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1241372_0 | Bubonic plague, the Black Death that killed a third of the population in 14th-century Europe and millions more worldwide at the turn of the 20th century, is one of the most feared diseases. But when it comes to understanding how plague spreads, researchers in Britain say, it's not about humans, it's about rats. Scientists at Cambridge University have developed a new model for the dynamics of the disease, which is caused by a bacterium that usually travels to people from rats via flea bites. Among their findings are that plague can persist in a rat population for years without causing human cases, which helps explain a historical puzzle: why new epidemics kept cropping up in some European cities in the 15th and 16th centuries despite strict quarantine measures. But the work is of more than historical interest. Plague is still a public health problem, with some 1,000 to 3,000 cases annually, particularly in developing countries, and with the recent discovery of strains of plague bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. The new model shows that when human cases occur, some methods used to control the disease may only make the situation worse. Epidemiologists have known that plague travels from rats to humans since the turn of the 20th century, when the last pandemic began in Canton, China, and Hong Kong and spread around the world, killing six million people in India alone. But, said Dr. Matthew J. Keeling, one of the Cambridge researchers, attempts to understand the dynamics of the disease have been hindered by an anthropocentric approach. ''As far as modeling the disease as a mathematical system and trying to predict things, most have been quite simplistic models looking at human populations,'' Dr. Keeling said. ''The fact that humans get it is really incidental to the spread of this disease,'' he added. The new model takes what might be called a rat-based approach. In a paper describing their work in the current issue of the journal Nature, Dr. Keeling and a colleague, Chris Gilligan, show that it is the characteristics of the rat population that determine whether the disease causes an epidemic among humans. One critical factor is how many rats are resistant to the disease. Rats get plague from other rodents and small animals that are infected with the bacteria. When a rat population becomes infected, the disease is catastrophic: only 2 to 5 percent of the rats | Plague Can Wax When Rats Wane |
1241389_9 | American suburbs. Extinction and endangerment are not limited to faraway tropics, said Dr. David B. Wake, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who divides his time between the cloud forests of Costa Rica, the suburbs of Southern California and the stream-laced mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Wake, whose work in Costa Rica 15 years ago first hinted that a substantial die-off of frogs and other amphibians was taking place, said that salamanders tucked in moist pockets of woodlands in Southern California contained enormous genetic diversity. Now, though, isolated populations are being quietly rooted out with each advance of roads and subdivisions, he said. ''I've watched this happen,'' he said. ''I've seen these tiny spots going out. A cougar or bird couldn't exist there, but salamanders can. The challenge for the future is not that we're losing all these species in the rain forest; we're losing them in our backyards.'' Finally, some scientists say, for extinction biology to gain more credibility, more work is needed to improve the basic taxonomic data determining just what is a species. Last year, Dr. Ross D. E. MacPhee, the curator of mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, published an analysis of the mammal extinctions in the 1996 Red List, a quadrennial roster of the planet's intensive care ward published by the World Conservation Union, and found dozens of instances in which species on the list either were not extinct or were misidentified -- and also of extinct species that the list had missed. A separate analysis of data for fish extinctions produced similar findings. Some biologists stress that concern over the current turmoil in the natural world should be tempered with the awareness that change, sometimes a lot of it -- including extinctions and new bursts of speciation -- is an essential part of the ferment of life on earth. And life can prove quite tough and adaptable. Puerto Rico, which lost 97 percent of its forests in the centuries following European settlement, is almost completely forested again, local scientists say, with a mix of exotic and native species. And sometimes species, with a little help, do pull back from the brink. The ginkgo tree was nearly extinct in its home range of China, preserved only on the grounds of a few monasteries. Now it has spread around the world and is ensconced in some rather unforgiving ecosystems, including Brooklyn. | Extinction Turns Out to Be a Slow, Slow Process; Some Severely Depleted Species Adapt to Altered Habitats and Hang On for Years, Puzzling Biologists |
1241362_2 | are relative newcomers to Antarctica. The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, for example, the only permanent station in the Antarctic interior, has only been continuously occupied for a little more than four decades. That is not such a long time, but the station, which is operated by the National Science Foundation, is really showing its age. A $153 million project to modernize the station has been under way for several years, and now, during the coming Antarctic summer, workers will begin building the first portion of a new main structure to replace a 52-foot-high geodesic dome built in the 1970's. That dome has been structurally weakened over the years by the buildup of drifting snow in the harsh polar conditions. The new building will be more spacious, and, like a beach house in hurricane country, will be built on stilts. The idea is that snow and ice will blow right through without drifting. As the stilts -- metal columns -- settle into the polar ice, the building will be jacked up from time to time. The modernization project is expected to be completed by 2005. Other improvements include new fuel storage facilities, and a system for treating sewage and recycling waste water. Previously, the station had pumped raw sewage down into the ice, where it has been left to accumulate. Clouds of Titan Things keep getting curiouser and curiouser with Titan, Saturn's largest moon and one of the objects to be studied by the Cassini spacecraft in 2004. Titan has an atmosphere, composed, like Earth's, mostly of nitrogen, and some planetary scientists think it may have a methane cycle, like the Earth's water cycle with its clouds, rain and seas. While there has been no firm evidence of rain or seas on Titan, there are now strong indications of clouds. Scientists at Northern Arizona University, writing in Science, have reported variations in spectral observations of the planet in a frequency range, the near-infrared, that indicates the presence of variable cloud coverage. The observations showed that the clouds are of the same height and are sparse, covering less than 1 percent of Titan. They also can dissipate quickly, in as little as two hours. Their short lives indicate the presence of rain, the researchers suggest, and the common heights indicate that a common process, perhaps convection, is responsible for their formation. So, the researchers suggest, Titan may indeed have a methane cycle. | OBSERVATORY |
1239367_4 | by the end of the year proposes the name ''the Police Service of Northern Ireland, incorporating the RUC.'' The British government has said this minimal mention would honor the 303 officers killed and thousands others injured, mainly by the I.R.A. Catholics say it is too much of a concession to the Protestants; Protestants say it is not enough of one. Brendan O'Leary, professor of political science at the London School of Economics, said Britain had already watered down the Patten recommendations in ways that made the proposed legislation unacceptable to Catholics. ''They have tampered with it and played infantile compromise politics,'' he said. ''Patten was the compromise.'' He said the continuing Protestant demands were simply efforts to renegotiate the original agreement. Ireland, which with Britain is a co-sponsor of the agreement, has balked at giving in to the Ulster Unionist complaints despite pleas from Peter Mandelson, Britain's Northern Ireland secretary, that the stakes are perilously high. ''Unless we go some way to assist David Trimble,'' he told the Dublin government last week, ''we won't have the Unionists, and in that case we won't have the Good Friday agreement, and that spells disaster for everyone in Northern Ireland.'' Violence is an ever-present threat in Northern Ireland, but even those people most pessimistic about the future of the peace accord do not believe that its collapse would necessarily bring back the kind of systematic mayhem that convulsed the province for three decades and led to the deaths of more than 3,600 people. ''Nobody wants it from either community,'' said Brian Feeney, professor of history at St. Mary's College. ''As far as the I.R.A. is concerned, that's over. What are they going to go to war for? While it was on, you had 'Brits out' and 'unite Ireland,' but now it would have to be 'return our devolved government with power-sharing,' and it's hard to think up a slogan for that one.'' But even if the mainstream paramilitary groups maintained their cease-fires, Mr. Bew fears that renegade groups would bring back some of the murderous hostility that Ulster hoped it had consigned to history in the euphoric aftermath of the 1998 settlement. ''If not to the level of violence we knew before, it would slide back pretty horribly,'' he said. ''One reason I am very keen indeed that this thing be kept alive is because otherwise things will become very nasty here again.'' | Protestant's Slipping Hold Imperils Ulster Peace Accord |
1239371_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-15 Clinton Heads for Mideast With More Modest Goals President Clinton will arrive in Egypt for a Middle East summit meeting to try to quell the violence that has left more than 100 people dead. The White House fears that the violence could spill across the region. Mr.Clinton is no longer playing the role of triumphant peacemaker that he had hoped for a month ago. A1 Members of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim guerrilla group that has long battled Israel in southern Lebanon, announced that it had captured an Israeli Army colonel and appeared to indicate that he was an intelligence operative. Israel denied it. A15 Both Israelis and Palestinians braced for more violence, though there were few more actual clashes, and neither side could muster much hope that summit talks could yield more than a shaky truce. A14 France has stepped up security measures around many synagogues in Paris and other cities. More than 30 anti-Semitic acts have been reported in France in the last two weeks. A14 Destroyer Bulkhead Collapses The collapse of an underwater bulkhead on board the destroyer Cole sent tons of water flooding into parts of the ship. An explosion on Thursday ripped a hole in the ship's side, killing 17 sailors. A1 The Pentagon suspended all naval refueling operations in Yemen until officials determine whether lax security in the port at Aden left the ship vulnerable to attack. A10 Ulster Pact Threatened A showdown is shaping up within Northern Ireland's dominant Protestant Ulster Unionist party that could lead to the ouster of its longtime leader, David Trimble, and an end to the power-sharing government at the heart of the peace accord. A6 A Suspect Election in Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko, the autocratic president of Belarus, all but mocked his critics as he voted in a parliamentary election called meaningless by the United States and other Western nations. Belarus's small democratic opposition has boycotted the election as a sham. A4 Talks Stymied in Peru Talks between the government and the opposition to reset Peru on a democratic course have broken off over accusations that allies of President Alberto K. Fujimori have backed away from promises to conclude a Congressional session and set a new date for presidential elections. A8 Vote Crucial to Mexican Party After a race marred by charges of vote-buying and unethical control of the news media, the long-governing Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico | NEWS SUMMARY |
1237953_0 | Women who took birth control pills before 1975 and whose mothers or sisters had breast cancer have a substantially increased risk of developing the disease and should take special care to have regular mammograms and breast exams, researchers are reporting. The warning applies only to women with a family history of breast cancer. Fewer than 10 percent of the 180,000 cases of breast cancer in the United States each year are thought to be familial, or inherited. The warning does not apply to the general population, where studies have shown a slight increase in breast cancer risk from birth control pills, which disappears 10 years after use of the pills is stopped. It is not known whether the findings apply to women who took birth control pills after 1975, because earlier pills contained far higher levels of estrogen, which is believed to spur the growth of some breast cancers. Newer pills contain lower doses of the hormone. The authors of the study say it is the first to look for a link between birth control pills and breast cancer risk in families with inherited breast cancer. The researchers followed more than 6,000 sisters, daughters, nieces, granddaughters and other female relatives of 426 women who were found to have breast cancer from 1944 to 1952. The relatives were interviewed from 1991 to 1996. The study, by doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, is being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers found that in women who already had a higher than average risk of breast cancer because of family history, early versions of the pill made the risk even worse. Those who took the pill before 1975 and whose mothers or sisters had breast cancer had triple the risk of women with the same family history who did not take the pill. If five or more relatives, including a mother or sister, had breast or ovarian cancer, women who took the pill had 11 times the risk of those who did not. Earlier studies of pill use in women with family histories of breast cancer had conflicting results, with some showing an increased risk and others finding no effect. The new study does not suggest that all women with breast cancer in the family should necessarily avoid taking the pill. Many are also at high risk for | Pre-1975 Pill Tied to Breast Cancer in High-Risk Families |
1237951_4 | any coverage.'' Many health policy experts contend that other states would be lucky to have New York's problem. Almost every state in the country has failed to spend its federal allotment, because, among myriad issues, they have local governments that are hostile to the program or have simply been unable to get their programs together. Most states lack the community outreach needed to let families know about the program; New York marketed Child Health Plus vigorously. ''I think the New York State department did the right thing,'' said Dr. Michael A. Stocker, president and chief executive of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, even though his company will now lose roughly half the 96,000 children it enrolled into Child Health Plus to Medicaid. The unknown fact, he conceded, ''is what is going to happen in the migration.'' The State Department of Health is critical of companies like Empire that do not participate in Medicaid, and some policy experts have suggested that any insurance company that wants to insure children should be forced by state law to participate in both Child Health Plus and Medicaid. ''They are putting profits before the needs of children,'' said John F. Signor, a department spokesman. New York says it finally has its system in place to transfer children seamlessly, a claim some advocates and policy experts question. It now has a single application to enroll children in Medicaid or Child Health Plus; indeed, both programs are now called Child Health Plus, in part to remove the Medicaid stigma. Further, the state's Department of Health has hired community organizations and other groups to help people enroll or make the transition. Nevertheless, health care policy experts argue, some people will still refuse Medicaid. Other plans, like Empire, will not participate in Medicaid, no matter what New York wants to call the program. While insurance companies can market a Child Health Plus program, Medicaid insurance programs are not allowed to contact recipients directly. And often children in the same family belong in different plans, because some benefits are tied to age. ''This is a very fragmented process,'' said Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. ''It should not be up to the family to figure out who the payer is. What New York is doing is very good, but the problem is children already enrolled may suffer a gap.'' David Sandman, | News Analysis; State Find Child Health Aid a Puzzle |
1237859_0 | In 1984, John B. Fagan, a molecular biologist at the National Institutes of Health, left a promising job as a cancer researcher in Washington to come to this sleepy farm town to practice transcendental meditation and begin a new life as a university professor. He took a post at the Maharishi International University here and became a star researcher, attracting N.I.H. research grants. But in the early 1990's, he began to have second thoughts about gene therapy and the genetic engineering of crops. In 1994 he turned down a $614,000 research grant from the N.I.H. to study gene therapy because of concerns about the ''dangerous consequences'' of manipulating human genes. And two years later, he founded a company that tests crops for genetic alterations, giving processed-food makers the option of steering clear of biotechnology ingredients. In September, Dr. Fagan's company, Genetic ID, found that a batch of grocery store taco shells sold by Kraft Foods, a unit of Philip Morris, were made with a genetically engineered corn that had not been approved for human consumption. The findings forced Kraft to recall millions of taco shells and reignited a long-standing debate over the safety and labeling of genetically altered foods. The discovery also led to renewed allegations from the biotechnology industry that Genetic ID, one of the nation's largest testing labs, was working closely with opponents of that technology. Genetic ID executives acknowledged Dr. Fagan's activism, but said the company itself was neutral about genetically altered crops, and relied on a widely accepted DNA testing technique, known as polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R. And, they note, the taco shell results were independently confirmed by Kraft and the Food and Drug Administration. The biotechnology industry, which has invested billions of dollars to create genetically altered crops, says Genetic ID has secretly waged war on the industry under the cloak of doing impartial testing for food companies, many of which support biotechnology. Genetic ID, many in the industry say, is trying to create a biotech scare to increase demand for testing. ''They claim to be impartial but their principal scientist for the past several years has made a name going around and raising questions about the safety of biotechnology without any supporting scientific data,'' said Val Giddings, a top official at the Biotechnology Industry Organization. The high-stakes debate over testing is certain to intensify as global food companies weigh the merits of marketing | Caught in Headlights Of the Biotech Debate; A Gene-Testing Lab and Its Critics |
1241303_0 | An article in Business Day on Oct. 11 about Genetic ID, a testing lab for genetically modified crops and foods, referred incorrectly to a press briefing that followed the company's discovery of unapproved corn in a brand of taco shells. Genetic ID announced the briefing in August, the month before the taco-shell findings were disclosed by opponents of bioengineered foods; the company says the gathering was not called to publicize the discovery. | Corrections |
