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932572_0 | To the Editor: In your May 18 front-page article on the National Academy of Sciences immigration report, James P. Smith, who led the study, is quoted as saying that though native-born Americans without a high school education have seen their wages fall slightly, the vast majority of Americans are enjoying a healthier economy. The 1990 Census found that 44 million Americans (about 25 percent of the adult population at that time) did not have a high school degree. Mr. Smith may be right about the vast majority, but a very significant portion of our adult population has seen wages decline over 15 years. The solution is not controls on immigration but opportunities for adults to improve basic skills, pass the high school equivalency exam and enter skill training or community college. Unfortunately, all of the Federal, state, local and private money available for these programs is less than $1 billion per year, or $23 per person without a high school degree. If we add to the 44 million those Americans with a high school degree but literacy skills below a ninth-grade level, the per-person expenditure drops to less than $15. We are becoming a country of two populations -- one with the education to compete in the global market for good wages and benefits, and the other whose education leaves them competing against recent immigrants and workers in low-wage countries. This is unacceptable to decent people and dangerous for our national future. We cannot increase wages with tax cuts that produce more low-wage jobs, but we can do it with investments in the education of both our native-born and immigrant work force. JOHN P. COMINGS Cambridge Mass., May 19, 1997 The writer is director of the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy at Harvard. Report Oversells Immigration's Meager Benefits | Help Workers Compete |
932207_1 | 100 miles out to sea. At the same time, vast coastal development was overwhelming old sewage and storm-drain systems. Not to mention the river of raw sewage and trash launched into the sea whenever rainwater caused New York City's ancient sewers to overflow. Three years later, the ocean ''basically puked,'' said Ms. Zipf. But the hideous trash, which washed ashore like seaborne bottles from hell, was actually a cosmic press-agent's most brilliant media stunt. ''The medical waste was in some ways the best bad news we had,'' Ms. Zipf said. ''It galvanized public attention -- and we saw that as a major opportunity, especially in fund raising and getting business on board. The business community for a long time had been, like, 'shhhhh', on the ocean dumping stuff. Suddenly, when billions were lost over those two summers, there was a greater appreciation of the economic value of the marine environment. That gave us a whole new kind of clout. We weren't just fish-huggers anymore.'' Doctoral dissertations should examine the amazing story of those two summers when time and tide coincided at the media nexus and created landmark policy changes. Spurred by the medical-waste horror stories, Congress banned ocean dumping in 1988. Even now, the ripples are felt. Today, Clean Ocean Action begins a 100-day countdown until the closing of the only remaining ocean dump, six miles off Sandy Hook, where sludge dredged from New York Harbor has been piled on the ocean floor since the 19th century. ''When I was a little girl, I went to the beach at Sea Bright every single day in the summer,'' Ms. Zipf recalled. ''Then, beachcombers found sea-shells.'' ''By the early 1980's, when the first plastic bags began washing up, beachcombing had become an entirely different thing,'' she said in a conversation the other day on the porch of a Victorian house on a former Army post in Sandy Hook, where her group shares space with the American Littoral Society, a national beach environment group. Ms. Zipf got a degree in marine policy at the University of Rhode Island and returned to the Jersey Shore to run Clean Ocean Action. The group's first publicity coup was in 1985, when it commissioned a huge sculpture made of plastic tampon applicators and other trash that had washed up on Sandy Hook beaches. A few summers later, it hired a plane to fly along crowded beaches towing | On a Clear Day, Nary a Sludge Ball |
932166_2 | the time of the conversion to rental use is substituted for the actual cost if that value is lower. So, Mr. Miller said, if the letter writer bought the house in 1987 for $129,000, and $119,000 of the price was attributable to the structure -- land is not depreciable -- he would have been entitled to a depreciation deduction of $4,000 each year. Whether or not those deductions were actually taken, Mr. Miller said, they would nevertheless reduce the adjusted basis of the property to $89,000 ($129,000 less ten years of accrued depreciation at $4,000 a year.) That means that even if the house is sold for a $17,000 ''loss'' at $112,000, Mr. Miller said, the seller would actually have a taxable gain of $23,000. Tenants' Rights on Cellular Antennas Q. My landlord has permitted a telecommunications company to install nine cellular antennas around the edge of the roof of my apartment building in return for a payment of $9,000 a month. Are there any negative health consequences of living near cellular communications antennas? What rights do tenants in my position have to prevent such antennas from being used? . . . Gloria Materaso, Bronx Thomas P. Higgins, a Manhattan real estate lawyer, said that in recent years ''scientific theorists and lots of personal injury lawyers'' have been trying to prove that low-level electromagnetic fields generated by cellular antennas and power lines, among other things, can cause health problems such as cancer. ''They have not been very successful in court,'' Mr. Higgins said. In California, for example, homeowners living near power lines sued the power company to recover for an alleged decrease in their property values because of the presence of electromagnetic fields, Mr. Higgins said. That suit was dismissed, he said, for lack of scientific evidence of harm. And in Florida, he said, the family of a woman who died of brain cancer sued the makers of her cellular phone, claiming that the electromagnetic fields generated by the phone caused her cancer. That suit was also dismissed for lack of scientific proof, Mr. Higgins said. As a result, he said, in the absence of health problems that can be proved to have been caused by the presence of the antennas -- or a lease provision that specifically addresses the issue -- a tenant would have no legal standing to prevent a landlord from placing the antennas on the roof. | Q. & A. |
932485_0 | Along with a new diploma to hang on the wall and old college loans to pay off, most members of the class of '97 are leaving college with something else: a job. Students who entered college when much of the country was still waiting to recover from recession now are graduating into the best job market in memory, especially for those with degrees in computer fields and electrical engineering. Business majors are also in demand, in part because companies that laid off members of their parents' generation throughout the early 90's are furiously hiring; they need those workers after all. The overall market is so strong, officials say, that it is even helping liberal-arts majors -- though as always, they have to look harder to find a good job. Campus career counselors say companies are rebuilding the recruiting ties with colleges and universities that they let lapse when hiring fell off. ''We are going back to the way it used to be before the major downsizings of the late 80's and early 90's,'' said Rosalind Hoffa, director of the Center for Ccareer Sservices at Syracuse University. PETER APPLEBOME May 18-24 | Thanks, Dad -- For Your Job |
930416_0 | In a speedy change in London's policy toward Northern Ireland, the new Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair, said today that he would allow British officials to resume contact with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. Mr. Blair emphasized that renewing official contact depended on an absence of I.R.A. violence. While he did not specifically demand a cease-fire, it was clear that he was hoping that the I.R.A. would discontinue its recent series of attacks and officially restore a full cease-fire. He also did not spell out how long the nonviolent period would have to last before contacts could resume. ''The settlement train is leaving,'' he warned Sinn Fein, apparently referring to the resumption of peace talks, scheduled for next month. ''I want you on that train. But it is leaving anyway, and I will not allow it to wait for you.'' Sinn Fein's No. 2 official, Martin McGuinness, said later that Sinn Fein officials would accept the offer and meet with British officials to explain their position. No date for the meeting was disclosed. Britain cut off contact with Sinn Fein when the I.R.A., after a 17-month cease-fire, resumed its campaign of violence 15 months ago with a bomb attack that killed two people in London. During the British election campaign last month, the I.R.A. widely disrupted transportation in Britain with bomb attacks and hoax warnings. It also attacked the police and army forces in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein has been excluded from the stalled peace talks, scheduled to resume on June 3, until the I.R.A. restores its cease-fire. But officials and experts in Dublin and in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, said today that it seemed unlikely that the I.R.A. would call a new cease-fire in direct response to Mr. Blair's terse offer, or before the resumption of the talks next month. And they cautioned against interpreting Mr. Blair's move as a breakthrough that would lead to swift progress in the peace effort. But John Hume, the prominent mainstream Catholic leader who has worked with Sinn Fein on the peace effort, said of Mr. Blair's statement: ''I think he has really opened the door to lasting peace by that offer. I think Sinn Fein should take him up on that offer immediately.'' Within hours of Mr. Blair's speech, the British Ambassador to Ireland, Veronica Sutherland, visited the office of Prime Minister John Bruton | Blair Makes Offer To Renew Contact With I.R.A. Wing |
927388_1 | a long-known pollution problem persisting beneath the great waterway's glistening surface may be more difficult to solve than previously thought. On the positive side, though, 18 other public spaces like Irvington's have been created along the shoreline on both sides of the river from Albany to Irvington through Scenic Hudson, a Poughkeepsie-based environmental group. As the organization's executive director, Klara B. Sauer, said last week, ''Many good things are happening quietly, piece by piece.'' In addition, Gov. George E. Pataki -- who grew up along the river -- has deemed the Hudson's health the linchpin of his environmental agenda. And last year he unveiled his Estuary Management Action Plan along with $31 million in financing, to begin the remediation process. The Governor's $1.75 billion Clean Air/Clean Water Bond Act will also cover some Hudson River projects. On a national level, the 104th United States Congress designated the Hudson Valley a National Heritage Area, making it eligible for Federal funds from the National Parks Service. The Hudson River Valley Greenway initiative, an intercounty effort to link 150 miles of parks, museum sites and recreational areas along the shoreline, continues to gather steam. And in Westchester, County Executive Andrew P. O'Rourke called last week for a coordinated effort by the county's Hudson River communities to develop a tourism and economic development plan. ''For the first time,'' Mr. O'Rourke said, ''the municipalities along the Hudson are being considered as a unified planning region.'' Worrisome news, on the other hand, has included the announcement on April 16 by American Rivers designating the Hudson as the second most endangered river in the United States because of extensive PCB contamination in its upper reaches. According to the report by American Rivers, the Washington-based environmental organization, the Hudson ''remains arguably the largest PCB contamination site'' in the country.'' The Missouri River was listed as most endangered because the Army Corps of Engineers ''dramatically altered'' its course, the group said. An estimated 500,000 to 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls were discharged into the Hudson River by General Electric Company for three decades until the late 1970's. Before their use was ruled illegal, the chemicals were used as insulation in electrical devices. PCB's are known to be carcinogens, and recent studies suggest they may also cause diminished intelligence in the fetuses of mothers who eat contaminated fish. After complying with Federal orders to stop using PCB's, General Electric | Revival of the Hudson Remains a Challenge |
927637_5 | Advoserv, he denied that children had been maltreated or that staff was short and attributed the allegations to disgruntled employees. Two of them, speaking on the condition that their names be withheld, acknowledged that they themselves had at times left severely self-abusive or aggressive children in physical restraints for hours because they had too many children in their care. Mr. Murphy said: ''Children are never placed in restraints due to lack of adequate staffing. There is zero tolerance for the maltreatment of any student at any of our facilities.'' Company records show that even as Au Clair was planning staff cuts, it was spending for a national lobbying campaign that helped make it a force in an industry that few people know. Its nonprofit arm, controlled by Mr. Mazik, wined and dined dozens of child-placement officials and state regulators at all-expenses paid weekend conferences in Florida, according to participants and records. An internal memorandum circulated in May 1995 among executives, including the top clinicians, testified to the priorities. ''Put the energies where the $$ are,'' instructed the memorandum, a summary of notes and assignments from corporate development meetings run by Mr. Mazik. The document is like a blueprint of the company's efforts to form ties with influential public officials and to circumvent or modify legal and licensing requirements in several states. It also ordered a reduction in the staff caring for the disturbed children, and called for employees who were ''cost-effective, non-clock punchers,'' adding, ''all marketeers, kids come from anywhere.'' The Opportunities Welfare Overhaul And Privatization This booming market is another example of how the welfare overhaul has opened up opportunities in the business of poverty. Corporations as large as Lockheed Martin and Electronic Data Systems are bidding to privatize an array of state welfare services. In this case, a system of financial support created six decades ago to keep poor children out of orphanages and with their families has instead become a means to build a for-profit orphanage industry. Companies in the running for the new stream of money include the successors of the for-profit psychiatric chains that ballooned in the 1980's, then crashed after scandals and lawsuits. One, Magellan, has created a division to take advantage of what it called the emerging market in public contracts for ''vulnerable, high cost populations,'' like abused, neglected and retarded children. Others in the field are relative newcomers, like Youth Services International, | Deletion of Word in Welfare Bill Opens Foster Care to Big Business |
927645_6 | new one up,'' he said. Once a station finds a large plot of land for a tower, another challenge begins: winning permission to build it. Nobody, it seems, wants a tower in the backyard. ''It's easier to get permission to build a prison,'' Joseph Flaherty, a senior vice president for CBS, said jokingly. David Brotzman, administrator of the National Association of Tower Erectors, said a recent project in Blooming Prairie, Minn., had had to be relocated at the last minute when environmentalists complained that it was going up in the migratory flight path of a certain breed of duck. And in San Francisco, residents complain about the suspected ill effects of the radio waves emanating from the antennas -- though there is no proof that television signals, digital or otherwise, are hazardous. San Francisco's 10 local stations plan to add antennas for digital broadcasts to an existing tower at the Sutro tower complex atop a ridge just above the city's Twin Peaks neighborhood. ''But I guarantee it will be held up,'' Mr. Ross said. ''A few years ago, we wanted to build just an addition to the building there, and residents came out of the woodwork talking about all kinds of cancers, all kinds of headaches,'' he added. The project was scrapped. There has been little public discussion of the plan to add antennas at Sutro, and at ABC, Mr. Niles said, ''We don't know what will happen when the public finds out about this.'' Assuming residents can be calmed and other Government agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration, grant approval (another trouble-fraught process) the station then faces its greatest challenge: building the tower. Mr. Miller of the LeBlanc tower company estimates that ''there are maybe 400 tower erector crews in the U.S.'' But nearly all of those, he added, are trained only to put up cellular-telephone towers that are usually just a couple of hundred feet tall. Many can be raised with a standard construction crane. ''There's a world of difference between that and putting up tall towers,'' he said. The task is easy to describe, but dangerously difficult to execute. Tower building crews are led by two people -- the ''top man,'' who works atop the tower as it goes up, and the crew chief on the ground. New pieces are hoisted to the top with winches and pulleys fastened to the uppermost part of the structure, and | Crews Are Scarce To Put Up Towers For New Digital TV |
927606_0 | IMAGINE, for a moment, that you are Joe Widgetmaker, chief executive of a small family-owned company. You hire a blind person, you install Braille buttons in the elevator. You hire a paraplegic, you build a ramp and lower the water fountain. You do this because you are a nice guy. Not to mention that Federal law requires it. But what if your foreman is depressed and sleepless and can't show up on time to get the assembly line rolling? What if your clerk has obsessive-compulsive disorder and persists in addressing the same envelope 100 times? Should every employer, in the words of Dr. Allan Lans, a New York City psychiatrist, be required to offer ''a little wheelchair access for the mentally ill''? That is precisely what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ordered last week, with a clarification of the American Disabilities Act of 1990. Business owners, the commission declared, may not discriminate against otherwise qualified workers with mental illness. They may not ask job applicants if they have ever been mentally ill and they must take ''reasonable steps'' to accommodate employees with psychiatric or emotional problems. That could mean anything from a flexible schedule for an anxious person, to a desk near a window for a person who grows depressed with too little light, to a quiet work space for a schizophrenic. Underlying this new set of rules is the assumption that physical illness and mental illness should be treated as one and the same. But can they? Are depression and schizophrenia akin to diabetes and deafness? Does a troubled mind heal the way a broken leg does? In the world of psychiatry, this concept is known as parity. And parity is what advocates for the mentally ill have been trying to achieve for years. Senators Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, and Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, both of whom have had mental illness in their families, put the issue prominently on the public agenda last year when they introduced a law requiring that insurers set the lifetime and annual reimbursement caps as high for mental illness as for physical illness. Congress adopted the law; it goes into effect next Jan. 1. But the guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission takes parity into some new territory, and there is little agreement even among mental health experts about what parity truly means. Experts say certain mental illnesses are no | Breaks for Mental Illness: Just What the Government Ordered |
906701_6 | was like throwing gasoline on the fire,'' he said. ''But it's important to realize that the fire was already there. It's a fight over university governance and the use of limited resources.'' The Grand Plan Visions of Adelphi As a Little Harvard Peter Diamandopoulos, descendant of an ancient land-holding family in Crete, sits confidently in his baronial, mahogany-paneled office as he is asked about Adelphi. He asserts that the university is on the rise again and will emerge stronger because of the changes. ''It is one thing to have a vision and another to make it materialize,'' he said. ''To be good is not good enough.'' With a mop of white hair and lively dark eyebrows, Dr. Diamandopoulos bounced energetically on a stuffed chair and delivered pithy remarks in bursts, with a Greek accent. ''I have an incomparably demanding idea of what is suitable for an educational institution,'' Dr. Diamandopoulos said. ''It is to reorient the souls of the students, as Plato said.'' Should nursing and social work students be required to take the great-books courses? ''Are we saying these students are less?'' he replied, almost leaping from his chair and thrashing the air with his arms. He then apologized for the outburst and continued: ''I cannot say to this student, you should just study accounting and nothing else. Infinite are the possibilities. Infinite are the possibilities!'' Then he leaned back in his chair and spoke softly. ''I have faith that the larger world values value,'' he said. Dr. Diamandopoulos's mentor, Dr. Silber, speaks glowingly of his protege: ''I don't think his ideas are grandiose. They're grand!'' Dr. Diamandopoulos, who immigrated to the United States in 1948, spent a decade at Harvard receiving a bachelor's in classics, a master's in philosophy and a doctorate in the history of science. A teaching fellow during his graduate years, he wrote a dissertation on Aristotle's Nico machean Ethics, a study of the practice of morals. After a series of academic appointments, he was named dean of the faculty at Brandeis University in the late 1960's and was profoundly influenced, his friends say, by Abram Sachar, the founding president of Brandeis who created, virtually from scratch, a liberal arts college known for academic excellence. ''That example of derring-do,'' Dr. Silber recalled, ''influenced Peter in his conception of what an academic leader can do.'' In 1977, Dr. Diamandopoulos was chosen president of the California State | Adelphi, a Little University With Big Ideas |
911123_1 | for corruption in the 1950's, especially in its customs office. A new Berlin-based organization called Transparency International, which runs workshops around the world on corruption-fighting, has published how-to manuals on its Web site. The most basic corruption-fighting steps require only firm leadership. Benjamin Mkapa, Tanzania's President, was elected in 1995 on an anti-corruption platform. He began his term by making public his financial assets and those of his wife, and is now getting rid of several cabinet officials. With the help of Transparency and the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank, Mr. Mkapa is now working on the larger challenge of changing a pervasive culture of corruption. Programs have been set up in villages to teach citizens about their rights. Judges and journalists are getting more training and resources. Meanwhile, other governments have encouraged citizens to form monitoring groups and publicize their findings. Opening up government is essential to battling corruption, but civil service reform is also important. Officials with immediate, day-to-day powers over the public -- the police, customs officials and tax assessors -- need a living wage to reduce the temptation to behave dishonestly. In the last five years, Uganda has tripled the salary of teachers, which may reduce the widespread practice of selling grades and test results. The Philippine tax chief found that corruption dropped when employees got bonuses and better assignments based not on seniority, but on honest work. Stricter monitoring can help, too. As part of its cleanup campaign, Singapore began to record customs agents' petty cash each morning, then carried out surprise spot checks to insure that the sum did not increase. Cutting red tape is essential. By reducing the number of permits a citizen needs, governments can narrow the opportunities for petty graft. By standardizing the laws, governments can reduce the temptation to impose arbitrary fees and fines. It is harder to prevent collusive corruption, like tacit agreements between customers and storekeepers to keep purchases off the books. But it is not impossible. Chile allowed people to enter sales receipts in a regular lottery for prizes like household appliances. When customers began to ask for receipts, they also began to pay sales taxes. As democracy spreads, leaders are realizing that corruption, more than any other sin, is likely to cost them their jobs. Leaders bold enough to tackle corruption will find a crucial ally in their fed-up people. TINA ROSENBERG Editorial Notebook | Overseas, Attacks on Corruption |
911143_0 | One of the world's biggest biotechnology companies is preparing to advocate that all genetically engineered crops and food products made from them be clearly labeled, a practice long demanded by opponents of genetic engineering but strongly opposed by farm and industry groups. The new policy by Novartis, a giant Swiss agribusiness, chemicals and drug company formed last year by the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz, is a response to the much stronger push for such labeling in Europe. It also reveals a rift within industry over whether consumers can be trusted to ultimately ignore what biotechnology backers see as scare-mongering by its opponents. ''There is no need from a scientific and safety standpoint, but if we believe in the consumers' right to choose, the industry cannot reasonably argue against labels facilitating this choice,'' Wolfgang Samo, head of agribusiness at Novartis, said in an interview on Friday. He will outline the company's position today at a conference in Boston. That right to choose is advocated by biotech opponents. But James Maryanski, biotechnology coordinator at the Food and Drug Administration, said the agency did not ''require things to be on a label just because a consumer might want to know them.'' ''We couldn't find any common characteristic conferred by genetic engineering so we look at each product on a case by case basis,'' he said. Genes are segments of DNA, the long double chain of molecules in every cell that governs its form and function. Genetic engineers modify the behavior of existing genes in a plant or animal or, in a matter of more controversy, insert genes from that species or other species that give the transgenic organism a new trait or enhance an existing one. Genetically engineered products are now used on American farms to increase milk production and reduce the amount of herbicides or insecticides used on corn, soybeans, cotton and potatoes. Foreign genes have also been introduced into tomatoes to delay ripening. None are explicitly labeled as genetically modified. Supporters of the technology say that most consumers accept it but that across-the-board labeling of all genetically altered products might falsely imply significant risks that could scare consumers away and slow the technology's development. Scientific advisory panels to Government regulators have found no substantial risks in such products, said Jerry Caulder, chief executive of the Mycogen Corporation, a biotechnology company based in San Diego, and head of the agricultural section | Biotechnology Company to Join Those Urging Labels on Genetically Altered Products |
