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921579_5 | in modernizing the rundown plant, and 1,100 workers now are unemployed. A press spokesman declined to discuss the reasons for the company's departure from Ukraine. The beneficiaries of the decree are domestic sugar beet growers, inefficient state-owned operations, in which Government officials have economic interests, according to diplomats and business people. Potentially, one of the most lucrative enterprises in this country of 52 million people will be the sale of mobile phones. Recently, the Government awarded three licenses, one to a company called Kiev Star. Its owners include an adviser to Mr. Kuchma, a Cabinet minister and a Ukrainian with links to organized crime, said officials from two Western countries and a Western businessman close to the Government. With that, Motorola, which had plans to invest $500 million to build the telecommunications system, announced that it was giving up on Ukraine. ''Motorola cannot continue to invest in Ukraine when the Government is constantly changing the rules of the game,'' the company's spokesman said at the time. Sometimes, the pressures against foreign investors are expressed overtly, as Joseph Lemire, an American businessman, discovered when he disputed the Government's ruling over a broadcast license for his radio station, Gala Radio. One night soon after, Mr. Lemire said, he was driving home after dinner at Uncle Sam's, a trendy new watering hole here. A car forced him to pull over and three burly men with automatic weapons drawn demanded that he go with them. Mr. Lemire refused, an act that most business people here would consider foolhardy. The American Embassy later determined that the men who accosted Mr. Lemire were police officers, and the 40-year-old former banker turned entrepreneur has no doubt that their intent was to threaten him. Mr. Lemire was fighting back after the Government had revoked Gala Radio's broadcast license -- just as the station was beginning to turn a profit. They gave it to a competing station in which Ukrainian Government officials have a financial interest, according to Western diplomats and Mr. Lemire. A Ukrainian arbitration court then ruled that the National Council of Radio and Television Broadcasting, which regulates the airwaves, had acted illegally in taking away Mr. Lemire's license. The council was not deterred. ''We reject the court's reasoning,'' the head of the council, Viktor Petrenko, said in an interview. Mr. Lemire said bitterly, ''There is no desire by the Ukrainian Government to ever have foreign investment.'' | Ukraine Staggers on Path to the Free Market |
921594_3 | to be calibrated as precisely as a jet-engine blade. And thus far, his actions and words have led to remarkable progress: US Airways is more prosperous than ever, with record profits of $263.4 million last year. Still, it is always easier to get concessions from labor in times of crisis, so the hard part for Mr. Wolf may just be starting. Like most airlines, US Airways has benefited in recent years from a strong economy and a more disciplined approach to limiting its supply of seats. That gives airlines more control over pricing, and they have raised fares sharply, particularly for last-minute travel. US Airways also has a lock on many routes in the Northeast, where a large percentage of its passengers are business people who pay the highest fares. Such profits make it difficult for workers to swallow the notion that cuts are urgently needed. All three major unions at the company are negotiating new contracts, and Mr. Wolf is saying to them, in effect: Work with me, and this airline will be bigger and better than ever. If union leaders have any doubts, they are not sharing them publicly. Mr. Wolf has asked them not to negotiate in the media, and calls to officials representing flight attendants and mechanics were not returned. A spokesman for the pilots, Jim Gardner, said only, ''From top to bottom, all of us at US Airways are committed to successfully and profitably meeting our competitive challenges.'' Innocuous as that statement sounds, there appears to be some truth to it, at least for now. Though US Airways retains the cost structure that is the industry's highest, it is by many measures a better airline under Mr. Wolf. For years, USAir, whose name Mr. Wolf changed earlier this year in hopes of giving it a more international flavor, lived up to its reputation as a second-rate airline. Its poor showings in on-time arrivals, customer complaints and lost baggage were often explained away as the result of flying in the congested and weather-beaten Northeast. Service was unpredictable, even on small things like drinks. On one flight, passengers would get an entire can of soda; on the next, they would get a glassful. Now, key performance yardsticks are posted throughout US Airways' operations, and they have improved sharply. In on-time arrivals, the carrier jumped from eighth a year ago to first by January. It ranked fifth in | Chief Seeks Harmony, for Now, As He Tries to Cut Labor Costs |
920143_1 | The company said it had learned that Andrew & Williamson inaccurately described some of the strawberries as having been grown and processed in the United States, as required by the Department of Agriculture school lunch program. In fact, some of the berries were grown in Mexico and processed in the United States, Epitope said yesterday. In Nasdaq trading, Epitope shares closed at $8.25, down $1.875. It was a 52-week low for the stock, which has traded as high as $22.87 in the past year. The company has long been a favorite of short sellers, who profit when a stock's price falls. ''We have notified the U.S.D.A. of our concern with regard to this matter and have today accepted the resignation of Fred L. Williamson, the president and chief executive officer of A. & W.,'' Adolph J. Ferro, Epitope's president and chief executive, said in a statement. ''As the health and well-being of the public remains our foremost concern, we will continue to work with appropriate governmental agencies.'' Founded in 1981 as a paternity testing company, Epitope in 1996 received Food and Drug Administration approval to market the nation's first H.I.V. testing system that did not rely on blood. Epitope's OraSure uses fluid from the mouth, which is sent to a laboratory for testing. Epitope acquired Andrew & Williamson in November in a stock swap worth about $7.7 million, as part of a plan to spin out Agritope, its agriculture operations as a separately traded stock. Earlier Agritope had joined with Andrew & Williamson, a major fresh fruit and vegetable grower and distributor in San Diego, in a joint venture to grow and wholesale new varieties of longer-lasting tomatoes. Shareholders are scheduled to vote on the arrangement on April 29. ''The only good thing is this all happened before they made the acquisition,'' said James McCamant, publisher of the Agbiotech Stock Letter, an industry newsletter. ''If their lawyers wrote the contract properly, this will probably come out of whatever they paid. That's the biggest single question mark: who's going to end up being liable.'' Epitope reported $6.2 million in revenue for the year ending Sept. 30, 1996, but that included a one-time $5.2 million fee from SmithKline Beecham as a result of the F.D.A.'s approving extending the shelf life of the OraSure device to two years from nine months. The company reported a net loss of $1.4 million for the year. | Business Linked to Berries Is Not New to Controversy |
920055_0 | BEAR AND HIS DAUGHTER Stories By Robert Stone 222 pages. Houghton Mifflin Company. $24. Rage is the wind that blows bitterly through the seven powerful short stories written by Robert Stone from 1969 to the present and collected here in a volume named for the longest piece, ''Bear and His Daughter.'' It is a rage sometimes produced by violence, as in the book's second story, ''Absence of Mercy,'' about Mackay, who was reared in an institution run by a Catholic order of teaching brothers. There he was subjected to so much ''unremitting petty violence'' that he acquired ''an instinctive cringe.'' It is a rage inspired also by hypocrisy, as in the book's first story, ''Miserere,'' about two women, Mary Urquhart and Camille Innaurato, who make it their business to steal aborted fetuses and give them a Catholic burial. When Father Hooke announces that what they're all doing may be wrong and that ''women have a right,'' Mary turns on him and tells him to ''take off the vestments you're afraid to wear'' and ''become the nice little happy homosexual nonentity you are.'' Or it is a rage brought on by chaos, as in ''Helping,'' where Chas Elliot falls off the wagon because one of the men he counsels at the state hospital reports a dream about Vietnam. ''You were never there, my man,'' Elliot tells him. ''You have no business dreaming about it! You better cut it out!'' In the world created by Mr. Stone's stories, people either cringe or threaten. As Gillian, in the sailing story ''Under the Pitons,'' reports to a shipmate, Liam Blessington, about her sexual encounter with a Rastafarian drug dealer in the West Indies: ''He told me not to worry about understanding things. He said understanding was weak and lame. He said you got to overstand things.'' The narrative continues: ''She hauled herself and did the voice of a big St. Vincentian man . . . laying down wisdom. You got to overstand it. Overstand it, right. Funny, huh?' '' Are these stories then a plea for nonviolence, honesty and rational order in the world? Hardly. Most of the characters in them are too far gone even for a world redeemed. All Liam, in ''Under the Pitons,'' hopes for is to get his share of the drug deal he and his shipmates have made and to escape from their sailboat alive. As things turn out, | Unleashing the Poison That Floods From Anger |
924603_2 | students to take it,'' said James Shapiro, a professor at Columbia University. ''There are two times as many students as there are seats.'' One of Professor Shapiro's students is Nomi Victor, 22, a Columbia senior from the Boston area. Her favorite among this semester's works is ''Troilus and Cressida,'' inspired by Homer's account of the Trojan Wars. ''I feel this distance from the 'Iliad,' '' Ms. Victor said. ''Shakespeare brings them down from the heroic. I'm interested in things from a feminist perspective. When Cressida is traded back to the Greeks, all the Greek generals are kissing her. You can read that as about molestation.'' Maurice Charney, a professor at Rutgers, said: ''Shakespeare is a tremendous growth industry. We have more than 1,000 students taking Shakespeare of their own free will.'' He added: ''Shakespeare is an icon of Anglo-American heritage. There are very few white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in my classes. The children of immigrants want to study an assured canonical figure.'' At smaller colleges and public universities, Shakespeare studies are also flourishing. ''We have to deliberately limit the size of classes,'' said Thomas Cartelli, a professor of English at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. ''We have three sections devoted to Shakespeare. We could have four and enroll 30 to 40 in each.'' Shakespeare's popularity in the United States has seldom flagged. Americans have always been fascinated by the notion of the individual alone on the stage of the world, by reckless, brazen characters who seize their fate and master it, Lawrence W. Levine observed in his 1988 book, ''Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America.'' A century earlier, Richard Grant White wrote of ''Shakespearism,'' calling it ''a cult, a religion, with priests and professional incense burners.'' De Tocqueville found Shakespeare performed in the remote settlements and mining camps of the New World. In 1849, New Yorkers rioted over the casting of ''Macbeth.'' When journalists and politicians are at a loss to describe the truly awful, or the truly important, they often look to Shakespeare for a metaphor. Hillary Rodham Clinton is ''Lady Macbeth''; Nicole Brown Simpson is ''Desdemona.'' Even Dick Morris, President Clinton's disgraced adviser, likened himself to a figure out of Shakespearean tragedy. Today, movies and videos have made the plays even more accessible. Last year, ''William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet'' was No. 1 at the box office when it opened, and it grossed nearly $50 million. In | After Four Centuries, Still Gaining Devotees |
926219_2 | economic payoff could be considerable. No wonder companies have come to view Internet technology as a communications tool that can reduce the expense of many transactions, whether buying factory equipment from outside suppliers or processing expense accounts. Various electronic systems for linking businesses have been available for years, but these usually required costly private data networks and tailor-made software. As such, these first-generation electronic communications were available only to an elite group of big companies and their chief suppliers. But Internet technology -- a set of public domain software standards and a global web of computer networks -- is transforming these economics, making it cheaper and easier to set up in-house corporate networks and establish electronic ties with outsiders of all sizes. As a result, the corporate dash to the Internet is not merely for big companies from Silicon Valley to Detroit. The race also includes thousands of small strivers, like the Dakota Electric Supply Company in Fargo, N.D., and the Strong Tool Company of Cleveland. Today's corporate uses of Internet technology fall into two broad categories: electronic communications inside the company walls, which often replace mountains of paperwork; and electronic communication outside the company walls, as a means of conducting business-to-business commerce or sharing information with suppliers and customers anywhere in the world. ''We're trying to reduce transaction costs, and the Internet is the way to do it,'' said Arne Breikjern, a marketing manager at Dakota Electric Supply, a 125-person concern that sells goods ranging from light switches to telephone cable. ''That's as true for us in North Dakota as it is in Silicon Valley.'' Dakota Electric Supply's Internet site on the World Wide Web went up last October on a business-to-business commerce service run by the International Business Machines Corporation. Dakota Electric Supply, a $40 million-a-year business, has invested $5,000 on the site so far. And, though the network has received E-mail nibbles from as far away as Australia, sales have been scarce. Still, Mr. Breikjern is not discouraged by the slow start. ''I have absolutely no doubt that a large portion, perhaps even a majority, of our business will be done on the Internet someday,'' he said. Lured by the Internet's cost-saving appeal, thousands of corporate newcomers to cyberspace are expected to begin selling goods to one another on line, whether power turbines or toilet paper. Such business-to-business commerce, estimated at $600 million last year, is projected | Companies Go on Line To Trim Costs and Find Ways to Make Money, Too |
921814_0 | ''These are really mind-blowing pictures. How often is an ocean discovered? The last one was the Pacific by Balboa, and that was 500 years ago.'' DR. RICHARD TERRILE, a planetary scientist, on new pictures that seem to show liquid water on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. $(A23$) | No Headline |
922812_0 | Dr. Joe Hendron, 63, an affable, slightly paunchy family physician, is virtually unknown outside Northern Ireland, but he is still famous in the working-class area of West Belfast as the only politician who ever defeated Gerry Adams, the leader of the Irish Republican Army's political wing. That was five years ago when, as the candidate of the mainstream, Roman Catholic-dominated Social Democratic Labor Party, he beat Mr. Adams by 589 votes out of 40,000 cast to become the area's representative in the British Parliament and a thorn in the side of Sinn Fein, the party led by Mr. Adams. The defeat of Mr. Adams did not hinder his rise as leader of the overwhelmingly Catholic Republican movement in efforts toward a peace settlement in Northern Ireland. Republicans have pushed for an end to British rule in Northern Ireland and closer ties to the Irish Republic in the south, a campaign marked by decades of sporadic guerrilla warfare by the I.R.A. They are opposed by Unionists, who want the mostly Protestant province to remain with Britain. But now the peace effort is stalled, and Mr. Adams and Sinn Fein have been barred from the negotiating table because of the I.R.A.'s resumption of violence. In the next British general election, on May 1, the 48-year-old Mr. Adams is trying to regain some of his prestige by winning back the seat he held for nine years before his defeat in 1992. The election will also fill 17 other Northern Ireland seats in Parliament. The composition of the Northern Irish delegation will be crucial to the peace talks that began 10 months ago. Negotiations bogged down in renewed I.R.A. violence and haggling between Catholic nationalists and Protestant Unionists at the Belfast talks headed by the former Senate majority leader, George J. Mitchell. On Friday, his first day of door-to-door campaigning, Dr. Hendron's house calls were distinctly partisan, although several people asked for medical advice. An old woman wanted him to look at her knee, which she had just twisted tripping over her vacuum cleaner cord. A man talking through a battery-powered voice box got a promise from the doctor to advise him on his recovery from throat cancer surgery. A woman asked him to visit a relative who had undergone heart surgery. But most of the doctor's talk was political as he rang bells of the small neat brick houses of Ardmoulin Close. ''I | Doctor Tests His Prescription for Defeating I.R.A. |
925449_0 | The news that a 63-year-old California woman gave birth late last year has prompted calls to set a maximum age limit for women who receive treatment at fertility centers to get pregnant. While individual fertility centers can, and already do, set age limits, this is not an area that requires regulation or other government intervention. The decision on whether to undergo pregnancy after menopause should remain a private choice between a woman and her doctor, based on individual circumstances. Advancing technology has rapidly expanded the possibilities for assisted reproduction, and eggs donated by younger women have allowed older women to conquer infertility. As long as a uterus is healthy, the pregnancy barrier can be pushed well beyond menopause. The clinic that assisted the California woman bars women over 55 from receiving donated eggs, and many fertility clinics set age limits at 50 or lower, usually because of health concerns. But the California woman, like many others in her position, simply lied about her age. She told the infertility specialists that she was 50 at the time she started treatment when she was, in fact, 10 years older. Even so, she passed extensive medical evaluations. It was not until three years later, after she was successfully implanted with a donated egg fertilized with her now 60-year-old husband's sperm, that she revealed her true age. According to her doctors, she experienced few complications during the pregnancy and delivered a healthy baby girl late last year. She now goes into the record books as the oldest known woman in the world to deliver a child. While this older mother is a monument to the increasing health and fitness of senior citizens, she has become the focus of debate over the propriety of becoming a parent at an age when contemporaries are enjoying the freedom of being grandparents. But in terms of maturity and knowledge, a child may be better off with a 60-year-old mother than a 15-year-old one, especially if the older woman makes provisions for the child in the event she dies or is incapacitated. Society already accepts the notion that older men can be fathers. Surely it is no more selfish or shortsighted for an older woman to have a child. The ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine believes that postmenopausal pregnancies should be discouraged because of physical and psychological risks to the mother or child. But the | Giving Birth at 63 |
925469_1 | had massacred refugees and even invited an international investigation to determine what had happened. He said the rebels responded with gunfire when they were attacked by armed Hutu guerrillas, and then intervened to stop skirmishes between the refugees and local villagers. ''I will accept independent findings, and if there is reason to take action against my troops, I will happily do so,'' Reuters quoted him as saying. ''But facts before me suggest my troops only intervened to stop fighting between armed refugees and local Zairians.'' But the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, said through a spokesman that the rebels' actions amounted to ''slow extermination.'' The spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said that the refugees were not only ''being attacked in an organized way'' but that they were also being subjected to the rebels' policy of denying aid workers access to them, which was tantamount to killing them. In Geneva, aid officials used even stronger words, suggesting that Mr. Kabila was seeking to exterminate the Hutu refugees, some of whom took part in the 1994 genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. ''Eighty thousand people are condemned to a slow and cruel death,'' Christiane Berthaume, speaking for the World Food Program, told Reuters. ''The expression 'final solution' is not exaggerated.'' On Thursday, United Nations officials who visited a camp at Kasese, 17 miles south of Kisangani, were shocked to discover not a single person was left of more than 55,000 people who had been camped there. Today officials flew over the area and found out that a second camp at Biaro, about eight miles farther south, was also abandoned, its 30,000 residents having apparently vanished into the forest. United Nations officials say they fear the worst. A bulldozer hijacked by villagers on Monday was seen at Kasese camp, as well as freshly dug trenches and a fresh mound of earth. Journalists and aid workers who tried to investigate the mound were scared away by automatic gunfire and grenade explosions nearby. Even if there were no massacres, the flight of the refugees into the rain forest means that the sickest among them will probably die, aid workers said. United Nations officials estimate that at least 9,000 of the more than 80,000 people in the two camps were in perilous shape, suffering from malaria, cholera and other tropical diseases. ''Those who can walk are somewhere else,'' said Filippo Grandi, the coordinator for the United Nations refugee | Rebels Force 80,000 Hutu to Flee to Jungle |
924502_4 | other efforts to bring back the fish. In addition, the Army Corps of Engineers has proposed spending more than $200 million over the next five years for fish screens, new fish-collection devices, adult fish ladders, new turbines and other equipment on Snake River dams. Despite these efforts, the count of adult salmon on the Snake River has dropped to less than 4,000 from more than 28,000 over the last 20 years, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. ''We are just continuing to spend money down a rat-hole,'' said Bob Heinith, hydropower coordinator for the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission. Industry groups agree that the fish-recovery efforts have failed. But they consider the dam-breaching proposal as ''a terrible idea,'' said Bruce Lovelin, executive director of the Columbia River Alliance, which represents shipping, irrigation and utility interests. The groups say that it would destroy the Snake River waterway and eight inland ports; increase irrigation costs for some farmers and reduce the Bonneville authority's power revenues by an estimated $208 million a year, or about 10 percent. The authority's revenues are important because the agency owes the United States Treasury about $16 billion, much of it from taking over the debt of the Washington Public Power Supply System, which went bankrupt after starting construction on five nuclear reactors whose power was not needed. Industry groups using the rivers clearly have the most to lose. About 60 percent of the grain exported to Pacific Rim markets is shipped down the Snake. The Pacific Northwest Grain and Feed Association put a value of $500 million on the grain shipped on the Snake River this year. ''If you take away the barging option, we go from being one of the strongest allies for salmon recovery to one of the biggest casualties,'' said Jonathan Schlueter, the association's director. Mr. Burkholder contends the waterway has subsidized grain and other shipments at the expense of the railroad and trucking industries. A 1992 Congressional Budget Office report found the Snake-Columbia waterway costs taxpayers $9.1 million a year, several times more than what it costs taxpayers to operate the Mississippi waterway. Mr. Burkholder is undaunted by his opponents. ''The influential guys are waiting for the public to lead,'' he said. ''The Northwest is paralyzed by big money, and we have a bureaucracy that cannot act. It would be nice if the rest of the country would save us from ourselves.'' | New Plan for Rescuing the Salmon |
923850_2 | you set the first kid loose,'' said Dr. Roland Pare, director of information systems for Hunterdon Central, which was among the first public schools in the country to connect to the Internet. ''You can't stop them altogether from making trouble, but you need to let them know what is expected of them.'' In a three-page contract that all students and parents are asked to sign, Hunterdon Central prohibits students from using vulgarities, destroying files and revealing their home addresses on the Internet. It also warns that administrators may read students' electronic mail and computer files. Elsewhere, Internet policies are even more restrictive. In Neptune, N.J., students may not send chain letters or use the Internet for political lobbying. And in North Providence, R.I., students must promise not to meet with anyone they talk to on line or visit Web sites that contain ''racial, ethnic or minority disparagement'' or ''advocation of violence.'' But experts say that many school officials, still naive about the Internet, have not thought seriously about appropriate-use policies, as they are commonly known. And they complain that wiring projects like Net Day -- which is planning to send volunteers into thousands of additional schools to lay cable on Saturday -- give schools the technology without teaching them how to use it. ''It does provide some initial wiring solutions,'' said Lynn Reuss, who oversees technology programs for the New York State Department of Education. ''But what's missing is sound instructional training to tell them why, where and what for.'' Although most school officials say that Internet policies are crucial, they have mixed feelings about filtering software that limits student access. Many, like Superintendent Timothy Nogueira of the Hazlet, N.J., school system, say they could not function without it. ''It saves us a great deal of trouble,'' said Mr. Nogueira, whose district pays an Internet service provider to block out chat rooms and thousands of Web sites. But others say that no amount of monitoring can block out every objectionable site, and that besides, students should know such sites exist. ''We don't want to shield kids from everything in the world,'' said Kieran O'Connor, the systems consultant for the Cortland, N.Y., school district ''The idea is to teach them what is appropriate rather than try to filter everything out.'' Some educators say that filtering software is problematic because it often blocks potentially informative sites. Censoring sites that contain the word | Internet Access Puts Burden of Control on Schools |
922356_0 | THIS WEEK | Bloodsucker |