1241237_5 | from cultivating coca, which needs almost no tending, to learning how to deal with fertilizers and pesticides is daunting for many. Coca is also far more lucrative than fruits and vegetables. Moreover, waiting for traffickers to come by and transport their coca harvest is a lot easier than finding credits and ways to get legitimate crops to markets. Moreover, coca strips the soil of nutrients. The land of the Chapare, never that fertile to begin with, is so poor from years of coca growing that the farmers have a tough time competing with farmers from other areas. ''We lack roads, much of the land isn't good and there isn't enough financing or government help,'' said Moises Alguilar, 52, a former coca leader. ''And coca is a tradition. Its part of our culture.'' As he spoke, Mr. Alguilar reached into his pocket to pull out a plastic bag full of coca to chew. ''After coca comes what?'' asked Carlos F. Toranzo Roca, a Bolivian economist at the Latin American Institute of Social Investigations in La Paz. ''To sustain zero coca, you need an economic plan. And we still haven't seen that plan.'' Nevertheless, of the 78,400 acres in the region under coca cultivation at the beginning of 1998, the aggressive eradication campaign has left only about 4,000 today, according to the American Embassy. Even those are due to be eliminated soon. Drug Enforcement Administration agents have been cut from 35 to 2 as Bolivia, once the second leading producer after Peru, has become a minor player. Despite the costs to the Chapare region and even Bolivia as a whole, the shift has had little or no impact on the overall supply of cocaine being brought to markets, as traffickers have nimbly shifted growing and production to Colombia over the last five years. Bolivian officials promise that virtually no coca will be left in the Chapare by January and that they will then move on to the Yungas region outside La Paz, a smaller but more traditional coca-growing area with 6,125 acres of illegal coca plants in tiny plots. The Yungas, rugged and rainy, will potentially be more difficult to denude of coca than the Chapare. The peasants there are very attached to their crops, which serve traditional medicinal and ceremonial purposes. And the region is served by a single-lane mountain road that officials worry will be an easy site for ambushes. | Bolivia Wiping Out Coca, at a Price |
1241290_0 | To the Editor: Michael M. Weinstein (''A Reassuring Scorecard for Affirmative Action,'' Editorial Observer, Oct. 17) is right that those of us who object on principle to racial discrimination are unlikely to have our minds changed by one study in the Journal of Economic Literature. The study's finding that preferences in favor of particular groups increase the number of members who are hired, promoted and so forth is obvious. Moreover, these increases took place while discrimination against these groups was decreasing. Mr. Weinstein says ''the wide gap in SAT scores of black and white students admitted to selective universities'' is not proof of discrimination. But there is more evidence than that. Studies by the Center for Equal Opportunity have shown that all over the country, whites and Asians with better scores and grades are turned down in favor of blacks and Hispanics with lower scores and grades. Any benefit of affirmative action must be weighed against the social and economic costs of institutionalized discrimination. ROGER CLEGG General Counsel Center for Equal Opportunity Washington, Oct. 17, 2000 | Affirmative Action: Cost and Benefit |
1241287_0 | To the Editor: The Senate has approved a bill easing the embargo on shipments of food and medicine to Cuba (front page, Oct. 19), but from the standpoint of farmers, agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies, it will be a dud. The terms of the bill forbid financing by private and government sources in the United States, and Cuba is denied the right to export any commodities here as a form of payment for its purchases. Fidel Castro has deemed the bill ''humiliating'' and has announced that Cuba will make no purchases under the act. The anti-Castro members of Congress and the Cuban American National Foundation are gleeful about the bill, which they regard as a victory over those who would genuinely seek to ease the embargo. The main victims, aside from the people of Cuba, are the American voters, who have once again been told that this odious 40-year embargo is being eased while, in reality, it is being tightened. DAVID WALD Santa Clara, Calif., Oct. 19, 2000 | The Embargo on Cuba: Business and Politics |
1242745_0 | To the Editor: My grandmother used to go to Germany every year for the mud baths in Bad Nauheim. During Prohibition, she was approached by the ship's captain the night before the ship docked in New York. He told her he had a bottle of Champagne for her if she could get it through Customs. Grandma tied the bottle to a string around her waist so it dangled between her legs, which she covered with a long skirt. As she walked down the gangplank the next morning the captain rushed up and said that he hoped she had not put the bottle in a warm place as it might explode. Nothing daunted, Grandma, small but spunky, went through Customs, walking confidently if somewhat gingerly. Nothing happened. I always figured no bottle of Champagne would dare explode under those circumstances! ELISE BELL Roslyn, N.Y. | Bon Voyage |
1242956_0 | To the Editor: Simply eliminating the global gag rule on international family planning financing will not repair the damage inflicted on women's reproductive health and rights abroad (front page, Oct. 25). The government's censorship of foreign organizations seeking to reform laws has done lasting harm to democracy in those countries. Furthermore, it may well be revived next year, either by an anti-family-planning administration or by an anti-family-planning Congress. Nearly 450 organizations in more than 50 nations worldwide have ''agreed'' that they would not speak up to reform their abortion laws, even where those laws prohibit abortions necessary to save women's lives. The global gag rule -- which is still in effect through next September -- is killing democracy and killing women. JANET BENSHOOF President, Center for Reproductive Law and Policy New York, Oct. 26, 2000 | Women's Health |
1242672_0 | I discovered that my supervisor routinely reads employee e-mail. Legal issues aside, is this ethical? I can understand doing so if a crime is suspected, but not as a matter of routine. It feels like a violation of my privacy. What do you think? -- Anonymous, New York While it is indeed legal, I agree with you: your supervisor should not routinely read employee e-mail. The right to privacy does not vanish at your office door. That the employer owns the computer system is not germane. The company presumably owns the restrooms, but the boss doesn't get to spy there. Absent suspicions of specific wrongdoing, one justification for this practice is to ensure that employees use work time for work. This argument is not enough. Every worker every day has passing thoughts unrelated to the job. We all need to make a doctor's appointment or contact a child's school. While your supervisor has a valid interest in learning if an employee is a habitual slacker, there are less intrusive ways to do so. Surely the dismal quality of a layabout's work -- or lack of it -- will be apparent (as will the gentle snoring sounds emanating from his cubicle). Also, many e-mail messages that are work-related -- an early draft of a report, comments about a co-worker -- are not something you necessarily want scrutinized. A desire for privacy is not an admission of wrongdoing, and to assume otherwise is to rupture the bonds of trust between employee and employer. If every legitimate activity were subject to constant monitoring, we'd all be flossing our teeth on prime-time TV. Naked. On CBS. Assigning a term paper for a history class, my professor said we were not to use any papers we had written for other classes; he said this was plagiarism. But is it plagiarism if the paper is my own work? Beyond the legal dimension, is it ethical to hand in one paper for two classes? -- Anonymous, St. Louis You should not hand in a prewritten paper. Your professor's ban is reason enough, but even without it, you should still forswear the practice. As unlikely as it may seem, a paper is not merely a dreary obligation to be discharged; it is a chance to learn, and that's what your prof is trying to get you to do. Submitting a prewritten paper may not be plagiarism -- it | The Way We Live Now: 10-29-00: The Ethicist; Pushing the E-Envelope |
1242863_0 | To the Editor: ''Man Against (Ready. Aim. Fire.) Nature,'' the cover article on Oct. 1, accurately depicted the daily routines of the vast number of New Jersey residents who love living with the state's wildlife and accurately covered the issues. The accompanying article on the Woodlands Wildlife Refuge was a wonderful tribute to the Bear Education and Resource Group's efforts to educate all state residents that you and your children are safe around bears, even those that have cubs. As a resident of ''bear country'' for 28 of my 34 years, I have found nothing offensive about any of the wildlife here -- only great joy in watching it be. I have, walked barefoot in my lakefront backyard through goose droppings, amazed that they have no bad odor and washed off so easily (unlike my neighbor's dog's droppings). So the geese sure get my vote. As for their increase in numbers, my community addles their eggs, so we have enough geese to enjoy without perpetuating the needless fear that a population problem is brewing. I bought five copies of that issue and climbed into a Dumpster to find two others so I could send a copy to a group of nuns in Baltimore who, because of my efforts to stop the New Jersey bear hunt, had educated their students about bears. Several went to others in the bear group -- medical and veterinary doctors who have offered to voluntarily sterilize the bears if need be. When I was in Paramus recently handing out bear literature, it turned out that your article had been seen by just about everyone we spoke to. It made our work much easier because it educated them so well. COLLEN ANN KROL, M.D. Highland Lakes | Living With Wildlife And Loving It |
1237140_1 | an entire culture? Mr. Chagnon, author of the best-selling 1968 study ''Yanomami: A Fierce People,'' has long been criticized by his peers for just these kind of sweeping interpretations. Mr. Chagnon contends that his detailed observations of Yanomami violence offer proof that human nature is inherently antagonistic. His opponents, in turn, have accused him of turning the Yanomami into cartoons of Stone Age savagery. ''Darkness in El Dorado,'' by a journalist, Patrick Tierney, which was excerpted last week in The New Yorker and will be published by W. W. Norton in November, takes up the cause of Mr. Chagnon's academic enemies with a vengeance. It accuses him of cooking his data, cozying up to nefarious gold-mining interests, causing tribal conflicts by carelessly handing out machetes, pressuring Indians to break cultural taboos and faking scenes in film documentaries so exploitative that they deserve to be called snuff films. Worse, the book suggests that Mr. Chagnon, with the late geneticist James Neel, sparked a deadly outbreak of measles among the Yanomami in 1968 through the administration of a ''contraindicated'' vaccine. Mr. Chagnon and his allies have mounted a vigorous counterattack since the book's contents were described in a widely circulated e-mail written by anthropologists Leslie Sponsel and Terry Turner. (The scholars, who are major sources for the book, compared Mr. Chagnon to Josef Mengele.) After medical experts posted statements on the Internet undermining Mr. Tierney's vaccine argument, Mr. Turner last week withdrew the genocide charge. But the broader accusation that Mr. Chagnon has slandered the Yanomami by presenting them as not-so-noble savages will not be resolved so easily -- for anthropologists' judgments of Mr. Chagnon's fieldwork often have as much to do with ideology as evidence. Anthropology is riven by two opposing worldviews. Sociobiologists, who believe that humans across the globe share an essential nature shaped by evolution, love Mr. Chagnon's work. It confirms their suspicion that men from South America to Serbia are driven by aggression. Cultural anthropologists, who emphasize the importance of local context and recoil at universal statements about human behavior, think Mr. Chagnon's conclusions are pure fantasy. STEVEN PINKER, a sociobiologist who teaches cognitive science at M.I.T., liberally cites Mr. Chagnon's work in his book ''How the Mind Works.'' ''Chagnon is a great empiricist.'' he says. ''Sadly, most anthropology is off the scale in post modernist lunacy. There's this orthodoxy that says human nature is a blank slate. | Ideas & Trends; Anthropology Enters the Age of Cannibalism |
1237135_0 | IN the security business, there is a technical term for the Muslim rebel kidnappers of the southern Philippines, draped in new gold chains, conspicuous in pristine Nike sneakers and Ray Ban sunglasses, racing around on -- and often falling off -- their new motorcycles. The term is ''decadent guerrillas.'' Having taken their remote region's age-old avocation of kidnapping for ransom to new heights this year with the abductions of dozens of foreigners, they now have more money than they may ever have dreamed of or, clearly, know what to do with: some $15 million for two dozen hostages. Cash rich, these few hundred rebels are buying sophisticated weaponry and recruiting new followers, and they have acquired a speedboat faster than anything in the Philippine navy. They are even kidnapping, and then paying ''dowry,'' for new brides. Clearly, they are more interested in their decadent new luxuries than in their fight for a separate Muslim state. And they may live to enjoy their spoils. A two-week-old military offensive against the kidnappers, who call themselves Abu Sayyaf, or Bearer of the Sword, appears to have accomplished little besides leveling several villages on the remote island of Jolo. Not a bad business proposition for local bandits in one of the poorest regions of the Philippines -- or for a growing number of hostage takers around the world. More and more these days, dollar amounts are being placed on human lives. ''It's clear that this is a growing industry worldwide, though there is disagreement about how fast it is growing,'' said Paul Wilkinson, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. ''And it's affecting many parts of the world, like the former Soviet Union, that have been relatively free of it in the past.'' Statistics are elusive in an arena marked by secrecy, corruption and sometimes the collusion of government authorities. Most often cited are the surveys of the Hiscox Group, a London-based insurer that tallied 1,789 kidnappings for ransom last year worldwide, almost all of them in 10 high-risk countries. That number shows a 6 percent rise from the previous high of 1,690 in 1998. Brian Jenkins, an expert on terrorism at the RAND Corporation, a research and policy group based in Santa Monica, Calif., said Latin America accounted for two-thirds to three-quarters of the world's ransom kidnappings, with Colombia making | The World; How to Succeed in the Kidnapping Business |
1236857_3 | inside. King Gagik's wife, Katramide, was the patroness of a nearby church built in 1001. It is perhaps the most impressive of all the structures at Ani, and looks as if it could have inspired Gothic architects in Europe. Four thick columns support the roof, much of which is intact. Rectangular windows look out over the gorge below. As I walked through the ruins of Ani's churches I could almost hear Gregorian chants and smell incense from perfumed censers. In some ways I found it more affecting than famous, often crowded ruins like those at Ephesus, a thousand miles away near Turkey's Aegean coast. At Ani, my three companions and I were just about the only visitors. Our solitude, combined with the extraordinary Armenian and Georgian-style architecture that soars so gracefully above the treeless plateau, gave this place a deeply moving, otherworldly aura. Remarkably, there is much more to discover nearby. Poring over guidebooks old and new and consulting with friends who live in the area, I plotted a course that took me and my companions to several other wonderfully impressive sites. None can really qualify as unknown, but all have fallen from the tourist itinerary over the last couple of decades. The logical base for a trip through this region is Van, a richly historic city on the shore of Lake Van, the largest lake in Turkey. Since I had already seen Van, I chose a different route. Our flight from Istanbul landed in Mus, and from there, traveling in a borrowed van, we made our way along the less-known north shore of the lake. Our first stop was Ahlat, a modest town that has fallen far from the days when it was a center of Urartian, Azerbaijani and Armenian kingdoms. Its main attraction is a huge Ottoman cemetery, opened in the 15th century, that is full of tall headstones carved with intricate Arabic inscriptions. The commanding stones reminded me of the great statues on Easter Island. Like the statues, they are mute messengers from a distant era, and at the same time powerful objects of beauty. Two tall and magnificently domed turbes, mausoleums built for Ottoman nobles, stand near the cemetery. They add to the air of history that hangs over this place, as do the seemingly ageless land turtles that crawl among the stones. From Ahlat we drove a few hours along the lake shore, which is | A Hidden Empire in Turkey |
1236833_4 | Asia Minor, a missionary proclaims, ''grants immortality to those who believe,'' and this, then, is topped again by the Isis evangelist, who preaches that Isis not only gives the gift of immortality at death but also that of a transformed life, of salvation, in the present. When the armies of Alexander the Great reached Egypt and then further east in the fourth century B.C., the resulting mix of things Greek and Near Eastern was a recipe for spicy new entrees of philosophy and religion -- a religious globalism every bit as revolutionary, and as baffling in its appeals both to yesterday and to tomorrow, as the 20th-century economic globalism of Thomas Friedman's book ''The Lexus and the Olive Tree.'' So, how, in this religious equivalent of free-market capitalism, did Christianity triumph? How, especially given Christianity's inauspicious start (in Galilee, of all places, which is sort of like Fargo) and the astonishingly few Christians in, say, A.D. 100? The numbers -- and this is an area where Hopkins himself has done some fundamental recent research -- are astonishing: ''Best estimates suggest that there were considerably fewer than 10,000 Christians'' then, he writes, ''and only about 200,000'' a century later, that figure representing ''only 0.3 percent of the total population of the Roman Empire.'' Hopkins's answers to the question of Christianity's puzzling and unpredictable triumph are surprisingly conventional. Christianity triumphed, in the first place, because of the strength of the three pillars upon which it rested: the church was supported by ''the emerging tradition of apostolic succession legitimating episcopal power, of the rule of faith, and of the canonical scriptures.'' Secondly, this religion flourished while its early competitors died because of the support of the Roman state following the conversion of the emperor Constantine. Surely these are plausible responses; but both the quite brilliant way in which Hopkins poses the question of Christianity's improbable triumph by accenting the many appeals of its competitors, and also the novel genre of history represented in this volume, lead us to expect something different, something more: state support and three powerful pillars; that's it, after Hopkins's promisingly trenchant critical account of Christianity? And speaking of something more: it is disturbing that amid all this fetching playfulness, from which we do learn plenty, we learn so little of where Hopkins stands. Even to ask the question, of course, is to fall into a trap that historians like | Up From Heathendom |
