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941274_7 | like viruses, lack of guarantees, damage to your image,'' said Nuria Vea, a former Microsoft executive and the president of the Italian branch of the Business Software Alliance, an industry group. Mr. Mazza's organization, the Federation Against Musical Piracy, was set up last year by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in London. In April, to emphasize the seriousness of the problem in Italy, the member companies held three days of talks in Rome, highlighted by a rally at which 150,000 pirated tapes and compact disks were destroyed. Dump trucks heaped the contraband on a piazza atop Rome's Pincian Hill and then, in a carnival atmosphere, Italian rock singers danced on the pile, some whacking at it with hammers. Later, a small steamroller climbed the mound and began crushing the recordings, but skidded and got stuck in the slippery plastic. In the end, the recordings were swept up and carted away. Despite such efforts, pirated recordings accounted last year for 21.5 percent of the Italian music market. That was down from 33 percent in 1995, but still represented losses to the industry of about $100 million. Many loopholes exist. San Marino, the tiny republic in central Italy, belongs neither to the European Union nor to the World Trade Organization, so the absence of anti-piracy laws has made it a musical pirates' cove. Earlier this year, when a grand jury in Florida indicted 13 members of a ring accused of smuggling bootleg compact disks into the United States, the trail led through San Marino. One of the accused was Italian, and two were citizens of San Marino. Some law enforcement officials say they are up against an unsympathetic public, which tends to view counterfeiters as modern-day Robin Hoods pitted against deep-pocketed corporations like the Walt Disney Company or Gianfranco Ferre, the Italian luxury fashion designer. ''People say, 'Why are you protecting Disney and Ferre, and antagonizing kids who are just playing games?' '' said Mr. Corasaniti, the Rome prosecutor. What they don't realize, he said, is how badly piracy burns the consumer. Each year, Mr. Corasaniti noted as an example, the cloning of cellular phone chips alone costs consumers of the phone chips that were duplicated at least $18 million, and the practice is spreading. He warned it would be an uphill fight. ''It's like emptying the sea with a cognac glass,'' he said. Fakes Blot A Nation's Good Names | In Italy's Piracy Culture, Black Market Is Thriving |
941313_5 | participants demanding to form a union. The group sought to present the 13,000 signatures to Giuliani administration officials, but said the city refused to accept them. B1 Du Pont Settles Pollution Suit More than 400 current and former inhabitants of Du Pont Village near Pompton Lakes, N.J., are sharing in a $38.5 million settlement of a lawsuit filed four years ago against Du Pont, the giant chemical company, which built the settlement for workers in one of its factories in the 1920's. The factory's neighbors say that streams of mercury, lead, and other hazardous materials have destroyed their property values and, in some cases, their health. B1 Long Island Beaches Open Beaches on Long Island Sound in Westchester County were reopened after county health officials determined that the water was no longer contaminated by the remnants of a sewage spill in the Bronx. B2 SPORTS B6-12, 16 British Surge at Wimbledon Tim Henman eliminated the defending champion, Richard Krajicek, putting two British men in the quarterfinals for the first time in 36 years. He joined his countryman, Greg Rusedski. Top-seeded Pete Sampras almost lost a 2-0 lead, but beat Petr Korda in a fifth set. B7 Mets Swept in Series The Detroit Tigers hit three homers in a 9-7 victory over the Mets, completing a three-game sweep in which they outscored the Mets, 31-13. B9 HOME C1-9 ARTS C11-24 Riga Ghetto Project Stalls More than half a century of efforts by the survivors of a Latvian ghetto to memorialize their story in a book have produced only disputes and bitter disappointments. The latest conflict pits the survivors against a German university scholar and court witness on Nazi crimes. C11 BUSINESS DAY D1-16 Cars Get More Affordable The auto industry is in the thick of a price war, with more rebates, cut-rate loans, cheap lease deals and other discounts than ever. And with family incomes rising at a hefty clip, these discounts have made new cars more affordable than they have been in nearly a generation. A1 Fed Holds Rates Steady The Federal Reserve decided to leave interest rates unchanged, betting that the economy can continue to enjoy low unemployment without inflation. The decision had been widely expected among economists and investors, who argued that there was no justification for raising rates when the economy was cooling and there were no signs of substantial price increases. D1 SBC Sues Government SBC | NEWS SUMMARY |
941315_4 | walls of the house.'' Add to that the fear that ''it does terrible things to children,'' and you have a substance that ''taps into our primal fears,'' he said. Dr. Linet said she did not start the study with her mind made up. ''This was the situation we found ourselves in the late 1980's,'' she said. ''A variety of studies had linked a variety of environmental causes to childhood leukemia.'' But, she said, the studies were all small and suggestive rather than definitive. Childhood leukemia is rare; there are only about 1,600 new cases a year in the United States, Dr. Linet said. But its cause was not known. Was there something in the environment or was it a genetic error, the result of bad luck? The investigators decided to focus on the power-line question. ''None of us would have devoted the last eight or so years of our lives to this if there wasn't potentially something in it,'' Dr. Linet said. Some say the debates show how hard it is to dispel the public's fears of a threat that has never been demonstrated but that seems terrifying. ''It's really true that it's just impossible to get rid of this,'' Dr. Stevens said. Indeed, not everyone finds the new data convincing. Dr. David Savitz, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, whose small study of Denver children in 1989 had found an association between power lines and childhood leukemia, pointed to the slight increase in cancer risk among children with very high exposures. ''Don't get me wrong, this is not compelling positive evidence,'' he said yesterday. But, he added, further research is needed. Louis Slesin, the editor of Microwave News, a newsletter that has warned of the dangers of power lines, went further. ''I think it's still a wide open question,'' of whether power lines cause cancer, Mr. Slesin said. ''We shouldn't close the book yet.'' Dr. Park disagreed, saying: ''The number of questions you can ask is infinite. If it's not the intensity of the electric field, maybe it's the number of times you turn the field on and off. Maybe it only causes cancer in conjunction with eating bananas. You can keep asking questions forever.'' But, he said, at some point, it is time to invest research money in other things. ''I'm ever an optimist,'' Dr. Park said. ''My guess is that it's pretty much over now.'' | Big Study Sees No Evidence Power Lines Cause Leukemia |
941276_2 | there, the principal traffic cop had summoned reporters from three other newspapers to his private precinct house. ''My parking space had nothing to do with it,'' he said. ''I'm always going to have my parking space. Nobody argues with me.'' He was sitting in the V.I.P. lot Tuesday afternoon, he insisted, because he had been told of people parking there who were not among those with a pass for it -- team and front-office personnel, members of the news media and luxury-suite holders. ''The guards tell me that people will tell them: 'I went to school with George Steinbrenner. I'm an old friend of George Steinbrenner.' And people will walk around and get player autographs,'' he said. ''The poor guards don't know what to do.'' They know what to do now. They know not to let anybody in the V.I.P. lot without a proper pass. ''It took an hour and 40 minutes to get everybody out of the garage Monday night,'' he said, alluding to those with cars there in Monday night's crowd of 39,887. ''Tuesday night we had it closed in 38 minutes. We'll do better. We'll get it under 30 minutes. We got little kids that want to go to bed.'' But half an hour after 36,606 attended yesterday's matinee, cars were still creeping from the garage to the Deegan. ''I should've been into it a long time ago,'' he said, alluding to the traffic problems that contribute to some fans' staying away from games. ''It's my fault. I take the blame. I'm going to do the best I can, and I hope the police work with me. I've got a tired old lady, and I'm trying to make her beautiful.'' The tired old lady, of course, is Yankee Stadium, opened in 1923 and modernized in 1976, but, until now, the tired old lady's sons and daughters have been worrying about George Steinbrenner's eventual egress when the Yankee lease expires in 2002. But his sudden concern might mean he is worrying about the ingress to 2003. ''I can't rebuild the Deegan,'' he said. ''We've got to work with what we've got.'' That is a message for the city and state politicians, but as the Yankees' principal traffic cop stood there in the rain, a grizzle-faced fan leaned out of a creeping car with a message for him. ''George,'' he growled. ''Get Jimmy Key back.'' Sports of The Times | The Ingress And Egress Traffic Cop |
942609_2 | drug, ergotamine, for long periods. Ergotamine mimics serotonin. Common antidepressants like Prozac increase serotonin levels, but not to levels anything like that seen with tumors or ergotamine, said Dr. Isner, a cardiology professor at Tufts Medical School. A report describing the new findings was to have been published on Aug. 28 in The New England Journal of Medicine, but the journal lifted its normal restrictions on prepublication publicity because the findings could be of such importance to the public's health, its editors said. ''We don't do this very often, but if there seems to be an important public health message we shouldn't be sitting on it,'' said Dr. Gregory Curfman, deputy editor of the journal. Dr. Friedman said the F.D.A. was sending letters to thousands of doctors, including heads of medical specialty organizations, telling them of the observations, and was posting its warning letter on its home page. The F.D.A. said in its letter that it knew of 33 women who developed heart problems after taking the diet pills -- the 24 women reported by the Mayo Clinic and Fargo doctors as well as 9 other women that doctors reported to the F.D.A. The agency is asking doctors to look for and report any patients who are taking the drug combination and who develop the valve defects or primary pulmonary hypertension. Two F.D.A. spokesmen, Brad Stone and Dr. Larry Bachorik, said the agency was somewhat restricted in its ability to regulate the diet pill combination because it was a drug use that was never approved in the first place. If the association with heart damage is real, the agency could meet with the drug manufacturers and ask them to warn doctors and patients. The agency could also require the drugs to carry warning labels cautioning doctors and patients against using them in combination and for long periods. ''Presently, there is no conclusive evidence establishing a causal relationship between these two products and valvular disease,'' the F.D.A. letter said. ''However, given the seriousness of the reported valvular disease and its rare occurrence in otherwise healthy women in this age range, we believe that patients and health care professionals should be notified of this information.'' In a telephone interview, Dr. Friedman acknowledged that ''these are immensely popular drugs.'' But the Acting Commissioner added, ''For those physicians who wish to prescribe these two drugs in an off-label manner and for patients who wish | 2 Popular Diet Pills Linked to Problems With Heart Valves |
942625_1 | he has not been linked to the crimes charged by firsthand testimony. But other men whom the agent identified as Genovese family mobsters are heard referring to Mr. Gigante by his nickname, Chin, in connection with various money-making deals and with the chance of arrests. And in an excerpt from a conversation in May 1984, one mobster, Anthony Salerno, is heard referring to Chin as ''boss.'' On the tapes of the recordings, Mr. Salerno is heard making several other references to Mr. Gigante that the prosecution says suggest Mr. Gigante was the boss. In the cross-examination of Mr. Kelleher, a defense lawyer, James Culleton, let the jury know that in a major case in 1985, Mr. Salerno was accused by Federal prosecutors in Manhattan of being the boss of the Genovese family at that time. Mr. Culleton also cited excerpts of the tapes that the prosecution did not play in which Mr. Salerno suggests that he himself was the Genovese boss, such as when he talks of meetings he attended with the bosses of other Mafia families. In the 1985 racketeering case, other defendants included men identified as the bosses or acting bosses of the four other Mafia families in New York. Mr. Salerno and the others were convicted, and he was sentenced to 100 years in prison, where he died in 1992. Mr. Culleton, reminding Mr. Kelleher that he himself had arrested Mr. Salerno in the 1985 case, handed him the indictment in that case. ''Wasn't it alleged in this document that he was the boss of the Genovese crime family?'' he asked, referring to Mr. Salerno. ''Yes,'' said the agent. Later, in questioning by the prosecution, George Stamboulidis, an assistant United States attorney in Brooklyn, suggested that in some of the social club recordings, Mr. Salerno could be heard ''complaining about having to share power with someone downtown'' -- a possible reference to Mr. Gigante. In 1988, two years after Mr. Salerno was convicted in the case in which he was accused of being the Genovese boss, officials at the F.B.I. were saying that it had begun focusing on Mr. Gigante as the reputed boss, and that Mr. Gigante had gained overall control of the family in the early 80's or by then had begun sharing power as an equal boss with Mr. Salerno. Mr. Gigante's lawyers say that he has been so impaired by mental illness that | Gigante Lawyers Say U.S. Saw Another as Genovese Boss |
942164_1 | a Diet ought to list as an ingredient ''synergistic potentiators''? *Are the Seagram Company and the TBWA Chiat/Day unit of Omnicom Group aware that a new series of print advertisements for Absolut Kurant currant-flavored vodka, which feature trendy fashions under the headline ''Absolut Au Kurant,'' have led some drinkers to believe the brand is actually named Au Kurant and order it that way at bars? *Though advertising for Wendy's International Inc. will typically not mention its giant competitor, the McDonald's Corporation, was it accidental that an actress in a recent Wendy's commercial, portraying an employee of a make-believe rival fast-food chain, was dressed in a uniform with Scotch-plaid accents? *Did the creators of a newspaper advertisement for Preferred Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, which carried the headline ''Languish in the scenes of summer,'' realize that the primary definitions of ''languish'' include ''to lose vigor or vitality, fail in health, become weak, droop; to live under distressing conditions, continue in a state of suffering; to become slack or dull, lose intensity''? *Was it planned that the Weather Channel cable network ran a commercial for Kellogg's Complete Bran Flakes that featured two firefighters talking about a rookie colleague at the same time that the Showtime cable network ran the film ''Backdraft,'' which is about rookie firefighters? *Why in a recent article in The National Enquirer was a quotation about stars who were caught ''smoking pot'' followed immediately by the word marijuana in parentheses, to explain what pot is, as if readers of The Enquirer were not well versed enough in celebrity peccadilloes to understand drug slang? *Did Del Monte Foods introduce Raspberry Peaches as part of a line of canned flavored fruit because scientists have discovered that the flavor of peaches is no longer sufficient to sell peaches? *If Tricon Global -- the company being created by the spinoff of the three fast-food businesses owned by Pepsico Inc. -- purchases a fourth restaurant chain, will a consultant advise that it be renamed Quadcon? *How tasteful was it that a recent promotion for the Broadway musical ''Titanic'' asked ticket buyers to mention a code that included the letters ''S.O.S.''? *Does it reveal anything about how executives at the Holiday Inn Worldwide unit of Bass P.L.C. perceive their customers when that lodging chain's new commercial is centered on a bunch of clowns who run amok in a hotel? *Even if it is a Hollywood tradition | Are 'synergistic potentiators' one of the four basic food groups? What does it take to sell peaches? |
942163_0 | Policemen dragged about 200 Roman Catholic demonstrators off the road in front of their homes early this morning to clear the way for a Protestant parade that had threatened to become a flash point of serious sectarian violence. The parade took place early this afternoon, with some stone-throwing but no major bloodshed. Violence flared, however, in other parts of this strife-torn province, further damaging efforts to convene broad-based peace talks on the political future of Northern Ireland. Dozens of armored personnel carriers lined the road today in Portadown, a predominantly Protestant town 40 miles southwest of Belfast, and police officers and army troops kept the Catholics separated from the parade. Many of the 2,000 Orange Order marchers, wearing black suits, orange sashes and bowler hats, glanced nervously at the houses as they hurried down a half-mile Catholic enclave on the Garvaghy Road. In a slight concession, the members of the all-male Orange Order marched without their traditional martial music, except for a single drum beating time. Of the 7,000 Catholic residents in the area, only about 200 watched them pass, hooting from a distance. A few hurled bricks and bottles that fell far short of the parade, which took less than 10 minutes to pass through the Catholic section. The decision by the British Government to allow the parade, taken after weeks of attempts at compromise failed, angered many Catholics, who comprise about 43 percent of the province's population. As word spread today that the parade would be allowed, violent incidents erupted around Northern Ireland. Armed masked men took over a train near here, evicted the passengers and set it afire. In the Catholic section of West Belfast, people hurled rocks at the police. In another part of the city, shots were fired, apparently at the police, and several cars were hijacked and burned. The police and army braced for more attacks after nightfall but by midnight, the police said, sporadic violence attributed to Catholics did not seem to be matching that of Protestants protesting the temporary ban on the parade a year ago. A policewoman was shot in the face by a lone gunman in Coalisland, County Tyrone, and seriously wounded. Shots were fired at a police station in West Belfast, where a bomb was also exploded, but no one was injured. Many Catholics say today's parade, one of about 3,000 every summer, most of them to commemorate the | 200 Catholics Hauled Away In Ulster Before Parade |
943687_0 | The House will vote again soon on whether to eliminate loan subsidies that keep sugar prices high while fostering destruction of the Florida Everglades. A bipartisan proposal sponsored by Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Dan Miller, Republican of Florida, to phase out sugar subsidies barely lost last year. It may come up for another vote this week in the form of an amendment to an appropriations bill. That will give the House a second chance to put the interests of consumers and the environment over those of a small crowd of politically powerful sugar growers. A combination of import restrictions, guaranteed prices and subsidized loans keeps sugar prices artificially high, roughly twice the level in other countries, and thus transfers about $1.5 billion a year from consumers to a handful of large sugar growers. Almost half of the benefits from the sugar program go to little more than 1 percent of growers. The high prices act like a tax on food, hitting hardest at poor families who typically spend a large fraction of their budget on food and other necessities. If the Schumer-Miller proposal passes, sugar prices could fall 20 cents for a five-pound bag. The sugar growers justify their subsidies as needed to counter foreign-subsidized imports and to protect the jobs of domestic workers. Neither argument withstands scrutiny. There are ample rules to prevent foreign countries from ''dumping'' government-subsidized sugar in United States markets. Also, by propping up raw sugar prices, the program has driven half the United States sugar refiners out of business or out of the country, taking jobs with them. There is a second, powerful reason to eliminate sugar subsidies. They breed excessive production of sugar cane in environmentally sensitive areas. In the Florida Everglades, about a half-million acres of wetlands have been converted to sugar cane production. Excessive sugar cane production has interrupted water flows and contaminated the Everglades with polluted agricultural run-off. When the Schumer-Miller bill comes up for a vote, representatives who claim to defend the interests of ordinary consumers ought to vote yes. The bill lost narrowly last year in part because some urban representatives -- including Gary Ackerman, Jose Serrano and Thomas Manton of New York -- voted no. They harmed their own constituents but can make amends this week. | End Sugar's Sweet Deal |
943690_0 | OVER the last three and a half years, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has all but accomplished the impossible with curbside recycling. During his tenure, the Mayor has repeatedly cut the program's budget, curtailed the number of pickups and generally pooh-poohed the concerns of anxious environmentalists. Yet, at the same time, he has, by his accounting at least, still managed to meet the ambitious goals set by the City Council exactly eight years ago today. How has he done it? Simply by tossing in the curb. Every day at the great Fresh Kills dump on Staten Island, tons of old roadway arrive in the form of huge slabs of asphalt and concrete. An enormous blue machine nicknamed Rock Crusher breaks up the slabs and the resulting riprap is then used to build temporary roads through the dump. Eventually, as the piles of garbage mount, these roads are themselves covered over by old sneakers and half-eaten bananas, entombed amid the trash they helped deliver. Mr. Giuliani calls the whole process recycling. He insists that the asphalt and concrete should be counted, along with empty plastic bottles and old newspapers, toward the city's quotas. By doing so, the Mayor has been able practically to double -- on paper at least -- the number of tons of trash the city collects and ''recycles.'' The Mayor's novel interpretation of the law has yet to win many adherents. The City Council members who originally set the recycling quotas say they never intended concrete and asphalt to be counted. The State Supreme Court judge charged with enforcing the quotas has dismissed Mr. Giuliani's argument as spurious. And even the men who proudly run Rock Crusher are skeptical. ''The stuff still winds up in the landfill,'' shrugged Lou Rispoli, the supervisor of the Crushing and Screening Plant. ''Is that really recycling?'' MR. GIULIANI is, as usual, unbowed. Just the other day, his corporation counsel, Paul A. Crotty, filed a notice of the city's intent to appeal -- yet again -- a ruling that the city is violating the recycling quotas. As Mr. Crotty outlined it, the administration's case basically amounts to this: crushed rocks do so count, no matter what the City Council, the State Supreme Court and, it is tempting to add, common sense might have to say about it. It will be the seventh time that the city has chosen to go to court rather than | How Giuliani Has Recycled A Trash Battle |
946184_0 | When Walt Disney released the animated fable ''Bambi'' in 1942, there were approximately 500,000 white-tailed deer in the United States. Now, with no natural predators, severe restrictions on hunting and an abundance of new habitat on the edges of forest clearings, there are more deer in the U.S. than when the Pilgrims landed in 1620. About 27 million roam through woodland and into the suburbs. They damage seedlings in new-growth forests, reduce habitat for smaller animals, plunder shrubbery in the suburbs and cause traffic deaths wherever they are found. Last year more than 100 people were killed in nearly 500,000 motor-vehicle collisions with deer. Deer overpopulation has become a vexing issue. Currently there are nearly one million deer in New York State, up from roughly 300,000 in 1954. To stabilize this population, approximately 200,000 must be removed annually. The main problem is in developed areas. Indeed, there are denser deer populations in some suburbs than in Adirondack State Park. Communities have used a variety of methods to cull their herds. The easiest fix in rural areas is to extend the hunting season or the number of deer that can be taken. In more populated areas, where hunters could be dangerous, communities sometimes resort to police marksmen, professional bow hunters or netting and trapping so as to transport deer out of the area. Then there is the option that animal rights activists prefer: an experimental technology called immunocontraception, or birth control for female deer. The doe is injected either by blowdart or after being tranquilized. A few weeks later a booster shot must be given and then re-administered every year. At Fire Island National Seashore, deer have been treated since 1993 by the National Park Service and the Humane Society. Two or more years of vaccinations have reduced pregnancies in treated animals by 85 to 90 percent and significantly slowed the rate of growth of the herd. However, Fire Island is a relatively closed environment where deer are easy to monitor. Most communities must contend with free-range deer. The difficulty in tracking them exacerbates logistical and financial concerns. A vaccination program can cost a community more than $500 per doe per year -- $100,000 annually for 200 does. There is also the question of how safe the chemicals are. Immunocontraceptives are not immediately practical in areas with a dense deer population because it could take from 3 to 15 years before | Bambi the Pest |
946222_2 | assumed Rituxan would be approved and had bid up the price in advance. ''A lot of physicians had already seen the data at scientific meetings and they feel comfortable with it,'' said Michael Sheffery, an analyst with Mehta & Isaly. He estimated that the drug would have at least $200 million in annual sales in the United States. ''This antibody makes a difference,'' he said. William H. Rastetter, the chairman, chief executive and president of Idec, said in a telephone interview that the monoclonal antibody technology could be applied to many diseases in addition to cancer. ''The vast majority of our products are genetically engineered monoclonal antibodies that bind to white blood cells in the immune system,'' Mr. Rastetter said. Because those cells are involved in a broad array of diseases, Rituxan could be the first of many drugs from Idec. ''The same approach, though not the same drug, could be applied to rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and other inflammatory and autoimmune diseases,'' he said. Monoclonal antibodies were among the earliest molecules pursued by the biotechnology industry, but they have taken a long time to be developed. Growth factors, a class of drugs that stimulate the growth of specific types of cells, were first studied about 20 years ago. Last week another advisory panel to the F.D.A. recommended approval of a drug from the Chiron Corporation for the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers; if approved, it would be the first growth factor cleared for commercial use in wound healing. ''It's obviously great news for the entire industry to finally get a monoclonal antibody approved for cancer,'' said James McCamant, editor of the Medical Technology Stock Letter, which is based in Berkeley. Idec, based in San Diego, discovered Rituxan and conducted preliminary clinical trials on the drug. But subsequent development was shared with Genentech, which is based in South San Francisco. The two companies plan to share manufacturing, marketing and sales. For Genentech, Rituxan is part of a new strategic thrust in cancer that includes reacquiring the rights to alpha interferon and a new drug in development for the treatment of breast cancer. ''With the explosion of knowledge of the molecular events in tumor progression, we thought there would be many opportunities to interfere with the proteins involved in that process,'' Arthur D. Levinson, the president and chief executive of Genentech, said in a telephone interview. ''This represents our first tangible success.'' | An F.D.A. Panel Approves a New Biotechnology Drug |