911103_1 | Park Police and the F.B.I. concluded that he had committed suicide. His widow and his son were of the same view. But that did not settle the issue for some people on the extreme right. They have made the Foster case the centerpiece of an attack on President Clinton for a host of alleged crimes, from drug-smuggling to murder. Richard Mellon Scaife, a Pittsburgh millionaire, has contributed heavily to something called the Western Journalism Center, which promotes theories of conspiracy in Mr. Foster's death: that he did not die in the park, that his body was moved and so on. Right-wing authors have told their tales in journals as far away as The Sunday Telegraph and The Times in Britain. Attorney General Janet Reno originally appointed a special counsel, Robert Fiske, on her own. In June 1994 he issued a report on Vincent Foster, concluding that he committed suicide in the park. The political right responded with vicious attacks on Mr. Fiske. Talk shows and extremist journals denounced his report. Conservative members of Congress such as Senator Lauch Faircloth lambasted him. The editorial page of The Wall Street Journal called for his replacement. Meanwhile, Attorney General Reno decided that she should act formally under the Independent Counsel Act. She asked the special court division to name a counsel. It was generally expected that the court would appoint Mr. Fiske, formalizing his position. Instead it appointed Kenneth Starr. There were charges of impropriety because the senior member of the special division, Judge David Sentelle, had had lunch with Senators Faircloth and Jesse Helms of North Carolina shortly before the change. Whatever the relevance of that lunch, the attack on Mr. Fiske's Foster report may have played a part in his replacement. Since he took over, Mr. Starr has been denounced by the Foster conspiracists for not following their advice on witnesses and other matters. Mr. Starr is a conservative thinker with strong ties to the conservative movement, and some wondered whether he would take on the conspiracists. Last Thursday The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Richard Mellon Scaife had made a contribution of $250,000 toward the new School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University of which Mr. Starr is to be dean. That seemed to raise a possible conflict of interest. Would Mr. Starr file a report on the Foster case that rejected conspiracy charges heavily backed by Richard Scaife? Mr. Starr | Closure On Vince Foster |
911095_1 | a small biotechnology company based in Edinburgh, Scotland, has the rights to technology for the production of genetically altered mammals that could produce therapeutic proteins in their milk. $(B8.$) Technology Spreading, Study Finds Disputing earlier conclusions that the Information Revolution is bypassing much of rural America, a new study argues that communications technology is becoming more equally distributed across the country. $(D6.$) Raytheon May Sell Appliance Unit Raytheon said that it might sell its appliance business, which makes Amana stoves and ovens and Speed Queen washers. $(D10.$) House Calls by Telephone and TV In a new approach to home health care, nurses at medical centers watch via television as equipment measures a patient's vital signs and conducts other tests. The results are transmitted to the medical center over a telephone or cable TV line. While the technique reduces the number of costly home visits, critics say it erodes the quality of care. $(A1.$) Hard Feelings Over Beer Ads The most contentious issue involving ads for Miller Lite used to be whether the beer is ''less filling'' or ''tastes great.'' But now Advertising Age's criticism of a new, off-center campaign, created by the Fallon McElligott agency, has led to a rift between the publication and the agency. Stuart Elliott: Advertising. $(D8.$) Web Advertising Grows From Inside While advertising on the World Wide Web surged in 1996, much of that spending came from technology companies advertising on the sites of other technology companies. That makes it difficult to determine the potential of the Web as an advertising vehicle. $(D5.$) A small but growing group of Internet access companies is going beyond offering set fees for unlimited access by eliminating monthly fees entirely and aiming to make money almost exclusively from advertising. $(D7.$) Labels on Genetic Engineering Novartis, the biotechnology giant, is preparing to advocate that all genetically engineered crops and food products made from them be clearly labeled, a practice long demanded by opponents of genetic engineering but strongly opposed by farm and industry groups. $(B8.$) Performing May Be Better Than Winning The biggest winners when the music industry hands out the Grammy awards may not be the artists who win but those who perform at the ceremonies. $(D9.$) Labor's Struggle in the South While the leadership of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. has focused new attention on the South, where labor has had relatively little support, unions there continue to face serious obstacles. $(A10.$) | BUSINESS DIGEST |
909083_1 | center of the war-and-peace business, could easily make a living as an author, of fiction or fact. For this reason, among others, his book ''After the Dawn'' is a disappointment. There are frequent flashes of good writing and political insight. But to many of the questions arising naturally about him and his life's work, Mr. Adams avoids answers or provides just elliptical hints and intimations, clear only to experts and to those who lived and agitated with him in West Belfast's Catholic stronghold. Was he, as is widely believed by friend and enemy in the North, the commander of the Belfast Brigade of the I.R.A. in the early 1970's? Why and how did he decide to take over Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, and transform it into a party that would advocate a political solution and enter the democratic electoral process in the North and in the Irish Republic? What has it been like, personally and emotionally, to be a principal in the efforts to broker a lasting peace between the I.R.A. and the British and Irish Governments? These points are touched on, but only lightly, carefully. Mr. Adams describes himself as ''middle leadership'' in the 1970's. But he does not say whether he means in Sinn Fein or in the I.R.A. He makes it clear he knew the I.R.A. guerrilla leaders and was present at some of their attacks, but never says whether he was one of them. The most vexing aspect of the book is that its narrative ends in 1982, sidestepping the momentous events of the last 14 years. Only a 10-page epilogue deals with this period. The current peace effort, which accelerated in 1993, is given a few pages that could have been rewritten from newspapers. And the early history is an avalanche of street violence -- demonstrations by disenfranchised Catholics and armed attacks by Protestant vigilantes and British troops, involving scores of names of people, political relationships and streets and alleys baffling to anyone who is not a Belfast resident or an expert on local history. In a prologue, Mr. Adams says he is ''necessarily constrained,'' because the peace effort is still in a crucial phase and he doesn't want to jeopardize it or the people involved. Fine, from his point of view, but the constraint is a hobble. Suspicion arises that someone advised him to empty out his old notebooks, virtually unedited, to | Middle Manager |
909363_0 | The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is spending $24 million to reduce delays on and around the George Washington Bridge. This month, the Port Authority board approved installation of an ''intelligent transportation system'' to speed information about accidents, bridge jumpers and other reasons for delays to the police and towing crews who can do something about them. The project, to be completed by 1999, calls for installing traffic sensors in the roadbed and upgrading existing call boxes spaced a quarter-mile apart to indicate the call's location automatically to bridge operators, said Terry Benczik, a spokeswoman for the agency. Other features, including 30 new electronic message signs along approaches and a highway advisory radio station, will inform drivers about road conditions, lane closings and other factors, helping them plan for delays or choose alternate routes. STEVE STRUNSKY IN BRIEF | Port Authority to Help Commuters Drive Smarter |
909454_0 | The first sign of trouble came in a nighttime phone call. Joon Park, a junior at Indiana University in Bloomington, listened as a frantic student told him on Jan. 31 that a hate message had been sent via electronic mail to 700 members of the Asian Students Association, the group of which Mr. Park is president. The obscenity-laden statement included racial epithets and ordered the students to leave the country, Mr. Park said. Less than a week later, a similar message was sent to the association's office in Bloomington. ''I was furious,'' Mr. Park said. ''There's a lot of resentment toward Asians on this campus, and these messages are a way to express feelings to a large number of people and easily cover your tracks.'' The use of E-mail to send hate messages is a growing concern on many college campuses. Although it is difficult to know how prevalent such messages are, the American Council on Education says, they seem to be increasing. ''We've seen a lot of reports of hate E-mail in recent months,'' said David Merkowitz, a spokesman for the council, which is based in Washington and represents 1,700 colleges. ''It's hard to tell if it's a trend or if we're just more attuned to what's happening on the Internet.'' At the Indiana University, where campus police are investigating the mail to Asian students, students and the police say the names attached to the messages are not likely to be those of the real senders. Those who are proficient with computers, they note, are able to use other people's addresses or mask their own, making anonymous hate communications, or ''flame mail,'' fairly simple to produce. Most universities have strict policies against hate and harassing E-mail, but both students and administrators say that because of free speech considerations, they are reluctant to see people punished for sending such messages. Robert Ulrich, assistant general counsel for the university and community college system in Nevada, said ''hate mail coupled with threats of violence'' was clearly grounds for criminal charges. At the University of California at Irvine, 10 Federal hate-crime charges have been brought against a former student, Richard Machado, 19, who is accused of threatening 58 students last fall, most of them Asian-Americans. The case is the first time the Federal Government has prosecuted a hate crime committed on the Internet, according to the United States Attorney's Office for the Central | E-Mail Is Becoming a Conduit of Prejudice on Many Campuses |
909442_0 | GUESTS at Havana's old Hotel Nacional who watch television can now choose between grainy black-and-white films extolling the glory of the 1959 Communist Revolution or feature films on HBO like the cold war thriller ''The Hunt for Red October.'' The hotel's new telephone service enables quick computer links with New York via AT&T, and hotel guests can get a warm can of Coca-Cola from their mini-bars. Nearly 35 years since the United States placed an economic embargo on Cuba to stifle its economy and squeeze Fidel Castro from power, Mr. Castro still struts around Havana in designer leather boots. American goods, along with the Yankee dollar, can be easily found all over, even though there are few Americans to be seen. What's going on? Cuba has managed to build bridges to the United States without dealing with the Federal Government directly. It buys regularly from the subsidiaries of American companies operating in countries like Mexico, where Cuba's Coca-Cola comes from. But one of Cuba's most valuable connections to the mainland and an increasingly eager business partner has been Canada, America's closest ally and biggest trade partner. To the Cubans, Canadians are just like Americans -- they're big, they act rich and they speak English. But while the United States has tried to isolate Cuba since the Communists took over in 1959, Canada has tried to engage the country both economically and diplomatically, much to Washington's annoyance. With last year's passage of the Helms-Burton law, which imposes sanctions on companies from Canada and other countries doing business in Cuba, United States foreign policy has clashed openly with the trade policies of some of its strongest allies. Several European countries have challenged the Helms-Burton law in a complaint before the World Trade Organization. But for the moment the challenge has been postponed, leaving Canada alone in its defiant response to the law. Ottawa already has passed a law prohibiting Canadian companies from complying with the reporting provisions of Helms-Burton or paying any fines. Washington itself shifted ground a bit on Cuba last week. The Clinton Administration said that 10 American news organizations would be permitted to circumvent the economic embargo and open bureaus in Cuba, spending dollars on rent, electricity and other goods. Still, while Washington has spent 40 years scheming against Cuba, Canada has spent that time making deals. Ottawa, a far less rigid cold warrior than Washington, never broke off | Cuba's Bridge to the United States |
909463_3 | the former Soviet Union to be ordained by bishops operating outside the scrutiny of Communist authorities. The new priests, nominally under the authority of those European dioceses in which they were ordained, returned to the United States and Canada to serve immigrant Eastern Rite communities, he said. The Rev. John F. Lahey, rector of Moreau Seminary at the University of Notre Dame, said of the 1929 decree, ''I am sure there are going to be two different opinions on this matter.'' The Vatican, he added, might have to settle the question. But others said they thought it unlikely the Vatican would intervene. In a recent article on Father St. Germain's ordination, the Catholic News Service, a church news agency, quoted Vatican legal experts as offering differing opinions about whether the decree had lapsed; a senior Vatican official refused to comment to the news service, which also said that a Ukrainian Catholic bishop had ordained a married man in Canada two years ago, apparently without repercussions. Although the issue involves married priests, Bishop Elya and Father St. Germain insisted the ordination implied no criticism of the Vatican's historic requirement that Roman Catholic priests be celibate. Some members of the church have blamed that rule for dissuading young men from becoming priests. Since 1966, enrollment in American Catholic seminaries has fallen 90 percent. ''We weren't looking to create a controversy,'' Father St. Germain said. But it was the marital status of Eastern Rite priests that led to conflict a century ago, when Eastern Catholics began arriving in America. Most came from the Carpathian Mountains of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and were known as Ruthenians. Immigrants also included Melkites, from Syria and Lebanon. In 1891, Archbishop John Ireland of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul, Minn., refused to allow the Rev. Alexis Toth, a widower from Hungary, to serve as a priest because he had been married. Outraged, Father Toth broke with Rome and entered the Russian Orthodox Church. Eventually, 200,000 Eastern Catholic immigrants followed his example, swelling Orthodox ranks. Roman Catholic bishops in the United States asked the Vatican for a ruling, which led to the 1929 decree. The bishops, said Father Lahey, the Moreau seminary rector, ''felt that it would be confusing to the faithful to have two different rules regarding celibacy of the clergy.'' Since then, tempers have cooled. ''It wasn't mischief on his part,'' Father St. Germain said, referring | Bishop's Quiet Action Allows Priest Both Flock and Family |
909077_7 | taking shape -- another form comparatively neglected by the canonists, though there has been an explosion of interest in it recently. Athens was one of the few Greek cities to boast that it had no forebears, that it literally sprang from its own earth -- was ''autochthonous.'' Perhaps that helps explain the short career of its Empire, even within its contracted Greek-speaking area. Alexander, who spread the Greek language and literature, was sniffily dismissed by Athenians as a barbarian himself, a Macedonian outsider, not a ''real Greek.'' Older classicists took up the Athenian snobbishness, condemning as not ''real Greek'' any later developments, from Hellenism to the koine (lingua franca) of the New Testament. When I was teaching Greek, a colleague sneered at me for teaching koine in my spare time to seminarians. The one unquestionably good result of Bernal's claims about a black Athena is that he revealed the prejudices of the old canonists who wanted to make Greece an entirely European phenomenon. Those answering Bernal have to admit that Egypt had a profound influence on early Greece (but question how far Egyptians can be considered blacks). More important, they acknowledge the effect of Near Eastern semitic cultures, which gave Greece its alphabet and many of its foundational myths. The downplaying of this influence was the real scandal of 19th-century classicism. Scholars as great as Karl Otfried Mueller and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf were anti-Semitic in their Eurocentric rejection of the Orient. Those romantic classicists believed in isolated tribal identities, the kind of ''folk genius'' that approximated Homer to the legendary Scottish poet ''Ossian'' and thought Homer's art had some of the local specificity of Robert Burns'. But the most exciting development in Homeric studies since the decipherment of Linear B has been a deeper realization of Greek openness to Akkadian and other cultures at the very time (the 8th century) when the epic cycles were being created. Walter Burkert argues persuasively that the epic tale of Thebes owes less to actual Greek history than to Oriental tales about a heroic struggle with seven devils. Eurocentrism, when it was embedded in the study of the classics, created a false picture of the classics themselves. Multiculturalism is now breaking open that deception. We learn that ''the West'' is an admittedly brilliant derivative of the East. Semites created the stories the Greeks revered in Homer -- just as Jewish scholars brought Aristotle back | There's Nothing Conservative About the Classics' Revival |
909513_2 | environmentalists question whether the approach would serve any ecosystem well enough to be built into Federal law. The biggest sticking point, say these critics, is the plan's central feature: absolving landowners of further responsibility for protecting endangered species once the preserve system was in place. The Clinton Administration has, by administrative order, built this ''no surprises'' policy into scores of other, mostly less sweeping or more rural, habitat conservation plans around the country that protected more than four million acres. The draft legislation now being circulated by Senator John H. Chafee of Rhode Island and Senator Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, Republicans who head environmental committees, would put a Congressional stamp of approval on the no-surprises policy. But nature is not static, say the plan's critics. Species populations vary for all sorts of reasons, they say, while habitats shift, and it could turn out that more protection would be needed. The landscape in question is a deceptively austere-looking collection of hills and canyons richly carpeted by a wide range of plant groupings. And it is a part of the country where 80 to 90 percent of the natural ecosystem has already succumbed to agriculture or development. Many Southern California plant and animal species exist nowhere else, and a recent study found that development's inroads on their habitat had made San Diego County a hot spot of endangerment.About 200 species of plants and animals in the county are considered imperiled. Until now the Endangered Species Act has been applied on a tract-by-tract, species-by-species basis that costs developers time, money and endless regulatory entanglement. Moreover, this nickel-and-dime approach has not worked. The proposed approach is intended to fix these problems. ''It was just crystal clear that we had to commit headlong to make it work,'' Mr. Babbitt said in a recent interview, since Southern California, in conservation terms, ''was the 800-pound gorilla of urban expansion.'' The proposed preserve would ultimately consist of a number of connecting units totaling as many as a half-million acres. One plan, involving a single landowner in Orange County, is already in effect. In the 172,000-acre region comprising the San Diego metropolitan area, most of the land to be preserved is already owned by governments or would be donated by land owners as compensation for future habitat destruction on lands exempt from protection under the agreement. About 27,000 acres would have to be purchased, however. The state and Federal | Disputed Conservation Plan Could Be Model for Nation |
909288_3 | as early as kindergarten. ''With the focus on multiculturalism, all sorts of people rise up out of the classical past,'' says William Mayer, lecturer in classics at Hunter College in New York. ''The ancient world -- Rome especially -- was multicultural for good and bad. Twenty-five years ago we looked at big events, dates and major personalities. Now it's important to look back at those times to see what they say about women, slaves, children, foreigners. The ancients really didn't regard skin color as a differentiating mark, for example, because there was so much mixing of peoples.'' This pluralistic approach is also affecting newly popular museum displays of classical holdings and exhibitions. Last fall in New Haven the Yale University Art Gallery show ''I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome'' drew record numbers before leaving for San Antonio and Raleigh, N.C. The most far-reaching and expensive museum undertaking involving classical art is the current expansion of the Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (far left), a $100 million overhaul that will more than double the exhibition space. Theater, too, is finding new vigor in the classics. Gregory Mosher, the producing director of Circle in the Square in New York, is directing a new version of Sophocles's ''Antigone.'' Todd Fletcher, a 27-year-old African-American playwright, is working on a musical version of the ' 'Odyssey'' in which the tale spun is that of a black G.I. making his way home through Europe to Harlem at the end of World War II. ''Theater is a living thing,'' Fletcher says, ''and when it is reinterpreted or resaid by a black director or actor, even when the focus is not on blackness, it gets a different meaning.'' In the field of contemporary philosophy, which is so close to psychology, scholars are reasserting the significant psychological underpinnings of Greco-Roman metaphysics. ''In the 60's,'' says Edmund Leites, a professor of philosophy at Queens College, ''anti-rationalist elements opposed thinkers like Seneca or Plato or Cicero in the name of an ecstatic experience. But I, for one, am a proponent of Seneca and his modernity. Classical culture wasn't rejected by people like Freud, it was further developed. You move forward from the ancients and discover things they would not have thought of.'' There's Nothing Conservative About the Classics Revival Celia McGee, the publishing columnist for The New York Observer, studied Greek and Latin for five years. | The Classic Moment |
908193_2 | swept to a series of victories in municipal elections, including the southern town of Vitrolles on Sunday. It has gained support precisely by attacking globalization -- portrayed as the death of national culture -- and the high unemployment said to stem from untrammeled market forces and immigration. With left and right, socialism and conservatism increasingly indistinguishable, the National Front has successfully contended that it is the only group with a distinct message. ''If we want to send the Arabs and Africans and Asians back to where they came from, it is not because we hate them, it is because they pollute our national identity and take our jobs,'' said Bruno Megret, the deputy leader of the party and husband of the new Mayor of Vitrolles. ''When we have power, we will organize their return. We will stop renewing their residence cards, and we will force companies to pay a tax on foreign workers that will eventually lead to the foreigners losing their positions.'' Such statements have a widening impact. Over a third of French people now say they sympathize with at least some of the National Front's ideas. Even a large city like Toulon has been won. The party's effectiveness appears to reflect the simmering frustration of a France that has lost its way. As Pierre Birnbaum, a political scientist, put it, ''Our problem is that we have not found the way to modernize while preserving our imagined community.'' In other words, how do you leap into the age of the Internet and remain French? The Breakdown An Uneasy Society Haunted By Ghosts France is still rich and it enjoys an importance beyond its wealth. Its nuclear bomb, its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, its central place in European security, its hold on the world's imagination through its wines, its perfumes and its cheeses, and its universalist pretensions themselves -- all carry weight. The country has many excellent companies; the Bourse rose 27 percent last year. As its leaders never tire of repeating in these dark days, France is the world's fourth-biggest industrial power and fourth-largest exporter. A stronger dollar, up 10 percent in the past month, bodes well for French exports. But France has a stagnant economy -- growth was slightly more than 1 percent during the last year. Its unemployment rate has swelled to 12.7 percent, more than double the rate in the United States. | For France, Sagging Self-Image and Esprit |