1237167_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Working for Women's Sexual Rights'' (news article, Oct. 2): Women's human rights violations are not news to the world, but not enough has been done to improve the actual condition of women. There are still societies in which women are murdered for not bringing enough dowry, or treated cruelly for not giving birth to a male child. Some are stoned to death for getting an abortion, losing their virginity before marriage or even for marrying a person out of their religion; others are smuggled across borders like commodities for prostitution. In our own country, some radical forces are trying hard to deprive women of their basic human right to have an abortion. Improving this situation is going to take lot more effort on the part of progressive men and women everywhere, not just words of recognition from the United Nations. DOBBIE SANGHA Hayward, Calif., Oct. 2, 2000 | Justice for Women |
1237097_0 | Gray shoebox-sized radio devices are fastened to light poles around the city, and Metricom, a California Internet company, wants you to feel good about them. The company recently strung up 3,000 radio transceivers on street lamps and traffic lights across the city as part of a wireless Internet network called Ricochet. Through Ricochet, which began Sept. 21, subscribers can connect to the Internet with portable modems that send and receive signals through the devices instead of through telephone or cable lines. The modem costs $300, and the service costs $79 a month. The transceivers, which use low-power microwaves, have left some New Yorkers fascinated and others leery, though, and so Metricom, which has networks in Atlanta and San Diego, spent the last month courting community boards and addressing questions about privacy and safety. The company also hoped to avoid comparisons to cellular phones, which many people love to hate. ''Most people equate the word 'wireless' with cell phones, but we're completely different,'' said Les St. Louis, the company's director in the metropolitan region, who pitched the product to Upper West Siders at a recent Community Board 7 committee meeting. The transceivers use a frequency different from that of cell phones and are not held close to the ear. They are placed 20 feet off the ground on poles spaced every four city blocks. Metricom paid the city $60 to $120 a pole for the space and agreed not to put the devices on any decorative poles. Mr. St. Louis said the devices would not pick up or interfere with other signals or harm anyone. ''We're as safe as a baby monitor or a garage door opener,'' he said. Some residents, like Barbara Adler, a member of the community board, said they were worried about all the signals whirring overhead. ''I think the whole concept is fantastic, but as we become more wireless, we have to consider all these waves,'' Ms. Adler said. ''They're invisible, and perhaps one day they'll kill us all.'' But others, like Kevin Fullam of West 85th Street, said they liked the idea. ''I'm up for wireless technology as long as it doesn't interfere with my quality of life,'' he said. ''It's just a small box, so it's O.K.'' KELLY CROW NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER WEST SIDE | Those Gray Boxes on Poles? Fear Not, the Company Says |
1237318_0 | By nearly any economic measure, India is a country with multitudes of poor people, but precisely how many? The attempt to answer that question has sparked a vigorous debate in recent months among some of the country's leading economists. The question is not purely academic. Recent government surveys -- including a big one released last week have not produced solid data about whether poverty has declined in the 1990's, when the state loosened its grip on the economy and opened the door to international trade. The statistical muddle has made it difficult to judge whether faster economic growth and increased spending on anti-poverty programs have, in fact, bettered the lot of the poor. The results of India's 1999 survey of household consumption, released last week, found that about a quarter of the country's population of one billion people lives below the poverty line -- substantially lower than the more than a third consistently found in similar government surveys taken in the 1990's. But Pravin Visaria, the economist who has overseen the surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organization since 1991, cautioned that while the 1999 poverty measurements are the most accurate to date, they cannot be compared with the results from earlier years because of changes in the methodology of the survey. ''It is not correct to call this a decline in poverty so much as a better measurement of poverty,'' said Mr. Visaria, who is director of the government-funded Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi. Poverty is tricky to measure and India's recent experience is an object lesson in the complexities of the task. In the National Sample Survey Organization's previous large-scale survey of 120,000 households, conducted in 1993 and 1994, investigators asked people how much food they had consumed in the prior 30 days. But Mr. Visaria had already begun to wonder whether people could accurately remember. ''Can you tell me what you ate eight days ago?'' he asked recently. ''Do you keep a diary? I don't.'' He worried that people were understating how much they ate and that India -- the only country to use such a measure -- was overstating its poverty rate. So in subsequent years, while conducting smaller annual surveys, he asked one group of households how much they had eaten in the previous 30 days and another what they had eaten in the prior 7 days. The difference was staggering. In | India Tries To Reassess Its Measure For Poverty |
1236828_0 | Hegel A Biography. By Terry Pinkard. Illustrated. 780 pp. New York: Cambridge University Press. $39.95. According to the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, rigorous thinking in the solitude of his study led him ineluctably to the conclusion that neither he himself nor the physical world could be known to exist. But as soon as he went outside, he cheerfully admitted, he was as convinced of the reality of his walk through the streets of London as anyone else. Three philosophical generations later, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) could not have had a more different idea of the significance, or the results, of philosophical inquiry. Philosophy had a place in the greater world as a guide to the inner nature of reality and the key to a well-ordered life. It represented the climax of creation: the universe had passed through the eons of natural history and epochs of social history to achieve an understanding of its structure -- in Hegel's own thinking. At a time when philosophy has for the most part settled down to a quiet life of academic distinction of little interest to nonprofessionals, the conditions under which such extravagant claims could be maintained form an interesting historical puzzle. One of the merits of ''Hegel: A Biography'' is the light Terry Pinkard casts on this question. A common difficulty of the biographer of a thinker -- the absence of dramatic adventures away from the lecture hall or writing table -- turns into an advantage. In a text somewhat shorter than the latest Harry Potter, Pinkard manages to sketch the political modernization of Germany under the impact of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and the post-Waterloo regime of restoration plus reform, providing a framework for the tale of his protagonist's career as theology student, tutor, newspaper editor, school principal and teacher and his final ascension to the leading ranks of the Berlin professoriate. We also learn what there is to know of Hegel's personal life: his student friendship with the poet HRated PG-13lderlin, the ill-treated illegitimate son born at the very time he was working out his theoretical celebration of family life, his love of wine, his many friends, his kindness and conscientiousness toward students, his obsessive enmity to academic rivals, his happy marriage to a woman apparently not put off -- as others in his circle were -- by his sexism. At the same time, Pinkard, a professor of | When Philosophy Was King |
1235500_0 | When Nafis Sadik, an obstetrician from Pakistan, was hired by the United Nations Population Fund more than 20 years ago, family planning in the developing world was largely something bureaucrats foisted on poor women who were targets for meeting fertility-control quotas. ''The world has come very far since then,'' said Dr. Sadik, who, by 1987, had become the fund's executive director. Quotas and targets are gone. So is some of the squeamishness about sex. And ''population control'' is no longer an acceptable description of what family planners do. Dr. Sadik, who will retire at the end of the year, has presided over a social revolution. Working with independent family planning organizations, women's groups on every continent and many governments, she and other increasingly powerful women in the United Nations system have turned the debate over how to cut population growth into a campaign for women's rights. Other women involved in this process include Carol Bellamy, the executive director of Unicef, the children's fund; Noeleen Heyzer of Unifem, the United Nations' development organization for women; and lately Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general of the World Health Organization. The United Nations itself is now in new territory, supporting the concept that women should have the right to make their own decisions about bearing children, and that they should have access to education and health services, a range of family planning tools and, as a last resort, safe abortions. ''If women had the power to make decisions about sexual activity and its consequences,'' says the new annual report of the population fund, ''they could avoid many of the 80 million unwanted pregnancies each year, 20 million unsafe abortions, some 750,000 maternal deaths and many times that number of infections and injuries.'' ''They could also avoid many of the 333 million sexually transmitted infections contracted each year,'' says the report, titled ''Lives Together, Worlds Apart: Men and Women in a Time of Change.'' The report says that the needs of women are often ''invisible to men'' and that until discrimination against women ends, the world's poorest countries -- where women are also often the most oppressed -- cannot develop to their potential. Here are some of the statistics from the report: *One woman a minute dies of pregnancy-related causes. *Sexually transmitted diseases afflict five times more women than men. *An estimated two-thirds of the 300 million children without access to education are girls, and | Working for Women's Sexual Rights |
1235480_0 | In the world of fuel cells and batteries, zinc-air systems get little respect, despite packing plenty of energy in small volumes while using cheap and environmentally benign materials as a power source. They have their niches. Zinc-air batteries, which generate power through a chemical reaction between zinc and oxygen, are common in hearing aids, for example. But after decades of research and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, it is going to take some significant breakthroughs to shake their also-ran image. Sadeg Faris seems to think that Evonyx, one of several technology development companies he owns, has quietly made enough progress that the moment has come for a little showing off. What better way, he decided, than to drive an electric car from the Evonyx laboratory in Hawthorne, N.Y., in Westchester County north of New York City, to Detroit without recharging? Such a 600-mile journey would smash the 373-mile record the Solectria Corporation set in 1996 for electric vehicle range on one charge, and would end up right under the noses of the big Detroit auto executives who long ago wrote off metal-air technology. So four months ago, Evonyx quietly bought two Honda Insight gasoline-and-electric hybrid cars, stripped out the engines and drive trains, and began to convert them into full-fledged electric vehicles. The two vehicles are scheduled to set off at 6:30 a.m. today from Hawthorne with a goal of arriving in Detroit by 2 a.m. tomorrow. The back seat and trunk areas are packed with batteries, but Evonyx says the system could easily be much more compact because the company cobbled it together without help from any auto engineers or auto electronics specialists. Evonyx intends to sacrifice speed on Interstate 80's hills in Pennsylvania to extend the cars' range, but it aims to average at least 45 miles an hour. ''The mission is to get people to revisit their assumptions about metal-air technology,'' Mr. Faris said. ''We don't claim we have a product.'' The company does, however, have a small-scale manufacturing line turning out components for a range of potential applications, from long-lasting AA batteries to vehicle and building power systems, thanks to an investment by Niagara Mohawk, an electric utility that has supported Evonyx research. Evonyxhas also acquired land to construct a factory in Taiwan that would supply power systems to the Asian scooter market. | Aiming for Longer Distance in Electric Cars |
1235505_0 | Firestone officials in Venezuela conducted at least two studies in 1999 that reviewed patterns of tire problems there while assuring Ford that tire failures in the country were isolated cases resulting from customer abuse and poor maintenance, internal Firestone documents show. The two studies are of interest because they describe dozens of cases in which steel-belted radial tires had treads and belts that were coming apart -- the same problem that led to the recall of Firestone ATX and Wilderness AT 15-inch tires in the United States on Aug. 9. But neither study compares the number of cases with the number of tires manufactured, making it difficult to assess the scope of the problem. There have been 103 deaths blamed on Firestone tires in the United States and 46 more in Venezuela, mostly in Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles, on which most of the problem tires have been mounted. American regulators began a separate investigation on Friday into Firestone Steeltex tires, which are used on the largest sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and vans. A Firestone spokeswoman said that tread and belt separations were the most common problem in radial tires and could be the result of many factors, including road hazards, improper repair and underinflation, rather than a manufacturing defect. But Hector Rodriguez, the vice president for purchasing at Ford of Venezuela, said today that although Ford asked Firestone repeatedly to check its tires in 1998 and 1999, Firestone never shared the existence or results of the two studies with Ford. Ford even shipped a failed tire to Firestone in late 1998, asking whether it was part of a broader problem. Mr. Rodriguez said that he was furious and had switched all of Ford's tire purchases for new cars and light trucks in Venezuela to Goodyear in the last two weeks. ''With this information, we have lost total confidence not only in local officials but with the corporation and the brand,'' he said. ''I feel betrayed.'' The Firestone spokeswoman said that she did not know what memorandums were shared in Venezuela. The first study by Firestone officials in Venezuela, completed in January 1999, said that 47 tires with separation problems had been replaced under warranty since 1995. The study noted that 13 had been imported from the United States. The second study, completed in November 1999, pointed out that tires on Chevrolet Grand Blazer sport utilities -- a model | 2 Firestone Studies in 1999 Pointed to Tire Problems |
1243233_2 | centuries, Brazil was focused on its southern border with Argentina, where the biggest concentrations of troops and military equipment have always been deployed, and largely neglected its northern borders. The key to the beefed-up Brazilian effort in the Amazon, which accounts for 60 percent of the country's territory, is a $1.4 billion radar project called the Amazon Vigilance System, known as Sivam, from its acronym in Portuguese. The American-financed system, which consists of 19 fixed and 6 mobile radar posts, was begun in 1997 to monitor deforestation, fires and illegal mining. But it has taken on great military significance with the deteriorating situation in Colombia, and is now considered a vital tool by both Brazilian and American officials to track the movements of guerrilla and drug operations, which often use small private aircraft. ''We have all of Brazilian airspace controlled, except for the Amazon,'' Gen. Alberto Cardoso, the government's national security minister, explained in an interview in Brasilia early this month. ''Now, the Sivam project is going to fill that void and permit us to defend our territory.'' In mid-October, Brazil offered to share data gathered from Sivam with neighbors and the United States. ''With Sivam and our own electronic intelligence gathering capacity, I expect to see us working together and sharing information in an unprecedented fashion so that we can each benefit from what we know and need to know about drug trafficking activity,'' the American Ambassador to Brazil, Anthony S. Harrington, said in a recent interview. In 1998, the Brazilian Congress approved legislation that would allow the Air Force to shoot down any aircraft that enters Brazilian airspace illegally. Peru and Colombia have similar laws, but ''ours is broader,'' General Cardoso said, and ''has to be regulated by a decree that is still being discussed, due to the sensitivity of the problem,'' before it can be put into effect. As part of its effort to control the sky over the often impenetrable jungle, the Brazilian government has also announced that it intends to spend about $3.5 billion during the next eight years to buy new supersonic fighter planes and transport planes. It will also refurbish 100 combat jets. The buildup is intended to remedy a vulnerability that Brazil was reminded of last year, when a plane on its way from neighboring Suriname made an emergency landing in the eastern Amazon state of Para. An inspection revealed a cargo | Latest Battleground In Latin Drug War: Brazilian Amazon |
1236543_1 | food and medicine to Iran, Libya, North Korea and Sudan. But it was Cuba that created the most conflict. Cuban-American lawmakers succeeded in barring private or United States government financing of sales to Cuba, forcing Cuba to use cash or to borrow from foreign banks. The financing restrictions can be waived by the president for all countries except Cuba. Cuban-American lawmakers also prevailed in pushing language that would convert into law existing federal regulations that limit travel to Cuba, making it even more difficult for American tourists to visit Cuba in the future. The measure would also prohibit any future sanctions on food and medicine, without Congress's approval. ''This is a victory,'' said Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican who fought for the restrictions. ''It's a demonstration of solidarity with the right of the Cuban people to be free.'' House and Senate negotiators also voted on a Republican proposal to permit the importing of American-made prescription drugs from other countries, a move intended to lower the cost of medication in the United States. Some other countries regulate pharmaceutical prices, and that means in many cases that drugs made in this country are priced 50 percent to 60 percent lower in those countries than in the United States. But Democrats said the language in the bill was a departure from the Senate version, which House Republicans said they were comfortable with and the White House said it could accept. The bill would allow pharmacies and wholesale distributors to buy prescription drugs abroad, reimport them and sell them at a lower cost. Democrats, though, complained that there were too many loopholes in the measure. The bill would expire five years after the completion of regulations. It could, they argued, allow American drug companies to force foreign distributors to fix prices at United States levels before sending the drugs back. Democrats also had concerns about language on labeling restrictions that could undermine the ability of American pharmacies and distributors to import and sell the drugs. Some Democrats wondered whether drug manufacturers, who have fought this proposal, would supply enough drugs abroad to allow these foreign distributors to resell them in the United States. ''We have concluded this is an unworkable provision as it is structured,'' said Chris Jennings, senior health care adviser to the president. ''We haven't given up, but it doesn't look good.'' Democrats tried to amend the two proposals to reflect | Congress Addresses Importing Medicine and Exporting to Cuba |