926236_0 | To the Editor: Elizardo Sanchez Santacruz (Op-Ed, April 22) has put forward several practical proposals to accelerate a peaceful transition in Cuba to a democratic and open society, including lifting restrictions on travel to Cuba by Americans. But what about the reverse? In October 1995 President Clinton announced changes in the administration of the embargo that would allow Cuban academics and scientists to visit the United States for educational exchanges. But this has not happened. As an example, just last month five Cuban scientists -- all professors of quantum chemistry from the University of Havana, who were invited to attend a United States-Latin American workshop in quantum chemistry at the University of Florida and other symposiums at Sanibel Island, Clark Atlanta University and Cornell -- were denied visas by our State Department. In the past, our country has adhered to the United Nations-sponsored international Council of Scientific Union charter, which supports free circulation of scientists. We call upon the State Department to resume its policy of granting visas to qualified scientists invited to bona fide conferences and scientific exchanges. JOSEPH L. BIRMAN JOEL LEBOWITZ New York, April 23, 1997 The writers are with, respectively, the New York Academy of Sciences and the Committee of Concerned Scientists. | Cuban Scientists Are Still Barred From U.S. |
926324_3 | for the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in New York. ''If you have a child at risk, you have an obligation to do something. But I believe many children are removed because we have not taken the time to determine what the parents need.'' Providing families with intensive services, including therapy and drug-abuse treatment, is also much cheaper than putting a child into foster care, Ms. Notkin said. Adoption is not an easy answer, either. Children who have suffered abuse and neglect often need professional help, wherever they live, and many potential adoptive parents are reluctant to take them on. All the hopes, scars and frustrations of children from abusive homes and the parents who take them in are on display in Vickie and Tim Ladd's five-bedroom brick ranch house, with a pool, a trampoline, a swing set and a basketball hoop in a tranquil development just south of Richmond. As their three foster children recounted their earliest memories, it was easy to see why they no longer resided with their biological parents. ''There was a lot of drinking,'' said Dawn, 17. ''My stepfather would attack me so I'd run away.'' Her foster brother, Lonnie, 14, sweaty after jumping on the backyard trampoline, said that when he was 8 and 9, he would slip out into the night to look for his mother in bars. In a heart-shaped frame in her room, Stephanie, 13, wiry and a little fidgety, has a picture of her mother, who went to jail briefly for beating her. ''She'd bring up her fist and hit me on the side of the head,'' she said, mimicking the whack. ''I have A.D.H.D,'' she said. ''That's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I take medicine. It calms me down.'' Since coming to the Ladds, these children are looking ahead to more conventional lives. Calm, direct and settled after three years here, Dawn has recaptured two lost years of school, is on the honor roll and starts community college in the fall. ''I draw,'' Lonnie said. ''I'm going to be a comic artist.'' Stephanie said no child of hers would need foster care. ''After I get married,'' she said, ''I want one kid. Just one. I want a girl, but whatever God gives me, I'll deal with it. I'm going to be strict but not too strict. She's going to have a curfew.'' The prospects are not so clear for two children | Priority on Safety Is Keeping More Children in Foster Care |
924783_3 | very passionate about being right,'' he said. The Debate Did Early Americans Live in the Tropics? The early settlement of the Americas is one of the most intractable mysteries of archeology. Despite some arguable evidence for human occupation as early as 30,000 years ago, scholars can agree only that hunters were living in western North America about 11,500 years ago. They were Asians who almost certainly crossed from Siberia to Alaska at the Bering Straits, when the continents were joined by a land bridge near the end of the last Ice Age. The earliest undisputed evidence of their presence comes from fluted spear points first discovered near Clovis, N.M., and later found at many mastodon kill sites throughout the West. As archeologists came to believe, to the point of dogma, these Paleoindians of the Clovis culture moved rapidly into South America, settling mainly in the temperate highlands where they left their distinctive stone points, while giving a wide berth to tropical lowlands as environmentally unfit for substantial occupation. It seemed to make sense. The first European explorers found dazzling civilizations in the highlands of Mexico and Peru and only simple hunter-gatherers in the rain forests of Amazonia. The few reports by explorers of seeing ruins of large settlements near the mouth of the Amazon were forgotten or discounted; they must have been derivative cultures, imported from the more advanced Andes and abandoned as lost causes. The resolute champion of this concept of a limited role for Amazonia in American prehistory is Dr. Betty J. Meggers, an influential archeologist at the Smithsonian Institution. With her late husband, Dr. Clifford Evans, she found no evidence that complex cultures started in the Amazon basin. The soil was infertile, the climate too harsh and resources scarce. And nothing Dr. Roosevelt has uncovered over the years has changed her mind. ''Our data from the Amazon,'' Dr. Meggers said, ''show that everything Roosevelt is finding is the result of multiple reoccupations over centuries by hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators, like what we see today among surviving groups there, and not by indigenous complex societies.'' Dr. Roosevelt first attacked traditional thinking using one of Dr. Meggers's own sites. On the island of Marajo in the mouth of the Amazon, Dr. Meggers excavated mounds revealing the existence of a large settlement in the first millennium A.D. She judged this a solitary complex society and probably an import from the | Sharp and To the Point In Amazonia |
922003_4 | expansion. The shortages that bring on inflation involve shortages of factory and office space, machinery, equipment and labor. But starting in 1994, productive capacity has been growing rapidly, matching a relatively brief spurt in the mid 1980's, and exceeding any other period since the mid-1960's. High levels of investment have contributed to this growth. And another Government measure, showing how much of the expanded capacity is now being used, is below the level that is typical so far into an expansion. The labor supply -- the total number of people at work or seeking work -- has also expanded more than expected. It typically grows by little more than 1 percent a year, but recently the labor supply has been growing at a 2 percent annual rate. The jump reflects several factors: immigration, welfare recipients moving more quickly to work, more older men working and a gain once again, after a period of no growth, in the percentage of working-age women seeking jobs. ''Family income is growing very slowly,'' said Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University, ''and that is drawing more people into work.'' Profits also play a role. By most measures, they have reached their highest levels since the 1960's. That might not last, but right now corporations have flexibility, economists say, to pay for some wage increases out of these higher profits. ''There is definitely wiggle room,'' said Robert D. Reischauer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. ''Corporations have not passed on all their savings in health care costs. Some has gone to profits, and this can be shifted to wages if necessary.'' And it might be. Worldwide, many industries can produce more than they can sell, and they sacrifice price increases in the struggle for market share. What's more, the prices of various commodities -- oil, chemicals, metals, paper -- have been falling lately after sharp gains the previous couple of years. A stronger dollar also makes imports relatively less expensive. ''Steel is coming into the United States from countries you never heard of,'' said David Wyss, chief economist at DRI/McGraw-Hill, a data gathering operation. ''Almost every industry where capacity is a little tight, you can turn to imports for relief.'' But it is not just foreign competition that helps hold down prices. When Rubbermaid tried to charge Wal-Mart more for plastic garbage cans, the nation's biggest retailer simply shifted to another, less expensive supplier. | Wages May Be Heading Up, But Prices Hold Their Own |
921937_1 | violence over the last week in this British province has raised fears of more to come in the days before the May 1 elections. The recent violence has included the burning of three Catholic churches by Protestant thugs, arson attacks by Catholic gangs on Protestant Orange Order meeting halls, and sniper attacks on two army security posts by gunners also believed to be I.R.A. operatives. Neither the I.R.A. nor Protestant paramilitary groups have acknowledged responsibility for those recent attacks. But officials and analysts said the nature of the attacks left no doubt as to who was responsible. Until this week, the I.R.A. had concentrated its activities on the British mainland. A further threat to stability in the province came from the breakdown of negotiations on Wednesday between Catholics and Protestants on the issue of the Protestant patriotic parades that have led to widespread violence in recent years. The parades, which go on all summer and peak in mid-July, celebrate the anniversary of the Protestant victory over Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Many Catholic communities resent the Protestant parades passing through their areas. Today, Brendan McAllister, head of the Mediation Network, an independent mediation organization, said the breakdown in talks meant that Northern Ireland was heading for a civil war comparable to that in Bosnia. The I.R.A. motive, experts say, is to emphasize to a newly elected British Government that it is a force that must be dealt with if the stalled Northern Ireland peace talks are to make progress when they resume, as scheduled, in June. The shooting today was immediately denounced by leaders of all political parties except Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A. Normally, Sinn Fein says it is against violence, but will not single out any organization for condemnation. Sir Patrick Mayhew, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, said the shooting was ''sickening'' and would further delay Sinn Fein's entry into broad-based peace talks. Prime Minister John Bruton of the Republic of Ireland said the shooting was another reason for Northern voters not to vote for Sinn Fein in British Parliamentary elections. In the election campaign, Sinn Fein is hoping to gain seats in the British Parliament at the expense of the mainstream Catholic Social Democratic Labor Party. Sinn Fein's President, Gerry Adams, is seeking to regain the seat he lost five years ago to Joe Hendron of the Social Democratic Labor Party. | I.R.A. Gunman in Londonderry Wounds Ulster Policewoman |
922110_0 | Sitting in the silly, theatrical splendor of Torre di Pisa, I watch the man across from me take a sip of his martini. He closes his eyes, leans back and slides slowly down in the silky sofa. Soon he is snoozing at his seat. I sympathize completely: a meal at the year-and-a-half-old Torre di Pisa can be exhausting. To begin, there is the aggressive design. David Rockwell has crossed Dali with Disney to make the restaurant a fantasy village with faux arches, a giant clock tower and a collection of floating plates. The chefs perform inside their own little castle, pottery pigeons perched above their heads. It is a stage set, a statement about eating as entertainment, and it is impossible to ignore. The actors on this stage are forced to make a particularly awkward entrance. The door is positioned so that arriving diners bump into people waiting for their coats and those waiting to be seated. There is simply not enough room, which makes the first few minutes confusing and uncomfortable. The hostesses, who seem as perplexed as the rest of us, aren't much help. All the service, in fact, is strange. It is impossible to predict whether you will have the speediest meal of your life or the slowest. One day at lunch, I was served three courses in less than hour. I found the pace exhilarating. But a few nights later it had slowed so much that it took an hour for the first course to arrive. Waiters vary from voluble to silent; some tell you their names and discuss dishes, others barely utter a word. At times the service is attentive, at others it is so frantic the waiters forget to ask if you want dessert and bring the check before you ask. Each meal is a little surprise: you never know what to expect. The food follows the same pattern. I have had wonderful meals at Torre di Pisa; I have had terrible ones, too. The original Torre di Pisa, in Milan, is almost 40 years old and it is still extremely popular with models and journalists. Clearly the Meacci family knows how to please Italians. They obviously want to please their American audience as well, but they don't know how. They seem to think we want enormous portions and lots of sauce, especially on pasta. The homemade tagliatelle is wonderful, the pasta vibrant, chewy, | Restaurants |
926522_3 | making a job offer, it said, the employer may require a medical examination, including a psychiatric examination, if the company requires all newly hired employees in the same job category to have such examinations. But if the employer uses the results to screen out a person because of disability, ''the employer must prove that the exclusionary criteria are job-related and consistent with business necessity,'' to defend against a charge of job bias. Moreover, the agency said, ''an employer must provide a reasonable accommodation to the known physical or mental limitations of a qualified individual with a disability,'' unless doing so would impose ''an undue hardship'' on the operation of the business. Cost is a factor that may be considered in assessing hardship, the agency said. Ms. Mastroianni said the commission had been flooded with questions about the 1990 law, mostly from employers. Here are some examples: *What should an employer do when an employee is not performing well and says he has depression? (The employer, the commission said today, may have to make ''reasonable accommodations,'' like changing the worker's schedule, assigning him to a different job or altering the method of supervision.) *Should an employer check on employees to make sure they are taking medications needed to treat a mental illness? (No.) *Must an employer excuse the conduct of an employee who threatens co-workers because of a mental impairment? (No.) The commission said employees need not use any ''magic words'' to request a change. If an employee asks for time off because he is ''depressed and stressed,'' that is enough to put the employer on notice that the worker is requesting a ''reasonable accommodation,'' the agency said. If the worker's need is not obvious, the employer may ask for documentation from a doctor, to show that the worker has a psychiatric disability requiring time off, the rules say. Michael J. Lotito, a San Francisco lawyer who advises employers on labor law, said: ''We have a long history of accommodating physical impairments of one kind or another. But we have much less experience with mental impairments. If you have cancer or have lost an arm or are blind in one eye, it's pretty clear. But a person with a mental impairment is often in denial. A person who is schizophrenic may not be in a good position to describe the disorder or to describe the accommodations that are needed.'' The Government | EMPLOYERS TOLD TO ACCOMMODATE THE MENTALLY ILL |
926555_0 | On a crowded flight from Chicago to Las Vegas, Nev., last year, Gail Scott, an America West Airlines flight attendant, was punched and pushed to the floor by a female passenger who became irate when told there were no extra sandwiches. While the passenger was sentenced to two years' probation and 200 hours of community service, Ms. Scott, an 11-year worker in the once-friendly skies, still carries psychological scars from the assault. ''It's gotten so you're almost afraid to ask passengers to raise their seat backs, or not smoke in the lavatories, for fear of what might happen,'' Ms. Scott said. What might happen, increasingly, does happen. Airlines report a surge of disruptive behavior in recent months by passengers herded into cramped seats, lubricated with too many drinks and denied the freedom to smoke. They curse or spit on flight attendants, fling food trays and sometimes strike employees. On occasion, they even attack pilots. While such violence is far more dangerous in the air because of the potential for causing crashes, it is even more common on the ground as travelers explode in rage over delayed flights or missing luggage. A passenger who missed a connection at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago two years ago hurled a suitcase at Karen Brennan, a customer service director for United Airlines -- who was eight months pregnant. ''He missed,'' said John J. Brennan, her husband. ''So the only thing she could do, and did do, was bar him from flying on United from O'Hare.'' Mr. Brennan, also a United customer service director, has been cursed and threatened, and more than once has been grabbed by late-arriving passengers demanding that he ''do something'' to bring a departing airplane back to the gate. ''Airline passengers mirror society,'' said Jill Gallagher, the spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants. ''They're less willing to accept problems or delays, and many of them are aggressive, like so many drivers.'' The problem has become so serious that the Air Line Pilots Association has organized a meeting today in Washington -- aptly titled the International Conference on Disruptive Airline Passengers -- to discuss ways of dealing with it. The meeting also reflects a hardening of the industry's position toward unruly passengers. Until recently, with their planes flying half empty much of the time, ''airlines hushed up these incidents,'' said Kathy Lord-Jones, safety coordinator of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, | Airlines Must Grapple With Hostile Passengers |
921378_1 | such student as Somnolent Samantha, that the sleeping young woman was someone he had invented to make a point. Even though Samantha is fictional, she and her inventor are at the heart of an academic debate over how much help, and what academic adjustments, learning-disabled college students are entitled to. Lawyers for Mr. Westling say he is guilty only of daring to voice the politically incorrect view that the field of learning disabilities is still scientifically murky and that universities have the right to set their own academic requirements, even if some disabled students will have trouble fulfilling them. But advocates for the learning-disabled say his dismissive words and his actions -- he has tightened the university's policy on handling requests for accommodations -- amount to illegal discrimination against those with learning disabilities. In a lawsuit, a class action that goes to trial today in Boston, learning-disabled students at Boston University are charging that the university and Mr. Westling have violated Federal laws requiring that educational institutions provide ''reasonable accommodations'' to those with learning disabilities. In the last decade, the number of college students identified as having learning disabilities has grown rapidly. In the annual survey by the American Council on Education last fall, 3.1 percent of full-time college freshmen called themselves learning-disabled, compared with 2.2 percent in 1991, the first year the question was asked. Colleges across the nation are grappling with the question of what they must do to accommodate these students. Learning disabilities are defined as the unexpected failure to learn, despite adequate intelligence, motivation and instruction. Reading disorders, or dyslexia, are the most common. But both clinically and legally, the field of learning disabilities is evolving. New learning disabilities are still being identified, and there are no clear legal standards on what constitutes reasonable accommodation. For many years, the Office of Learning Disabilities Support Services at Boston University had a national reputation for its summer program for learning-disabled students, the tutoring it offered and its policy of helping such students get special assistance, like the aid of a note-taker, extended time on tests or permission to substitute a course to meet a foreign language or math requirement. But in 1995, Mr. Westling, then the provost, became suspicious of the diagnoses some students were declaring, the credentials of some of the experts making the diagnoses and the accommodations the university was being asked to make. After reviewing | Fictitious Learning-Disabled Student Is at Center of Lawsuit Against College |
923217_0 | AT the World Travel and Tourism Council meeting in Washington today and tomorrow, I.B.M. will demonstrate an automated system for speeding passengers through immigration checkpoints at airports. Called Fastgate, the system will undergo testing beginning next month at Bermuda International Airport; by fall it is expected to be in North America, Europe and Asia. Comparing travelers' fingerprints, hand geometry or voice prints, the A.T.M.-like devices are also said to confirm that travelers do not pose a known security threat. ''The minimal level immigration check is higher than what is in place at airports today,'' said Jeff Mortner, I.B.M.'s worldwide solutions manager for Fastgate. And because travelers using Fastgate are expected to clear immigration checkpoints in no more than 15 seconds, on average, police and immigration officers will have more time for other matters. After the test period, travelers will be able to enroll in the Fastgate system through participating airlines or credit card companies. This will require them to provide their names, addresses, dates of birth and passport numbers, as well as to record their fingerprints or voiceprints at a participating airport. Once enrolled, a passenger will be able to insert a card into a biometric reader and answer a few questions on a touch screen. Fastgate will then retrieve the passenger's information from the I.B.M.-managed data base and compare the biometric information to verify identity. The system will then seek confirmation from various Government data bases that there are no security alerts for the traveler. As for any privacy concerns, I.B.M. said it ''employs state-of-the-art security to protect the data base, but travelers should remember that most of this information is already known to the card issuer, and participation is purely voluntary.'' Airline Update Next Tuesday or Wednesday, the 10-millionth passenger will fly the Delta Shuttle, which along with the US Airways Shuttle flies hourly between New York and Washington and New York and Boston. The lucky passenger will receive two free round-trip tickets to any Delta Air Lines destination, as well as hotel accommodations and assorted bagatelles. Millions more passengers have actually flown the shuttle, which was formerly owned and operated by Pan Am. But as Pan Am slid toward bankruptcy, and eventual liquidation, it sold the shuttle to Delta in 1991 and Delta began operating it in September of that year. The 10 million consist only of passengers aboard the shuttle under Delta's ownership. On June 1, | New automated system for speeding travelers through immigration will be tested in Bermuda. |
924354_0 | Last month, Monica McWilliams was struck in the face with a fist-sized chunk of brick hurled from a Protestant crowd outside a Roman Catholic church in the mostly Protestant town of Ballymena, north of Belfast. The Protestants had been harassing the Catholics for several months and Ms. McWilliams, one of two delegates to the Northern Irish peace talks from the new Northern Ireland Women's Coalition party, had joined with other women, Protestant and Catholic, in a silent vigil of support for the churchgoers. Her face may have been bruised, Ms. McWilliams said in a recent interview, but her political skin was toughened by the experience. ''The rocks they had in their heads were a big as the ones they threw,'' she said of the hard-line Protestants. Now the Women's Coalition, founded last year in a challenge to sectarian divisions and traditional male-dominated politics, has announced that it will field three candidates for Northern Ireland seats in the May 1 British Parliamentary election. Ms. McWilliams, 42, a Catholic and a lecturer in government at Ulster University, recalled that since last May, when she and Pearl Sagar, a Protestant social worker, founded the party and were elected to seats at the peace talks, they have been attacked at negotiation sessions by Protestant Unionist delegates. The animosity has been directed not only at their ideas but at them, for violating the custom that men rule politics and women confine themselves to children and kitchen. In this predominantly Protestant province, which has seen decades of conflict between Protestant Unionists favoring continued British rule and Catholic Republicans fighting to end it, the Women's Coalition is an even mix of Catholics and Protestants. And although women make up 52 percent of the population in Northern Ireland, there are none in the province's delegation to the British Parliament, and women hold only 12 percent of local council seats. Two decades ago, two Northern Irish women, Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, gained political prominence and were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their Peace People movement, but the group's influence has faded. Ms. McWilliams says she and Ms. Sagar have been subjected to ''ritual humiliation'' at the peace talks by the men of the Democratic Unionist Party, led by the Rev. Ian Paisley, and his son, Ian Jr. The assertion is supported by the official minutes of the negotiations, which have been suspended until June 3, after the | Ulster Women's Party Tackles Sectarians, and Sexism |
924343_2 | issues like trade and nuclear nonproliferation, law enforcement is where they fail most miserably. Chiming in with maritime officials like Mr. Mukundan, United States and other law enforcement officials routinely express frustration that their Chinese counterparts are so inflexible and secretive about drug and other cross-border crimes that efforts to cooperate rarely achieve anything, with a few minor exceptions in immigrant-smuggling cases. ''We send faxes, we call on the phone, and it's always 'We're not too clear,' '' said an American official who asked Chinese authorities for help on a high-volume heroin-smuggling case last year. ''I assume it's because they don't want anyone in to see the corruption going on. But the truth is, we simply don't know.'' It is as hard to measure piracy accurately because many incidents go unreported, as they did 100 years ago. Yet the International Maritime Bureau recorded 224 incidents of piracy worldwide in 1996, up from 170 in 1995, the majority in or near the South China Sea. Mr. Mukundan said more pirated ships seem to be docking in Chinese ports, though he did not know exactly how many. In Beihai's port, where old wooden fishing vessels unload their catch on the backs of laborers at a muddy shore, the occasional arrival of pirated ships is common knowledge. At a rundown boat yard a few miles down the coast, two workmen repainting old vessels said pirated ships had been brought there for paint jobs in the past, once their cargoes were unloaded and sold. As for the three vessels there now, being repainted in garish colors that covered the original names on bow and stern, the workmen said they did not know where the ships had come from, whether they were pirated or where they were headed next. Not far from the boat yard, out of public view, the Anna Sierra remains beached. The ship's Cypriot owner gave up trying to recover it after sending a ship captain who waited in Beihai nine months for a satisfactory briefing from Chinese officials, and never got it. The owner of the cargo, Metals and Minerals Trading Company of New Delhi, is still pressing its case. But international investigators are perplexed at the stock response from local officials that an investigation is still under way. ''They already let all the pirates go, so what are they investigating?'' asked Capt. Jayant Abhyankar, a maritime bureau investigator who located | Pirates, With Speedboats, Reign in China Sea Port |