908223_1 | The images and data returned to Earth by the Hubble Space Telescope since its 1993 repair -- a comet hitting Jupiter, a storm raging across thousands of miles of Saturn's surface and a nursery where stars are born, for example -- have amazed and delighted nonscientists as well as astronomers. And in the last two years, the little Galileo spacecraft has probed the upper atmosphere of Jupiter and sent back pictures that hint of marvels on the giant planet and its moons. The Cosmic Background Explorer spacecraft of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration revolutionized 20th-century science with its discovery that the microwave echo of the Big Bang is not smooth but speaks of structure even in the earliest epoch of the universe. And a radio antenna dish scheduled for launching this week will work in concert with radio telescopes spread across the United States, Australia and Europe to produce radio images so fine they will be comparable to observing a footprint on the Moon from Earth. While scores of other spacecraft have also captured attention, new technology and refinements in mathematical analysis have also paved the way for a newly productive era in ground-based astronomy. Many of the new ground-based telescopes rival even the Hubble Space Telescope in their clarity of vision, so effectively can their computerized eyes pierce Earth's turbulent atmosphere, which makes stars twinkle and blocks some of the radiation frequencies important to astronomy. On every continent, including Antarctica, new ground-based observatories are springing up to complement the work of space-borne observatories, which, by their nature, are expensive and difficult to operate. Great though the Hubble Space Telescope has proved to be, it took so long to build that since its inception, new technologies have emerged endowing ground-based telescopes with many of the advantages of those operating in space. These new technologies include powerful computers, new telescope mounts, better observatory designs, feedback systems that squelch the distortive twinkling of stars, interferometers capable of simulating telescopes the size of the entire Earth, special glass mixtures that resist deformation while undergoing temperature changes and much more. Even NASA, which traditionally supports space science, now has a mandate to support ground-based telescopes. For example, the space agency will contribute some $15 million for accessory instruments to be used with two privately built Keck telescopes in Hawaii -- the world's largest -- and is supporting projects at several other ground-based observatories. | New Vistas Open for Earthbound Astronomers |
910742_0 | THE FIRST THING THAT ONE hears in Issac Delgado's voice is how distinct he is from other Afro-Cuban singers. Most of his notes don't seem to start anywhere; they fuzz into being. And though he can coo, he can also chant, hard and strong. Mr. Delgado is widely considered one of the best young singers in Cuba, and his just-released album, ''Otra Idea'' (''Another Idea''), is the first to marry successfully the smoothness of Puerto Rico salsa with the imaginativeness of Cuban songo. Beyond its musical pleasures, it reflects changed political and cultural realities. For three decades, an American-imposed trade embargo has made any musical exchange between Cuba and Puerto Rico virtually impossible. As a result the two forms of music have developed without much knowledge of each other, despite their similarities. But under the Clinton Administration, musical exchange between the two countries has quietly begun to open up. Mr. Delgado recorded the album in New York, for RMM, the premier label for Caribbean music in New York; his band was made up of Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Except for some small musical blunders, the album deftly brings the Puerto Rican sound up to date while adding what could not be found in Cuba -- the gloss of good production. But more than anything, the music's importance comes from Mr. Delgado's authority. He is a gifted singer and improviser, who knows when -- and when not -- to edit himself. He lets his sense of swing and his virtuoso pitch carry the meaning. He does not bend notes; he gives them just a touch of bitterness to suggest emotion. The songs are suites. Mr. Delgado usually starts out sweetly -- though there are some extraordinary piano parts by the Cuban pianist Melon -- and slowly the pieces build dance heft. Then the music becomes Cuban: the chorus starts with Mr. Delgado improvising between the voices; the choruses change. The songs have breakdowns, in which drums take over; each segment builds on the next, with brass parts accentuating the rhythms of the tune. Under the velvet of Mr. Delgado's voice lies a sharp knife. His singing is as good as it gets in the Caribbean. RECORDINGS VIEW | No Longer an Island (Musically), Cuba Adds to Caribbean Mix |
907371_1 | Zaire, which by virtue of its size, population and mineral wealth is one of Africa's most important countries. Although Zaire, which is one-third the size of the United States, has never been stable, the catastrophic breakup of the country would be deeply troubling to many of the country's nine neighbors. Western alarm at this threat has been somewhat tempered by the fact that the rebel moves have strengthened the stability of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda -- all of which have suffered in the past from insurrections based in Zaire and so have an interest in aiding the rebel forces. In two simultaneous advances west and south, the rebels are moving toward the major cities of Kisangani and Lubumbashi. They are led by a longtime foe of Mr. Mobutu's, Laurent Desire Kabila, with considerable help from Zaire's eastern neighbors. Asked how Mr. Kabila's forces have managed to achieve so much in so little time, one Western diplomat here responded tersely: ''Rwanda and Uganda.'' ''That's where they are getting their weapons, their transportation, their communications, their new uniforms, even some of their men,'' the diplomat added. But others say that as important as the aid from outside the country has been for the rebels, the recent successes in pushing west and in swelling their ranks suggest that Mr. Kabila's forces are taking root. While Mr. Kabila proudly reviewed a parade of 5,000 new recruits who marched through the streets of Goma, near the border with Rwanda, on Thursday, the Government's recruitment efforts have been met with little enthusiasm. Army enlistment offices in Kinshasa have remained empty in the week since a call was made for young men 15 to 18 years old to join the war effort. Zaire's soldiers are paid as little as $1 a month, and like many citizens who are disaffected with a Government that has driven this country into poverty, they seem to see no reason to fight. By almost all accounts, the rebels' advances have been aided by the sympathetic reception that they have often received from local populations, who are happy to see the army, which has engaged in widespread looting, chased away. Foreign witnesses who saw the rebels arrive in the eastern town of Shabunda the other day say they were greeted with courtesy, if not fanfare, by the residents as they marched in orderly formation through the area. The recent combat has only reinforced | As Rebels Gain in Zaire, Army Morale Is Declining |
906016_0 | IN testimony before Congress two weeks ago, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, discussed his worries about the danger of wage inflation. Specifically, Mr. Greenspan is concerned that shortages of qualified people for job openings may lead to excessive wage offers to fill those jobs. Some people take this uneasiness to suggest that a rise in interest rates may be in the offing -- if not at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting starting on Tuesday, then sometime later this year. While German economists like myself are supposedly born with a penchant to worry themselves sick about even the slightest signs of inflation, I cannot quite share Mr. Greenspan's concerns. From my perspective, the most important dimension in evaluating future wage pressures in the United States is regularly overlooked: the increased global outsourcing of services like data processing and computer programming. Computers let American companies tap into a labor pool without national borders -- thus shattering old-school assumptions about tightness in domestic labor markets. If the labor market becomes tight at home, a company can look abroad. In this sense, the United States is again the trailblazer. In the 1970's, big American manufacturers scoured the world to find cheap sources of offshore labor to control production costs. Undoubtedly, the decision to move production abroad not only helped American companies' bottom lines, it was also a crucial factor in keeping the nation's inflation rate in check. Other nations, like Germany and Japan, jumped on the bandwagon only much later. United States companies are now repeating this process in the services sector. The global services labor pool, after all, is just a phone call or an E-mail message away. Accordingly, credit card providers, insurance firms, phone companies and technology service concerns are placing crucial business functions all over the world. Even important value-added skills, like software design, are being moved offshore. This ability to tap into the global labor pool without headaches may well be a special advantage for American corporations. Because English is the second, if not first, language of many people, American companies can readily depend on service providers who speak the same language as headquarters does. Compare that with the problems of, say, a German or Japanese insurance company trying to start a billing department in Barbados or Sri Lanka. While the effect of global telecommunications and computer networks is increasingly understood, little thought has been given to what | Deflating an Inflation Worry |
905856_5 | three-part tour. At our first stop, the Bonneville Dam Visitor Center, we viewed the enormous turbines as well as salmon and steelhead migrating up the fish ladder. The next sight, Multnomah Falls, was scenic, but a cloudburst discouraged exploration (in any case, the tour schedule left no time for the walking trails). The last stop, however -- the new Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center in Stevenson, Wash. -- was delightful. Opened in 1995, the museum includes exhibits on the history and culture of the Indian tribes of the gorge, the advent of white settlers, the use of natural resources and natural history. A 12-minute filmstrip on the origins of the Columbia Gorge, the nation's only National Scenic Area, presented the astonishing (to me) information that this enormous geological feature seems to have been formed over a period of only a few thousand years, by repeated huge floods at the end of the last ice age -- that is, only about 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. For such an impressive landform, this was mind-boggling, particularly as the waters had to slice through hundreds of feet of basalt, and not soft sedimentary rock. But the hour's time allotted to this compact but rich museum was hardly enough to scratch the surface before returning to ship for the evening. In general, the time spent at on-shore attractions was rather short; here, as later at Mount St. Helens and Fort Clatsop, we could have benefited from an additional half-hour at least. Too, the selection of these sites seemed uneven; while Mount St. Helens is spectacular, and I was fascinated by the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center and Fort Clatsop, many of us were less than thrilled with the hydroelectric plant; my seatmate on the train to Parkdale actually fell asleep. The next morning featured a film on the Lewis and Clark expedition, followed by a commentary by our Mike White, who explained how we were retracing part of their route. MOUNT ST. HELENS, which erupted on May 18, 1980, and is now a National Monument, was the object of our next excursion. We had traveled downstream most of the night to Longview, Wash., where we again boarded buses for a 90-minute ride through forests and small towns to the mountain. The Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center stands only a few air miles from the broken crater; you can actually see the lava dome inside the crater. We | By Sternwheeler Along the Columbia |
905858_4 | from $200 to $699, the last of which includes a treatment with a seaweed soap shower, medicinal mud pack, herbal steam bath and massage. Holland America is using an unusual approach to combining the vacation experience with additional revenue: Last month it bought an uninhabited, 2,400-acre island in the Bahamas, which it renamed Half Moon Cay. When its ships begin calling there late this year, on Caribbean and Panama Canal cruises, passengers will find not only paddle boats, a children's play area and other recreational activities, but also a shopping center complete with an art gallery. Similarly, Royal Caribbean has a fine arts and crafts shop on its private island, Labadee, in Haiti. Twenty-one cruise lines offer honeymoon, anniversary or vow renewal packages, while nine offer wedding packages and four others plan to do so. Dolphin Cruise Lines' wedding packages, for example, cost $275 to $750, although options like wedding cakes, photographs, flowers, catering and music can easily triple that amount. Shore excursions are also a growing source of options for passengers and revenue for cruise lines. While shore trips range from the predictable to the plush, many now include nature walks, eco-tours and historical excursions. Holland America's Statendam recently began offering the first tour by a cruise operator to the land of the Carib Indians on Dominica, while the Windstar plans to have a full-time naturalist aboard when it begins weekly cruises under sail later this year along the coast of Costa Rica. Many of American Hawaii's shore excursions are designed around Hawaiian culture. And Silversea Cruises arranged for its lectures and excursions to be led by photographers and journalists who have traveled on assignment for National Geographic publications. The industry's reputation as environmentally friendly suffered a possible setback with the December disclosure that a Federal grand jury in Puerto Rico had handed up a 10-count felony indictment against Royal Caribbean charging the line routinely dumped waste oil and falsified log books to cover up the dumping. Last month Royal Caribbean pleaded not guilty to the charges. A spokesman for the line, Richard Steck, said last week that the company planned to meet with the judge and schedule a time for ''various filings.'' Despite that assertion, the cruise business overall appears to be making a good faith effort to go beyond Federal and international regulations governing the environment, including monitoring the impact of pollution from fuel in buses and | Not Just Cruise Ships Anymore |
906086_0 | To the Editor: Your article brings up the central issue of ''preserving'' ruins -- particularly concentration camps -- as historic monuments and memorials to the atrocities of World War II. To stabilize the inevitable process of decay, repairs must continually be undertaken. Consequently, the ruins are increasingly no longer ''original.'' The alternative is to let nature take its course. This issue has been hotly debated in connection with Oradour. An extensive account, in French, is given in Sarah Farmer's ''Oradour: Arret sur Memoire'' (1994). MARGARET COLLINS WEITZ Cambridge, Mass. | Remembering |
906043_0 | Wind Breaker Q. I've heard that the Citicorp building at 53d Street and Lexington Avenue has some sort of giant concrete block on the roof to keep it from swaying too much in strong winds. How does it work? A. By sitting still. When the building sways in one direction, the 400-ton block of reinforced concrete doesn't. All very tall buildings sway in high winds. But the 914-foot Citicorp Center, completed in 1978, was the first to employ a ''tuned mass damper'' to minimize this sway, said a Citicorp spokesman, John M. Morris. The idea was to place a large mass atop the building, allow it to remain stationary while the building moves, and to convey this tendency to remain still, or inertia, to the swaying building through connections to the structure. The damper, which measures 30 feet by 30 feet by 8 1/2 feet, is housed with the mechanical equipment in the building's angled crown, and is connected to the building's walls by a system of pistons and spring mounts, Mr. Morris said. But the damper itself is free to slide on a thin layer of oil. About 80 days a year, when gusts are strong enough to sway the building, sensors feed the wind speed and direction into a computer that controls the pistons. The damper floats on the oil, essentially remaining still as the building moves under it. The mechanism then pulls the building back toward its original position. Then the pistons move the damper in the direction opposite the sway, further stabilizing the building. The damping effect reduces the sway about 40 percent, Mr. Morris said. The mechanism is ''tuned'' so the time required for the mass to complete its movement is the same as that required for the building to go through a complete swing. The mechanical engineers for Citicorp Center were Joseph R. Loring & Associates, and the structural engineers were LeMessurier Associates/ SCI and James Ruderman. Mr. Morris said he knew of no other tuned mass dampers operating in New York City. Frosty the Soot Man Q. When it snows, my children lift their little faces to the sky and stick out their tongues to catch the falling flakes, just as I did as a boy. But I didn't grow up in the Bronx. Is falling snow safe to eat in New York? A. You couldn't keep a child from tasting snowflakes even | F.Y.I. |
906106_1 | was reading, the answer stayed comfortingly the same, year in, year out: Paul Johnson's ''Modern Times,'' a conservative history of the 20th century. (I wonder if he ever finished it.) Bob Dole was blunt about literature as P.R. accessory. Asked what book he'd like to curl up with on a free evening, he replied, ''Unlimited Partners,'' the autobiography he wrote with his wife, Elizabeth. Now Bill Clinton would seem like the sort of pol you could trust with books. But it is odd that his favorite book is not a work of fiction or policy, but of ancient philosophy, the ''Meditations'' of Marcus Aurelius. Why would this least Stoic of Americans dwell on this most Stoic of Romans? Marcus was an emperor who chose to have no clothes, who believed in simplicity of wardrobe, diet and speech, who hated carping, bad temper and polls (known then as ''sounding the minds of the neighbors''). In his first term, Mr. Clinton was so busy with New Age gurus, he ignored the lessons of his Old Age guru. But perhaps the messy burden of Paula Jones and John Huang has convinced the President of the need to find some philosophical distance. Here, summarized, a dozen epigrams of Marcus that will serve Potus (the smarmy Washington insider way of referring to President of the United States) very well. 1. Work toward mastery of self and vacillation in nothing. 2. Within 10 days you will appear a god even to those to whom today you seem a beast or a baboon if you return to your principles. 3. Don't anymore discuss what the good man is like, but be good. 4. If it is not right, don't do it; if it is not true, don't say it. 5. Let no one any longer hear you finding fault with your life in a palace. 6. Turn inward to your self, whenever you blame the traitor or the ungrateful, for the fault is plainly yours. 7. Disdain the flesh: blood and bones, a twisted skein of nerves, veins, arteries. 8. Perceive at last that you have within yourself something stronger and more divine than the passions -- fright, suspicion, appetite? -- which make a downright puppet of you. 9. The simple and good man ought to be entirely such. The affectation of simplicity is like a razor. 10. Nothing is more wretched than the man who seeks | Potus Aurelius |
905868_2 | institutions throughout the country. He is looking for support from corporations, foundations and other sources, specifically $150,000 to hire sales, marketing and training staffs. Connecticut Department of Labor funds, which helped launch the program at Quinnipiac in Hamden, have run out, and he would also like money to help students who can't afford the $1,300 tuition the college is now charging. In some ways, it's been difficult promoting a course that many traditional educators would consider ''radically different,'' Mr. Hodge said. Explaining that society has encouraged people to pursue what they are good at instead of what they enjoy, he throws words like qualifications, attitude and skills out the window. Rather than rely on aptitude tests, he encourages students to look inward for answers, basing their career goals on natural strengths and past achievements. Then he tells them to go out and find out what other people think about them. ''I've got a bunch of degrees, but if you don't like me because I'm black or because I'm tall, it doesn't matter,'' he said. ''The person across the table says, 'I don't care what you're good at. It's not good enough for us.' '' In his classroom, students are encouraged to be straightforward in assessing each other, even if it means talking about ''the scar on your face or how thin your hair is.'' The idea is to face reality, change or accept it, then move on to other things, Mr. Hodge said. He also tells them chances at a good job are slim if they don't understand computers, and he teaches such basics as document and spreadsheet creation, data processing and desktop publishing. ''Especially as employers are going global, and downsizing is forcing people to produce more, the technology is what has limited a lot of people,'' Mr. Hodge said. ''The company is moving along, and it needs to know how it can get its people to speak the same language.'' Such ideas impressed the Department of Labor, which usually reserves its support for small and mid-sized businesses, said Janice Hasenjager, program manager for customized job training. The department liked the way Mr. Hodge addressed the rapid changes in the workplace. ''He has been able to place people who have been out of work for a long time,'' she said. Mr. Hodge said his ideas for the course came from his own experience. He described himself as ''a youth | How to Find a Fit in the New Job Market |
907019_3 | members to vote on Mr. Smith's resolution. ''They probably are not going to be tied together in any way,'' Mr. Boehner said. Representative James C. Greenwood, Republican of Pennsylvania, an abortion rights supporter and a leader of the moderates on the issue, said they would not support a rule that simply allowed both resolutions to the floor, as the leaders proposed and as Mr. Smith said he wanted. ''Our position,'' Mr. Greenwood said, ''is that we will vote for the rule permitting Smith to have his resolution if and only if the President's resolution passes.'' The two resolutions may seem mutually exclusive, he said, but the moderates are offering the rules proposal to try to attract to the President's resolution the anti-abortion members who support family planning but need the political cover of being recorded as voting with the abortion foes. ''It's just a common legislative ploy to allow members to have various things both ways and protect themselves politically,'' he said. He said he was not worried about Mr. Smith's resolution even if it passed, because, he said, it will not be taken up in the Senate. The Senate Republican leader, Trent Lott, has indicated that, as in the House, the President's resolution will be allowed a vote with no alterations or amendments. ''Lott said he was not inclined to amendments, and there ought not to be any roadblocks to this,'' said Peter Kostmayer, executive director of Zero Population Growth, which aims to slow population growth worldwide. He was one of about 15 environmentalists who met recently with the Senate leader. ''It really is in the House where our efforts are focused.'' At the moment, the Senate has no measure comparable to Mr. Smith's. Tony Fratto, a spokesman for Senator Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican who is active against abortion, said, ''It seems clear to us that an up or down vote is what's in order, and the bottom line in the Senate is, we can't get unanimous consent for Chris Smith's language.'' Even with the protection of the veto in the White House, Mr. Greenwood said, he is disappointed that the Administration has not made more of an effort to rally Democratic votes in the House for the President's resolution. ''There's a general fear that legislatively, the White House isn't ready to tackle this,'' he said. ''But it's the Administration's bill, and they need to get up here.'' | Lawmaker Sees a Gain for His Fight Against Abortions Overseas |
907022_0 | John Bromley waits with childlike impatience for the arrival of his photography teacher, who has printed Mr. Bromley's latest roll of film -- exuberant images of friends at a local disco -- and is stopping by with contact sheets. Mr. Bromley, 39, has the sweet nature, garbled speech and facial distortions of Down syndrome. He spends his days on an assembly line, putting plastic shrink wrap on Easter-egg-coloring kits. He spends his nights at a group home here cataloguing baseball cards, Elvis memorabilia and old family snapshots. The snapshots are in perfect order, shoebox after shoebox. They connect him to a safe, predictable world, when his parents were still alive and the family had barbecues, vacationed in the Poconos and celebrated birthdays and holidays that Mr. Bromley gave idiosyncratic names, like Happy Me and Ho Ho Ho. But the color snapshots, mostly taken by his late father, do not thrill Mr. Bromley as do the black-and-white pictures he makes these days in a class taught by Martin Benjamin, a photography professor at Union College. He is instructing nine developmentally disabled adults at a center run by the Schenectady County Association for Retarded Citizens. Mr. Bromley always reacts the same way to a new contact sheet, laughing out loud and turning to Mr. Benjamin for approval. ''I got good shots, don't I?'' Mr. Bromley says. Thus the teacher found a title for an exhibition, ''Good Shots: Photographs of and by People with Disabilities,'' which is to open Feb. 10 at the Union College arts building. Mr. Bromley and his fellow students -- some with fetal alcohol syndrome, others with seizure disorders, many previously institutionalized -- are beside themselves with excitement about the event, which will include pictures taken by Mr. Benjamin and some Union College students who visit the center with him. Mr. Benjamin, a 47-year-old professor who has exhibited widely, is one of a long and growing line of documentary photographers who are giving cameras to unlikely students -- ghetto children, learning-disabled teen-agers, retarded adults and others -- and watching their eyes widen and their worlds expand. Experts -- including Bruce Davidson, the documentary photographer, and Wendy Ewald, who won a MacArthur Foundation grant for her photographic projects with street urchins -- cite various reasons why cameras are such expressive tools. They are inexpensive, simple to use and allow people with limited dexterity and language skill to make representational images | Disabled Adults Unshutter the World |