1236404_1 | little as a dollar, has forced the remaining producers in Luis Alves to search for markets overseas, where a bottle of the liquor can fetch upwards of $30. The big producers have more success exporting because of their scale, but the smaller ones have higher quality because their cachaca, which is similar to rum, is handmade. ''Even with all of the import duties and shipping costs, it is still much better for us to sell abroad,'' said Almir Spezia, one of Mr. Spezia's sons, who has taken over financial management of the company. ''Brazilians don't want to know about quality. They're only interested in price.'' Also called pinga, aguardente or agua que passarinho nao bebe (''water that the little birds won't drink''), cachaca is Brazil's favorite liquor. In bars here, it is usually served on ice, accompanied by crushed limes and a liberal amount of sugar, to make the traditional caipirinha. Thanks to increasing tourism, word of the caipirinha has leaked outside Brazil's borders, making it the second-most-requested alcoholic drink in Germany behind beer. In the United States, a handful of bars in New York, Miami and San Francisco are also starting to serve the caipirinha brasileira with imported cachaca. But despite growing interest abroad, exporting has not proved to be a simple matter. About 1.3 billion liters of cachaca were bottled in Brazil last year by more than 5,000 producers, but only one-third of 1 percent of those bottles, or $7.4 million worth, made it across the border. That is bad news for smaller producers, because their prices are undercut at home by large producers. ''The biggest problem with the cachaca industry is that it is fragmented and a lot of producers are still informal,'' said Maria das Vitorias Cavalcanti, president of the board of the Brazilian Development Program for Cachaca at the Brazilian Association of Beverages, a private group known as Abrabe. ''To position cachaca in the international market, we need to reposition it inside Brazil by formalizing the sector and investing in the image of the product.'' Following the lead of Mexico, which has succeeded in raising the international profile of tequila significantly over recent years, Abrabe is investing $4 million over the next three years to help organize the industry. The association is also focused on bringing local cachaca distillers to international beverage fairs to promote their products. Through its program, Abrabe aims to increase cachaca | WORLD BUSINESS: A Local Liquor Catches On; But Export Outside Brazil Has Been Fragmented |
1242260_4 | And yesterday, WorldCom said it would introduce a new business-oriented structure next week. Sprint is another competitor in the business services market, which may be the most profitable segment of the telecommunications industry. But Sprint cannot match the scale of WorldCom or AT&T, and has had much less success serving the very biggest corporate clients. The Bell companies will certainly end up competing strongly at the top of the business services market, but they are limited by not yet being allowed to sell long-distance services, except in New York and Texas. Consequently, the Bells have not had the processes, product lines and people to provide all-in-one service to big corporate clients. Developing those necessary support elements may end up taking longer for the regional Bell companies than winning regulatory long-distance approval. An argument could be made that AT&T's business services arm would be hurt by its separation from the AT&T wireless business, since many business people use wireless phones. But not having a wireless unit has not appeared to significantly harm WorldCom. Besides, the selection of a wireless phone and wireless carrier is often an executive's personal choice, while the information system for his or her employer is a corporate decision. CONSUMER -- Perhaps the most intriguing piece of the company, AT&T's consumer unit, will have to do some serious soul-searching to figure out just what it wants to be. The long-distance operation, which will dominate the the new AT&T Consumer unit, is expected to see revenue shrink by more than 10 percent next year as the Bells get into that market and as prices continue to fall. AT&T's Worldnet Internet-access operation, which is also to be part of the consumer unit, is unlikely to grow big enough to compensate for the erosion in the long-distance market. If it is any solace, similar problems are afflicting the consumer long-distance units at WorldCom and Sprint. But the consumer unit's new plan to offer high-speed Internet access using so-called digital subscriber line technology could provide a shot in the arm. To deliver D.S.L. service, which is carried by conventional telephone lines, AT&T executives said yesterday that they would strongly consider working with outside companies like Covad, Rhythms and Northpoint, which have installed D.S.L. equipment in local phone offices around the country. Northpoint appears to be off the table; it is merging with the D.S.L. operation of Verizon -- the regional phone company | The Devolved AT&T: Are 4 Parts More Promising Than One? |
1242267_0 | The U.S. ambassador to China, Joseph Prueher, was answering questions the other day after a lecture at Nanjing University, when an American student rose and asked him something like this: Why is it that whenever I'm back home Americans ask me what it's like to live in a Communist dictatorship that abuses its people, but when I'm here in China I feel that I'm living in a society that's becoming more open? The young man's question reflected an important truth. While views of China in America -- and particularly in Congress -- still remain frozen in many cases on the Tiananmen Square massacre, the reality here is now a much more complex combination of iron fists and Web servers, personal freedoms and political handcuffs. Here are the five biggest myths about today's China that the next U.S. president should know: Myth #1: The main threat to the Chinese regime is a resurgence of the coalition of pro-democracy students and intellectuals who led the Tiananmen movement. Wrong. The fact is, the students have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the stability and foreign investment in China in the past decade, and they are unlikely to rock the boat. The big challenge to the regime is the workers and farmers who will be laid off as a result of China's pending entry into the World Trade Organization. Many uncompetitive factories will be shut down and 10 million farmers alone could lose their jobs as superior U.S. sugar and wheat start flooding China. Unrest among this group is the biggest threat to the regime. Myth #2: The Internet will promote democracy in China. Wrong. Talk to Chinese dissident groups and they will tell you they can now send one million e-mails of uncensored information into China every day. That's true. But what can the recipients do with those e-mails? ''If you just have information, but can't use it for organization or action to promote change, its political impact will be limited, and for now the Chinese government is still very good at preventing people from turning information into political action,'' said Michael Chase, who with his colleague James Mulvenon has been researching the Internet in China for the RAND Corporation. Myth #3: The Internet will not promote democracy in China. Also wrong. Yes, it's true that the Chinese government has tried to block access, but it's not working. Come with me here in | Foreign Affairs; The Five Myths |
1239119_0 | The long-running United States economic embargo of Cuba has played neatly into the hands of both the Havana government and Canada, which has become the largest foreign investor in Cuba, Canada's foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, said in an interview here today. ''It's the one thing that keeps them in power, keeping up their police state,'' Mr. Axworthy said, explaining that American economic sanctions give a nationalistic aura to Fidel Castro's 41-year-old rule in Cuba. ''If the U.S. announced tomorrow that the embargo was going off, Castro would have to find something else to replace it. Otherwise, the whole place would go like wildfire.'' Sherritt International Corporation, a Toronto company, has nearly $1 billion invested in Cuban oil production, nickel mining, power generation, cell phones, tourism and agriculture. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians travel to Cuba each winter for discount beach vacations. By contrast, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved an agricultural financing bill today that would slightly ease the embargo on Cuba, allowing food and medicine sales. ''If the U.S. Congress were to allow American companies to make certain investments, it would make our prime minister very unhappy,'' Mr. Axworthy said. ''The more Congress keeps U.S. companies out, the more it allows Sherritt to control the island.'' Relations between Canada and Cuba cooled in the late 1990's because of Mr. Castro's continued crackdowns on dissident journalists and human rights activists. But this month, in a clear effort to repair ties, Mr. Castro attended the funeral of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in Montreal. This week the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast extracts from a two-hour interview it had with Mr. Castro. In the interview, Mr. Castro said no prisoner had been tortured since he took power in 1959 and indirectly confirmed that his jails hold about 300 political prisoners, telling the Canadian interviewer, ''Listen, if we jailed all of those who receive a salary from the United States to fight against the revolution, there would be a lot more than those 300.'' Mr. Castro, who has nearly outlasted nine American presidents, has shown no indication that he will get along with the 10th. In August, he remarked that George W. Bush and Al Gore were ''the most boring and insipid'' candidates in American history. On Canadian television, he said: ''I'm against both of them, I'd like another candidate. But there are only these two and my position is this: I don't | Embargo Seen as Aid To Castro; Canada, Too |
1239008_3 | the landfill.'' The goal now is to put as many items as possible on public view, preferably in their original sites. But sometimes those sites have disappeared, been altered or adorned with replicas. So some items will be recycled for parts. Some will stay in storage, as models for repairs for re-creations. Some will be loaned, and still others may be sold or even given away to the public. Because not all the materials are intrinsically or aesthetically valuable, deciding what to do with them is not easy. Many variables must be weighed in deciding what to restore: an item's historical associations, the wishes of benefactors, the cost, the community's desires. Many of the restorations depend on private donations. AS for the doughboy, a 1923 statue, he is destined to return to his station in Highbridge, at the corner of Ogden and University Avenues, once money is found to restore his right arm and rifle and carry out the installation. A dozen doughboy memorials were established in New York neighborhoods after the Great War to honor local men who died, just as towns around the country and Europe built memorials in their main squares. The Highbridge doughboy was salvaged in the 1970's after suffering the damage and after plaques listing 21 local men who died were stolen. ''Once you have an amputee, that's an invitation to finish the job,'' said Mr. Kuhn, whose job at times seems like one big reminder of New York's capacity to chip away at its monuments, or spray paint them, or steal them whole. Soaring metal prices in the 1970's and a municipal budget crisis led to much thieving, but Mr. Kuhn says monument vandalism has waned. He cites at least two dozen successful restorations in the last decade, thanks in part to the private donations that flow from better economic times and to more city financing. Keeping the doughboy company is Arthur Cunningham, formerly of Cunningham Park in Fresh Meadows, Queens. More specifically, it is a bronze bust of Mr. Cunningham, his hair brushed straight back, a bristle mustache on his upper lip, a three-piece suit on his torso. Mr. Cunningham, born in 1894, was a rising star in New York City politics. He was elected city comptroller with Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and died six months later, in 1934, after a heart attack while horseback riding. The statue went up in 1941. | Huddled Masses of City Statuary Face Eviction |
1239167_0 | A thin, sporadic drizzle mixed with the chilled northerly breeze did nothing to raise the comfort level of the gathering throng. But this is a sailor's town, and last Monday the blast of unseasonable weather did nothing to dissuade the locals from assembling on the waterfront for what has become an annual boating spectacle. Lining the docks and stationed in upper-deck perches on hotel balconies -- and, in many instances, fortified by rum-laced painkillers from an adjacent saloon -- the crowd had come to witness and cheer the rapid disassembly of the United States Sailboat Show, an operation of nautical choreography that must be seen to be believed. At precisely 6 p.m., as it does each Columbus Day, an announcement hailing the end of the country's largest in-the-water sailboat show was bellowed through the public-address system. It might have been synonymous for, ''Let the games begin.'' The festive atmosphere was heightened by the whiff of potential disaster that wafted in the air. For when the goal is to move well over 200 yachts of varying size and description in an hour or two, the possibility of a gleaming new hull having a rendezvous with a solid old pier is ever present. The exercise is complicated by the fact that as soon as the sailboats have exited, an entire fleet of powerboats begins to fill the vacated berths in anticipation of the United States Powerboat Show, which started on Thursday and continues through Sunday. Overnight, the view over the City Docks in downtown Annapolis, for days dominated by a forest of masts, becomes open and sparless. For all boaters but for sailors especially, it is a strange and somewhat disorienting transformation. Then again, so is the entire metamorphosis, which is something like watching a real-life staging of time-lapse photography. Things happen very quickly. Whole rafts of linked docks are towed out to make way. Throttles are dropped and boats fire through the narrowest of openings. It becomes apparent that what had appeared to be a full-service, modern marina was really a temporary staging area extending well into the harbor. This year, despite the nasty north wind, there were close calls but no incidents. The skipper of the 57-foot catamaran Crazy Horse earned wild applause for extricating his giant platform from an impossibly tight position. So too did the crew of a new J/80 racer, who smartly hightailed it under spinnaker and | Sailors' Town Is a Mecca for the Boat Industry |
1238866_4 | hearing his first broadcast. ''I've seen you on the stage,'' James Brannigan told his son. ''I've seen you on TV. You have a great face for radio.'' Heeding the Call When Hope Koski was about 7 years old, she told her mother that she wanted to be an Episcopalian priest. ''Oh honey,'' the Very Rev. Hope Koski recalled her mother saying. ''Little girls can't be priests.'' ''Mommy, I don't want to be a priest when I'm a little girl,'' Ms. Koski replied. ''I want to be a priest when I grow up.'' But when she got to Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan in 1963, women weren't allowed to prepare for the priesthood. Ms. Koski studied liturgical music instead, receiving her master's degree in sacred music. She went to work as a church organist and choir director and was a lay chaplain at the University of Wisconsin for 10 years. ''I really knew in my heart that if I were male instead of female, I would have gone for ordination,'' said Ms. Koski, 60. Her calling to the priesthood, she said, came from God. So in 1977, when the Episcopal Church voted to ordain women, Ms. Koski headed back to seminary and studied for three more years. She was among the first 100 women to be ordained nationwide She took the pulpit at St. Lawrence of Canterbury Episcopal Church in Dix Hills 11 years ago. She was the first woman in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island to be appointed rector of a parish and is still the only female rector in Suffolk County. She is also dean of the region, overseeing 10 churches. St. Lawrence, she said, is a racially and ethnically diverse, liberal, social-action-oriented congregation. Parishioners come from as far east as Selden, south from Patchogue, north to Lloyd Harbor and west from Mineola. ''Sometimes I'm a draw and sometimes I'm a stay-away,'' said the priest, known to her congregants as Mother Koski. ''Some people just don't want a woman as their priest. You have to be very careful about sacraments. You wouldn't want them to have any chance of the magic not working. You want to make sure that baby is really baptized when it's baptized and that marriage is really going to stick,'' said Ms. Koski, who is divorced and has three grown children. In May, Ms. Koski became the first female president of the Long Island | Multiple Personalities? Yes, on the Radio |
1239127_1 | their products are deadly and addictive. They made clear, however, that they will resist stringent global rules, insisting that they are free to sell and advertise their wares. ''Today, with near-universal awareness of the health risks, a billion adults choose to smoke,'' said Christopher Proctor, BAT's science director, who argued that regulatory schemes can only work at the national level. The negotiations here will be fierce, tussling over whether to ban tobacco multinationals from advertising and sponsoring sports events; whether to increase taxes to make cigarettes more expensive, and whether to discourage tobacco growing and adopt measures to deter young people from smoking. The World Health Organization maintains that tobacco use already kills four million people annually and will worsen over the next two decades. Unchecked, tobacco's death toll will rise to 10 million yearly by 2030, according to the agency, which would take huge chunks out of budgets of both rich and poor countries. American medical groups have argued in recent days that the consequences of inaction are dire, and urged the Clinton administration to apply its tough domestic smoking stand to the international arena. ''If smoking is not curbed, China alone will have one million lung cancer deaths in 2025,'' said Dr. Randolph D. Smoak, Jr., president of the American Medical Association, who recently returned from China, where about 70 percent of men smoke. The strategy of big tobacco firms appears to be lobbying national governments, which may prove vulnerable to the companies' influence, and counting on the fact that any global agreement is only as good as the number of countries that sign on, ratify and implement provisions -- which, at best, is years away. A proposal to raise taxes on cigarettes in order to cut consumption, especially among the poor, the young and the less educated -- a method favored by the World Health Organization and the World Bank -- is likely to run into stiff resistance. A report by the two organizations last August maintained that tax increases do not lead to job losses and increase smuggling, two arguments advanced against the measure. Based on the study, its authors will argue that a 10 percent rise in cigarette prices would lead to as many as 42 million people quitting smoking, and prevent about 10 million tobacco-related deaths. Such tax increases could also combat wholesale smuggling, which now amounts to around 355 million bootleg cigarettes yearly. | World's Health Officials Seek Global Treaty to Curb Smoking |