924180_0 | Underground Radio Q. For years, my car radio faded as I entered the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, remaining silent for the duration of the trip. Now it plays from one end to the other. What happened? A. Last month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority let Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile, a Nynex subsidiary, install something called a leaky coaxial cable along the entire 9,117-foot length of the tunnel, according to Frank Pascual, a spokesman for M.T.A. Bridges and Tunnels. The cable, about twice as thick as a typical television cable, acts as a continuous, insulated antenna that receives AM, FM, emergency band and two-way radio signals inside the 47-year-old tunnel as well as allowing mobile phone and beeper use. The M.T.A.'s emergency and traffic management abilities are clearly enhanced by the cable, Mr. Pascual said, and Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile is certainly pleased to enable customers to place more telephone calls and not have them cut off by a trip into the tunnel (about 55,000 trips are made through the tunnel every day). The Queens-Midtown Tunnel has also been wired for sound, Mr. Pascual said. The good news is that allows for a few extra minutes of radio listening. That, of course, is also the bad news. Simple Plugs Q. In the Bronx neighborhood flanking the old Isaac L. Rice Stadium in Pelham Bay Park, I noticed with a jolt the names of four streets: Ohm, Watt, Ampere and Radio. What is behind this electrical theme? A. Nothing terribly shocking. Born in 1850, Isaac L. Rice was a man of exceptionally wide-ranging abilities, becoming a chess master, lawyer, musician, publisher, editor, inventor and industrialist after graduating from Columbia Law School in 1870. He amassed a fortune serving as a counsel to railroad and mining companies, was president of the Forum Publishing Companies, and founded four chess clubs -- even devising a chess opening now known as the Rice gambit. (Please don't ask.) Perhaps more significant, Rice was a pioneer in the design and development of the electrical storage batteries used in cars and submarines, and was president of the Electric Storage Battery Company. After his death, Isaac L. Rice Stadium, known since 1989 as Aileen B. Ryan Recreation Field and used for Parks Department events, was designed (by Herts & Tallant) and built in his honor in 1916 with a $1 million gift from his widow, Julia Rice. In their gratitude, Bronx officials in | F.Y.I. |
922261_0 | If government officials and environmental groups remain opposed, the Du Pont Company ''will not go forward'' with plans to mine titanium just outside the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Georgia, a company official said today. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announced his unequivocal opposition to the plan on April 3, saying, ''It is apparent that this refuge and this mining project are not compatible.'' Ellen J. Kullman, vice president and general manager of Du Pont White Pigment and Mineral Products, said today that the company would suspend its efforts to gather data to support future permit applications. Instead, Ms. Kullman said, the company will form a panel to study the project. But Mr. Babbitt and environmentalists said it would be virtually impossible to satisfy them that the swamp would not be harmed. National News Briefs | Du Pont Delays Its Plans To Mine Near a Refuge |
922231_1 | careful focus on ritual observance (he called it behaviorism), a devotion to the study of texts (intellectualism) and the pursuit of a personal relationship with God (spiritualism). ''I think for the first time in about a century,'' he said, ''the seminary has lots of spiritualists.'' The seminary, which is affiliated with Judaism's Conservative movement, has long specialized in providing a nurturing ground for students who would approach religion primarily from an intellectual standpoint. That there has been a shift, producing a student body more diverse in its concerns, reflects a generational change, said Ismar Schorsch, the seminary's chancellor. In the 1960's and 1970's, Dr. Schorsch said, the seminary's students tended to focus on social issues and on questions of responsibility to the Jewish community and to the larger society. ''The climate today is much more in quest of a rich inner life,'' he said. Others have taken note. The Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper, recently published an article titled ''Students Swoon for Spirituality,'' citing the lecture series and two regular discussion sessions for students, one called ''What Do You Believe?'' and the other ''God Talk.'' Dr. Schorsch said the groups were a sign of the times. ''I cannot imagine a series of lunches on 'God talk' at this institution 25 years ago,'' he said. ''I think spirituality existed here 20 to 25 years ago, but it was expressed through and subsumed under grappling with classic Jewish texts.'' These days, he said, students are more willing to express their religious views in terms of their personal feeling. ''And that is not without its problems,'' Dr. Schorsch said. ''It's much more subjective. It's much less subtle, and it is much more centered on the individual.'' Professor Gillman, in his lecture, also expressed reservations about the rising interest in spirituality, saying it could be anti-intellectual and narcissistic. But spirituality has its defenders at the seminary, among them Rabbi David Wolpe, who is a special assistant to Chancellor Schorsch. Rabbi Wolpe spoke on Thursday night in response to Professor Gillman's lecture, saying that at Judaism's core lies ''the idea of an ineffable, intangible, mysterious God.'' God, he added, asks not just goodness from people, but holiness as well, a sense of being linked to God. As an example, he said that if a person, while lighting candles at dusk on the Sabbath, felt something stirring, ''then that is your soul.'' In an interview, Rabbi | Seminarians Shift Focus From Intellect to Soul |
923676_0 | A study of the brains of elderly drivers killed in automobile accidents in Sweden and Finland has found that an unusually high percentage, as many as half, showed signs of early Alzheimer's disease, researchers said today. But the condition had not been diagnosed before their deaths, which led the scientists to suggest that even in its preliminary stages, Alzheimer's can cause enough mental impairment to make driving dangerous. Finding such a high incidence of Alzheimer's disease in crash victims over the age of 65 surprised the researchers, they said. In Sweden's general population over 65, they said, only 5 percent have the disease. In the United States, from 5 to 10 percent of people older than 65 and nearly half of those older than 85 are estimated to have the disease. The Swedish researchers reported their findings in today's issue of The Lancet, a British medical journal. They appear to raise the possibility both that many more accidents than thought are caused by Alzheimer's and that the incidence of Alzheimer's in the population is higher than thought. Hazards created by drivers with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia have become a focus of increasing concern and research in the United States, as the share of the elderly in the population increases. There were 13 million drivers older than 70 in this country in 1995, and the number is expected to rise to 30 million by 2020. ''It's an area of considerable concern,'' said Dr. Barry Gordon, a neurologist and director of the memory clinic at Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved in the study. ''In many areas, if you don't drive you're effectively trapped. But individual needs must be balanced against societal needs.'' The Swedish researchers examined the brains of 98 drivers, 65 to 90 years old, who were killed in traffic accidents in Sweden and Finland. They paid special attention to two regions of the cerebral cortex involved in decision-making, judgment and visual and spatial ability. In 33 percent of the accident victims, they found brain lesions characteristic of Alzheimer's disease, and in 20 percent, they found lesions that suggested it, perhaps reflecting an earlier stage of the disease. The accident victims also had an unusually high incidence of a gene that has been associated with an increased risk of late-onset Alzheimer's disease. About half the accidents in the study involved only the drivers' vehicle, but in | Nordic Study Links Dementia To Drivers in Fatal Crashes |
919645_6 | in rocks, sand and semiconductors. Over eons, the molecules coat the silicon grains with icy mantles. Dense clouds of such materials condense in places to form new stars that irradiate nearby grains with bursts of ultraviolet light, transforming the simple molecules into more complex ones like formaldehyde (H2 CO) and methyl alcohol (CH3 OH). In theory, such complex interstellar dusts then become the raw material for new generations of stars, perhaps accompanied by planets as well as trillions of icy comets. Astronomers on Earth observe comets rushing through the inner solar system only fleetingly. In contrast, the interstellar wilds are always visible. Despite the difficulty, astronomers, aided by recent advances in telescopes and instrumentation, have begun to learn some of the chemical secrets of the icy visitors. The first glimmers came in 1985 and 1986 with Halley's comet, which yielded signs of water, carbon dioxide and formaldehyde (used on Earth as a disinfectant and preservative). In 1989, another comet showed evidence of methyl alcohol (used as antifreeze), while one in 1990 gave signs of hydrogen sulfide (the poison that smells like rotten eggs). The big advance came last year with Comet Hyakutake, which was extremely bright and easy to analyze. Its signals gave evidence of many different molecules akin to those of the interstellar wastes. Now astronomers studying Hale-Bopp, discovered on July 22, 1995, have topped even that. The findings are significant both for the sheer number of molecules and, as important, for a detailed description of when the chemicals evaporated from the giant ice ball as it raced inward from the deep freeze toward the Sun. In Science, a 12-member team headed by Dr. Nicolas Biver at the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, in Meudon, France, describes nine chemicals sighted by radiotelescopes: Carbon monoxide (CO) in September 1995, methyl alcohol in March 1996, hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in April 1996, hydroxyl radical (OH) in April 1996, hydrogen sulfide (H2 S) in May 1996, formaldehyde in June 1996, carbon monosulfide (CS) in June 1996, methyl cyanide (CH3 CN) in August 1996 and hydrogen isocyanide (HNC) in November 1996. ''It's a landmark,'' Dr. Cruikshank said of the list. ''It shows when and how these molecules turn on, and shows the evaporation sequences. They're also found in space. This is the link that really clinches the connection to the interstellar medium and proves that this material is essentially unaltered.'' Put differently, it shows that comets | The Comet's Gift: Hints of How Earth Came to Life |
919734_1 | to health and the environment than does gene splicing, promises fewer benefits and raises ethical issues no more difficult than those grappled with for the past quarter-century. It is salutary to recall the outcry that greeted the advent of gene splicing in the early 1970's. The biggest concern then does not even arise in the cloning debate, namely the fear that reckless scientists might create novel pathogens that would devastate the world's population, or new plants that would grow out of control and bury the herbal competition. That concern was soon alleviated, thanks to astonishing self-control by a scientific community eager to stay one jump ahead of the Luddites and regulators. Guidelines were drawn up that stipulated high-level containment for the most dangerous experiments and approval by institutional and government authorities before experiments could be conducted. The guidelines applied to all scientists receiving Federal funds, and were followed voluntarily by others. Once it became clear that no catastrophe was on the way, the guidelines were relaxed and the whole field fell under routine supervision by regulatory agencies. True, some critics still complain that genetic engineering is booming ahead without adequate public discussion or vigorous oversight. But now the more frequent complaint is that progress is too slow, the benefits long in coming. The genetically engineered tomatoes are hard and flavorless, the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone to boost milk production is meeting resistance, and most biotech companies have yet to show a profit. Fears that gene splicing might be misapplied to humans have also proved unfounded. Gene therapy to cure disease has progressed much slower than hoped and has thus far been applied to cases almost everyone would find ethical -- replacing a defective gene with a good one in an effort to cure an inherited disease, for example. A consensus has developed, reinforced by government guidelines, that gene therapy will be tried only on somatic cells that affect an individual patient, not on the reproductive, or germ, cells that will affect future generations. So far as is known, no one is trying germ line experiments and no one is trying to produce a more perfect human being in a new wave of eugenics. Now the cloning breakthrough is upon us. Scientists have finally cloned an adult animal, a big step beyond the past cloning of embryos and fetuses. This is a striking technical achievement, for it shows that mature | Cloning as an Anticlimax |
920908_0 | THEY may not carry sabers and chant ''Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,'' but pirates still roam some of the world's waters. Nitin Vadukul, a photographer, and Donovan Webster, a journalist, spent time in the South China Sea in 1994 following a band of Filipino pirates who allowed photographs as long as they were masked. The resultant exhibition opens at the South Street Seaport Museum on Friday. The exhibition is a companion to one that deals with the history of piracy -- real and in literature -- from the Spanish Main to the present. Watercolor paintings, prints, maps, weapons, coins and other artifacts will be on display. ''Blood Upon the Waters: Contemporary Piracy in the South China Sea''; South Street Seaport Museum, 209 Water Street, near Fulton Street, Friday through July 15. ''Under the Black Flag: Life Among the Pirates,'' A. A. Low Building, 171 John Street, at South Street, through Aug. 15. Admission $6 for adults, $5 for people 65 or over, $4 for students, $3 for children under 12. 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. daily. (212) 748-8600. PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: LOWER MANHATTAN | Off the High Seas, A Look at Piracy |
921018_2 | the effects of the rupture so lingered that the churches did not reunite until 1983. Some opponents of the Presbyterians' Amendment B, which bars ordination of practicing homosexuals, have expressed satisfaction in warning that it could force open questions that congregants would consider long closed. Although the amendment is directed against sexual activity outside marriage, it concludes by stating: ''Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained.'' The potential problem is that the church's confessional statements, written over hundreds of years, call many things sin, including usury, gluttony and women performing baptisms. Were the injunction against usury to be enforced, Amendment B's opponents say, the denomination might have to bar bankers from serving as church elders. In the 1970's, some Protestants found themselves caught up in a debate over whether a divorce should disqualify a person from being a clergy member. Those who held that it should could muster Scriptural references to support their argument. In the Gospel of Matthew (19:9), for example, Jesus says that ''whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.'' But as the nation's divorce rate rose, and its effects were felt inside churches, some denominations softened their stands. In 1973, for example, the Episcopal Church changed its canons governing divorce and remarriage in the church; prior to that, in some dioceses, a priest whose marriage failed was expected to resign. James Hudnut-Beulmer, academic dean and associate professor of religion and culture at Columbia Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian institution in Decatur, Ga., said the new standards on divorced clergy members followed from the experience of church authorities. ''They knew so many good people who nevertheless had broken marriages,'' he said. ''Through that compassion, some allowance began to be made for the divorced persons.'' Change or Contract All but the most separatist religious organizations must interact with the surrounding culture, critiquing and challenging it, and also finding ways to adapt. Religious authorities may wind up in the vanguard of change or at its rear. How one responds to the larger culture from a religious standpoint depends on what one sees religion's role in society to be. Rabbi Daniel H. Freelander, who as director of programs for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations oversees educational work and other activities for Reform synagogues, boiled it down to two opposing questions: ''To | Divining the Sins of the Sinner |
920767_0 | NEW YORK, the great vertical city, must get back to thinking horizontally. There are other boroughs out there besides Manhattan -- four big ones -- and the city cannot afford to regard them as depositories for superstores, landfills, juvenile detention centers and such. Nor will the city happily survive the great sucking force that would, for instance, leave Yankee Stadium hanging on the edge of Manhattan. In Paris and in Barcelona, to cite two prominent examples, planners understand that new buildings can play a critical role in stretching the urban horizon beyond the dense central core. In New York, urban stretching has historically been the task of transportation -- bridges, tunnels, subways -- monumental works in their own fashion. Staten Island is now embarking on a project in which infrastructure and architecture are imaginatively joined. As designed by Peter Eisenman, the project will expand the site of the existing St. George Ferry Terminal and create a new home for the Staten Island Institute of Art and Sciences. The $100 million plan is to be financed by government and private money, with construction to begin in 1998. Combining ferry operations with a museum, this is the most innovative civic project to go forward in New York in more than a generation. The focus is on relationships: between transportation and destination, movement and repose, energy and place. The building is also the most buoyant Eisenman has yet designed. Its most spectacular feature is a large, translucent roof of faceted, whirling contour. Viewed from the water, the roof recalls the weatherman's pinwheel sign for a hurricane. Formally, it recalls the sinuous metal roof of the convention center Eisenman designed for Columbus, Ohio, a serpentine construction that brings to mind the flow of goods and information over highways and fiber-optic cables. Though Eisenman's buildings may look expressionistic, their plan is usually grounded in an ''objective'' method. To calculate the roof design for the ferry project, he used a computer program that generates laminar flows, a technique typically used in the design of planes, ships and cars, to register the disturbance of air or water by an obstruction. In this case the site was treated as the obstruction to the flow of ferries and commuter buses. Essentially, it locates a scale of order within turbulent chaos. The existing terminal building will be renovated, its exterior clad in Kevlar, the translucent steel material from which the | Making a Rush-Hour Battleground High Art |
920690_5 | his 76-page essay is ideally suited to this new edition and offers an additional pleasure. As befits the work of an older writer looking back on himself, the introduction is better written; it doesn't suffer from the occasionally confounding and polemical utterances of the original -- for within George Trow's wonderful essay are some Nietzschean one-liners that might make more sense if they were translated into German. (And this from the man who, in his lucid introduction, asks: ''If there were more people on the face of the earth who understood Nietzsche in 1957 than there had been in 1890, what did that mean in the face of television -- or rock-and-roll?'') The original essay also suffers from a few pronouncements as strenuous as this one: ''The lie is in this -- that the teen-age alcoholic suffers from a problem in the foreground, a problem within a context, liable to solution within the frame of the context, subject to powers of arrangement near to the hand of the organizing power of the context. The reality is this -- that the problem is the only context available to the people in the problem.'' Did you get that? How many times did you have to read that before you got that? I still haven't quite got that, but I would be the first to admit that George Trow is smarter that I am; he always was. More than his words, it is his face I remember from Exeter. As I was a slow and struggling student, I used to feel that there was something arrogant or smug in George's smile; I occasionally felt that George Trow was smirking at me. Now I realize that he was simply more alert and more aware than I was. What I mistook for smirking was instead something prescient in his smile; it was as if the unfathomable powers of precognition were already alive within him. Thus I am chilled again to read that irrefutable first sentence of ''Within the Context of No Context,'' which is even a little more chilling today than it was then. ''Wonder was the grace of the country.'' (Emphasis on ''was.'') This elegant little book is essential reading for anyone interested in the demise, the terminal silliness, of our culture. John Irving's most recent novel is ''A Son of the Circus.'' He is now completing his ninth, ''A Widow for One Year.'' | Is There Any There Here? |
920728_5 | might have been, but satisfying with a dipping sauce of aioli enlivened with ancho peppers. The array of main courses is daunting. Seafood is certainly a high point as judged by the beautifully sauteed yellowtail snapper in citrus butter with asparagus spears and wonderfully chunky mashed potatoes. Also excellent are the grilled ''diver-harvested' scallops perched on fluffy mashed sweet potatoes, fresh corn and a lemon-vinaigrette holding chunks of salty pancetta -- quite a mouthful, but it works. One creation that sank under its own weight was a ravioli filled with a mass of tiny shrimp and blue crab along with portobellos, leeks, tomatoes, mustard cream and balsamic vinegar. Among many delectable dishes was the unremittingly rich loin lamb chops in a lustrous reduction of lamb shank ragout, wild mushrooms and red wine. Servers at Norman's have a challenge keeping up with the chef's fancy footwork, but they try hard. On Saturday night service was slow and scattered. And a restaurant of this caliber should know better than to print its wine list in eye-straining small agate type. The international selections are mostly big-name standards with prices starting in the mid-$20 range and going up. Desserts are as polymorphic as the rest of the menu. Try the vertical strudel filled with dates paired with ginger ice cream and a thyme-honey sauce; the banana-rum flan with caramelized bananas and a crunchy spiced cookie; and the sharp-sweet cinnamon poached Granny Smith apple with gianduja (a chocolate hazelnut flavoring) ice cream. Chef Allen's That a kid from Brooklyn, trained at a local technical college and apprenticed at the classically oriented Le Cirque in Manhattan would find his way to Florida and become a pioneer of Caribbean-American cuisine might seem peculiar -- but Allen Susser believes that his unconventional road has been an asset. ''If you know the basics of French cuisine then you can build on it or modify it,'' said the genial, soft-spoken chef while making the rounds recently in his innovative restaurant, Chef Allen's, in Aventura (formerly North Miami Beach). Mr. Susser, who succeeds as much as or more than most, infuses his food with the sunny flavors of mango, papaya, starfruit, mamey (a sweet, football-shaped fruit with a granular texture), coconut, and tangerines. Other products that are common on his menu include wahoo and cobia (two local fish), mussels and shrimp, pompano, and conch. While the notion of combining fruit with | Exotic Blends From Miami Chefs |
925682_2 | are living longer,'' said Dr. Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, lead nutritionist for the study. ''Some women will spend half their lives after menopause.'' Dr. Smoller and Dr. Mossavar-Rahmani said the study is the only clinical trial to assess the effects of hormones on heart disease and bone loss as well as those of diet on memory. Other studies have been less controlled or what medical researchers call observational. Dr. Smoller said: ''In observational trials, for example, you look at a group of women on hormones and look at some not taking hormones, then you compare them. The problem is those taking hormones may have different characteristics, like higher educational or income levels. In clinical trials, a computer randomly assigns women to one group or the other so the inequities are equalized.'' The motivation for joining the Women's Health Initiative is varied. Some women seek the immediate free health attention provided by screening tests like pap tests and cervical exams. ''After taking care of my husband night and day before he died of brain cancer in October, I wanted to do something for my own health,'' said Muriel Woodson of Elmsford, a participant in the hormone-therapy group. Kathryn Vollmer, a medical technologist from Scarsdale who attends low-fat diet sessions for the study at Einstein College, said: ''I don't have many of the risk factors for disease. But what I think is important is what can be learned about women totally.'' Many participants worry about the lack of information about women's health and hope the study will change that. ''I was intrigued by the idea of a large study of older women and the incidence of heart disease and cancer. In the past, the studies were all of men,'' said Phyllis Rodriguez, a 54-year-old artist from White Plains. She is part of the low-fat diet group here and has found keeping a food diary revealing. ''I thought I basically ate well,'' she said. ''But I'm learning that my little transgressions -- like snacking on cheese -- are more significant than I thought.'' Ms. Rodriguez said the sessions were fun. Recently, while emphasizing the importance of five servings of fruits and vegetables and six servings of grain daily, Dr. Mossavar-Rahmani offered tastings of low-fat lasagna and brownies. ''One of the benefits is that the women like to get together and talk,'' Dr. Smoller said. ''They want a sense of community. Separation and isolation are problems | Study Focuses on the Health of Older Women |