906987_1 | military action, the Clinton Administration began a furious round of diplomacy to soothe tensions in the area. But Russian nuclear officials are unrepentant about their drive for foreign sales and say the sale of power plants to India will not enhance its military potential. ''We must expand our exports,'' Viktor N. Mikhailov, Russia's Atomic Energy Minister, told reporters last month. ''We will use the export earnings to repay our debts.'' The roots of the Indian dispute go back to 1974, when New Delhi startled the world by conducting a nuclear test. The Indians used plutonium from a research rector sold by Canada for peaceful purposes. In an effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear suppliers agreed to a system of export controls, which were broadened in 1992. The 1992 ''suppliers' agreement'' forbids nuclear suppliers from exporting nuclear technology to aspiring nuclear powers. Specifically, it says that nuclear suppliers cannot sell nuclear technology to nations that are not formally recognized as nuclear weapons states and which do not allow international inspections of all of their key nuclear institutes, laboratories and plants and of the nuclear material there. Under the treaty against the spread of nuclear arms, only the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China are recognized as nuclear weapon states. ''The basic idea is that countries should not get the benefits of nuclear energy without making a comprehensive commitment to its peaceful use,'' an American official said. As a practical matter, the 1992 agreement imposed an embargo on sales of nuclear technology to India, Pakistan and Israel, which are believed to have developed nuclear weapons and have refused to sign the treaty against the spread of nuclear weapons and accept international monitoring. South Asia has long been an area of special concern. India and Pakistan, both emerging nuclear powers, are bitter antagonists and have fought three wars since 1947. American diplomats have also been frustrated by India's opposition to a nuclear test ban. India says that it is not willing to accept a ban until the major nuclear powers agreed to a timetable for disarmament. But American officials say they believe that India's position is simply a rationale for keeping its nuclear option open. American officials became alarmed in 1995 when American spy satellites detected possible preparations for a nuclear test. As a nuclear exporter, Russia went along with the toughened controls over nuclear supplies. But after it | Russia Is Selling Nuclear Reactors to India; U.S. Protests |
907073_0 | To the Editor: By linking outdated criticisms of an expired tax credit program to an initiative from President Clinton, your Jan. 30 editorial almost ignores a year and a half of bipartisan effort in Congress to create a public-private tax credit program, the Work Opportunities Tax Credit, which is just getting under way. Although millions were helped by the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit program, its critics charged that many employers were rewarded yet welfare eligibility was not considered when the hiring decision was made. The new program addresses that criticism by requiring employers to screen for eligibility during the job application process and by tightening the criteria to insure that the credit is available only for those who have a history of dependence on public assistance programs. Employers have become comfortable with hiring credits because it provides them with the resources they need to engage welfare recipients in on-the-job training. The hiring tax credit helps to offset at least a portion of the higher costs associated with employing the hard-core unemployed. (Rep.) AMO HOUGHTON (Rep.) CHARLES J. RANGEL Washington, Jan. 31, 1997 Clinton Tax Credit Plan Won't End Welfare Cycle | New and Improved |
906989_1 | well organized criminal rings. The United States and European countries are reluctant to grant visas to Nigerians out of the concern that they will remain in the country they visit. Nigerian newspapers have reported with delight the allegations that British citizens are involved in the illegal sales. A number of newspapers have been quick to take editorial shots at Britain after being the object of disparaging British statements about official corruption in Nigeria. ''Stinking British Embassy,'' read the banner headline Saturday in the newspaper Concord. Under the headline was the official picture of Queen Elizabeth II. Word of the British visa scandal has spread a sense of distress through other Western embassies in Lagos. ''We are being extra vigilant,'' said Joseph Melrose, the American charge d'affaires. The United States Embassy said it has received reports of people from the outside claiming to be able to influence the visa process, and promising to provide visas for a fee. The Embassy said those reported to be involved have no official standing with the embassy. There have also been reports made by people seeking visas from both the German and United States Embassies that Nigerian gate guards demand bribes just to let applicants pass. The major concern of American diplomats is the falsification of documents. The Embassy has received reports from international airports of Nigerians traveling on doctored American passports. Embassy officials suspect that attempts are also being made to forge American visas in Nigeria. Not only is Nigeria one of the world's major drug-trafficking points, but most public corporations have reputations of being corrupt, and fake documents of virtually any kind are easily available on street corners. American diplomats say more than 40 percent of the documents accompanying visa application forms they receive are false, with the German Embassy saying the figure is 90 percent for its visa section. ''We can't catch them all,'' said one European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''We're lucky if we can identify a fifth of the false papers.'' An article published in a Nigerian travel journal last year gave detailed instructions how to make arrangements to get a foreign visa. ''If you want to make everything go faster, turn up for the interview panel with, say, $5,000 to $10,000,'' it advised, reminding applicants to bring personal documents like marriage certificates, which are available for the equivalent of $6, and to dress well for the interview. | 4 Britons Recalled From Nigeria in Visa-Selling Investigation |
911820_2 | conservative majority in the French Parliament to propose new regulations. That allowed the National Front to claim that it had the right position all along. One of the National Front's favorite arguments is that France cannot keep unwanted immigrants from Africa and Asia from sneaking into the country, because France is dismantling border controls to build a united Europe that few of Europe's 370 million people understand. Some of the National Front's top leaders are among the 626 elected members of the European Parliament, but apparently were not there last Thursday when it voted to call on the French Government to withdraw the bill being debated in Paris. In fact, the European Parliament has no power to legislate on immigration, which like most problems of strategic importance except trade remains in the hands of national parliaments. The French bill originally had a clause that would have required people who invite foreigners to visit to get permission from local mayors and then to report to the police when the guests have left French territory. The European Parliament's vote struck a sensitive nerve. First, the European Parliament said the bill was an invitation to denunciation, precisely the point made by thousands of intellectuals who have drawn a parallel between the bill and denunciations of Jews and foreign agents under the Vichy regime during the German occupation. Second, the opposition Socialists allowed the measure to slip through its first reading in the French Parliament last month practically without debate. They woke to its supposed dangers only after the National Front jolted the political establishment by winning a municipal election in the southern town of Vitrolles. And third, the French Government, as if ashamed of itself, withdrew the offending provision in advance of a second debate on the bill in the National Assembly this week. An amendment leaves enforcement of immigration laws in the hands of Government-appointed prefects and makes foreigners report their own comings and goings. Some 100,000 opponents, led by intellectuals, actors and leading theater and film directors who signed petitions against the bill, mobilized in the streets of Paris last weekend. Protesters and the police clashed outside the National Assembly after it debated the bill on Tuesday night; today the assembly approved the amended bill by a huge majority. ''The extreme right may be the biggest beneficiary of all this legislative perpetual motion,'' warned Laurent Fabius, a Socialist former Prime Minister. | France Blasts European Parliament for Attacking Immigration Bill |
908991_1 | Lockerbie disaster. It need not happen again if the Clinton Administration has the will to follow through. The report aims to reduce the rate of fatal accidents by 80 percent within the next 10 years. It addresses three main areas -- safety, security and the air traffic control system. It would upgrade safety through more frequent inspection of aging aircraft, new ground-sensing equipment and more stringent certification standards and regulatory enforcement. Traffic control would be enhanced by greater use of satellite and computer data-base information. Its strategy for better protection against terrorism relies on what it calls a ''layered'' approach. Special scrutiny would be given to passengers with characteristics that do not fit a ''normal'' passenger profile -- for example, travelers who pay in cash rather than a credit card. There would also be ''baggage-matching'' -- making sure that passengers who have checked baggage actually board their flights. Luggage-scanning machines will be made more sophisticated and used more often. Even a carefully designed profiling system, however, raises civil liberties issues. Full-scale baggage-matching could cause long delays and disrupt airline scheduling. Thus the commission's ultimate goal is to rely mainly on mechanical screening as soon as the development of more accurate and cheaper machines makes this practical. For now, delays would be reduced by matching the bags of those falling outside the conventional passenger profile. Meanwhile, a panel of civil liberties experts will recommend guidelines to minimize unnecessary intrusions. Still, any profiling system will have to be strictly monitored. Funds have already been approved for the purchase of a new generation of experimental baggage-scanning machines and for the development of new navigational warning systems. A national test of baggage-matching is now scheduled for May. But the hardest challenges lie ahead, and Mr. Gore in particular must see to it that agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration heed the commission's good advice. He will also need to keep the airline industry convinced that the Government is serious about baggage-matching. That is the way to spur the industry to develop procedures that will minimize costs and delays, perhaps by adopting a version of the bar-code system already used by major air freight companies. Americans now take more than half a billion flights a year. Every air traveler, from the business flier to the infrequent visitor of distant relatives, has a life-and-death interest in seeing the Gore commission's main recommendations quickly put into effect. | Making Air Travel Safer |
909031_3 | abandoned car. In 1989, the city got about $15 a car for 146,880 derelict cars, which added up to about $2.1 million. Last year, the average price had risen to $128 a car, so that even though the number of vehicles had dropped by 90 percent, to 17,218, the city still collected $2.2 million. In the 1980's, car owners would have to pay a junkyard to have their battered cars picked up. Now, at the very least, the vehicle will be picked up free; often, the owner can expect to be paid as much as $100. Dr. Herschel Cutler, the executive director of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade group in Washington, said that what is driving the increase in the value of scrap is the steel industry, because it is relying much more heavily on recycled metal for raw material. Traditional mills that make steel from iron ore have increasingly been replaced by minimills, which turn items like cars and large kitchen appliances back into steel. ''The growth in that area has been phenomenal,'' Dr. Cutler said, adding that recyclers now account for 40 percent of the steel manufactured in the country. At U.S. 1 Auto Wreckers in Hunts Point, which hauls away all of the city's abandoned cars in the Bronx, that changing market has created a reliable outlet. Dennis Pantore, the owner of U.S.1 Auto Wreckers, said that even though scrap metal prices had dipped temporarily, competition for derelict cars was still fierce. He said that street scavengers routinely whisk away about 20 to 25 percent of the abandoned cars tagged by sanitation officials before his tow trucks can get to them. Last month, that meant that 150 of the 600 tagged cars were gone by the time his trucks went to retrieve them. ''There are plenty of fly-by-night operations roaming the streets looking for scrap,'' he said. ''And all they need is a flatbed and a tow truck and they can do a good business stealing the cars that we're supposed to get.'' At least some people in the South Bronx remain skeptical of the change. Bryan Oh, owner of Hipone Cleaners, on Hunts Point Avenue, used to watch men rip out the windows and remove the tires from skeletal cars and take the parts to auto shops around the corner. The streets are much less ominous now, he said, but he cannot believe | Gone to Junkyards, Almost Every One |
909027_1 | he resigned in 1976. John Pike, an authority on space policy who is the director of the space policy project at the Federation of American Scientists, an organization that is based in Washington, said on Thursday that Mr. Katz's ''early studies made possible the reconnaissance satellites that were a mainstay of intelligence collection and treaty verification during the cold war.'' Most of those studies were done at Rand in the 1950's. Mr. Pike said they were important because they ''identified how one would do photographic intelligence from space.'' William R. Harris, a Rand consultant who is an expert on arms control treaties, said of Mr. Katz: ''In the 1950's and early 1960's, he was really the world's pre-eminent expert on the use of photographic systems in piercing cold-war secrecy. His expertise helped others in the West to construct reconnaissance systems that enabled successive Western political leaders to manage cold-war crises more effectively in the nuclear age.'' Mr. Katz was born in Chicago, grew up in Milwaukee, received a bachelor's degree in 1939 from the University of Wisconsin and did graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1946 he supervised the Army Air Forces' photography of the atomic bomb tests at Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands in the western Pacific. During the Korean War, in preparation for the successful amphibious landing of American troops at Inchon, South Korea, Mr. Katz devised a plan to measure the height of a sea wall at the harbor without alerting enemy forces of the impending attack. He did it by having airplanes take photographs of Inchon at carefully timed intervals, and then using trigonometry to calculate the height of the wall and to show that it would not be a major obstacle to the Marine Corps landing on Sept. 15, 1950. In 1957, Mr. Katz and a Rand teammate, Merton E. Davies, advocated the use of cameras and film-recovery systems in space reconnaissance to gather intelligence about the Soviet Union from places where intelligence-gathering had not been possible before. Rand's recommendations were promptly accepted by the Air Force. Mr. Harris said Mr. Katz ''was among the earliest champions of the use of reconnaissance by spacecraft to take the place of inspectors on the ground as the main means of monitoring the implementation of proposed arms control treaties.'' Mr. Katz was sometimes a critic of American reconnaissance techniques in the cold war, too. | Amrom H. Katz, 81, Early Expert on Space Reconnaissance |
909871_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Six Figures of Fun; It's Bonus Season on Wall Street'' (news article, Feb. 12): What a sad commentary when young men drop out of universities because they recognize their ability to make megabucks. Pity this country if some of our brightest individuals have lost the real reason for obtaining a college education. IRENE BLOOM Champaign, Ill., Feb. 13, 1997 | Can I.R.S. Be Far From Classroom Door? |
909748_0 | SINCE the middle of the last century, the Amazon River and its tributaries have provided passage to many an intrepid adventurer heading into South America's interior rain forests. But despite the fact that scientifically minded explorers have been floating down these waterways for more than 100 years, life in the river itself has remained largely unknown. A handful of scientists have now begun the difficult work of plumbing the Amazon's depths, casting down their nets to unveil the deep-water world below. With each haul, long-hidden inhabitants of the Amazon, the largest tropical river system on earth, are coming to light, including oddities like transparent catfish and electric fish that subsist solely on the tails of other electric fish. ''We've now gone close to 2,500 miles over the Amazon and its tributaries,'' said Dr. John G. Lundberg, an ichthyologist, or fish specialist, at the University of Arizona in Tucson. ''You come up with drastically different kinds of fish.'' Dr. Richard Robins, the Maytag professor emeritus of ichthyology at University of Miami, said, ''Lundberg's work has been pioneering.'' Dr. Robins helped make the case to persuade the National Science Foundation to finance Dr. Lundberg's team when it first proposed fishing the deep rivers. He argued that even though the team would probably lose every net it had trying to catch fish from the ragged bottom of these rushing rivers, if it got just one successful haul, the effort would be worthwhile. ''No one knew what was going on down there,'' Dr. Robins said. ''It's a big breakthrough.'' Like the Amazon rain forest, the Amazon River is home to creatures of extreme diversity, helping to make South America the continent with more fish species than any other in the world. So far, the Amazon and its tributaries are estimated to harbor at least 2,000 freshwater fish species, twice the number in the United States, Canada and Mexico. ''It's just an overwhelming diversity,'' said Dr. William L. Fink, an ichthyologist at the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology, ''and how all this came to be is a real interesting question. The deep-water faunas are especially odd and the most challenging to get to. You get into strange and interesting new worlds.'' So far, Dr. Lundberg and his collaborators, including Dr. Cristina Cox Fernandes of Brazil's National Institute of Research of Amazonia and Dr. Naercio Menezes of Brazil's Zoology Museum in Sao Paulo, have amassed | Amazon's Depths Yield Strange New World Of Unknown Fish |
908445_1 | environment and promoting economic growth.'' The family-planning programs have come under fire from anti-abortion forces, who contend that they are actually conduits for what many of them call President Clinton's worldwide ''abortion crusade.'' In addition, some opponents of the Administration's measure, like Steven W. Mosher of the Population Research Institute, which opposes contraception, accuse the United States of a ''contraceptive imperialism.'' At a news conference on Monday that featured Representative Christopher Smith, Republican of New Jersey, and Senator Tim Hutchinson, Republican of Arkansas, Mr. Mosher said that overpopulation of the world was a ''myth'' and that money from the United States was used disproportionately for family planning at the expense of basic health and hygiene. The Administration-backed resolution would speed the release of money allocated last year but withheld until July 1997. If released on March 1, as the Administration wants, the money available between then and Sept. 30, the end of the 1997 fiscal year, would amount to $215 million. If delayed until July, the sum would amount to $92 million, a loss of $123 million. An alternative measure, offered by Mr. Smith, would provide $385 million for family planning, but only on the condition that none of the money go to any organization that performs abortions, even if it finances them with money from other sources. While both measures could conceivably pass the House, the Smith bill would face a tougher time in the Senate and would be vetoed by President Clinton. At today's hearing, Mr. Smith pointedly questioned Ms. Albright as he asserted that the Administration was bent on undermining anti-abortion laws in many of the countries where the United States sends family-planning money through the Agency for International Development. ''I believe the real consensus is with providing family planning funds,'' Mr. Smith said, ''but not, however unwittingly, empowering the pro-abortion movement overseas to bring down the right-to-life laws as they exist in approximately 100 countries of the world.'' Ms. Albright responded: ''The U.S. does not fund the performance or promotion of abortion anywhere in the world. And what we are concerned about is that the restrictions that are envisioned in your language would preclude U.S.A.I.D. from working with organizations that provide effective, voluntary family planning and women's health services in countries where abortion is legal.'' She added, ''I think the issue here, sir, is that we desperately need the money in order to try to get | Family Planning and Foreign Policy Are Linked, Albright Tells House Panel |
908395_2 | against airplanes. *Randomly checking for explosives in packages of 16 ounces and more sent by mail. *Improving the identification of passengers at airports so airlines know whom they are flying. Identity checks now consist mostly of a glance at a passenger's driver's license. The commission also made some points that previous critics had made: that the F.A.A. has problems modernizing air traffic control, that it needs a better source of financing and that it needs to pay attention to a plethora of small aviation businesses that do contract maintenance and be tougher on them. Overseeing such maintenance was a factor in the Valujet crash. The commission also said that the F.A.A. could not hope to inspect many airplanes and oversee airline operations and should focus instead on making sure the airlines have a good system for policing themselves. On the question of accident rates, the draft report made the point that if the number of crashes per departure did not improve, the number of crashes would increase in tandem with air traffic. That rate has been flat for the last two decades, the report said, but should be cut to one-fifth of its current level by 2005. Transportation Secretary Federico F. Pena established the goal of no accidents in early 1995 after a particularly bad year for crashes, but he did not map out a course to reach it. The commission said it had not found a way to carry out a system for domestic flights in which the airlines would assure that no one checked a bag without boarding a plane. A test was conducted last year, but the report said, ''Unfortunately, the F.A.A. did not carry out this responsibility correctly, and as a result, delayed the implementation of an important security improvement.'' The White House staff member said that in a statistical study of baggage, the F.A.A. had neglected to measure how frequently a bag is put on a plane even though a passenger decides not to board. That could occur because a connecting passenger was on an important phone call in an airport concourse, was in a bathroom, or, said the staff member, ''was drunk in the bar,'' but in any case, if the Government required bag matching, the airline would have to send someone into the hold to remove that passenger's bags. At the moment, the commission still does not know how cumbersome that would be. | Panel to Recommend Steps For Cutting Air Crash Rate |
910129_2 | latter, at least, subsequently subsiding. Exports, which hit a record in November, eased $1.1 billion, much of the decline reflecting lower foreign sales of soybeans and corn at the end of a year when early prospects of tight supplies gave way to bountiful harvests. But even as the overall deficit widened by nearly 30 percent in December, there was a narrowing with both China and Japan, the sources of much of this country's trade friction. The gap with China shrank $400 million, to $2.6 billion, in December, while surging 16.9 percent for the year, to $39.5 billion, or slightly higher than with Canada and Mexico combined. The United States buys more than four times as much from China as it sells there and exported slightly less last year to China than to Australia. In June, Congress will be called upon to extend China's trading rights for another year, a process not now expected to prove difficult but that is nevertheless likely to at least be deferred until after China's takeover of Hong Kong at midyear. As for Japan, the American deficit edged down a slight $50 million, to $4.3 billion, in December but shrank markedly for the year. The 1996 deficit was $47.7 billion, or 19.4 percent below the 1995 total. This was the second consecutive decline, and the smallest gap since 1991. Unlike the aggregate statistics, those for individual countries are not adjusted for seasonal variation, nor do they include services, which generally offset a large part of the deficit in merchandise. The Coalition of Service Industries estimated that travel, transportation, royalties and other services generated a United States surplus last year equal to about 40 percent of this country's goods deficit with Japan but only about 2 percent of the goods deficit with China. The overall deficit with Canada widened in December by $600 million, to $2.3 billion, while the deficit with Mexico was halved, to $700 million. For the full year, however, the shortfall with Mexico climbed to a record $16.2 billion, a development seen by critics as a failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement and by the Clinton Administration as temporary fallout from unrelated Mexican economic problems, including peso devaluation in late 1994. The devaluation spurred a severe recession, which drastically cut the market for American imports. Michael Strauss, chief economist for Sanwa Securities in New York, was not bothered by today's report, declaring | Trade Deficit Grew Sharply Last Year |
910105_0 | Even by the standards of an angry, sullen France, an unusual uprising is in the making: hundreds of French actors, film directors and cartoonists have said they are ready to go to jail if a new immigration bill is passed. More defiant still, many Government officials have publicly announced that they would ignore the proposed law. Among them are influential groups like the national association of French mayors and a number of judges and magistrates. At issue is a Government bill, due to be discussed in Parliament on Tuesday, that aims to tighten measures to prevent illegal immigration. The portion of the bill that has caused particular outrage among the intelligentsia would oblige the French to inform the authorities of the movements of visiting foreigners who are on special guest visas, staying in French homes. Some foreigners would be exempt, including visitors from Europe and industrial countries like Japan and the United States, but visitors from a long list of countries, among them many in Africa and the Middle East, are designated as targets of the new law. Officials have made it no secret that behind the new immigration bill lies the fear that all mainstream political parties share of the growing extreme-right position of the National Front. The Front, with its strident anti-foreigner platform, blames immigrants for France's record unemployment, and in recent local elections it won control of a fourth town in southern France. Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre, who proposed the bill, is known to see it as a means of preventing the extreme right from further using the immigration issue to gain support. Critics have likened the proposal to the repressive policies decreed by the wartime Vichy regime that required the French to register Jewish residents with the police. Many critics of the current proposal, including more than 130 magistrates who have signed a protest, have called it a dangerous flouting of civil liberties. ''This law would transform all citizens into police informers,'' said Dan Franck, a writer and a coordinator of a protest demonstration planned for Saturday. The bill has in fact been before Parliament since mid-December, but it only turned into a major political issue in the last week when nearly 60 film makers demanded to be prosecuted. ''We are guilty, every one of us, of harboring illegal foreign residents recently,'' they said in a statement. ''We ask to be investigated and put on trial.'' | Report Foreign Guests? French Tempers Flare |