1239012_0 | Last year, a ceiling in the Angelo Petromelis College Point Senior Center nearly caved in under the weight of pigeon droppings. The birds had nested in the roof, and their droppings were eating through the ceiling. The city, which runs the center, repaired the roof. However, Sabina Cardali, president of the College Point Civic and Taxpayers Association, says the building is still unsafe and wants the center to relocate. ''It's falling apart,'' Ms. Cardali said. ''These quarters are just not suitable for seniors.'' The College Point Little League owns the building, a three-story structure on 123rd Street between 13th and 14th Avenues. It was built in 1906 as a firehouse for the private community of College Point; the center for the elderly has occupied it for the past quarter century. In June, the building was listed on the State Register of Historic Places. Last month, it received the federal designation. Although the exterior is undistinguished, the interior features such decorative touches as embossed paneling. Ms. Cardali said the designations created a problem because now the building's owner cannot make repairs on the site quickly. But the old firehouse is not actually a landmark. In fact, only three percent of the 71,000 properties on the National Register of Historic Places are official landmarks. Most are simply places with historic interest. And being listed on the federal and state rosters does not automatically prevent an owner from making improvements. Jerry Castro, president of the College Point Little League, said his group did not apply for landmark designation because of the restrictions it brought with it. He plans to apply for money available to restore buildings listed as historic places, since his group, a volunteer organization, cannot afford to make repairs on its own. Although the firehouse needs repairs, Suzanne Metaxas, the center's director, said it was safe. It is, however, too small for the senior program, which is growing. She has been looking for new quarters for more than a year but has not found anything the city is willing to pay for. ''It's just unfortunate that things have not worked out,'' Ms. Metaxas said. SHERRI DAY NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: FLUSHNG | Not-Quite Landmark Languishes in Limbo |
1239124_4 | to it for years,'' he said. But the allure was strong, too, Mr. Root said. Under the thundering falls, the fishing -- for brown trout, rainbows and landlocked salmon -- has been ''very sweet'' lately, he said, though he added that he would not think of eating anything that came from these waters now. For him, it is strictly catch and release. Ithaca city leaders and officials at the State Department of Environmental Conservation said they knew about the lead in Fall Creek Gorge long before Mr. Hang made a federal case out of it by getting the E. P. A. involved. The gorge was accepted into the state's industrial brownfields cleanup program in late 1998, according to Thomas Suozzo, an environmental engineer at the state agency's Division of Environmental Remediation. Under the brownfields program, the city would have been required to pay 25 percent of the cleanup costs and the state would pay the rest. The gorge would become a city park. But Mr. Hang, the president of an Ithaca-based company called Toxics Targeting, which does environmental database analysis, said he got a call in July from a resident who said the contamination was worse than people realized. Mr. Hang filed Freedom of Information requests about previous testing and sent his material to the E.P.A., which in turn contacted the State Department of Environmental Conservation. That exchange, Mr. Suozzo said, set a new plan in motion. If the cleanup were taken over by the E.P.A., the federal government would pay the costs, then seek reimbursement from the responsible parties, who would be identified at a later date. The city would be off the hook for its 25 percent contribution, too. So the state sent a formal letter requesting E.P.A. involvement. The federal testing crews came and the warning signs went up. Mr. Hang says he worries that the federal cleanup will be superficial, taking only the most visible layers of lead and leaving contaminants beneath that might still work their way to the surface through erosion. The on-scene coordinator for the E.P.A., Jeff Bechtel, who said the agency would issue its cleanup decision within the next few weeks, added that he thought the main issue would be the unique setting -- trying to make a place that looks pristine into one that actually is. ''How do you remove it without disturbing the natural beauty?'' he said. ''That's the trick.'' | Ithaca Journal; Sweet Fishing and a Gorgeous Gorge, if You Don't Mind All That Old Lead |
1239778_1 | its overall production by a fifth for the next two months, even though Firestone-brand tires only account for half the company's sales. Firestone also sells Bridgestone tires, which go mainly on Japanese-brand automobiles, and other brands. Firestone's inventory of unsold tires is 50 percent larger than usual now, partly because of the slower sales but also because the company stockpiled tires this summer in preparation for a possible strike by union workers that did not take place, Mr. Lampe said. In addition, the company has found itself with large numbers of tires in smaller sizes as more Americans choose vehicles that use larger tires. The three factories cutting back production -- the Decatur factory plus factories in La Vergne, Tenn., and in Oklahoma City -- make a high proportion of Firestone-brand tires and tires in smaller sizes and had particularly large inventories accumulated before a labor agreement was reached on Sept. 4, Mr. Lampe said. All three factories will be closed for the second half of December, and the Oklahoma City and La Vergne factories will also be closed from Oct. 29 to Nov. 11. Laid-off workers and workers furloughed for two to four weeks will be entitled to unemployment benefits. Unionized workers with at least two years of seniority will receive additional payments from the company for up to 6 to 12 months, raising their overall benefits to 80 percent of previous income. Ford and Firestone dealers have been besieged by angry Ford Explorer owners, many of whom have been unable to find replacements for their tires since the recall was announced on Aug. 9. But Mr. Lampe said that Firestone and other tire makers had replaced 4.2 million of the 6.5 million recalled tires, and he predicted that all of the tires would be replaced by the end of next month. Firestone's production of replacement tires will not be affected by today's announcement, because most of the production is taking place at other factories, Mr. Lampe said. Stephen Garman, the city manager in Decatur, said that many of the laid-off workers should be able to find other jobs, although some might not have skills that closely match the available openings. The local economy is at full employment and the city has just hired an advertising firm to try to attract people from other cities to fill vacancies in a wide range of occupations, he said. ''Our economy is | Firestone Announces Production Cutbacks in 3 Plants and Layoffs |
1239846_0 | An article in Business Day last Wednesday about Genetic ID, the laboratory that found genetically modified corn in a batch of taco shells, misidentified the agency that is considering starting a program to certify food as being free of modified ingredients. It is the Department of Agriculture, not the Food and Drug Administration. | Corrections |
1239716_2 | of the entire Amazon.'' Without mentioning Mr. Chavez by name, Mr. Cohen, who returned to Washington this afternoon in order to attend a memorial service on Wednesday for the sailors who died in the attack on the American destroyer Cole, emphatically denied that any such escalation will take place. ''We do not, under any circumstances, intend to become involved militarily in Colombia,'' Mr. Cohen said. ''Anything that you read or hear to the contrary is completely false and fabricated.'' Government leaders, especially in the five countries that border Colombia, have expressed concern that an influx of coca cultivation, refugees and fighting on their own territory may result from the push the Colombian government is planning into coca-growing areas under guerrilla control. But Mr. Cohen argued that any effort to ignore the crisis or stay aloof from it is likely to backfire. ''The United States is concerned that the 'spillover' of those problems to neighboring states, which has been increasing in recent years, will only worsen if we do nothing,'' he said. ''Working together, we hope to help Colombia in its time of need and prevent the conflict from shifting Colombia's problems to its neighbors.'' Just in the last week, the government of Ecuador has accused Colombia's main guerrilla group of invading its territory to kidnap 10 foreign oil workers, and a village in Panama was attacked by an armed group, either guerrillas or a paramilitary unit, that came over the Colombian border. In addition, Colombia says that Venezuelan troops violated the border over the weekend, razing coca fields and destroying homes and farm animals. South American leaders have been careful to draw a distinction between the military buildup and efforts by the Colombian government to negotiate a peace accord with Marxist rebel groups, which does have regional support. But Gen. Alberto Cardoso, the Brazilian government's chief national security adviser, went out of his way to praise American officials for what he described as a steady stream of briefings and consultations. ''The government of the United States has acted correctly with the neighbors of Colombia by regularly keeping us informed,'' he said in an interview earlier this month in Brasilia. ''Every month one or two American officials have come here to talk with me.'' On their own, some countries have already increased deployments of the police and soldiers along their borders with Colombia, and other joint efforts are also under way. | U.S. Aid to Colombia Worries Hemisphere's Defense Leaders |
1239722_4 | Shell has posted on the Internet, identifies initiatives that it is taking to prevent wrongdoing by employees. For example, it said enforcement of its policy against bribe-taking had resulted in four dismissals and one resignation, though it did not provide details. And Shell says it has hired the accounting and consulting firms KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers to verify the steps it is taking to ensure the health and safety of its workers and to protect the environment, like cleaning up oil spills. ''There was no book on this. We had to invent it for ourselves and looked at business principles line by line, clause by clause,'' said Mark Wade, a founding member of the task force that developed the company's environmental and social policies and issued the report. Mattel Inc., the toy maker, embarked on a social audit three years ago that it named the Mattel Independent Monitoring Council. An advisory panel, made up entirely of company outsiders, including Murray Weidenbaum, the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, spent a year creating 200 workplace standards, including the length of breaks and the number of restrooms for workers at its plants. Mattel said it especially wanted to make sure none of its overseas plants were exploiting workers. While the company said that it found none that were, it did uncover accounting infractions and air-quality abuses at some factories and made sure the local managers corrected them. The panel detailed those incidents in its report. Elsewhere, companies are requiring employees to take ethics classes. Lockheed Martin, for example, has created a newspaper called Ethics Daily that runs articles based on ethical problems people at the company have faced, then uses those accounts as grist for its training programs. When employee feedback showed more than half the employees surveyed did not report misconduct that they had observed because they feared retaliation, management used the information to create a program on trust. The Boeing Company requires its rank and file to undergo at least one hour of ethical training a year, and senior managers five hours. Participants must decide the best way to respond to a moral problem, like an outside vendor's offer of free baseball tickets. (The correct answer, even in late October: refuse them.) ''The perception of favoritism is bad in the company,'' said Gale C. Andrews, Boeing's vice president of ethics and business conduct. ''It's important to have a conversation | MANAGEMENT: Getting Religion On Corporate Ethics; A Scourge of Scandals Leaves Its Mark |
1238056_0 | Q. Is there anything I can do to stop getting so much junk e-mail? A. Avoiding all spam might be difficult, but there are a number of things you can do to fight back. Although it can be a bit technical for the new user, the Stop Spam FAQ page on the Web (www.mall-net.com /spamfaq.html) provides a thorough background on spam and ways to find out its source. The page also has links to many other spam-fighting information sites. The Network Abuse Clearinghouse page (www.abuse.net) also has a section devoted to spam-fighting tools. The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (www.cauce.org) has links to spam-fighting groups and a page devoted to legislative measures past and present. Many e-mail programs will let users filter incoming messages, and America Online will allow its customers to block as much e-mail as they like. Once you use your e-mail address publicly on the Internet, your chances of getting spam greatly increase. The people who send junk mail often use programs that search the Net for e-mail addresses to compile a bulk-mailing list. Some junk-mail messages have a legitimate address in the message text for you to request the removal of your name from the list, but simply hitting the Reply button usually doesn't work and often just confirms your address for the spammer. Many users swamped by spam have resorted to getting free Web-based e-mail accounts or extra screen names just to use for filling out forms and for posting in Usenet newsgroups or other places where spammers collect addresses. That way, at least some of the spam ends up someplace other than the recipient's home or office In box. If you want to fight back directly, you can report spam messages to the Spam Cop site (spamcop.net). If you paste a spam message into a form on the SpamCop page, the site will trace the message back to its mailer and send a complaint letter in your name to the spammer's I.S.P. SpamCop also offers other services for a spam-free life. Commercial antispam software like SpamKiller (www.spamkiller.com) and Spam Buster (www.contactplus.com) might also help reduce the spam in your In box. Some antispam software can even let you screen out junk mail that was routed through mail servers in other countries on its way to you. J. D. BIERSDORFER Q & A | Fighting Back Against Spam |
1238076_2 | on e-mail do make it possible for many people who would not otherwise participate to get involved. One such person is Amy Vernick, a lawyer in New York who is a volunteer for iMentor. She exchanged e-mail notes about once a week last semester with a student who had moved to New York from Venezuela. She said her career would have prohibited her from participating in an offline mentoring program. ''It's so much easier to e-mail than it is to pick up the phone or get together,'' she said. One teacher who directs students to iMentor is Dominick Camastro at Erasmus Hall High School. The mentoring takes place online. Otherwise, he said, ''I can't imagine some of the professionals having the time to talk to the kids in my class on a regular basis.'' E-mail mentoring programs can offer volunteers duties that require fixed amounts of time. ''Online programs are a little less threatening because there's usually a mandated start and finish,'' said David Moen, program director at Youth Trust in Minneapolis, which creates mentoring partnerships between schools and companies like Cargill, General Mills and Best Buy. Most e-mail mentoring programs organize only two or three actual meetings per semester. ''I think that what prevents a lot of people from getting involved with mentoring is this overwhelming feeling of responsibility,'' Mr. Dailey said. ''iMentor sets it up so you're not obligated to meet more than three times, so you feel like a true mentor as opposed to a quasi parent.'' Many people find that they are more comfortable communicating by e-mail. Dan Bassill, president and chief executive of Cabrini Connections, a mentoring and tutoring organization in Chicago, said: ''I think e-mail lets you focus more clearly on what you're talking about because you're not as focused on personal dynamics.'' That proved to be true for Lisette Rodriguez, who participated in an online mentoring program last year, when she was a senior at Central Park East Secondary School in Manhattan. ''I'm really quick to judge people I meet in person,'' Ms. Rodriguez said, ''but when you write to someone you can't always form an impression right away. I'm also kind of shy, and I'll say more in writing than I will in person.'' Ms. Rodriguez said she had exchanged e-mail notes with her mentor, Heather Butts, a lawyer at PricewaterhouseCoopers, at least once a day over four months, and that they | E-Mail Gives Students More Choices for Career Advice |
1238227_0 | Despite his previous reservations, President Clinton is now expected to sign a bill that would permit the sale of food to Cuba, the most significant rollback of United States sanctions to the island in four decades, White House officials said today. The House approved the bill today by a vote of 340-75 as part of a larger spending measure on agriculture, and Senate passage is expected as early as Thursday. The easing of sanctions on Cuba was viewed as an important political victory by farmers, who lobbied aggressively for trade openings in that country, but it is not expected to produce sales of wheat, soy or any other food product any time soon. Financing restrictions on the sale of food to Cuba are so onerous, and the tension between Cuba and the United States so pronounced, many farmers, lobbyists and trade group officials said the two countries must jump many hurdles to make the deal work. Further complicating matters, Cuban officials have criticized the bill, portraying it as a missed opportunity, and say there are no plans to buy food from the United States. | Clinton Expected to Allow Cuba Food Sales |
1240245_6 | the last 15 years, scientists have steadily built a case that killer T-cells can hold the AIDS virus in check. They found that the cells could inhibit the AIDS virus in test tubes. Then they found that killer T-cells proliferated in infected monkeys and in humans at the same time as the AIDS virus replication was brought under control. They found that the strength of an infected individual's killer T-cell response predicted how much virus would be in the person's blood and how well the person would do clinically. And they found that in monkeys, when killer T-cells were obliterated, AIDS viruses ran rampant, never coming under any sort of control and quickly killing the animals. Encouraged by the body of evidence, Dr. Letvin and his colleagues began looking for ways to prime monkeys to make CD8 cells. The method that worked, they learned, was a DNA vaccine, some components of which were provided by Merck & Company, the pharmaceutical business. The scientists injected the animals with two AIDS virus genes along with stimulants for cells to make an immune system hormone to speed the production of CD8 cells. Cells picked up the DNA and used those viral genes to make viral proteins. The proteins were harmless to the cells, but the cells responded as they did to any foreign proteins -- they put pieces of the proteins on their surfaces, signaling killer T-cells to proliferate. The hormone amplified this process. The result was a wave of killer cells. Ordinarily, a monkey infected with an AIDS-like virus might end up with 5 percent to 10 percent of its billions of CD8 cells dedicated to fighting the virus. But, Dr. Letvin and his colleagues found, when they used their new vaccine and then infected the monkeys with an AIDS virus, the animals would have up to 30 percent of their CD8 cells specifically designed to fight the infection with the virus. So far, however, the study only shows that DNA vaccines are a promising approach in AIDS, not that this particular vaccine will protect people, researchers emphasized. ''This is a proof of concept,'' Dr. Siliciano said. Nonetheless, he and other AIDS experts said they were hopeful. ''We're not there yet in humans in terms of having a vaccine that can do what we can do in monkeys,'' Dr. Letvin said. But, he added, ''I think we know how to do it.'' | New Kind of Vaccine, Made of DNA, Controls AIDS Virus in Early Tests on Monkeys |
