during this period. Mexico is especially important for another reason. As a study sponsored by the Clinton Administration reported, the increase in United States-Mexico trade since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement has been driven ''almost entirely'' by the growth of intracompany trade. Such trade consists of American multinational corporations ''exporting'' parts and components of products to Mexico for further processing, and re-exporting the final products back to the United States. Mexican statistics indicate that such exports jumped from 40 percent of the total American goods exported to Mexico in 1993 to 62 percent in 1996. Alan Tonelson Washington | Market Analysis |
945040_8 | other cities. Rosanne Aratoon, of Brooklyn, is one, though she prefers the term ''animal communicator.'' For $60 an hour, she says, she will tell you what your pet is saying. ''It is mental telepathy,'' Ms. Aratoon explained. ''I translate whatever the animal wants to say through the human.'' While many people think it a mistake to treat dogs like humans, Ms. Aratoon takes the opposite view. She says that far from being little children in dog suits, dogs are little adults with a great deal to say about human behavior. ''I talked to one dog who was taking three medications,'' she said. ''He told me that he could be weaned off two of them and suggested natural remedies.'' Since most people cannot tell what dogs are thinking, it is tempting to view them in human terms. People imagine that they are happy or sad, that they know that they have done wrong. The scientific view, however, is more complex. That point of view was discussed last week in the Staten Island home of Catherine Bertolino, the owner of Teddi Bear, an 18-month-old female Akita with a nasty tendency to bark at children, nip workmen and attack major appliances. ''She loves it when the kids are afraid of her,'' Ms. Bertolino said. ''She really started to get unfriendly at 8 months old.'' Ms. Bertolino was being interviewed by Peter Borchelt, who is what is commonly known as an animal psychiatrist, although he is not a veterinarian. Dr. Borchelt has a doctorate in animal behavior (his dissertation was on birds) and has been advising troubled dog and cat owners for 20 years. He charges $300 for aggressive cases. Throughout the interview, Ms. Bertolino repeatedly referred to her dog's emotions in human terms, while Dr. Borchelt was much more interested in Teddi Bear's behavior. When exactly did she bite? What behavior preceded the biting? After an hour, Dr. Borchelt had a theory. Teddi's antics were caused by a combination of the fact that Akitas are bred to be guard dogs, that the dog's own personality is fearful and that Ms. Bertolino has decided, wisely it seems, to keep her locked up. He recommended putting Teddi Bear in a special harness that clamps down on her mouth and allows her to be out with people. ''Since animals do not have language, it is hard to know how to talk about animal anxiety,'' said Dr. | A Dog's Luxe Life |
945109_2 | barred Sinn Fein from the talks until there is a new cease-fire. On Friday, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, said he had asked the I.R.A. to restore the cease-fire. Today, Mr. Adams and British and Irish officials said that they hoped the cease-fire would lead to Sinn Fein's participation in the talks when they resume in mid-September. But first, said Mo Mowlam, the British Secretary for Northern Ireland, the cease-fire must prove to be genuine. She added that she would make a decision on that in the next six weeks. Protestant Unionist leaders, who want Northern Ireland to remain British and abhor Sinn Fein's goal of closer ties between the province and the Irish Republic, were quick to criticize the I.R.A. announcement, pointing out that it did not say the cease-fire would be permanent. ''We can all do wishful thinking,'' said Ken Maginnes, a leader of the Ulster Unionist party, the largest in the province. ''I don't see the word permanent.'' David Robinson, the deputy leader of the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, said: ''It's a phony cease-fire. This effectively brings to an end the present talks process.'' But the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, said of the cease-fire statement, ''I certainly interpret it as permanent.'' And Ms. Mowlam, asked if the I.R.A. had not in effect bombed its way back to the peace table, said, ''It wasn't a question of people bombing their way to the table.'' She emphasized that there would be a waiting period to determine if the cease-fire was genuine. ''Now the hard work starts,'' she added. ''It is a difficult time for the Unionists,'' Ms. Mowlam said. ''We will try to reassure them.'' Mr. Adams, at a news conference in Belfast, called the cease-fire ''momentous'' and immediately took up one of the next sticking points in the peace effort, the scheduled vote of peace talk participants next Wednesday on the disarmament of the I.R.A. and Protestant paramilitaries. The British and Irish Governments propose that when the talks begin in September disarmament be dealt with simultaneously with political questions. The Protestant Unionist leaders want this to mean that actual disarmament must take place, in stages, during the talks. The two Governments will say only that disarmament will be discussed. Mr. Adams has repeatedly said that disarmament can only take place at the end of the talks, as part of an overall agreement. Today, he said that | I.R.A. ANNOUNCES A NEW CEASE-FIRE BEGINNING TODAY |
944482_2 | enough to save the mostly small companies here an average of $900,000 a year in waste disposal costs, and to become the model for a citywide waste and product exchange program now being set up by the city's Department of Sanitation, with Mr. Okun as consultant. It also evolved, from its early focus on traditionally defined industrial waste, to things like old car parts and bunnies and dartboards, items from an economic netherworld that Mr. Okun calls ''the edge of the market.'' National waste experts say there is nothing quite like Mr. Okun's Inwrap service. Many waste exchange services are passively run warehouses at which companies or individuals look for what they need. The New York City service is aggressive, combing the Internet, among other sources, for leads. Many exchanges also operate primarily out of environmental motives; here, economics is the point. But in the movement toward the re-use of materials, the experts say, unusual is common. Unlike recycling, in which waste items are broken down into components and remade, finding new uses for old items necessarily means piecing together an idiosyncratic local universe of supply and demand. ''They all seem to have formed in their own way, that's what's interesting,'' said David Goldbeck, who, with his wife, Nikki, is author of ''Choose to Reuse'' (Ceres Press, Woodstock, N.Y., 1995), a guide for buyers and sellers in the so-called after use market. A state program in Vermont, for instance, takes in broken electronic appliances like VCR's, trains people to fix them, then sells them. Seattle collected old paint from its residents, mixed it together and cheerfully dubbed the drab result Seattle Gray, and used it for municipal buildings. Boston, in the midst of a construction boom, resells used building materials. In an area of warehouses and low-rise brick just across the East River from midtown Manhattan, Mr. Okun's program offers a window into an economy of survivors. The giant, vertically integrated manufacturers that only a few years ago dominated places like Long Island City -- self-contained and full of resources and probably not in need of a service like Mr. Okun's -- are mostly gone, and even middle-sized ones are endangered. Swingline, the stapler manufacturer that is just a few blocks from Mr. Okun's office, recently announced plans to move its operation to Mexico. Most of the companies that remain are small. Many are family owned, generations old, sometimes chaotic. | Middleman of Waste Material, Mistakes and Leftovers |
943084_0 | Bruce Coppock, executive director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, has been appointed deputy director of Carnegie Hall, effective Dec. 1. Mr. Coppock, 46, previously served as manager of the St. Louis Symphony. He was a founder of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and was director of orchestra activities and chairman of the chamber music department at the New England Conservatory of Music. He also taught at the New England Conservatory, the Boston Conservatory, the University of New Hampshire and Brown University. | New Carnegie Director |