945319_0 | The Irish Republican Army's decision to resume its cease-fire yesterday brings Northern Ireland closer than it has ever been to meaningful peace talks that will include all major Catholic and Protestant parties. But that result is not yet assured. The I.R.A. must scrupulously maintain its cease-fire through the start of those talks, scheduled for mid-September, and then continue it throughout what are sure to be difficult and frustrating negotiations. As important, the province's main Protestant parties must not abandon the bargaining table the moment Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, arrives. Any respite from the violence that has plagued Northern Ireland for most of the past 30 years, and killed more than 3,200 of its people, would be welcome. More than half of those victims died from I.R.A. terror. The new cease-fire is doubly welcome, however, because it represents the I.R.A.'s acceptance of British and Irish conditions for Sinn Fein to participate in the peace talks. Without Sinn Fein, those talks would have scant chance of success. Now that Sinn Fein finally looks set to join the talks, it will mainly be up to David Trimble, a moderate who heads Northern Ireland's largest Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, to make sure his followers do not petulantly walk away from them. Mr. Trimble's main concern is establishing at which point in the talks the I.R.A. and Protestant paramilitary groups will surrender weapons. The best basis for resolving this sensitive issue is a compromise proposed by the chairman of the peace talks, former Senator George Mitchell. Under his formula, negotiations on disarming would take place in separate talks parallel to the discussion of political issues. No detailed timetable for surrendering weapons would be fixed in advance. Instead, a disarmament schedule would be established as progress in political talks allowed both sides to develop confidence in a negotiated settlement. The Mitchell approach has been accepted by the British and Irish Governments and established the basis for the I.R.A. cease-fire. The Unionists now should accept it as well, so that the talks can at last move on to substantive issues, including a new political charter for Northern Ireland and the province's future relations with Ireland and Britain. The new cease-fire is a considerable achievement for Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has made Northern Ireland a principal focus of his efforts since taking office May 1. Mr. Blair has taken courageous initiatives that his | The I.R.A. Cease-Fire |
945296_0 | As the new Irish Republican Army cease-fire went into effect at noon today, hundreds of Roman Catholics and Protestants strolled among the fragrant flowers in the Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Rose Garden on the edge of Belfast. Their children, warned not to touch the flowers, did cartwheels on the grass. A string quartet -- three Catholics, one Protestant -- sitting under a kiosk played Bach's Air from Orchestral Suite No. 3. A grandmother dangled an infant on her knee, keeping time with the music. Peace, for an idyllic while anyway, had returned to Northern Ireland, where more than 3,200 people have been killed in sectarian fighting since 1969. The new cease-fire has brought a cautious sense of relief. For people remember that the last I.R.A. cease-fire lasted for only 17 months, ending in February 1996, and that a return to mayhem is always possible, particularly if peace talks scheduled for mid-September break down. ''We're delighted,'' said Tom Gunning, 75, a Protestant who is a retired Transport Authority official, as he sat in the garden with his wife, their son-in-law, daughter and two grandchildren -- Jill, 7, and Mark, 4, who were waiting hungrily for the family picnic to begin. ''I'd sooner see talking than fighting,'' he added. ''It's been a difficult life for my children, with violence all their life. I am hopeful that this is the answer. For my grandchildren, for everybody.'' His wife, May, frowned. ''I don't think it'll work out at all,'' she said, and, referring to the I.R.A. and its political wing, Sinn Fein, added, ''They get one thing, then they want another.'' Members of the Cole Quartet, finishing two Gershwin numbers, ''Embraceable You'' and ''I Got Rhythm,'' said that peace was good for the music business. ''It helps bring better musicians here -- people who just wouldn't come before,'' said Orla Cole, 22, the group's violinist and leader. ''The politicians need to sit and talk, to get on with it.'' Karen Porter, 23, a cellist and the group's only Protestant, said she feared that Catholic and Protestant splinter groups would continue the violence even though the I.R.A. and major Protestant paramilitaries both say they are observing a cease-fire. ''The loyalists have just started up again,'' she said, referring to Protestant guerrillas. Shane O'Neill, 22, a violinist, said his father, Seamus, had recently received a prize from the White House and had met President Clinton, | Belfast Takes Time To Smell the Roses Under I.R.A. Truce |
945275_0 | Several million cars will go on sale this autumn with a costly new pollution-control device that will make it harder to fill the gas tank at some service stations and may pose a safety risk. The new device is designed to capture the gasoline vapors that occupy a mostly empty gas tank and are usually pushed out into the air when the tank is refueled. The 1990 Clean Air Act requires auto makers to install the devices on 40 percent of their new cars for the 1998 model year, 80 percent of the 1999 cars and all of the 2000 models. The devices, known as onboard refueling vapor recovery systems, will be phased in on new mini-vans, sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks early in the next century. Recent tests by the California Air Resources Board have found that the devices cause problems with several of the many brands of gas pump nozzles that recover gasoline vapors and that are widely used in large cities like New York. The car devices cause these several brands of nozzles to shut off prematurely during refueling, even when the customer's gas tank is nowhere near full. The new pollution-control devices on cars are also adding $150 to $250 apiece to the cost of building a car, auto executives say. The insurance industry and some safety experts are further worried that the devices may slightly increase the risk of vehicle fires, although auto makers insist that they have come up with safe designs to meet the latest regulatory mandate. The highly explosive gasoline vapors captured by the onboard devices during refueling are pushed into the engine and burned with gasoline when the driver turns the ignition. The question is whether the presence of the stored vapors in cars will increase the risk of fires or explosions during refueling. ''Making the fuel system more complicated, adding more lines, more valves and more vapor, could only make the risk move in one direction, and that is toward more risk,'' said Brian O'Neill, the president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research group bankrolled by insurers seeking to reduce the cost of accident claims. In drafting the Clean Air Act, Congress considered simply requiring all service stations to install gasoline pumps that recover vapor. But service station owners strenuously objected, saying the cost could reach $3,000 a nozzle. Auto makers were told to redesign their | New Auto Pollution Device To Block Gasoline Vapors |
945272_1 | next. The contracts will run for a year. The environmental agency selected these areas for logging because it has complete inventories on all the trees there. Mr. Martins said that loggers who obtain the concessions would be subject to limits on the amount extracted and other rules that would insure that the same forest could be used for logging again within 20 years. The concessions could also include requirements for building housing for local residents or for fulfilling other obligations to the surrounding communities. The plan drew mixed reactions from environmentalists. Israel Klabin, a pulp and paper scion who now runs a Rio-based foundation for sustainable development, acknowledged, ''If we would be all the way orthodox about what we are doing, we would say that no development at all is best.'' ''But we have to see the complete impossibility of treating part of the country outside the pragmatic reality of what goes on around the world,'' he said. Mr. Klabin added that he feared the concessions were being granted before the Government had created adequate monitoring systems and goals for forest management. ''Do we have the right definition of sustainability?'' he said. ''We don't. Do we have the right system of inspection and monitoring? We don't. Ideologically the concessions are right, but they're too early.'' Gustavo Fonseca, vice president for Brazil of Conservation International, a Washington-based environmental group, agreed. He predicted that opening the Amazon's forests for concessions would have ''minimal'' impact on conservation or sustainable development. While illegal deforestation is hardly a new problem in Brazil, the recent arrival of several Asian logging companies, which bought up failing domestic logging companies, has fueled concerns of a rapid acceleration in deforestation. A recent Government study found that 80 percent of the timber extracted from the Amazon is being removed illegally. While opening once-protected frontiers for logging, he said, the Amazonian concessions would do nothing to alter the advantages for logging companies to strip a forest quickly and move on. Mr. Fonseca added that ''99.9 percent of the Amazon is being exploited without any control or design.'' Tarso Resende de Azeveda, the executive director of Imaflora, a Sao Paulo based group that rates the environmental soundness of logging operations, said the Government sale of licenses in the Tapajos reserve would destroy the ecosystem that supports hundreds of people who live along the Tapajos river. ''It's not so much that the logging | To Fight Outlaws, Brazil Opens Rain Forest to Loggers |
943557_0 | The crash could not have been more horrific: a 170-ton airplane with 230 people aboard exploding, splitting in two and plunging into the Atlantic Ocean within sight of Long Island beaches. But so far investigators have not turned up a definitive cause that matches the enormity of the crash. There was no physical evidence to show that Trans World Airlines Flight 800 was sabotaged or shot down by terrorists, but neither has there been a definitive finding of a mechanical failure to explain fully such a catastrophic event. But even with the central question unanswered, the investigation has had wide-ranging effects. The crash provided momentum for measures that had been previously proposed, such as tightening airport security and improving the flow of information to relatives of victims of aviation disasters. It also led to an inspection of wiring and fuel systems on jumbo jets, and promoted research on preventing fires and explosions in fuel tanks. ''It locked us on the course we were headed, to improve security in the U.S.,'' said Bruce Butterworth, the director of the Federal Aviation Administration's office of civil aviation security. Since the crash, four CTX-5000 devices, intended to scan luggage for explosives, have been placed in airports. One was installed at the Tower Air terminal at Kennedy International Airport. Within several months, 50 more will be in use around the country, although security experts acknowledge there will not be nearly enough devices to search all the suspect baggage. A law was enacted in October that requires airlines to release more quickly a list of passengers aboard airplanes that crash. The new law also made the National Transportation Safety Board responsible for informing relatives of progress in accident investigations. The T.W.A. crash, said James E. Hall, the safety board chairman, ''probably changed forever how families will be treated.'' The Flight 800 investigation, which once involved efforts of hundreds of criminal and aviation investigators around the world, has shrunk to a plodding scientific inquiry by a few dozen people. Outside the cavernous hangars in Calverton, N.Y., where a 90-foot section of the plane's fuselage has been reassembled, fewer than a dozen cars sit in a parking lot that last year held more than 100 vehicles on any given day. The main hangar is now as still as a library, crash investigators said. Out on the ocean, scallop boats that spent seven months scraping the sea bottom for | Flight 800: Mystery Remains, but Inquiry Has Brought Change |
943221_0 | SEA CHANGE Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat. By Peter Nichols. 238 pp. New York: Viking. $23.95. On tropical vacations we've all envied those people who have seemingly perfect carefree lives, sleeping and eating on their boats and making money at odd jobs that more often than not involve sailing boats to and from other exotic locales. That's the kind of existence Peter Nichols and his wife had in the Caribbean and Florida. They bought a rundown boat, the Toad, and fell in love with it, or rather fell in love with restoring it. While they lived in and worked on the boat, they took chartering jobs, or she worked as a waitress and he labored in a boatyard. But they realized the trap that such a Margaritaville life can hold, and so, the boat restored, they decided to sail across the Atlantic. In ''Sea Change,'' Nichols reveals that beneath this idyllic life there were tensions in his marriage, and by the time the voyage was over, the relationship had foundered. Soon after arriving in Europe, they split up. Left alone in England, he set out to sail the Toad, a 27-foot engineless sailboat with a shallow four-foot draft, solo back across the Atlantic to Maine. ''Sea Change'' is the story of that voyage told in the form of a ship's log. But the book is more than an account of sightings and positions, as Nichols reflects on his marriage and the loving restoration of the Toad, offers a fine condensed history of small-boat journeys and explains simply and clearly what it is like to sail across the ocean by yourself. He is marvelous at describing the feelings of awe and loneliness that the sea inspires (a loneliness made more acute for him as he sails without the woman he obviously still loves). One of the hardest things to endure on a transoceanic solo voyage is lack of sleep. The careful sailor will sleep only in 15- to 30-minute stints. One of the greatest dangers to a ''singlehander'' is the prospect of being run down by a large ship. Powerful cargo ships are now able to head directly toward their destinations against prevailing winds and currents and no longer need to stay within regular shipping lanes. The radar on these ships often doesn't pick up a small boat, and the tiny craft is unlikely to be seen until | Small Craft Warning |
943559_4 | since I had to disturb him for something as mundane as going to the toilet,'' said Mr. Umashankar. Whatever high-technology civilities vacationers do or do not observe in the presence of others, though, the toughest conflicts are typically within themselves. On a recent trip to Montreal, Cheryl Moreau, 38, who lives in Portland, Me., and keeps in touch with several close friends by E-mail, found herself surreptitiously looking over her hosts' homes for Internet connections. She recalls, too, her joy last summer in Prague to find a cybercafe where she could send and retrieve messages. But Ms. Moreau has misgivings about indulging her on-line craving. ''In Prague,'' she said, ''I began thinking to myself, 'I've been in this windowless basement place for an hour and there's a whole interesting city out there. What am I doing?' '' The urge to stay in touch is driven in part by changing expectations among employers and clients, whose respect for the sacrosanct vacation time seems to be fading with the growing ease of impinging on it. ''They are not putting it in policy and procedures manuals,'' said Marge Yanker, of the American Management Association. ''But as companies provide more electronic means to be in touch, there is an unspoken expectation that people will be reachable, even on their own time.'' Jon Stapleton, a New York lawyer who sometimes spends hours at his weekend home in Rhode Island on the phone and computer, said the technology had radically changed clients' demands of him on vacation. While he used to be available by phone, and documents could be faxed or delivered overnight, he can now receive them in minutes by E-mail. ''Clients anticipate you'll see it immediately, and I'm in a service business, and part of the service is to be available,'' said Mr. Stapleton, who sometimes wonders whether it would be better for his wife and 11-year-old son if he stayed in the office. Many people may have simply acquired a wired habit that encompasses social ties and an insatiable appetite for information. ''There's a thrill to being connected that is much more than the feeling that you have to be working all the time,'' said David Shenk, author of ''Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut'' (HarperCollins, 1997). ''It's fun to be there for people anytime they want to phone or fax or E-mail you,'' Mr. Shenk said. ''It's fun to be able to | Plugged-In Nation Goes on Vacations In a New Territory |
943524_2 | in four towns had agreed, in an unprecedented move of conciliation, based partly on fear of Catholic attacks, not to march through areas where Catholic residents do not want them. The province breathed a collective sigh of relief, hoping that the parade-related violence might abate. A week ago, a Protestant parade through a Catholic section of Portadown, southwest of Belfast, provoked three days of violent protest by Catholics throughout the province. Protestant unionist politicians, who are sympathetic to the Orange Order, and in many cases members of it, were quick to attribute the new violence to the I.R.A. and its political wing, Sinn Fein. David Trimble, an Orangeman and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, the largest in the province, said in an interview with the BBC that the attacks Friday night ''just underline the evil intent of Sinn Fein-I.R.A.'' ''One of the really irritating things about this situation is that Sinn Fein-I.R.A., who have been in all these disputed march cases the aggressors, have managed to convince other people that someone else is to blame,'' he said. Neither Sinn Fein nor the I.R.A. commented on the new attacks. Cecil Walker, an Ulster Unionist Member of the British Parliament from North Belfast, said: ''There are obviously elements in the nationalist community who seem to be holding on to mayhem. It is a diabolical situation when we have the security forces trying to help both communities and being attacked in this way.'' Nigel Dodds, also a Unionist party member of Parliament, said the attacks were ''a deliberate attempt at the murder of Protestants.'' Some Protestant leaders have called on the unionist parties to boycott the formal peace effort that is being pushed by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Mr. Blair, and the new Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, have issued a proposal under which Sinn Fein may be allowed to enter peace talks scheduled to resume in September. Sinn Fein is excluded from the talks until the I.R.A. restores the cease-fire it broke 17 months ago. The parade dispute has complicated the prospects for the talks. There are still dozens of parades scheduled this summer. The Irish and British Governments are hoping that the rest of the marching season will pass without excessive violence, that the I.R.A. will restore its cease-fire, and that Sinn Fein will sit at a negotiating table with Catholic mainstream leaders and with Mr. Trimble's unionists. | Province Tense, but Protestants March Undisturbed in Belfast |
943307_0 | Indian Point 3 Cleared The New York Power Authority has reported that after two years of sustained improvement, its much criticized Indian Point 3 Nuclear Power Plant in Buchanan has been removed from the United State Nuclear Regulatory Commission's watch list of plants that require special oversight. Four years ago, the plant was placed on the Government list after a series of problems that caused the plant to be shut down for 27 months. C. D. Rappleyea, the authority's chairman and chief executive officer, said the Government's decision was a result of a ''vigorous pursuit of excellence'' at the plant. A letter from L. Joseph Callan, executive director for operations for the Federal regulatory agency agreed that the power plant had ''demonstrated sustained improvement.'' The letter also said personnel errors were on the decline. In more good news for the plant, the Government gave it passing grades in a periodic review. Road to Ruin? A coalition of three Washington-based organizations said in a recent report that a proposed $365 million car-pool lane for Interstate 287 is one of ''the 37 worst proposed highway projects that would waste $13 billion, harm our communities and damage the environment.'' The report, called ''Road to Ruin,'' was drafted by Taxpayers for Common Sense, Friends of the Earth and the United States Public Interest Research Group. Plans for the high-occupancy-vehicle lane on the Cross Westchester section of Interstate 287 should be canceled, the coalition said in the report, adding that the project is ''an unwise use of Federal dollars'' encouraging more traffic congestion and urban sprawl in environmentally sensitive land. The road now carries about 110,000 cars a day, and the coalition is worried that open space, like Sterling Forest and the Croton watershed, would be negatively affected by increased traffic. The report said the expressway's closely spaced on and off ramps often cause traffic backups during rush hours. David Hirsch, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, said his organization would prefer to see an existing lane converted to a high-occupancy-vehicle lane. As proposed by the state Transportation Department, the H.O.V. lane would be an additional one and run from Route 303 in Rockland County to Route 120 in Harrison. Elderly Unit at Hospital New York Hospital, a White Plains institution specializing in psychiatric and geriatric care, has announced plans to develop an extended care residence with 171 units for the elderly. The site | WESTCHESTER BRIEFS |
944648_0 | Of all the emblems of the modern economy now invading rural America -- freeways, strip malls, giant subdivisions -- none seemed so benign as the electronic cottage. Urban professionals who migrated to the country thought they could stay in touch with the urban world through phone, fax and Internet without disturbing their solitude or ruining the scenery. How naive. Here in heavily forested northwest Michigan, the social and environmental costs of the communications revolution are quickly becoming apparent. A regional wireless phone company, N.P.I. Wireless, has proposed building a 250-foot tower on Benzie County's most prominent forested summit. The tower is designed to carry an array of antennas and receivers for so-called personal communications services, the new wireless technology that its proponents say is superior to cellular phones. Benzie County instituted a moratorium on such towers, and rejected the company's proposal. But the company has sued and, if a settlement is not reached, will probably win it case -- eventually. That's because the company can cite the Telecommunications Act, which the White House and Congress teamed up with the wireless industry to pass in 1996. Hailed as the definitive statement of Washington's desire to promote flexibility, innovation and competition, the act was supposed to help speed up the development of the wireless telecommunications industry. But Washington, by taking the industry under its wing, has kicked local governments in the teeth, and created a formidable backlash to its plans. On the way to passage, lobbyists for the wireless industry quietly made sure that local opposition to the unsightly towers would be blocked. They persuaded Congress to write new rules that drastically limited the authority local governments had to oversee land use. The Telecommunications Act makes it illegal for local governments to reject new towers. The law also makes it difficult, and in many cases impossible, for communities to restrict the size, location, appearance or number of towers. The law, however, includes one loophole. Congress directed communities to speed review of new tower applications. This provision, though, was ambiguous enough to invite a successful challenge. In 1996, a Federal District judge in Washington State ruled that it was legal for the city of Medina to institute a temporary moratorium on building towers to give planners time to update the zoning ordinance. Since then, some 300 other communities have established moratoriums. The industry has appealed the practice to the Federal Communications Commission, which | Technology's Towers Invade the Forest |
944675_0 | A brief report in Business Day on Tuesday about the sale of a unit of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company's Engineered Products division described the unit incorrectly. The company is selling its engineered composite business, which makes products like exterior body panels for cars and trucks; it is keeping its business of making conveyor and power transmission belts, air springs, hose, molded rubber and transportation replacement products. | Corrections |
944655_0 | Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, said today that he had urged the guerrilla group to resume the cease-fire it abandoned last year and that he expected a positive and prompt reply. A credible resolve by the I.R.A. to halt its terror attacks is a condition set by the British and Irish Governments for establishing talks involving all major parties aimed at a political solution for Northern Ireland, where sectarian violence has claimed 3,200 lives since 1969. Tony Blair, the new British Prime Minister, has made the pursuit of peace in Northern Ireland a priority of his first months in office. Without Sinn Fein at the table, there is little hope of any accord that could bring a durable settlement. ''I have made it clear over the 18 months since the collapse of the peace process that I would only approach the I.R.A. to restore their cessation if I was confident that their response would be positive,'' Mr. Adams said in a statement issued in Dublin. At a meeting of Sinn Fein leaders in the Irish capital, he said, ''The I.R.A. leadership assured us that they would respond without delay to our request.'' Sinn Fein was denied entry to talks that began 13 months ago because the I.R.A. ended its previous 17-month cease-fire by setting off a bomb in the Docklands business complex in London in February 1996 that killed two people. In the year and a half since then, the outlawed group has taken responsibility for exploding a huge bomb in the commercial center of Manchester, killing policemen and British soldiers and widely disrupting sporting events and rail and road transportation. Mr. Blair has said Sinn Fein could join talks on a political solution to Northern Ireland only if the I.R.A. declared a cease-fire that was both ''genuine and unequivocal'' and ''matched by word and deed.'' The British and Irish Governments, he said, would need six weeks from the date of the declaration to draw their conclusions about its meeting those terms. In a phrase much repeated since then, he told the House of Commons on June 25 that the ''peace train'' would be leaving on Sept. 15 with or without Sinn Fein on board. Neither Mo Mowlam, Britain's Secretary for Northern Ireland, nor Mr. Blair, who was visiting Wales today, had any immediate comment on today's announcement. While the | SINN FEIN LEADER SAYS HE EXPECTS I.R.A. CEASE-FIRE |