1240294_0 | Several New Jersey civil rights leaders and black lawmakers said today they are concerned that state officials are preparing to offer a plea bargain to the two state troopers who shot three unarmed minority men during a traffic stop in 1998, in order to avoid a prolonged criminal trial focusing on racial profiling. The troopers, John Hogan and James Kenna, were indicted on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault, for wounding passengers of a van they stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike -- a case that transformed racial profiling into a national issue. But prosecutors said last month that evidence recently gleaned from two eyewitnesses has made them consider dropping the most serious charges against at least one officer, and there have been several discussions about possible plea bargains since then. Robert Galantucci, the lawyer representing Trooper Hogan, declined to comment on the discussions, and in an interview today said only: ''There is no agreement, and I don't think there's going to be an agreement.'' James J. Gerrow, the special state prosecutor assigned to the case, has refused to discuss the case, as has Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. In recent weeks, however, documents have emerged showing that state law enforcement officials concealed detailed evidence of racial profiling from the public for years, providing fresh ammunition for the troopers' lawyers to argue that state police commanders condoned racial profiling. So today, when a newspaper published details about another proposed plea agreement, which would spare the troopers prison time, black legislators warned that the special state prosecutor not be swayed by the specter of more bad publicity. Assemblyman LeRoy Jones, a Democrat from Essex County, warned that if any plea bargain is viewed as an attempt at political damage control, it would undermine efforts to rebuild the reputation of the State Police in minority neighborhoods. ''This is the same old story in which black men get attacked by police and the offending officers get protected by the system,'' said Mr. Jones, who is black. ''It fosters resentment and distrust. It sends the signal that the status quo will endure and that reform will only be cosmetic. The prosecutor has the responsibility to administer justice, not deals.'' Racial profiling has been one of New Jersey's dominant political issues since the night of April 23, 1998, when Troopers Hogan and Kenna stopped a van near Exit 7A of the turnpike. The | Reported Plea Bargaining in Turnpike Shooting Causes Concern in New Jersey |
1240194_4 | eventually you'll be stranded.'' To prevent that from happening, the company developed a temperature and pressure monitor that is strapped inside the wheel. Like Mr. Zaroor's device, it broadcasts to a monitor in the passenger compartment. But run-flat tires have not yet caught on. And partly because installation of the SmarTire unit is complicated, the system had sold for about $300 for light vehicles and $400 for vehicles that are heavier or have more than four wheels. Now, Ms. Krepiakevich said, SmarTire is anticipating a booming market, and mass production should lower prices. A new, refined version of its hardware will go into mass production soon, she said. It has a battery that will last seven years, which, she said, is almost certainly longer than the life of the tire. Temperature and pressure usually move in tandem, so measuring one should generally be adequate, but SmarTire measures both. John I. Bolegoh, manager of technical services at the company, said that if a tire developed a slow leak on the highway, the normal rise in temperature during highway driving might mask the leak by indicating stable tire pressure. SmarTire would give early warning of a problem, he said. Or if a brake was dragging, the temperature of one tire might rise much higher than the others', another early warning sign. The company plans to distribute the device through after-market auto parts stores. It has also signed a deal with TRW, a big parts supplier, to try to have its product included on new cars. That would permit a variety of built-in display systems, Ms. Krepiakevich said. A description is available at www.smartire.com/fl/. Maintaining tire pressure would have other benefits, including less tire wear, lower fuel consumption and better handling. And a factory-installed model could also establish the appropriate inflation for a new car. A study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that most people inflate their tires to the maximum pressure stated on the sidewall, not to the manufacturer's instructions in the owner's manual or on the door post, two more obscure locations. Just what the Federal rule will require will not be clear for months. Congress gave the Transportation Department a year to develop rules requiring a warning system for tire pressure. The rule would be applied to new cars two years after it was published. Until then, of course, one can always use the old-fashioned tire-pressure gauge. | AUTOS ON FRIDAY/Safety; Checking Tire Pressure From the Driver's Seat |
1240235_1 | country ''more than self-sufficient in food,'' and that ''famines which used to occur have now become a thing of the past.'' It ruled that the height of the dam can be raised in phases from 290 feet to as high as 452 feet, with each major step requiring the approval of forestry and environmental officials. By a 2-to-1 vote, the court rejected a petition filed six years ago by a private group called the Save the Narmada Movement. It rejected the group's contention that the dam had damaged the environment, though the dissenting judge argued that construction should be halted to allow for further environmental studies. The court did, however, note a grievance committee's finding that the state of Madhya Pradesh -- a beneficiary of the dam project -- had not done enough to acquire land for the resettlement of those whose property would be inundated. The judges ordered the governments of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra to care for those displaced by the rising waters. Any disputes over treatment of the displaced that cannot be resolved by dam authorities are to be referred to the prime minister, whose decisions will be final, the judges ruled. The Sardar Sarovar dam is part of a vast project in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh to build a network of 3,200 dams -- including 30 large and 135 medium-sized ones -- on the Narmada and its tributaries. Leaders of the Save the Narmada Movement rushed to the Narmada Valley today to plan a new strategy. ''The nonviolent struggle will continue,'' said Medha Patkar, who leads the group and who has been fighting for the rights of those in the dam's path for the past 15 years. ''We are now moving from the battle to the war.'' Ms. Roy, who joined the campaign over a year ago, said the dam project would lead to ''a horrible spiral of dispossession and uprootment.'' Speaking in New Delhi, she said she believed people in the Narmada Valley would keep fighting. But the views of the dam opponents are far from universally shared, even among those who have joined movements on behalf of farmers and the lower castes. As the debate has heated up over the past year, some have argued that dams can improve the lot of struggling farmers and help India continue to produce enough food to keep up with its growing population. | Opponents of India Dam Project Bemoan Green Light From Court |
1235031_9 | was first moved near a shopping center, then near a senior citzens' center and then a school before finally ending up on a back road. ''I was out hunting a dead deer,'' Mr. Griggs said with a laugh. Princeton Township, he said, is one of his most frequent pickup zones. ''In Princeton you have calls all the time about deer jumping straight through the plate glass storefront windows in town,'' he said. ''It's bound to happen more and more with all the development. The deer are pushed into smaller spots.'' UP the northern and western reaches of the state it is bears that have some residents literally up in arms. Unlike the deer -- a threat by their sheer numbers and traffic hazards -- the invading black bear sends people scattering and their hearts skittering. First there is elation at the sighting. But soon it dawns on the person facing the bear that although the animal looks cuddly, it is in fact a potential predator. Development has grown steadily in the last 20 years in sections of Sussex, Passaic, Morris and Warren Counties that were once covered with forests. The bears -- hearty eaters and intelligent, adaptable animals -- have come to rely on people to broaden their diet of berries, acorns, skunk cabbage, rabbits and other small mammals. Bears have long been wandering into more settled areas, particularly in the summer, as the young are rousted from their lairs to make way for new offspring. But experts say the bears being spotted now tend to be older and more brazen. As their numbers have grown, they have migrated to more thickly populated counties, including Bergen, Essex, Hunterdon and Somerset. Indeed, some residents of West Milford, in Passaic County, are battling black bears that have become so at home in human terrain that residents claim they look both ways before crossing the street. Susan Kuchenreuther of West Milford -- who heads Bear Truth, the group that lobbied Governor Whitman to hold the black bear hunt -- said: ''They're beautiful animals. Really, I love them. But if they come into the yard they pose a threat and need to be euthanized. ''The bears need to have the fear instilled back into them,'' Mrs. Kuchenreuther added. ''They want our food and they'll do anything to get it. They are way too comfortable in my backyard.'' Mrs. Kuchenreuther founded the group in June | Man Against (Ready. Aim. Fire.) Nature; As the Line Separating the Suburbs and the Countryside Blurs, the Wildlife Gets Squeezed. Or Worse. |
1235364_0 | After months of bitter negotiations that pitted the American farm lobby against enemies of President Fidel Castro of Cuba, Congressional Republicans agreed to allow the sale of food products to Cuba. The deal, which was brokered by Representative Roy D. Blunt, Republican of Missouri, would allow Cuba to buy American grains, pork and other products by paying cash or arranging financing through a third country. In a nod to Mr. Castro's critics, however, the arrangement ruled out American financing for such purchases, and Cuban products will not be sold in the United States. Christopher Marquis | Sept. 24-30; Deal on Food Sales to Cuba |
1235273_4 | case of the water resource ministry, Niu Maosheng, the minister under whose watch the corruption occurred and who was implicated by the auditors, was reassigned as governor of Hebei Province, hardly a severe reproof. Increasingly, aggrieved people are banding together to fight corruption, either physically or legally by appealing to higher powers in Beijing. Their efforts rarely win much relief. When farmers in Shaanxi Province failed to get satisfaction last year in a lawsuit against party officials who they contended were taxing them illegally, they sent their lawyer to appeal to the central government. He was arrested for fomenting unrest and sentenced to five years in jail. Farmers are now petitioning the Shaanxi provincial government to overturn his conviction. The cynicism is heightened by the muzzling of the press, which is only allowed to report selectively on corruption and is never permitted to dig very deep. Gao Qinrong, a reporter for the state-run New China News Agency, was sentenced to 13 years on charges including bribery and pimping after his expose of an irrigation project in Shanxi Province that was an elaborate sham. Corruption involving water has become one of the country's most emotional flash points. More than 100 cities in northern China are rationing dwindling water supplies. Anger toward the ministry is high. In Anqiu, a small town in eastern Shandong Province, people used to surviving on seepage from the Mushan Reservoir went on a rampage in July when the ministry tried to seal the reservoir's dam without first installing promised pumps and water lines. . The auditors' report on the ministry, which President Jiang Zemin ordered after floods killed 3,000 people and destroyed $20 billion in property in 1998, uncovered a maze of bank accounts that diverted Ministry of Water into slush funds, sideline businesses and investments, including real estate and the stock market. Some of the money was used to buy homes and cars for ministry officials or was given to them directly in the form of off-the-book ''bonuses.'' The opportunity for graft will only increase when the ministry embarks on a huge scheme to divert water from the Tibetan plateau to the chronically arid north. The plan, a dream of the late Mao Zedong, involves a series of pipelines and canals covering more than 700 miles. So far, according to the auditors' report, it has diverted more money -- at least $8 million -- than water. | Graft in China Flows Freely, Draining the Treasury |
1234947_2 | -- where they would be called staterooms -- or tourist class, which was the cheapest), and the relief if it had a porthole. If you were traveling alone in cabin class, you would all arrive and wonder if it was cricket to reserve the lower bunk with a coat before your cabinmate showed up. Often there would be telegrams waiting in your cabin. I have one here, sent to the Nieuw Amsterdam from San Francisco on July 1, 1949: BON VOYAGE LOVE AUNT HALLIE. She was my great-aunt, a fervent Francophile, happy that I, age 18, was sailing off to study in her beloved France. Also delivered to my cabin that day was a large package of books from Scribner's, sent by a friend who knew I was going to Italy, and that I would, of course, have a trunk. The five or six hardback books included the complete works of Robert Browning and two E. M. Forster novels, with careful instructions from my friend as to where in Italy to read each poem or passage. Usually, friends seeing you off on those grand old ships would have brought along liquor or candy. Baskets of cellophane-covered fruit might have been sent on board from Maison Glass. At that Andrea Doria send-off one friend brought us a miniature chess set. We lost a queen overboard the second day out and replaced her with a tiny papier-mache Easter bunny that had decorated a box of gift candy. But there would be time to explore the ship before crowding into the cabin to open the presents and champagne. ''Sign up for the second sitting,'' someone would always advise at the dining room door, where a steward was stationed with a book for signatures. (The first sitting was unfashionably early and full of infants.) Another friend would study the passenger list to see if anybody famous was sailing with us. If the ship was a Cunard liner, someone would be sure to say ''Remember not to mention the Titanic if you're at the captain's table!'' And if you were on, say, the Ile de France, a facetious friend would warn you that French crews obeyed the order ''Sauve qui peut'' -- loosely translated ''Every man for himself'' -- never ''Women and children first.'' At 11 the ship's horn would rend the air with its first deep, shattering blast, the official signal ''I have intent | Bon Voyage Doesn't Mean What It Used To |
1235022_2 | seem to work equally well) can diminish symptoms within days, sometimes within hours. The medications may be effective taken intermittently, for two weeks a month. And when the medications work, they affect not only emotional symptoms, like irritability, but also physical symptoms, like bloating and breast tenderness. But the distinctiveness of the new drug use is by no means certain. Lilly is studying a one-a-week formulation of Prozac for chronically depressed patients. And the sex hormones play a role in depression. For instance, a recent study found that Zoloft has a stronger antidepressant effect in premenopausal women than in women past menopause or in men. In truth, no one knows exactly how these medicines relieve either depression or PMS; in both cases, the good responders are women with mood instability. And surveys show it is problems with mood, not physical symptoms, that determine whether a woman will get a prescription for PMS. So Sarafem raises some of the same issues for medical ethics that Prozac did. We have had 10 years of debate about when drugs like Prozac are used to treat illness and when they are simply affecting personality traits, like pessimism, shyness and low self-esteem. The monthly cycle of menstruation is a natural function, which healthy women experience, and irritability can be a normal aspect of that function. What is a symptom? How bad must symptoms be to warrant medicating them and risking a drug's side effects? Who gets to decide, doctor or patient? Severe PMS can be devastating to family life, job performance and happiness. But does medicating PMS in its milder forms constitute pathologizing an aspect of womanhood? Is it a question of women taking control of their lives? Or of conformity to cultural demands, for workers, mothers and wives to be even-tempered? Sarafem carries the risk of implicit coercion -- the existence of a treatment may pressure a woman to use it, say, to respond to demands that she be a more affable colleague. The presentation of Sarafem seems an attempt to finesse these issues, as if it were simply a matter of self-soothing, like gazing at a crystal to induce inner peace. Lilly's Web page for Sarafem features a strikingly yonic sunflower -- half blue and half yellow, to signify mood change -- and a copy line, ''More like the Woman you are.'' The implication is that the premenstrual self is inauthentic, that irritability | The Way We Live Now: 10-01-00; Female Troubles |
1235375_0 | To the Editor: Re ''California Makes College an Entitlement'' (Op-Ed, Sept. 26): Perhaps Abigail Thernstrom is correct in asserting that the main beneficiaries of California's new education entitlement are likely to be middle-class students. But the entitlement benefits all Californians by encouraging the best students to stay in the state for college. This makes it more likely that they will remain after graduation, enhancing California's work force with their skilled labor and improving the tax base. ANTHONY Q. FLETCHER New York, Sept. 26, 2000 The writer is an adjunct assistant professor of political science at City College, CUNY. | California's Freeway to Learning |