943846_0 | Northern Ireland is two weeks into its annual marching season, a ritual of confrontation commemorating 17th-century Protestant military victories over Catholic forces. These martial parades, which pass provocatively through Catholic neighborhoods, have often ignited sectarian violence. This year's season started out following the usual destructive pattern. But last week, on the eve of marches celebrating the decisive Protestant triumph, sanity prevailed. The main Protestant marching society, the Orange Order, rerouted its parades away from Catholic areas in four cities, something it has previously refused to do. The turn away from confrontation increases pressure on the Irish Republican Army to end its terrorism. A new cease-fire would enable the I.R.A.'s political wing, Sinn Fein, to join peace talks next fall. The Orange Order's decision came after this season's first major parade precipitated Ulster's worst violence in years. On July 6 British troops and provincial police, bowing to Protestant threats of violence, forcibly cleared a path for marchers through a Catholic area of Portadown. This show of official partiality undermined moderate Catholic parties and allowed the I.R.A. to pose as the armed defenders of an abused Catholic minority. Ulster's parades involve issues of turf, speech and the respective rights of the Protestant and Catholic communities. That makes them a central part of Northern Ireland's larger political equation. Decisions about regulating the marches should not depend merely on police calculations of which side threatens worse violence. Nor can the authorities count on last-minute gestures of restraint. Legislation to be voted on by the British Parliament this autumn would give final authority over parades and their routing to an independent commission, a good idea. Meanwhile, the British Government must demonstrate to both sides that it is evenhanded and unintimidated by threats. Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, recently initiated a new effort to draw the I.R.A. into the peace talks. He endorsed a compromise timetable for paramilitary groups to turn in their weapons as negotiations progressed. He also promised that Sinn Fein could join the talks six weeks after an I.R.A. cease-fire begins. But Mr. Blair understands that the I.R.A.'s terrorist core will resist making peace until it feels compelled to do so by the Ulster Catholic community. That is only likely to happen if the marching season passes without further Protestant provocations. | Marching Lessons in Ulster |
946360_7 | collection of oatmeal-colored stone buildings clustered along the Grand River just as it dives into the Elora Gorge. Now that its river-powered mills are no more, the village's 20th-century raison d'etre is the beauty of the 1.8-mile limestone gorge, which is lined with trails, varied by pools and rapids and surrounded by more than 350 acres of evergreen forest. An easy two hours from Toronto, Elora is in the heart of Ontario's Mennonite country, near much-visited towns such as St. Jacobs and Elmira. Elora's main street, Mill Street, has accommodated itself to the village's new tourist life: The Scottish millers who settled the place would probably shake their Presbyterian heads over two antiques warehouses and smart shops selling Asian objets d'art, save-the-earth merchandise and more mainstream offerings. At the end of Mill Street, the Elora Mill Country Inn literally hangs out into the gorge, opposite a molar-shaped rock-and-cedar formation known as the Tooth of Time. I've probably had a dozen cups of coffee in the Elora Mill over the years, before and after tramping the gorge, but never thought to stay there. A perfectly situated, five-story converted gristmill from 1870 had obviously stirred not-totally-formed suspicions: The bedrooms would have straw hats on the door or teddy-bear stencils, all too self-consciously quaint. Wrong again. Quite properly relying on the view of the gorge as its chief draw, the dining room is bluff and rustic. But the upper floors, where oak beams and occasional limestone outcroppings through the plaster remind you of the original gristmill, are more interesting. The bedrooms seem to speak of the restraint of Elora's Scottish founders and the nearby Mennonites. My adequately-sized room, painted cream-of-celery, was austerely, handsomely furnished with a geometric, Mennonite-style quilt in coral and two shades of blue. Aside from the bed and night tables, furnishings were few: a dark Mennonite cupboard with a small television (no remote control) and a few old pine chairs. What I thought was a very loud air-conditioner turned out to be the falls, roiling nonstop just below my window -- what would have been maddening if mechanical became romantic. I sat on the deep pine window seat, pondering the floodlighted Tooth of Time straight ahead, with ruins of a mill on the opposite bank. The food ranges unpredictably from adequate to very good. The Atlantic salmon pickled on the premises was exceptional; the potato pancake that accompanied it was | Eclectic Mix Of Ontario Inns |
946394_2 | to a line, so customers rarely get a busy signal. Nor are they put on hold for an hour, before they get to speak to a trouble-shooter. We have developed a strong customer support department to prevent that from happening. Our 7 technicians not only know a lot, they are trained to communicate well with customers.'' When customers order the service, Mr. Dickey said they are given the company's software, which provides everything needed to use the Internet. ''That includes surfing the Web, viewing news groups and sending and receiving E-mail,'' he said. ''Our home page is arranged so that even beginners can explore interesting Internet sites as close as their own village or as far away as 'search engines' can take them.'' Best Web's service, he added, provides full Internet access, including the World Wide Web, a hypertext system, which allows users to move through linked documents. For instance, if someone is reading about dogs, every time a new breed is mentioned, the name is marked in some way. By following the link, the user will jump to an article about that breed of dog. The service also offers access to news groups, which are the Internet equivalent of discussion groups involving millions of people from all over the world. Each discussion group centers around a particular topic ranging from jokes to philosophy, Internet Chat, Interactive games and FTP-File Transfer Protocol, which allows transfer of data from one computer to another. Telenet is the method of getting on a remote computer system, allowing public access to view files and search data bases. Another service is Gopher, a menu system, providing a simple, consistent method of navigating around the Internet. ''We also provide a host of business services for our commercial accounts,'' Mr. Dickey said, ''including registration of the domain name, their Internet address, data storage, E-mail, data transfer, page maintenance and one of the most important, custom-designed pages for internal use of our corporate clients.'' Mr. Dickey, 44, holds a degree in industrial engineering from Cornell University. ''But I was always interested in electronic stuff,'' he said. ''I remember helping a teacher at Croton-Harmon High School set up the school's first computer. I took as many computer courses as I could find at college, and after I graduated I bounced around, spending two or three years in different jobs before getting a better offer because of my computer skills, | Internet Provider Emphasizes Service |
946607_0 | To the Editor: Your July 21 news article on the Brazilian Government's decision to open the Amazon rain forest to logging presents valid aspects of the forestry challenge in the Amazon, but misses some key points. We tend to oversimplify forestry issues in terms of either destroying forests or saving them by keeping people out. But when we ''save'' forests in developing countries, we cannot ignore the growing number of poor people who seek survival by using forestry resources. The challenge is to make this use as sustainable as possible. The announcement of a one-year contract to log 12,355 acres in Amazon timber reserves and to award further licenses this year and next spurred protest. Compare this first contract with the approximately 10,000 acres a day that are deforested by illegal logging and slash-and-burn agriculture. Although deforestation in the Amazon is large in scale, 90 percent of the forest area remains intact. Most experts now agree that forest management is the only sustainable and economically productive option for most of the Amazon. Forest products could support millions of people. Brazilians are investing considerable effort and money in several of the most complex environmental and development issues encountered anywhere -- including harvesting forests for economic and social benefit without destroying them. These efforts are more promising for forest conservation than a simplistic protection policy, which is futile in areas of overwhelming poverty. RALPH SCHMIDT Director, Forests Program U.N. Development Program New York, July 23, 1997 | Protests Over Amazon Logging Are Too Hasty |