944693_0 | When the Episcopal Church began a 10-day meeting of the General Convention, its top legislative body, in Philadelphia on Wednesday, its leaders gathered as a church where women are ever more visible. Seven women now sit among the church's 200 bishops; there were none a decade ago. About 12 percent of 11,000 Episcopal priests are female. But when church leaders looked over their agenda, they found that one contentious item concerned women's ordination: should dioceses be compelled to allow a woman to serve as a priest anywhere in the church? At issue is the fact that women are barred from serving in 4 of the church's 113 dioceses, because the bishops there believe Christian tradition restricts the priesthood to men. And the lack of uniformity reflects how unsettled the issue of women's ordination remains within the context of organized religion. Three of Judaism's four movements -- the Reform, the Conservative and the Reconstructionist -- ordain women as rabbis, but Orthodox Judaism does not. In the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II has declared the issue closed, arguing that Jesus established the precedent for a male priesthood by calling only men as his apostles. There is no agreement among members of the National Council of Churches, whose top official, General Secretary Joan Brown Campbell, is an ordained minister. Of the 33 religious bodies in the council, 21 Protestant churches ordain women as clergy members. But 11 churches, mainly Orthodox ones, do not. (The remaining organization, a Quaker group, has no clergy, but does not bar women from holding office.) Among the major Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church decided relatively late to ordain women as clergy members, acting in 1976, a few years after various Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran bodies did so. Even then, opposition ran high: nearly 40 percent of the bishops who voted came out against the measure. The following year, the bishops drafted a ''statement of conscience,'' declaring that no bishop would be penalized either for ordaining women as priests or for refusing to do so. Two decades later, four dioceses -- in Fort Worth, Quincy, Ill., Eau Claire, Wis., and San Joaquin, Calif. -- still decline to allow women as priests, prompting supporters of women's ordination to press the issue. The bishops' statement was ''only supposed to have been a temporary measure,'' Sally Bucklee, past president of the Episcopal Women's Caucus, said yesterday. A resolution prepared for | For Episcopalians, Debate on Women |
919482_2 | custody of its hard drives. The plaintiff hired a computer expert to pick through the hard drives for anything that could prove the defendant stole proprietary information. The case came to an abrupt halt early this year after copies of internal memorandums were presented as exhibits in depositions of the defendant's principals. According to Mike Abernathy, a partner at Bell, Boyd & Lloyd in Chicago who represented the plaintiff, ''We basically broke from the deposition'' and began settlement talks. These are not isolated occurrences, according to lawyers and experts in document retrieval. Commercial litigators have caught on to two computer-related facts with a vengeance. First, the delete function on a computer, whether mainframe, network computer or laptop, does not usually destroy documents. It moves them to undisclosed locations on a hard drive. Second, many companies periodically download and store all of the information on their systems, including deleted E-mail and document drafts. And with a trend toward integrating phone mail into companies' computer systems, phone-mail messages are increasingly being downloaded and stored, also in retrievable form. Recovered phone messages are just beginning to become a factor in commercial cases, Mr. Abernathy said. E-mail can be particularly damaging, providing lawyers with disarming, personal and even embarrassing evidence. One senior executive, for example, was having an illicit liaison with his subordinate and sent her highly personal and incriminating E-mail. This note was discovered in the course of a lawsuit against the company and became a focus of the case. Why are people so careless when it comes to E-mail? ''Most sophisticated business persons have been trained not to put damaging things on paper,'' said John Willems, a litigation partner at White & Case. ''But I don't think the culture's gotten there on E-mail because people don't think of them as documents. People think of them as a lot like telephone conversations.'' While deleted E-mail may draw some lawyers to computer-based information, experts say that the sheer volume of stored electronic data has had the biggest impact upon commercial cases. With more litigants insisting that adversaries review all of their stored files, said Joan Feldman, president of Computer Forensics Inc., a Seattle company specializing in litigation support, the act of squirreling material away to guard against catastrophes like fires or floods can result in another sort of calamity. ''Five years ago, the bigger disaster was the earthquake,'' she said. ''Now the bigger disaster | Electronic Discovery Proves an Effective Legal Weapon |
919527_3 | that he believes the cult had planned to build an elaborate commune. He said the group had sold him the 40-acre site in April 1996 without giving a reason, just 10 months after they had bought it. He also said they had told him that they had planned to construct a bakery, pharmacy, lookout tower, ''nutrilab'' and ''consuming area'' and that they had planned to live in the ''Earth Ship'' structure made of tires and masonry. The compound also includes a mess hall, kitchen, showers and bathrooms. Once a summer camp for an insurance company, it also has a baseball diamond and basketball court. Though the tire construction may look like sinister barricades, it is a form of architecture that has caught on somewhat here in the Southwest; tires are recycled to provide the base for thick walls that are later plastered over. The Heaven's Gate group left behind a how-to book on the style called ''Earth Ship: How to Build Your Own'' (Solar Survival Press). Leroy Herrera, a neighbor, watched group members haul their construction materials in a big old yellow truck all summer in 1995, he said, and though they once asked to rent his cement mixer, they seemed to do everything on their own. But they did ask for help when they needed more phone lines for their computer business. Mr. Gustin said the members of the cult who rented offices from him from July to October in 1995 -- under the name ''Computer Knowmad'' -- said they had had to ''come down from the mountains'' to have six lines added to their three existing lines, he said, and proved themselves handy at snaking cable around the offices. ''They'd show you what they were doing on the computer,'' said Mr. Gustin's wife, Patsy, referring to the Web page designs. ''They never were secretive. They always had the doors open.'' When the group left, Mr. Gustin said, they said that they had been called to California and that their superior had been afraid they would get snowed in at their retreat. They said they hoped to come back in the spring, he said, but never did. The Gustins said the group members had never mentioned anything about religion or the occult. And at the grocery store near Manzano, Josephine Castillo said she thought the group had left because the area was so pervasively Catholic that they could not | Heaven's Gate Fit In With New Mexico's Offbeat Style |
914492_4 | barely 2.0, and it has been below the replacement rate for 30 years. The figure in China is 1.8. Couples in Japan are typically having 1.5 children, in Germany 1.3 and in Italy and Spain, 1.2. To some people, these are alarming portents of national decline and call for pro-natalist policies. That smacks of coarse chauvinism. The challenge is not to dilute the number of older people by promoting more births. It is to improve the quality of life at all ages, and a good place to start is to conquer misconceptions about later life. Better Health This, Gloria Steinem once said famously, ''is what 40 looks like.''And this, many older adults now say, is what 60, 70 and even 80 look like. Health and vitality are constantly improving, as a result of more exercise, better medicine and much better prevention. I can't imagine my late father in a sweatsuit, let alone on a Stairmaster, but when I look into the mirrored halls of a health-club gym on upper Broadway I see, among the intent young women in black leotards, white-haired men who are every bit as earnest, climbing, climbing, climbing. Consider the glow that radiates from the faces on today's cover, or contemplate the standards maintained by people like Bob Cousy, Max Roach, Ruth Bernhard and others who speak out in the following pages. That people are living healthier lives is evident from the work of Kenneth G. Manton and his colleagues at Duke's Center for Demographic Studies. The National Long-Term Care Survey they started in 1982 shows a steady decline in disability, a 15 percent drop in 12 years. Some of this progress derives from advances in medicine. For instance, estrogen supplements substantially relieve bone weakness in older women -- and now seem effective also against other diseases. But much of the progress may also derive from advances in perception. When Clare Friedman, the mother of a New York lawyer, observed her 80th birthday, she said to her son, ''You know, Steve, I'm not middle-aged anymore.'' It's no joke. Manton recalls survey research in which people over 50 are asked when old age begins. Typically, they, too, say ''80.'' Traditionally, spirited older adults have been urged to act their age. But what age is that in this era of 80-year-old marathoners and 90-year-old ice skaters? As Manton says, ''We no longer need to accept loss of physical function | The Age Boom |
914396_0 | Its four-story-high mansard roof leaked, its Mission clay tiles were broken and its copper details were corroded. Years ago, its roof might have been replaced with a tacky imitation. But the very visible top of the landmark Guardian Life Building at Union Square has been restored -- and will be honored tomorrow night. The roof restoration -- ''the biggest copper job since the Statue of Liberty,'' according to Jan Hird Pokorny, its architect -- joins a host of projects and a preservation leader to be given the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. ''Have you seen the Casa Italiana?'' asked Peg Breen, the Conservancy's president, citing the recreation of the 1926 neo-Renaissance palazzo at Columbia University that is another prizewinner. It was designed by Sam White of Buttrick White and Burtis with Italo Rota. ''It's now one of the happiest buildings -- the pastel colors. It's got a mint green stairwell.'' Ms. Breen also cited the restoration of the City Hall rotunda and preservation planning at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Sarah Bradford Landau, a professor at New York University who, with Carl W. Condit, wrote ''Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865-1913,'' published last year by Yale University Press, will also be honored. The Conservancy cited her contributions to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, where she was a commissioner for nine years. Jujamcyn Theaters will be honored for restoring three landmarked Broadway theaters, the Eugene O'Neill, the Martin Beck and the Virginia. A six-unit condominium conversion of a huge Greek Revival mansion at 170 Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights was also singled out, as were the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center in East Harlem and St. Thomas Church, at Fifth Avenue and 53d Street. The ceremony will be held at 6 P.M. at Casa Italiana, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue, between 116th and 118th Streets. POSTINGS: Landmarks Conservancy Awards | Honors for Palazzo, Roof, Preservationist |
914467_2 | last 12 months. One paper described the Government actions as ''panicky half-measures'' and said they were no substitute for long-term planning. Financial analysts called the crisis the worst since 1983, when Thai finance companies lost a quarter of their assets. But the director of the International Monetary Fund, Michel Camdessus, speaking in Hong Kong on Friday, said Thai authorities ''have all the potential to bring the Thai economy back on track for successful growth.'' ''I'm confident of their success,'' Mr. Camdessus said. ''What they are doing is exactly what you must do. I don't see any particular reason for this crisis to develop further.'' The measures taken last Monday were needed, Mr. Rerngchai said, because Thai financial institutions had seriously overextended themselves in loans in the sagging real estate market. For a decade, as the economy of Thailand, one of Asia's tigers, boomed at one of the world's highest growth rates -- 8 percent a year or more -- the construction of new condominiums, hotels and office buildings turned Bangkok into a giant building site, filled with dust and din and stalled traffic. But more and more, the new buildings are standing at least partly empty, with enough unused space, by one estimate, to satisfy growth needs for the next five years. At the same time, Thailand's export-led economy has been slowing sharply. Indeed, export growth virtually stalled last year after expanding about 24 percent in 1995. With the baht continuing to weaken against the dollar, a main topic of debate for weeks in financial circles has been whether it should be devalued. Some argue that Thailand's finances are solid and that the nation can defend the baht. Indeed, the country still has access to global capital markets and is selling a $500 million bond in the United States. Its foreign reserves of almost $40 billion equal more than six months of imports and exceed international guidelines. Growth in the gross domestic product, which reached 8.5 percent in 1995, fell to 6.7 percent last year, and Thais, who have been spoiled by rapid and largely unregulated growth, have been panicking. Last September, in a severe shock to national confidence, Moody's Investors Service, the United States credit-rating agency, lowered Thailand's short-term credit standing. Now it is reviewing the country's long-term credit rating, and the very fact that the review is under way has caused anguished editorials in the Thai media. Concern | Thailand's Struggling Lenders Put Investors on Edge |
914402_2 | of the $1.75 billion bond issue is earmarked for land acquisition statewide. The tract is one of 90 in the state that are on a priority list to be purchased for groundwater and open space protection, and it is one of only seven on the list for Long Island. ''So the importance of acquiring this property has already been determined,'' said Lewis J. Yevoli, a Democrat who is the Oyster Bay Supervisor. Even for Long Island, which is known for its lengthy and contentious approvals processes, the Underhill property controversy has been unusually protracted. ''The trial in Dickens's 'Bleak House' took 30 years and we're on year 23,'' said Joseph L. Forstadt, a partner at the Manhattan law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, which is representing Tilles. ''The community, which was sitting by happily allowing the town to prevent development, now comes forward a lot too late complaining that the town has settled with us.'' The 1986 lawsuit was an outgrowth of events that began in 1974. It was then that Tilles first entered into a contract to purchase the property from Mr. Underhill and first began submitting applications to the town for a rezoning to a higher density. The first application was denied by the Town Board in 1979 and several other applications, some for commercial projects, also were rejected, culminating in the 1986 lawsuit. In 1984 the town considered rezoning the tract to a minimum of five-acre lots, but took no action. And an attempt by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to designate it a wetlands and habitat of the endangered Eastern Tiger Salamander was defeated by the developers in court. But those who want to retain the existing one- and two-acre zoning say this is no ordinary piece of land. It has been identified by state and local authorities as an important recharge watershed area. It also is one of the last tracts of open space in a densely packed corridor of office buildings and condominium developments. IMMEDIATELY to the north, in the Village of Brookville, the prevailing zoning is two to five acres. ''This property is a buffer property, a transition between the lower density and higher density developments surrounding it,'' said Thomas E. Stagg of the Simmons, Jannace & Stagg law firm in Mineola, who is representing the plaintiffs suing the town as well as the Doremuses and Mrs. Underhill in | At a Busy Crossroads, 81 Acres Mired in Litigation |
914236_1 | the decline of olfactory cells. SKIN Recent skin-tightening techniques like ''laserbrasion,'' which vaporizes the top layer of skin without harming underlying structures, will be supplemented in the next decade or two by a variety of creams or injections containing molecules that will revitalize the skin. MUSCLES Researchers are studying molecules that maintain muscle tissue as potential drugs. Or we'll use combinations of either testosterone or growth hormone and exercise to maintain muscle mass. CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM Doctors foresee injections of genetically modified viruses or even just plain DNA, which will repair aging tissues with replacement genes. The new genes will make vessels limber and flexible again or stimulate the growth of new blood vessels around a vascular blockage. ENDOCRINE SYSTEM Hormone-replacement therapy is already in advanced testing. In the near future, we will probably pop pills called ''secretagogues'' -- molecules that induce growth hormone production, for example. The cocktail of choice for the over-65 crowd may be customized combinations of growth hormone and the appropriate sex hormone (estrogen or testosterone). SEX HORMONES Look for targeted hormone treatment soon -- for instance, estrogen formulations that preserve bone mass without side effects in the breast and uterus. Doctors will be able to start 40- and 50-year-old patients on hormone therapy so that, in the words of one endocrinologist, ''they can maintain their energy level and have great sex until the day they die.'' REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS AND SEXUAL FUNCTION For impotence, men will be able to pop a pill about an hour before they would like an erection. In addition, by age 80, almost all men will show some evidence of prostate enlargement. Those who do may benefit from a new device being tested called TUNA -- for Transurethral Needle Ablation -- which uses a flexible catheterlike probe and radio-frequency energy to destroy enlarged prostate tissue with heat. JOINTS The future promises drugs that block the enzymes that soften cartilage, leading to the pain associated with osteoarthritis. Doctors may also remove bits of cartilage or marrow during brief arthroscopic surgery, grow many more cartilage cells in the lab and then implant the fresh tissue into an affected joint. BONE In the near future, doctors will be able to predict who is likeliest to lose bone mass and initiate treatment in the early middle age. Gene therapy may stimulate new bone formation by delivering special proteins to bone-making cells in the marrow. The Age Boom: | 84 Going on 50 |
914255_3 | catching it are increasing. He points out that, as is well known, every species has viruses with which it is in more or less friendly equilibrium. Herpes simplex in humans is relatively benign, usually producing no more than mild facial ''cold'' sores in a minority of those infected, and most people are infected. Such viruses, however, produce fulminating symptoms if they succeed in infecting a related species: conservationists should contemplate with horror the possibility that an animal lover could perhaps wipe out the gorilla or the chimpanzee simply by giving one a herpes simplex kiss. Likewise, viruses that produce no effect in monkeys or rodents, or indeed many other animals, have lethal potential for us. Here Dr. Ryan makes an original and challenging suggestion (skeptical biologists should take it seriously): this situation is no accident. These viruses are ''aggressive symbionts,'' like the ants that live in special chambers created for them by some tropical acacia bushes: browse the bush and out comes a defending army. Likewise, invade the territory of another species and it will give you its aggressive virus to wipe you out. H.I.V.-2 came to us this way from a West African monkey, and H.I.V.-1 probably from the chimpanzee. Once, a nucleic acid war between us and other mammals would simply wipe out a hunter-gatherer village. Now the whole world hunts and gathers in the tropical rain forests -- those huge stores of species (many times greater than in the whole of the rest of the planet) once effectively defended by their aggressive symbionts but now vulnerable to our expanding populations and technologies. Thus we are in contact with every one of the world's other species, uncounted millions of them, and our speed of travel round our own village takes their viruses across continents before you can say ''night sweats.'' Dr. Ryan, a physician and the author of a previous popular book on tuberculosis, writes well in a difficult technical field, weaving the technicalities of scientific history, medicine, molecular biology and evolution into the human narratives of a sequence of epidemics, with victims, heroes (the medical teams) and villains (politicians, more or less). There are so many characters that his thumbnail sketches of the scientists do not always bring them to life, but it is nice to see the great Joshua Lederberg starting as a ''heavyset young graduate student'' presenting a paper at the end of a grueling | Killers Among Us |
914284_3 | If the problems are complex we have the patient return a second or third time. We arrange for all the involved family members to be present and we separate; a case manager will meet privately with the family to discuss issues that they are not comfortable bringing up in the presence of the patient. And we sit with the patient separately and have a heart to heart. We perform the physical and psychological examinations. Then we have a huddle between the staff, propose recommendations and discuss them with the family. We provide a report for the referring physician; if the patient doesn't have one, we are very good at finding one. Q. Is over-medication a problem? A. Absolutely. We have many patients who are on 6, 8, 10 or more medications. I can only guess at the potential interactions these medications have. Often they're taking over-the-counter remedies that they don't even consider medication. We ask a patient to bring a brown bag with everything from the medicine cabinet. We look it over, ask the physician if it is still necessary and then chart the essential medications. Q. Did we have the same geriatric problems 50 years ago? A. They were there, but who was talking about senile dementia 50 years ago? Who was concerned about osteoporosis? We just didn't recognize it. Another crucial issue is that while the age of menopause has not changed -- it's about 50 -- a woman is spending hopefully several decades in post-menopause. It becomes much more important now to address hormone replacement therapy than it was for her grandmother. Q. What is your view on estrogen replacement therapy? A. I'm a very strong proponent of it unless there is a good medical reason not to. Life expectancy increases by at least one year, and it greatly enhances the quality of life. Q. Should an older woman still have mammograms? A. Yes. A woman's risk of developing breast cancer increases with age at least until around age 80. Q. What's about older men? A. Prostate cancer remains the No. 1 cancer in men, and we're still struggling to find the best approach to it. But we have made great progress in what is often the bane of the older man's life: benign prostate enlargement. Medications are providing an effective means of delaying or avoiding surgery. We're also hitting some home runs in treating male impotence | Practical Geriatrics for an Aging Nation |
918674_0 | To the Editor: There is irony in a comparison of two March 24 news articles -- one on budget cuts in long-term care for disabled children and the other a discussion of whether fund-raising for the Clinton campaign broke any laws. How incongruous that while funds are being cut from effective programs for poor handicapped children, the Democratic and Republican parties are busy raising campaign funds. Neither political party sees the cynicism behind its fund-raising. They seem more concerned about their own futures than the futures of America's most vulnerable children. HANNAH A. KINN Executive Director League Treatment Center Brooklyn, March 24, 1997 | Politicians and Children |
914571_1 | dealing with topics from the minimum wage to the Family and Medical Leave Act. The pension search feature is a valuable tool for those who believe they are owed a pension by a former employer. A site available off the Labor Department's Web page is that of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It has the latest changes in the law, links to safety and health sites, and an interactive ''asbestos adviser.'' For a more academic approach, visit the site of Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, which offers studies, journals and data resources. As with most professions, human resource executives have plenty of associations that they use for networking and exchanging ideas. An alphabet soup of these groups can be found at the site of the Associations for Human Resource Management. The Dallas-based law firm of Collier & Associates offers free information on its site about such topics as ''Firing without Fear'' and ''Raiding the Competition (Without Getting Sued).'' Another smaller player, Winning Associates, an employee relations consulting firm in Walnut Creek, Calif., has a site that includes such articles as ''The Trouble with Salary Surveys'' and ''Legal and Illegal Questions in Interviewing.'' With ever-more complicated health care benefits options available, the Web offers a number of approaches to clear up some of the confusion. The Med Access Corporation's Health Fair On-Line is an interactive service that lets employees in enrolled companies evaluate and select options on line. And the Web offers valuable information on sexual harassment. The Altos Education Network has a primer on the topic, with an interactive quiz. The human resources department of Arthur D. Little, the management consulting firm, uses the Web in the hiring process for its technology and product development group. Along with job listings, its site has an interactive on-line job application. Retirement planning can be a complicated and murky field for most employees as well as human resources departments. Fidelity Investments has a site that provides plenty of information, with on-line work sheets and investment primers. The Positive Employee Relations Council has a site that includes a number of unusual items. Among them: ''Leadership Challenge Simulation,'' an interactive game to test management skills, a workaholics test and even a serialized Web novel entitled ''Goldstreet'' (a mystery involving a human resources manager caught up in ''murder, drugs, extortion and mayhem.'') Despite its sober reputation, the subject has a lighter side. | Web Transforms World of Personnel |
914571_2 | former employer. A site available off the Labor Department's Web page is that of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It has the latest changes in the law, links to safety and health sites, and an interactive ''asbestos adviser.'' For a more academic approach, visit the site of Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, which offers studies, journals and data resources. As with most professions, human resource executives have plenty of associations that they use for networking and exchanging ideas. An alphabet soup of these groups can be found at the site of the Associations for Human Resource Management. The Dallas-based law firm of Collier & Associates offers free information on its site about such topics as ''Firing without Fear'' and ''Raiding the Competition (Without Getting Sued).'' Another smaller player, Winning Associates, an employee relations consulting firm in Walnut Creek, Calif., has a site that includes such articles as ''The Trouble with Salary Surveys'' and ''Legal and Illegal Questions in Interviewing.'' With ever-more complicated health care benefits options available, the Web offers a number of approaches to clear up some of the confusion. The Med Access Corporation's Health Fair On-Line is an interactive service that lets employees in enrolled companies evaluate and select options on line. And the Web offers valuable information on sexual harassment. The Altos Education Network has a primer on the topic, with an interactive quiz. The human resources department of Arthur D. Little, the management consulting firm, uses the Web in the hiring process for its technology and product development group. Along with job listings, its site has an interactive on-line job application. Retirement planning can be a complicated and murky field for most employees as well as human resources departments. Fidelity Investments has a site that provides plenty of information, with on-line work sheets and investment primers. The Positive Employee Relations Council has a site that includes a number of unusual items. Among them: ''Leadership Challenge Simulation,'' an interactive game to test management skills, a workaholics test and even a serialized Web novel entitled ''Goldstreet'' (a mystery involving a human resources manager caught up in ''murder, drugs, extortion and mayhem.'') Despite its sober reputation, the subject has a lighter side. Hard@work examines the perils and pains of the modern workplace. So does the Dilbert Zone, which is inhabited by idiotic bosses and an evil human resources director named Catbert. Taking In the Sites | Web Transforms World of Personnel |