1234949_1 | the Irrawaddy River is September to April, and one of the vessels making the trip is the 126-passenger Road to Mandalay, operated by Orient Express Trains and Cruises and marketed in the United States by Abercrombie & Kent. A three-night cruise from Mandalay to Bagan, including sightseeing, costs $1,780 to $3,590 and includes a flight from Yangon (formerly Rangoon) to Mandalay with return from Bagan to Yangon. The Three Gorges of the Yangtze River in China, destined like the original site of Abu Simbel to be filled by water backing up from a massive dam, are being visited by the boats of at least two companies, Regal China Cruises and Victoria Cruises. Regal China Cruises offers a package through Nov. 21 that includes a three- or five-night cruise between Chongqing and Wuhan and a half-day tour in both cities, ranging from $1,049 to $2,399 a person in double occupancy. Through Nov. 29 Victoria Cruises offers a series of two- to nine-night cruises, some of them originating in Shanghai, for $630 to $3,520. Another spectacular gorge is the Columbia River Gorge between Oregon and Washington, where the newest American riverboat, the 161-passenger Columbia Queen of the Delta Queen Steamboat Company of New Orleans, went into service in May. Each stateroom has satellite TV and a radio, a VCR and a ship-to-shore telephone with a data port; some have balconies. The Columbia Queen offers an eight-night program that includes a night's hotel stay in Portland as well as a seven-night, 1,000-mile cruise on the Willamette, Columbia and Snake Rivers between Astoria, Ore., and Lewiston, Idaho, the gateway to Hells Canyon. Fares range from $2,100 to $4,300 a person in double occupancy. A similar seven-night itinerary on another paddlewheeler, the 146-passenger Queen of the West of the American West Steamboat Company of Seattle, costs $1,859 to $3,929 a person in double occupancy. The company also has four-night cruises and a seven-night rail-cruise trip with Amtrak. Along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Texas, Riverbarge Excursion Lines of New Orleans, which began cruises on the Mississippi River in 1998, is adding service as far as Matamoros, Mexico. In December and January the company, which operates the 198-passenger River Explorer, has scheduled seven-night trips on what is described as the Route of Jean Lafitte between Port Isabel and Galveston, Tex. Calls include Matamoros, just south of Brownsville; South Padre Island and Corpus Christi, Tex. Fares | River touring from the Nile and Irrawaddy to the Snake and Willamette |
1230359_0 | Do-Mode, a search engine company in Los Angeles, has published a list of specific absorption radiation, or SAR, levels for many cell phone models. In 1996, the Federal Communications Commission mandated a requirement limiting SAR levels on phones sold in the United States to less than 1.6 watts per kilogram of human tissue. According to the list (www.sardata.com/sardata.htm), which was compiled from information on the commission's Web site, the cell phone with the highest SAR level in digital mode is Ericsson's T28 World model (1.49 watts per kilogram); Motorola's StarTAC 7860 has the lowest level (0.24 watts per kilogram). Jo-Anne Basile of the Cellular Communications Technology Association pointed out that these numbers represent peak radiation levels, while SAR levels fluctuate, depending on the user's location and the phone's battery status. She also pointed out that the 1.6 number ''has a substantial margin of safety built into it.'' CATHERINE GREENMAN NEWS WATCH | Cell Phone Radiation Levels Now Published on the Web |
1230384_1 | attack on the American fast-food giant had tapped into a deep well of public discontent and a feeling of powerlessness on subjects ranging from genetically modified foods to the power of the American economy. His particular protest was prompted by the United States' decision to levy high tariffs on Roquefort cheese, pate de foie gras and other luxury imported food in retaliation for the European Union's decision to ban American hormone-treated beef. But it came to represent much more. During his trial in the small southwestern town of Millau, thousands of supporters showed up. For two days the atmosphere of a French Woodstock prevailed as teenagers with green hair gathered along with middle-aged men with ponytails and retirees wearing T-shirts that said, ''The world is not merchandise and I'm not either.'' But today only a few dozen supporters were on hand in Millau, where the local industry is the production of Roquefort cheese. Few people in France expected Mr. Bove, who organized the attack, to be handed a jail term. In this country protesting is a national pastime and activists are rarely given prison sentences. None of Mr. Bove's nine co-defendants were sent to prison. Three were given two-month suspended sentences, five were fined about $300 and one was acquitted. In a telephone interview, Mr. Bove, 47, said he was surprised by the verdict. ''I think this is a very severe judgment,'' he said. ''The magistrate didn't understand the movement or the motivation behind what we did.'' He said an appeal had already been filed and that the trial would effectively take place again in about one year before the Court of Appeals. In the meantime, Mr. Bove, who now has a busy speaking schedule, a far more prominent job with his union and dinner invitations from high-level government officials, said he would keep up with his activities as usual. Before the attack on the McDonald's, Mr. Bove was a local activist and union official living in a small stone farm tucked in the craggy hills of the Larzac region. His activism involved local issues, like opposing use of nearby land for an army base. Nowadays, Mr. Bove, who has an amiable grin under his handlebar mustache, trots the globe. He said he would be in Bangalore, India, at the end of the month to take part in a protest against genetically modified grain. ''The combat will continue,'' he said. | French Farmer Is Sentenced to Jail for Attack on McDonald's |
1233861_0 | The discovery of an unapproved variety of genetically engineered corn in a brand of store-bought taco shells is prompting new calls for the labeling of bioengineered foods. But the case, which led Kraft Foods to announce a nationwide recall on Friday, also offers a foretaste of some of the practical difficulties involved in such labeling. Among the questions are the reliability of testing, the degree to which conventional grains and foods can feasibly be kept separate from those that are genetically modified, and even the definition of genetically modified food. Such issues are already confronting the European Union, Australia, Japan and other countries that already require labeling or are moving toward it, with different countries, or even different supermarkets in the same country, adopting different standards. In the United States, where about two-thirds of processed food contains ingredients made from genetically modified corn, soybeans, potatoes or other crops, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, is sponsoring bills requiring labeling and safety testing of such foods. He seized upon the discovery, initially made by a coalition opposed to bioengineered foods, that taco shells sold under the Taco Bell brand contained small amounts of a genetically modified corn known as StarLink. The corn, with a gene to make it more pest-resistant, has been approved for use as animal feed but not for human consumption because it contains a protein with some characteristics of an allergen. ''It concerns me, and should concern American consumers, that this is a glimpse of things to come as genetically engineered products are rushed to store shelves without real mandatory safety testing and labeling programs in place,'' Mr. Kucinich said in a statement last week. He later elaborated in an interview that if labeling were required the problem might have been caught, because labeling ''would establish a higher level of responsibility among those in the biotechnology industry in controlling what is in their products.'' But those in the food industry say this is not a case of a biotechnology product being rushed to market without safety testing. Indeed, it was because of such tests that the corn in question had not been approved for human consumption. Nor, they say, would labeling have made a difference in this case, since the taco shells were not supposed to have the StarLink corn in the first place. Kraft said the corn came from a Texas mill operated by Azteca Milling, | Labeling Genetically Altered Food Is Thorny Issue |
1233816_1 | on the Via Appia Antica, the ancient Appian Way, the road where legend has it that St. Peter saw an apparition of Christ, and asked, ''Quo vadis, Domine?'' (''Whither goest thou, Lord?'') The society has a Web site (http://digilander.iol.it/sergioiac/), a clubhouse and a yard littered with helmets, shields, pikes, nets, catapults and other martial accessories. The members devote most of their time to staging Roman scenes and battles for pageants and town fairs. But the society, which had long hoped to open a gladiator school, seized the coattails of the summer Hollywood hit, ''Gladiator,'' starring Russell Crowe, to begin offering classes this month. And these Roman history buffs, unlike many classicists in Italy and the United States, do not quibble with the liberties ''Gladiator'' screenwriters took in rewriting ancient Roman history. ''The movie was excellent,'' Korakos stated defiantly. The trainer, whose day job has him printing Euro currency bills for the Bank of Italy, said he had seen ''Gladiator'' four times. But not all the new students, who paid $100 for a two-month course, said they were drawn to gladiator school by the movie. Training for the female ''Amazon'' division, Patricia Mincone, 29, a hospital worker, said she would never be influenced by Hollywood. ''I was looking for a workout that wasn't the typical routine -- tennis, aerobics, the things everybody does,'' she said. A tall woman with muscular arms and legs, Ms. Mincone looked as though she could easily stab, bludgeon or harpoon any of her fellow rookies. But gladiator school does not sanction real bloodletting. Mostly, students are taught how to choreograph combat, (four sequences, six blows per sequence), both to savor simulated savagery and, eventually, to perform gladiator combat the way it was done in the Colosseum more than 2,000 years ago. Unlike American Civil War buffs who rigorously re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg or Manassas, Italians are not known for an obsession with dressing up and reliving past wars. Italy's somewhat concise history of modern battlefield victories could be one reason. Another is that Italians already have a centuries-old tradition of religious re-enactments -- pageants and processions in which whole towns turn out to recreate favorite passages of the Bible or a saint's life. Every Easter since the 17th century, the city of Sezze, in central Italy, performs its Passion Play, a re-enactment of agonized journey to the cross on Good Friday. As many as 700 | Rome Journal; In This Gladiators' Arena, Even Nero Is Bloodless |
1233773_0 | In a finding that is being hailed by the biotechnology industry and denounced by environmentalists, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued a preliminary report concluding that genetically modified corn is unlikely to pose a serious threat to monarch butterflies. The report, which was made public last week and focuses on crops genetically modified to produce an insecticide known as Bt, also minimized the potential for other environmental problems, including the persistence of the insecticide in the soil and the evolution of pests that can withstand it. ''Although there may be individual butterflies that could be adversely affected, the overall population of monarch butterflies is not at any risk'' from Bt corn, Brian Steinwand, a spokesman for the environmental agency, said. But he said the report's conclusions were tentative and that new data were continuing to come in. Bt stands for Bacillus thuringiensis, the scientific name of the bacterium from which the toxin and the gene producing the toxin originate. The report comes after more than a year of controversy following the publication of a Cornell University study showing that Bt-containing pollen from the genetically modified corn could kill monarch butterfly caterpillars in the laboratory. That finding turned the monarch into a symbol of fragile nature threatened by biotechnology. Opponents criticized the environmental agency for approving the corn, which was planted on 20 million acres last year. The report is a major step in a continuing re-evaluation of the safety of Bt crops that will culminate in a decision next fall to discontinue or reapprove their widespread commercial use. Meanwhile, the report noted, companies are phasing out Bt corn varieties that produce a particularly toxic pollen -- those that carry the genetically engineered DNA known as Event 176. The change could help reduce risks to monarchs and other nonpest insects. Dr. Val Giddings, vice president for food and agriculture at Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents companies that sell seed for genetically modified crops and other biotech products, praised the report. He called the review rigorous, and said it confirmed that biotech crops ''pose no adverse health or environmental problems.'' But Dr. Jane Rissler, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has been critical of the agency's handling of Bt crops, said: ''We were disappointed. It's clear that there are insufficient data.'' Because studies showing actual effects of Bt corn pollen on monarch butterfly populations in the wild are | Biotech Corn Isn't Serious Threat to Monarchs, Draft U.S. Report Finds |
1228591_1 | grow over the long term. Reducing the national debt, while an important goal, is not a singular priority. After spending much of the past several months campaigning as a corporation-bashing populist fighting for working families, Mr. Gore presented himself today as the embodiment of fiscal responsibility, brushing aside the Bush camp's accusations that he is a recklessly big-spending liberal. Mr. Gore emphasized his willingness to take some money out of contention for either tax cuts or additional spending, vowing to set aside $300 billion of the projected surplus over the next 10 years in case the surplus does not materialize as projected. If the money materializes, it would go to additional debt reduction; if it does not, it would not have been promised for any particular use and thus would not be contributing to any new deficit. The 191-page document released today by Mr. Gore was written largely by economic advisers closely associated with the Clinton administration's emphasis on keeping the budget balanced and paying off the national debt. They included Robert E. Rubin, the former treasury secretary, who colleagues said has sometimes been uncomfortable with Mr. Gore's recent populist emphasis; Gene Sperling, the White House economic policy adviser; Erskine B. Bowles, the former White House chief of staff; and Laura D'Andrea Tyson, a former White House chief economist and policy adviser. Those advisers generally see the strong economy as Mr. Gore's best weapon, and reducing the debt as the best way of keeping interest rates low and stimulating the investment the economy needs to remain the world's most competitive. Yet even as he presented himself as a man of economic prudence, Mr. Gore sketched a vision of an activist government willing to take on big problems. The document he released today sought to spell out for voters, with considerable specificity, how Mr. Gore would seek to harness continued prosperity on their behalf. Incomes would rise by a third, Mr. Gore promised. The poverty level would decline to less than 10 percent, from 12.7 percent. College attendance and graduation rates would increase. Income-tax rates on families making the median income would fall. The disparity between what men and women earn would be reduced by 50 percent. Mr. Gore described not just the goals, but the programs and policies he said would be necessary to achieve them, from paying off the national debt to spending $115 billion more on education in | Debating Detailed Plans for Hypothetical Money |
1228633_7 | possibly including second-degree manslaughter, for the executives of companies that knowingly sell defective products that kill consumers. Automakers narrowly turned back a similar measure in 1966, when the nation's auto regulatory system was set up. Violations of federal auto safety rules are currently punished with a fine of the manufacturer of no more than $925,000, plus a mandatory recall of the defective vehicle, auto part or tire. Senator Shelby, who is the chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee for transportation, which held one of today's hearings, said he would consider an immediate increase in the budget of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is part of the Transportation Department. The agency's budget was cut almost in half at the beginning of the Reagan administration and remains a third lower than it was in the Carter administration, after adjusting for inflation. For years, auto defects have received little attention on Capitol Hill. Sue Bailey, the safety agency's administrator, pointed out that it recommended on March 24 that Congress enact stiffer laws, including an increase in the limit on civil penalties to at least $1 million. No member of Congress has yet introduced a bill with these proposals, she added. The current session of Congress is scheduled to end a month from today, with only 21 more working days. Bills and budget changes introduced this late in a session usually have little chance of passage, but Senators Specter and Shelby said in interviews that Congress and the nation were so interested in the tire issue that legislative action was possible and even probable. The tire recall appears to have had fairly little effect on sales of sport utility vehicles. S.U.V. sales rose 5.1 percent in August from the level of a year earlier, while the overall auto market was flat. But all of the growth in sport utility sales occurred in small car-based models like the Chrysler PT Cruiser, which the auto industry classifies as sport utilities so as to qualify for the more lenient regulations that cover light trucks. Sales of larger models like the Ford Explorer, which tend to be based on pickup designs, fell 0.9 percent in August, partly because the Explorer, the nation's top-selling sport utility, had a drop of 0.8 percent. Sales of pickup-based sport utilities soared in the mid-1990's, but the growth has been slowing since 1997. ''I see it leveling off; I don't see | MORE INDICATIONS HAZARDS OF TIRES WERE LONG KNOWN |
1228585_1 | of concern that it would have to be reported in the United States, a contention that was vigorously denied by Firestone officials testifying before Congress yesterday. In Venezuela, Ford and Firestone face the prospect of a criminal investigation over the tires. Ford's failure to share news of recalls overseas with American regulators is not acceptable behavior. United States laws should compel a multinational company to advise American regulators of a recall of an unsafe consumer product in another country when that product is also sold domestically. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration did not learn about Ford's 1999 replacement of tires in Saudi Arabia and more recent recalls in Thailand and Malaysia until last May, after press reports and insurance company notices finally prompted the agency to launch its own investigation into some 1,400 incidents that resulted in 88 deaths and 250 injuries in America. At the safety agency's request, Firestone last month recalled 6.5 million tires used on Ford Explorers in the United States, but has refused the agency's subsequent request that it recall an additional 1.4 million tires used on other models. Relations between Ford and Firestone have frayed under the intense scrutiny. In their Congressional testimony yesterday, the companies pointed the finger at each other. Ford maintained that it had relied on Firestone's representations about the tires' safety, and Firestone said it believed that incidents in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere often involved under-inflated tires. For years, Ford suggested a lower pressure for tires on its Explorer than did Firestone. Further investigations will have to determine whether Ford set the lower level merely to provide a more comfortable ride, or whether it did so to compensate for a lack of structural stability in the Explorer. The highway safety agency was sluggish in reacting to a number of tips about this case, which may be a result of severe budgetary cuts over the past two decades. If so, this unfolding story should remind Congress that when it comes to safety, free markets are no substitutes for an adequately funded federal watchdog. Correction: September 9, 2000, Saturday An article in Business Day on Aug. 31 about a regulatory agency investigation of defective Firestone tires misstated the name of the agency. The error also occurred in an editorial on Thursday and an Op-Ed article yesterday. The agency is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, not the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. | Congress Takes Up Defective Tires |