946635_4 | churches and a Buddhist temple on the East Java coast, to protest the leniency of a sentence given to a Muslim by an Indonesian judge for slandering Islam. In the course of the riots a Protestant minister, his wife and child and a church worker were burned to death. Iran. Non-Muslims may not proselytize Muslims. Muslims who convert to another faith are considered apostates and may be subject to the death penalty. Four Baha'is remain in prison under death sentences, convicted on charges of apostasy in 1996. North Korea. Three Christian churches -- two Protestant and one Catholic -- have been opened since 1988 in Pyongyang. These appear to be the only active Christian churches in the country. Many visitors say that church activity appears staged. Lebanon. Discrimination based on religion is built into the system of government. The President is by tradition a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies a Shi'a Muslim. . . . The amended Constitution of 1990 embraces the principle of abolishing religious affiliation as a criterion for filling all Government positions, but few practical steps have been taken to accomplish this. Morocco. Islamic law and tradition call for strict punishment of any Muslim who converts to another faith, and any attempt to induce a Muslim to convert is illegal. Ordinarily, foreign missionaries either limit their proselytizing to non-Muslims or conduct their work quietly. In 1995, at least seven Moroccans were arrested, and in some cases sentenced to jail terms, for offenses related to their Christianity. Russia. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the overall climate for religious freedom in Russia has improved dramatically, and made possible a large increase in the activities of foreign missionaries. This has troubled some sectors of Russian society, particularly nationalists and factions of the Russian Orthodox Church. During 1996 and 1997, the Russian Orthodox Church used its political influence to promote official actions that discriminate against religious groups and sects. Singapore. The Government banned Jehovah's Witnesses in 1972 on the grounds that the group opposes military service, and its roughly 2,000 members refuse to perform military service, salute the flag or swear oaths of allegiance to the State. In July 1996, a 72-year-old woman was arrested and convicted for possession of banned Jehovah's Witness literature. She was sentenced to a $500 fine. She refused to pay and was ordered | Elsewhere in the World, the Right To Worship Freely Hasn't a Prayer |
946398_3 | I would go to play with her -- she lived across the street -- she would make me wait outside her house and not allow me to step foot into her house because she was afraid that I would find a book on her shelf and that would be it for the rest of the day. We wouldn't be able to play. I loved ''Nancy Drew.'' You have to let kids read what they really want to read, and I think that's what makes you want to read more -- because you are associating it with a wonderful experience. There was a woman who came in here recently, looking so tired, who had been obviously working all day. She brought her kids and they ran to the shelves, and she was standing there and all of a sudden her face lit up as she saw an old familiar book. She said: ''Look, it's Madeleine. I remember Madeleine.'' It gave her such obvious pleasure; obviously she had a very special shared experience with someone sitting down and reading that book. Q. What is the right role for parents in encouraging reading? A. We really need to turn the TV set off. I don't mean totally do away with it, but cut back. I think it's such an easy thing to fall into, and I can understand how parents do it. I mean, I don't have children and I come home and I am dead tired and I sit down and it's so easy to put on that TV set. Take a mother who has worked all day long and is tired and has to get dinner on the table and has other things to do, what's the easiest thing to do? Turn on the television. Q. How do you keep abreast of new books? A. Library journals. I go into book stores to see what has come out. I go on the Internet. The Library System has a system by which the publishers send them books, and the books are sent out to individual librarians, and we all review them. That way you get a well-rounded view. Q. Do we get a female slant? Are there any male librarians? A. There are some; in fact, we just hired one. But there are not that many because I think it started out the same as for teachers -- as a job with | A Librarian Who Puts the Fun in Reading |
946436_3 | ''but we will take the legal route if necessary.'' The organization also sued Pergament Home Center in Port Chester to comply with the 1990 requirements, and that action, like the one involving Larchmont, was settled out of court, with the retailer's being forced to make architectural changes. According to statistics from the County Office for the Disabled, there are about 150,000 Westchester residents with disabilities, a category that includes not only those with physical impairments but also those who have a learning disability, are mentally ill or who have AIDS or any ongoing illness that might make it difficult to work or get hired. Nationally, there are about 49 million people who are disabled. The Americans With Disabilities Act -- intended to provide a user-friendly environment for all Americans regardless of the costs and financial burdens it might represent to commercial or government establishments -- prohibits employers from discriminating because of such limitations. It says that public transportation must be accessible to all; that places of public accommodation, like restaurants and retail stores, may not discriminate; that services by state and local government must be accessible to all, and that companies offering phone service to the public must also offer services for the deaf and hearing impaired. Although the legislation spelled out that mental disabilities were included under its protection, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April further clarified the law.Business owners, the commission said, may not discriminate against otherwise qualified workers with mental illnesses. They may not ask job applicants if they have ever been mentally ill, and they must take reasonable steps to accommodate employees with psychiatric or emotional problems. That could mean anything from a flexible schedule for an anxious person to a desk near a window for a person who grows depressed with too little light to a quiet work space for a schizophrenic. The underlying assumption is that physical illness and mental illness should be treated as one and the same. But the intent of the law and reality in this case have failed to mesh, said Joshua Koerner, executive director of the New Rochelle-based advocacy group Consumers Helping Others in a Caring Environment, also known by its acronym Choice. ''In some ways it would be easier to come out and say, 'I'm a drug addict' than 'I'm mentally ill,' '' Mr. Koerner said, ''because mentally ill people are always portrayed in the most horrific | Disabled People Count Some Gains |
946636_1 | of Bevmark L.L.C., a management consulting company. For every pitch on radio or television, there's a public-service announcement reminding the public to drink responsibly. ''They're stepping on the gas pedal and the brake at the same time,'' Mr. Pirko said. Not that there aren't plenty of alcohol innovators out there driving without brakes. The last two years alone have been a particularly creative period. A company near Boston introduced Tumblers, a 24-proof version of Jell-O shots, a blend of vodka and fruit flavors first popularized in fraternity houses and college bars. A Florida entrepreneur came up with Tooters, 30-proof, neon-colored shots packaged together in test tubes. Many table wines contain comparable amounts of alcohol. Both new products drew criticism from church and activist groups. T.G.I. Friday's, the restaurant chain, introduced single-serving bottles of drinks sold at its bars with names like Oatmeal Cookie and Monkey Bite, which it says are aimed at men aged 30 or older. Tequila aficionados can even buy lollipops complete with a real worm inside. A less successful entry is Tattoos, strongly colored, berry- or cherry-flavored schnapps. These drinks dye the tongues of those who imbibe them -- which must make for some interesting explanations at traffic stops. The Ice Cream Bar, a Minneapolis company, recently won approval from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms this year for its Blenders, ice cream cups with flavors like Pink Squirrel, Grasshopper and Golden Cadillac. Each cup will contain between 2 and 5 percent alcohol. 'Stomach Share' None of these new products is likely to be advertised widely anytime soon, or sold alongside children's snacks and Italian ices at the corner grocery like the ephemeral Freeze and Squeeze. Still, the alcohol industry keeps trying, especially in summer. Dozens of fruity concoctions have entered liquor stores, bars and supermarkets, from Tropical Freezes and Bacardi Breezes to Jack Daniel's whisky-and-juice blends. Breweries seeking more market share -- or ''stomach share'' in industry parlance -- have also come up with their own non-alcoholic iced teas and juices, responding to the Snapple phenomenon and increasing competition from soft drinks. While critics say that such products are intended as ''training wheels'' for future drinkers, industry officials say they can't be blamed if the tastes of young adults overlap with those of juveniles. The dirty secret, bartenders and liquor store owners say, is that young adults and juveniles aren't the only ones who like | Selling Alcohol Disguised As Punch |