916282_2 | the long-distance companies, when they come into the region, are going to spend a lot of money in advertising,'' Mr. Pate said. ''We are going to make sure those companies can't come in and buy our customers.'' BellSouth has already signed three-year sponsorship agreements with the Atlanta Braves, the Florida Marlins and a NASCAR car-racing team, which Mr. Pate called ''the things that draw Southerners.'' And it already uses a number of Southern-bred celebrities -- including Dixie Carter, Kathleen Turner and Naomi Judd -- to build loyalty. BellSouth is also trying to raise its stature outside of the Southeast with a year's worth of prominent ads in USA Today starting March 10. In its saucy ad campaign with Dennis Miller, the company is touting BellSouth Mobility, the cellular and digital calling arm of BellSouth, which has customers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. The regional ad campaign was created by West Wayne Inc., the independent, Atlanta-based company formed when BellSouth's longtime advertising agency, Atlanta-based Tucker Wayne, merged with the West Group in Tampa, Fla. Three television ads began running earlier this month on prime-time shows like ''Friends,'' ''ER'' and ''Seinfeld.'' Three radio ads also began playing at the same time, and the company plans a blitz of newspaper and billboard ads across the region. One of the three new television commercials shows Mr. Miller in a convertible, pretending to drive along an obviously fake highway, as various backgrounds roll by. First cowboys on horseback gallop up to the car as Mr. Miller drives and talks on a cell phone. Then, the palm-lined boulevards of Los Angeles become the backdrop, followed by the farmlands of Minnesota. ''You are supposed to think I'm traveling cross-country,'' Mr. Miller tells viewers. ''Only BellSouth Mobility gives you a single nationwide roaming rate from sea to shining sea.'' Television and print ads use the slogan, ''BellSouth Mobility, count on it.'' West Wayne plans to begin showing three fresh ads with Mr. Miller in about three months. By then, even more phone company commercials will be competing on American television channels. ''The competitive arena is growing like crazy because of deregulation,'' said Martin A. Mecdonald, executive creative director of West Wayne. Because AT&T has such a well-defined brand image, BellSouth and all the Baby Bells must show they can compete, he said, ''to make sure they don't get eaten alive.'' THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING | BellSouth leads the way as local telephone companies step up spending on campaigns. |
918121_1 | Suzuki, professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Tokyo. A seeming comedy of errors in responding to the fire and informing the public was more disturbing to some than the amount of radiation released. The missteps were committed by the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation, a Government-run company that also was in charge of an experimental reactor at which a serious accident occurred in December 1995. Japan is banking heavily on conventional uranium-based nuclear power and on advanced systems using plutonium to relieve its almost complete dependence on imported oil and coal. Plutonium can be extracted from the spent fuel of nuclear power plants and then used as fuel itself, either in conventional reactors or in fast breeder reactors, which can create more plutonium than they consume. The plant in Tokai, a Pacific coast town 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, handles about 12 percent of Japan's spent fuel, with the rest sent to France or Britain for reprocessing. The Tokai plant and the adjacent plutonium fuel fabrication factory now contain about 4.4 tons of plutonium, which is toxic and in some forms can be used to make nuclear warheads. Even before the latest accident, Japan's plan was facing a cloudy future because of the December 1995 leak of sodium coolant at the country's prototype fast breeder reactor, known as Monju. No date has been set for reactivating Monju, which has been closed since the accident. The Government-run nuclear energy company was harshly criticized for its slow response to the Monju accident and for its attempts to cover it up. The company's top executive was replaced, safety manuals were revised and other reforms were supposedly introduced. But many of the same types of mistakes were made in the Tokai accident. The sprinkler system to put out the fire was left on for only one minute. It is believed that failure to extinguish the blaze completely led to the subsequent explosion. Containment systems did not function effectively, so that radiation from the room with the fire leaked into an adjacent building, exposing workers, who were not evacuated until 24 minutes after the fire was noticed. Although the nuclear energy company reported the initial fire quickly to local governments, it took hours to report that radiation had leaked, and then continually revised upward the amount of leakage and the number of workers exposed. People in Tokai did not know of | After Accident, Japan Rethinks Its Nuclear Hopes |
913222_1 | the occasion as a pretext for violent confrontation. Nonetheless, the protest against the train and road convoy, which carried nuclear waste from several German power stations and from a reprocessing plant at La Hague in France, is also depicted by environmentalists as a reflection of broad opposition in Germany to nuclear power. Today demonstrators dug holes in the road on the route of the convoy and blocked highways with tractors. To counter protests, the police deployed water cannon and helicopters. Seven police officers were hurt, one of them seriously, when a water cannon in a procession of police vehicles on its way to Gorleben collided with a patrol car. The cost of the police deployment is estimated at more than $40 million. ''The problem is that too many people have got involved in this and want to pursue their own agenda with violence to draw attention to themselves,'' said Gerhard Glogowski, the Interior Minister of Lower Saxony State. The opposition Green Party maintains that the issue is not so much the transport of nuclear waste as the use of nuclear power in general. ''There is only one alternative -- to abolish nuclear power in the face of popular protest,'' said Gunda Roestel, a leader of the Greens. The authorities have banned all demonstrations along the entire route taken by the nuclear waste train and road convoy, but that has had little effect on the readiness of some protesters to try to block its progress. Near Gottingen today, the 17-car, 1,900-ton train was held up for 20 minutes when protesters slipped through a line of police officers in riot gear and clambered onto the tracks in front of it. As the train began its journey today, 172 protesters were briefly detained, then released, the police said. In one protest, demonstrators described by the police as militants set off a pipe bomb near a railroad at Hanau. No injuries were reported. The nuclear waste is being transported in specially constructed containers, known as castors -- the acronym for the English words Cask for Storage and Transport of Radioactive Material -- whose outer shell is made of seamless cast iron. The containers, which are monitored for radioactive seepage, are said by German authorities to be capable of storing radioactive materials safely for tens of thousands of years. Protests have been gathering since last week, when protesters sabotaged rail tracks. Joschka Fischer, the national | Nuclear Waste Convoy Stirs Angry Protests in Germany |
913118_6 | an estrogen, simply by changing the levels of co-activators and co-repressors. The relative amounts of co-activators and co-repressors in a given tissue can vary from woman to woman, affecting each woman's sensitivity to the stimulatory effects of estrogenic substances, Dr. O'Malley said. Thus, tamoxifen may protect the breast or stimulate the growth of uterine cancer in one woman but not another. ''You can give 100 women the same amount of hormone,'' Dr. O'Malley said, ''and the dose will turn out to be too much for some women and not enough for others. In the future, we should be able to measure the sensitivity to a particular hormone in a given tissue and predict the ideal dose for each woman.'' However, as the experience with tamoxifen has shown, a woman's sensitivity can change with time, necessitating periodic monitoring of the effects of an estrogenic substance on a given tissue. Although tamoxifen initially acts as an anti-estrogen in the breast, blocking cell growth, breast cells in most patients begin to see tamoxifen as a stimulant, not a repressor, after five or more years of use, Dr. McDonnell said. That finding has prompted the National Cancer Institute to recommend that the drug be used for only five years, not indefinitely. However, Dr. McDonnell added: ''Resistance to the benefits of tamoxifen does not confer cross-resistance to other classes of estrogen. Therefore, it's likely that women who fail on tamoxifen can go on a different class of estrogenic drug and resume the preventive therapy.'' A major challenge researchers face in looking for such drugs is that there is no short-term indicator to show whether a particular estrogen-receptor complex has the desired effect on breast tissue. For bone effects, substances in the blood can indicate the rate of bone formation, and for heart effects, levels of cholesterol -- low-density and high-density lipoprotein -- in the blood can be measured. But there is no direct marker for activity in the breast. Nor is there a simple biochemical indicator to show if a compound can get into the brain from the blood -- crossing the blood-brain barrier -- to stimulate the brain cells involved in memory and learning. ''The study of estrogen compounds that might benefit the brain is just getting started,'' Dr. McDonnell said. ''We first have to determine what compounds will cross the blood-brain barrier and, if so, whether they will increase activity in the brain.'' | Drug Researchers Working To Design Customized Estrogen |
913258_2 | the trail sprouts new paths, means of transport and markets when the old ones are attacked. Donald Ferrarone, the special agent in charge of the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration field office in Houston, has seen cocaine flowing in for years. ''The only difference,'' Mr. Ferrarone said, ''is the intensity is more ferocious now.'' The trail starts in the Andean jungles, where peasants strip coca bushes of their oval leaves, dump the leaves in a plastic-lined pit, pour in kerosene or gasoline and water, and sometimes sprinkle on cement. Barefoot, the workers stomp the mixture to press out the psychoactive alkaloids into a paste that resembles grimy snow. Across rural Colombia, thousands of laborers process the paste into a sludge that is dried to form the raw ingredient for powdered cocaine hydrochloride. Every day, more than two tons of powder flows through Mexico and the Caribbean, with one-third of that ending up in the United States. Once cocaine was ferried by small planes. Now, to evade American radar surveillance, more and more cocaine floats north in the holds of freighters, fishing boats and yachts. ''How are drugs coming across the border?'' asked Leon W. Guinn, special agent in charge of the Customs Service field office in Houston. ''Probably in every imaginable way you can think of.'' The Lab Workers Double the Pay Of Cutting Cane Altemar Restrepo could not earn enough cutting sugar cane to support his family. So Mr. Restrepo, a slender Colombian, followed other peasants and apprenticed himself to the making of cocaine. For 4 of his 25 years, Mr. Restrepo said, he has worked in the tangled jungle of southeastern Colombia, fetching the gasoline used to leach coca leaves of their alkaloids. The ''cocina,'' or jungle laboratory where Mr. Restrepo was interviewed, consisted of six wooden maturation pens, in which a ton of leaves soaked in gasoline and water. Every week, he said, the laboratory produced more than 75 pounds of coca to be refined elsewhere into powdered cocaine. ''We do this because you can't raise cattle or corn in this region,'' Mr. Restrepo said as he fidgeted, shirtless and sweating, beside a waist-high pile of coca leaves. ''There's no water, and transport is too expensive.'' As a cane cutter, he said, he was lucky to earn $35 a week. For processing coca leaves he was promised $10 to $15 a day, plus a dormitory cot and food. | Keeping Cocaine Resilient: Low Cost and High Profit |
916711_2 | Committee, said yesterday that proposals to restore benefits are simply too costly. He said he favors a two- or three-year block grant to states to help elderly and disabled immigrants who lose their Federal benefits. His spokeswoman, Donna Boyer, acknowledged: ''It would be a Band-Aid approach. It would not permanently help the people who didn't become citizens.'' But Representative Shaw said he is confident that the number of very severely mentally incompetent people will shrink over the years of the block grant ''simply because of natural attrition.'' ''The death rate will see that that population shrinks in those two to three years. There will be some left but it will be much smaller, and if necessary, we'll revisit the issue then. We're not going to see people pushed out of nursing homes onto the sidewalk with no one to care for them.'' The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service announced the new rules, which go into effect today, almost two and a half years after Congress passed a law to exempt mentally and physically disabled legal immigrants seeking citizenship from requirements that they prove their English proficiency and knowledge of American civics. The rules released yesterday spell out who qualifies for the exemptions (those whose disabilities make them unable to demonstrate an understanding of English or civics), which doctors can certify a person's disability (doctors licensed in the United States who have experience diagnosing such impairments), and the immigration service's right to ask for a second opinion from another doctor if it doubts the claim. The immigration service has estimated that 300,000 people may apply for the exemption from the English and civics tests. Despite the waivers for the English and civics tests, immigration officials said they decided they could not waive the oath of citizenship for those too mentally impaired to understand they are taking it. ''The oath is a thorny legal issue,'' said Terrance O'Reilly, acting assistant commissioner for naturalization. ''The way the naturalization section is written, each person has to take the oath. There was no wiggle room.'' The immigration service will try to be flexible about ways that immigrants can show they understand they are becoming citizens and forswearing allegiance to their homelands. If they can communicate only by nodding their heads or blinking their eyes, that would be acceptable, officials said. Naturalization examiners will decide whether an applicant can knowingly take the oath. The examiners | U.S. Says Mental Impairment Might Be a Bar to Citizenship |
916776_0 | The space agency announced today that it would sponsor two low-cost satellite projects to study the distribution of Earth's forests and provide a detailed map of the planet's gravity field. National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said the new economical projects, part of the agency's Mission to Planet Earth program, were intended to complement more expensive space missions to study the planet's environment. William Townsend, the NASA official in charge of the program, said the new missions were part of the agency's renewed focus on quickly developing and flying smaller, less expensive spacecraft that have limited objectives rather than concentrating on billion-dollar missions. After a competition, NASA selected 2 of 12 semifinalist projects to finance and a third project to be sponsored as a backup. The first to fly is expected to be the Vegetation Canopy Lidar mission, a satellite that would orbit 250 miles above Earth, firing energy pulses from five lasers to the ground. The mission would spend two years accumulating three-dimensional details of 98 percent of the world's forests. The satellite is scheduled for launching in January 2000 on a Pegasus rocket, said Dr. Ralph Dubayah of the University of Maryland, the chief mission scientist. Dr. Dubayah said the safe, low-power laser beams would scan strips of forests more than 80 feet wide to determine the height of foliage. That would allow more precise measurements of tree heights, the cataloging of information about forest canopies and greatly improved estimates of global biomass, or the number or mass of living organisms in a particular area, he said. The forest survey mission has a budget of $59.8 million, which includes the price of launchings, as well as data gathering and analysis, NASA said. The second mission selected is the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, which plans to use two satellites, to be launched by a Russian rocket in 2001, to measure gravity fluctuations while flying in formation 280 miles above Earth. A team headed by Dr. Byron D. Tapley of the University of Texas in Austin plans to work with a German group led by Dr. Christoph Reigher of GeoFor schungsZentrum in Potsdam to launch and operate the satellites for up to five years. NASA plans to spend $85.9 million on this mission for the United States investigators to build the satellites and instruments. The Germans agreed to contribute an additional $40 million to buy a Russian Cosmos launching | NASA Plans to Study Forests and Global Gravity |
916683_3 | of New Jersey,'' he said. The high education levels of New Jersey's immigrants has helped them adapt successfully to the job market and win rapidly rising wages in the 1980's. Seven out of 10 Asian immigrants in the state have attended college, compared with slightly more than 5 out of 10 Asian immigrants nationally. And 55 percent of immigrants from Latin America have completed high school or attended college, compared with 40 percent of Latin American immigrants nationally. The average income for immigrant households in New Jersey was $48,100 in 1989, just $3,000 a year less than that of native-born households. And citing Federal immigration statistics, researchers said New Jersey has a much smaller share of the illegal immigrant population (3 percent) than California (43 percent), New York (13 percent), Texas (11 percent) and Florida (10 percent). The largest group of illegal immigrants in New Jersey is from Portugal, hardly typical of the nation. The relatively small size of the illegal population has meant that the financial burden on state and local government has been more modest. Using a variety of statistical sources from the 1990's, researchers estimated that the cost of educating 16,000 illegal immigrant children and jailing 285 illegal immigrant inmates was $153 million, while 116,000 illegal immigrants paid $130 million in state sales and income taxes, and state and local property taxes. The overall impact of immigration on New Jersey has been benign, researchers found. Kristin F. Butcher, an assistant professor of economics at Boston College, and Anne M. Piehl, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University, reviewed the economic data and found that immigrants had not damaged the wages or employment of American-born workers -- a conclusion that echoes the findings of other national studies. Intriguingly, Professors Butcher and Piehl also discovered that high school dropouts working in industries with large concentrations of immigrant workers experienced relatively high wage growth, remarkable considering that the wages of low-skilled workers declined generally in the 1980's. They say they are not sure why this occurred, but it is possible that highly skilled immigrants helped these industries expand, creating more jobs for low-skilled Americans. Though immigrants have generally moved smoothly into the mainstream of New Jersey's economy, the researchers concluded that they receive somewhat more in benefits than they pay in taxes. That is largely because immigrant households earn slightly less than native-born people and have more children. | New Jersey Is Seen as a Model for the Success of Immigrants |
918343_3 | that had placed the antenna. Since the purpose complied with the health standards set by the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act, city officials told them, the contract was purely a matter between the landlord and the wireless company. At the Manhattan co-op, Sprint has declared that its contract is valid and that it will take the building to court if necessary. Health studies and tests conducted for the Federal Communications Commission have found no danger from exposure to radio transmissions, especially the newer systems that use very low power. Opponents say, however, that just as exposure to high-power electrical transmission lines has been linked by some researchers to higher cancer rates, the health effects from long-term exposure to cellular transmissions remain unknown. A spokesman for the City Health Department, Fred Winters, said that the agency accepted the F.C.C.'s analysis that there was no basis for concern. Opponents say that feeling helpless against antenna encroachment is as much a problem as any anxiety caused by the technology. ''I felt stuck,'' said Edward Drinkmann, a registered nurse from Whitestone, Queens, who unsuccessfully fought his neighborhood's antenna, on the roof of a building on 146th Place, two doors from his house. Mr. Drinkmann said he was concerned about the effect on property values, but even more worried about his two daughters, ages 9 and 13. ''I don't want to hear 20 years from now that there is a pattern of health concerns found around the clusters of cellular telephone transmission sites,'' he said. Nationwide, telecommunications experts estimate that more than 100,000 new radio antennas will be needed over the next decade to keep up with the exploding volume of cellular telephone use and the newly licensed technologies like personal communications services. The new technologies, which include new forms of cellular phone service, pagers and data transmission, using different radio band-widths and digital rather than analog technology, have been licensed in recent years as the Federal Communications Commission has begun selling off chunks of the nation's airwaves. But telecommunications industry officials and New Yorkers who oppose rampant antenna installation agree that building the wireless machinery in New York is also a fundamentally different proposition from doing it anywhere else. Because of the city's dense topography -- especially in Manhattan -- radio signals bounce in unpredictable ways through the urban canyons. That means more antennas are required. New York's population density, meanwhile, means that residents are | In Cellular Phone Era, Receivers Are Hidden All Over |
913419_1 | of islands scattered in the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. Some 19 ships, including the only divable aircraft carrier in the world, lie at the bottom of the lagoon, where they sank after the United States tested what would happen to big ships when an atomic bomb exploded nearby. (They sink.) Most atolls in the Pacific are barely viable in a modern economy. But Bikini, because of its fame and the bombed-out shipwrecks, might emerge as one of the few that can thrive on tourism. The heartbreak of the Bikinians would become their sustenance. Six scientific surveys have declared that the island is now basically habitable, so long as residents do not eat too many local coconuts. So the people of Bikini -- who have been wandering about the Marshall Islands as ''nuclear nomads'' ever since the United States evicted them from their island in 1946 -- are now considering whether to return. ''It's so beautiful here,'' said Edward Maddison, a Bikinian who is helping to run a new scuba diving program for foreigners on Bikini. ''Sometimes I bring my family here, and my kids love to swim in the lagoon because it's so clean. ''Every time I go back, people ask me what it's like, if it's safe to come back to Bikini. If it's safe, we'll be coming back.'' The Marshall Islanders were in effect guinea pigs during the nuclear testing, and Western doctors still examine them to determine the delayed effects of radiation. But this time, the Bikini islanders say with a smile, it is they who are conducting the experiment: they stand back and monitor the results as wealthy Western tourists visit the island. ''We're very curious about the effects on those people,'' said Johnny Johnson, a Bikinian now living in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. Bikini became a household name around the world in 1946 when the United States announced that it would test nuclear weapons on the atoll. The countdown for the first explosion was broadcast around the world, vast supplies of film were used to record the mushroom cloud, and Godzilla was said to have risen from Bikini lagoon after being disturbed by the explosions. A skimpy new bathing suit for women was just coming on the market then in France, and its makers called it the bikini, advertising it as the world's smallest and hoping perhaps to suggest the shocking | An Atomic Age Eden (but Don't Eat the Coconuts) |
913347_4 | in the brain, including its role in regulating the proteins that end up as brain-destroying plaques in Alzheimer patients and its ability to increase cerebral blood flow and the use of glucose, brain energy source. Even in a healthy brain, estrogen can improve cognitive function, Dr. Henderson said. Dr. Buckwalter reported that ''women generally perform better than men on a variety of verbal tasks'' and that menstruating women ''show better verbal skills during the parts of the menstrual cycle when estrogen levels are high.'' In men's brains, the enzyme aromatase converts testosterone to estrogen, and, Dr. Buckwalter suggested, the fact that men do not experience a precipitous decline in testosterone in midlife may be why they are less susceptible to Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, he said, among men and women with Alzheimer's disease of equal duration, cognitive skills in men are likely to be more intact than they are in female patients who do not take estrogen. But female patients on estrogen are on a cognitive par with men. Clues to estrogen's role in the brain have been around for nearly half a century. A placebo-controlled study in 1952 first suggested that estrogen could combat brain atrophy in Alzheimer's patients. Thirty nursing home residents with dementia were given injections of either estrogen and progesterone or a placebo for six months. Those receiving the hormones showed improvements in comprehension, memory, learning and test-taking behavior. A second treatment study in 1968 of 50 nursing home residents with dementia revealed improved performance in activities of daily living and behavior among women randomly assigned to treatment with Premarin, a mix of estrogens that is used by millions of postmenopausal women. Most exciting to researchers and public health officials are indications from recent studies that estrogen replacement after menopause can prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Several studies that compared hundreds of Alzheimer's patients with otherwise similar but healthy women showed that those who took estrogen after menopause had a one-third to two-thirds lower risk of developing dementia. And in two of three large long-term studies, older women who took postmenopausal estrogen were 60 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. But until the completion of clinical trials in which thousands of women are randomly assigned to receive either estrogen or a placebo, researchers cannot be certain that estrogen, and not some other unrecognized factor, was responsible for the benefits observed in these studies. | Alzheimer Studies Thwarted |