910108_0 | After endless complaints from airline passengers, self-service luggage carts will soon be available without charge in the international arrival terminals at the three major area airports. Passengers on domestic flights, however, will still have to pay $1.50 for a cart. The changeover is expected this spring, after the Port Authority initiates a system for operating and maintaining baggage cart dispensing machines and for returning carts to Federal inspection areas. ''One of the most common complaints of arriving international passengers is that the luggage carts are not free, as they are at most airports worldwide,'' said Charles A. Gargano, vice chairman of the Port Authority. In particular, foreign visitors have complained that they often have to exchange currency first to pay for the carts. About three million cart rentals were recorded at Kennedy International Airport last year, for both domestic and international flights, according to John Kampfe, a Port Authority spokesman. About 500,000 rentals occurred at Newark International Airport, which introduced carts in its international terminal in 1989 and in its domestic terminals last year. At La Guardia Airport, where carts were not available until 1994, there were 500,000 rentals last year, although the airport has few international flights. New York area airports were not alone in charging a fee for carts for international passengers. A survey at the end of last year by the Airports Council International, a trade group, found that a small number of United States airports, including those in Anchorage, San Antonio, Detroit and Louisville, Ky., charged a fee. ''But by a wide area, they were in the minority,'' said Susan Black Olson, a spokeswoman for the council. She added, however, that ''a very large majority of airports charge for the use of carts on domestic flights.'' | International Terminals To Drop Airport Cart Fee |
905641_0 | To the Editor: It is ironic that Edna O'Brien (Op-Ed, Jan. 25) accuses Prime Minister John Major of Britain of damaging the peace process in Northern Ireland because of his personal biases while her own article is a masterpiece of partisan rhetoric and one-sided reasoning. She criticizes David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, for calling his opponents ''Hitlers'' but forgets to mention that Prime Minister John Bruton of Ireland recently likened the Irish Republican Army to ''Nazis.'' Ms. O'Brien chides Mr. Major for his contempt for Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, but makes no mention of the contempt that Mr. Adams regularly expresses for British politicians. She disagrees with Mr. Major's accusation that Mr. Adams was ''talking peace while preparing for war,'' but this accusation is demonstrably true: throughout its short-lived cease-fire, the Irish Republican Army continued to stockpile arms and recruit and plan terrorist attacks. A police raid on an I.R.A. bomb factory last October revealed that the London safe house used by the terrorists had been rented within four weeks of the announcement of the cease-fire. The inescapable fact is that the peace process has been sabotaged primarily by the I.R.A.'s unprovoked decision to resume full-scale terrorist campaigns in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland. Mr. Adams and his colleagues in Sinn Fein have proved to be unwilling or unable to stop the slaughter. It's time to question their commitment to peace. HENRY LAURENCE Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 25, 1997 The writer is a research associate with the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. | I.R.A., Not Britain, Sabotages Irish Peace |
905642_0 | To the Editor: Last week's visit of Canada's Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, to Havana has evidently touched a nerve with you (editorial, Jan. 25). Since Cuba's Communist revolution in the late 1950's, Canada has combined normal diplomatic and trade relations with development assistance and low-key human rights work. Canada has for decades been critical of the Castro regime's human rights record. Compared with America's dollar diplomacy in China and Vietnam, Canada's multifaceted diplomacy in Cuba sets an enviable standard. The effective promotion of human rights need not require, as you seem to suggest, that a foreign minister harangue his host on the occasion of a state visit. JAMES REED Boston, Jan. 27, 1997 Editor, American Canada Watch | Canada, Cuba and Rights |
906373_1 | Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the senior United States military commander in Latin America, ''and riverine interdiction is the heart of the next important step in disrupting the supply.'' The officials are proposing that Peruvian security forces do the actual interdicting, stepping up their incipient program of intercepting freighters, motorboats and dugout canoes that carry coca leaves and partly refined coca base hidden among bunches of bananas, coffee, papaya and lumber. The Defense Department's preliminary plans include regular visits to the Peruvian jungle by scores of Navy Seal and Army Green Beret trainers. They also call for supplying Peru with more than 100 patrol boats outfitted with M-60 machine guns, VHF radios and satellite-linked tracking and communications gear. United States personnel would operate a dozen or more low-flying propeller planes to guide Peruvian National Police and Navy forces plying the muddy waters below. United States Customs Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Coast Guard personnel would join in the effort, the officials said. Military planners said they did not know whether they would be able to finance the program fully, noting that they do not want to divert any money from existing programs in their current $150 million anti-drug budget for South America. But the planners are hopeful that they will receive support from General McCaffrey and the Republican-controlled Congress. An estimated 80 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States originates in the Peruvian Andes, before it is refined in Colombia and then transported by air, sea and land through the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. Critics of interdiction say it diverts money from drug treatment programs. Moreover, they say previous United States efforts to curtail supplies of illegal drugs reaching American cities have been largely ineffective in reducing supplies or raising prices on the street for long. But Defense Department officials say air interdiction efforts have begun to make an impact, adding that they were able to restrict the connections between traffickers and peasant growers to such a degree that the price of a 25-pound bag of coca leaves, $25 at the beginning of 1995, plunged to under $5 in one year as peasants were unable to find buyers. That price collapse, analysts said, helped persuade thousands of Peruvian coca growers to seek replacement crops. But coca leaf prices are beginning to rise again as flows to Colombia begin to pick up again. The traffickers have adapted to aggressive | Pentagon to Help Peru Stop Drug Traffic on Jungle Rivers |
906281_0 | A recent help-wanted newspaper advertisement instructed job seekers to send their resumes to hireme@concretemedia.com. Ads like this are proliferating and suggest it is time to dust off the electronic resume -- or hurry and write one. Many places on the World Wide Web offer simple forms for just that purpose. Electronic resumes offer advantages over those sent by mail and fax, even when the three versions are alike in content. Nowadays it is more often the print version that is modeled after the electronic version, not the other way around. The reason is that employers, especially big technology companies, are inundated by thousands upon thousands of resumes each year, and need to search for ''key words'' to indicate a person's match for a job. Even a resume printed the old-fashioned way on fine paper with a handsome design is apt to be scanned electronically to make it searchable. Searching makes it more important to impress the computer, and less important to charm people. As the Web site Job Bank USA puts it: ''Computers have problems with verbs and enjoy key words. What pleases a computer is likely to bore a person.'' So resolve mentally to address your resume to ''Dear Computer . . .'' and just ignore the dehumanization of it all. Intel's Web page explains the new world in a nutshell. It says the resumes it gets ''are scanned into a data base using optical character recognition technology.'' ''Intel recruiters perform regular searches of this data base to locate qualified candidates for open jobs. Searches are done by key words and phrases that describe the skills and core course work required for each job. It is important, therefore, that resumes include terms and familiar industry acronyms for all relevant skills.'' This means that the action verbs of yesteryear -- ''accelerated'' and ''launched'' and ''built'' -- are not required as they once were, and industry jargon is in, according to career professionals on the Web. The scanning obviously benefits people with the most demonstrable skills, and those who pepper their resumes with terms like Unix and T.Q.M. (total quality management) and list professional groups, alma maters and language skills. Itemizing all and sundry is meant to get a match from a computer that may be searching for key words like ''engineer'' and ''fluid dynamics,'' and ''U.C.L.A.'' and ''Santa Ana.'' Not only does electronic filing allow for quick delivery, but often, | Cyberspace Resumes Fit the Modern Job Hunt |
907522_4 | coins valued at $200 each. It's a process that usually takes 18 months, but we got it through in six weeks. People across the political spectrum, including Senators Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, signed on. Q. Are there a lot of special events for the anniversary year? A. Yes. There are events sponsored by some other organization but sanctioned by the Jackie Robinson Foundation, events we sponsor, and a lot of other events, some of which we'll know about and some of which we won't. Several universities are offering courses, some of which will be ongoing. For example, the University of Massachusetts began offering a Jackie Robinson course this year. Q. What are some of the major events? A. The Rose Bowl on New Year's Day, with a float in Jackie's honor by the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, was the kick-off event. In February there are a lot of things, because it's Black History Month. In March there will be the annual Jackie Robinson Foundation awards dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. There's also a jazz concert in June, a golf tournament in July. A statue is being built in Jersey City, where Jackie played his first minor league game. The Jackie Robinson Park of Fame in Stamford is being renovated, and a statue is being built there as well. In the 1997 season, each player on every professional baseball team will wear a patch in Jackie's honor, all season long. A commemorative video will be played in all the stadiums on April 15. We'll have a presence at the All-Star game in Cleveland on July 8. Q. Do you think your experiences as head of the Hamden board of education gave you any insight into Jackie Robinson's life? A. As school board president, I was looking out for the interests of the nonwhite students. After several black parents approached me about their daughters' inability to even get a tryout for the cheerleading squad, I looked into it. After three years of working behind the scenes, nothing changed so I went public. I received death threats. My children were harassed, my wife was harassed. That was several years ago, but rarely a month goes by, still, that there's not some reminder of that. That's a tiny thing that gives me some insight into the pressures he was under. Q. What is Rachel Robinson's role in the foundation? | In Celebration of Jackie Robinson |
907498_11 | resort Getting There El Questro is in the East Kimberley, 55 miles from the city of Kununurra. Ansett Airlines flies into Kununurra from Darwin, Perth or Broome. Both Ansett and Qantas fly to Darwin and Perth from Australia's major cities. Chartered flights into El Questro run from about $40 a person, at a rate of 1.24 Australian dollars to $1, depending upon the number of persons and the plane's size. To book a stay at El Questro, write El Questro, Post Office Box 909, Kununurra, Western Australia 6743 or phone (61-91) 691-777 or fax (61-91) 691-383. The best time of year to visit is from April through October when the temperature ranges from 86 degrees (May) to 100 (October). Because the humidity is low, the temperatures are not as bad as they sound. Casual clothing, light and porous for the heat, is fine day and night, with the exception of the Homestead, where smart but still casual clothing is usual for evening dining. Accommodations El Questro Homestead. Minimum two-night stay, $516 a person a night in a double room or $677 in a single. All expenses are covered except helicopter charters. Emma Gorge Resort (tented cabins, exterior bath and showers) $39.50 a person. Bungalows (able to sleep four, with interior bath) $48.40 a person. Riverside camping sites (take your own gear and four-wheel drive) are $6 a person. A day's visit is $4 a person at Emma Gorge and $6 at the Station. Restaurants The Steakhouse at the Station serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Entrees at dinner run from $11.25 (seafood basket) to $13.70 (grilled steak) to $16 (grilled fillet of barramundi). Wine and beer available. Emma Gorge Restaurant at Emma Gorge serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Entrees at dinner run from $18.50 for grilled barramundi topped with a banana and galliano sauce to $19.35 for Morton Bay bugs (a very special, small rock lobster) to $20.15 for prime fillet steak grilled and topped with cajun prawn in bearnaise. Wine and beer available. Activities Chamberlain Gorge (with four-wheel drive vehicle and boat), three hours, from $28 a person; scenic tour (with four-wheel drive) $44.35 half day, $76.60 full day with picnic a person. Horseback riding $20.15 an hour. Guided barramundi fishing (with four-wheel drive vehicle and boat), half day, $96.75 a person. Helicopter flight, half-hour, $100 a person. Helicopter fishing, half day, $282. M.H. MALABAR HORNBLOWER is a travel writer. | Wilderness Deluxe |
907524_3 | a greenhouse at the Boboli Gardens to provide a safe, controlled environment to slowly dry the hundreds of soaked panel paintings. In the 12 months that followed, Florentine restorers removed 27,000 square feet of wet and stained frescoes from their supporting walls, thereby preserving a significant part of Florence's patrimony of wall paintings. Volunteers, including Richard Burton and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, came from around the world to help save the city's treasures. Dressed in rubber boots, working 10 to 14 hours a day, these volunteers came to be known as the angeli del fango, the angels of the mud. The Government eventually provided money to raise the flood barriers near the Uffizi to 26 feet and to dredge the river bottom under the Ponte Vecchio. But these measures were hardly sufficient to handle a volume of water like that of November 1966. Only in 1989 was the problem of the Arno River declared of pressing national interest. With the formation of the Arno Basin Authority, local, regional and national authorities began to search in earnest for ways to assure Florence's safety. ''A river is a very complex and demanding organism,'' says Costanza Pera, director general of the institute for the safeguarding of Italian terrain at the Ministry of the Interior. ''You cannot resolve the problems of the Arno at Florence by simply altering the waterway at Florence,'' she says. ''You have to intervene at various points along the river. And in Italy, where we have a high density of population, much of which lives near or on our rivers, each of these choices means modifying the life of thousands of people.'' Current plans to domesticate the Arno center on building a series of reservoirs upstream to handle excess volumes of water during heavy rains. Ms. Pera expects the 15-year Arno basin plan to cost $2.3 billion. Yet given Italy's perpetual fiscal travails, there is no guarantee that these funds will be forthcoming. Of the $180 million needed to begin work this year, the Government is unlikely to provide more than half. The memory of the 1966 flood is still vivid in the minds of Florentines. Each fall, when the rains begin, inhabitants pack the city's bridges and river banks, wringing their hands beneath their umbrellas as they watch the rising waters with a mix of fear and fascination. Should monitors upstream from Florence sound the alarm, Florentines would have | 30 Years Later, Florence Warily Watches the Arno |
907706_4 | its own risk: nearly everyone will be at risk for some disorder. How genetic profiles will be used -- including by insurance companies -- and who will have access to them remains a huge question. True confidentiality is unlikely. And what will happen if courts accept the idea that some criminal behavior has a genetic basis? THE ENVIRONMENT Energy is still being used -- and wasted -- in vast amounts, degrading the environment. Some experts say the only answer is to reduce energy consumption, to make people live more frugally. But others say information technologies can help countries and consumers cut back by eliminating the waste. For example, better traffic management could slash the gasoline wasted in traffic jams. LEARNING Education must reach more people -- and it must go to them rather than forcing individuals to go to schools to learn. People may then see education as a lifelong activity, rather than something that takes place when they are young. It's also not too late to join the information age -- worldwide, fewer than 5 percent of people use computers, although the proportion in the United States is upward of 30 percent. POPULATION By 2000, half the world's population will be under 20, with profound consequences. The vast majority will live in poor nations, many in the streets of mega-cities that cannot provide jobs. Worriers are certain that these leaps in population will test the world's ability to feed everyone. Still, recent surveys in China show that the amount of arable land there is greater than previously thought, and some scientists see biotechnology as the savior that will increase food production. No matter what happens, food may well cost everyone a lot more. THE FRENZY Are you tired? Just wait. The pace of life in the developed world will only get faster, leading some to suggest that some people will opt out of post-industrial life altogether and others to predict a big business in building sanctuaries for the harried. Alienation is a huge risk. Considering that a huge part of Davos is the talk that goes on in the corridors, attendees had a good Davos if they covered anywhere close to the ground outlined here. If it all sounds squishy, however, remember that Davos functions best when it provides questions, not answers. After all, Elie Wiesel said at one meeting, ''Questions unite people, and answers divide them.'' EARNING IT | A Quick Guide to Big Ideas, if You Didn't Get to Davos |
907938_17 | planet is passing across its face. If the project wins Federal approval in the next few months, the spacecraft, called Kepler, could be launched in March 2001; within a few weeks, it could detect some 2,400 new planets, including perhaps 100 that might have a size and solid surface like Earth's. A more ambitious concept is being developed by Dr. J. Roger P. Angel and Dr. Neville J. Woolf of the University of Arizona. They propose putting a large infrared telescope in deep space that would be capable of detecting the radiated heat of exoplanets. The emissions should also reveal the presence of any water, ozone or carbon dioxide on a planet, which could be evidence of life. But this project may have trouble winning support because of its complexity and a cost estimate of $2 billion. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engineers are drawing up plans for two space missions they expect will be centerpieces in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's new Origins Program, a major goal of which is the search for Earthlike exoplanets. The missions are to apply a new technology called optical interferometry for the first time in space science. A variation on the idea that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, interferometry involves several small telescopes, separated but operated in unison, to make observations that are as sharp as those of a single telescope that would be so powerful and big, several hundred feet wide, that it would be impossible to build or deploy. The first of these, the Space Interferometry Mission, which could be ready for launching in seven years, should give astronomers their most precise measure yet of the positions and motions of stars. Dr. Firouz Naderi, director of the program, put it this way: ''If you were looking at the Moon with this system and there was an astronaut with a flashlight on the surface, you would be able to detect his passing the flashlight from one hand to the other.'' The second step, to be taken in about 10 years, would be a mission called the Terrestrial Planet Finder. In a more elaborate application of interferometry, the spacecraft would operate four 60-inch telescopes placed along a 240-foot-long truss. The infrared light they collect would be combined in a way to eliminate light from the star but magnify any radiation from a nearby planet. Astronomers predict | In a Golden Age of Discovery, Faraway Worlds Beckon |
907988_2 | AOLnet across the country, and still relies on Sprintnet for coverage in some rural areas. The company does volunteer Sprintnet access numbers in areas where AOLnet does not exist. But America Online volunteers no information about the usable Sprintnet numbers in area codes that cover cities like Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington. In New York City, for instance, a Sprintnet telephone number is (212) 206-0256. But when America Online customers use the keyword ''access'' to pull up a list of potential access numbers for the 212 area code, that number does not appear. ''It would cost them a little bit, but it would seem to me that it would make sense to pay Sprint something to keep people happy,'' said William B. Haynes, president of a small computer consulting company in Charlotte, N.C. ''People expect to be able to get their E-mail. People expect to be able to get their stock quotes. I think there's a real responsibility that comes with that. If they have the opportunity to save some of that grief for people, they should. ''Now with Charlotte so overloaded, why in the world aren't the Sprint numbers there in that listing?'' Mr. Gang said that the company could reintroduce Sprintnet numbers to its listings, but added, ''I do not see that happening in any major metropolitan areas any time soon.'' ''It is obviously more efficient and more cost-effective to our shareholders to build our own network,'' he said. ''We've got the best-quality network available.'' Neither company would disclose what it costs America Online to receive customer calls through Sprintnet. ''It cuts into their margins,'' said David Readerman, an analyst at Montgomery Securities in San Francisco, ''but they're not losing money on those calls.'' America Online recently reached a settlement with attorneys general from 36 states who had threatened to sue the company for deceptive business practices. In early December America Online began to promote an all-you-can-eat pricing plan that offered users ''unlimited'' access to the service for $19.95 a month. But the company underestimated demand and the AOLnet modems quickly became clogged, preventing many customers from using the system as often as they liked. ''I've given all my clients the Sprintnet number and they're getting on line with no problems,'' Mr. Haynes said. Customers who dial (800) 473-7983 can find a Sprintnet telephone number in | Data Service's Users Not Told Of Other Lines |
908032_3 | to predict, but experts say at least a half-dozen are likely to be introduced in the next two or three years. ''Soon these won't just be applications on paper,'' said Michael Mignogno, head of licensing coordination at the Commerce Department. ''They'll be real assets in the sky.'' Makers of the satellites say the market for space photos might eventually reach billions of dollars annually. And contrary to critics who worry about aiding war, they say the field is likely to bring about a new age of peacefulness. ''We have a chance to change the world,'' said Douglas B. Gerrull, president of Earthwatch, which has four satellites in the works. ''The basic premise is that the more people know, the safer we are. Dictators will realize they can't move their troops without somebody knowing about it.'' Military spying from orbit began in 1960, when the United States launched the world's first reconnaissance satellite. Over the decades, only a few countries have had the wealth and skill to achieve their own espionage from the high ground of space. The photographs were fuzzy at first but grew increasingly sharp, until they could reveal objects at least as small as a football. The visual power of spy craft is usually expressed as the length, in meters, of the smallest feature that analysts can see when photo processing is pushed to the limit. For a camera that can show a football, the resolution is about one foot, or one-third of a meter. In the early 1970's, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched a civil satellite known as Landsat, the first to near the military's surveillance realm. With a resolution of about 100 meters, or 109 yards, its cameras were able to show things no smaller than wheat fields, ice floes and general land formations. The Landsats evolved to show images of features as small as 30 meters, or 33 yards. But the Defense Department blocked further progress as a security threat. In the mid-1980's, the French Government moved to the edge of the espionage realm with its civilian Spot satellites, which had a resolution of 10 meters, about 11 yards, and could aid urban planning and the reconnaissance of large military targets, like warships. In 1987, Moscow began selling photos with a resolution of five meters. The imagery, from spy operations, was limited geographically and badly out of date. But it prompted fears in | PRIVATE VENTURES HOPE FOR PROFITS ON SPY SATELLITES |