942049_1 | of our attention is placed on that, we're not understanding the full problem.'' The tale of the predatory males is just one example of what has become a disquieting trend. Call it the ''whoops factor,'' a phenomenon that starts with shoddy research or the misinterpretation of solid research, moves on quickly to public outcry, segues swiftly into the enactment of new laws or regulations and often ends with news organizations and some public policy mavens sounding like the late Gilda Radner's character, Emily Litella, as they sheepishly chirp, ''Never mind!'' Arson, Rape, Poison The public has been buffeted by reports suggesting a campaign to torch black churches, a surge in juvenile crime, rampant child abuse in day-care centers, a rape crisis on college campuses and the continued poisoning of the country by cancer-causing chemicals like alar, saccharin or cyclamates or by electromagnetic forces emanating from high-voltage power wires. Last week a panel of scientists from the National Cancer Institute and some leading hospitals reported after an exhaustive study that there is no evidence that living near power lines causes elevated rates of childhood leukemia. The link had been suggested by a poorly designed 1979 study by researchers at the University of Colorado. After that study was reported, parents of children with cancer sued power companies, and property values near power lines plummeted. While there tends to be enough truth in many of these claims to warrant serious investigation and remedial action, some of the initial reports are so overblown as to produce panic and then cynicism. ''It's what I call the Weather Channel phenomenon,'' said Robert Thompson, a professor of radio and television at Syracuse University. ''Five minutes into watching it, you're convinced that you have to be really concerned about that front moving in. The next thing you know you've turned off the TV in a state of panic, feeling that you should be sand-bagging your house.'' When the brewing problem is exposed as a kind of Comet Kohoutek of social pathology, there is a sense of betrayal, complacency and, finally, attention is drawn away from the true extent of the problem to the methodology that was used to unearth it. ''A brilliant sleight-of-hand gets achieved,'' Mr. Thompson said. ''These are problems that are difficult to solve. And if we divert attention to a debate on how they are covered or how they are measured, then we don't have | It's Awful! It's Terrible! It's . . . Never Mind |
942035_0 | To the Editor: There are at least three lessons in all the data about today's job market for college graduates: First, parents do not complain when their child graduates into a job paying $30,000 to $40,000 a year, considering that four years earlier, that child's skills were worth only $5 an hour. Second, most universities have niche programs that place essentially 100 percent of their graduates in high-paying professional positions. A recent graduate of the packaging science department at Clemson University, for example, will be one of the new hires at Kraft Foods, working in the same area mentioned in the article. A third lesson is that professional positions compel interest. The challenge of competition, of making a difference, is what makes a position interesting, not the often false facade of glamour. PETER J. VERGANO Clemson, S.C., June 9 The writer is a professor of packaging science at Clemson University. | Education, Not Glamour |
941750_1 | professional football players, 241 baseball players and a collection of inventors, entertainers, entrepreneurs, financial wizards and heirs. Just under them come America's richest professionals -- the top 1 percent of all earners, with yearly incomes starting at $200,000 -- featuring not only star doctors and lawyers but also heads of charitable foundations (the Ford Foundation pays its president $839,139), university presidents (more than half a million dollars at Boston University) and even a football coach ($975,000 at Florida State, including endorsements). These generous incomes are mostly explained by the special skills or education of their recipients. In Hacker's view, the substance of what they learned in college is less important than the style. ''The years at college and graduate school pay off because they burnish students' personalities. The time spent on a campus imparts cues and clues on how to conduct oneself in corporate cultures and professional settings.'' Professors themselves, although hardly in the top ranks, are paid comfortable salaries ''not so much for teaching subjects like history and philosophy as for being a professional presence that students can emulate.'' The rest of Hacker's explanation for why the very rich got that way has even less to do with their expertise. He argues that when organizations or individuals want to demonstrate they are getting the ''best,'' they hire people who are already paid the most. A similar ratcheting-up occurs with corporate boards, which always want to pay their chieftains just above the norm in order to prove that the company is ahead of the rest of the pack; or with Wall Street investment bankers, who conventionally receive a 1 percent commission on all deals and so promote the biggest ones conceivable. In any event, a payment of tens of millions of dollars just doesn't seem that extravagant when one is presiding over billions. How else to explain Michael Ovitz's $128 million severance package for about 60 weeks' work at Disney? The bottom 80 percent of the population, meanwhile, receives a smaller share of the nation's total income than it did 20 years ago. The shift began in the early 1970's, when the median earnings of men began dropping. Middle-income households avoided downward mobility only by sending wives to work and by postponing both marriage and children. At the same time, the poor have become poorer. Some of this downdraft has been caused by technological advances and globalization, hurting those with | For Richer, for Poorer |
941815_4 | stretched 4,290 feet across the Columbia River and created a 150-mile-long lake as its reservoir. It opened in 1942 and for some time was the world's single most powerful source of electricity. Woody Guthrie wrote a song in its praise. It is now hard to imagine a folk singer waxing rhapsodic about the control of nature. The price that is paid is too clear, and that is what the series is really about. The Owens Valley dried up. Lake Tulare, the largest lake west of the Mississippi, was drained to irrigate farmland in the Central Valley in California. To remake the planet so people can live in the desert as if they were by the sea, dry land was made wet and wet land dry. In this country the move to create vast water projects began to turn with President Carter, but it was still years before the era of huge public water projects stopped and conservation began. For instance, the price of water in the Central Valley was raised by Congress in 1992, with the result that most of the big farms simply left. Los Angeles was forced to look to conservation when its draining of Mono Lake was stopped. But elsewhere around the world, the dam building has continued. In China, the Three Gorges Dam, if completed, would be the biggest on the planet, displacing a million people. The United States Bureau of Reclamation, which boasts one of the most Orwellian names ever given to a Federal agency, after having dammed just about every river in the West, decided that enough was enough. It withdrew its technical support for the Chinese project, as did the World Bank. But China is determined to continue with the project. And it is not just the face of the planet that is being remade. If there is any doubt of the immensity of human dam-building activity, last year a NASA scientist calculated that 88 major reservoirs in temperate regions worldwide, created by dams built since 1950, had produced a redistribution of the earth's water significant enough to tilt the planet's axis, if ever so slightly, alter its gravitational field and speed up its rotation. The effects are so small as to have no practical effect on people or the environment, but the notion that with bulldozers and concrete, human beings can change how fast the planet spins is shocking to contemplate. TELEVISION | The Bygone Romance Of Taming the Rivers |