913387_2 | settling down at the University of California at Berkeley in 1955 for a 22-year run followed by 13 years at the University of Southern California with a parallel appointment at Hoover, and then his retirement in 1992. His 1947 book ''Human Relationships,'' was long a standard sociology text. But Dr. Davis established his reputation in demographics two years earlier with a paper that explored and named the theory of demographic transition. It held that developing societies with high birth and death rates, and a consequently stable population, will experience first a decline in death rates and a surge in population and then a fall in birthrates until stability is reached once again, this time with low birth and death rates. Although the underlying theory is still viable in demographic circles, it required considerable modification after its original version was almost immediately disproved by the American baby boom. For all that, Dr. Davis's understanding of the factors behind population trends was so formidable that in 1957 he predicted that by the year 2000 the world's population would be nearing six billion, a total that current estimates say will actually be reached only a year or two earlier. Dr. Davis created something of a sensation in 1967 when he published an article in Science magazine arguing that merely distributing contraceptive devices in undeveloped societies would have a negligible effect on runaway population growth. The underlying motivations for large families were so well ingrained, he argued, and the consequences of unbridled growth so catastrophic that sterner measures going ''beyond zero population growth'' would be required to avert disaster. Although his ideas were disputed at the time, population specialists credit Dr. Davis's approach with increasing the use of contraceptives in developing nations to almost 50 percent today from less than 10 percent. Curiously, having established himself as a latter-day Malthus warning of the dangers of unchecked population growth, by the end of his career Dr. Davis was pointing to the dangers of excessively low birthrates in the West, a shift that he felt would leave the world with a shortage of educated leaders at a time that the population of developing countries continued to surge. Dr. Davis is survived by his wife, Marta Seoane; their 9-year-old son, Alexander; three children by previous marriages, Jo Ann Daily of Santa Barbara, Calif., Jefferson Davis of Santa Fe, N.M., and Laura Davis of Boston, and two grandchildren. | Kingsley Davis, 88, Who Told Of 'Zero Population Growth' |
915885_5 | has argued that nothing matters but his foreign conviction and his failure to note it as a crime on his tourist visa in 1990. ''We expect individuals to answer questions truthfully,''said Russell A Bergeron, a spokesman for the agency. ''The determination of whether that conviction is a crime or an act of political opposition is a determination for the U.S. Government, not the individual filing the application. ''We think these laws will have a significant impact on removing them from the U.S. and put credibility back into immigration enforcement,'' he said. Hero or terrorist? Mr. Gaynor resembles neither. Instead, he looks very much like the union laborer he is, a compact man with thick, coarse hands. His speaks a brand of nonviolent Irish nationalism, levened by references to his wife and two small girls, and memories of a peaceful childhood in the flat industrial town of Lurgan, near Belfast. It was in the cramped Catholic neighborhoods of his youth that he first saw the destruction that could be wrought throwing rocks and stones, gunfire or bombs. But it did not begin that way. Many of his earliest friends, he said, were Protestants from the other side of town. They were on the same football teams; they fished in the same mingling of rivers and took the dogs out to hunt rats at the same local dump. Their ghettos were often separate, but their interests were the same. ''No one asked you what religion you were because you were all young,'' he said. ''You played soccer. You didn't get into politics. That was for the adults.'' In fact, Northern Ireland had been in relative peace since 1921, when the British separated the troublesome mix of Roman Catholics and Protestants in Ireland's six northern counties from the predominantly Catholic south, making the latter a free state while continuing to tether the north. Catholics in Northern Ireland never ceased to complain about jury-rigged elections that denied Catholics without property the right to vote and gave Protestants near complete government control. They also continued to grumble about the discrimination they encountered in the search for jobs and housing. Violence did not break out in earnest again until the late 1960's, when Catholics in Northern Ireland took a cue from the civil rights movement in America and started their own peaceful demonstrations at home, demanding more of a say in politics and a stake in | Citizenship Wars |
915980_7 | hiring and promoting minorities, he said he came to believe that the company's policies seemed designed to fail. A trip to a convention sponsored by a national association of black M.B.A.'s held promise, but nothing came of it. ''We came back with a stack of resumes that would knock your socks off,'' Mr. Lundwall said. ''But then the hiring result was zero. So you start thinking, 'What are we doing here?' '' In particular, Mr. Lundwall said, he was frustrated by Texaco's refusal to expand its search for college graduates outside of a few top schools. His suggestions that Texaco look elsewhere for qualified minority candidates, particularly at predominantly black schools, were largely ignored. Some procedures struck Mr. Lundwall as disingenuous. Texaco required that all job openings be posted, supposedly to insure that all candidates would be considered. But repeatedly, Mr. Lundwall found, the hiring decisions had already been made. Texaco's failure to recruit and promote minority candidates was documented in its own employment numbers. According to court records, in 1991, of the 1,887 employees in the top pay grades at Texaco, only 19 were black. By 1994, little had changed: The total number of employees in those levels had grown to 2,029, but only 22 were black. In 1994, some minority executives decided to fight. That year, Bari-Ellen Roberts and Sil Chambers, who had both been recruited for the finance department years earlier, became lead plaintiffs in the discrimination suit against Texaco. The suit contended that the company's promotion system, including its job posting program, was largely a sham. Instead, the suit said, the company thrived on a ''good old boy'' system. In court papers filed at the time, Texaco said its employment practices did not discriminate against minorities, and defended its program -- including the posting of all jobs -- as fair, racially neutral policies. The reaction in the finance department, Mr. Lundwall said, was one of silence. But soon, Mr. Lundwall could not ignore the suit; the plaintiffs demanded that he testify and tell them about documents involving the company's employment practices. On Aug. 5, 1994, Mr. Lundwall sat for his deposition. For several hours, Mr. Lundwall openly described company records that the plaintiffs had known nothing about but that could prove crucial to their case. ''Lundwall was very forthcoming,'' said Cyrus Mehri, the plaintiff's lawyer who took his deposition. ''He was straight about every document he | Blowing the Whistle, and Now Facing the Music |
916057_0 | With the most promising explanations for the mid-air explosion of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 becoming increasingly difficult to prove, the eight-month investigation has turned into a nationwide scientific exploration of all conceivable theories, including such remote possibilities as the plane being destroyed by debris falling from space or by natural gas rising from the ocean. The widening of the search reflects a fear among investigators that they will never be able to say precisely what ignited the explosion. Instead, they expect they will have to convince the public that they have ruled out a variety of possibilities -- anything from bombs and meteors to faulty wiring -- and have narrowed the possible causes to one or two that they can address. Aviation investigators are pressing hard to show how the explosion in the plane's center fuel tank could have resulted from a mechanical malfunction in the tank and not some external force, criminal or natural. For months they have focused on the possibility that a spark could have ignited the fumes in the Boeing 747's nearly empty fuel tank. Working in a laboratory at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, engineers have tried in the last two weeks to reconstruct the conditions within the tank, but, as yet, they have not been able to generate a spark strong enough to cause a blast. Those tests are expected to continue for several weeks, if not months. Since the morning after the July 17 crash off Long Island that killed 230 people, officials of the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have listed three possible causes: a bomb, a missile or a mechanical malfunction. But since no clear evidence of any of those three has been found, the possibilities are growing to include some that investigators consider farfetched. They are working with scientists from military and intelligence agencies to determine whether it was possible something falling from space hit the plane -- a tiny meteor, or perhaps a piece of broken satellite the size of a BB. And when a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico recently wrote to the safety board that he suspected a bubble of natural gas rose out of the ocean, enveloped the plane and exploded, the agency dispatched a meteorologist who interviewed the scientist and then returned to Washington with some documents for further study. ''We're looking at | T.W.A. Inquiry Explores Likely And Farfetched |
916033_6 | kitchen tables and in church parking lots than in doctors' offices, fueled more by doubt and fear than medical science. Doctors who interviewed residents last year did not find any firm connection between exposure to PCB's and health problems. ''We just don't know,'' said one of the physicians, Dr. Michael Mueller, an assistant professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Frightening Links, But Few Facts Science has not proved that PCB's pose a cancer threat to people. According to a report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, studies suggest that PCB's are associated with leukemia and cancers of the skin, liver, gall bladder, brain and bile duct, but those effects ''have not been adequately studied.'' PCB's, banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1979 because of their threat to the environment, have been found in Government studies to cause other health problems, like below-normal birth weights, a form of acne and shifts in cholesterol levels. ''The problem is that there are as many studies that show there are no health effects as there are studies that show there are health effects,'' said Neil Daniel, a geologist with the Alabama Department of Public Health who has investigated the PCB contamination and its consequences. Mr. Daniel noted that the Anniston site did not qualify for cleanup under the Federal Superfund program, but said that the contamination was ''as widespread as any of the Superfund sites I've seen.'' Like many of her former neighbors, Mrs. Mealing has decided to stay in Anniston, in an apartment about two miles from her old home. She no longer dismisses her aches as old age. ''When my body starts paining, I can't help but think of the PCB's,'' said Mrs. Mealing, whose blood tested at 12 times the acceptable level of PCB's. ''I'm trusting in God.'' Production Stopped, But Danger Stayed Children used to push each other in the ditch. ''We didn't know any better,'' said Lonnie Barnett, now 47. The question that the lawsuits may now turn on is whether, and when, Monsanto knew. Only in the past few years have people in the neighborhood known of any potential threat. The lawsuits charge that the company knowingly released PCB's from the plant even after the environmental threat became apparent in the late 1960's. Donald W. Stewart, | Pollution Drives Away Neighborhood and Trust |
915844_0 | Garry Wills's splendid article vividly recalled my experience teaching Euripides in the early 1960's (''There's Nothing Conservative About the Classics Revival,'' Feb. 16). I was fresh out of graduate school, where of course we had studied Euripides. For most of us, though, he evoked less enthusiasm than did Aeschylus and Sophocles: his plays seemed too focused on the particulars of his own time, the speech of his characters often too ordinary, and many plays seemed to lack either dramatic unity or organic bonds between characters' deeds and their destinies. But in the 60's, suddenly, it was Euripides who spoke to us with uncanny aptness, obsessed as he was with the same themes that haunted us -- the brutal actions of an imperialist state, the role and position of women, the nature of the gods and our relation to them, the use and misuse of rhetoric, the gulf between nature and culture. To be sure, we went overboard in assimilating Euripides to the 1960's, but I believe the insights gained, and the excitement of the identification, far outweighed any distortions perpetrated. As Wills points out so well, classics are well able to recover from such overzealous enthusiasms, and it is their turbulent interplay with just such moments that both gives them new life and reveals once again their astonishing power to take on ever new meanings. DAVID H. PORTER Saratoga Springs, N.Y. President, Skidmore College | THERE'S NOTHING CONSERVATIVE ABOUT THE CLASSICS REVIVAL |
916001_1 | is,'' said Mike Rose, an education professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. ''If you look at 100 years of industrial history, there's nothing close to the one-to-one link between education and the economy that we assume today. I think the way we think about education is terribly constrained by the assumption that we're in trouble, that we're in decline, and that the decline is intimately, causally linked to what's wrong with education.'' Mr. Rose, the author of ''Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America'' (Houghton Mifflin, 1995), is quick to add that he believes that upgrading the skills and knowledge of America's children is closely linked to their economic prospects. And it is clear that the current focus on education reflects changes in the workplace that make education a more critical component of an individual's economic success than it was in the past. Frank Levy, a professor of urban economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, with Richard Murnane, of ''Teaching the New Basic Skills'' (Free Press, 1996), notes that in 1979, a 30-year-old man with a high school diploma earned a yearly average of $27,700 in 1993 dollars. By 1993 a high school graduate was only earning $20,000. Fifteen years ago, the typical worker with a college degree made 38 percent more than a worker with a high school diploma. Today, the typical college-educated worker makes 73 percent more. But what holds true for individuals does not necessarily make a metaphor for the nation as a whole, most experts say. ''There is a relationship in how education helps individuals increase their skills and then helps these individuals get jobs,'' said Larry Cuban, an education professor at Stanford University. ''But there's also a false kind of connection about how lower productivity in the economy, particularly in the late 70's and 80's, was somehow related to lower productivity in the schools.'' The skeptics often start with the Reagan Administration's apocalyptic ''A Nation at Risk'' report, which said the nation has been ''committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament'' that was putting its very future at risk. But almost a decade and a half later, the nation's economy is performing, by many measures, extraordinarily well. In fact, it is dramatically outperforming Japan and Germany, often cited as countries with educational systems that the United States should be emulating. Remembering Sputnik Given that no | Better Schools, Uncertain Returns |
917956_0 | Three-year-old Samantha can say about 10 words. She can say ''stuck,'' as she tries to slide out of her wheelchair on her powerless legs. Peppy and playful now, Samantha started coming to the Children's Therapy Clinic here in the winter of 1996 with a range of disabilities that seemed to preclude any thought that she would ever speak or navigate a wheelchair. ''We had been told that she was severely, profoundly mentally retarded,'' said Connie Miller, Samantha's foster mother. ''All she did was cry. She wanted to be flat on her back on the floor.'' In 90-minute sessions every Tuesday, therapists have been working with Samantha and had ever rising hopes that she would eventually be able to function on her own. ''She just hadn't been worked with,'' Ms. Miller said. But those hopes are dimming. The state sharply cut financing for Samantha's therapy in January. Like many of the nation's children who have chronic and developmental disabilities, like cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism, sensory impairments and fetal alcohol syndrome, she has been caught in the move to limit state and Federal spending for welfare and health care, particularly for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor whose costs the states share with the Federal Government. Chronically handicapped children in West Virginia are not alone, though they are among the most severely affected because the state's weak economy has forced budget cuts. Most states are shifting to the businesslike practices of managed health care, and many are turning their patients over to health maintenance organizations that provide little chronic or long-term care for children. Peggy McManus, co-director of the Maternal and Child Health Policy Research Center in Washington, a private group, said of children served by managed care: ''It's a hot potato. The bottom line is these kids are not getting access to services.'' In a study of the impact of managed care on children in four states -- Oregon, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Tennessee -- Ms. McManus said she found that ''the infrastructure that has been created as a safety net for kids with special needs is crumbling.'' The effort to cut costs has exposed sharp differences between health care services and government agencies over how much professional attention a child needs. ''What we're finding is that the state is not going to want to pay to maintain these children,'' said Jennifer Bezjak, director of the Children's Therapy | Long-Term Care Is Reduced Under Managed Care Programs |
917967_0 | Already pressed for money, Harry Daguizam, a student at Hunter College in Manhattan, says that Gov. George E. Pataki's proposed $400 tuition increase for New York's public colleges may force him to delay plans to attend law school. ''The City University of New York was created for students who couldn't afford to go to a big-name Ivy League college,'' Mr. Daguizam, 21, said in an interview. ''And I just want to say, 'Please, let's keep it that way.' '' At a news conference yesterday, Representative Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat of Brooklyn, criticized the Governor's proposal and urged the adoption of his own plan, which would allow parents to create tax-exempt savings accounts for tuition while their children are young. He said that more and more students at New York's public universities are finding it harder to pay for their educations because of increases in tuition and cuts in financial aid -- a problem that may be forcing lower income students to drop out. ''One of the great things about New York is that we've always had people who have been well trained,'' said Mr. Schumer, who is considered a possible gubernatorial candidate. ''That golden day may close.'' To show the severity of the problem, Mr. Schumer said, he gathered figures indicating that students at the State University of New York who graduated in 1995 owed, on average, 65 percent more in Federal loans than those who graduated in 1990, even though inflation rose only about 16 percent over that time. Students at the City University of New York also faced an increasing burden, Mr. Schumer said. The average Federal student loan balance at graduation was 34 percent higher in 1995 than in 1990. In January, Governor Pataki proposed the $400 annual increase, which would bring tuition at SUNY to $3,800 a year and tuition at CUNY's four-year colleges to $3,600 a year. He also proposed a reduction in state aid for some of the neediest students. Yesterday, Michael McKeon, a spokesman for the Governor, defended the proposals. ''The State University system remains one of the best bargains in the nation,'' Mr. McKeon said. ''Under Governor Pataki, New York State continues to provide tuition assistance that puts 80,000 students through SUNY and CUNY systems tuition-free.'' Mr. Pataki's proposals still face scrutiny in the Legislature, which rejected similar tuition increases last year. Mr. Schumer called on state lawmakers to defeat the | Schumer Criticizes Pataki's Plan to Increase Tuition at Public Colleges |
917449_3 | 10 years is a result of these schools. The world, except for the United States, is catching on. Magic Music's growth is doubling yearly, and one of its artists, Lucretia, who now lives in Spain, has been snapped up by MCA, the multinational label. Another small label specializing in Cuban music, Caribe Records, which is owned by a Spaniard but based in Panama, is reportedly poised to be bought by a large multinational record company. ''The thing that I'm worried about is that this invasion of foreign interest will fundamentally change the Cuban experiment, its idiosyncrasies,'' said Francis Cabezas, the president of Magic Music. ''For all its problems, the Government here has supported the music in an extraordinary way, and while there may be problems, the system has created the future.'' That system involves total Government regulation. Musicians are Government employees. A lesser-known band that finds work in a local club, for example, must go to the Government to be paid. Bands with larger followings perform where the Government tells them to. When bands perform abroad, the Government extracts up to 50 percent of their earnings in the form of a newly imposed tax. Musicians also complain about the system for other reasons. El Tosco says he is overwhelmed by the amount of work NG la Banda gets. ''It's like being in a prison of popular music,'' he said. ''I have to play it to support my three children. I'd rather be playing serious music.'' The drummer Jose Sanchez says that although he plays for the popular singer Rojitas, his earnings do not cover his living expenses. Like many Cuban musicians, Mr. Sanchez moonlights to earn American dollars, the only currency with real power in the country. ''I teach students,'' he said. ''I charge them dollars. Even Rojitas doesn't make much more than we do. When we go to Europe we make more, but not that much.'' Ms. Perea, head of the music institute, is sympathetic toward their plight. ''Socialism isn't there to deny riches,'' she said. ''It's there to distribute the riches fairly. The problem is that we Cubans are very, very bad at making riches. Our distribution system is incompetent. We don't know how to market. But we're learning. We have to because, for example, we don't make basic things in Cuba like violin strings or music paper, which means we have to pay dollars for them.'' Whatever | A Hip-Swaying State-Sponsored Export |
917683_5 | to the rider's exact body type. Among cyclists, ''fit'' continues to be a subject of much academic debate, with esoteric theories and arcane mathematics used to determine the perfect relationship of frame, seat and handlebars to legs, neck and back. But the wrong fit will mean a far-from-academic reduction in performance and a possible source of pain, like buying skis that are too long. The last decade has seen marked improvements in bike equipment. Tires lined with the fiber Kevlar, also used in bulletproof vests, resist punctures better than earlier tires, important on glass-strewn city streets. ''Index shifting'' makes for smoother gear-changing, not the Marley's Ghost clanking of chains from a baby boomer's youth. Most manufacturers have also moved gear-shift levers from the bottom tube of the frame to the handle bars, making it easier for the cyclist to shift gears without shifting body position or attention, another important factor in urban cycling. However irritating non-cyclists' japes about ''helmet hair'' might be, helmets are critical to cushioning the head in a fall. When the head hits the ground, the brain remains in motion, colliding with the inside of the skull and bruising brain tissue. Helmets made out of specially hardened foam that weighs a few ounces can absorb most of the shock. But helmets should conform to American National Standards Institute or Snell Memorial Foundation standards. And they should fit snugly, since a loose helmet tipped rakishly to the side provides no protection at all. No tire is impregnable to New York glass, nails and other detritus, so it is a good idea to put together a roadside repair kit consisting of a spare tube, tire levers, a patch kit, a saddlebag and a portable pump that can be mounted on the frame. But unless you're a championship bodybuilder, such a pump is good only for inflating a flat tire to rideable pressure. A floor-mounted pump with a pressure gauge will enable tires to be inflated to 80 pounds or more. Another bonus: a floor pump's pressure gauge is often more accurate than the gauges at filling stations, which helps a cyclist to avoid under-inflation (which can lead to flat tires) or overinflation (and possible explosion). Adults carrying children should remember that rear-mounted seats are designed for youngsters up to 40 pounds, roughly 4 years old or so. (It is illegal to carry a child less than a year old.) | Tour de New York |
918887_3 | last week that they misspoke earlier: they had not required visas before March, but started doing so because they suspected many of the weddings they were performing were fraudulent, arranged for immigration purposes. He said the clerk's office simply sought to require what at least two other city and state agencies required to guard against fraud. ''What we had been saying before that was, as long as the passport is valid, we could care less,'' Mr. Cuevas said. ''But as the Motor Vehicles Bureau, Health Department and others began to require visas and I-94'' extension cards, Mr. Cuevas said, his staff ''recommended that it be standardized.'' ''And that's all that happened,'' he said. ''When Paul Crotty said, 'This cannot be,' it was dropped.'' The State Department of Motor Vehicles does require a valid visa or extension card for those with foreign passports applying for drivers' licenses. But officials at the city's Department of Health said they did not have such a requirement for applications for documents. Mr. Cuevas and Mr. Teatum have also given conflicting statements about the presence of police officers at their five wedding bureaus. While they maintained earlier this month that two officers were stationed in each office to identify fraudulent documents, they said last week that officers were called over from police headquarters only when bogus documents were identified by the staff. Several arrests have been made by those officers this month, they said. Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, contends that the clerk's waffling on these issues has ''created a climate of suspicion and anxiety among New Yorkers, especially among immigrant New Yorkers.'' ''I think that there's not only confusion but also possibly misstatements coming out of the City Clerk's office,'' Mr. Siegel said. ''It's fair to say that has fostered a sense of panic in immigrant communities. And with due respect, I think they failed miserably in doing what they should have done.'' Mr. Cuevas and Mr. Teatum insist that it was not their intention to deny illegal immigrants the right to marry, only to protect their office against charges of fraud. ''Quite obviously, you could see weddings in there that are a farce,'' Mr. Teatum said. Gesturing with his hands, Mr. Teatum offered an example of the type of case he said was likely to raise their suspicions; say, an immigrant from India betrothed to a woman who | Honeymoon's Over For the Marrying Man |
918903_0 | The Irish Republican Army acknowledged today that it had detonated two bombs on Wednesday in northwestern England. The incidents were widely seen as an I.R.A. effort to remind the public and political leaders that it was still capable of violent attacks during the British parliamentary campaign leading up to the election on May 1. The bombs, which disrupted rail traffic but injured no one, exploded in the Cheshire town of Wilmslow. The acknowledgment came in a telephone call to RTE, the Irish national radio and television network in Dublin. The caller, using a recognized code word to identify the call as coming from the I.R.A., did not refer to another bomb attack on Wednesday night, on a Royal Ulster Constabulary base in the British province of Northern Ireland. The police shot a suspected attacker and arrested him in a local hospital in Coalisland, County Tyrone. The attacks came as unconfirmed reports circulated here and in Northern Ireland that the I.R.A. was preparing to call a new cease-fire to replace the one it broke, after 17 months, on Feb. 9 last year. Since then I.R.A. attacks in England and Northern Ireland have killed five people, including three British soldiers, and injured several hundred. The Irish Times said in a front-page report on Thursday that ''senior security figures'' in Ireland ''are still hopeful that the I.R.A. is moving towards a second cease-fire.'' But the I.R.A., in a message Thursday, made no such suggestion, saying, ''We remain committed to bringing the British Government's undemocratic rule of the occupied part of our country to an end,'' using phrases that normally refer to violence. The message added that the organization was ''ready to face our responsibilities in facilitating a process aimed at securing a lasting resolution to the conflict,'' a reference to the efforts of its political wing, Sinn Fein. The message also praised I.R.A. prisoners who had attempted to escape from the Maze Prison, near Belfast, by digging a tunnel; the tunnel was discovered last Sunday. There is always speculation at Easter weekend that the I.R.A. may do something spectacular to mark the most important event in its history, the Easter Rising of 1916. On that Easter Monday, republicans began a weeklong insurrection against British colonial authorities. Southern Ireland gained independence in 1922, but the treaty with Britain, which left the six northern counties in British hands, was rejected by some republicans, who provoked | I.R.A. Admits It Planted 2 Bombs in England |