925855_7 | colors, and even airsickness bags in the seat-back pockets. Passengers who fill out evaluation cards are promised a luggage tag embossed with their name and address, with the U.P.S. logo on the back. Other, subtler traits are still pure U.P.S. Just as its trucks are stripped of exterior logos that say Mack or Ford or Chevrolet, the planes' exteriors do not say Boeing or McDonnell Douglas. They are simply U.P.S. The company has always done it that way, initially considering its trucks as its advertising. Passengers may not have guessed it, but U.P.S. hates any plane to be late. Mechanics found a problem with the batteries that would run the emergency exit lights on No. 946 if the main electrical system failed, and as the 64 passengers waited in the terminal, the captain, Leon Johnson, decided that he should personally tell them why. So at 10:30 on this Friday morning, an hour after the scheduled takeoff, Captain Johnson -- his chocolate-brown uniform enhanced with a bit of gold braid on the sleeves -- picked up the microphone in the airport boarding lounge to explain the delay. While such announcements are usually curt, and made by a gate agent, the captain went into lengthy detail about what UPS Airlines was doing to fix the problem, including asking the F.A.A. for one-time permission to fly without the system, and looking for replacement parts that could be flown in by Lear jet. (Two company executives, showcasing the flight, looked unhappier about the delay than the passengers did. And another 39 passengers were waiting for the flight in Cincinnati, its intermediate stop.) The Lear jet solution, which the company eventually chose, almost certainly wiped out any profit from the flight, but U.P.S. says it is prepared to let the experiment run for months before making judgments. THE company's newer, bigger planes fly day and night, as part of its two-day air system, but it has a special reason for wanting to keep aloft as many of its 727's as it can. A 30-year-old plane is not usually a high-cost asset, but U.P.S. has invested heavily. It put new Rolls-Royce engines on 51 of them, at a total cost of $510 million, to cut noise and be a better neighbor in the airports that it calls on every night. (It is the first big airline to meet the noise standards that take effect in December.) | Why U.P.S. Is Flying A New Package Deal |
925662_1 | are needed to service cellular phone users. Cellular transmission is based on line-of-sight technology. Each phone call is sent to a transmitter, which in turn transfers it to a processing computer called a switch, then to an exchange or interexchange carrier, and finally to the receiving phone. If there is a break along the way, the call cannot be completed. Areas where a cellular phone will not function are called ''dead spots,'' and it is the industry's goal to eliminate them -- by erecting more antennas. ''Many people sign up for cellular service to have a phone available in case of emergencies,'' said Howard Waterman, a Bell-Nynex spokesman. ''It's about safety and security. God forbid the car breaks down, you want that call to go through. ''If I'm having a heart attack, I want the ambulance to be able to shoot my vital information to the hospital in seconds.'' However, when his company came before the East Hampton Town Planning Board to ask permission to erect a transmission tower, it was met with a rash of concerns. ''During the review they mentioned they had plans for more towers,'' recalled Marguerite Wolffsohn, the assistant planning director. ''We said whoa! Why don't you tell us about all of them? It was misleading. We want to see a master plan. The problem, as they get more and more customers, they use up all the room on their frequencies, so they need even more towers.'' Jane O'Donaghue, a vice president of corporate communications for A T & T Wireless, said her company was aware that many communities find transmission towers esthetically offensive. Like Bell-Nynex, A T & T tries to locate new antennas on existing structures. ''About 85 percent of ours are mounted on water tanks, billboards, buildings, cablevision towers,'' Ms. O'Donaghue said. ''We understand people want to protect the quality and the environment. But there are cases, given the topography, where you have to put something up.'' In Oyster Bay, both companies are involved in litigation with the town, which denied each permission to erect an antenna, though in the case of A T & T an existing structure was to be used. ''We struggled with those applications for a long time,'' said Anthony Sabino, a deputy town attorney. ''In the end the Town Board felt we just don't know enough about what goes on up there. The board denied it on esthetic | Of Towering Concern: The Cellulars' Antennas |
925696_2 | and then receive reimbursement of up to 59.5 percent from the state. ''There are people who think that if the school districts have to pay for preschool special education, they wouldn't classify as many children,'' said Dr. Donald R. Kusel, Superintendent of the public schools of the Tarrytowns. ''Our committees for preschool special education are very, very responsible, and that's a fallacious assumption.'' After last year's legislative directive, preschool special education providers are required to submit a business plan explaining how they will shift 25 percent of the children from a full-day program to a less segregated classroom within the next two years. Under Federal mandates for special education, students are supposed to be placed in the least restrictive setting possible. This means that, whenever possible, students would be placed in regular classrooms and receive the appropriate special education services. ''The intent is to have providers serve a greater number of children in more integrated settings,'' said Michael Plotzker, coordinator for preschool special education at the State Department of Education. ''We're trying to move the system so that fewer children would be in segregated settings and more children would be in typical settings like day care, Head Start or at home receiving services. This is not a cut. We're asking providers to redirect their services. New York has one of the most segregated preschool programs in the country. We feel we can serve more children in less costly and more integrated settings.'' Still, for providers of preschool special education programs, complying with the new state requirements while trying to meet the needs of the children has proved to be a delicate balancing act. ''It makes it difficult for programs to make ends meet,'' said JoAnn Doherty, special education coordinator for the Alcott School. ''When you have a 25 percent reduction in center-based enrollment, our fixed costs haven't changed. When you serve fewer children, it costs more to service each child.'' Others who work with special education children are concerned about how changes from the state are affecting their assessments and evaluations. ''It's a negative focus,'' said Helen Rubel, a clinical social worker at the Alcott School in Ardsley. ''For example, the regulation for getting summer services has changed to significant regression. Instead of focusing on the positive, we have to look at a child's loss of skills and prove regression. You're not looking at progress. It's a problem.'' The state | Preschoolers Face Program Losses |
925991_4 | he said. And, he added, ''once you go that route, there's absolutely no limit.'' ''Nobody wants to stand around and point a finger at this woman and say, 'You're immoral,' '' Dr. Kass said. ''But generalize the practice and ask yourself, What does it really mean that we don't accept the life cycle or the life course? That's one of the big problems of the contemporary scene. You've got all kinds of people who make a living and support themselves but who psychologically are not grown up. We have a culture of functional immaturity.'' And, he said, as the example of the 63-year-old woman illustrates, ''there really is no cultural script that guides anyone.'' But maybe such scripts are period pieces. R. Alta Charo, a law professor and ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said the moral question of having mothers who had passed menopause was last discussed about two years ago when an Italian doctor announced a similar feat, with a woman who was just slightly younger than the one at the University of Southern California. The ''argument from nature,'' Ms. Charo said, did not persuade her. That argument, she said, assumes that ''if women's bodies aren't capable of making babies after menopause, then there's something inherently wrong with doing something that nature doesn't permit.'' But, she said, we do not hesitate in medicine to do all sorts of unnatural things to heal the sick or to delay death. ''Over and over again, we see very different reasons to circumvent what is biologically programmed,'' she said. Dr. Susan Sherwin, a professor of philosophy and women's studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, said she was concerned by the ''worrisome social attitudes'' that she saw in the anxiety about elderly women giving birth. ''I do think there is a tendency for society to want to write off postmenopausal women,'' she said. ''Women are primarily valued as a class for sexual and reproductive purposes.'' She added that when, by allowing postmenopausal women to give birth, ''we want to move them back into these categories, we feel there is something odd.'' But, Dr. Sherwin said, ''what is it that we are horrified about?'' ''Is it that she may not live long enough to see her child grow up?'' she asked. ''If so, we should be equally horrified by elderly men'' who father children. ''It seems to me that symmetry should apply.'' | Childbirth at 63 Says What About Life? |
925635_5 | the manager of the Conservatory, who masterminded the plant reinstallation, points out the Euterpe oleracea that has crossed the Pacific by barge from Hawaii to take its place here among the slender columns and umbrella canopies of at least 100 species of sister palms and cycads. A pond has been added, and along with rivulets, waterfalls and pools in other houses, enhances the quality of sound and reflected light. Walking into the Lowland Rain Forest, one sees through a curtain of vines the massive branch of a kapok tree that has been hurled, archlike, across the path. Kapok trees, among the tallest in the forest, are what make rain forests so dark. But here, the kapok is an artificial, completely convincing creation, the stuff of dioramas; the top of the forest has been brought down to eye level with bromeliads thriving on the tree bark, and the sun pours through the gap to nourish the forest floor. It's a good script made more real by the excellent eye of the tropical plant curator, Francisca Coelho, who was raised in Trinidad. The remaining trunk of the tree, buttressed like a cathedral, is found further along. Emerging from the underground tunnel linking this section with the dry regions of the Americas, Africa and Australia, one focuses on the sculptural quality of plants in these more open pavilions. Along the way are places to sit under a canopy of hanging plants and seasonal displays, as well as plantings of subtropicals such as camellias, olive trees and scented geraniums. At every turn, intelligent signs entice even the casual visitor to learn about the Garden's larger missions in environmentalism and economic botany, discovering the uses of plants including medicinal properties that are being learned firsthand from local healers in places like Belize. The thatched healer's hut near the great tree trunk gives an immediacy to the Garden's work. The Conservatory's popular seasonal flower displays will continue in two galleries. For the reopening, in a tribute to another New York institution, the Cloisters, the medieval wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibit will be a garden of flowers from the 16th-century unicorn tapestries. In 1941, two of the Garden's botanists identified the more than 80 species of plants in the seven Flemish tapestries, and their list provided the basis for the display. Scenes from the tapestries will be recreated in the Conservatory. From the | A Victorian Gem Restored |
925914_2 | The support program has kept some marginal producers in business while producing big profits for more efficient companies. The most conspicuous example of the latter is Flo-Sun, a huge operation north of the Everglades controlled by two brothers, Alfonso and Jose Fanjul, Cuban exiles who fled Castro and rebuilt their sugar empire in Florida with help from Washington's price supports. The G.A.O. estimates that in one year the sugar subsidy sent about $65 million directly to the Fanjuls' bottom line. Given their obvious interest in keeping the subsidy program alive, the Fanjuls are lavish contributors to politicians in both parties -- giving as much as $3 million since 1979, by one estimate. The industry has already begun its counterattack on Miller-Schumer. It calls the bill ''a bullet in the brain,'' and warns that if the subsidy disappears, so will domestic producers and the thousands of workers they employ. The Florida cane growers' most energetic spokesman, Robert Buker of U.S. Sugar, Flo-Sun's biggest rival, argues that nobody can compete with foreign governments that dump sugar on world markets at artificially low prices. But many independent economists think the industry exaggerates the potential damage. For one thing, Miller-Schumer's gradual phase-out will allow time for adjustments. Second, during the phase-out, and even after the price supports disappear completely, the Federal Government will still have powerful tools under existing trade laws to prevent dumping or unfair foreign competition. The industry is right that there will be casualties. Operations in Hawaii, California and Texas that barely survive now will probably go out of business. Florida companies, the most efficient cane growers, may find some of their poorer lands are no longer profitable and take them out of production. Environmentally, that could be beneficial. Economists estimate that perhaps one-fifth of the 450,000 acres now under cultivation might be at risk when the subsidy disappears. As it happens, that is about the same number of acres that the Federal Government and the state of Florida would like to buy to use as storage areas to replenish the water-starved Everglades and as water-treatment areas to clean up polluted runoff from the cane fields. Ending the sugar subsidy will not kill the sugar industry. It will, however, continue to speed the process begun in last year's farm bill of moving American agriculture to a free market. It is also likely to give South Florida's beleaguered environment a happier future. | Sugar's Sweet Deal |
978668_2 | they had not been fired upon.'' It said there was a ''strong suspicion'' that the marchers had handled bombs and fired weapons even though none were ever recovered or detected in the many photographs of the episode. Campaigners believe the moment is crucial because hundreds of accounts by witnesses, recordings of army and police messages and forensic evidence that were not taken into account by Lord Widgery have just come to light and because Mr. Blair has shown himself amenable to confidence-building measures to keep the momentum of the peace talks now under way in Belfast. ''We talk so much about the peace process, but as well as a peace process we must have a healing process,'' Mayor Martin Bradley, 33, said in his neo-Gothic office in the waterfront Guildhall. The leader of the campaign is John Hume, head of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, a member of the British and European Parliaments and the most widely admired political figure in the peace effort. ''All we want is the truth of what happened on Bloody Sunday,'' he said. ''We on the streets of Derry know what happened.'' The shock and anger of that day provoked hundreds of young Catholic men who had grown up in this city's less tribally contentious society to enlist in the Irish Republican Army and join in the fight to end British control. Mitchel McLaughlin, 52, a member of the City Council and a negotiator in the present talks in Belfast as a member of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, said there was little tradition of Republicanism here before Bloody Sunday. Edward Daly, 64, a retired Bishop, said, ''Many young people I have talked to in prison have told me they would have never joined the I.R.A. had it not been for what they witnessed on Bloody Sunday.'' Bishop Daly was himself a witness, captured in photographs that have inspired murals now on Bogside walls showing him helping to carry a fatally wounded teen-ager and waving a bloody handkerchief at the troops to make them stop firing. ''I know what happened, I saw it, I was there,'' he said. ''Innocent people were murdered without justification by heavily armed paratroopers.'' That the incident still has the power to divide the Irish and the British became clear recently with a promise from Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, to publish new conclusions his Government has. ''We | In Ulster, New Calls for the Truth of Bloody Sunday |
978380_11 | (or anything else) really exists. ''Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them,'' Immanuel Kant wrote 200 years ago, ''the starry heaven above and the moral law within.'' Judeo-Christian morality has linked these two sources of wonder through God, the creator and guarantor of the physical as well as the moral order: Thy steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, thy faithfulness to the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God, thy judgments are like the great deep. (Psalm 36: 5-6) Even when silence is maintained about God, the fact that existence can be predicated of cosmos and conscience alike creates a link between the two. If, however, we begin to entertain doubts about existence as such, then all links become dubious, not just the link between the heavens above and the moral law within. Once the philosophical glue is gone, everything comes unstuck. Our various intellectual enterprises, call them what we will, may go forward unchecked, but they will go forward under an enormous question mark. The armed-and-dangerous ignorance of religious fanaticism deserves to be quarantined. Let's be clear about that. I dread it as much as any atheist does. All the same, the trouble in which secular ideology finds itself -- and it does find itself in some kind of trouble -- does not seem to me to be generated wholly from without. During the cold war, Americans dared not consider the erosion of our interlocking secular beliefs any more than we dared consider the nuclear contamination of our landscape. Now, like a jury summons that can be put off no longer, the long-postponed questions are being taken up. At the deepest level, nothing else can explain the recent resurgence of interest in religion. Alas, there is a vast difference between taking the questions up and answering them. Despair, according to a study published in the American Heart Association's journal, is as bad for the human heart as a pack-a-day smoking habit. ''Steps should be taken,'' writes one doctor in the study, ''to try to change'' the cardiac patients' situation ''so they gain hope or become more optimistic.'' Steps should be taken by whom? In our day, religion often begins in despair -- in personal despair that hardens the arteries, in cultural despair that darkens the heart, in intellectual despair that humbles the | Faith Is an Option; Religion Makes a Comeback. (Belief to Follow.) |
980529_0 | Gerry Adams went to 10 Downing Street to see Prime Minister Tony Blair, becoming the first Irish republican to visit the British Prime Minister's official residence since Michael Collins met David Lloyd George there in 1921. That meeting led to the partition of the six Northern counties from what is now Ireland and continuing violence that has cost more than 3,200 lives. Mr. Adams, President of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, and a participant in the peace talks now under way in Belfast, emerged with higher hopes. ''Usually moments in Anglo-Irish relationships in history are bad,'' he said, ''but today was a significantly good moment.'' WARREN HOGE | December 7-13; Sinn Fein Leader Meets Blair |
980081_0 | Even Wattenberg concedes that the world is still growing, just not as fast. A birth dearth? I don't think so. Wattenberg does make two worthwhile points. First, he notes that environmentalists and population activists, long at the forefront of providing family-planning services, can appropriately claim much credit for the brighter outlook. Second, he says, ''Even if there are not as many billions as were expected, there will be enough billions to make a big mess.'' Instead of talking about a nonexistent birth dearth, we need to talk about providing family planning to the 350 million couples in the world who still lack access to it. Peter H. Kostmayer Executive Director Zero Population Growth Washington | The Population Explosion Is Over |
980261_0 | To the Editor: For employers, there can be legal dangers in granting privacy to E-mail. The specter of messages being used by plaintiff's lawyers as evidence of a hostile environment in a sexual-harassment or race-discrimination case is only the tip of an iceberg. Unlike phone mail messages, which can be erased after being heard, E-mail is typically backed up and stored or archived. It has become standard practice in any litigation involving corporations to seek discovery of all E-mail messages relating to the issues or the parties central to the action. (It may be malpractice to fail to seek these.) Casual E-mails to colleagues, including so-called flame messages, take on the stature of official corporate pronouncements that can be used to indicate corporate plans, policies or attitudes in a manner never intended by people just chatting or gossiping with others in their ''company community.'' It is, therefore, only prudent for employers to remind employees that the corporate E-mail is a business tool for business use, not a private perk provided for employee amusement and casual chatter. PAUL S. McDONOUGH Queens, Nov. 23 The writer, a lawyer with Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler & Krupman, advises businesses on employment law issues. | No Shields, Please, for E-Mail |
980083_0 | Analysts and policymakers in the industrialized North tend to see reduction of populations in the North as a detriment to global economic prosperity and political democracy. They are increasingly calling for pronatalist policies in the North while at the same time continuing to support strong anti-natalist policies for the poor countries in the South. What is needed in the world, however, is not eugenics but social justice. We need global policies that focus on alleviation of poverty and on greater sharing of resources and wealth within the human family. Asoka Bandarage Associate Professor Women's Studies Program Mount Holyoke College South Hadley, Mass. | The Population Explosion Is Over |
980078_1 | Population Explosure Is Over,'' Nov. 23). What delicious irony! Birthrates are certainly declining around the world. Not a world made lonely by fewer children, however, but one with better access to education and health care for women, and with families who are choosing to have fewer kids in order to give each child a better life. Wattenberg would have us believe that ''the saddest funerals are those in which the deceased have no offspring.'' In developing countries, the saddest funerals are those of the 600,000 women who die needlessly each year from pregnancy-related complications, many of them mothers with young children. Yes, world population growth is slowing, but is unlikely to be over ''soon.'' Today's population of 5.9 billion puts us just past the midpoint of some 50 years of unparalleled growth: some 2 billion people since 1970 and most likely another 2 billion by 2020. If the world's population starts to decrease in size, it will only do so several decades from now at the earliest, and from a level substantially higher than today's. Most future growth will occur in developing countries. While birthrates have fallen in many of these countries, they are still high in many others. In sub-Saharan Africa, birthrates are not ''plunging,'' but falling modestly. For example, in Kenya, the average number of births per woman has fallen from over eight to between five and six. Under even the lowest of the U.N.'s projections, sub-Saharan Africa's population will nearly double in size to 1.2 billion by 2025. Many poor countries are struggling to support their current populations. Slowing population growth is essential to insure a world worth living in for future generations. Even with declining birthrates, by the middle of the next century, at least two billion people will live in countries where water shortages may constrain food production and economic development. Wattenberg rightly attributes declining birthrates in developing countries to the success of international efforts to expand access to family-planning services, to social and economic change, but most of all, to the conscious choices about childbearing made by millions of individuals. But his misrepresentation of other facts provides further ammunition for those seeking to deny women and men the means to control their reproductive destinies, including our own Congress, which has slashed funding for international family planning by one-third since 1995. Robin Chandler Duke National Chairman Shanti Conly Director, Policy Research Population Action International Washington | The Population Explosion Is Over |
980439_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Some Privacy, Please, for E-Mail'' (Viewpoint, Nov. 23), in which the author, Amitai Etzioni, suggests that employers provide an avenue for their workers to send confidential messages. Wouldn't it be more bearable for employees to assume that none of their memos, E-mail messages or telephone conversations issued from their place of work on company equipment is private at all, rather than to expect their employers to promise any form of privacy? The author argues that it would be ''more communitarian, and possibly profitable'' for companies to provide E-mail privacy because it would make their workers happier -- thus, perhaps, raising their level of productivity. But should companies allow unlimited access to the Internet and guarantee privacy there, too? How much of wasted employees' time is already paid for by companies? If we have anything private and personal to communicate, let's use our private and personal time to do so. The author wants this privacy right to be granted as ''a gesture of genuine trust.'' But genuine trust doesn't exist in success-oriented companies. Business is business. A little chatting on the telephone, a little cigarette break, a little coffee break, a little E-mail bonding, a little glance at the Internet and before you know it, one's business day is over. CATHERINE GODBILLE Manhattan, Nov. 23 | No Shields, Please, for E-Mail |
980080_0 | Somewhere deep in Wattenberg's missive is a monumental story of vision and hope that he has wrongly framed as a jeremiad. The real story is that the environmentalists and family-planning advocates that he derides as ''alarmists'' were right 50 years ago when they predicted a world population explosion. The world is now on the road to sustainability because we ''alarmists'' took action to make possible a better future for the world's peoples through family planning, education and economic development. But we haven't reached that sustainable world yet. The most troubling aspect of his article is that it blithely suggests abandoning a course that has saved and enhanced countless lives. Wattenberg also fails to note the many factors that mitigate against population stabilization. Not least is the diminishing commitment worldwide to family-planning funding. Much of the responsibility must be placed with the United States which has retreated from its leadership role in foreign aid for family-planning programs. Each new generation needs to learn how to plan and space its children responsibly. The correct conclusion from the current data is that we must maintain and expand effective domestic and international family-planning policies to insure that future generations share in their proven benefits. Instead, Wattenberg warns of potential problems that face a mythical ''emptier planet.'' Healthier, longer lives, greater democratic liberties and the potential for reduced strain on the earth's limited resources are problems most of us can live with quite happily. Gloria Feldt President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America New York | The Population Explosion Is Over |