942034_0 | To the Editor: ''For This We Sent You to College?'' (June 8) showed that there are a lot of jobs out there for a college graduate, although they may fall below expectations in regard to glamour and remuneration. But what should we expect from our institutions of higher learning, and what is our collective notion of ''work''? The article reflected today's notions of job-centered pursuits and expectations for education. Two important visions, however, have been lost. The first is how education prepares students for undertaking a fulfilling vocation, for assuming citizenship and experiencing life in many dimensions. The second is that vocation is a ''calling'' that leads to a career. We are probably witnessing a third generation of students and parents who look to the college or university experience as a place to attain vocational training. Such training has a very important place in our educational system, but it doesn't belong in our institutions of higher learning. They should be dedicated to training an individual's mind and opening intellectual and spiritual horizons. Impractical? Not in the least. Liberally educated graduates without specific vocationally centered courses could perform the jobs described in the article with the utmost competency and panache. Furthermore, these graduates would have greater potential to move on to higher levels of responsibility (perhaps glamour?) than those who graduated with specific, vocationally centered degrees. Much of the problem relates to parents' and students' expectations of job training and job procurement. Don't we have a far greater obligation to young people who spend four years at an institution of higher learning than merely to train them for a specific job or an expertise that probably will soon be outdated? So we come back to the title of the article, ''For This We Sent You To College?'' For graduates, ''This'' should be a whole life in its complexity, challenges and richness. PETER A. BENOLIEL Conshohocken, Pa., June 13 The writer is the retired chairman of Quaker Chemical Corporation. | Education, Not Glamour |
942117_2 | and Protestant leaders together to work out a compromise. At Drumcree, soldiers of the British Army, which has 18,000 troops in Northern Ireland, patrolled roads and hills in full-combat uniform, some in armored vehicles. They were assisted by the police, who were not yet wearing the new flame-resistant uniforms purchased after last year's rioting, in which they were attacked with gasoline bombs. Leaders of the Orange Order said their Catholic counterparts had refused to meet with them. The head of the local Catholic demonstrators, Brendan McKenna, who served time in a British prison after being convicted of terrorist offenses, said that his people remained adamantly opposed to the parade and that he did not trust Ms. Mowlam. Both Protestant and Catholic political leaders have used the parade dispute to support their positions on the formal peace talks that began 13 months ago but have achieved little, partly because Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, has been excluded. The Irish and British Governments insist that the I.R.A. must restore the cease-fire it broke 17 months ago before Sinn Fein is allowed a place at the peace table. The marches have not always provoked sectarian violence. Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, recalled two years ago how as a boy in Belfast he had enjoyed the Protestant parades, and even learned to sing Orange Order songs. But in recent years Sinn Fein has encouraged the Catholic protests. This gives Mr. Adams credit with the hard-line I.R.A. commanders who prefer confrontation to peace talks. Protestant leaders like David Trimble also use the parades. Mr. Trimble was elected head of the Ulster Unionist Party two years ago after he marched in the Drumcree parade and raised his arm in a triumphal salute with the Rev. Ian Paisley, the hard-line leader of the Democratic Unionist Party. The hope of militant Protestants is that a violent Catholic reaction to the parade will weaken Sinn Fein's claim that it deserves to be included in the formal peace talks because it won 16 percent of the vote in the province in recent elections. If the parade on Sunday erupts in violence, particularly Protestant violence, the I.R.A. would have to consider whether to retaliate with new attacks, further dimming the prospect of a cease-fire and the success of peace talks to settle the sectarian violence that has killed more then 3,200 people since 1969. | British Troops Deploy in Ulster Town for a Protestant Parade |
941866_0 | THE newest additions to the Mystic Seaport Museum are not whaling ships or sidewheel steamers, but models of some of the most modern ships in the world: the nuclear submarines Hartford, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, which represent the latest classes of ship constructed by Electric Boat in Groton. ''We'll be putting together a major new exhibition, 'America and the Sea,' that we hope to open a year from this fall,'' said William N. Peterson, senior curator at the Seaport. ''These models will bring us right up to date.'' Because of declining military business, Electric Boat has been reducing its work force for the last several years, from a high of 25,000 in the 1980's, to fewer than 10,000 today, on the way to 6,000 to 7,000 by the end of next year. In the process, it is giving away what it cannot use. Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Southeastern Connecticut, for instance, got a house to use as its offices. ''We were in rented space, and the prospect of owning our own space was probably nil,'' said Joseph C. Petroff, the organization's executive director. The house is structurally sound, although it needed to be modernized. Cast-iron pipes came out and copper plumbing went back in; fuses were replaced with circuit breakers, and a fresh coat of exterior paint was needed. In such chores, Mr. Petroff said, Electric Boat employees have been some of their most dedicated volunteers. The giveaway program has accelerated recently because of an ambitious plan to tear down dozens of buildings, from old wooden shacks to four-story turn-of-the-century brick buildings, in the main shipyard off Thames Street in Groton. Most of the remaining employees have been assigned to workspace in fewer buildings, and the company can save on heating, maintenance and taxes by ripping down unneeded buildings. But that has created one new job: John Webster, who retired last year after 35 years as a facilities planner at Electric Boat, was called back in to roam the buildings that are scheduled for demolition and find homes for equipment, appliances and furniture no longer needed. Mr. Webster has become known as the ''Giveaway King.'' ''There's all kinds of things we're getting out of these old buildings that we can't use anymore,'' Mr. Webster said. ''We don't have room to store the stuff, and there's no reason to store it because we'll never use them again.'' He estimated that more | Yes, Electric Boat's Giving Stuff Away |
941480_3 | of the two policemen here. The gunmen's choice of a village in the midst of the major marching activity was seen as an effort to provoke a violent response from the Protestants, or loyalists as they are called in Northern Ireland, in the same way Catholics are referred to as nationalists. In last year's confrontation the Orangemen remained corralled in the church cemetery and surrounding pasture for five days while armed British soldiers and military helicopters patrolled the floodlighted meadows. Police officers in bullet-proof vests, visored helmets and shields held off the Protestants' return to Portadown to keep them away from protesting Catholics. Then, citing the danger that the growing numbers of Orange supporters pouring in from all around Northern Ireland posed to his own men, the Chief Constable decided to allow the Protestants to go down Garvaghy Road and back to their hall, where they were hailed by residents of the town. Portadown is known as the Orange Citadel because it was there in 1795 that the order was founded. The decision set off days of bombings and riots across Northern Ireland and further set back a peace effort already undermined by the I.R.A.'s abandonment of its 17-month cease-fire. Two Catholics were killed, and the conflict has continued to spiral out of control, threatening to plunge the province back into the sectarian violence that has already taken more than 3,200 lives since 1969. In May Robert Hamill, 25, died after being beaten by a gang of 30 Protestant youths in Portadown as he was returning from a dance in St. Patrick's Hall. ''Drumcree was Northern Ireland's Chernobyl with almost a meltdown in community relations,'' said the Rev. Samuel Hutchinson, an officer of the Presbyterian Assembly in Belfast. Community relations is a quaint phrase for the state of play in the Northern Ireland of today. Despite some narrowing of the income and opportunity gap between Protestants and Catholics, socially and institutionally the groups are as far apart as they have ever been. ''We grow up so close together we can hear each others' voices through the walls, but we don't know each other,'' said David Ervine, spokesman for the Progressive Unionist Party and a former Protestant paramilitary who served five years in jail for possessing explosives. ''We're divided from the beginning, sent off to separate schools and we stay separate for the rest of our lives.'' David McKittrick, a Belfast-born | With the Old Hatreds, Ulster Faces New Marching Season |