914770_0 | ''The finds are opening up a whole new world of real piracy that belies the stories. Pirates were nowhere near the monsters they were made out to be.'' PHILIP MASTERS, the head of a team that recently discovered the remains of a pirate ship. $(C1$) | No Headline |
914749_0 | PIRATES are often pictured as inhuman devils, quick to maim and kill in pursuit of treasure. They fired broadsides into hapless merchant ships, sent captives down the plank and took grim pleasure in torturing victims and even one another. Blackbeard was said to discipline his crew with his bare fists and to have forced one prisoner to eat his own ears. But scholars in recent years have assailed much of this mythology as misleading or wrong. They find the age of piracy in the late 17th and early 18th centuries to be peopled by rogues at times less cruel and more egalitarian than previously imagined. Now newly discovered pirate artifacts are starting to confirm and deepen parts of that revisionist portrait, shedding new light on a lost age. Spoils appear to have been carefully divided for distribution among crew members, including rare jewelry from the African gold trade. And weapons like primitive hand grenades have been found that appear to have been meant more for intimidating victims and waging psychological warfare than for blasting apart ships. Many of the discoveries come from the wreck of the Whydah, a famous pirate ship sailed by Black Sam Bellamy that sank in 1717 and was found in 1984 off Cape Cod. Moreover, archeologists announced last week that they had discovered off the coast of North Carolina the remains of what they strongly believe to be Blackbeard's flagship. ''The finds are opening up a whole new world of real piracy that belies the stories,'' Philip Masters, the head of the team that found the new wreck, said in an interview. ''Pirates were nowhere near the monsters they were made out to be.'' Archeologists say the hunt is on for at least two other lost pirate ships, promising to redouble the light already being shed on a class of legendary figures cloaked in centuries of myths and misconceptions. Until archeologists began excavating the Whydah (pronounced WID-da), named after the African ''widow bird,'' or the African port of the same name, there was little evidence available to show how the pirates lived. ''The problem is that pirates moved from ship to ship and often came to a sticky end,'' Dr. David Cordingly, author of ''Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates'' (Random House, 1995), said in an interview. ''We do not have Henry Morgan's cutlass or his articles of | Archeologists Revise Portrait Of Buccaneers As Monsters |
914758_4 | Castro, always the fundamental issue in Cuban Miami. Hecklers would shout, ''How many times did you play that one for Fidel?'' and she would answer: ''One time too many. That's why I'm here.'' One recent day, Manuel Trinidad, 29, an airport shuttle driver, spied one of her albums and broke into a rendition of an Albita song while loading bags. ''You know, in Miami they have the terrible habit of mixing art and politics,'' he said. ''There are a lot of people who don't like Albita because she hasn't denounced the dictatorship. They start shaking their fists, and then her music comes on, and their hips start shaking, too. So they have to put their hands down to calm their hips so they can continue with their politics.'' When Albita's parents, Cuban folkloric performers themselves, gave Albita a guitar for her 15th birthday, she was pursuing an unengaging career in aviation mechanics. Before long, she was composing romantic ballads and pulsating odes to the Cuban peasantry. At 19, she became a regular on a Cuban variety show, ''Palm Trees and Sugar Cane,'' a kind of tropical ''Hee-Haw,'' which, she says, was as unfortunate as it may sound. And she was playing tourist hotels and touring the socialist festival circuit -- Bulgaria one year, Czechoslovakia the next. In the late 80's, her first album, state-produced, liberated her by becoming Cuba's best-selling export album ever. And with that success came an unusual freedom: license to live and work abroad, in Colombia. But with it also came increasing pressure to represent Cuba as a cultural diplomat and to send most of her band's earnings back to the Government. In their first year in Miami, Albita and Ms. Wong, her housemate, used to cruise the town in a temperamental $300 used car, sometimes roaming the luxurious Star Island off Miami Beach to gaze at Gloria Estefan's estate. ''Someday, I'd tell Albita,'' Ms. Wong said, drawing on a Cuban expression for closeness, ''you and Gloria will be like a rear end and a long shirt.'' Indeed, it was Mr. Estefan who got Albita's career off to a start in the United States after an evening at Centro Vasco, signing her to his record label, Crescent Moon, a subsidiary of Epic Records. In late 1995, her first United States album, ''No Se Parece a Nada'' (''Unlike Anything Else''), hit No. 10 on the Billboard Latin charts. | I'm a Hot Potato,' Says a Cuban Who Found a New Career (and Old Politics) in the U.S. |
914722_2 | National Marine Fisheries Service, which is expected to issue a final rule within weeks, the fishing industry has argued that the tightening is premature because populations of these sharks may have already stabilized or even begun to recover since quotas and other controls were first imposed in 1993. ''Patience is truly a virtue,'' said John J. Hoey, a shark scientist at the National Fisheries Institute, an industry group, ''and so is honestly describing the difficult position we are in, in terms of scientifically evaluating what has happened and what else needs to be done to enhance management and our understanding of current conditions.'' The debate over the American shark controls would surely be amplified if any strong measures were proposed to control fishing for these species worldwide. According to documents drafted by the United States for consideration by the various world bodies studying the issue, only 10 of the countries that report shark landings make any attempt to manage their fisheries, and only four countries have detailed management plans for shark fishing. Few international bodies are competent to manage shark fishing, and none are actively doing so, the documents say. But several world bodies are encouraging member countries to at least collect more information, a vital first step toward regulating the industry. How to build international rules to control shark fishing has been closely examined by the world's fishing nations for only the past three years, following the adoption of a resolution by the Conference on International Trade in Endangered Species, calling for some kind of global action. Next week in Rome, the Committee on Fisheries of the Food and Agriculture Organization is expected to take up the subject, and at the next full meeting of the conference on endangered species, in Harare, Zimbabwe, in June, there may be debate on adding some sharks and their products to the list of protected species whose parts are restricted in international trade. But any formal steps to devise international measures to protect sharks could be years away. ''We have to do the homework first,'' said Erhard Rucke, F.A.O.'s senior fisheries officer in Rome. ''We are in rather bad shape with regard to information on a global basis.'' Conservation groups warn, meanwhile, that the quirks of human appetite and the economics of the fish trade seem to be conspiring against sharks. Their slow growth, long lives, extended gestation and low birth rates -- | As More Sharks Wind Up on Plates, Need for Protection Rises |
914719_1 | if the building was swaying. Is this an illusion? A. The building does move, but the motion is a very slight bending, only about a quarter of an inch, in winds of more than 75 miles an hour. The illusion of a larger motion probably has to do with wind-whipped clouds; an observer on the ground can see a tall building appear to ''fall'' if the clouds above it are being blown in the right direction. Older skyscrapers like the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building would sway some inches or even feet if they were not stiffened with a massive sheathing of stone and masonry, engineers say. Newer skyscrapers, with their barely covered skeletons of steel, may sway perceptibly. The 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center are designed to withstand sustained winds of up to 150 miles an hour, but in a big blow, the towers may sway in an arc of 11 or 12 inches, its engineers say. And the 579-foot Trump International Tower, the old Gulf and Western Building on Columbus Circle, is being stiffened to defeat a perceptible twist in high winds of two and a half feet; a 44-by-15-foot brace from the street to the roof is being added. The reason is comfort, not safety, the developers say, because the amount of sway that an office worker can ignore would be disturbing to a full-time residential tenant. As a rule of thumb, a 100-mile-an-hour wind can blow a 1,000-foot-tall tower two feet off center, causing the top of the building to sway a total of 4 feet, said Lynn S. Beedle, a professor of civil engineering at Lehigh University and director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Structural engineers, who are not concerned about the movement's impact on the building's own integrity, use a number of techniques to dampen the motion so that people inside a tower do not perceive it. Current strategies include making buildings heavier by using more concrete, cross-bracing the steel framework or devising a mechanical system that uses rooftop weights to offset motion. C. CLAIBORNE RAY Readers are invited to submit questions about science to Questions, Science Times, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. Questions of general interest will be answered in this column, but requests for medical advice cannot be honored and unpublished letters cannot be answered individually. | Q&A |
919330_0 | Although not intended by its sponsors, and not noticed by most visitors, there is a fascinating political subtext to ''The Glory of Byzantium,'' the Metropolitan Museum's sumptuous new show about Byzantine culture at its peak, from the 9th century to the 13th. (The show ends in July.) You might think this celebration of the arts and letters of a thoroughly defunct empire would be politically inert, but not so. According to a Harvard professor, Samuel Huntington, Byzantium and its Orthodox Church belong not to the West but to the ''Rest,'' namely the assorted ''Others'' lacking the unique core of institutions and beliefs said to constitute Western civilization. This core, Mr. Huntington writes in a recent Foreign Affairs essay, includes the classical legacy of Greece and Rome -- the rule of law, and civil society and social pluralism, the latter pair being defined as the rise and persistence of autonomous groups not based on kinship. Because the ''Rest'' are so different, the professor contends, it is an error to try to universalize such Western concepts as human rights. In short, we have to learn to live with a ''clash of civilizations.'' But the clash takes an odd turn as one walks through galleries filled with Byzantine icons, statuary, illuminated books and mosaics, many of which have never left such places as the monasteries of Mount Athos in Greece or St. Catherine's in the sands below Mount Sinai. Here one is reminded afresh that great cultures are not boxed behind fault lines, but spill messily all over the map, filling the interstices and soaking the subsoil. This was true of the Greek-speaking Byzantines, whose scholars and monks kept classical art, letters and science alive for a millennium after the fall of the feebler Western Roman Empire. The Orthodox images of the bearded Jesus and the Holy Family spread through Gothic Europe to Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine, just as Byzantine architecture swept the Islamic East. In Italy, Eastern icons form a connecting link to the early Renaissance. As to the principles of civil society and social pluralism, it is fair to say that Byzantium's most zealous tormentors lay in the Christian West, not the Islamic East. In 1204, the walls of Constantinople, which had withstood attacks by Persians, Arabs, Avars and Bulgars, fell to the Crusaders led by the craftiest of Venetian doges, Enrico Dandoldo, then about 85 and nearly blind, who | The West's Debt to Byzantium |
919267_0 | LAST month's successful cloning of a sheep immediately sent the stock of PPL Therapeutics, the start-up company in Edinburgh that has the technology rights, up more than 16 percent in London. And the stock of Genzyme Transgenics, which, like PPL, wants eventually to extract valuable drugs from the milk of genetically programmed livestock, jumped more than 11 percent in this country. On this news, many investors may have been tempted to dive into what sounds like a promising field. But they may also have heard biotechnology analysts warn that it is foolish to pay much attention to feats whose commercial benefits are so speculative and distant. ''The impact of cloning sheep, for the next few years at least, is zero,'' said Peter Drake, an analyst at Vector Securities, which specializes in research and financial services on biotechnology and health care. Such is the trouble many investors perceive with biotechnology stocks in general. Like PPL and other cloning ventures, hundreds of companies in the industry have big dreams, limited capital and business plans that project years of research and operating losses before they become big profit makers. Is there any way to invest directly in this industry and avoid big risks? The short answer is no. True, biotechnology is turning out commercial products -- a big contrast to the early 1980's -- but it is still no industry for the passive or the safety-minded. ''The allure is that doubles, triples, even quick quadruples are not out of the ordinary,'' Mr. Drake said. ''Then you have to be ready to move to the sidelines.'' Since 1983, the stock indexes that track the industry have gyrated; only twice have they risen for two or more consecutive years. So far, even mutual fund investors have ridden this roller coaster. The Fidelity Biotechnology Select fund, for instance, was down 18.18 percent in 1994, up 49.10 percent in 1995 and up 5.61 percent last year. Still, biotechnology is maturing. And that means the emergence of somewhat safer, if less explosively rewarding, ways to play the field. There are roughly 1,300 biotech companies in the United States, more than 300 of them publicly traded, and there are 700 in Europe, where about 30 have issued public stock, said G. Steven Burrill, a San Francisco-based consultant who prepares an annual industry overview with Kenneth B. Lee Jr., a biotechnology specialist at Ernst & Young. While most of these | Biotechnology: Ways to Rein in the Risks |
919034_1 | 15th century, settling in such large numbers that for a time the city was known as a ''second Jerusalem'' -- until World War II when the Jewish community was annihilated by Nazi occupiers. A fire in 1917 and an earthquake in 1978 did much to destroy the city's multicultural character to the point where now, with the exception of a few neighborhoods and some restored Orthodox churches and Roman and Hellenic ruins, Salonika for the most part looks like a typical product of modern Greek urban planning. With the Aristotle University, the University of Macedonia and institutes of higher education, the city is Greece's largest university town. And that, probably more than anything else, explains its present-day charms and certainly its extraordinary number of cafes -- indoor, outdoor, along the promenade, scattered through restored neighborhoods, with decors ranging from Art Nouveau to New Age. Events The high mark of the yearlong cultural program will be the exhibit from June 21 to Dec. 31 of treasures from one of the holiest sites of Orthodox Christianity: Mount Athos, the community of monasteries stretched across the eastern finger of the nearby Chalkidiki peninsula. Since Mount Athos, known as the Ark of Orthodoxy, is a strictly male-only preserve, this exhibition -- the first of its kind -- will be a chance for women to see the impressive icons, manuscripts and artifacts collected by the monasteries over the last centuries. The exhibit, in six halls at the Museum of Byzantine Culture, 2 Stratou Avenue, telephone (30-31) 868-570-4, will include 580 items, among them embroideries and ceramics. Other sections will focus on the architecture of the Mount Athos monasteries, monastic life and the natural environment of the relatively undisturbed peninsula. Admission is $7.90 (calculating the dollar at 254 drachmas). On April 15, the Patriarchal Choir of Moscow, made up of 13 professional cantors, will perform at St. Demetrius Church at 9 P.M. On April 17 the John Damascene Choir will sing Byzantine hymns in the mode of the great masters of Constantinople at the Aula of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki at 9 P.M. From April 15 to 18, Peter Brook will direct ''Oh Happy Days,'' by Samuel Beckett. Nataly Parrie, Brook's wife, stars in the production, to be staged at the Stavroupolis Municipal Theater, (30-31) 608-000. ''The Passion of Christ,'' a tragedy written by scholars in the fifth century, interspersed with lines from Euripides, is | Salonika |
919079_4 | interest in a project involving children and the elderly, and at about the same time, Ms. Banquer read in a publication of the American Association of Retired Persons that an estimated 3.2 million children in the United States live in their grandparents' homes. She wondered if the local situation would mirror the national statistics, so she and her colleagues surveyed social service agencies throughout the New Haven area. The results proved their suspicions; there were indeed grandparents in need of support. Ms. Banquer and her team decided to begin with a six-week workshop. The plan was to sponsor a weekly meeting that would include a light supper and child care for grandparents who had no access to baby-sitters. ''It was a shoestring approach,'' she recalled. Each week, Ms. Banquer picked up donated pizzas, wrapped them in electric blankets and made a dash back to the cramped Consultation Center offices where the grandparents and children were waiting. A $6,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven enabled the program to relocate to a church hall that had separate rooms for the grandparents and children, and to hire three special education teachers to provide child care during the meetings. The workshop proved popular indeed. One woman who had no car had to catch a 5 o'clock bus and wait for the meetings to convene at 7, but she attended religiously. ''She really needed to hear that she wasn't alone,'' said Ms. Banquer. ''Most of the people are still coming,'' said Ms. Holmes. ''I feel like I'm going to visit a friend when I go once a month.'' So far, some 60 families with more than 100 children have taken part in the program. Ms. Banquer and her staff arrange for meetings and child care, apply for grants to pay expenses and invite speakers. The grandparents have heard from pediatricians, child psychologists and lawyers as well as each other. Often, the meetings focus on dealing with the children, who tend to have more than their share of childhood troubles. ''We found that many of the children were neurologically impaired,'' said Ms. Banquer. Often, this is a result of parental drug use; a high proportion of the children suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome and symptoms like attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, she explained. Even those who are not physically impaired typically suffer some degree of emotional trauma. ''It's a big adjustment, moving, | Caring for the Grandchildren |
913995_3 | technically unfeasible. Ethicists also shied away from the question because in scientific and medical circles, cloning was often viewed more as a plot device for B movies about mad scientists, than as a legitimate pursuit. In setting the issue aside, bioethicists seemed to be deferring to a view long nurtured among scientists that science should be critiqued with caution because discoveries are almost always hard won in the face of stubborn popular prejudice and remain endangered by irrational fear of the new. But there has been another view, in which science is not nearly so vulnerable. Indeed, in contemporary culture, science has achieved a nearly impregnable status. Some would even say it has all the trappings of a quasi-established religion. This is science with a capital ''S,'' whose recent ambassadors have been Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins. This is the Science that presents itself as the only reliable source of ultimate explanation and the best hope of human happiness. With mythical and historical heroes, from Prometheus to Roger Bacon, martyrs like Galileo and public rituals like the awarding of Nobel Prizes, this is the Science that historically understood itself as an heroic alternative to traditional faith. Although many working researchers may be indifferent to this heritage, they are still affected by its reflexive condemnation of any hint of a limit on scientific inquiry as an affront akin to blasphemy. Science as a force in modern culture, in this view, is coupled to science as a force in the modern marketplace, and the combination creates a powerful machine that will not be subject to ethical restraint unless faced by an equally powerful sense that crossing certain lines would be morally abhorrent. Can such a line be drawn at the point, five years from now or 50, when human cloning, if it is a possibility at all, suddenly becomes as real as Dolly? Or need it be established well beforehand, harnessing whatever ethical intuitions and even visceral reactions can withstand rational scrutiny? Three decades after the discussion was begun hardly seems too soon to reach some closure on the ethics of human cloning. As Paul Ramsey suggested in ''Fabricated Man,'' ethical discussion that frets about awesome technical possibilities but from the start is unwilling ever to say ''no'' is ultimately frivolous. ''It would perhaps be better not to raise the ethical issues,'' he wrote, ''than not to raise them in earnest.'' Beliefs | Beliefs |
914026_2 | in December 1951, Mr. Manley quickly became involved in the trade union movement, focusing his efforts on improving salaries and living conditions for the island's sugar and bauxite workers. In 1962, when Jamaica achieved independence from Britain, he was appointed to the Senate; five years later, he was elected to Parliament and became vice president of the party his father was still leading. In 1969, Norman Manley died, and Michael Manley succeeded him as president of the People's National Party. Tall, handsome, charismatic and a spellbinding orator who enthralled large crowds on the campaign trail, Mr. Manley won a landslide victory in the general election that followed in 1972, becoming Jamaica's fourth Prime Minister. Once in office, Mr. Manley set out to reduce what he called the ''irrational and dangerous'' economic inequalities and class divisions that defined Jamaican society. He expanded the health and education systems, organized job training programs for the young and the unemployed, fostered racial pride and tried to encourage agricultural self-sufficiency through state farms. That same year, Mr. Manley addressed the United Nations and chastised what he called ''the misplaced priorities'' of its members, ''especially the most powerful and wealthy ones.'' Along with Prime Minister Indira Ghandi of India and President Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania, Mr. Manley became one of the most outspoken advocates of what he called a new international economic order for developing nations. ''The point is that now some two-thirds of mankind have been reduced to a peripheral status in political, economic and even social terms,'' he wrote. The solution, he argued, was a redistribution of the world's wealth, with the poor countries that ''own the resources and provide the essential infrastructure and the labor force'' getting a larger share. To do that, he argued in one memorable phrase, capitalism should be demolished ''brick by brick.'' At home, he tried to put theory into practice by raising royalties on exports of bauxite, the ore from which aluminum is made, and acquiring a controlling share of American and Canadian bauxite companies. He was successful on both counts, but in doing so antagonized the Nixon and Ford Administrations. Mr. Manley also sought a much closer relationship with Cuba, which further strained his ties with the United States. He imported hundreds of Cuban doctors, teachers and construction workers and invited Fidel Castro, whom he described as ''a man of extraordinary political sophistication,'' to visit Jamaica. | Michael Manley, Ex-Premier of Jamaica, Is Dead at 72 |
912521_3 | reports of ''Sandwich Island girl disease.'' An engraving by the British artist John Webber, who had sailed with Captain Cook in the 1770's, shows Hawaiian canoes meeting a ship, just as the American logs describe it. Canton was the next and most important stop, the only Chinese port open to Westerners. Their trade was welcome, but as ''foreign devils'' they were restricted to the waterfront area and not allowed in the city itself. An oil painting done in 1795 shows warehouses, wharves and buildings flying the stars and stripes, the Union Jack and other Western flags, while sailing ships lie at anchor in the bay. The Neptune did exceptionally well in Canton. The seal skins fetched $3.25 each, for a total of $280,000 -- a vast sum in 1798. With these earnings, the crew bought bolts of silk and nankeen, a sturdy cotton cloth to be made into knee britches; thousands of crates of tea, the most popular beverage back home, and porcelain dinnerware, both for sale and for personal use. Several pieces of elegant white china rimmed in blue and gold are featured in the exhibition, part of a dinner set commissioned by a member of the Townsend family. A lacquered dressing table, 2 1/2 feet high with oval mirror, was brought back by John Hurlbut for his financee and bears her name. It is considered the earliest piece of China trade furniture in New England. Although most of the day at sea was devoted to keeping the ship in good order, viewers will note that there was also time for comradeship and relaxation. Musical instruments on display -- fife, drum and violin -- evoke the frolics described in several diaries. One was held with a group of Patagonian Indians who wanted to trade fresh meat for American liquor and biscuits. Another was a ball held in honor of a visiting captain in the Falkland Islands. Other pastimes illustrated in the display are games like cards, dice and checkers, and books, which were read aloud, either for entertainment or teaching, particularly navigation. The exhibition will be on view through June 29 at the New Haven Colony Historical Society, 114 Whitney Avenue, New Haven. Hours are 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesday through Friday and 2 to 5 P.M. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $2, $1.50 for older people and students and $1 for children age 6 to 16. On | On the Neptune, Three Years Under Sail |