980079_0 | What seems to worry Wattenberg most are the demographic changes that must inevitably accompany reducing population growth: an older population and a higher proportion of single people and an end to the chain-letter economics that he has promoted over the years. (Existing businesses tend to do better when their potential customer base grows. ... Try building new houses in a depopulating country.) What would be the optimum size of the human population? Advocates of growth always seem to avoid such questions. Conflict over living space and natural resources produced World War II. Should population decline become excessive in the next 50 years, promotion of childbirth could be accomplished relatively easily, much more easily than population reduction. And unnatural means of population growth like cloning will become feasible long before we have figured out how to control such techniques. G. Mackenzie Gordon Lakeville, Conn. | The Population Explosion Is Over |
980330_0 | Here is a list of some organizations around the five boroughs that can use your help. THE MAYOR'S VOLUNTARY ACTION CENTER -- 49-51 Chambers Street, Suite 1231, Manhattan. A volunteer clearinghouse that uses a database listing more than 3,000 volunteer jobs in the five boroughs to match people with agencies that could most use their help. Call Monday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., for an appointment. (212) 788-7550. NEW YORK CARES -- 116 East 16th Street, Manhattan. Requires a one-hour orientation at which volunteers receive a monthly calendar listing opportunities to help at 100 to 150 organizations. No long-term commitment required. Orientation by appointment. Office hours: Monday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. (212) 228-5000. THE LIGHTHOUSE INC. -- 111 East 59th Street, Manhattan. Reads to blind or visually impaired business people and students in two-hour sessions. Also needs volunteers for Saturday youth program, annual sale of new and used designer clothes, and office help. For interview or reading audi tion, Monday through Friday, (212) 821-9406. VOLUNTEER SUPPORT PROJECT -- Department of Aging. 2 Lafayette Street, Manhattan. Provides basic care and assistance to blind and visually impaired people in communities. Volunteers can be any age. Monday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. (212)442-3168. FOSTER GRANDPARENT PROGRAM -- City Department of Aging, 2 Lafayette Street, 14th floor, Room 1419, Manhattan. Elderly volunteers care for children with physical or mental illnesses. Applicants must be over 60, and meet low-income requirements. Transportation, training and food provided. Small stipend available. Five days a week, four hours a day. Information: Monday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. (212) 442-3117. INSURANCE AND HEALTH COUNSELING -- Department of Aging, 2 Lafayette Street, Manhattan. Volunteers over age 60 are needed to provide information about health insurance options to other seniors. Monday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. (212) 442-1382. R.S.V.P. -- (Retired Senior Volunteer Program) 105 East 22d Street. Locations in all five boroughs. Fills 10,000 volunteer spots annually. Volunteers are ages 55 and older. Openings include tutoring positions, museum docents and food delivery people. Office hours: Monday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. (212)674-7787. RIVINGTON HOUSE -- 45 Rivington Street, Manhattan. Residential health care facility for people with AIDS. Volunteers visit with and counsel residents and perform clerical and administrative tasks. Volunteers are required to complete a six-hour orientation. Office hours: Monday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. (212) | Agencies That Need a Hand |
980474_0 | A special synod of Roman Catholic bishops from North and South America convened here by Pope John Paul II has concluded a monthlong survey of the moral, social and economic challenges confronting the Western Hemisphere, from foreign debt to broken families. The participants in this Special Assembly for America, which ended on Friday, listened to speeches, took part in workshops, prepared 76 proposals and wrote a final collective message. These will form the basis, one year from now, for a papal document on the tasks facing the church in the Americas -- home of about half the world's 1 billion Catholics -- as it approaches its 2,000th year. But according to many of the bishops, the most significant result of the special synod -- one of several that will bring bishops together by geography rather than by topic over the next two years -- was the fact that they came together at all, from two continents that do not always see themselves as a single region. ''Some of the most important outcomes will be the ones that can't be quantified,'' said Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles and co-president of the synod delegates. ''Borders and boundaries have fallen away, as we viewed this hemisphere as one.'' At a final news conference on Thursday, other bishops discussed the novelty of addressing problems together. ''What struck me was that, despite the geographical differences, there was a brotherly community,'' said Archbishop Francois Gayot of Cap-Haitien, Haiti. ''The synod has allowed us to meet the challenge of diversity within unity.'' From bishops from Latin America came a preoccupation with the continuing burden of foreign debt on their countries, which they feel has caused profound economic and social dislocations. From bishops from North America came lessons in ecumenical sensitivity, learned on a continent where Roman Catholics have historically been in the minority and imparted to a Roman Catholic Church in South America that has long enjoyed dominance but has been alarmed by the inroads of Protestant evangelical movements. But the 300 bishops gathered here also discovered how many problems are shared: declining vocations, single-parent families, immigration, globalized economies, securing the rights of minority groups, and what the bishops referred to as the ''cry of the poor for justice.'' ''There are cases of injustice everywhere,'' said Archbishop Dario Castrillon Hoyos of Bucaramanga, Colombia. ''The poor are not only in the South, but also in the | Catholic Bishops Finish Survey of Challenges to the Americas |
980152_3 | may be a moral argument for sanctions, but they may not work. Q. Are you thinking of Cuba? A. Sanctions on Cuba are a mistake. They've been a mistake for years. They've had no impact on the Cuban economy, but they're politically great for Fidel Castro and his Government to argue that the reason that the country has been in such trouble, has fallen so far behind the level of development elsewhere in Latin and Central America, is because of the nasty U.S. The reality is every other country in the world will trade with Cuba, so the sanctions economically are relatively meaningless. Cuba's economic problems are the result of very bad economic policies inside the country. But everyone understands the sanctions were imposed for political reasons. Q. Did you support our changed economic policies toward Vietnam? A. Oh, sure. I think the worldwide move toward market-oriented economy and democratically oriented political systems is terrific. It is to be applauded, supported and promoted. It doesn't happen in some countries without providing moral support, political support and economic support to those forces in the countries that want those kinds of changes. Q. What about China? Is it moral to make China a most-favored-nation trade partner? A. China is not yet a member of the World Trade Organization. It's the last major international organization that it has been kept out of. It has been kept out of it for very good reasons. The W.T.O. is an organization for countries that have market-oriented economies. People know in advance how their products are going to be treated, and they know what the trade barriers are. For the last number of years, China has been negotiating with members of the W.T.O. on what it has to do in order to be allowed in. It's very close to it. There has been a lot of technical assistance from the U.S. trade representative's office to China and by the European Union on how it needs to reorganize its economy. At some point that will be settled. Once China gets into the W.T.O., it will automatically have most-favored-nation treatment in all the products it sells to any of the W.T.O. members. Most-favored nation is a phrase that gives the impression of something terrific. In reality, it is almost the worst treatment that anyone gives W.T.O. members because everyone wants some type of preferential treatment beyond that. Q. What | Q&A/Dr. Seamus O'Cleireacain; Professor's Spin on Global Trade Policies |
980082_0 | While it is evident that some European countries may face more deaths than births in the coming decades, immigration, even at less than the rate in the United States, is one obvious solution to labor shortages. This is a remedy that these countries are less than enthusiastic about. It is interesting that it is just as politically incorrect in Europe to propose that demographic alternative as it is currently in this country to consider the considerable impact of immigration on population growth. Wattenberg deplores the extreme high projections of some concerned with rapid population growth but commits the same extremism in reverse. Charles F. Westoff Professor of Demographic Studies Princeton University Princeton, N.J. | The Population Explosion Is Over |
983089_1 | driven colleges and universities to hire graduate students and part-time instructors to teach basic courses. These temporary teachers are paid only a fraction of the salaries of full-time faculty members, and commonly juggle several jobs in order to make a living. One result of the hiring of part-time instructors is that a great number of graduates who in better times might have been hired to teach introductory courses are unable to find college or university teaching jobs. The report, prepared by the Modern Language Association's Committee on Professional Employment, also found that from 1990 to 1995, 55 percent of the 7,598 Ph.D.'s who graduated in English and foreign language programs failed to find full-time tenure-track positions in the year they received their degrees. Because many of these graduates hold advance degrees in English and foreign languages, the association has been outspoken in criticizing the trend. The association, which has 30,000 members in 100 countries, is the world's largest organization of college-level language and literature teachers. The report made several recommendations, including one that graduate programs should warn prospective students about the state of the job market for Ph.D.'s. The report also recommended that institutions that have poor records of placing graduates should reduce the number of students they admit. Richard Chait, a professor of higher education at Harvard University who has read the report, said it would be extremely difficult to reverse the trend. ''On the whole,'' Professor Chait said, ''it would make sense to reduce the production of 38,000 doctorates every year, which is what we produce, since we can't find jobs for them all.'' ''But of course the counterargument is that graduate programs don't make any guarantees to the students,'' he added. ''People go in with their eyes open.'' Morton Owen Schapiro, dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California, was more hopeful. The ability of a college to place graduate students in teaching positions at top institutions, Dean Schapiro said, is an important measure of the college's success, and programs that cannot accomplish that must be reassessed. ''We have one of the country's most distinguished programs in linguistics and that has no trouble at all in placing graduates, but some of our other programs are less successful,'' the dean said. ''So what we do is we find ways to allocate money away from the less successful to the more successful.'' | Education Peril Is Seen in Increase of Part-Time College Teachers |
983109_3 | In the early days of this century, philosophy was thought of as fundamental to a well-rounded liberal arts education, Mr. Hoffman of the American Philosophical Association said. Considered more than just the teachings of Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, philosophy was regarded as a broad search for knowledge, encompassing the latest scientific and social theories. But that was before those concerns became independent fields of study, leaving philosophy with a narrower focus. And it was before college-age baby boomers gave way to a baby bust. Cash-starved colleges started looking for departments to trim. And students, watching the cost of a college education at selective private schools soar, turned into pragmatic consumers weighing the economic value of a diploma that could put them in debt by more than $100,000. By 1994, one survey found that a philosophy course was required at only 18 percent of colleges, Mr. Hoffman said. Between 1992 and 1996, more than 400 standalone philosophy departments disappeared, according to the Directory of American Philosophers. Schools offering a major in the subject slipped from 683 to 660; those offering even scattered courses plummeted from 947 to 606. All this occurred despite the fact that philosophy, in the last 20 years, has taken a more marketable turn as the issues faced in industry and the professions have grown more complex. Dr. Bruner's career hints at the changes. He heads a medical team, including two ethicists, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville that developed a surgical procedure for repairing spina bifida in fetuses. The procedure raised several ethical issues -- whether, for instance, it is appropriate to perform an operation that could kill a fetus incapable of giving consent to repair a condition that is not life-threatening. ''We've published almost as many articles on the ethics issues as on the medical issues,'' Dr. Bruner said. While so many other schools were cutting back, Princeton has maintained what is widely considered one of the best philosophy departments in the country. Its famous graduates include Carl C. Icahn, the financier, who earned his B.A. in 1957; his senior thesis was titled ''The Problem of Formulating an Adequate Explication of the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning.'' Philosophy majors in the class of 1977 have spent the last two decades building striking resumes -- just not in philosophy. Jay M. Behmke, 42, did what so many philosophy majors do: He became a lawyer. But he built | Philosophers Find the Degree Pays Off in Life And in Work |
982122_13 | with Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son for God. ''It's my Isaac,'' she said. Images of leave-takings remain unblurred. Marie Anatrella said goodbye to a little sister that she had been ''a little mother to.'' Anne Marie left her ailing father listening to the 1947 World Series on the radio. Mary Vincent left her father weeping at the gate. ''I will not go in that place to see you,'' he said. ''Bye Daddy,'' she said, and walked inside. The Decline in Numbers IN 1965, there were 179,954 Catholic nuns in the United States. Today, there are 87,644. (In third-world countries, particularly those where women have few professional opportunities, the church cannot build monasteries fast enough.) The drop here owes in large part to the women's movement, which vastly broadened women's opportunities beyond the staples of nurse, teacher or nun. But the church itself was also responsible: in the mid-1960's, the Second Vatican Council said religious women were essentially no holier than anyone else, a judgment that prompted many women to say, ''Why bother?,'' according to Sister Patricia Wittberg, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University. ''The role of the nun in the church was absolutely torpedoed by Vatican II.'' Of the American women in religious orders, only a few -- estimates range from 2,000 to 6,000 -- are cloistered. While it might seem their more radical demands would spell extinction, some sociologists believe that active communities are losing members faster. ''There is a strong hunger out there for the contemplative life style and prayer,'' Sister Wittberg said. ''It still offers something you can't get anywhere else.'' Sister Regina Wilson, who counsels women interested in religious life, said half of those she counseled last year were interested in the cloistered life. She said she has been amazed at the women she has seen: professional women -- from Wall Street, the law, health care -- in their mid-30's or older. ''They have everything: a professional career, good jobs, money, their own homes. But they're looking for something more.'' But some contemplative, cloistered communities are dying, while just a few miles away another may be bulging with young people, said Sister Mary Johnson, an associate professor of sociology at Emmanuel College. At least one monastery, she said, has set up a Web site to do outreach. Others live or die by the belief that God alone will decide their future. AMY WALDMAN | The Silence |
982056_0 | Phyllis Rubenfeld, a professor of social work at Hunter College in Manhattan, plans to propose a disability studies department for undergraduates next year, which would be the first of its kind in the nation. Ms. Rubenfeld, who uses a motorized scooter because of childhood polio, is among a number of scholars around the country who want to redefine how colleges and universities view people with disabilities, so that disability is seen as an ''ordinary human variation,'' like gender, race or ethnicity. She acknowledges that to some people, the notion of identifying people with disabilities as a separate minority is unfamiliar. ''But disability, in contrast to health, is a constant state, like race or ethnicity,'' she said. ''Someone in a wheelchair may be just as healthy as someone who isn't.'' Still, the idea of a disabilities studies department has prompted skepticism among some on campus. Charles Landesman, a philosophy professor at Hunter, said he was worried that ''a proliferation of departments would drain away resources from the core disciplines.'' Issues that might be examined in disability studies, he said, can be addressed in existing departments like history and anthropology. Establishing a disability studies department at Hunter, which has had budget cutbacks in recent years, would cost at least $500,000 a year, according to David A. Caputo, the president of Hunter. If new money could not be found, then faculty and staff would have to come from other departments, which is likely to lead to staff skirmishes. Jane Bowers, acting director of the women's studies program at Hunter, noted that after 20 years the program had no permanent faculty and did not grant a degree. ''Turf is the major issue,'' she said. Disabilities studies examines history, literature and sociology in much the same way that ethnic studies departments look at these topics for unexamined assumptions about black, Hispanic and Asian people. For example, in a paper delivered at a recent disability-studies seminar, Tamara Green, a classics professor at Hunter College, discussed Hephaestus, blacksmith to the gods and a god himself though he was lame. Hephaestus is the ''butt of the gods' cruel humor,'' Ms. Green said. The treatment of Hephaestus, she said, shows that the ancient Greeks' ''deep sense of disquiet and uneasiness'' about people with disabilities extends even to Mount Olympus. ANTHONY RAMIREZ NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER EAST SIDE | Disability as Field of Study? |
981913_6 | of an important cell-signaling system known as the Ras pathway. The pathway's ordinary role is to accept messages from outside the cell indicating that the body needs the cell to divide into two. But when genes in the Ras pathway become mutated, the signaling system can get jammed in the on position. Under continual instructions to divide, the cell becomes a tumor. McCormick became head of a group seeking drugs to block the Ras pathway, to prevent tumors from growing, and his work on the project won him worldwide attention. But as a biotech company, Cetus was a brilliant failure. It supported high-quality work like McCormick's research in cell signaling and the invention by Kary Mullis of the P.C.R. technique, a Nobel Prize-winning method of analyzing DNA. But in 1991, after a failed gamble on the anticancer drug interleukin-2, Cetus was bought by the Chiron Corporation, another biotech company. McCormick, by then a vice president of Cetus, decided to leave and form Onyx. At the new venture, Mccormick became chief scientific officer and set about trying to translate recent research findings about cancer cells into actual treatments. The group he brought from Cetus continued to work on the Ras pathway, while new groups were formed to search for drugs aimed at the errant genes known to cause breast and colon cancer. In December 1992, McCormick conceived a novel idea for an anticancer agent: a crippled version of an adenovirus. That a disabled virus, cause of the mildest of human diseases, could become a weapon against the deadliest seems farfetched -- until you consider that adenoviruses and cancer face the same problem. They can't cause their respective diseases unless they subvert the checks that restrain human cells from uncontrolled division and growth. Two of the principal checks are proteins named Rb and p53, nerdy labels that designate remarkable pieces of biological machinery. Rb, so called because it was first discovered in a rare cancer called retinoblastoma, clamps itself to the agents that drive the cycle of cell division; normal cells cannot divide unless Rb releases its grip, prompted by the cell's receipt of an appropriate growth signal. The p53 protein, named after a measure of its size, can detect when its cell's DNA has been compromised, whether by damage or by foreign DNA like that of an infecting virus. The p53 protein will then force the cell to destroy itself for | Can the Common Cold Cure Cancer? |
981892_5 | Buttafucco of Valley Stream, N.Y., the director of flight safety for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said in an interview that airlines were reluctant to offend passengers by forbidding heavy objects in the overhead or forcing them to leave their bags for checking. Mr. Buttafucco's union believes that the overhead bins are holding much greater weight than they were designed for; in the 80's, the clips that held the bins to the ceiling of the B-737's all had to be replaced because they were failing. Still, three major airlines have taken tiny steps. On Nov. 12, American Airlines, its flight attendants' union (not the same one that held the conference) and its pilots union asked the F.A.A. to set carry-on baggage policies for all the airlines. A draft of a guidance sheet has been put out for public comment by the agency, but it does not offer any new enforcement rules. David Evans, managing editor of Air Safety Week, laments that the draft merely suggests the use of luggage ''sizer'' boxes in the air terminal. Northwest, on Nov. 21, expanded its ''one plus'' baggage rule to all its flights. Now all passengers are limited to one carry-on bag, plus a briefcase, laptop computer or purse. Certain other items, coats, umbrellas, cane, crutches, braces, collapsible manual wheelchairs, strollers, infant seats and diaper bags are also exempted. But first-class, world business class, Gold Elite frequent flier members and World Perks Gold members are allowed extra carry-on items. When the policy was begun, last summer, it applied only to flights that were 70 percent full, or more. United's program, begun Dec. 1, is more bluntly focused on the fare paid. Its Take-Off Fares pilot program applies only to flights originating in Des Moines, Iowa. Passengers who buy the lowest advance-purchase ticket available for Des Moines flights must decide to buy the quoted fare on the spot, must use an electronic, or paperless, ticket, and may carry aboard only one bag, although they may check two. Again, Premier members of the frequent flier program who take the cheapest fare may carry on more than one bag. Greg Couper, head of United's airport services planning, explained the program by saying it responded to its most profitable customers' desires for carry-on space, faster boarding and quicker departures. He continued: ''We expect that these new procedures will help infrequent leisure travelers, who may not | Crackdown On Carry-Ons |
982191_1 | are their neighbor, only 90 miles away, we think there can be collaboration and cultural exchange that works both ways.'' With that notion firmly implanted here, Jamaica, the largest English-speaking nation in the Caribbean, is once again leading efforts to reach out to Cuba. Jamaican policy, like that of a growing number of Caribbean countries, is one of ''deepening the collaborative ties between our Governments and peoples,'' said the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Seymour Mullings, recently. Several Caribbean nations, including Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, first established diplomatic ties with Cuba a quarter of a century ago, defying Washington's policy of political and commercial isolation. But after the United States and countries of the eastern Caribbean invaded Grenada in October 1983 to put an end to Cuban influence there, those relationships cooled. Besides Mr. Patterson, who is currently chairman of the Caribbean Community, or Caricom, Prime Minister Keith Mitchell of Grenada and Prime Minister James F. Mitchell of St. Vincent and the Grenadines have also traveled to Cuba this year. This month, Billie Miller, the Foreign Minister of Barbados, the country from which the 1983 invasion of Grenada was mounted, also paid an official visit to Havana. ''We have to be able to strike strategic relationships with those who are willing to help us in charting a course of serious development as we confront the 21st century,'' Keith Mitchell said in an interview earlier this year. ''When we look back at our relationship with Cuba, I think most Grenadians of all ages and groups agree that, over all, the Cuban role and presence here was positive.'' As a result of the increased contacts, Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader, has been invited to attend a Caricom summit meeting in Grenada early next year. Cuba recently opened an embassy in Trinidad, and Mr. Castro may also visit Jamaica sometime in 1998, diplomats said. In addition, a Caricom delegation met with Cuban officials in Havana this month to discuss such matters as trade, investment, maritime links and bilateral projects. The meeting followed Caricom's earlier endorsement of Cuba's effort to gain eligibility for European trade benefits that the rest of the Caribbean already enjoys. At the beginning of the decade, trade between Caricom and Cuba was barely $5 million. That figure has since grown tenfold, and is expected to increase further as the Cuban economy gradually opens to foreign investment and four | Caribbean Nations, Ignoring U.S., Warm to Cuba |
982265_0 | A Galleries listing on page 43 of the Arts and Leisure section today was published in error. ''Early Sculpture,'' a show of work by Donald Judd, will not open at the Pace Wildenstein Gallery on East 57th Street until Jan. 28. A group show, featuring works by Giacometti, de Kooning, Picasso and others, is now on view at the gallery. | Corrections |
982029_7 | describe an uncomfortable situation or to tell him about a creative project that student has done. ''It makes it difficult for a candidate to lie,'' said Mr. Greene. Mr. Greene has seen the recruiting move from a system where students had to wake up early in the morning to sign up on an interview list posted outside the career services building at Rutgers to one based almost solely on the Internet. Students tap into a web site called Jobtrack, which is where employers post job opportunities. And he receives tons of resumes through his E-mail account. Despite all the changes, and one or two hiring mistakes along the way, Mr. Greene still smiles when he thinks about why he is still recruiting at Rutgers after 14 years. ''I love the excitement of finding talent,'' he said. And he has no plans for leaving that part of his job behind. ''I can't seem to get out of it,'' said Mr. Greene. ''But I'm not in a rush to leave.'' You Have 30 Minutes. Make Them All Count. Here are some interviewing tips from a guide prepared by Greg Sobol, Assistant Director of Career Services on the Douglas-Cook campus of Rutgers University. PLUSES -- Most interviewers look for good communication skills, the ability to interact with others, the ability to handle stress, the ability to solve problems and promotability. MINUSES -- These 10 factors can knock a candidate out of contention: -- Not being prepared for the interview; no research or questions about employer. -- Inability to express ideas clearly; poor communication skills. -- Poorly defined career goals; little or no sense of direction. -- No real interest in the employer. -- Unhappy personality; disliked former jobs, supervisors, school. -- Evasiveness; making excuses. -- Asking too few or poor questions about the job. -- Interested only in best dollar offer. -- Lack of confidence or poise; fails to make eye contact, weak handshake. -- Unwillingness to relocate. F.Y.I. -- Be prepared for a new technique called ''behavioral interviewing.'' This interview method focuses on the applicant's past actions and behaviors in response to specific situations. For example, the interviewer may state, ''Describe a major problem you have faced on the job and how you dealt with it.'' To prepare for this type of question, think about situations that demonstrate your leadership, problem solving, customer service, teamwork and planning abilities. Prepare short descriptions of | Shake Hands With a Corporate Recruiter |