912169_3 | is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a large irrigation project that would allow one million Sichuan immigrants to move into the region. None of the funding will benefit Uighur lands, he said. Last week, residents interviewed in the border town of Khourgos near Yining said that Muslims living in Xinjiang had told them that heavily armored military units remain garrisoned throughout the city and that one central park looks like a parking lot for armored personnel carriers. At checkpoints leading into the city, the police are closely screening traffic, allowing only residents to enter. Western diplomats in Beijing said they continue to receive reports that ''excessive force'' was used to put down the riot. A number of Uighur leaders of the exile community in Almaty say they believe China's leaders have undertaken a broad suppression campaign in the Far West to enforce a rigid stability during the sensitive months ahead when Hong Kong returns to Chinese sovereignty and when the political succession to Deng is ratified at the 15th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in the fall. Several Uighur officials who have fled western China in recent months say that an internal Communist Party document, entitled Central Party Document No. 8, warned last May that ''national separatism and unlawful religious activities'' are the key problems endangering the stability of western China. State-controlled television in the region broadcast a warning that same month that the party must ''wage a concerted battle and ruthlessly clamp down'' on ''those criminal elements who dare go against the wind'' by promoting Muslim nationalism and ''strong religious feeling'' in the region. Such feelings are most evident in Xinjiang, where a brief Muslim republic was declared in 1944, only to be crushed by the Communists in 1950. Still, Xinjiang was named a Uighur Autonomous Region in recognition that ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities make up 60 percent of the population. For many Uighurs, however, Chinese promises of autonomy have never been fulfilled. ''The promises of the Chinese Constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion are a fraud,'' said Babur Makhsut, a former Communist Party member and Muslim mayor of Hetian who fled China last year to seek political asylum in the West. Western diplomats say assassinations, bombings and gunfights are rising in the region. In many areas, unarmed Han Chinese dare not stray into Muslim neighborhoods. And, in recent weeks, before large bombs went off | In China's Far West, Tensions With Ethnic Muslims Boil Over in Riots and Bombings |
910505_0 | With the world's forests continuing to shrink, more than 70 governments ended two years of talks today deeply divided over whether to propose binding steps to curb overlogging. Senior environmental ministers meeting in April might yet breathe life into the proposal when discussions continue at a commission monitoring pledges made at the the Rio de Janeiro environmental summit meeting of 1992. But if opponents of a forestry convention -- including the Clinton Administration and Brazil -- stand their ground, firm action is unlikely to be taken on forestry when world leaders gather in June for the fifth anniversary of the Rio meeting. After holding 10 meetings on five continents since 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests today drew up a wish-list for preserving dwindling forest reserves. It set no specific targets and left compliance voluntary and unmonitored. The 15 European Union countries and Canada pressed hard for the forestry panel to recommend an immediate start to talks on a binding convention. They had the support of several developing countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Uganda and Papua New Guinea. Such a proposal would then have become the centerpiece of the June meeting. But they failed to overcome the opposition of an unusual coalition of the United States, Australia, Brazil and some other developing nations, united with several environmental groups, including the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. The Clinton Administration appears as reluctant to accept a forestry convention as the Bush Administration was at Rio five years ago. But many environmental groups, after lobbying unsuccessfully for an agreement then, are having second thoughts today. At Rio, world leaders adopted three conventions: to protect the climate, to protect plants and wildlife (which the United States refused to sign), and to stop the encroachment of desert onto fertile land. But a planned fourth convention -- now often called ''the missing Rio convention'' -- was blocked by the United States, fearful of restrictions on its lumber industry. It acted in alliance with much of the developing world, which feared that an agreement might limit economic growth. Instead, the summit meeting settled for a nonbinding declaration of principles that countries should follow. Today, many environmental groups have concluded that the record has been so dismal that in the six to 10 years it would take to negotiate and ratify a convention, governments would only relax their protection of forests. And given the | World Forestry Talks End in Division on Whether to Curb Logging |
911354_1 | would be more effective, the report says, to focus on Pell Grants, a program based on need. Mr. Clinton has proposed that the maximum available from Pell Grants be increased to $3,000 from $2,700. ''Tax policy is very useful in promoting affordability for higher education -- we think that is a good thing,'' said Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy. ''But the advantage of need-based student aid is that it promotes both access to higher education and affordability.'' The report says there are political and practical reasons for a tax-based approach. Tax provisions do not face annual budget reviews and oversight, it says, and those who benefit from tax policies, primarily the middle and upper class, have more political clout than those who benefit from programs like Pell Grants. But it says the continuing disparity in college attendance rates makes that political tradeoff worrisome. According to the report, there is a gap of almost 30 percentage points -- 58.2 percent compared with 87.8 percent -- between the college attendance rates of the lowest- and highest-income groups. Tax policies will do nothing to redress that, the report says, because 71 percent of those with incomes above $30,000 itemize their deductions, while only 9 percent of those with incomes below $30,000 do so. The Pell Grant maximum would need to grow to $5,000, Mr. Merisotis said, to match in real dollars the level of 1980. David A. Longanecker, assistant secretary of education for post-secondary education, said the report failed to recognize fully both the political realities and the positive impact of a strong message that a college education can be attained. Mr. Longanecker said, ''It may be true that most of the tax credits will go to middle-income students -- something we're not ashamed of -- but if we're able to send a message as strongly as this does, it will affect participation of lower-income students as well as middle-income ones.'' Although the greatest share of new resources would go to tax policies, Mr. Longanecker said, more overall spending would go to Pell Grants. The Administration plans to spend $40 billion on Pell Grants over the next five years, compared with $38 billion for tax benefits, he said. ''You can argue that we could take the tax-benefits money and put it onto the other side into Pell Grants, but it's a useless argument,'' Mr. Longanecker said. ''In | Study Faults President's Plan for Tuition Aid |
911364_4 | altered animals, and its purported advantages in relation to alternatives. James McCamant, editor of the Agbiotech stock letter, had written on PPL before last weekend, but he does not recommend buying the stock. ''This announcement doesn't increase the value of the company significantly; it just attracts attention,'' he said. Even if one believes PPL is a worthy investment, ''now is not the time to buy it, when the stock's up on the announcement.'' And Mr. McCamant is not sure that PPL's business strategy is ever likely to create large returns. ''They are clearly a pioneer, but what they are doing is basically being a production house for other companies,'' he said. ''The profits you can make in doing that are constrained by the fact that there are lots of other ways to make drugs. You're not going to get monumental profits producing proteins in milk because there are so many other ways to do it.'' Today's big biotechnology drugs, like Amgen Inc.'s Epogen, or Activase from Genentech, are genetically engineered copies of naturally occurring proteins, which are produced in yeast, bacteria or mammal cells that are cultivated in huge fermenters. Genetically altered animals hold the promise of producing greater amounts of protein for less cost, but this is by no means a sure thing. The fermentation process has come down in cost as it has become more common. In addition, experiments have shown that genetically altered plants can also produce therapeutic proteins, and plants are far less costly to produce than sheep or goats. It is also not clear that PPL's cloning technique, breakthrough though it is, gives the company an equally clear competitive advantage. Genzyme Transgenics has already produced more than 25 different proteins in genetically altered animals, and has a broad array of partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies. Pharming Inc., a privately held company in the Netherlands, has used altered cows to produce human lactoferrin, a natural antibiotic, as well as human collagen, a structural protein used in cosmetic and surgical processes. ''PPL will have a proprietary method that will give it an advantage,'' said Carl Gordon, an analyst with Mehta & Isaly, noting that the cloning technique should lead to more consistent protein production than existing processes. ''But its competitors are still making good progress, and it's not clear, a priori, that doing it PPL's way is necessary,'' he said. ''It's not like PPL has a monopoly.'' | Success in Cloning Hardly Insures Profit |
911286_1 | the experiment really panned out? The formal reports from a corps of scientists are only now coming in, and the picture is decidedly mixed. The flood did build many new beaches, sand bars and backwaters. Some of the beaches made superb camp sites for the canyon's abundant river rafters. But the deluge was not strong enough to flush non-native species from the system, as had been hoped. Among these intruders are carp and catfish that compete with and prey on endangered natives like the humpback and bony-tailed chubs, the Colorado squawfish and the razorback sucker. Experts say that a natural flood, on average more than twice as powerful as the controlled one, would have swept away the non-natives, while the natives, more suited to watery cataclysm, survived. Short of partly renovating the dam to allow it to pass more water safely, the full restorative effects of flooding cannot be exploited, some experts say. Furthermore, the effects of a restorative flood are not permanent. Many of the new beaches and sand bars have been steadily eroding. That was expected, but now nature has thrown a curve: high water caused by heavy snows in the last two winters forced the Government last week to increase somewhat the normal flow from Lake Powell, behind the dam. Rather than building the beaches and bars, this flow is expected to speed their erosion. All this testifies to the difficulty of restoring natural processes once human activity has drastically altered them. In this case, the experiment has shown that controlled flooding ''is only a tool, it's not a panacea,'' said David L. Wegner, an aquatic ecologist and engineer who directed the Glen Canyon scientific experiment for the Federal Government until recently. He now heads a private consulting company, Ecosystem Management International Inc., in Flagstaff, Ariz. Still, whatever its ecological outcome, the experiment is widely seen as a breakthrough in another arena, that of politics and policy. In the past, Western dams like the one at Glen Canyon have been operated with only two considerations in mind: producing electrical power and providing water to farms and cities downstream. Protecting nature was nowhere in the picture. Now it is, along with a whole range of human activities that depend on it, like angling, boating, camping and nature study -- all the tourist-related activities that economically define what is called the New West. So while the Grand Canyon experiment | A Dam Open, Grand Canyon Roars Again |
911317_6 | the worst of both worlds: the highway is still elevated, there is no unimpeded access to the river, and the buildings, while smaller than originally proposed, are far from demure. Mr. Nadler does not mourn the passing of the park, however, calling it a $10 million-an-acre ''private backyard for the people who live in these buildings.'' He also asserts that he has at least hobbled the Riverside South project. Indeed he is not entirely convinced that he has not stopped it, likening the many announcements of its impending construction to those that once heralded Westway, the highway project along the Hudson River that was never built. The beginning of Riverside South does seem to be on an ever-shortening but ever-receding horizon. In July 1994, Mr. Trump said construction could start within a year. In June 1996, he said construction could start within four months. In January, he said it could start within a week. So far, it has not. A spokesman for the Buildings Department said the first Riverside South tower, designated Building C, had the necessary permits to begin. Besides Mr. Trump, the development team, Hudson Waterfront Associates, includes Henry Cheng, Vincent Lo, Charles Yeung, Edward Wong and David Chiu of Hong Kong. Because Building C would rise from a rail yard about 30 feet below street level, it would have three basements so that its first floor would be level with the existing grade. Part of the building would be directly above an Amtrak right-of-way. Adjoining the tower on the west would be an elevated viaduct carrying a southern extension of Riverside Drive. Kent L. Barwick, former president of the Municipal Art Society, believes the political winds may shift in favor of highway relocation once the towers of Riverside South emerge. ''It will dawn on people that the developer is building what he wants anyway,'' Mr. Barwick said, ''and they'll begin to ask what are they going to get out of it.'' Having planned to step down from the chairmanship once construction began, Mr. Kahan finds himself asking the same question. ''I never would have wanted my name attached to a project that would leave an elevated highway standing along the Hudson River,'' he said. ''This was a deal to get a park. I don't consider a piece of grass with an eight-lane highway running over it the kind of park we envisioned.'' Green Fades From a Blueprint | In Trump Revision, Highway Stays and Park Goes |
909592_0 | To the Editor: The study of the relationship between accidents and cellular-phone use (news article, Feb. 13) doesn't surprise me. Personally, I find I have more trouble dialing than talking. Hitting the 7 key seems to be difficult unless I'm making a left turn, for example. I think the cellular equivalent of being really drunk is when I have to enter a calling-card number. JAMES J. ROMANOWSKI Schaumburg, Ill., Feb. 13, 1997 | Driven to Distraction Seems to Be Rule |
909667_3 | million in campaign funds from drug traffickers. President Samper has repeatedly denied the charges. Robert S. Gelbard, the Assistant Secretary of State for Narcotics Matters, said on Friday that ''the Government of Colombia has failed, in our view, to follow through on promised counter-narcotics action,'' and had not taken concrete steps to show that it was fully confronting drug interests. General McCaffrey, in an interview this month, said ''Colombia is going to be a big problem.'' He said it had passed Bolivia to become the world's second-largest producer of coca leaf, after Peru. He also said that ''Colombians are hustling cocaine and heroin up and down the Eastern seaboard'' of the United States, and that jailed leaders of the Cali cartel ''are still running the cartel with faxes and cellular phones.'' But Congressman Farr said that the Administration may not want to reimpose tariffs on Colombian flowers because their growers are viewed as an influential business allies against President Samper as well as against drug trafficking. Business leaders in Miami say that reimposing duties on Colombian flowers would directly jeopardize 5,400 jobs in southern Florida and indirectly threaten another 10,000. ''Politics should not be at the same table as trade issues,'' said Charlotte Gallogly, president of the World Trade Center, a Miami business group. ''We should not hold countries hostage to these issues by laying on trade sanctions.'' She said Colombia was the second-largest exporter to southern Florida after Brazil. Colombia did not begin exporting flowers until the 1960's, but now ranks behind the Netherlands as the world's second-largest exporter. Because cut flowers are perishable, almost all those coming into the United States arrive by air in Miami. Removing the exemption would restore duties amounting to 3.6 to 7.4 percent to the cost of Colombian flowers, increasing Colombia's official trade deficit with the United States. (Some drug experts say that the deficit, $2.1 billion in 1995, would vanish if illicit cocaine exports to the United States were included in trade figures.) Cut flowers are the biggest shipments coming through Miami's international airport and most come from Colombia. If the flower tariffs were reimposed, Ms. Gallogly she said, ''that would kill the market.'' She said Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida had been asked to intercede with President Clinton. ''Why should the honest business community be penalized for this?'' she said. ''We would like to remove politics from the issue of certification.'' | U.S. Sours on Flowers From Andes |
909660_4 | and that it continues to perform essential functions even after menopause. Not only does it respond to hormones -- as everybody who has menstruated is well aware -- it creates a few compounds of its own. Among these are beta-endorphins, the body's innate painkillers, and a type of prostaglandin called prostacyclin, which inhibits blood clotting. The loss of this source of prostacyclin could help explain why women who have had hysterectomies are prone to cardiovascular problems. ''There have been studies in the last couple of years showing that women can develop hypertension after a hysterectomy, even when their ovaries are preserved,'' said Dr. Herbert A. Goldfarb, director of gynecology at Montclair Community Hospital in New Jersey and author of ''The No-Hysterectomy Option'' (John Wiley), which is coming out in a new edition this spring. Nora W. Coffey, director of Hysterectomy Education Resources and Services, a nonprofit counseling and information organization in Bala-Cynwyd, Pa., that she started after her own hysterectomy at age 36, contends that the effects of a hysterectomy are profound and that women must be warned of them in detail before undergoing the operation. ''The most frequent problems that women report are loss of energy and stamina, loss of physical and sexual sensations, diminished maternal feelings,'' Ms. Coffey said. There are consequences of the anatomical change as well. ''Without a uterus, you lose bladder support,'' she said. ''It's very common to have urinary problems like leakage and increased urinary frequency. And the bowel moves down to take up the place where the uterus has been, so over time it can become very difficult to have a bowel movement.'' Dr. Sam Kirschner, a psychologist in Philadelphia who has counseled many women with hysterectomies, said that some became depressed and lost their sexual appetite without realizing the surgery might have something to do with it. For a number of women, the rhythmic contractions of the uterus and cervix during orgasm are an important part of their pleasure, and the loss of that capacity can leave them with a sense of lessened sexuality. The Ovaries Broader Procedure Is Often Criticized Ms. Coffey and many others also strongly oppose the practice of removing the ovaries along with the uterus, an additional bit of surgery that occurs in the majority of hysterectomies even when the ovaries are perfectly healthy and are still carrying out their endocrinological tasks by generating estrogens, androgens and other | In a Culture of Hysterectomies, Many Question Their Necessity |
909699_0 | To the Editor: The study on the potential hazards of using a cellular telephone while driving (news article, Feb. 13; editorial, Feb. 14) may obscure the nature of the problem. Rather than concluding that cellular telephones are hazardous when used while driving, as if they were directly responsible for altering the driver's behavior like alcohol, perhaps the increase in accidents when an additional distractor is introduced points to a larger problem: a decline in competence and an increasingly cavalier attitude among the driving population. Cellular telephones are just the latest addition to a long list of items people increasingly seem to prefer to focus on instead of their driving. Besides cellular telephones, my own casual observation of other cars on local freeways frequently captures drivers reading, shaving, putting on makeup, curling eyelashes, fussing with children, attending to pets and even having sex. It would be interesting to apply the researchers' methodology to accidents involving these distracting behaviors. Would we then conclude, for instance, that children cause accidents and should be avoided? MARK HAAS Kensington, Calif., Feb. 14, 1997 | Driven to Distraction Seems to Be Rule |
909619_0 | If recycling rules are revamped, and no one writes about it, will consumer behavior change? It is not as profound as the noise value of falling trees in forests, but the news value of recycling has become a sore topic among the practice's advocates. ''Los Angeles expanded its program last year, and the best we could do was one radio interview and a suburban paper,'' groused Betsy Martinelli, the Steel Recycling Institute's media relations associate. So now the institute is changing its tack. It is abandoning righteous indignation and the attempts to play to journalists' social conscience that advocacy groups usually use to drum up friendly coverage. Instead, it has mounted a public relations campaign with enough gimmicks, celebrity endorsements and other bells and whistles to sell the most crass consumer product. Following are a few samples of the institute's new effort: *It is recording celebrities answering questions about recycling, and is tailoring the tapes to appropriate radio stations -- say, members of the band Oasis to rock stations, athletes like Shaquille O'Neal to sports stations and the Oak Ridge Boys to country stations. *It is holding state and city sweepstake contests, with cars, computers, shopping sprees and other expensive prizes. Cost of entry: sometimes a pledge to recycle, sometimes a label from a recycled steel can. *It is posting a monthly recycling question on its World Wide Web site (www.recycle-steel.org) and trying to convince reporters that the misinformation the answers show is newsworthy. ''Granted, these are gimmicks, but they get coverage,'' said William M. Heenan Jr., the institute's president. The push comes none too soon. Jerry Powell, the editor of the trade magazine Resource Recycling, notes that the percentage of aluminum and plastic that is recycled has been dropping, while steel recycling is flat. ''The reminders aren't out there anymore, because the media don't think this is a story,'' he said. Of course, that is not strictly true. The Philadelphia Inquirer did a series in 1995 that followed various items from recycling bin to re-use. And an article in The New York Times Magazine last June, questioning whether recycling made economic or environmental sense, got huge reader response. (Ms. Martinelli complained that the news conference that five industries held to dispute the article barely made a ripple. ) Reporters and editors offer numerous reasons for the sporadic interest in a topic that once routinely hit page one. ''Environment is | Recycling Advocates Don't Take Less News Coverage Lightly |
906479_0 | Responding to pressure from anti-abortion activists, Congress has put so many restrictions on spending for international family planning programs that, according to the Clinton Administration, millions of people in developing countries are being denied access to contraceptives. America's role in population planning has thus been transformed from generous benefactor to parsimonious scold. The new Congress has a chance to turn matters around. The United States helps to underwrite family planning programs in more than 60 countries, offering contraceptives like condoms and birth control pills and providing technical assistance to local family planning organizations, including training of health-care and family counselors and demographic research. Many foreign groups that provide these services also offer information about abortions or actually perform abortions in countries where they are legal. As a matter of law and policy, no American money can be used for these purposes. That is, foreign organizations can only spend the money on contraceptives and other preventive programs. Even so, anti-abortion activists in the U.S. have managed to scare so many legislators that funding for even non-controversial birth control programs has suffered a dramatic decline, from $548 million in 1995 to $356 million in 1996. Congress compounded the problem by putting a big chunk of this money in escrow. Only $72 million was actually released to foreign organizations last year, amounting to an effective decrease of 87 percent from the previous year. For 1997, Congress appropriated $385 million but delayed disbursement from the start of the fiscal year last October until July. Congress promised to reconsider some of the restrictions if the Administration could show that the cuts had caused harm. The Administration now confirms that 17 of 95 overseas programs may have to shut down and that the reduced funding will result in ''increased unintended pregnancies, more abortions, higher numbers of maternal and infant deaths and, of course, more births.'' These arguments are echoed in a recent report from the Rockefeller Foundation. The foundation argues that family planning programs have reduced average family size and improved the health and survival of women and children, resulting in better economic and environmental prospects in developing countries. Congress is expected to vote later this month on whether to allow the funds allotted for 1997 to be released starting March 1, instead of waiting until July. That vote is supposed to be yes or no, with no amendments. But Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey | Unlock Family Planning Funds |
908660_0 | To the Editor: As a French-American, I was saddened to read your Feb. 11 front-page article. France's right-wing National Front does not offer solutions, only illusions. It promotes censorship by removing books from libraries and xenophobia by blaming foreigners for all the country's ills. The French must accept the transition to a global economy, not resist it. They cannot revitalize their stagnant economy by looking backward. Instead, they should look to the past to see that the National Front's ideas could be catastrophic for their country. VANESSA CORDONNIER Hinsdale, Ill., Feb. 11, 1997 | French Are Right to Question Changing World |