912842_2 | to April 18. In six out of the last seven years, the United States has co-sponsored a resolution calling for an investigation into China's human rights record. Each time, China has defeated the resolution in the 53-nation forum. Other elements of the deal would require that China release a list of eight political prisoners, including Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan, two of the country's most famous dissidents who are both serving long prison terms. China would also sign two United Nations human rights covenants and have them ratified by the National People's Congress, or its ruling Presidium. Finally, China would agree to resume a broad dialogue on human rights with the United States. Chinese and American officials have been trying to make progress so that a breakthrough could be timed for the visit of Vice President Al Gore, who is expected at the end of March. In late 1993, China's Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, surprised human rights organizations by saying Beijing was ready to open talks with the Red Cross after decades of refusals. But the following spring, after President Clinton broke the linkage between American insistence on human rights progress in China and the granting of trade privileges, China abruptly walked away from the Red Cross initiative. In January 1995, after three rounds of talks between the Red Cross and Chinese Ministry of Justice officials, a senior Chinese prison official met with journalists here and said, ''The premise of prison visits by Red Cross officials is out of the question in China.'' The official went on to deny that there were any political prisoners in China and added, ''China will not be subject to regulation'' by a foreign entity such as the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross. ''The prison administration falls under the scope of our country's sovereignty,'' the Chinese official said at the time. China's behavior toward the Red Cross prompted a number of Western observers to conclude that Mr. Qian and the Chinese leadership as a whole have played each ''concession'' on human rights, or promise of a concession, as a diplomatic tactic aimed at ending the long period of international condemnation that has followed the 1989 massacre of unarmed pro-democracy protesters around Tiananmen Square. Still, human rights advocates say the diplomatic pressure has led to the release of hundreds of prisoners and has brought China closer to incorporating human rights concepts into its laws. | China and Red Cross Agree To New Talks on Jail Visits |
912462_1 | natural bounty belongs to the Pantanal, a vast wetland stretching over Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay - in Brazil it occupies more than 50,000 square miles in the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. From Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, the Pantanal might seem the kind of place one would go to find tranquillity: only a handful of telephones; access by charter plane; more rare and endangered animals than people; annual flooding that chases away the trappings of modern life, like highways and electricity. In the wet season, much of the Pantanal is accessible only by horseback, boat, or plane. Though the area alongside the Transpantaneira Highway is national park land, some 90 percent of the Pantanal is privately owned, traditionally used for ranching. Formed of a vast depression traversed by several rivers, including the Paraguay River, the Pantanal is a place of extremes. In the dry season, tired caimans trudge from dessicated ponds, crossing parched landscapes of beige and brown in search of water and food. In the rainy season, from October to March, there is so much water the animal drive is to escape it. Streams swell into rivers, and enemy species are forced to coexist on sparse islands above the flood plain. Along with the Amazon rainforest, it is one of the regions most packed with wildlife in the world. For each pair of eyes you detect as you float down the river, you know there are hundreds more studying you from behind the thickets. Like many of the species who make their home here, the Pantanal is endangered. A billion-dollar project to build a water highway that would allow year-round shipping down the Paraguay and Parana Rivers is currently under consideration by the governments of Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay. The so-called Hidrovia project, which involves blasting rock formations, dredging and straightening the rivers, would drain the water and dry out the wetlands while introducing flooding downstream, a 1995 hydrological study by Victor Ponce of San Diego State University found. In short, ecologists warn, it would destroy the Pantanal's ecological rhythms. It would also destroy its seclusion. Leia de Castro Rondon, the eccentric -- at times, severe -- dona da casa who owns and runs the Fazenda Rio Negro with her husband, Orlando, told us some couples can't take the quiet. ''They go crazy after two or three days,'' she said a | A Brazilian Wetland, Burgeoning With Wildlife |
912616_0 | DEAR CONCERNED CITIZEN: Brooke Astor and her Park Avenue friends hope you don't read this letter. The don'ts want you to hear this message because it just might make you stand up for what's right! I know you're tired of fund-raising letters. I'd rather not add to the pile, but I have no choice. An enormous radio twoer is going up right across the street from the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. It's supposed to be 480 feet tall - a steel skeleton looming over the garden's sylvan paths and delicate crystal palace. The behemoth will forever mar one of New York's last refuges of natural beauty. The Botanical Garden's lawyers, backed by editorial writers and politicians and the dedicated New Yorkers on the Committee to Move the Tower, have forced construction to halt at 260 feet. Now they're trying to tear the tower down. That's why I'm writing to you. Help me finish building that tower! Yes, that's right, I'm asking you to join our fight to save the tower. Because we see it as more than just a radio tower. It should become a national monument. Why? I hope you'll read on, even if it means getting through some complicated paragraphs. This 480-foot tower will support a new antenna for the Fordham University radio station. The station's current antenna, which is lower, must be replaced because it is dangerous - at least according to the worrywarts who think it's too close to people on the ground. Environmentalists - notably Paul Brodeur, in his books and New Yorker articles - have been warning that electromagnetic fields created by radio antennae and power lines cause cancer. Pure bunk, I say. Most scientists think these fears are overblown. Last year the National Academy of Sciences found no convincing evidence of a health hazard from the electromagnetic fields produced by power lines. The evidence on radio antennae is no more convincing. But the hysteria continues. Citizens groups have been fighting new towers, and the Federal Communications Commission has been tightening its so-called safety standards for antennae. Sorry for these long paragraphs! I'm getting to the point! Fordham spent 11 years looking for a safe spot for its antennae. It ruled out densely populated neighborhoods - mustn't scare anyone! Fordham could find only one good site, on the edge of its own campus. Not many neighbors except for the Botanical Garden's | The Height of Absurdity |
912683_0 | WHAT does the future hold for the automobile? Bits and pieces of tomorrow's technologies were on display here last week at the conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers, whose members determine the direction of personal transportation here and abroad. The conference draws nearly 50,000 automotive engineers, auto executives and industry experts from around the world each year. Engineers and researchers deliver papers on mostly esoteric subjects at more than 200 technical sessions. The wares of 150 automotive suppliers are displayed in an exhibition hall at Cobo Center in downtown Detroit. Here are some of the technological trends demonstrated at the show, some of which may never see production. Others are readily available, just waiting to be snatched up by auto manufacturers. ADDITIONAL AIR BAGS Despite reports about deaths and injuries associated with their deployment, air bags will continue to proliferate. All new cars now have front air bags for the driver and right front passenger, and some have side air bags. Next will be tubular air bags that pop out of the roof to protect the head; air bags below the dashboard to protect the knees, and large air bags that explode out of the sides of the seats. Air bag suppliers say the typical car of the future could easily have as many as 10 air bags. SMART AIR BAGS Making air bags safer was a central theme at the show. Companies demonstrated bags that deploy with less force, depending on the size of the person, the occupant's position in the seat and the severity of the impact. The smart air bag would not deploy at all if it detected the presence of a child seat. The Lear Corporation, a seating manufacturer, installed sensors in the roof of a demonstration vehicle that analyze changes in the electrical field of the cabin. Part of that analysis includes measuring the electrical field produced by salt water in a person's head. The system can thus determine the occupant's size and position in the seat and decide whether to deploy the air bag. And the Delphi Automotive Systems unit of the General Motors Corporation exhibited what it calls an adaptive restraint system, which includes sensors that provide a variety of information on whether an air bag should be deployed in an accident, and if so, under how much force. The system can tell if the person is wearing a seat belt, if | Innovations for Cars of the Near-Future |
912490_3 | computer checked in advance 201 names of the 240 passengers from Hong Kong and Tokyo. This APIS, or Advance Passenger Information System, works by comparing biographical details with the record, said Vincent DiGilio, a supervisory Customs inspector in the passenger analysis unit at Kennedy. This advance-information system was tested in 1988; 41 flights of two airlines were handled in the 1989 fiscal year; last year the total was 204,047 flights on 52 airlines carrying 27 million passengers. Only 39 ports of entry are equipped to receive the information; besides Kennedy, they include Newark, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, San Jose, San Juan, Seattle, Tampa and Washington-Dulles. Airport Trouble-Shooters As part of the speed-them-along program, Mr. Manning and George Burns have been appointed Customs trouble-shooters, or passenger service representatives, at Kennedy, along with 29 others at 23 other airports, two cruise ports and a border crossing in Washington State. This program is designed as a lightning rod at a time when human contact at Customs is rare and likely to be upsetting. Mr. Manning and his colleagues wear civilian clothes, not uniforms, and are on the floor in times of heavy traffic. Their pictures and telephone numbers are posted on the wall. They are responsible for dealing with angry or confused passengers, and are pledged to respond to telephone complaints within three days. One focus of the passenger service program is fears of passengers, both United States citizens and others, that Customs inspections and enforcement are falling disproportionately on nonwhite travelers, who feel stigmatized. Mr. Manning, who is black, said Customs inspectors have been taking sensitivity classes to learn about the cultures of the countries their customers come from. Frequent-Flier Pass Travelers who frequently fly into New York have another way of getting through the Immigration check fast, perhaps in 11 seconds: an Ins pass. This is an identification card that can be used at only three airports right now: Kennedy, Newark and Pearson in Toronto. Miami will be added in April. Cards are inserted into kiosks at the Immigration barrier, holders punch in their flight numbers and are instructed to insert their right hands into a reader. If it all matches, each traveler gets a receipt and passes without questioning by an Immigration officer. These cards, good for a year, are available free to applicants who meet the criteria. They are designed for | Zipping Through Customs Check |
912564_0 | WENDY WELSHANS, a woman with an adventurous spirit, is taking 11 students from Litchfield on a 12-day expedition to Costa Rica's rain forest on Friday. Ms. Welshans, an environmental science teacher at the Forman School, says that ''educating people about rain forests is an important mission'' and that ''the kids can really make a difference.'' Scientists say rain forests are being threatened by deforestation, done to make room for farming, cattle raising and to build communities. Deforesting even a small chunk of a rain forest can have a domino effect on nearby areas, according to environmentalists. The elimination of trees, for example, reduces the jungle's overall rate of transpiration -- leaves releasing moisture into the air. With fewer leaves contributing to an area's moisture level, patches of rain forest near deforested areas may experience severe dry spells, and those spells could kill moisture-reliant plants and the animals that depend on them. ''We all knew the project could grow and be of value to the scientific community,'' said Ms. Welshans, who said she learned to love the outdoors while growing up in upstate New York and living in Maine. ''I knew I wanted to be in the environmental field since I was 14,'' she said. ''Sharing it with kids makes it all the more worthwhile.'' The students -- seven from Forman, and two each from Litchfield and Wamogo High Schools -- have been preparing for life in the rain forest since October. Twice each week, they meet after school with Ms. Welshans to learn about species specialization, tropical biodiversity, soil nutrient cycles and other environmental topics. They've also endured rigorous training sessions in the Forman gymnasium. The proficiency gained through hours of rope climbing in the gym will be put to practical use when a student uses a harness and rope to inch his or her way 100 feet off the ground into the canopy, the forest's upper layer. In Costa Rica, the group will be based at Rara Avis, a privately owned research station about 60 miles north of San Jose, the capital. The students will work together in teams of two to pursue chosen areas of research they've been studying in a tropical ecology class. Paul Farmer and Henry Temple, roommates at Forman, will devote their time to amphibians and reptiles. After graduation in May, they plan to keep their love of the outdoors alive by hiking the 2,100-mile | Students Off to See Costa Rica Rain Forest |
912652_2 | since 1993. People dine out on the ground floor, work out on the second floor, rebuild antique violins or peruse contemporary art on the third floor, sell furniture on the fourth floor, archive countless hours of film and video on the fifth floor and devise marketing campaigns or give out $14 million a year in grants on the sixth floor. Not bad for a building that came into existence as a garage. In 1905, when he was 25, Robert Goelet arrived at Broadway and 64th Street with $500,000 in his pocket. He purchased nine lots forming an odd-shaped parcel through the block, with 174 feet on Broadway and a notch cut out at 65th Street. The transaction was noteworthy, The New York Times reported, as the first major real-estate purchase by any member of the Goelet family in recent years. The Goelets, who arrived in the New World in 1676, would have been as celebrated as the Astors for their extensive Manhattan land holdings -- they were said at one time to own 55 acres of the East Side -- had they not been so averse to publicity. What Goelet built, from 1906 to 1907, was the Goelet Garage. This was a logical development choice, since the parcel sat on Automobile Row, which ran from the West 40's to the West 70's, and was lined with showrooms, garages and the offices of major motor-car and tire companies. GOELET employed two architectural firms for his Broadway garage. Maynicke & Franke had just completed another project for the family, the enlargement of the Goelet Building, which is still standing at Broadway and 20th Street. The other architect was Frank M. Andrews, who also designed the 1,500-room Hotel McAlpin, at Broadway and 34th Street, which was the largest hotel in New York City on its completion in 1913. No mean utilitarian structure, the Goelet Garage is a forceful yet delicate composition. Its broad window bays have 7 1/2-foot-wide center panes flanked by smaller side lights, reminiscent of the Chicago school of architecture. These bays are framed by terra-cotta borders, pediments, brackets and medallions. The freight elevators, which had to transport horseless carriages, are larger than some studio apartments: 10 feet wide, 20 feet long, 10 feet high. To contemporary eyes, 1926 Broadway looks extravagant for a garage, but it was on a par with the esthetic tenor of Automobile Row. Other elegant survivors | The Anatomy of a 'People Building' |
913639_0 | The battle to undermine the only Communist regime in the Western Hemisphere -- Fidel Castro's Cuba -- has spread to the pajama department at the Wal-Mart in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Late last week, a Canadian customer rummaging through the store's racks discovered that the Arkansas-based retailer was trafficking in Cuban-made pj's. A politically alert store manager pulled the pajamas off the shelves, fearful that the chain could find itself in violation of the Helms-Burton Act. That is the American law that tries to force foreign companies and governments to join in the American embargo of Cuban products. Yet no sooner had Wal-Mart announced that it was also clearing the pajama shelves of its 135 other stores around Canada than the Canadian Government opened an inquiry into whether the retailer had violated a Canadian law that bars companies operating in Canada from obeying the American statute or ''observing any directive, instruction, intimation of policy, or other communication'' from the United States that furthers the Cuba embargo. In public at least, Canada is taking its Cuban pajamas as seriously as cigar aficionados take their Cohibas. ''We expect Canadian companies and the Canadian subsidiaries of American companies to obey Canadian law, full stop,'' a spokesman for the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said this afternoon. If prosecuted and found guilty, he added, Wal-Mart could be fined as much as $1.5 million (Canadian), or a bit more than $1 million (United States) at current exchange rates. No one thinks it will come to that. But if Wal-Mart is the first to be caught in this maw of conflicting laws and contradictory national policies, it is almost certain not to be the last. Mexico and the European Union have recently adopted similar ''blocking'' legislation, which makes it illegal for companies doing business within their borders to obey the American legislation, which they are challenging at the World Trade Organization. The United States vowed two weeks ago to block that challenge. In Washington, Stuart E. Eizenstat, the Under Secretary of Commerce, declared that rather than allow the organization to judge whether the Helms-Burton Act violated international trade accords, the United States would invoke a ''national security exemption,'' a claim that Helms-Burton is not a trade action but a law to curb the Cuban threat to the United States. That declaration was sharply criticized in Europe and Canada and came up earlier this week in | U.S.-Canadian Split on Cuba Tangles Wal-Mart's Pajamas |
918507_4 | China's heavily policed one-party state, ''democracy'' is a valid description of the village chief selection process, or that the Communist Party leadership is inclined to allow democratic rule in any locality for the foreseeable future. Indeed, the debate among scholars is whether village elections represent a progressive step at all or simply a substitute method of Communist Party control that co-opts local opposition to party rule while providing a potent propaganda tool for Chinese leaders. They have recently begun to claim that up to 900 million Chinese tale part in ''free elections.'' If domestic politics were afflicting Mr. Gore, they were also preoccupying his Chinese hosts. With the death of the paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, on Feb. 19, the collective Communist Party leadership of President Jiang must demonstrate its legitimacy and competence to lead the nation, Chinese and Western officials say. To do so it must show it can command American respect without making concessions. That is why it was important for Prime Minister Li to stage a surprise champagne toast with Mr. Gore in the Great Hall of the People on Tuesday. Every Chinese who saw the clinking glasses on state-run television got the message that the hard-line Prime Minister commands great respect from the United States despite Mr. Li's association with the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. The subtext was that China has emerged from the long shadow of Tiananmen and that Washington, like Paris, Bonn and Moscow, is more interested in scoring big business contracts in China than in dragging on with recriminations over the crushed democracy movement. That message is all-important in a year in which Mr. Li is angling to hold on to a commensurate measure of power after his second five-year term as Prime Minister ends next year and he is forced to relinquish the job. At times, Mr. Gore seemed just as pained to make any concessions to the Chinese. He brought no commitment from President Clinton to set a definite date for President Jiang's first state visit to Washington, though the agreement to exchange visits was announced last November. Mr. Gore said, ''President Jiang is expected in Washington this autumn, and planning will now begin in earnest in both capitals to develop specific dates and work programs.'' Even in the area of environmental protection, Mr. Gore's policy forte, there was no meeting of the minds on how China could realistically reduce its emission of | Gore in China: Still No Break in the Political Wall |
918572_0 | To the Editor: Dr. Susan Love's diatribe against the evils of estrogen and the conspiracy of the greedy drug companies (Op-Ed, March 20) requires a response. I am board certified in internal medicine with extra credentials in geriatric medicine. Do I have an agenda? You bet. Is it as informed as Dr. Love's? I think so. Hip fractures kill. Exaggeration? The older you are the more likely you are to die from complications of hip fracture. The potential pain and disability are equally disturbing. Better not ever to fracture your hip. The woman who is at risk of osteoporosis will benefit from taking estrogen unless she has a reason not to take it, like being at high risk for breast cancer. No, there are no guarantees, and, yes, there are many other things you should do like taking calcium, eating a proper diet, exercising and keeping your environment safe to prevent fractures. Estrogen is not for everyone, but many women will benefit. You will not be a dramatic result, and nothing terrible will happen to land you on a talk show. SAM BRODY, M.D. Baldwin, L.I., March 20, 1997 NO MORE Women Who Use Estrogen Reduce Cardiac Risk | Hip Fractures Kill |
918459_1 | is part of the reason so many are not identified. Smart children who lag in school are often labeled underachievers, behavior problems or just lazy. The disorder itself is imprecisely understood. There is no simple way to identify a learning-disabled child, and once the diagnosis is made, there is often disagreement over treatment. Many parents talk about the need to recognize a problem, to request testing and to become intimately involved in the learning process. ''There's this assumption that it's the school's job, and of course they're going to take care of your kid,'' said Paula Einbender, a rehabilitation counselor who lives in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. A learning disability was diagnosed in Megan, her daughter, when the child was 8. ''But you can't assume anything,'' she added. Learning disabilities are disorders that prevent children from learning or functioning up to their potential. While reading problems like dyslexia are the most common, the disorders may also affect writing, speaking or mathematical ability. Some children cannot process spoken words. The mother of a Westchester 10th grader, who insisted that their names not be used to protect the family's privacy, said her son had struggled for years in a regular classroom, unable to decipher what the teacher wanted him to do. When he was in the sixth grade, she recalled: ''He came home after a social studies lecture, and he told me, 'It might as well be a dog barking, that's how much I understand.' '' The first signs may be obvious. A young child may have difficulty learning letter names and sounds or comprehending what she hears or reads. Often, the signals are not so direct. Among the more common ones, Dr. Levine said, are trouble with organization, diminished awareness of time, not understanding how to do things a step at a time, an inability to meet deadlines and trouble with concentration or memory. Parents talk about other clues: teachers complaining that children are goofing off; children who want to read only the same babyish books, who dread going to school or have trouble making friends. Working in student teams or using a phonetic approach to writing called ''creative spelling'' masks the problem. ''Under the guise of liberal education, they were leaving him in a corner,'' Henry's mother said. ''All the other creative, self-motivated children were busy, but he was totally unfocused. He started feeling out of it and | What to Do When a Child Should Do Better but Can't |
918570_0 | To the Editor; All praise to Dr. Susan Love (Op-Ed, March 20) for her balanced consideration of the estrogen replacement therapies. When drug companies and complacent physicians push them with the gusto of crack dealers, women's health care is in grave trouble. Equally culpable is a media only too happy to pass along news of the ''miracles'' of replacement therapy, based on drug-company-financed research, without asking hard questions. So thank you, Dr. Love, for posing some questions of the research. The only thing missing were some recipes to help keep hormonal levels up through diet. Soy milk, anyone? JACQUELINE MCSWEENEY New York, March 20, 1997 Women Who Use Estrogen Reduce Cardiac Risk | Soy Milk, Anyone? |
918539_0 | In a setback for the Clinton Administration that demonstrates the difficulty of setting global policies for the Internet, the leading industrial nations have declined to embrace a United States proposal to allow computer eavesdropping by the world's law enforcement agencies. The United States proposal, backed by Britain and France, was an attempt to restrict the private use of increasingly advanced data-scrambling technology that can protect the privacy of electronic mail and other forms of computer communication. The equipment can make it difficult for law enforcement officials to crack a code when they suspect it is masking criminal or terrorist activities. The proposal called for international endorsement of a system in which mathematical keys to computer-security codes would be held by escrow agents from whom law enforcement officials could obtain the keys once they have a court's wiretapping warrant. But policy guidelines scheduled to be released in Paris today by the 29-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fail to endorse the United States proposal. And they leave such leeway for members to regulate data-scrambling technology -- or not -- that computer security experts say any uniform international policy remains elusive. ''The difficulty with the guidelines is that anybody can interpret parts of them in their own way,'' said Konstantine Papanikdaw, a policy analyst for information security at the European Commission in Brussels. Indeed, the industrial world seems to be deeply divided on whether governments can ever legitimately eavesdrop on the electronic communication of their citizens. Because messages on the Internet are easy to intercept, a growing number of individuals and corporations are protecting the privacy of their communications and the security of their commercial transactions by scrambling such information. Some O.E.C.D. nations, including Britain and France, have either outlawed or are in the process of tightly regulating the private use of data-scrambling systems. But other nations -- including Australia, Canada, Denmark and Finland -- have policies that protect individual privacy. Among other member nations, Japan had initially resisted the United States proposal but was said to be moving closer to it, while Germany remained deeply divided. Most other countries, inside or outside the O.E.C.D., have yet to confront the data-scrambling issue. And even the United States has a somewhat contradictory national policy that permits citizens to use whatever data-scrambling software they wish within the nation's borders, but restricts the export of the most up-to-date computer-coding technology. That seeming contradiction, however, | U.S. Rebuffed in Global Proposal For Eavesdropping on the Internet |