941398_0 | DAUER-Alice Chapman. President of the Mark Twain Assoc. of NY passed away Tuesday, July 1, after a short illness, regretfully leaving brothers, nephew and sister-in-law and many good friends. | Paid Notice: Deaths DAUER, ALICE CHAPMAN |
946047_2 | talks, even though it didn't agree with the Governments' proposal on decommissioning,'' as disarmament is called here. The Unionists wanted the I.R.A. to start to disarm once the talks reconvened. The proposal they rejected on Wednesday said only that disarmament would be discussed during the talks, with no guarantee that actual disarmament would occur. In explaining the progress and stumbling blocks on the way to peace, Mr. Mitchell said: ''There's a pattern to this process you can observe if you look back over the past three years. Each step forward is usually followed by a step backward. There's excessive optimism for the steps forward and excessive pessimism for the steps backward. The important thing is to ask whether the long-term trend is in the right direction. I believe it is.'' Mr. Mitchell, a Democrat from Maine, pointed out that the events of the last few days were unusual in the course of the struggle for peace in Northern Ireland. ''This week is the first time in modern history that both a cease-fire, observed by both sides, and a negotiating process are in existence at the same time,'' he said. ''So, I'm hopeful.'' Mr. Adams shares such hope. He has again demonstrated that he has strong influence with the I.R.A., by persuading the military commanders to try politics again instead of violence and to trust the new British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to get real peace negotiations going. But Mr. Adams has had to fend off a spate of criticism from radical Republican splinter groups that say he has abandoned the ultimate goal of a united Ireland, with the predominantly Protestant North absorbed by the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Irish Republic to the south. Virtually no one in Northern Ireland thinks that the talks will produce a united Ireland. British and Irish policy states that there will be no change in the political status of the North without the consent of the majority, which is 57 percent Protestant. During the last two years, before the latest cease-fire, Mr. Adams rarely mentioned a united Ireland, using circumlocution to express his views on the issue, as he did in an article he wrote two weeks ago for The Irish Times. In it he urged the Irish Government ''to uphold the legitimacy of Irish unity as a policy objective.'' To a charge from a Republican radical that he would in effect be approving the partition | In Ulster Drama, a U.S. Player Is Hopeful About Peace |
946013_5 | personal contacts at the top level.'' But this view has not been universally shared. In 1990 another expert, the writer Erik Arnoult, wrote in a memorandum for Mr. Mitterrand that the results of French policy in Africa had been ''catastrophic'' in all but one of the 35 French-speaking countries on the continent, the exception being Mauritius. ''Since 1981, aid has gone up by a lot, but for what result?'' he asked. ''To enrich whom?'' According to Mr. Vedrine, Mr. Mitterrand rejected the criticism as too astringent, but at a meeting of French-speaking African leaders later in 1990 in the French seaside resort of La Baule, the President made many of them squirm by calling for more democracy, and five years later some had at least made pro forma moves in that direction. Democracy and human rights were not the main standard by which French presidents measured their Africa policies, however. Instead, it was loyalty, a word that crops up often in French histories of the post-colonial era. What it meant was that French governments would support African leaders who remained loyal to France, which depended on French Africa for much of its oil and $10 billion a year in trade. Much of that trade, in turn, was sustained by a regional African currency maintained at a level of exchange that favored French exports (and purchases of French luxury goods by the few Africans who could afford them), until it was finally devalued in 1994. Underpinning the whole structure have been military and technical agreements that made much of the area between Senegal, on the Atlantic coast, and Chad, in the sub-Saharan interior, a French preserve where 160,000 French citizens lived and where ELF, the big and once state-owned French oil company, benefited from powerful patronage from Paris. Since the beginning of this year, French diplomats have been saying that France would prefer multinational, United Nations blessing for its actions in Africa to the old unilateral, neocolonial approach, but authorities in Paris are of two minds about opening French-speaking Africa to Anglo-Saxon (i.e., American) influence. But when the Congo Republic collapsed into political violence last spring, France did not intervene. Instead, Paris sent 1,200 troops who, in an operation widely admired by their fellow NATO soldiers, evacuated the 5,666 foreign residents of the city by air and then pulled out themselves, leaving the country to sort out its troubles by itself. | France Snips at the Old Ties That Bind It to Africa |
946797_0 | To the Editor: Your July 23 editorial ''The Lost Vesuvian Library'' describes the majority of the scrolls found at Herculaneum as ''the dull treatises of an obscure Greek philosopher, Philodemus.'' O.K., so finding the treatises of Philodemus might not compare to unearthing a lost play of Aeschylus, but it's still not small potatoes. Philodemus was a prominent Epicurean philosopher of the first century B.C. who wrote on central philosophical questions like the fear of death and the nature of happiness. Uncovering his works means that scholars can now look at extended Epicurean arguments from the philosophical disputants themselves, instead of relying on second-hand reports. This is akin to being able to study Plato's own arguments versus simply reading what some gossipy biographer said centuries later. Moreover, Herculaneum contains portions of Epicurus's magnum opus, ''On Nature,'' which are just now being deciphered, translated and analyzed. TIM O'KEEFE Austin, Tex., July 24, 1997 | Ancient Library Yields History, Not Gossip |
946820_0 | An Internet service provider that specializes in working with human rights, peace and labor groups came under a barrage of electronic protest earlier this month, a protest that culminated in computerized sabotage, forcing the organization to suspend a client's World Wide Web site. The Web site provided a sympathetic account of the history and aims of the Basque separatist movement, whose relations with Spain have for decades often been violent. But for the Institute for Global Communications, a San Francisco-based nonprofit company with 13,000 subscribers who use its computer servers as their gateway to the Internet, the incident involved not the rights and wrongs of distant political strife, but issues of free speech. The institute said it acted under protest to suspend the Web site of The Basque People's Journal), a publication of the Basque Congress for Peace, on July 18, because a campaign of electronic disruption was making it impossible to provide normal E-mail service to its users. A spokesman for the Association for Progressive Communications, an international group of computer networks that includes the institute, said the episode was ''the electronic equivalent of taking hostages.'' But the institute said it was also reviewing the content of the Web site to determine whether carrying it was in keeping with its support for nonviolence and human rights. Protesters, many of them apparently based in Spain, said that sections of the Web site supported the separatist group E.T.A., the Basque-language initials for Basque Homeland and Freedom, an armed group that has committed widely denounced acts of political violence. The site also contained articles on human rights, politics, language, and on other Basque groups, as well as links to Web sites opposing E.T.A., the institute said. The episode began two weeks ago after E.T.A. assassinated a rising Spanish politician, Miguel Angel Blanco, sparking a wave of revulsion and protest across Spain. At first, the institute received a torrent of E-mail criticizing it as host of the Basque Web site. This evolved into a barrage of junk E-mail that overwhelmed the company's computers and prevented it from providing normal service to its subscribers. In place of the Basque Web site (http://www.igc.apc.org/ehj), the Internet service provider (whose home page is at http://www.igc. apc.org) on July 18 posted explanations of its suspension of the on-line publication. ''Many, many messages to I.G.C. were legitimate expressions of protest,'' it said. ''We respect the people who wrote them | Basque Web Site Suspended After Protests |