981567_2 | on methods of castration. The section begins: ''It would seem that there are several kinds of eunuchs, quite apart from those born entirely impotent. The early Christians naturally followed Matthew.'' Ms. Chase-Riboud continues with the relevant quote from the Book of Matthew. In a chapter called ''The Black Eunuchs,'' Mr. Penzer wrote: ''Thus it would seem that there are several kinds of eunuchs, quite apart from those born entirely impotent. The early Christians naturally followed Matthew, xix, 12, where we read . . .'' Mr. Penzer -- a life fellow of the Royal Geographical Society who was noted for his work on Sir Richard Burton and who died in 1960 -- provides most of the Biblical verse. The Penzer history quotes extensively from a report by Carter Stent on the Chinese method of castration, with a footnote citing an 1877 issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, North China Branch. In Ms. Chase-Riboud's novel, Father Delleda gives the same description, unattributed. In ''Valide,'' Ms. Chase-Riboud neither credited her sources nor offered a bibliography. Ms. Chase-Riboud said that her latest novel, ''The President's Daughter,'' has nine pages of author's notes on historical sources. ''Accusing me of plagiarizing reference books or real documents or nonfiction history books is ridiculous considering how I work,'' she said. She admitted that in ''Valide,'' it was ''incorrect'' and an ''oversight'' on the part of an ''inexperienced'' writer -- it was her second book -- not to include notes on her sources. In a few instances, Ms. Chase-Riboud attempted some paraphrasing. In chapter three of ''Valide,'' titled ''The Black Eunuch,'' there is this passage, ostensibly the ruminations of the Kizlar Aga, or Chief Eunuch: ''Eunuchs were not weaklings. He had drawn his conclusions from other species; vicious horses and bulls when castrated lose some of their spirits, but they are not deprived of their strength or capacity for work. In the same way, dogs when castrated stop running away from their masters, but are no less useful for hunting or guarding. One could say that men, after all, were not animals. Yet men, he had found, became gentler when deprived of desire, but no less careful of that which was entrusted to them. They were no less efficient horsemen, no less skillful lancers, no less ambitious men.'' In his chapter on the black eunuchs, Mr. Penzer quotes from Xenophon's ''Cyropaedia,'' translated by W. Miller: ''But | Writer Who Cried Plagiarism Used Passages She Didn't Write |
979933_0 | When Trey and Jennifer Urbahn moved from Washington, D.C., to a house dotting one of the many inland waterways here in the self-styled ''Venice of America,'' they expected a year-round cool breeze and a view of cruising boats. They did not expect the noise of revving engines day and night on weekends, or constant splashing ''like in a bathtub'' from the huge wakes left by speeding powerboats. Then on Nov. 24, a 45-foot speedboat rammed the rear of a 31-foot cabin cruiser shortly before midnight near the Urbahns' dock, killing six people. The next morning, three body bags lay on the couple's backyard lawn where their three children normally play. ''It was so predictable. It makes me so angry,'' Mrs. Urbahn said. ''This is a prime example of how hazardous it is. I could imagine a boat ricocheting into somebody's house.'' The Thanksgiving week crash underscored both the steadily rising popularity of recreational boating and what marine law-enforcement officials, waterfront residents like the Urbahns and even many boaters consider the failure of regulation to keep up with it. In their view, the leisurely culture of recreational boating has changed fundamentally in recent years, with the advent of faster boats and the sheer increase in the traffic. Nationwide, the number of registered recreational boats has more than doubled in the last two decades, from 5.9 million in 1972 to 12.1 million in 1996, nearly 750,000 of them in Florida. When unregistered boats are included -- mostly canoes, kayaks and other motorless craft -- the number is millions higher: in 1993, the last year for which there were figures, there were 21 million boats in the United States' recreational waters. ''The prevailing attitude among boaters and regulators has been this is a form of leisure, a hobby,'' said David Pilvelait, a spokesman for the Boat Owners Association of the United States in Alexandria, Va., the largest group of recreational boaters. ''And in general governments have not imposed tight regulation on outdoor activities.'' But Mr. Pilvelait added, ''The time has come for an assessment of the risks of boating and how government should address those risks.'' Indeed, the scene in Florida, which leads the nation in boating accidents and deaths, indicates that while the waters are still a playground for tourists and residents, they can get as tense as an intersection at rush hour. Waterfront neighbors and experienced boat operators complain that speeding | Rev, Rev, Rev Your Boat: The Evolution of an Ungentle Weekend Sport |
977697_0 | A custom-designed estrogen recently endorsed by a Federal advisory panel can strengthen bones and may protect the hearts of postmenopausal women without fostering cancers of the breast and uterus, a large study has found. If the drug, raloxifene, is cleared for marketing by the Food and Drug Administration, it is expected to result in a surge in the number of women willing to take hormones after menopause to prevent osteoporosis and possibly heart disease. Currently, fewer than 1 in 5 women past menopause take replacement hormones, which are associated with protection against osteoporosis, heart disease and possibly Alzheimer's disease as well as prevention of unpleasant menopausal symptoms. A fear of cancer has been the main stumbling block to wider use of the hormones, which have been linked to an increased risk of cancers of the breast and endometrium, the lining of the uterus. The new report summarizing the interim results of the study, which is still in progress, is expected to hasten marketing approval for raloxifene, a synthetic hormone-like compound produced by Eli Lilly & Company. In the study, 601 postmenopausal women from eight European countries were randomly assigned to treatment with one of three doses of raloxifene or a look-alike dummy drug for two years. Those receiving raloxifene experienced increases in bone density of their lower spine, hip and total body along with a drop in blood levels of heart-damaging LDL cholesterol. The study, directed by Dr. Pierre D. Delmas of Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyons, France, is being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. Last month, an advisory group to the Food and Drug Administration voted 8 to 4 to recommend approval of raloxifene, which would be sold under the brand name Evista. The panel noted that although the drug was not as effective in building bone as estrogens currently used by postmenopausal women, it lacked worrisome growth stimulation of the breast and uterus that can result from treatment with natural estrogens. Raloxifene is the second of a new class of synthetic estrogenic compounds that have selective actions on different tissues. The first to reach the market, tamoxifen, blocks the ability of natural estrogens to stimulate growth of breast tissue. It is now widely used in women who have had breast cancer to prevent cancer in the second breast. Tamoxifen also decreases the risk of heart attack by lowering cholesterol levels in the blood, but | Study Says Designed Estrogen May Be Risk Free |
977731_2 | new report warning that so-called mad cow disease might be carried by beef bones and bone marrow by banning the sale of most cuts of beef on the bone, including ribs, T-bone steaks and oxtails. The beef covered by the ban represents only about 5 percent of the total beef sold in Britain each year. A24 NATIONAL A18-28 Clinton Seeks to Ignite A 'Conversation' on Race President Clinton, with an edgy impatience behind his folksy demeanor, struggled to strike some sparks in his ''national conversation'' on race, challenging participants in a televised town hall meeting in Akron, Ohio, to defend their views of affirmative action and to propose specific steps to bring the races together. A1 Akron, the site of the President's first town meeting on race, has been undertaking the kind of racial dialogue Mr. Clinton has said he would like to foster nationally. But Akron's ''Coming Together Project'' has not necessarily grappled with difficult issues like racial stereotypes, crime, housing or education. Nor has the dialogue produced much change in public policy. A26 Same-Sex Harassment Argued The Supreme Court heard arguments about whether the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applies to sexual harassment cases among members of the same sex. A Federal appeals court had dismissed a suit by a male oil rig worker against male co-workers. But Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said, ''I don't see how we can possibly sustain'' that ruling. A28 Replacement Hormones Backed A custom-designed estrogen recently endorsed by an advisory panel can strengthen bones and may protect the hearts of postmenopausal women without fostering cancers of the breast and uterus, a study has found. If the drug, raloxifene, is cleared for marketing by the Food and Drug Administration, it is expected to result in a surge in the number of women willing to take hormones after menopause to prevent osteoporosis and possibly heart disease. A25 Bush Opens Texas Campaign George W. Bush launched his 1998 campaign for re-election as governor of Texas, already holding a campaign chest worth $13 million, but speculation has surfaced about a possible run for the White House in 2000. A18 2 Freed From Rape Charge After 13 years, 10 months and 12 days in prison, two Alabama brothers walked free this week after DNA tests indicated that they were wrongfully convicted of raping and kidnapping a woman in 1983. A18 Witnesses Cite John Doe No. 2 Three | NEWS SUMMARY |
977736_4 | to be identified. Moreover, he added, ''the bigger they are, the more they want to be second.'' If it catches on, irradiation might end up being used as the ultimate insurance for the vulnerable products, like ground beef and poultry. But in the end, many experts say, no one method is likely to be a panacea. ''Irradiation may be helpful, and it may play a very important role in the future,'' said Dr. David A. Kessler, a former F.D.A. commissioner. ''But I don't think it's going, by itself, to get us where we need to be. It's not going to work if companies think they don't have to keep up with basic sanitary practices, and that they can just zap it all at the end.'' But even as the questions persist, many regulators and food industry executives agree that this is irradiation's moment, a time when the Government's attention, and the public's, are focused to an unusual degree on a method with an unappealing name that, its supporters hope, will eventually be on labels in supermarkets across America. The Discovery At First, Success, Then a Long Wait The idea of irradiating food first surfaced just after the turn of the century, and it began to take hold during World War II, when scientists working for the Army found that ground beef stayed fresh longer if it was exposed to X-rays. The concept is simple: Irradiation shatters the genetic material of bacteria, killing them. Gamma rays from sources like rods of radioactive cobalt are aimed at containers holding food and kill the bacteria as they pass through the food, leaving no residual radioactivity behind, scientists say. The F.D.A. approved several limited uses of irradiation -- the first was to help the Army preserve canned bacon -- in the early 1960's. But it rescinded the approval for canned bacon after a few questions were raised about irradiation's effect on laboratory animals in the late 1960's, casting suspicions on the process that persist even though most leading medical and scientific associations have since declared that it is safe. Since then, the F.D.A. has changed its view. The agency approved the irradiation of spices, fruits and vegetables in 1986 to destroy insects and mold, and it authorized the irradiation of chicken in 1990 to kill bacteria like salmonella or campylobacter, which are the two biggest causes of food poisoning in the United States. The | TECHNOLOGY IN WAITING: A special report.; Long Quest for Safer Food Revisits Radiation Method |
981071_0 | New Yorkers live out their lives under towers of brick and concrete, walking and sitting and playing next to buildings so tall that even a tiny object plummeting from their heights could maim or kill a human strolling at ground level. It is a wonder, really, that so few tragedies occur beneath the soaring, sometimes aging skyscrapers. But the shower of bricks that fell from the side of a 39-story office tower on Madison Avenue this month reminds the city's inhabitants of their vulnerability. The building appears to have been constructed with remarkable shoddiness. The simple metal ties routinely used to bind brick facades to the building frames are missing in many places. While workmen were fixing a side wall, a section peeled off, raining two-pound bricks and debris. Thanks to some safety netting there were no serious injuries. But the people who live, work or travel in the blocks of Madison Avenue near 55th Street are getting grim reminders of how much our lives depend on the solidity of New York City's big buildings. A restaurant lost $40,000 worth of caviar, a dentist is cut off from his patients, a teddy bear store missed one of the biggest weeks in its year. The story of this disaster has proved hard to unravel. The building's original owner is dead. Many companies involved in its construction are now reorganized. The present owner, Harry Macklowe, says he was trying to fix defects he had just discovered when the bricks came showering down. The Giuliani administration has proposed two reforms worthy of serious consideration. One is that the law requiring building facades to be inspected every five years be changed to cover all the unattached walls of the building, not just the one facing the street. Another is that general contractors, key players in construction, be licensed. But even more important, the Department of Investigation must determine what exactly happened, and who is at fault. The public needs that information to ward off these disasters in the future -- and the city needs to punish those who should have averted the problem and failed to do so. City Hall's approach to building safety has relied heavily on professionals like electricians, architects and plumbers, to certify the work they are responsible for, with their licenses at risk if it is found to be unsatisfactory. Since the alternative is to rely on inspections by the | Looking Upward, With Anxiety |
981060_0 | TWO weeks ago, UAL's United Airlines began a one-bag carry-on policy experiment for passengers in Des Moines who buy the lowest-fare tickets, and other carriers also tightened their carry-on policies. Since then, airlines say, there appears to be both more rigorous enforcement of the policies and wider compliance with them. But the true test, they add, will be determined when planes are no longer routinely jammed with passengers, and carriers and passengers alike relax their guard. While the Federal Aviation Administration has already said it does not favor regulation, business travelers are chiming in with suggestions for improvement. A recent survey of members by the National Business Travel Association found that 63 percent of respondents want carry-on luggage restrictions applied to all passengers regardless of ticket class or air fare. A survey by Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown/Yankelovich Partners did not address the number of carry-on bags, but found that 65 percent of business travelers want more space for the baggage they do carry on. A United spokesman said yesterday that the Iowa experiment had been well received, especially the fact that the policy was explicit and enforced. While that experiment could continue for an additional four to six months, the carrier also intends to experiment with at least several other carry-on policies before deciding which to adopt. United is not saying much about the experiment, beyond the fact that it is likely to be rolled out in February on both coasts. Meanwhile, since carriers set their own policies, anyone planning to carry more than one piece of luggage aboard should check with a particular airline for its policy, or with a travel agent. Even at that, it is important to remember that all airlines reserve the right to restrict carry-on baggage for lack of space. Continental Club Continental Airlines opened its third Presidents Club at Newark International Airport on Monday, in the C-2 concourse. The clubroom has a businesses services area with a fax machine and copier, nine private work stations with telephones and data ports for computer hookups. High-Speed Access It will be a while before high-speed access to the Internet is widely available in hotels, but business travelers can take heart that it is making steady progress. Among the growing number of hotels where it already exists, in rooms or in lobbies, are the Hyatt Airport hotel in San Jose, Calif.; the Holiday Inn Union Square in San | Business Travel; An experiment by United Airlines to further limit carry-on baggage is well received by passengers. |
982939_2 | include battlefields, bases, arms factories and missile fields. Public interest groups hope to use the photos to monitor arms control treaties and to police the world's intelligence services. Foreign governments that cannot afford their own satellite systems are also expected to be big customers. The Federal rules under which American companies were granted licenses for the new class of spy satellites allow those companies to photograph anything from space and sell the imagery on the open market. But the Government retains the right to switch off the commercial cameras in time of war or international tensions, a provision known as shutter control. The Federal Government also retains the right to screen foreign customers. Nations likely to be denied access to the imagery include Iraq, Libya, Cuba and North Korea. But private experts say front companies will probably evade export prohibitions, as they have repeatedly on behalf of nations intent on buying sensitive gear for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The new spy technology arose at the end of the cold war as the commercial sector, facing a decline in military contracts, pressured Washington to allow more powerful imaging for civilians. The Clinton Administration approved the plan in 1994, saying the move would help aerospace companies challenge foreign rivals in the emerging industry of civilian surveillance from space. Today at least three companies in the United States, including Earthwatch, and others in France, India and Israel are preparing to launch civilian spy satellites, which at best can see ground objects with a diameter of about one meter, or 39 inches. In the United States, much of the activity involves gear and contractors that once were, or still are, part of the sprawling Government complex for military espionage, as well as some of its former leaders. The exact number of these spy satellites that will reach orbit is hard to predict, but experts say at least half a dozen are likely to be introduced in the next two or three years. Earthwatch, the first entrant in the new field, was formed in March 1995 by the merger of the commercial remote sensing efforts of the Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation and the Worldview Imaging Corporation. The company's partners include Hitachi Ltd., the Japanese industrial giant. The Earlybird 1 spacecraft was built in Pleasanton, Calif., and underwent environmental testing at the Goddard Space Flight Center, a NASA complex in Greenbelt, Md. From there, | First Civilian Spy Satellite Soars Into Space, Launched in Russia by a U.S. Company |
982936_1 | group that runs Wheels for the World from Agoura Hills, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb. Disabled people are often carted around in wheelbarrows, or parked on street corners to beg. ''In Poznan, Poland, we found a 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who was being pushed around by his parents in a rusty, beat-up baby carriage,'' said Ms. Tada, who has had to use a wheelchair since 1967, when a diving accident rendered her a quadriplegic at age 17. ''In a mountain village in Albania, we delivered a wheelchair to a woman who had been unable to leave her bedroom for 15 years.'' Roughly 28 million people in the third world need wheelchairs, John Wern, director of the charity, estimated. On the other side of the equation, in the United States, as many as one million wheelchairs are thrown out as trash or stored in attics and garages every year. Liability worries have led insurers to discourage hospitals and nursing homes from repairing broken wheelchairs. With new wheelchairs selling for as little as $300 apiece and Medicare paying most of the cost, health professionals often prefer to have patients buy new chairs. With the nation's elderly and disabled population growing rapidly, the United States' fleet of castoff wheelchairs is growing, too. As wheelchair waste mounts, a wheelchair recycling movement is taking root. Formed in 1994, Wheels for the World conducts wheelchair drives and operates repair centers around the nation. Sea-Land, the shipping company, has promised free overseas shipment of 3,000 wheelchairs every year. The company began its service last year, when it shipped about 1,300 refurbished wheelchairs to Chile, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. Whirlwind Wheelchair International, a secular nonprofit group based at San Francisco State University, has set up 35 wheelchair production shops in 25 third world countries since 1980. The workshops have made 12,000 chairs, all from locally available materials. Fueling this aid and development movement is growing concern over the human toll from land mines. In October, the Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and on Jody Williams, the group's American coordinator. Two weeks ago, representatives of about 120 countries -- although not the United States, Russia or China -- signed a treaty to ban the global production and use of antipersonnel mines. Galvanizing world support for the treaty, its drafters said that the 100 million land mines around the world cripple | Behind Bars, Reaching Out to Others; Inmates Restore Castoff Wheelchairs for Third World's Disabled |
982997_0 | Christmas in Baghdad this year was heralded by the arrival of a giant fir tree in the lobby of Al Rashid Hotel. Then gardeners carried in a large Frosty the Snowman. Surveying the scene was the ubiquitous portrait of President Saddam Hussein. But Baghdad's eighth Christmas under sanctions, imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, is not exactly celebratory. The mood is subdued as many families struggle financially. Basics like food have taken precedence over lavish gifts, and even Christmas cards have become small luxuries. ''Before the embargo, it was a different story,'' said a Christian who is a waiter at the restaurant at Al Rashid. ''We used to have huge parties here with champagne, whisky and late-night dancing to live orchestras.'' Since the ban on serving alcohol in public places took effect in 1993, largely as a measure to curb rising crime rates under the embargo but also as a gesture to rising Islamic feeling in Iraq, the fizz has largely gone out of Christmas celebrations here. Although many Muslims celebrate Christmas by giving presents to their children and holding parties, Dec. 25 remains largely a holiday for Iraq's Christian minority -- about 4 percent of the population of 22 million -- with banks and other public institutions maintaining regular working hours. Most of Baghdad's Christians are Chaldean Catholics, who hold their Mass in Aramaic, while a small percentage are Orthodox. Although Iraq remains nominally secular (high-profile Christians include Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz), there has been a slow exodus of Christians since the Persian Gulf war. Many Iraqi Christians are choosing life abroad to the uncertainties of life under sanctions. HADANI DITMARS | A World of Christmases, Not Just for Christians; In Baghdad, Far Less Fizz |
982981_5 | specific toys because it does not want to limit the choice for such children. Toys ''R'' Us, the nation's largest toy retailer, promotes modified toys and traditional ones for this market. Its latest specialty toy guide includes Tickle Me Elmo because the retailer says the toy stimulates touching and listening. It also includes the Fisher-Price Little People School Bus, which now comes with a wheelchair ramp and a handicapped toy figure. ''Children who use wheelchairs can identify with this toy,'' the catalogue says. The toys in the guide were chosen by the National Lekotek Center in Evanston, Ill., a nonprofit organization that promotes accessible play for disabled children. They were selected for their ability to promote things like motor functions, self-esteem and language skills. ''We evaluated about 250 toys, and there are about 100 toys in the guide,'' said Diane Nielander, a spokeswoman for the center. ''What we do is evaluate the toys here in our centers and look at them while children who come to receive services here play with them,'' Ms. Nielander said. ''We talk to the parents to see how they do with the toys at home, then ask a team of special education professionals to talk about the special attributes for a child with special needs.'' Ms. Nielander sees the project as part of a much-needed shift that is also likely to increase awareness of differences among all children. ''Originally you did not see dolls of people of color,'' she said. ''I can only hope other toy manufacturers seize the opportunity, if not as a business opportunity then also because it is right, to show people of different abilities and different colors in society.'' Some say the industry's efforts do not go far enough. Small specialty toy companies, though, have found a niche modifying toys to enable children with limited mobility to play with them. One such operation in Bohemia, N.Y., Kapable Kids, adds devices to toys that many handicapped children would otherwise not be able to use. In battery-powered toys, for instance, it replaces tiny, hard-to-flip switches with devices that can be squeezed or pulled. Whatever the improvements, those who care for disabled children say the changes could not have come soon enough. ''Toys are important for all children,'' said Dr. Philip R. Ziring, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on children with disabilities. ''They just need to be the right toy for | More Toys Are Reflecting Disabled Children's Needs |