918568_0 | To the Editor: Dr. Susan Love (Op-Ed, March 20) presents a distorted picture of the health effects of postmenopausal hormones. She quotes as ''definitive'' the findings of an increased risk of breast cancer from the Nurses' Health Study, for which I am a researcher. However, she fails to point out that the same study also showed that women who used estrogen had about half the risk of fatal and nonfatal heart disease, after taking into account differences between estrogen users and non-users in other coronary risk factors and access to medical care. Dozens of studies show that estrogen users are at lower risk for heart disease, the leading cause of death in women. Dr. Love says ''it is important to note that in women younger than age 75, there are actually three times as many deaths from breast cancer as there are from heart disease.'' False. According to the American Cancer Society, in 1993 among United States women age 35 to 74, 95,819 died of heart disease, compared with 28,216 from breast cancer. Dr. Love characterizes the studies on osteoporosis as confusing. Virtually all studies show that estrogen maintains bone density for current users. She highlights other adverse effects of estrogen but fails to point out some of the additional benefits, including a potential reduction in risk of colon cancer and perhaps Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Love castigates the pharmaceutical companies for exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the risks in order to push their product. In her zeal, she has taken the opposite extreme. Virtually every study that has examined the issue finds that estrogen users have a lower mortality rate than non-users. Although the benefits appear to outweigh the risks, this is not true for all individuals. The decision whether to take postmenopausal estrogens is one of the most complex that a healthy woman faces. Women aren't served by one-sided arguments based on distortions rather than facts. MEIR STAMPFER, M.D. Boston, March 21, 1997 The writer is a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard. | Women Who Use Estrogen Reduce Cardiac Risk |
918571_0 | To the Editor: Dr. Susan Love's March 20 Op-Ed article on menopause reminds me of how lucky I was when I went through that phase. My doctor told me that he could give me estrogen but that there were side effects and, in his words, ''I'd rather see you tough it out.'' I did that, albeit with some of the usual uncomfortable symptoms over a two-year span. Just as with some forms of arthritis, a good dose of just plain ''ignoring'' and acceptance is often the best medicine of all. For me, it beats all the hype out there. NADIA KOUTZEN Toms River, N.J., March 21, 1997 Women Who Use Estrogen Reduce Cardiac Risk | Acceptance as Medicine |
918569_0 | To the Editor: Hurrah to Dr. Susan Love for taking the hype out of hormone replacement therapy! Twenty years ago, when I went through premature menopause, I decided not to take hormones. I've never regretted my decision. Contrary to what pharmaceutical companies maintain, I haven't turned into a prune, my bones haven't cracked, and I can hold my own against women half my age in the gym and in aerobics. I'm still waiting for my friends who are on hormone replacement therapy to turn into super-babes, as the ads claim they will. Last time I looked they were wrinkled, flabby and complained about their money. Drug companies would have us think the therapy is a panacea for all that ails the over-50 crowd. I don't believe them, and place my bet with Dr. Love. MARY DRAKE BELL Baton Rouge, La., March 20, 1997 Women Who Use Estrogen Reduce Cardiac Risk | No Super-Babes |
916880_0 | Just as the baby boomers hit middle age, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession have discovered a new disease: menopause, or as it is called clinically, estrogen deficiency disease. That this diagnosis automatically applies to the 40 million women turning 50 over the next decade doesn't seem to bother the medical powers that be, especially since they have a remedy at hand: artificial replacement hormones. It is true that women who have had hysterectomies may want to take hormones until the natural age of menopause. Other women have troubling symptoms like hot flashes and insomnia as they approach menopause that warrant treatment with hormones. No one has argued that short-term use of hormones is dangerous. The symptoms before menopause are transient, a kind of puberty in reverse. After three to five years, women can gradually taper off the treatment and suffer no more symptoms. But now the push is on to use these drugs on a long-term basis, in the name of disease ''prevention.'' From my position as a breast cancer surgeon, I worry that prolonged hormone treatment increases the risk of a woman developing breast cancer and other diseases. Yet pharmaceutical companies have launched an expensive ''educational'' (read: advertising) campaign directed at both doctors and women. Premarin, an estrogen product made from the urine of pregnant horses, is already the biggest-selling drug in the United States. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology recommends that every postmenopausal woman should be on ''replacement'' hormones for the rest of her life unless she has a compelling medical reason not to be. But this sweeping recommendation is based on inadequate scientific evidence. Menopause is not a disease; it is a normal part of life. A woman's ovaries don't shut down at menopause. They continue to produce low levels of hormones well into a woman's 80's. Synthetic hormones don't replace something that is missing when women reach menopause. They add something that is not naturally there. Many gynecologists who favor long-term hormone therapy argue that as the average life expectancy has expanded, these drugs are necessary to maintain our health. Wrong. Women have long lived well beyond menopause into old age. Our ovaries are genetically programmed to shift gears. Pharmaceutical companies have realized that in marketing their products to women it is smarter to emphasize diseases rather than the hormone treatment. Some advertisements warn women about conditions like osteoporosis, which occur in | Sometimes Mother Nature Knows Best |
916920_0 | The gigantic clock is out. The electronic message board, no more. Instead, the city's Economic Development Corporation has proposed that the new Staten Island Ferry terminal in lower Manhattan be a sleek, simple glass-walled building. The new design calls for a 19,000-square-foot structure to replace the existing building, which in turn replaced the terminal destroyed in a 1991 fire. The waiting room would be about 50 percent larger than the current one. With a 90-foot-high entry hall, the $81 million terminal would have views of New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan. The project is still in the preliminary stages: before the construction contract can be awarded, additional design work still needs to be done, public hearings held and approvals from various city agencies obtained. All told, the project may not be finished until 2003. But if approved, the design will cap a project that has been plagued by years of false starts, including rejected proposals to affix a big clock and an electronic message board to the facade. The design would also be a modern touch for an old-fashioned institution: the chugging boat which, at 50 cents a round trip, means cheap commuting for 60,000 Staten Islanders, and an inexpensive nighttime cruise. ''We're very enthusiastic about the project,'' said Charles Millard, president of the Economic Development Corporation, ''and we're glad that the community seems to be, too.'' The original terminal, called the Whitehall Street Ferry Terminal, was a squat, washed-out green hulk in which function vanquished form; the American Institute of Architects once called it ''the world's most banal portal of joy.'' A fire destroyed the old terminal in 1991, forcing the construction of a temporary station. In 1992, the Economic Development Corporation selected a design for a new terminal from a team led by the architectural firm of Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates. But that design, with its clock, and another one, with an electronic message board, were torpedoed by public criticism and budget constraints. Last October, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates bowed out of the project, leaving Anderson/ Schwartz Architects to work on it. Last week, Anderson Schwartz unveiled the newest design at a meeting in Staten Island Borough Hall. Under the plans, the terminal would include 8,000 square feet of concessions, including cafes and newsstands. It would redesign the outdoor Peter Minuit Plaza, currently a group of traffic islands, to accommodate pedestrians, markets | Sleeker Design for Staten Island Ferry Terminal Is Unveiled |
916518_3 | focuses ''almost exclusively'' on policy issues. The sermons Mr. Clinton hears most often these days are preached by the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, which the President and his wife frequently attend. Despite the attention that Mr. Schuller has drawn since the State of the Union speech, most of the clergy members close to Mr. Clinton have kept a lower profile. Mr. MacDonald, 57, said he had never publicly discussed his association with Mr. Clinton and doubted that many in his congregation knew about it. He and his wife, Gail, he said, ''have only talked about this to our closest friends.'' Although Father O'Donovan could not be reached for comment, the other clergy members or their spokesmen described their conversations with Mr. Clinton as centering on prayer, Bible reading and discussion of personal spiritual growth. Mr. Campolo, 62, a minister with the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., said: ''I don't think I've met him where we both didn't pray. So it's not like the Old Testament king who says, 'Come in and pray for me,' to the high priest.'' Mr. Schuller, 70, said he had told the President about ''possibility thinking,'' his conviction that a positive outlook leads a person to productive results. ''I think he's turned on by that,'' Mr. Schuller said. Mr. Clinton, who is 50, said he saw ''practical, positive consequences'' in these relationships. Recalling times when he was ''low in the polls and taking a great public beating,'' he said, ''It was very interesting what these people wrote to me, what they said to me, and how they helped me get through it and kind of keep not just my public composure, but to be more centered and to be able to enjoy each day of life and of this job, no matter how bad it seems to be at the moment.'' Mr. Clinton said the clergy members had also helped to keep him from becoming ''overinflated'' by the Presidency's power. By some accounts, their conversations have been blunt and searching, although the clergy members declined to go into detail. Mr. MacDonald said: ''I've been in a small group with two or three guys where some pretty candid things were said. He's accepted rebuke. He invites blunt talk.'' Still, proximity to President Clinton can have a public cost. Mr. Horne, who is a theological conservative, was confronted by | Not All Presidential Advisers Talk Politics |
914971_3 | and is a very worrisome situation now.'' For the first time, too, boats from China are boldly making their way to the eastern Japanese shores near Tokyo and are undertaking the weeklong journey in winter, when the seas are particularly rough. Japanese coastal patrols are increasingly spotting small, rusty boats slipping into harbor at night carrying several dozen Chinese migrants packed into a tiny cabin. But old boats are not the only method. Two months ago, 31 Chinese trying to smuggle themselves into Japan were found in a container aboard a freighter in Kobe. Also in January, 14 Chinese on a group tour were arrested at Narita Airport after the authorities noticed they carried fake passports. In contrast to the Vietnamese boat people of a generation ago, who often ventured to sea on their own with little direction, many of the Chinese migrants are taking to the seas through organized smuggling operations. Chinese gangs in China, presumably with the protection of the local police and military, organize the expeditions and enforce payment, and have agents in Japan to ease the passage into Japanese society. But much of the reception work seems to be done by Japanese gangs, possibly with Chinese accomplices. Last month, the maritime patrol received a call from a foreigner speaking Japanese who reported that a ship with people aboard was about to sink. The caller was speaking from a phone on land, though it was not clear whether he was calling from China or Japan. In any case, the maritime officials dispatched eight helicopters, which rescued 43 people from a sinking boat with a gaping hole in it. ''Since it was on the high seas, they didn't violate Japanese law,'' said Keiji Oba, a maritime official in Yokohama. ''They are not officially criminals so we didn't interview them and don't know why they were there. But there's a high possibility that they were trying to smuggle themselves into the country.'' The recent growth in criminal activity on the part of the Chinese seems to have affected Japanese attitudes toward Chinese, according to a poll released last month. For the first time since 1978, when the Government began conducting the poll, a majority -- in this case, 51 percent -- of Japanese surveyed said they do not feel ''friendly'' toward China. There were many other reasons, however, including China's nuclear testing last year and a dispute over ownership | Japan Worries About a Trend: Crime by Chinese |
923389_1 | eye. In part, it follows from Beijing's desire to amass foreign currency reserves on the eve of the takeover of Hong Kong. More important, suggests Nicholas R. Lardy of the Brookings Institution, it comes when China is inheriting export markets from the more productive, higher-wage economies of Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore. ''Taken as a group,'' he said, ''China and the four tigers had a smaller share of world exports in key labor-intensive industries in 1994 than they did in 1984.'' To most people, trade deficits mean jobs lost to peasants willing to work for a bowl of rice (or a burrito) a day. But to economists, jobs are just not part of the trade equation: the Federal Reserve largely determines employment. Indeed, the Fed has just raised interest rates, serving notice that it wants to restrain further reductions in joblessness, no matter how successful exporters are, out of fear that excessively tight labor markets will lead to higher inflation. For better or worse, the current account deficit is simply the other side of an immutable accounting identity -- the difference between domestic investment and savings. Countries like Japan that save more than they invest automatically run surpluses. The black ink shows up as added holdings of foreign securities and property. Chronic deficit economies, like America's, are in effect selling assets to finance foreign purchases. Deficits are bad if individuals are consuming the proceeds of the asset sales when they ought to be worrying about how they will get by when they retire. But it's good news when it reflects a surfeit of investment opportunities. By this reckoning, America rates a B-minus. Private savings are low, but Washington has taken decisive action to curb the Government's dissavings by reducing the budget deficit. Note, too, that the current account deficit shrank from a peak of 3.6 percent of national output in 1987 to 2.1 percent in 1996. It will probably fall much further when Japanese and European policy makers crank up growth and foreigners stop throwing money at American financial markets. ''Nobody worries these days that the American current account deficit is unsustainable,'' Mr. Lawrence concludes. But what about China? Economists have never shared the popular fear of imbalances. Robert M. Solow, the Nobel economist, is fond of saying that he has been running deficits with his barber for 40 years straight, buying haircuts for cash and never selling | America's trade gap is (1) a disaster (2) a sign of success. |
923393_0 | As part of a nationwide crackdown on the illegal copying of movies and music, the Supreme People's Court of China has announced heavy prison sentences in two prominent cases of copyright piracy, the country's official news media reported today. China's previous failure to prosecute copyright pirates has been a sticking point in trade negotiations with the United States, so the imprisonment of factory managers who were responsible for large-scale piracy marks a breakthrough of sorts. Pu Xinghua, former deputy general manager of the Suzhou Baodie Compact Disk Company, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for pirating more than three million audio and video compact disks worth about $1.5 million, including 130,000 pornographic videos, the court said. Separately, Wang Binyan, former chairman and general manager of Cailing Audio and Video Products in Guangzhou, was sentenced to four years for copying more than five million audio and video disks. In the past, copyright pirates in China have generally been punished with minor fines, in some cases because the judicial authorities did not see illegal copying as a serious crime. In others, where piracy was so lucrative that powerful members of China's military and police got involved, factory managers were able to escape prosecution. Mr. Wang's office, for instance, was situated in a military compound in Guangzhou until he was taken into custody a year ago, not long after telling a foreign journalist that the crime he was being investigated for was not very serious. While Chinese authorities have been confiscating illegally copied disks since American negotiators began threatening trade sanctions a few years ago, the most serious crackdown on copyright piracy so far began only in December. The People's Daily reported last week that sizable rewards to anonymous informants had led to the closing of 33 underground disk factories, most in Guangdong province in the south. Copyright piracy is so widespread in China, however, that no one knows how many more factories exist. And in what may be the best barometer of the problem, compact disks of current movies are still openly available in large cities, though supplies have dropped and prices have risen. The current crackdown is part of a domestic political campaign to improve ''spiritual civilization,'' and is focused on combating pornographic material. Mr. Pu's heavy sentence was clearly meted out because the films copied at his factory included pornography. The authorities first brought him to a Shanghai courtroom | China Jails Audio and Movie Disk Pirates |
925313_0 | To the Editor: Your April 20 editorial ''The 50-Year War on the Everglades'' may actually understate the factor by which United States sugar prices are inflated by the Government's import quota, and leaves out the price that consumers must pay for this ''welfare for the rich'' program, in addition to whatever damage is being done to the Everglades. As noted by economists, recent world prices for sugar have been as low as 4 cents a pound and American prices as high as 25 cents. Even in 1989, when the difference was only 12.5 versus 23 cents, nearly $930 million extra was extracted from American consumers by the sugar industry through the quota. But the total cost to consumers was even more: about $2 billion The difference was made up by about $400 million in extra profits to the few importers lucky enough to get a piece of the 3.8 billion-pound quota and about $635 million ''deadweight'' losses simply wasted through overall underconsumption and misallocated, inefficient production. Even if the world price rose in reaction to freed United States demand -- a great potential benefit to our struggling Caribbean neighbors -- the savings could still be substantial. The multibillion-dollar environmental reconstruction project envisioned by the Government may or may not be good policy. But if ''Big Sugar'' is at fault, this industry could be cut down to size without spending a penny -- in fact, at a possible savings of billions -- just by lifting the quota. MERRILL SMITH Flushing, Queens, April 20, 1997 Sugar Lobbying Near Everglades Began Early | Needless Import Quota |
925261_0 | To any middle-aged mother, having a baby at age 63 probably seems like a colossally bad idea. Imagine the constant backache at that age, the 2 A.M. feedings and the endless diaper changes. Didn't nature arrange for us to stop doing this sort of thing after our mid-40's? But nature has been overruled. It has recently been announced that a 63-year-old woman gave birth late last year to a healthy baby girl. A doctor implanted into her hormonally primed uterus an embryo created in a test tube with her husband's sperm and a young donor's egg. The woman's doctor, Dr. Richard J. Paulson, said she had lied about her age to get around his age limit of 55 years for in vitro fertilization. The 63-year-old woman was not the first postmenopausal woman to have a baby, only the oldest. In the last several years, progressively older women have given birth through in vitro fertilization. So we now must contemplate the curious possibility of women on Medicare becoming pregnant. Many people are probably offended, even repelled, by postmenopausal women's having babies. To many observers, it seems somehow unethical; they believe that if a woman doesn't know any better, her doctor should. There will probably be calls to regulate this technology and forbid women of a certain age to receive in vitro fertilization. This would be a mistake. Why is it wrong for a woman in her 60's to have a baby? If the technology exists, why shouldn't she take advantage of it? For a healthy woman who is willing to take the medical risk of being pregnant at an advanced age, it may be her last chance to become a mother. Many people will object that it is unnatural for postmenopausal women to have babies, that it is a perverse use of a technology that has been widely accepted for younger women since 1978. To these critics, women in their 60's are simply too old to become good mothers. But all sorts of women who, by nearly anyone's standards, are extremely unlikely to be fit mothers can choose to have babies, including girls barely in their teens, drug abusers and the homeless. Some people also point out that an older mother is less likely than a younger mother to live long enough to raise her children to adulthood. But any responsible mother, young or old, should make provisions for the care | Pregnant At 63? Why Not? |
925219_1 | to be safer than hand-held telephones,'' it found. Cell phones may not cause crashes, but talking on one may reduce the ability of a driver to compensate for the mistakes of other drivers, researchers said. If true, that would contradict years of efforts by cellular companies, which have built telephones with speakers and microphones and installed software that allows a driver to speak a telephone number so that a call can be made with only one or two touches of the keypad. The idea that talking itself is a risk seems counter-intuitive, since people talk in cars all the time. But Gordon Logan, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Illinois, said that a conversation with someone in the car is different from a conversation on the telephone. Suppose, he said, a driver is talking to his wife while in heavy traffic. ''If she's in the car with you, she might know there's traffic and lay off,'' he said. ''People will be quiet when the driving gets tough, but not if they are on the phone.'' People talk over citizens band radios or even talk back to the radio, but experts say they do not get as involved in the conversation as they do on a telephone. Not that the cell phone conversations are long and convoluted. Either because of cost or because drivers don't like to talk, the conversations studied by the Ontario researchers were short, with 76 percent lasting less than two minutes. An editorial accompanying the Ontario study pointed out that if one car in 10 has a cellular phone by the end of the decade and if the risk of accident doubles with cellular use, which the editorial said was a conservative projection, then 0.6 to 1.2 percent of all accidents could be attributable to cellular phones, at a cost of $2 billion to $4 billion a year in the United States. So far, no jurisdictions bar cell phone use while driving. And experts are not aware of any that even count whether a cellular phone was in use during an accident, though they routinely count other risk factors, like whether the pavement was wet or the sun was up. Evidence suggests that most people can handle more distractions as the tasks become more familiar. Logan said that most people can carry out two tasks at once if they use different parts of the brain, | Using Cellular Phones May Add to Road Risks |
925233_0 | France's conservative Government may be facing elections May 25 and June 1, but today it left no one in doubt about what it thought of American legislative attempts to discourage investments in Cuba. Franck Borotra, the country's Minister of Industry, Posts and Telecommunications, sent out invitations to selected guests to watch him and Cuba's Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation Minister, Ibrahim Ferradaz, sign a bilateral accord on protection and mutual promotion of investments at the French ministry on Friday. No one was invited from the American Embassy, officials there said. France and the other 14 members of the European Union refuse to observe the terms of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, a United States law that punishes companies in third countries that buy Cuban properties expropriated from owners who now live in the United States. The European Union also threatened to take the United States to task in the World Trade Organization in Geneva but reached agreement with the United States this month to suspend the dispute while the Clinton Administration seeks to eliminate a provision in the law that denies United States visas to executives of offending foreign corporations. American officials said they took no umbrage at the announcement and were not surprised that France was seeking to develop trade with Cuba. About 40 representatives of large French companies, including the automakers Peugeot and Renault, met Fidel Castro in Havana on April 17, inaugurating among other things a joint-venture French bakery that will sell croissants and baguettes for hard currency. The delegation also announced plans for a $16-million renovation of a Cuban electric power station near Santiago de Cuba. The group left after visiting a Club Med beach resort near Varadero. | France Signals Its Displeasure At U.S. Over Cuba Trade Policy |
920380_7 | extremely few exceptions. The embargo was strengthened in 1992 to prohibit subsidiaries of American companies from doing business in Cuba, and it was tightened again last year to, among other points, punish foreign companies that use property that the Government confiscated after President Castro seized power in 1959. The embargo does not prohibit travel to Cuba, but rather the spending of dollars there without a special license from the Treasury Department. People with relatives in Cuba, journalists and a few others are allowed to go to the island, but only with the license. Until last year, those people could fly on direct charter flights from Miami. But after Cuban fighter pilots shot down two unarmed civilian planes who belonged to a Cuban-American organization, Brothers to the Rescue, in February 1996, Mr. Clinton suspended the charter flights. The President recently renewed that suspension for an additional year. People who obtain special licenses may travel to Cuba, but they have to travel through a third country. Ms. Mannerud's charter service flies through the Bahamas and Mexico. A Cuban-born American, Mr. Cabrera was arrested two times on serious drug charges in the 1980's. Both times he pleaded guilty to nondrug felony charges. In 1983, he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for conspiring to bribe a grand jury witness and served 42 months in prison. In 1988, he pleaded guilty to filing a false income-tax return and served one year in prison. After his brief brush with Presidential politics, Mr. Cabrera was arrested in January 1996 inside a cigar warehouse near here in Dade County, where more than 500 pounds of cocaine had been hidden. He and several accomplices were charged with having smuggled 3,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States through the Keys. When he was arrested, agents found a picture of Mr. Cabrera with Mr. Castro. Mr. Cabrera tried to obtain a lighter sentence by contending that the Cuban Government was involved in his drug trafficking. Mr. Bronis said prosecutors began an inquiry into those assertions, but dropped the investigation. ''It was pure politics, and it stinks,'' he said. Mr. Bronis asked Attorney General Janet Reno for a special prosecutor to investigate the case. She rejected that request. Congressional investigators are planning to highlight the Havana solicitation and the source of Mr. Cabrera's contribution at hearings into campaign financing. In January, Mr. Cabrera received an invitation to Mr. Clinton's inauguration. | A Felon's Donation to Democrats Was Sought in Cuba, Inquiry Says |
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