908585_0 | Talking on a cellular telephone while driving may not cause brain cancer, as was once suggested, but two Canadian researchers have evidence that it is hazardous to health. In fact, the investigators report, talking on a cellular telephone while driving is as dangerous as driving while at the threshhold of legal intoxication, and for the same reason: the risk of an accident. Of course, the researchers say, cellular telephones do have some compensating benefits. Thirty-nine percent of the drivers used their phones to call for help after the crashes. And, the researchers suggested, it could be the content of the conversations, rather than simply being on the phone, that accounted for the increased risk. A person who is not talking on the phone cannot become distracted by a shouting match with a boss or a significant other. The study, by Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, and Dr. Robert J. Tibshirani, a statistician at the university, involved 699 drivers who had cellular telephones and who had been involved in traffic accidents. The researchers got permission from the drivers to examine their telephone records from the week before their accidents. After analyzing 26,798 cellular telephone calls, they concluded that the risk of having an accident increased four-fold when drivers were talking on the telephone. Their paper, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, said it was the same risk as when a person's blood alcohol level was at the legal limit. Dr. Redelmeier said that was .10 percent. The legal limit for driving a passenger vehicle in New York State is .06 percent. ''I think people should avoid unnecessary calls and keep their conversations brief,'' while they are driving, Dr. Redelmeier said. He demurred when asked if drivers should be banned from using their phones while behind the wheel of a car. ''As a scientist, my role is to provide objective data on risks and benefits,'' Dr. Redelmeier said. ''I think a public debate is needed,'' on whether legislation is desirable. The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, a Washington trade group, concurred with the study's findings but said it did not favor laws to restrict drivers' use of the phones. The group said the study was ''the broadest epidemiological study to date and the most statistically valid'' relating to auto accidents and the use of cellular phones. The group also said that ''the | Researchers Warn Driving and Phone Chats Don't Mix |
908595_7 | and front-end loaders, Donald Benton, an electrician, reported that other offers were his most useful tool. He joined the project last May to win a modest raise -- electricians average about $17 an hour -- and escape a new manager he did not like. About two months ago, he and two friends announced they were ready to quit for a site that paid better still. ''They made it worth it for us to stay,'' he chuckled. ''I'll put it like that.'' Count workers in the computer industry as among the most empowered. Demand for them, already strong, is accelerating. Cisco Systems, a leading maker of computer networking equipment, decided in 1992 to open an East Coast base in Research Triangle Park, in part to escape the high costs in Silicon Valley. Now Cisco finds itself competing for talent with scores of other companies that came to Silicon Hollow for similar reasons. Clifford B. Meltzer, Cisco's general manager here, has a simple strategy to keep workers. ''You pay them enough to get them to feel guilty,'' he said. Bill Fredenburg, a hardware engineer who joined Cisco last April, shrugged at how easy it was to win a big pay increase. He was just about to accept another job that would have increased his pay by 10 percent. Then a Cisco recruiter asked him, ''What would it take?'' He cited a figure more than 10 percent above his other offer. The recruiter laughed at his modesty. A few days later, he asked for thousands more, which the company topped. And that does not count the bonuses and stock options. At North Carolina State University here, Walter B. Jones, the director of the career center, says the going rate for computer-friendly graduates is $42,000 and up, roughly 10 percent above last year. It's not just high-fliers like Cisco that are vigorously bidding, but also companies like I.B.M., which brought at least five recruiters to campus last fall. ''Organizations went through a long time of downsizing and downsizing,'' Mr. Jones said. ''Now they are looking up and saying, 'Hey, we have to get more people in the pipeline.' '' Even in unionized industries where retrenchment remains a threat, companies and union leaders sometimes misjudge workers' determination. At the Kelly-Springfield plant in Fayetteville, N.C., the largest tire factory in the nation, union members overwhelmingly rejected a proposed contract from Goodyear last month for the second | In Era of Belt-Tightening, Modest Gains for Workers |
908661_0 | To the Editor: In your Feb. 11 front-page article, President Jacques Chirac of France is reported as speaking dismissively of the Internet as ''an Anglo-Saxon network.'' The original remark, ''un reseau anglo-saxon,'' seems more intelligent when translated as ''an English-language network.'' GERARD MRYGLOT New York, Feb. 11, 1997 The writer is a translator. | French Are Right to Question Changing World |
908596_1 | have to say about it.'' Airline and union negotiators continued to meet throughout the day here, after the pilots rejected management's latest pay offer. An American spokesman said that the airline had canceled its overseas flights for Friday night, except for flights to London, to assure that its planes would not be stranded abroad if the pilots walk out. A strike would cancel 2,200 flights by American on Saturday, affecting as many as 220,000 passengers. Ken Hipp, chairman of the National Mediation Board, which is conducting the talks, said that the process was ''going slowly and with increasing difficulty,'' and that even the discussion of possible Presidential involvement ''makes it much more difficult to get an agreement at the table.'' Under the Railway Labor Act, Mr. Clinton could intervene to name a three-member Presidential emergency panel to recommend a nonbinding resolution of the dispute, if the mediation board found that the strike threatened a region's central transportation system and recommended intervention. Such a panel would have 30 days to devise recommendations and the parties would have another 30 days to consider them, with no work stoppage in the meantime. Such boards are relatively common in rail strikes, but the White House said today that none had been convened in an airline strike since a machinists' strike against five carriers disrupted service for 40 days in 1966. President George Bush twice declined to appoint such a board during a machinists' strike against Eastern Airlines in 1989. In recent years, a far more common practice has been jawboning and arm-twisting, such as Mr. Clinton informal intervention after a five-day flight attendants' strike against American on the eve of Thanksgiving in 1993, in which he persuaded the parties to submit to binding arbitration. But Mr. Clinton's informal efforts to break a logjam in the Major League Baseball strike in 1995 failed, and White House aides said that there was little incentive to get involved in the current dispute unless absolutely necessary. ''There's no gain in this for us being involved,'' one senior aide said, ''because you have every angry passenger whose flight gets screwed up blaming us. We want them to settle the damn dispute and do it before midnight Friday.'' A strike against American would be particularly disruptive because of the major airlines' system of hub services, in which carriers concentrate routes through particular cities. For example, two-thirds of all flights at | Dispute at American Airlines Draws Clinton Plea |
908659_0 | To the Editor: You argue (front page, Feb. 11) that much of the despair and unemployment in France's ghetto-suburbs, as well as the country's perceived loss of its commanding position in the world, can be traced to a prevalent anti-business attitude and fear of the cyber culture. How then do we explain the horrifying conditions in America's inner cities, our crumbling infrastructure and our anemic public transportation, which stand in sharp contrast with the ''manicured capital, impeccable roads'' and high-speed trains of the French? Could it be that the World Wide Web and venture capitalism are not the panacea for all of the world's problems? MICHAEL WEINSTEIN Washington, Feb. 11, 1997 | French Are Right to Question Changing World |
908506_0 | IN 1931, Villa Cavrois, a low-slung, yellow-brick mansion in Croix, a suburb of the French city of Lille, was heralded as the masterpiece of Robert Mallet-Stevens, an architect who built extravagant Cubist follies for avant-garde aristocrats. Today, humbled by graffiti and rust, it looks like an abandoned factory. Richard Klein of the Association de Sauvegarde de la Villa Cavrois, a grass-roots preservation organization, says the dilapidation is the fault of the villa's present owner. The developer abandoned the property after the French Government declared the house a historic monument, a move that blocked his plan to bulldoze the villa for tract housing. Unfortunately, money doesn't come with landmark status. Nor much protection, it seems. Despite the Government's demand that the developer make repairs, windows remain broken and doors gape -- vandals and weather participating in a sort of passive demolition. ''It's a disaster now, but it is amazing how much remains in spite of the utter decrepitude,'' said Michael Webb, a writer who reported the villa's plight in Metropolis magazine. ''The bones of a ravishing house are still there.'' To support a Cavrois-awareness program, Mr. Klein and his staff are selling commemorative postcards (below) and are soliciting donations. The association is at 68 rue Jules Guesde, 59170 Croix, France. Currents | A Rescue Plan For a Mansion Dying of Neglect |
908658_0 | To the Editor: ''For France, Sagging Self-Image and Esprit'' (front page, Feb. 11) suggests that France has committed the unpardonable error of ignoring marketing lessons learned at Stanford University by a new generation of French. And France compounds the error by a less than enthusiastic embrace of the Internet. Moreover, Paris is ''flat'' compared with the sizzling German and English capitals. Even France's position as the fourth-largest industrial economy in the world is characterized as the tired claim of an outmoded bureaucracy. Such attitudes undercut the concerns your article raises. The political and social conflict arising from immigration challenges France's view of itself as a humanistic society, but immigration is a flash point in nearly every industrialized society, including our own. Unemployment is a Continental European problem: the German unemployment rate is nearly that of France. There are many who argue that the United States' 10 million new jobs were created at the expense of the decent wages, job security and benefits that France has tried to institutionalize. And it is simplistic to suggest that France must choose between either Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front or European integration and obeisance to global market forces. France's ills cannot be attributed to its resistance to unregulated free-market globalization. Indeed, many of us are relieved that in spite of the problems besetting their country, the French are at least questioning whether the role of government is to protect the global robber-baron capitalism practiced by some industrialized nations or to protect the welfare of its citizens. ANNE POIRIER Berkeley, Calif., Feb. 11, 1997 | French Are Right to Question Changing World |
910364_1 | though an Administration official briefing reporters today said, ''We do not believe anything the W.T.O. says or does can force the U.S. to change its laws.'' The central issue in the increasingly bitter dispute is Europe's claim that the United States has violated international law by imposing penalties on foreign companies that conduct business in Cuba using properties or assets that once belonged to American companies. Those properties, which include Cuba's telephone system, were expropriated by Havana four decades ago. The penalties, which include barring executives of those companies from entering the United States, are intended to force foreign governments to support the American effort to isolate Fidel Castro. But the European action and the American response raise a deeper issue: how this highly charged case could damage the authority of the W.T.O., which was created by a global trade accord that went into effect two years ago. The case is the first to test the scope of the organization's authority, in an age when trade issues and broader political and security questions often merge. Today officials on both sides of the Atlantic accused each other of undermining the organization. European officials described as arrogant the American effort to declare the law outside of the World Trade Organization's jurisdiction. They argued that if the United States did not want the issue dealt with as a trade matter, it should not have employed trade sanctions. ''It is not credible to suggest that protection of U.S. national security requires interference in the legitimate trade of European companies with Cuba,'' Sir Leon Brittan, the European Union's top official for foreign trade, said this week. The United States insisted that the embargo has nothing to do with trade because it is not intended to protect American products or American industry. ''By bringing noncommercial matters into the W.T.O., the E.U. may well jeopardize what we and others have worked so hard to achieve,'' Stuart E. Eizenstat, the Under Secretary of Commerce and the President's special envoy on the Cuba issue, said today. For many in the Administration, however, the confrontation poses particularly difficult problems. Several of Mr. Clinton's advisers counseled him against signing Helms-Burton, though the fact that Cuba shot down two American planes flown by members of a Cuban exile group led Mr. Clinton to conclude that he had no choice. Other advisers urged him to sign the bill, arguing that it was important | U.S. WON'T OFFER TRADE TESTIMONY ON CUBA EMBARGO |
911589_0 | This week President Clinton will decree which countries the United States deems uncooperative with American anti-drug efforts. The decision has been dominated by the question of whether Washington will be honest and deny full certification to Mexico, a close ally with a big corruption problem. The politicization of the debate is only one example of what is wrong with the whole certification process. It began in 1986 as a way to pressure supplier countries to fight drugs. It has not been successful and should be abolished. Last year six countries were decertified: Myanmar, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iran, Syria and Colombia, where President Ernesto Samper recently escaped impeachment on charges that he had accepted campaign contributions from traffickers. Latin Americans' resentment of the certification process makes it counterproductive. Many Latin Americans believe that as the world's largest consumer of cocaine, the United States caused the drug problem. The more they feel attacked by Washington, the less they are willing to make the sacrifices involved in fighting drugs. When Colombia was decertified, President Samper rallied Colombian nationalism and his popularity rose. The process does not capture the ambiguities of cooperation. How, for example, should the United States assess Colombia's performance last year? Coca production and drug corruption increased. At the same time, Colombia apparently took important steps to fight cocaine. In fact, Colombia probably did more than Mexico, but is likely to be decertified. Because an announcement that Mexico is not cooperating would hurt a nation whose stability, good will and economic health matters greatly to the United States, Mexico has been able to count on America to exaggerate its efforts to fight cocaine. Certification is ultimately dangerous because it contributes to the myth that America's drug problem can best be fought overseas. In both Colombia and Mexico, this task is shifting to the military. As relations with Colombia's civilian Government have deteriorated, Washington has increased aid and weapons sales to the country's military, which has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere and strong ties to paramilitary leaders who traffic in cocaine. America's drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, says that anti-narcotics programs in the Andes have made little difference. He is right; they can only push the drug trade from one country to another. Some overseas efforts are needed, but the real hope for reducing drug usage in the United States lies in domestic treatment, prevention and law enforcement. President Clinton yesterday | The Drug-Certification Dance |
911684_0 | To the Editor: Your Feb. 21 front-page article on the upset between the United States and the World Trade Organization mentions Havana's expropriation of the American-owned Cuban telephone system. This historical example is frequently used to justify United States economic sanctions on Cuba. The Cuban Telephone Company, then a subsidiary of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, was awarded a concession by law in 1909, permitting monopoly operation for 20 years. At expiration, I.T.T. did not transfer ownership to the state as agreed but retained control. Some Cubans accused it of earning illegal profits and also suspected a collusion with corrupt Cuban politicians, a suspicion strengthened by I.T.T.'s gift of a gold telephone to President Fulgencio Batista. ROBERT BRAMBL Minneapolis, Feb. 22, 1997 | Cuba Embargo No Longer Makes Policy Sense |
908770_1 | should stay away. Prime Minister John Bruton of Ireland said after the shooting, ''The I.R.A. campaign is anti-Irish and contrary to the interests of all in Ireland.'' Mr. Bruton, who faces a national election later in the year, has already been attacked by political opponents as head of a Government that lost the peace that had come after the I.R.A. called its cessation in August 1994. But even before the soldier's death, political leaders and prominent officials, who normally try to put a hopeful spin on events, seemed resigned to the prospect that there will be no progress toward peace until after the British elections, to be held before the end of May. Former Senator George J. Mitchell, chairman of the stalled peace talks that began in June in Belfast, acknowledged in an interview that he did not think significant progress could be made until after the British election. He said it was likely that the talks would be suspended for a month as soon as the date of the British election was announced. ''Progress has been slow,'' Mr. Mitchell said, ''and there has been little progress. But I don't think there's any alternative to the talks. Certainly not the path of violence. I don't for a minute underestimate the difficulties.'' During the I.R.A. cease-fire, he said, ''people got used to two years of relative peace and security. Most people have deep differences,'' he added, referring to the Protestant majority and the Roman Catholic minority in the province. ''There is not a long history of working with each other, talking with each other, but it can come over time.'' No one here is sure exactly how much time it will take to end sectarian violence that has killed 3,211 people since 1969. But Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A., predicted in an interview that a peace agreement would come within three or four years once Sinn Fein is allowed to take part in the official talks. Sinn Fein has been excluded by Britain and Ireland at least until the I.R.A. restores its cease-fire. Sitting in a coffee shop in an Irish cultural center in his home area of West Belfast, Mr. Adams did not seem optimistic. ''The return to war makes it difficult for everybody,'' he said, ''the very fact that somebody could come in here and shoot the both of us. I | British Soldier's Death in Ulster Raises Fears of New Violence |
908840_0 | Sometimes it takes real effort and ingenuity to prove the obvious. Such is the case with the work of two University of Toronto researchers who have published a report in The New England Journal of Medicine demonstrating that driving while talking on a cellular phone is a bad idea. The Toronto study examined 699 drivers who had cellular phones and car crashes. After analyzing 26,798 cellular phone calls and comparing the timing of the calls with the timing of the crashes, the researchers concluded that the risk of having an accident while talking on the phone was four times higher than when the phone was not in use. Dr. Donald Redelmeier compared that level of risk to driving with a blood alcohol level of .10, higher than New York's .06 intoxication limit. Intuition alone, of course, would suggest that driving with one ear glued to a car phone can distract one's attention from the road. But it is nice to have scholarly confirmation anyway. Interestingly, the data, though limited, suggest that hands-free car phones may not be any safer. It is the mental distraction that largely accounts for the increased risk. It is also worth making a point that the study did not. Unseen conversation partners are much less useful than back-seat drivers. They can tell you what's for dinner, but they can't shout ''Stop!'' The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, a trade group, accepted the study without complaint as statistically valid. But it steered reporters to the one section of the report that had something positive to say about the phones. Thirty-nine percent of the drivers who crashed used them to call for help. | Shut Up and Drive |
907224_0 | Facing famine and desperate for hard currency, North Korea has agreed to accept up to 200,000 barrels of nuclear waste from Taiwan, in exchange for tens of millions of dollars. The deal has enraged South Korea, which is less than 40 miles from the reported disposal site in North Korea. As a result, the arrangement is adding new hostility to the tensions between North and South Korea. South Koreans have traveled to Taiwan to protest the shipments, and a group staged a demonstration in South Korean waters on Wednesday to protest the shipping of the waste. The idea of exporting nuclear waste has surfaced before. Japan and other countries currently send spent fuel from nuclear reactors to Europe for reprocessing, mainly to separate out the plutonium, which Japan can then try to use as a new energy source. But this is quite different from an outright export of nuclear waste. Taiwan and North Korea do not belong to international treaties governing the disposal of nuclear waste, but experts say that if the Taiwan deal goes through as planned, then it could pave the way for other countries seeking refuge sites for their nuclear waste. ''This might be a precedent for the practice of international exporting of waste,'' said Junizaburo Takagi, a nuclear chemist and executive director at Citizen's Nuclear Information Center. Japan has reportedly considered the possibility of paying the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific, in exchange for storing waste there. Some residents of the Marshall Islands objected, and Japan quickly dropped the idea. The waste reportedly is mostly low-level garbage, like old gloves or clothing that have been used in the presence of radioactive material. The United States has said that since the waste material contains no uranium or plutonium, the deal does not seem to raise any concerns about proliferation. Still, the South Korean Government has been playing diplomatic hardball on the issue, threatening to refuse Taiwan the recognition it seeks in international organizations. And South Korea has also suggested that it will be less likely to arrange aid for North Korea if the North goes ahead with the deal. The main concern of South Korean officials seem to be safety. They assert that North Korea does not have the proper installations to store the nuclear waste safely. The nuclear wastes, which would apparently be disposed of in an area with old coal mines close to the demilitarized | North Korea Agrees to Take Taiwan Atom Waste for Cash |
907249_1 | tandem with Mr. Clinton's budget today, set standards to be used in evaluating disabilities under the new law, which allows disability benefits only for people with ''severe functional limitations.'' Advocates for the disabled said the rules were more restrictive than necessary. But Administration officials said even more disabled children would have lost benefits under early versions of the welfare legislation that were vetoed by Mr. Clinton. Susan M. Daniels, an Associate Commissioner of Social Security, said the new rules would save the Federal Government $4.8 billion over five years. In the last fiscal year, the Government spent $26 billion on the Supplemental Security Income program, including a little more than $5 billion for children. Benefits for a child average $424 a month. Most of the children being denied benefits have mental impairments or behavioral problems. Ms. Daniels said they had ''more mild or less severe impairments.'' It is ''really a matter of degree,'' she said. Social Security officials gave examples of how the new rules would affect various children. A child with attention deficit disorder, with a verbal I.Q. score of 75 or with swollen wrists resulting from rheumatoid arthritis will probably lose benefits, they said. In contrast, they said, children with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy or autism may still qualify, as will children with diabetes requiring insulin shots three times a day. But officials said each case would be evaluated carefully. Martha E. Ford, a lobbyist for the Arc, formerly the Association for Retarded Citizens, said she was ''deeply disappointed'' with the rules. ''Today's decision appears to have been driven by budget targets,'' Ms. Ford said, ''rather than by what is in the best interest of the children.'' Social service workers will begin interviewing parents of the affected children next month. The first decisions will be made in March. Benefits will be stopped in July, at the earliest. Mr. Clinton is asking Congress to guarantee continued Medicaid coverage of all children who lose disability benefits because of the new standards. About 50,000 of them would otherwise lose Medicaid. In a separate initiative, the President asked Congress today to restore disability benefits to some legal immigrants who have not become citizens, including those who became disabled after entering the United States. As for the President's food stamp proposals, they would restore $3.3 billion of the $21 billion cut from the program from 1998 through 2002 by the new welfare law. | 135,000 Children to Be Struck From Disability Benefit Rolls |