982363_5 | their central disabilities were losing benefits. On the other hand, the officials said, only 28 percent of those claiming mental retardation were being cut. In Southside and its surrounding neighborhoods, 185 children have been ordered cut from benefits, threatening cash that has helped prop up entire households. With the new standards, many parents are left in the awkward position of rooting for an evaluation that will find a child's problems are significant. Marlene Torain of South Second Street said she spent six months trying to convince officials that her 5-year-old son, Jonathan, still qualified. He had a range of problems: his legs were in braces, and he was under the care of a psychiatrist for behavioral problems. If he was cut, Ms. Torain said she would try to get him regular welfare benefits. The letter eventually came. The benefits would continue. ''It was the first time I had relaxed in a long time,'' she said. Paula Schmecer, the mother of a 9-year-old boy, is anything but relaxed. She is awaiting a decision on her son, who suffers from heart disease, hyperactivity and severe myopia. ''It would mean disaster,'' said Mrs. Schmecer, whose husband teaches at a yeshiva. ''They are trying to cut as much as they can. They think people and their problems are illegitimate. I have an expensive boy who I try and build up as much as I can. How can I do that without funds?'' It has also not been an easy experience at the other end, where the bureaucrats try to explain the changes to disbelieving clients. Paul Cavalero, a supervisor in the Social Security Administration's office in Southside, had to explain the reversal to the same parents whom he had enthusiastically helped to obtain the benefits only two or three years ago. ''I would say they were amazed that they were no longer considered disabled,'' he said. Ruth Feinsile, meanwhile, spent the last six months trying to master an unflinching objectivity. A disability analyst for the state, she made the first decision on who was deserving and who was not. ''The children can not speak for themselves, and so I tried to work with what I had,'' Ms. Feinsile, a 40-year-old mother of two, said. ''It is always difficult. Each child is an individual. But it was not an emotional decision. It was a fact-based decision. I think we were fair.'' The state official who | Only Severely Impaired Children Need Apply |
982386_1 | in Asia, officials around the world see obvious parallels to past experiences like the American savings and loan debacle as well as complicated new problems. National systems intended to supervise banks in their home countries have proven unable to keep pace with the rapid development of a global financial marketplace that pays little attention to borders. There is no international body able to play the role of global regulator, and an inability by the United States and other powers to impose changes on the often-reluctant governments and banks in nations at risk. And efforts to bolster the soundness of financial systems in Asia and elsewhere by encouraging greater disclosure of financial data and by prodding large international banks to demand changes have so far yielded little if any success. A result is that to a remarkable extent, individual nations and even the worldwide economy are suddenly more at risk because of the ineffectiveness of obscure banking regulators in far-off countries. South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia are among the countries paying a steep price for the problems with their banks, and Japan is scrambling to avoid the same fate; just last week Japan unveiled a $77 billion plan to shore up its financial institutions. The ripples have crossed the Pacific, unsettling Wall Street, hurting exporters and potentially curbing economic growth in the United States. ''In the early 1980's the U.S. confused deregulation with supervision, and the same thing happened in Asia,'' said Charles Bowsher, the former head of the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. ''You pay a very big price, as we did in 1929 and the 1980's in this country, and what we're now seeing in Asia.'' With the International Monetary Fund taking the lead, multinational organizations and national governments have pledged more than $100 billion to bail out countries in Asia, the largest international rescue in history. Yet, paradoxically, there is no global body with the ability or the mandate to manage the problem. Individual countries monitor what their banks do at home and abroad, and what foreign banks do on their turf. But if central banks and national regulatory agencies can take individual snapshots, no organization is responsible for a global perspective. The principal body for coordinating international bank regulation -- a committee of worldwide regulators operating under the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland -- has made little progress until now in getting countries | Poor Oversight Said to Imperil World Banking |
982353_2 | be closed and people will not have to work on Christmas Day. The announcement came as an unexpected early Christmas gift for Cubans on the island and abroad. Many Cubans in the United States have always celebrated Christmas with a twinge of guilt and sadness, knowing that their relatives and friends on the island were not allowed to observe the holiday openly. Although some Cubans in the United States believe that Mr. Castro's gesture is small and long overdue, others are busily sending packages to relatives. Gifts, from plastic Christmas trees to traditional desserts, are crossing the ocean. Aura Gomez, 28, who left Cuba two years ago and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, said she sent toys to her three nephews. ''Nothing fancy, you know,'' she said as she boarded the train to her job as a waitress in Manhattan. ''But it's what I can send, and I do it with all my love.'' In New Jersey, a group of former Cuban political prisoners has sent about 300 Christmas cards to human right advocates and dissidents on the island, said Eduardo Ochoa, who spent three years in Cuban jails and now sells insurance in North Bergen, N.J. And in Miami, which has the highest concentration of Cubans outside the island, people are rushing to agencies to book flights to Cuba or send packages to relatives. Despite the embargo that the United States has maintained against Cuba for the last three decades, Cuban exiles can travel to the island to see their relatives and, with certain restrictions, can send packages. Some studies indicate that Cubans in the United States send a total of about $1 billion to the island each year in cash, food, medicine and other items. Nilda Serret, who runs the Miami-based Cuba Paquetes, one of the largest agencies sending people and packages to Cuba, said her business had increased 50 percent in the last week. Ms. Serret said she was shipping about 100 boxes a week. ''People are really happy around here,'' she said. ''They come to the agency and hug and kiss each other. They all want to go to Cuba to see their families or to see the Pope.'' In New York City, about 150 Cuban Catholics have already signed up to join a group coordinated by the archdiocese and led by John Cardinal O'Connor. Hundreds more are expected to sign up in early January as | An Exile's Dream: To See Cuba and the Pope |
983516_0 | RICHARD HAYMAN and Arthur Adams plan to reinvent the wheel -- the paddle wheel, that is. By building paddle wheelers to ply the Hudson River daily from Manhattan to Albany, the two men hope to re-create an industry whose last whistle was heard more than a half-century ago. ''It looks old, but it will have modern marine engineering,'' said Mr. Hayman, who with Mr. Adams has formed the Hudson River Navigation Company. Before this venture, Mr. Hayman was onboard director of cruise ships to the Arctic, the Antarctic and the Yangtze River and in Asian waters. Mr. Adams has written several books on the Hudson River's history. As a result of the damming of the Yangtze for construction of the Three Gorges megadam, Mr. Hayman's company, Victoria Cruises, is seeking other rivers to navigate. ''This is not a new idea,'' Mr. Hayman said. ''We're re-inventing an industry that was busy for more than 100 years.'' Using the ports of Yonkers, Irvington, Peekskill, Bear Mountain Landing, West Point, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Kingston Point, Catskill Point, Hudson and Albany-Troy, all once served by steam-powered paddle wheelers, the Hudson River Line plans to link its service with other modes of transportation. ''We plan to match inland roads and railroads,'' Mr. Hayman said. ''And resorts -- many have faded away for lack of ship service. We think they will revive.'' The Hudson River Line will stop at all those ports again. A one-way ticket from Manhattan to Albany will cost $15. Travel time is about nine hours. ''What is unique in this project is the multiple markets that will be addressed: day trippers, local residents from New York City and travelers between all of the ports, mostly local people,'' Mr. Hayman said. ''Then international leisure travelers will come from all around the world to visit the Hudson Valley.'' Starting in 1999 with two boats, both now being built, the Hudson River Line will be able to transport 1,000 passengers on each boat daily. Each vessel will leave port in Manhattan or Albany at 9 A.M., arriving at the other port around 6 P.M. Mr. Hayman said that discussions were under way about the use of Piers 76, 82 or the passenger ship terminal, and that , loading of passengers at Manhattan would be done on the west side at one of the Midtown Hudson River piers. Overnight, the vessel will dock at Weehawken. In Albany, | Company Plans Return of Paddle Wheeler |
983709_0 | When Joseph and Roxana Hartmann moved to Loudoun County, Va., four years ago, they enrolled their autistic son, Mark, in second grade at Ashburn Elementary School, where officials took many steps to accommodate him in a regular classroom. They hired a full-time aide and trained both the aide and Mark's teacher in a special communication technique used with some autistic children. They placed Mark in a smaller-than-usual class, and they took him out five hours a week for speech and language therapy, and three more to work with a special education teacher who also consulted with his teacher and aide. Still, Mark had daily episodes of loud screeching and often hit, pinched, kicked, bit or removed his clothing. By the end of the year, the school decided that he belonged in a special class for autistic children at Leesburg Elementary. The Hartmanns disagreed, and sued, spawning a protracted legal battle that stands as a troubling example of how bitter placement disputes can become. To avoid the segregated class, Mrs. Hartmann moved her son 230 miles away, to Blacksburg, Va., a town known for its inclusionary policies, where Mark is now a sixth-grader in Blacksburg Middle School. Every weekend, Mrs. Hartmann and Mark commute back to Loudoun County, where Mr. Hartmann and Mark's 13-year-old sister still live in the family home -- and where the family hopes to be reunited if the Supreme Court accepts their appeal, and rules that Mark must be allowed to attend regular classes. Usually, parents and school officials can negotiate decisions about where to place a child, and what services to provide. But when they cannot agree, the dispute can go to mediation, administrative hearings, and then to court. As parents become more savvy about disability law, and more aggressive about seeking the setting and services they want, tensions between families and schools are rising, and legal challenges are becoming more common. While school officials are aware of how much disagreements with families can cost -- in time, legal fees and community polarization -- there are some situations in which they will not follow the family's wishes. ''There are some cases where it's a forced fit, it's inappropriate and it doesn't work, either for the child with the disability or for the rest of the class,'' said Ned Waterhouse, the special education coordinator in Loudoun. ''I don't believe one size fits all in special education. I | Family Tests Law on the Meaning of Inclusion |
983629_0 | BUYING gasoline is a chore; drivers want to get in and out of the gas station as quickly as possible and be on their way. To help ease the process, some big gasoline retailers are experimenting with new gadgets, including radio transmissions, robot arms and scanner technology. All are intended to move motorists along -- and maybe even without the smell of gasoline on their hands. ''This is a fiercely competitive business, and the gasoline companies are trying to differentiate themselves from each other,'' said Ed Maran, an associate analyst with A. G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. One of the best-known programs is the Mobil Corporation's Speedpass system. Introduced in May and now available at more than 2,500 Mobil stations, it allows customers to buy gas at the pump and have the charge automatically billed to a pre-selected credit card. Enrolled drivers are given a tag, which can be attached to a key ring or placed in a vehicle's rear window. Motorists can wave the key tag at a scanner at the pump, or stop at a special pump that scans the window tag; either tag activates the fueling. To bolster the use of Speedpass, Mobil discontinued the sign-up fees, which originally ranged from $4.95 to $10.95. Joe Giordano, Mobil's acting pricing and technology manager, said research showed that consumers using Speedpass increased their gas purchases by about one per month. Shell Oil is testing its similar Easy Pay system, consisting of an electronic key-chain device that is also waved in front of a scanner at the pump. The device costs $3.99, and the service is now available at 125 of Shell's 9,000 stations. Shell is not yet sure whether the one-time fee for the device will remain, said Art Driscoll, manager of product development for Shell Oil Products. Early next year, Shell will also begin testing its Smart Pump, an automated fueling system. A robotic arm automatically pumps gas through a special fuel cap that replaces the car's original cap. The new cap can still be used for conventional fueling at other gas stations, Mr. Driscoll said. The Smart Pump also requires a low-range radio transmitter that is mounted to the windshield. Once the customer selects a grade of gas, the automated fueling arm moves around the car, finds the fuel cap, opens the fuel door and dispenses gas. A typical self-service fueling would be cut from | Beyond Self-Serve: Robots and Magic Wands |
983413_3 | nature transposed across time,'' our Horace explains. Despite himself, he can't help feeling attracted, in different ways, to two people in town, each an outsider like him. Mohr, the head librarian, is a gaunt 60-ish scholar with a bad wig and ''an air of chemotherapy'' whose ''mouth makes a clacking sound, a labial, dental, skeletal blend of noises as he talks.'' Mohr, who's battling lung cancer, becomes Horace's intellectual partner and unlikely drinking companion. ''Don't call me gay,'' Mohr confides drunkenly. ''I'm too old to be gay. I'm homosexual.'' The scenes of the two men together are the book's best, providing sharp dialogue and a touching real-life analogy for some of the Roman Horace's verses. The other significant outsider is Sylvia, an embittered 31-year-old former factory worker with chewed nails and a self-destructive flair: ''In case you're wondering why I drink so much. I have trouble sleeping.'' She may bear a name from Roman poetry, but her problems are of the here and now -- losing her job, getting mixed up with the wrong men, being questioned by the police. Skillfully, the author sketches Sylvia's mix of gallantry and vulgar defiance, her ''redneck stoicism.'' Although she's wholly inappropriate for Horace, she has a visceral pull that (amusingly) puzzles him far more than us. Sylvia, it turns out, needs substantial help, and in facing this realization, Horace finally accepts connection, risk and sacrifice. By doing so, he learns perhaps the biggest philosophical truth: that it is in our human need to cherish and help others that we can find God or ''spirit or soul,'' that ''shadowy self that lurks underneath all experience.'' The novel has its wrinkles. With no strong antagonist, the plot is a bit tepid (although always plausible). More serious is the problem of a narrator who is too opaque, who never thinks about his childhood or suggests what traumas he may have endured. It's not enough to say that Horace is repressed or that he lives in the present: we soon get the annoying suspicion that we're not really inside his head. Yet the reader can overlook such flaws, thanks to the book's confident portrait of the town and its observations on struggling humanity. The simple ending, oddly moving, hits a note of loss and acceptance that could have been written by the original Horace. David Sacks is the author of the Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World. | Nowhere Man |
983739_1 | who has Down syndrome, serves as ''12th man'' for the football team, cheering from the bench. As the debate over how and where to educate the nation's six million children with disabilities has become increasingly polarized -- and litigious -- Vermont is singular in its commitment to integrating severely disabled students into regular classrooms, keeping almost 9 out of 10 in regular classes for most of the day. And unlike most states, Vermont has always kept students with learning disabilities, who make up nearly half the state's 11,000 children with disabilities, in regular classes. Although Vermont's record is unlikely to be matched anytime soon, most states, in response to prodding from the Federal Government and recent amendments to the Federal disability law, are also moving toward greater integration. In Vermont, where the rugged terrain has helped produce a strong tradition of local control, experiments with integration -- the latest term for what is also called mainstreaming or inclusion -- began in a few districts in the early 1980's. But they did not take off statewide until 1989, when the state changed its school financing formulas to remove financial incentives for keeping children in segregated placements, giving districts just as much money to provide services in a child's home school. Since 1975, the Federal Individuals With Disabilities in Education Act has guaranteed children with disabilities the right to free and appropriate educations in the least restrictive environment. Under amendments this year, all states have to adopt financing plans that, as with Vermont's, offer no financial incentive to place disabled children outside their home schools. Special education costs $30 billion a year in Federal, state and local money, and it accounts for 19 percent of all money spent on schools, up from 17.8 percent in 1991, according to a study of nine representative districts by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, a nonpartisan research group. There are huge differences from state to state on the placement of children with disabilities, who make up 11 percent of the school population. Where such children are best taught is a complicated question with pedagogical, ethical and financial overtones. The number of children who have diagnoses of disabilities, and especially learning disabilities, has been steadily increasing. That has led some educators to contend that disabilities are vastly overdiagnosed and that special education is too often used as a catchall for poor minority-group students whose difficulties may | ALL IN ONE: A special report. ; Where All Doors Are Open for Disabled Students |
979265_0 | WITH air traffic back to normal after Thanksgiving, but with Christmas only two weeks away, the airlines have issued tips for business and leisure travelers to help make their flights more bearable. While some of the tips are self-evident, such as leaving early for the airport, others are less familiar. These include mailing gifts ahead of time or leaving them unwrapped if carried aboard, since wrapped packages may have to be opened at security checkpoints. Put address tags on the inside as well as the outside of each bag, in case the outer tag comes off. While the crackdown on carry-on luggage has received a lot of publicity lately, UAL's United Airlines advises that passengers familiarize themselves with checked-baggage allowances. For example, if traveling with skis, snow boards, bicycles or golf clubs, travelers should check with the airline about packaging and whether such items require an additional fee. Travelers with laptop computers should be especially careful, since laptops remain a prime target of the thieves and teams of well-dressed brigands that hang around airports, including around the security checkpoints. Expanding South Business travelers to Latin America have never had it so convenient, as destinations and additional flights are added almost weekly. This morning, for example, Delta Air Lines will announce its plans for expanding to Latin America. It already has applications pending for flights between Orlando, Fla., and Caracas, Venezuela; Orlando and Santiago, Chile; Orlando and Lima, Peru; New York and Rio de Janeiro, and New York and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Two weeks ago AMR's American Airlines, the leading airline between the United States and Latin America, began daily nonstop service between Miami and Asuncion, Paraguay, and on Monday will begin flying between Dallas/Fort Worth and Pueblo, Mexico. Next April, American will begin daily nonstop service between Miami and Cozumel, Mexico, and United will begin daily nonstop service between Chicago and Guatemala on Dec. 1. LAB Bolivian Airlines has added two flights a week between Miami and Santa Cruz, Bolivia, for total of nine. On Dec. 19, Varig Airlines, which recently began daily service between Washington and Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, will start daily service between Miami and Salvador, Brazil. On Dec. 27, LanChile Airlines will begin flying between Orlando and Santiago. On Feb. 12, Continental Airlines -- which already flies to 13 Latin American nations, including 11 destinations in Mexico -- will begin daily nonstop service between | Business Travel; Fliers can make their trips during the holidays easier if they take advantage of some airline tips. |
984217_1 | N.Y., about 35 miles north of New York City, is a 50-acre retreat, run by the society, that welcomes disabled children for long weekends over school holidays. The camp's dual mission is to provide joyous days for children and a break for their beleaguered parents. Camping costs are subsidized by the Neediest Cases Fund, so families like the Parkers pay less than $15 a day. The campgrounds are lush and expansive, but the setting is intimate. Each trip includes just 42 campers, 21 counselors, a handful of social workers, a doctor and a nurse. Respite Weekends, as they are called, represent only a tiny fraction of the work done by the Children's Aid Society. Yet the agency, whose members believe it is important to comfort children who live their lives in pain, has organized the weekend trips for 56 years. Lukas Weinstein, the director of the camp, said that Wagon Road ''tries to normalize the childhood experience for kids who don't lead normal lives.'' To that end, traditional camp activities are tailored to campers' abilities. Children with cerebral palsy ride horses while instructors hold the reins. In winter, when campers climb aboard toboggans, counselors form a human chain at the bottom of the hill to intercept the speeding sledders. In summer, teen-agers who use wheelchairs put on life jackets and are eased down a ramp into the swimming pool, where they float up out of their chairs to swim. Many of the campers are shunned by children in their neighborhoods, but group activities at Wagon Road encourage them to form lasting friendships. Evan Silva, a 14-year-old autistic boy from Queens, did not speak until he was 8 years old, except to holler when anyone approached. Now, after five years as a regular camper at Wagon Road, Evan plays basketball and soccer, and he eagerly recites a lengthy list of his friends' names. While the children sing around the campfire and enjoy pajama parties, their parents spend the weekend at home sleeping late, going to movies and enjoying a brief break from the constant care the children require. At first, many parents are terrified to leave their children with strangers. Louisa Albritton of the Bronx wept the whole weekend her son, Earnest, first attended camp, until he came home clutching ribbons for his swimming prowess. Ms. Parker had never let Melodie go anywhere by herself until that first weekend in 1992. | The Neediest Cases; A Respite for Children, and a Break for Parents |
984248_3 | received no response. But the pages of many other foreign news sources, including The Washington Post, were accessible, as were many X-rated sites reached via a common Web browser. Controlling Web sites is a Sisyphean task because so many new ones are constantly being created, and people with skill and determination can find ways to bypass the Government barriers. Though a monitor may be able to identify messages by their labels -- for example, www.amnesty.com -- seditious information can be disguised. Still, one blocked site, that of the group Human Rights in China, based in New York, still gets dozens of ''hits'' from inside China each week, said the executive director, Xiao Qiang. Another banned site from the United States, China News Digest, gets hundreds each week, he said. E-mail is the Government's real Achilles' heel. Security agents can tap phones and monitor the contents of some among the blizzard of letters, but there is no way to censor them. More likely, a monitoring program could be used to gather evidence against addressees should the Government wish to suppress their access to information. The scattered, usually silent remnant of democracy advocates here has found ways, together with exiles, to exploit electronic mail. It is not so useful, they say, for sending sensitive messages directly to one person in China, because the line might be tapped and because so many accounts have numerous readers. ''But it's great for the mass distribution of information,'' Mr. Xiao said by telephone from New York, noting that news or articles can be sent to dozens or hundreds of addresses to be widely read, with no one clearly responsible. He pointed to an electronic magazine called ''Tunnel,'' a weekly forum for free political discussion that is mainly written and edited inside China. The contents are sent by E-mail to a Silicon Valley address where it is electronically mailed back into China to thousands of addresses. Some 20 issues have appeared since it began in June. China's struggle to tame the squirming Internet octopus reflects what many experts see as the Government's central conundrum: how to foster economic growth and freedom while keeping tight screws on politics. Mr. Zhu, the security official who announced the new rules, gave no nod to the possible trade-offs. ''The safe and effective management of computer information networks,'' he said, ''is a prerequisite for the smooth implementation of the country's modernization drive.'' | China Cracks Down on Dissent in Cyberspace |
984223_1 | *At least 74 countries -- including Nigeria, Iran, Ethiopia, Iraq, El Salvador, Guatemala, Syria, Honduras and Nicaragua -- will probably double their populations in 30 years. *Thirty-three countries, 25 of them in Africa, still have a fertility rate of 6 children per woman. *About three billion women -- the equivalent of the world's population in 1960 -- will enter their child-bearing years in the next few years. *More than 30 percent of all births in 1997 took place in one country: India. Although India's fertility rate fell sharply between 1986 and 1997, India is still expected to overtake China as the world's most populous country by the middle of the next century. Authors of the report hope that it will provide fodder for what is expected to be a contentious debate over funds for abortion when Congress returns next month. In November, Congress stripped $3.5 billion from the American contribution to the International Monetary Fund and $1 billion from a fund to pay the American debt to the United Nations, in both cases citing the dispute over abortion funds. Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House, prodded by anti-abortion Republicans, has said the House will only approve the two spending measures if the Clinton Administration agrees to ban the use of Federal money by any private or government organization that supports abortions overseas or counsels women about their availability. Officials with the Population Institute express the fear that as Congress resumes debate on the funds for the United Nations and the I.M.F., lawmakers' views on aid for abortion will be influenced by a spate of recent articles that assert that the world's population crisis is over. One article, by Ben J. Wattenberg and published in The New York Times Magazine, noted that birth rates had begun to plummet, and that in Europe and Japan fertility rates are about 1.4 children per woman, far below the level needed to keep their populations from declining. Mr. Wattenberg wrote that ''mounting evidence, from rich nations and poor, strongly suggests that the population explosion is fizzling.'' Werner Fornos, president of the Population Institute, agreed that overall birth rates are declining. But he said the world's population is still rising sharply. It would be arrogant to think, he said, ''that the problem is over because the Caucasian race has balanced its population, and that we can now ignore the problems of the poorest of the poor.'' | Global Crisis in Population Is Far From Over, a Group Warns |