945454_1 | process. Martin McGuinness, the chief negotiator of Sinn Fein, said on Sunday that the I.R.A. would not surrender ''a single bullet.'' It was this concern that took David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionists, the largest Protestant party in Northern Ireland, to 10 Downing Street today for a tense meeting with Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister. Mr. Blair secured the cease-fire that began on Sunday by dropping a demand made by his predecessor, John Major, that Sinn Fein could only take part in the peace talks if the guerrillas gave up some weapons at the outset. Obtaining the cease-fire was a significant diplomatic triumph for Mr. Blair, who has moved rapidly in his first months in office to seek an end to the cycle of sectarian violence that has taken more than 3,200 lives since 1969. But it left Mr. Trimble, leader of a party that is every bit as essential to achieving a durable accord as is Sinn Fein, exposed to accusations of humiliation by the British and demands from his own membership and from more militant Protestant parties that he exact from Mr. Blair a promise that arsenals would be reduced during the talks. Before seeing Mr. Blair, Mr. Trimble accused the British Government of ''duplicity on a massive scale,'' but on departing an hour and a half later he reported ''some possibilities for progress,'' adding that ''the Prime Minister is going to make further explorations of the issues to see what can be done.'' While Mr. Trimble is under pressure from fellow Protestants to insist on favorable terms as a condition for staying in the talks, he risks public opprobrium as the person who doomed peaceful talks if he walks out. He must also act in the awareness that such a step would lend the image of peacemaker to Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein, the political leader of a group with a history of terror. Sinn Fein wasted no time exercising its new access today. Senior party figures, led by Gerry Kelly, who was convicted of bombing the Old Bailey in London in 1972 and who later escaped three times from prisons, took up offices set aside for Sinn Fein in the Stormont Castle Government buildings in Belfast where the talks are going on. Accompanying him was Siobhan O'Hanlon, another party official, who was jailed after being caught in a bomb-making factory in 1983. In the | New Truce, New Questions |
945461_2 | be open to everyone, absolutely everyone.'' Bishop Griswold is known as a supporter of the ordination of women as priests. When he was elected as Chicago's bishop in 1985, the diocese had no female clergy members. It now has 41, out of a total of 146 priests. He has also said that his diocese has a number of gay priests. But the quality that may serve Bishop Griswold best at this difficult time in his denomination is his reputation as a good listener who chooses his words carefully. Asked in a news conference where he stood on the highly contentious issue of whether the Episcopal Church should allow the blessing of same-sex unions, the bishop avoided taking a clear position. ''What I think is important is that the conversation be continued,'' he said. ''I do not think we have come to a consensus at this point.'' Bishop Griswold was one of five bishops who sought the church's top office. He and three of the others were named as candidates by a church nominating committee, which originally considered 38 men for the office. A fifth candidate, Bishop Herbert Thompson Jr. of the Diocese of Southern Ohio, was nominated last month, when the panel allowed additional names to be submitted. After the voting by the bishops in a local church, a church representative announced that Bishop Griswold had prevailed on the third ballot, receiving 110 votes to 96 for Bishop Thompson. Bishop Thompson, one of seven black bishops in the church, has been known for a moderately conservative record on sexuality issues. In 1991, for example, he voted for a church law that would have required clergy members to abstain from sex outside marriage. But he said in a statement before the election that his candidacy was ''not part of a political agenda or affiliation with any other person or group.'' Several groups within the church, including the convention's Black Caucus, the conservative American Anglican Council and Integrity Inc., which represents gay Episcopalians, issued statements welcoming Bishop Griswold's election and saying they wanted to work with him. In the Anglican Council's statement, an official of the group said its members ''hoped to be fully included in the life of our church,'' after feeling excluded. The Rev. Michael W. Hopkins, a spokesman for Integrity, said he liked Bishop Griswold's record in office in Chicago. Asked what he thought of the bishop's reticence on | Moderate Bishop Elected To Lead Episcopal Church |
945413_4 | ship. Eugene C. Pollard, the ship's drilling superintendent, helps the co-chiefs sink their holes in sensible places. The current voyage has had its share of technical problems. The topdrive, which spins the drill string, has acted up twice. Fat wedges of sand, New Jersey's missing beaches of millions of years ago, lie interspersed with the mud layers below. The sand sucks at the drillstring, which is hard to yank free in shallow waters. It also fills up holes before instrument packages can be sent down to take measurements. Today the last cores of the voyage have been brought up and are being processed through the Resolution's laboratories. The long cylinders of gray mud are sliced lengthways into an archive half and a sample half. Near the very bottom of the core, at a point the ship's paleontologist has dated through its microfossils to 36 million years of age, is a crumbly whitish streak of a boundary layer. The white band may mark the shoreline of a Greater New Jersey, when sea level was several hundred feet lower than today. Technicians take physical measurements of the sample, then scoop out small chunks of various ages and composition that have been ordered by geologists around the world. The archive half is packaged in a plastic sheaf and sent to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. The laboratory now holds 25,000 meters of ocean core collected over the last quarter-century by the Resolution and her predecessor, the Glomar Challenger. What the Resolution lacks is free space. Every room brims with people or equipment. Even the sea's cry is crowded out by the steady rumble of the 12 thruster motors that keep the ship poised above its drill hole. The ocean drilling program carried out by the Resolution has helped geologists make many discoveries about the rock movements of earth's interior and the ancient cycles of the globe's climate. ''The record of earth's history is probably written with greater fidelity in the oceans than anywhere else on earth,'' says Jeff P. Fox of Texas A & M University, which manages the ocean drilling program. ''For us to be good stewards of the planet in the 21st century we must understand that record.'' . Other ships can visualize sea floor sediments from their sonar reflections, or scoop shallow samples off the bottom. But only the Resolution can bring up deep cores and learn what | Scientists Explore the Remotest Frontier, Just Off New Jersey |