1255849_2 | Transcontinental originally wanted to install the entire project by the end of this year, but later asked for the four-year delay to finish its biggest piece. ''We take that as a signal they're going to need a long time to get those contracts or may not be able to get them,'' he said. Transcontinental executives, however, expressed optimism today about lining up buyers by the mid-April deadline. Gary D. Lauderdale, a senior vice president, said soaring prices for natural gas in the Northeast in recent weeks showed a need for new pipelines to bring more natural gas into the region. ''This winter, we think we'll certainly be able to market it,'' Mr. Lauderdale said. ''The marketplace is demonstrating some need for additional capacity.'' Mr. Lauderdale also said he hoped the Whitman administration and other critics of the project would soften their opposition, since only a 30-mile portion had received final approval. But spokesmen for the governor and another critic, Representative Bill Pascrell, a Democrat of Paterson, said they remained opposed to the installation of any new pipelines. Mr. Lauderdale said Transcontinental hoped that the Whitman administration would drop its legal challenge to the regulatory commission's ruling in April that tentatively approved the entire 90-mile project. That appeal is pending in a federal appeals court in Washington. In it, the state argued that New Jersey did not need any new natural gas and that the proposed pipeline would threaten public safety and damage wetlands and other sensitive environmental areas. Lawrence O'Reilly, an assistant state attorney general involved in the case, said there were no plans to abandon the appeal. Although the commission's ruling on Wednesday modified its April decision by imposing new conditions on the 60-mile stretch of pipe, Mr. O'Reilly said it did not disturb the approval of the other 30 miles. Consequently, he said, the state's appeal remained valid. The federal appeals court has not scheduled oral arguments yet on the state's appeal. It is uncertain now when the appeal will be resolved. It is also unclear how Transcontinental will be able to start installing the first phase of pipeline by March if the appeal is still alive then and the environmental permits have not been approved. Transcontinental needs several state environmental permits for the first phases of pipeline. State officials said today that they planned to meet with Transcontinental by the end of next week to discuss that. | U.S. Approves Part of Plan for a Gas Pipeline in New Jersey |
1255957_32 | of discovery documents collected in the course of hundreds of lawsuits, he knew that one of Ford's biggest worries in designing both the Bronco II and its successor, the Explorer, was the rollover problem. Turner knew from Ford's own road-test results that one factor affecting rollover was the tires' size and air pressure: the bigger the tire, the tippier it made the S.U.V. for sharp turns. Turner had the Ford engineers' tables and charts showing they constantly juggled the size and air-pressure of the tires in hopes of making the prototype Explorer more stable. But as much as they juggled, the rollover issue would not go away. In September 1989, Roger Stornant, a Ford engineer working on the Explorer prototype, wrote that Ford's general counsel was concerned that it would be the only manufacturer ''with a vehicle that has a significant chance of failing the Consumer Union test'' for rollover stability. This would have been very bad for Ford; a few months before, the consumer magazine had given the Bronco II a ''poor'' stability rating. For style reasons, Ford would have loved a larger, 245-centimeter-wide tire on its new Explorer; a big tire is a marketing plus for an S.U.V., part of the macho appeal. For best tire wear, Ford and Firestone would have also liked a high air pressure of 35 p.s.i. (The higher the tire pressure, the less the tire's rubber surface comes in contact with the road, meaning less friction and less wear.) As Ford's Harmon says, ''Any tiremaker will prefer a higher tire pressure. It's better for tire wear.'' But at Ford's Arizona Proving Grounds in May 1989, when they tested the 245 Firestone tire at 35 p.s.i. on an Explorer prototype in a J-turn maneuver (an extreme turn of the wheel to the left, which you might use to avoid an animal or car), it lifted two tires off the ground (known as a rollover response). The other S.U.V. used for comparison, the Chevy S-10 Blazer, did not roll with a 245, 35-p.s.i. tire. In fact, Ford engineers did six tests of the Chevy S-10, and it did not roll once; the Explorer prototype rolled 5 of 12 times. In the end, the Ford engineers settled on a smaller tire, a 235, with a low air pressure, 26 p.s.i., to improve the Explorer's stability. But not all Ford engineers agreed it was wise to rely | What's Tab Turner Got Against Ford? |
1255798_0 | Working women in Geneva canton will be the first in Switzerland to receive mandatory maternity benefits, raising hopes among advocates that Switzerland will not be the only country in Western Europe without such paid leave for much longer. Cantonal lawmakers approved the legislation this week; it is to take effect in July. The move was considered significant because last year, Swiss voters nationally strongly rejected paid maternity leave. While the United States has never mandated paid leave, it is routinely provided in much of Europe. Swiss law, on the other hand, requires that a woman take eight weeks off work after childbirth, but it does not guarantee a salary during that period. Britain gives a new mother up to 18 weeks' leave at 90 percent of her salary, and the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries typically pay 100 percent. Even though more women are working throughout their childbearing years, the question of guaranteeing rights to new mothers is not universally supported. The United Nations International Labor Organization has been struggling to convince countries to sign a global accord setting out maternity benefits. A key sticking point has been whether time off after childbirth should be compulsory. Last June a handful of countries, including the United States, voted against a provision to guarantee 14 weeks' maternity leave. Maternity benefits were included in Switzerland's constitution more than a half-century ago, but the Swiss have voted four times -- in 1971, 1984, 1987 and last year -- against enforcing that provision. A legal loophole dating back to the last century, when an eight-week ban on work after childbirth was introduced to ''protect'' young mothers, requires the government to act separately to set up maternity insurance. Last year's electoral rebuff left many women determined to fight for a mandatory benefit. They include the country's former president, Ruth Dreifuss, who said last year that 54 years of waiting since the constitution was passed was enough. Currently many women receive some money from their employers, but unless the company has a policy, maternity benefits must be negotiated individually. As a result, it is estimated that about 200,000 women in Switzerland receive no benefits. In fact, the federal Parliament in Bern has quietly been moving to institute compulsory insurance. Last week the Senate passed a motion calling for 14 weeks' paid maternity leave. The House had already approved the measure. The Geneva canton's new law is subject to | In a First for Swiss, Women in Geneva Gain Maternity Benefits |
1256096_0 | ALL through the 80's, office buildings popped out of the ground in Stamford like crocuses in spring, but no one gave much thought to where the employees would live. As the housing supply shrank and prices rose, they settled in communities up the line, their vehicles flooding the highways, railroad parking lots and Stamford streets. Today, office construction is at a standstill, but a critical housing shortage has attracted some developers from nearby states to take over office projects that have languished unbuilt for two or three years, reworking them as rental apartments. Plans for at least three major commercial complexes have been redesigned as housing, and the shift is hailed by city officials as an overdue correction of an imbalance in Stamford's real estate market. Unlike cautious office tenants, eager apartment seekers are at the door, checks in hand, when rentals become available. And backers for new apartments are not hard to find. ''Pension funds, the primary source for apartments,'' said Jeffrey Dunne, senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis, the real estate brokerage firm, ''are willing to accept the lower yields of apartments as opposed to offices, because they feel apartments are a safer investment with less ongoing capital requirements.'' In spite of the tightest commercial market in decades, ''office development is still paying the price for what happened when they built too much on spec,'' said Robin Stein, Stamford's land use bureau chief. Vacancy rates for quality downtown space have dropped to between 4 and 5 percent, but developers and brokers say that while prospective tenants for new buildings exist, commitments have not materialized, and without tenants there are no lenders. ''The market tells you that more office buildings are not needed in Stamford,'' said Anthony Malkin, president of W&M Properties of Manhattan, which operates in eight states, including Connecticut. In recent years, the focus has shifted from new offices to ''a conglomeration of multifamily development, night life, retail and UConn.'' The two most prominent proposed office projects in Stamford are regarded by many real estate professionals as too large to sign up tenants for the 50 percent of space required to secure financing. Connecticut Place, Louis Dreyfus Property Group's proposed 23-story, 574,000-square-foot building at Washington Boulevard and Richmond Hill Avenue, has all its approvals but with no firm starting date has not yet signed up any tenants. The Hines Interest project at 425 Atlantic Street, was | Commercial Property/Connecticut; Housing Is Replacing Planned Stamford Offices |
1252492_0 | A class-action lawsuit accuses the developer of StarLink, a variety of bioengineered corn that accidentally entered the food supply, of harming American farmers through negligence. The suit, filed on Friday in United States District Court in East St. Louis, Ill., on behalf of farmers, is the first to seek damages. It contends that the developer of the corn, Aventis CropScience, a unit of Aventis S.A., was negligent in bringing StarLink to market. The company, the suit says, failed to inform farmers that StarLink had been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for use only in animal feed and for industrial purposes out of concern that a protein in the genetically altered corn might set off allergies in humans. The appearance of StarLink in the food supply led to a nationwide recall of millions of taco shells and other products. The suit says that many StarLink farmers, who were unaware of the planting or selling restrictions, allowed their crops to cross-pollinate with traditional crops in nearby fields. They also allowed their crops to be mixed up with regular corn supplies at grain elevators and processing plants. As a result, the suit contends, the crops of many corn growers who did not plant StarLink were contaminated by StarLink corn and the subsequent crisis in the nation's grain-handling system closed off foreign markets and depressed the price of American corn here and abroad. Lawyers at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, the Washington firm that filed the suit, said that after receiving E.P.A. approval and licensing the StarLink trait to the Garst Seed Company and others, Aventis failed to follow procedures ensuring the segregation of StarLink corn. ''They didn't show the kind of prudence or knowledge someone in the industry should have shown that you could segregate this corn,'' said Richard S. Lewis, a partner at Cohen, Milstein. ''Now the whole credibility of the American corn market is taking a beating and people who did not plant StarLink corn cannot sell their crop in several markets.'' A spokeswoman for Aventis CropScience, of Research Triangle Park, N.C., declined to comment today, saying the company had not seen the complaint. But Aventis has canceled its marketing license to sell the StarLink technology and has agreed to spend millions of dollars to prevent StarLink corn from entering the food supply. The company has also said it will buy back some StarLink supplies and compensate some farmers for | Negligence Suit Is Filed Over Altered Corn |
1252542_0 | The Yankees did not make much of an effort to keep pitcher Denny Neagle in New York, but the Mets did, making a strong offer to the veteran left-hander. But Neagle is close to signing with the Colorado Rockies, he said last night, and he will be in Denver today for a medical examination that seems to be the last hurdle before he signs a long-term deal to play there. Asked if the deal would be finalized if he passed the routine physical, Neagle said, ''I'd say there'd be a good chance.'' There have been reports that the deal is for five years and $51 million, and Neagle said the Rockies' offer was pretty close to that. He said he still had time to think about it, and he had not ruled out signing with the Mets or the Los Angeles Dodgers. Neagle said most of the offers he received were close to the Rockies' proposal, but he wants to pitch in Colorado because it is near his off-season home. Neagle and his family live in Morrison, Colo., about a half-hour drive from Coors Field. The Mets, who tried to sign the right-hander Mike Mussina but lost out to the Yankees last week, have three spots open in their starting rotation. They are trying to re-sign the free agent Mike Hampton. They have made Hampton's short list, but the Rockies will also make an aggressive push to sign him, possibly with an eight-year offer. ''They are definitely serious about trying to get both of us here,'' said Neagle, who spoke by telephone. ''I know Mike pretty well, and the Rockies are still on his list. It might be wishful thinking, and they might have to be creative financially, but if they can make it work, the more the merrier.'' The Rockies have been desperate for pitching since their inception in 1993. They signed Darryl Kile as a free agent after the 1997 season, but Kile was 21-30 with a 5.82 earned run average there over two seasons, the thin air frustrating him. Kile regained form quickly last year, winning 20 games for St. Louis. Neagle, who has had recent success at Coors Field, does not think he will have the same problems. Neagle has thrown his changeup effectively there by altering his release point, and he does not need a sweeping breaking pitch to be successful. ''Kile's big pitch is | Neagle Leans to Rockies Despite the Mets' Efforts |
1253649_0 | In a season when Cubans traditionally reach out to one other across the Florida Straits, the Cuban government announced today that it would cut off phone service with the United States next week unless American phone companies paid a new 10 percent tax. President Fidel Castro of Cuba first announced the surcharge in October after Congress approved antiterrorism legislation that would use frozen Cuban assets in the United States to compensate relatives of anti-Castro exiles killed in 1996. The men were killed in a Cuban attack on two planes flown by exiles into Cuban airspace. Cuba today set a deadline of Dec. 15, saying the tax bills were coming due. The Clinton administration has forbidden American carriers from paying the surcharge, which would add 24 cents a minute to rates that experts say are already among the highest in the world. Such a unilateral increase is not allowed under a seven-year-old deal between the countries that renewed direct phone links and set terms for splitting the profits from calls, administration officials argue. ''It is unfortunate that while the world continues to open up to the people of Cuba, the Cuban government is threatening to deny Cuban citizens the ability to talk with family members,'' said Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman. Cutting off phone service would have personal and political implications. For hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles, mostly based in South Florida, direct phone links in recent years have helped restore family ties that were severed by the cold war. Telephone service, moreover, has been a cornerstone of the administration's efforts to build bridges among ordinary citizens, beyond the reach of Cuban government control. Exile groups said Mr. Castro's ultimatum amounted to extortion. ''Just as we are entering this holiday season, he is prepared to summarily cut what has become a vital emotional link between Cuban families to avoid facing up to his culpability in the death of U.S. citizens,'' said Dennis Hays, executive vice president of the Cuban American National Foundation, the leading exile lobby. Cuban officials countered that they were merely seeking to recoup money that rightfully belong to the Cuban state. The antiterrorism law, which offered relief to Americans with claims against such nations as Iran and Libya, authorized using Cuban money held in escrow by the Treasury Department -- valued at more than $120 million -- to pay damages to relatives of the exile pilots | Cuba Threatens to Cut Off Phone Service to the States |
1253625_3 | with patients by e-mail and conducts psychoanalytic sessions by telephone with patients who are traveling, as psychotherapists long have. He says that using such technology is not such a big departure for psychoanalysis. ''There are some aspects of e-mail communication that strikingly replicate some aspects of the psychoanalytic situation, as in the relative anonymity or facelessness of it, like when the patient in analysis is out of view of the analyst, it can have a disinhibiting effect on the patient. E-mail can be a very disinhibiting medium,'' Dr. Sulkowicz said. ''Patients have sent me thoughts that they haven't been able to convey in a session.'' How viable such an approach is for psychoanalysts remains to be seen, however. Five years ago Dr. Sulkowicz and his wife, Dr. Sandra Leong, started an e-mail business that involved two communications with a patient and then a referral, but they ended it before long. ''We grossly underestimated how much time it would take,'' he said. Nor can e-mail or the telephone ever entirely replace the classic encounter between patient and analyst, Dr. Sulkowicz said. ''You learn a lot from being in a room with a patient. If he is lying on a couch or sitting in a chair, there's a lot that gets communicated in their behavior.'' Whether the new openness has stemmed the loss of patients is still unclear. Dr. Hoffman says it has, but the results of a new patient survey by the association won't be available until spring. As for the number of analysts, the association's membership has increased in the past decade, but that is partly because of the settlement of a lawsuit by psychologists in 1989 that made it much easier for people without medical degrees to graduate from the training institutes. The number of candidates in training institutes has risen from 909 in 1989-90 to 995 in 1997-98, the last year for which statistics are available. The association has also tried to attract gays. Until 1991, when it instituted a policy abolishing discrimination against homosexuals in institutes affiliated with it, homosexuality was regarded as a perversion or character disorder. The association has also recruited members of minority groups, both as analysts and patients. Meanwhile, the theoretical changes in psychoanalysis have made it easier for analysts to get patients. Analysts have for a number of years performed classical analysis on patients taking psychotropic medications. But in the past five | Analysts Turn to P.R. To Market Themselves |
1253733_0 | BASF of Germany and Sinopec of China said they had set up a joint venture to build a $3 billion petrochemical complex in Nanjing in eastern China that will begin production in 2004. The project had been tied up in China's complex approval process for years. Craig Smith (NYT) WORLD BUSINESS BRIEFING: ASIA | GREEN LIGHT FOR PETROCHEMICAL COMPLEX |
1253615_0 | To the Editor: A Dec. 2 letter, commenting on the right of graduate students to unionize at universities, criticized the quality of American academic research. If American research universities produce low-quality research and have minimal economic impact, why are they the envy of the world? By any measure of success, research universities have significantly increased the knowledge base in science and engineering and the material well-being of our society. What's more, technological advances spawned by our universities -- from the Internet to medical scanners to computer chips -- have fueled the growth of the economy. We acknowledge that conditions for graduate students must be improved. Reasonable people may disagree on whether unionizing will achieve this. But we all should agree on this much: The American system of research universities is without peer. WILLIAM A. WULF JOHN HENNESSY Washington, Dec. 6, 2000 The writers are, respectively, president of the National Academy of Engineering and president of Stanford University. | U.S. Academic Research |
1253627_3 | wall that divided the city. Checkpoint Charlie was featured in many spy novels and became known for its ''You Are Leaving the American Sector'' sign. A development company said the wall's destruction was ordered because new office and business premises are to be built there. Victor Homola (NYT) BRITAIN: CELL PHONE STUDY The government revealed a package of safety precautions for cell phones, including leaflets advising that children be discouraged from using the phones at all. The measures include $10 million for more research, disclosure of the radiation levels emitted by every phone model and an audit of radio wave emissions from base stations. The leaflets say experts have concluded that although no evidence exists that using a cell phone causes brain tumors or other ill-effects, a health risk cannot be ruled out. (AP) ASIA INDONESIA: SEPARATISTS ORDERED FREED Facing criticism over a crackdown in restive provinces, President Abdurrahman Wahid demanded that the police release five arrested separatist leaders. The five were arrested on Irian Jaya on charges of subversion two weeks ago before a rally calling for independence. A United States State Department spokesman criticized the policy, saying ''these detentions should have no place in today's open and democratic Indonesia.'' (AP) INDIA: POSTAL STRIKE CONTINUES Postal services were paralyzed for a fourth successive day as hundreds of thousands of postal workers vowed to continue a protest strike until the government renews talks. About 600,000 postal workers began an indefinite strike on Tuesday to demand higher wages and full benefits and pensions for 300,000 part-time employees. (Reuters) AFRICA UGANDA: EBOLA TOLL RISES The number of people infected with the Ebola virus reached 400, with 160 of those victims dying, a health official said. In the last three days two people have died in the northern town of Gulu, while two others died in Masindi, 125 miles northwest of Kampala, said Dr. Alex Opio, assistant director of the National Disease Control Center. (AP) GHANA: OPPOSITION TAKES LEAD The main opposition candidate took an early lead in partial results from Ghana's presidential election to find a successor to Jerry Rawlings, who is stepping down after 19 years. With just over a quarter of results in, it was not clear whether a second round would be needed, but experts said that if early trends were confirmed the opposition contender, John Kufuor, above, might pick up the necessary majority in the first round. (Reuters) | World Briefing |
1252100_1 | the Wesleyan University library in Middletown are longer because fewer students have applied to work there. And Albertus Magnus College in New Haven has turned to temporary employment agencies to fill clerical jobs traditionally held by students. ''We've offered cash and other incentives,'' said Janet Freniere, manager of transportation services at UConn. ''We've been to every job fair. But the kids don't want to work. With the supposed wonderful economy that we have, I can imagine that a lot of the parents are saying: 'Go to college. Concentrate on your academics. Don't worry about it, we'll take care of you.' '' Education officials said that wealthier parents and lazier students were only part of the problem. The tight labor market has also forced many companies to increase benefits and wages, so students can find higher paying jobs off campus. ''I would assume many students are getting jobs off campus for more than minimum wage,'' said John Tirinzonie, director of job development for the Connecticut Department of Labor (minimum wage in Connecticut is $6.15 per hour). ''Companies in private sectors have the opportunity to offer more money to students than what many of the colleges and universities can afford to pay.'' One example is Stop and Shop in Middletown. Clinton Mattis, a customer service manager at the grocery store, says whenever he gets desperate for workers he takes a five-minute drive to Wesleyan and posts job notices inviting students to come work for him. Many of them do, and lately word of mouth has been all the advertising he needs. Most student jobs at the university pay minimum wage, so with a starting salary of $6.45, some limited health benefits and flexible work schedules, Mr. Mattis does not have many problems attracting students. Neither does Cynthia Galle, owner of Neon Deli just outside campus, who employs 25 Wesleyan students. She says they like working for her because she offers a flexible schedule, she takes them out to dinner for the holidays and gives them birthday money. Her starting wages are $6.25 an hour and she pays up to $8. ''They get to eat free, and that's big for the guys,'' she added. Sarah Kozinn, 21, a senior at Wesleyan, works the cash register and makes sandwiches at the deli. She said her parents and grandparents were paying her college expenses (tuition alone is more than $25,000 a year) and she needed | Reading, Writing and . . . Work? Not Always |
1252058_4 | commission is considering. Mr. Kimmerle said that as an architect he frequently appears before zoning agencies and historic commissions and is used to working toward a compromise. But in the borough, he said, the commission, the historical society and some neighbors have repeatedly rebuffed his attempts to meet and agree to some type of revised plan. The Kimmerles' new plan calls for constructing a 46-square-foot addition to the rear of the home, raising the roof by three feet, eliminating a garage bay, relocating a deck, extending existing dormers and adding a 121-square-foot studio. The historical society has objected to changes to the side of the house that faces the lighthouse, which would receive for two sets of double windows each on the first and second floors. ''It seems totally out of scale,'' Mr. Davis said. ''It seems totally inappropriate for a property in that part of the borough and for a property overlooking the lighthouse. It's a look-at-me approach to building.'' The society has applied for formal intervener status on both of the Kimmerles' applications, which places the burden on the commission to determine that there are no feasible alternatives to the project. The Kimmerles point out that the society did not object to a recent unsuccessful proposal by the owners of the neighboring Point House to construct a two-story addition even though it exceeded the borough's 30-foot height limit and would have blocked ocean views from the lighthouse tower. They say the society has also not objected to neighboring homeowners who have installed large blocks of windows or to the ongoing construction of a two-story addition with large windows across the street from the lighthouse. Mr. Davis defended the society's decisions, saying it had limited resources and could not fight every project. He said it did not hire a lawyer to oppose the first Point House application because it knew it would be rejected. The society has considered filing for intervener status for the latest Point House application, which calls for a 3,408-square-foot addition, but has yet to do so. Mr. Davis said the Point House addition would block water views from the lighthouse and break its historical connection with the ocean. He added that the society did not oppose the project across the street because it was in keeping with what it feels is historically appropriate. Other projects were done before the new design standards were implemented. Mr. | A Renovation Causes Trouble in Paradise |
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