984296_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-9 New Internet Rules in China May Be Aimed at Dissent China has introduced new regulations criminalizing the use of electronic mail and the Internet in ways that defame Government agencies or promote separatist movements. Officials cited a need ''to safeguard national security and social stability.'' A3 Avian Flu Safeguards The bird-flu outbreak that has killed four people in Hong Kong originated from chickens imported from mainland China, Hong Kong officials declared. They said they had worked out an elaborate inspection system to screen poultry imports from the mainland and would extend a ban on imports until it was set up. A3 Vietnam Chooses Hard-Liner Vietnam announced that Gen. Le Kha Phieu had been appointed to the country's top post, General Secretary of the Communist Party. General Phieu, reputed to be a law-and-order enthusiast, replaces Do Moui, who in the 1980's steered the country through a modest liberalizing phase. A9 Kenya Vote Ends in Confusion Both President Daniel arap Moi and the opposition in Kenya accused the Electoral Commission of rigging the elections against them after a second day of voting. Chaos had blossomed at the polls amid bad weather and anger at an erratic distribution of ballots. The specter of resurgent political violence hovered as politicians on all sides armed themselves with reasons to reject the results. A4 Judge Disrupts U.S. Policy Legal experts said that a Texas magistrate's unexpected decision to release a Rwandan Hutu charged with genocide and refuse a government request to surrender him to an international tribunal demonstrated that judges were clashing more and more often with Federal agencies trying to carry out international treaty obligations. Some warned that the precedent could prove ''very disruptive'' to the conduct of American foreign policy, which often pressures other countries to extradite people. A4 Population Growth Is Slowing A study by the liberal-leaning Population Institute said the world's population growth was slowing but warned that it was still comparable to an overwhelming tidal wave and emphasized that it was concentrated in poorer countries. The authors of the report hope it will provide fodder for an upcoming Congressional debate on the funding of abortions overseas and counter a spate of recent articles contending that declining population rates in developed countries are the real crisis. A6 Conviction in Anti-Muslim Case Tatyana Suskin was convicted in a Jerusalem court of committing an act of racism and trying to offend religious | NEWS SUMMARY |
984303_3 | my experience because it was the second round of the playoffs. ''I like to think that I brought that experience when I was there. It's hard to make it up. I don't think anything takes the place of stability in the league. That's the thing that stands and can be a mainstay with any team.'' Harper has always been solid, always strong enough for his teammates to lean on. But how is he playing? He started off slowly with the Magic, and was hampered by a thigh bruise. His play slipped, and Mark Price took over at point guard. But in Anfernee Hardaway's absence because of an injury, Harper has taken over the shooting guard position, and turned on some offense. ''When I was out, the team won without me,'' said Harper, who is averaging 21 minutes and 7.8 points a game and shooting 47.9 percent from the field. ''You have to work your way back into it. Unfortunately, guys had to be injured for me to get back some quality minutes. ''I'm doing whatever they want me to do. After 15 years in the league, it's kind of hard to cry about minutes.'' This is typical Harper. Attitude in check. There have been moments when the Knicks have been preoccupied with playing time instead of winning. And this was before Ewing's departure. On top of correcting their inconsistent effort, the Knicks must learning how to cope with Ewing's absence. ''I think it's a process of learning how to play without a guy like Patrick,'' Harper said. ''I don't think you can lose a guy like that and then be the same basketball team. Everything runs through Patrick from an offensive and defensive standpoint. It's going to be difficult. But I think they can learn because they have the personnel that won't allow them to just sink.'' Harper is that kind of player, a life preserver in rough waters. It is not that the Knicks did not understand Harper's contributions, but they had to weigh the other side of the equation. They opted for the younger mix of Houston and Childs, knowing Harper was most likely in the sunset of his career. And that was, and is, true. ''I want to hang out with my kids,'' said Harper, who is leaning toward retiring when his contract runs out after this season. ''I think it's good to go out contributing.'' BASKETBALL | Soft Shot, Soft Voice: Harper Can Still Lead |
984205_2 | fishing, butterfly ranching, a contract with the Zurich Zoo and a plan for ''eco-certified'' logging -- activities that CARE, the private aid agency which is managing this new park, hopes will provide income to the local population and keep them from encroaching on Masoala. For instance, the fishermen of Ambodirafia at the mouth of the Onive River have worked only from dugout canoes inside the reef, where the water is calm. The bay had been overfished and the young men had begun turning their attention inland, toward the forest. Then CARE gave the village fishing cooperative a sturdy 20-foot boat with an outboard motor. Nowadays, members of the cooperative take turns steering their new boat into the unfished waters past the reef, bringing in more than 100 pounds of fish a day, enough to feed themselves with some left over to sell to inland villages. ''The young men who had gone to the forest have come back now,'' said Pierre Alfonse, the president of the cooperative, sitting beneath a palm tree near his shack. ''Now we would like to buy another boat.'' Upriver, a stretch of rain forest on the edge of the park has already been surveyed for what officials hope will be an environmentally friendly logging operation. Only the faster growing trees are to be cut, and only at a pace that will let the forest replenish itself. And in the village of Tanamboa, also in the buffer zone, two other projects are under way. A nursery is being developed to supply the Zurich Zoo with local plants for an exhibit on tropical rain forests. The zoo is building a greenhouse with a 90-foot ceiling to house what it hopes will be a perfect replica of this eco-system. In addition to buying the plants, the zoo will collect donations from visitors, to share with villagers near the park. The women of Tanamboa are also being taught butterfly ranching. The idea is to collect butterfly eggs and nurture them until they can be sent off to zoos that have butterfly houses or sold as dead specimens to collectors. Strict policing of the park is considered far too expensive and to some degree politically unviable. ''Many reproach us for protecting lemurs and orchids instead of human beings,'' said Raymond J. Rakotonindrina, the director general of the nation's parks agency. ''It is not practical to throw everyone in a jail cell.'' | Masoala Journal; Rare Fauna, Flora and Human Want |
978990_7 | links charity and commerce -- saying, for example, that buying a certain handmade craft will help American Indians, or that a magazine subscription will help save tropical rain forests -- determine how much money goes to the charitable cause (usually far less than with a direct donation). * Investigate before donating. Check whether the charity is registered in your state and whether any reports have been issued on it by the local Better Business Bureau, the Attorney General's Office and national groups like the Philanthropic Advisory Service or the American Institute of Philanthropy. It is generally not a good idea to check out one charity with other charities, which usually have limited information and are also competing for your money. * Find out what portion of donor dollars will go to program services and what portion will go to administrative and fund-raising costs. The Better Business Bureau recommends that at least 50 percent be spent on program services; the American Institute of Philanthropy recommends a minimum of 60. Get as specific a breakdown of costs as possible. ''Public education,'' for example, can include direct-mail and telemarketing expenses. * Use common sense: Do not give your credit card number to a charity over the phone or over the Internet unless there is encryption ability. Do not send cash. Get a receipt: the I.R.S. requires one for tax-deductible donations. Verify any E-mail solicitation by sending an E-mail message back and then calling the charity. The following are some sources for information about charities: The American Institute of Philanthropy is the pit bull of watchdogs. Its staff members dig deeper than most other overseers, going to state and Federal records to get information that charities do not volunteer, honing in on program efficiency and exposing abuses. The institute publishes a quarterly newsletter and charity rating guide that gives charities an A through F grade, based on their use of funds. For more information, call (301) 913-5200. The Philanthropic Advisory Service of the Better Business Bureau (http://www.bbb.org) judges national charities by 23 standards for charitable solicitations, using categories like accountability, governance and fund-raising. Eighty to 90 percent of charities queried provide the service with information; of those, about 75 percent meet the standards. For more information, call (703) 247-9323. Information on more than 600,000 charities can be found through Guidestar (http://www.guidestar.org). The National Charities Information Bureau (http://www.give.org) evaluates national charities according to a list | In a World of Good Causes, Beware Waste and a Few Crooks |
979019_6 | heat and a liquid ocean.'' In the closer encounters, the spacecraft just might photograph any frozen lakes that exist, suggesting recent seepage to the surface, or perhaps watery geysers. ''That would say there's water right there, right now,'' Dr. McKinnon said. Galileo's magnetometers might also contribute suggestive data. A Europan ocean would probably be salty. As Jupiter's powerful magnetic field passes through the moon, it should create electric currents in any salty ocean. This in turn should induce a Europan magnetic field detectable by the spacecraft. Whether Europa has a self-generated magnetic field, not one induced by Jupiter's, is not clear from Galileo's ambiguous observations so far. Although Dr. Squyres of Cornell said the extended mission was certain to produce ''more evidence, pro and con, on the water problem,'' he doubted that it would resolve the issue. ''I would not be surprised if the issue is still controversial two years from now,'' he said. A committee of scientists advising NASA is studying ideas for a mission to orbit Europa with instruments that might settle the matter in the next decade. Besides cameras, the spacecraft would carry a laser altimeter to measure the changing shape of Europa as its surface bulges and subsides in response to powerful tidal forces. Differences of a few dozen feet in the bulges could tell scientists if Europa has a large ocean. A radar system on the craft could penetrate the surface ice with microwave beams and determine boundaries between ice and water and then the rocky interior. Scientists are also developing proposals for more advanced probes, in case the existence of a Europan ocean is confirmed. One concept is to penetrate the ice surface with seismometers or even a miniature submarine, which would melt its way down into the ocean. Such thinking reflects a mounting enthusiasm to learn more about Europa and Jupiter's other large moons. Like Galileo in 1610, who recognized the Jovian moons as a revealing microcosm of the solar system, scientists today are finding in them new insights about the origin and evolution of the Sun's family of planets and satellites. They are struck by the fact that the inner moons, Io and Europa, are relatively small and composed mostly or entirely of rock and metal, while Ganymede and Callisto, about the size of the planet Mercury, are roughly half ice. In an article in the Nov. 6 issue of the journal | Fire, Water and, Maybe, Life in Jupiter's Realm |
977433_6 | of landscape painters for inspiration, attention to order and arrangement in the case is an index of quality. Fish isn't everything. The word ''sushi'' refers to the rice cake that the fish sits on, not the fish itself, and sushi chefs can spend two years learning how to turn out perfect rice, chewy with a glossy sheen, seasoned with rice vinegar, sugar and salt. The seaweed wrap used for certain fish should be crisp and crackly. The best sushi restaurants use high-grade soy sauce, mellow tasting rather than salty, and serve freshly grated wasabi root, rather than a blob of powdered wasabi paste, as a garnish for sashimi. In the ideal piece of sushi, all elements achieve a balance that brings out the best in the fish, which is one reason not everyone approves of draping an extra-generous slice of fish over the rice cake, as is done at restaurants like Tomoe and Yama.''To me that's not good,'' said Yuko Kawakita, the vice president of Crossing International, an export consultancy. ''The combination with rice is important. There shouldn't be too much of one or the other.'' Sushi chefs spend 5 to 10 years as apprentices at a sushi restaurant, learning how to handle each type of fish and how to bring out its essential character. American diners often undo this work in a matter of seconds by piling on the wasabi and soaking the rice in soy, a twofold mistake, since the flavor of the fish disappears and the rice falls apart. Some diners take a wad of pickled ginger, which is intended as a palate refreshener, drench it in soy sauce, and pile it on top of their sushi. This is bad. Masuo Yoshino, a writer and eminent sushi chef in Japan, takes a liberal position on many points of sushi etiquette. He pooh-poohs the widely held belief that the only proper way to eat sushi is with the fingers, turning the fish downward, swiping it quickly across a puddle of soy, and eating it fish side down. Fingers or chopsticks? Your choice. Whatever is easiest is fine with Mr. Yoshino. On the soy sauce issue, however, he does not budge, especially the nefarious practice of taking the fish off the rice cake, dunking it in soy sauce and reassembling the sushi unit. This practice, he notes, is ''viewed with great disappointment by the sushi chef.'' It is not | From Merely Loving Sushi, to Knowing It |
977035_1 | three hours, will require 9 or 10. Reels from first- and second-run theaters are eventually shipped to what the industry calls a rejuvenation center, like Hollywood Film in Los Angeles, which each year turns more than two million feet of scratched, chipped and smudged film into one million feet of film that is like new, said Frank Heller, operations manager of the film services division of Hollywood Film. Count this as Recycle No. 2. ''I don't know what the theaters do with them sometimes,'' Mr. Heller said. ''The films come in in such bad condition. We grade every scratch, to see if it's projectable. Then we put the films through a nonabrasive process that cleans them and cures the scratches.'' To make complete sets of rejuvenated films, Hollywood also mixes and matches the various surviving reels. Liz Galvin, an executive at Fox International, which handles foreign distribution for 20th Century Fox, said, ''On 'Volcano,' I went through eight pallets of films to get the prints I needed, because it had been played repeatedly.'' Those rejuvenated prints often end up being shipped to English-speaking countries like Australia and South Africa and sometimes are subtitled, particularly for distribution in Eastern Europe. (Executives who work in international distribution say most subtitling is done on new prints.) But even these films eventually finish their play dates abroad. At some point, there are very few people on earth who want the thousands of pounds of reels for ''The Cable Guy'' or even ''The Lost World.'' Of course, there are archives, but even they want only a print or two of the most important films. That leaves about 95 percent of the prints with no mission in life. Where does this useless, played-out film ultimately go? Mountain City, Tenn. The Eastman Kodak Company acquired a film recycling company in Mountain City 10 years ago to do something with all that tired film stock. In the early days of film, when the stock was made of cellulose nitrate, studios sometimes burned old films for special effects. The highly flammable reels were thrown onto the flames when a film maker needed to shoot a really explosive fire. By 1951, movies were being printed on triacetate stock, known as safety stock because it was far less flammable than nitrate. But in the last five years, most studios have made the switch to polyester. Yes, polyester. ''We used to use | For Old Films, the Ending Almost Always Comes Out the Same |
977049_2 | back with ''remove'' in the subject and text fields. Done. The volume eased; the problem was not solved. Most of these services are at least honest enough to identify the nature of their business in the subject line. But a few weeks ago, E-mail whose subject line read ''testing. . .'' was left untouched. Molly opened that one and got raunch in her face. There was an option: America Online has a parental control allowing subscribers to limit incoming mail access to people whose names and addresses they designate. My wife and I rejected that. Friends whom Molly had lost touch with when we last moved could not have reached her, as several had in the last year. A call to Hotmail, a California company that appeared to be the source of many of the sleaziest messages, yielded a vice president, Steve Douty, who said Hotmail cuts off clients using its service to send commercial solicitations but can do little about those forging a hotmail.com address. A call to America Online yielded its general counsel, George Vradenburg, who identified ''spam'' as the biggest source of complaints from America Online subscribers. (Spam is Net talk for unsolicited commercial E-mail, which costs the sender next to nothing but costs a system and its users in terms of wasted time and effort.) But E-mails with subject lines like ''testing. . .'' and ''hi'' -- the kind Molly would be most likely to open -- often produce sexually explicit invitations and links to Web sites with frankly pornographic pictures. Molly knows she should avoid clicking on any of these links. Mr. Vradenburg and Mr. Douty both said they favored legislation to regulate spam, including new criminal laws, if necessary. The United States Postal Service already has a civil law that a spokesman, John Brugger, said ''almost invariably'' stops unwanted solicitations from sex services. Had Molly received snail mail from the sex services, she could have gone to the Post Office, filled out Form 1500 and attached the offending envelope and its contents. The Post Office, Mr. Brugger said, would notify the sender to remove my name and address from its lists. ''These guys want to sell to customers, not waste time and money fighting us,'' Mr. Brugger said. The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission both enforce laws and regulations that require telephone solicitors to remove individuals who request it from their | Delete, Delete, Delete: Trying to Keep an 11-Year-Old's E-Mail Smut-Free |
977022_1 | years after playing host to the 1992 Earth Summit here, Brazil claimed that the destruction of the Amazon rain forest -- home to the world's richest trove of bacterial, plant, animal and insect species -- was on the decline. But when it finally released data last year on the period through 1994, the figures showed precisely the opposite, a 34 percent increase in deforestation, to about 15,000 square kilometers a year from 11,000 square kilometers, destroyed through colonization by ranchers and farmers and illegal logging. Once again this year, official word on the extent of rain forest destruction, this time for data since 1994, is running late, with the Government pledging to release them the day before the Kyoto conference begins. But the thick clouds of black smoke that have shut schools and airports near the forests' edges have left little doubt among Brazilians about the trend. Weather satellites show the number of fires increased 11 percent in the June to October burning season. While most fires are not located in primary rain forest, some environmentalists believe that the increased burning corresponds to an increase in deforestation and makes the rain forests more vulnerable to accidental fires. Brazilian officials say they are making progress. They are moving to crack down on deforestation by revoking 63 percent of logging licenses, many of which were being used to log in excess of legal limits, and are overhauling government policies that traditionally rewarded ranching or planting in the rain forest as an improvement on the land. But environmentalists fear that the Amazon may face new threats ahead. A state-of-the-art radar surveillance project to reveal the Amazon's hidden resources is under way, as well as major road projects to make the Amazon more accessible for industry. Before the Kyoto meeting, Brazilian officials said their country's fires and rain forest destruction paled next to the environmental damage caused by United States industry, which puts out 22 percent of the world's fossil fuel emissions. Brazil says it puts out less than 3 percent of the fossil fuel emissions. Brazilian officials also criticize the G-7, the seven richest industrial nations, for declining to spend $1.5 billion for environmental protection programs that Brazil requested in 1990. But environmentalists argue that the problem is not one of money, but of political will. Of the $260 million that was pledged, Brazil has spent only some 30 percent. DIANA JEAN SCHEMO | GLOBAL WARMING: Around the Globe, Big Worries and Small Signs of Progress; In Brazil, a Struggle To Save Rain Forest |
977045_0 | As recent events surrounding the new Steven Spielberg movie have borne out, the Amistad affair is and was a debate about who owns history. The facts were never in dispute. In 1839 a group of West African captives took over their ship, the Amistad, tried to sail her back home from the Caribbean, ended up off Long Island and were taken to jail in Connecticut. The legal argument then hinged on whether they were slaves, and therefore must be returned to the Spanish authorities, or free, and therefore could have their wishes heeded and be transported back across the Atlantic. The intervention on their side by a former President, John Quincy Adams, and the Supreme Court ruling in their favor make this a heroic moment in 19th-century America's efforts toward racial equality. But it was an incident that almost disappeared from memory for a century and a half -- a history not owned by anyone but ignored by all -- before becoming the subject of books, a film and an opera. Composers and librettists have their own ways of appropriating history, not least by making it sing. But in the case of ''Amistad,'' which was given its premiere by the Lyric Opera yesterday evening, the composer, Anthony Davis, and his librettist cousin, Thulani Davis, have also gone some way toward rewriting an exemplary instance of liberalism as an African folk tale. To the large cast of human characters -- black prisoners, white reporters, John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren -- they add the Trickster God and the Goddess of the Waters. One big problem, unless it be desperate comment, is that these black divinities are disempowered. The Goddess of the Waters appears only for one big aria, which, if only the music were there, could possibly be justified as a luscious side issue. (Certainly Florence Quivar was making every effort to squeeze lusciousness into the material.) The Trickster God begins the opera with a long solo in which he insists that he is the tale teller, but then narrative authority is taken out of his hands and dropped. Though he keeps reappearing in the action, his function is obscure. Thomas Young, who performed this role, was left having to rely on a repertory of vivid glances, angular gestures and sneaky moves, while his characteristically intense, tightly focused singing could find no purchase in the music. Anthony Davis's score is | Captives Who Confront Presidents and Gods |
981702_1 | said. The new post and other measures approved by the Assembly are not related to reforms demanded by the United States Congress. The naming of a Deputy Secretary General will be one of several appointments the Secretary General will make in the coming weeks. Apparently bowing to pressure from the third world, the United Nations has decided to nominate someone from a developing nation to replace a German woman it had named to help decide how to spend Ted Turner's $1 billion gift. The case sheds light on the way United Nations jobs are often apportioned for political or geographical reasons. On Nov. 19, officials said that Angela Kane, a career official who has been in charge of publications, the library and the organization's computerized information systems, which she largely created, would be the United Nations' liaison to the foundation set up by Mr. Turner. Officials now say that Ms. Kane, who has been doing the job for more than a month, has been told that her appointment was only temporary. Mr. Annan is expected to replace her as early as next week. A candidate from Latin America is likely to be appointed. Mr. Turner's United Nations Foundation named Timothy E. Wirth, a former Senator from Colorado who is now the Clinton Administration's Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, as its director. Envoys said that developing nations have convinced the Secretary General's advisers that since much of the Turner money will go into programs for economic development, environmental protection and poverty reduction, the job required someone with experience in those areas, preferably with a third world background. Ms. Kane, who declined to talk about the change in plans, will return to a job in the information department, officials said. Whenever new appointments are made or candidates considered, governments around the world are very keenly attuned to what is known as ''geographic balance.'' Ms. Kane, like Ms. Frechette, is considered a person from ''the north'' -- the industrialized countries. For those who keep score, the north seemed to be over-represented. Mr. Annan will also be appointing an Under Secretary General for Disarmament, a job already approved in principle but awaiting final budgetary action. The leading candidate is Jayantha Dhanapala, a Sri Lankan arms-control expert. He would be classified as someone from ''the south,'' although the job is so specialized and Mr. Dhanapala so widely regarded that geography is of little consideration. | U.N. Agrees to Create Position Of Deputy Secretary General |
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