945489_5 | In Iran, the report says, official oppression of evangelical Christians increased in 1996, while four Bahais remain in prison under death sentences, convicted of apostasy. In Israel, Jehovah's Witnesses have been harassed and attacked, and they and the Unification Church are banned in Singapore. In Saudi Arabia, freedom of religion does not exist, and the Government prohibits the public and private practice of all non-Muslim religions. American criticism is steady and includes protests about the religious police and their efforts to accost foreigners. The report says that privately run religious services, attended by both American Government employees and other Americans, are held regularly on the grounds of ''at least one U.S. diplomatic facility in Saudi Arabia.'' In Russia, the Administration is concerned over new legislation restricting religious freedom there for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. The legislation, passed by huge majorities in the legislature and awaiting Mr. Yeltsin's signature, would restrict religions not registered 15 years ago, in the Soviet era, when the official ideology was atheist and religious activists and dissidents were persecuted. Under the legislation, full rights would go to Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Russian Orthodoxy, which is the state religion, while Baptist groups that worked with a state-sponsored organization would be acceptable. But independent Baptist groups, for instance, along with groups like the Mormons and Pentecostals, would not be, because they were not registered; they would not be able to own property, publish literature or hold public worship. The legislation is intended to crack down on evangelical sects and cults. After oppression and infiltration by the state in the Soviet era, the Russian Orthodox Church feels vulnerable to this new attack by well-financed foreign churches and sects, said the Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, secretary for ecumenical and external affairs of the Orthodox Church in America and a member of the advisory committee. While not supporting the law in all its details, Father Kishkovsky said that ''the overall pattern is not unique to Russia, but exists in other post-Communist countries,'' including Poland and Latvia. He added, ''Closed societies becoming open become confused by the influx of new religious groups.'' President Clinton, officials say, has raised concerns about the law in many recent conversations with Mr. Yeltsin, who says that there may be constitutional problems with it. But some kind of new religion law is expected to be passed in Russia, Father Kishkovsky said. | U.S. ASSAILS CHINA OVER SUPPRESSION OF RELIGIOUS LIFE |
945450_0 | For two days at our home on Mobile Bay we have watched Hurricane Danny's winds thrashing the oak trees, pounding the wharves, turning walls into instruments that whistle and moan. Power gone, we eat sandwiches by candlelight, play board games and listen to our transistor radio, that lowliest of technological devices. My wife and I, both born here, are hurricane people. We are reminded of this when storms like Danny begin as counterclockwise swirls in the overheated Gulf of Mexico and soon rage outside our taped-up windows. To people elsewhere, the words ''tropical depression'' might conjure a melancholy youth in a Caribbean bar. They set us in search of flashlights, ice coolers, six-packs and emergency phone numbers. Our phone still works, and friends from Denver to Maine call us. Watching the Weather Channel, they know more about the location of the storm than we do. We were living in Brooklyn during the Blizzard of '96. The snow kept us indoors, closed stores, changed Atlantic Avenue into a lane of cross-country skiers. Our neighbors in Mobile shudder at the thought of a New York blizzard; New Yorkers shrug. In Brooklyn, you could captivate a dinner party with tales of Mobile hurricanes. People here say hurricanes are just part of who we are. It's still light outside. I hop into the car and navigate to the grocery store, which has a generator. People have plowed through as much water to get there as Admiral Farragut in the Battle of Mobile Bay. Many are filling their carts. But most look like they've braved the storm because they're tired of looking at their four walls. They have come out, like me, to talk. Frederic, Elena, Erin, Opal, Camille -- these names bind us together. One man tells of a red oak that crashed into his den during Frederic, another of walking through the rubble of a fancy hotel after Camille. One ancient mariner goes back to the hurricane of 1926 that wrecked Miami and then Pensacola, before falling to pieces in Mobile. Somebody says his grandmother told him that the hurricane of 1916 lifted river boats onto the flooded streets of downtown Mobile. Back home, my wife and daughter are lighting the storm candles. Night comes down with a roar. I settle down on the couch next to them, hearing, already, the stories this hurricane will tell. Roy Hoffman writes for The Mobile Register. | Hurricane People |
947421_2 | drags on into the fall. He wants the project to flourish in the long run. The authority, on the other hand, is worried that if it does not sell the site quickly, the surging real estate market could falter, forcing it to accept a lower price. Even when state and city grudgingly get along, others -- particularly developers and neighborhood groups -- have tried to exert control. When they have felt ignored by government, the groups have repeatedly sought leverage over the project by suing. In the 1980's, litigation prompted officials to scale back the size of the redevelopment and thus the shadows it would cast. One group, the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development, has already vowed to go to court to stop the new version of the project, no matter what proposal is adopted, because it believes that any development would be too large. Such factionalism would cause problems for most projects. But the Mayor and state officials are engaging in this new battle with the knowledge of the earlier failures at developing the site. City and state officials, as well as others debating the future of the Coliseum, all insist that they do not want to repeat mistakes; yet, as a result, they are all quick to accuse others of doing just that. The current dispute arose last weekend, when Mr. Giuliani contended that the authority was concentrating too much on profiting from the site and not enough on finding the developer with the best plans for it. The Mayor said he was angered that the authority had tentatively chosen a developer, Millennium Partners, mostly because of an unusual financial concession that it offered. The Mayor did not criticize the Millennium proposal directly. But in attacking the authority, he was clearly trying to regain control over a project that he thought was moving too quickly in the wrong direction. He appeared particularly concerned about the perception that financial, not aesthetic or cultural, considerations were driving the search for a developer. The authority's board was to have voted to approve the selection of Millennium yesterday, but it put off the vote after Mr. Giuliani threatened a veto and said he would set up a panel of experts to study the designs of the five finalists in the yearlong competition for a developer. The Mayor's interest in the theater surprised M.T.A. officials and some neighborhood and civic groups that have | Building on a Shaky Foundation |
941334_3 | 1995, the latest year available, from 971,000 in 1986. In the first three months of 1997 alone, some 850,000 more cars used the six crossings managed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey than in the same period in 1996. Officials ascribe the change to improved economic activity. ''If we can increase the level of information about specific incidents, then we can reduce the backups they cause,'' said Matthew Edelman, the general manager of Transcom, a traffic report clearinghouse run by the Port Authority. But broadcasting more information generally does not include giving details about the gruesome accidents that snarl traffic. Instead, airborne reporters focus on giving hundreds of thousands of daily commuters a sense of how long any collision will take to clear. They prefer to recall the wackier moments of traffic jams. Like the time a pack of wild dogs roved the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx, blocking traffic for hours. Or the time a truck littered the Bruckner Expressway with five-gallon ice cream containers. Traffic reporters overhead declared the roadway cleared when sanitation trucks swept the containers onto the shoulder, but their bosses ordered them back to the scene because commuters were calling on their cellular phones to complain about delays. Other drivers, it turned out, were haphazardly parking their cars to grab the ice cream. With or without the technology, there are certain immutable rules for traffic reporters. The day before Thanksgiving is known as Armageddon. (The Fourth of July tends to be slightly better because departures are more staggered.) Good weather often creates worse traffic than bad, especially on summer Sundays, with more cars and more careless drivers. ''Any time I see a beautiful sunny morning I get nervous because we really get in trouble,'' said Pete Tauriello, a veteran Shadow reporter who pumps out roughly 20 reports per hour during the morning rush. Commuters with cellular phones do report problems -- and both Metro and Shadow depend heavily on them -- but drivers call less often in the morning rush to work than they do in the evening, when they are eager to get home. The metropolitan area is something like the Balkans of traffic control, with 14 autonomous agencies ruling some piece of the road network. Rather than trolling for road reports from the various agencies and the police, traffic reporters have come to rely on remote cameras in | Most Radio News of Roads Comes From 2 Services |
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