1228482_5 | towers. Property values play a big role, too. The Dunn Foundation, in its research on utility lines, has found that real estate prices increase in places where lines have been buried. Mr. Kreines has seen real estate values drop when cell phone towers have been installed nearby. In a case in Ho Ho Kus, N.J., he said, a tax assessor determined that the aggregated value of property near a cell phone tower would drop as much as $660,000. Telecommunications companies say they are trying to balance two opposing desires: cellular customers want clearer calls, and property owners want unobstructed views. But the companies say they try to be sensitive to aesthetics. ''We do the best we can to keep our facilities from looking unsightly,'' said Tracey Kennedy, a spokeswoman for Verizon, which provides wireless and conventional telephone service. ''The last thing you want,'' she said, ''are your constituents to be up in arms about their surroundings.'' Some communities have found that companies are responsive to their requests. Several have asked cell phone companies to install cell sites on top of light poles or on buildings where they are less noticeable. And camouflaging is becoming more popular for the sites. Some cell phone companies have made cell phone towers look like pine trees, and in Arizona and California, cell sites that look like giant saguaro cactuses rise 35 feet above the desert. When compromises cannot be reached, battles erupt. Search the Internet for ''cell phone towers,'' and you will find dozens of Web sites that have been posted by people protesting the erection of towers that block their views. In many cases, wireless companies have sued municipalities for the right to go forward with their plans. In others, local governments have sued to prevent construction. Mr. Kreines lists about 15 cases on his Web site (www.planwireless.com). A few years ago, most cell-site lawsuits were won by the telecommunications companies. But some observers say that is changing as municipalities realize that they can place limits on construction and still stay within the law. For example, in a case last year against Albemarle County in Virginia, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of the county. The county's board of supervisors had denied an application filed by 360degrees Communications, a company that wanted to install a 100-foot tower on a ridge called Dudley Mountain. The company sued, | The Future Is Here, and It's Ugly; A Spreading Techno-blight of Wires, Cables and Towers Sparks a Revolt |
1228505_2 | Steve Hipple, an economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said one of the reasons may be the hot economy and its technology engine. The computer fields are growing at a torrid pace, according to government figures. In the last decade, there has been a 17 percent annual employment growth among computer systems analysts, a broad category that includes network administrators, Web designers, computer security professionals and computer scientists. That figure compares with an overall employment growth of 1.5 percent annually in the same period. Salaries in computer-related fields reflect the demand for workers that has accompanied this growth. According to the Census Department's Current Population Survey, the median income in 1999 for computer systems analysts was $1,008 a week and the median income for computer programmers was $898 a week. That compares with an overall median wage of $550 a week, or $29,000 annually. Still, not everyone is convinced that the lure of attractive salaries in the high-tech world should be the basis for deciding whether to pass on college. Students who make this decision often face skepticism from teachers and parents. Diana Coleman, Mr. Gaietto's mother, said she had ''mixed emotions'' about her son's decision to bypass college. Ms. Coleman, who is 42, started college in 1977 but interrupted her education when she had a family. She went back to college, receiving her degree in 1995, in part to show her son the value of getting an education. ''He has a phenomenal opportunity,'' Ms. Coleman said of her son's current job, ''but I really would have liked to have seen him go to college.'' Mr. Gaietto's father, Michael J. Gaietto, who never attended college, is more insistent. ''If you go up against someone in a job interview who has less experience but a degree, chances are, they'll get the job,'' he said. ''College degrees carry a lot of weight, and when you're young you don't realize it.'' Some studies support the contention that it pays in the long run to earn a college degree. A study by the Census Bureau in 1994, the last time the agency looked at the subject, estimated that in 1992, the mean annual earnings for a person with a bachelor's degree was $32,629, compared with $18,737 for a high school graduate and $19,666 for a person with some college but no bachelor's degree. John-Thomas Gaietto said that he had not given up on | Choosing A Salary Or Tuition |
1228536_1 | been reported, all of them minor. The encounters have been worse on the bears, more than 25 of which have been put to death this year under Colorado's two-strikes-and-you're-out policy for those that forage too close to people. Over the same period last year, the state killed only six. Biologists and state officials say that if there are more summers like this one, and if home construction near mountainous areas continues at its feverish pace, more dangerous confrontations are inevitable. ''If a bear learns where to find human foods, he's likely to come back,'' said Chuck Schwartz, an expert in bears as the leader of the United States Geological Survey's Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, in Bozeman, Mont. ''They have very good memory, and they don't differentiate. If it's edible, they'll eat it.'' Grizzlies are not to be confused with the black bears roaming Colorado and other states. Grizzlies, larger than black bears and more threatening to humans, are generally found only in areas around two national parks in the northwest Rockies, Yellowstone and Glacier, putting them at greater distances from population centers. Black bears, which are known to attack humans only when they feel trapped, are commonly found in dense forests and mountain terrain at high elevations, where they have encountered unsuitable conditions in Colorado this year. A late spring frost and endless summer weeks of uncommonly hot and dry weather have cost them their usual meals of acorns and berries. Bears typically eat up to 20 hours a day in the warm months to put on enough weight to last the winter. Denied their natural foods, they have been foraging closer to homes and towns to scavenge landfills, trash cans, even dog dishes, making this year one of the most active for officials responding to calls from frightened people throughout the Rocky Mountain West. In Colorado, reports of bear sightings and encounters now occur almost daily. ''Everybody has a bear story,'' said Mr. Solomon, a jewelry maker who has lived for 15 years in Basalt (pronounced buh-SALT), a mountain town 20 miles northwest of Aspen. ''One woman on the next street down was canning in her kitchen with the door open. A bear wandered in to help her out.'' ''I know another family,'' he said, ''who eliminated every bit of food from their house, scrubbed it down and now only eats in restaurants.'' In Aspen, the food is | Basalt Journal; This Land Is Their Land: Bears Are Everywhere |
1232309_1 | no matter where they are. Which is more important? The answer may not matter. The BlackBerry is the forerunner of a set of tools that offer constant contact without the need to actually talk to anyone. About a million Americans use a wireless e-mail service, with BlackBerry leading the pack, according to the Yankee Group, of Boston, a telecommunications consulting firm. In recent months, the BlackBerry has become much coveted by America's business professionals, who are increasingly judged by how accessible they are to colleagues and clients. A key draw: unlike cellular phone calls, which require a clear distraction of attention, BlackBerrys allow users to do two things at once. Internet executives rave about watching messages roll in while they conduct other business. Along with higher salaries and concierge service, BlackBerrys headed a list of demands submitted by junior analysts at Salomon Smith Barney to their superiors last spring. Even lawyers, notoriously slow to embrace e-mail in the office, have become enthralled by the BlackBerry. ''I've heard colleagues say that when they've had the poor taste to return e-mails from their bedrooms, it hasn't been a welcome gesture,'' said David Grais, a partner in the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York. ''It definitely makes you more of an e-mail junkie.'' Mr. Grais uses his BlackBerry to receive messages when he's out of the office and when he's not. ''If I'm two floors away and I get a call, my secretary knows I can always be reached,'' he said. ''It's completely indispensable.'' It is harder to see why ordinary consumers would crave such continuous connection, or be willing to pay for it. Research in Motion, or RIM, the Canadian company that makes the original BlackBerry models ($349 and $399) and a slightly larger version ($499), has marketed its $40-per-month e-mail service to corporations, and about 5,000 companies now pay for employees to use it. Individuals can buy the BlackBerry online, and RIM said it would soon be available in retail stores like Staples. America Online has announced plans to make its e-mail and instant messaging service available through BlackBerry-like gadgets. And Earthlink, the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, is conducting a pilot test with BlackBerrys. ''I can't tell you what motivates people to want e-mail on their hip when they leave home,'' said Roland Wilcox, a senior product manager at Earthlink. ''But they do, and we want | E-Mail You Can't Outrun |
1232387_2 | chairman of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection, said: ''It might resemble an Explorer, but it's not an Explorer. That's the whole point.'' He added, ''We will have legislation to solve that problem in the future.'' Mr. Johnson also said that investigators had found records of tire tests done in 1996 at Firestone's Decatur, Ill., plant, where many of the defective tires were produced. Of 229 tires randomly tested, 31 failed a standard test of 10 minutes at 112 miles an hour, he said. The tire is supposed to last for 10 minutes but ''they started peeling like bananas a couple of minutes into the test,'' he said. Of the 31, 20 were tread separations, he said, adding, ''Someone at Firestone had to know they were having problems,'' he said. A spokeswoman for Firestone, Julia Sutherland, reached this evening, said she was not familiar with the document. Ford, meanwhile, said it was looking into the part in the front suspension, a sway bar link, that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had asked about. The part helps keep the vehicle from leaning too far during turns. Ford said its own database of complaints showed that they came mainly from northern states where road salt, a cause of corrosion, is used for melting snow. The company believes the highway traffic agency will open an investigation. Asked if the failures were a safety problem, Mr. Vines said, ''everything we see says no.'' He added, ''In the end, we'll do the right thing for our customers.'' While the House committee discusses legislation, the Senate Commerce Committee passed a bill, sponsored by Senator John McCain of Arizona, the committee chairman, that would establish criminal penalties for knowingly violating an existing law that requires manufacturers to notify the government about defects. It would also have the Government establish rules for reporting by companies of warranty claims and crashes. But the idea was immediately attacked by the United States Chamber of Commerce. ''Criminalization at the heat of the moment may sound like a good thing,'' said Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the chamber. ''But does everybody understand that criminalization take precedence over civil law?'' Manufacturers would refuse to turn over records to government regulators or Congress, he said, for fear of incriminating themselves. ''You've now defeated the open flow to the very authorities and the American public that need to know.'' | Ford Tested Firestone Tires On Pickup, Not on Explorer |
1230221_1 | vote suggested that the dissidents took a dim view of the governor's request. Over the years, the council, an obscure, part-time panel with unpaid members, has enacted the state's hunting regulations with little political interference. But a coalition opposed to hunting mounted a campaign after the council first proposed the bear hunt in March. Governor Whitman finally asked the council on Friday to acknowledge the opposition and ban the hunt. The council, at her request, had already unanimously voted to cut the number of bears to be killed from 350 to 175. The split vote yesterday also suggested the council's dissenters saw little wisdom in Governor Whitman's counterproposal for a bear-control plan aimed only at killing bears that break into homes, attack pets, kill livestock or threaten people. Eliminating the most aggressive bears, Mrs. Whitman said Friday, was a better public safety measure than a random hunt. Early last night, the council's chairman, John W. Bradway, one of the six members voting for the ban, issued a statement expressing hope that the governor's new plan ''will help address bear safety problems in the near future.'' But Mr. Bradway said it was too early to know if the plan would be sufficient to address the steadily increasing numbers of conflicts between humans and bears. In a terse statement, the governor thanked the council for changing its position on the hunt, which was to start Monday. One element of her plan requires state wildlife agents to teach local police how to euthanize the most dangerous bears. Routinely, as the state's black bear population has grown from near extinction in 1971 to an estimated 1,000 now, local police have done little more than refer complaints to wildlife agents. Jayne O'Connor, a spokeswoman for the governor, said yesterday that the new plan called for spending $1 million in coming months to double the size of the state's bear-control unit to 14 agents and provide extra equipment for euthanizing. Although leaders of the anti-hunt coalition were overjoyed by the cancellation, some residents yesterday questioned whether the governor's plan would work. Rebecca Goldsworthy of Lafayette, a small Sussex County town, whose two pet goats were killed by bears in March 1999, said she doubted that local police would be effective against bears. ''All my attacks happened at night,'' she said. ''By the time you call the police and they get out here, the bears are gone.'' | Black Bear Hunt Is Canceled After the Governor Intervenes |
1230118_0 | I HAVE been to the future and it smells. It smells like . . . But I'm getting ahead of myself. For centuries, technology has struggled to catch up with human perception. The eye perceives motion, but until the 20th century, mankind made do with static representations of the visual field. The ear hears, but the first recordings did not come along until the late 19th century, and films did not add sound until the 1920's. And what about the nose? The nose, treated as a third-class citizen, is finally getting the attention it deserves. And for food lovers, it's not a moment too soon. The nasal perspective was given its due this week at a panel discussion and demonstration organized by DigiScents, a company in Oakland, Calif., that sees the Internet as one huge smelly online opportunity. If its vision of the future is correct, every personal computer will come with a plug-in apparatus, analogous to a printer, that wafts odors in the general direction of the user's nose. Users download images and sound. Why not smell? On Monday, a thundering herd of experts gathered in the Nose Room of Trattoria dell'Arte in Midtown, ostensibly to thrash out the olfactory issues, but actually to give the hard sell for the company's smell machine, which it calls iSmell. Joel Bellenson, the chief executive officer of DigiScents, led the charge. A soft-spoken, portly man with a beatnik goatee, he emphasized the artistic possibilities of iSmell by wearing a maroon beret and a loose rayon shirt decorated with paint splashes. Two messages came across loud and clear. First, iSmell is a wonderful thing and a boon to humankind. Perhaps not as important as the wheel, but much more fun. Second, the human olfactory system is enormously complex, underserved by industry and a potential gold mine. Doron Lancet, the director of the Crown Human Genome Center at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, pointed out that humans have four genes for vision, but 1,000 genes that govern olfaction, accounting for about 2 percent of the human gene total. We may eat first with the eyes, but not very well, apparently. Taste receptors have their limitations too. ''A lot of what we know as food flavor is actually olfactory,'' said Harry Lawless, a professor of food science at Cornell University. What's more, the nose seems to lead more directly to the emotions than the eye | Now on the Small Screen: The Scent of a Kitchen |
1230165_2 | with the tires. Many industry officials stressed how complicated the tire-making process was and how sophisticated tires had become. In the exhibition hall, industry officials talked about how far the industry had come from the days when Charles Goodyear invented vulcanization, which helped transform Akron into the industry's birthplace. ''We have doubled the life of the tire and provided all-weather traction,'' a Goodyear Tire and Rubber spokesman told a television crew. Many at the conference -- not naming names -- pointed the finger at automakers, which have pushed to keep tire prices low, and a public unwilling to pay top dollar. ''People here buy tires that are cheaper than sneakers and then drive 70 miles per hour on them,'' said Jorg Jetter, who was on duty at the exhibition booth of Jet Lasersysteme, which makes equipment for the industry. Truck tires, many delegates said, are much more expensive and largely better made because of the liabilities associated with the industry. Few, though, were willing to point too harshly at Firestone, at least publicly. Several meetings, after all, were held in the Harvey S. Firestone room, and the loudspeaker announced at noon that a complimentary luncheon was sponsored by Bridgestone/Firestone. After delivering a paper on the bonding of steel cords to rubber -- the issue many investigators said might be the problem -- William J. van Ooij, a professor at the University of Cincinnati and an expert in rubber adhesion in tires, said he would not speculate about the cause of tread separation. ''It's theoretically possible, but I think it's highly unlikely that it was a design problem,'' he said. ''I know Firestone, and it wouldn't be design.'' Suresh Sethi, an executive at Modi, a tire equipment company in India, said that makers of autos and tires around the world were overly concerned about price and market share. Not enough thought had been given to safety, he said. ''You buy a $30,000 vehicle,'' he said, ''and what does the tire cost? The companies were trying to save $1 per tire because $1 per tire adds up to a lot. That is responsible for this.'' Gunter Maass, an executive at Erhardt & Leimer, a tire equipment company in Germany, said the recall was about technology. He said this would not happen in Europe. ''As far as I understand, this is not the first time,'' he said, referring to a 1978 Firestone recall. | In Akron, the Talk Is About Treads |
1230218_4 | Firestone tires. They did not specify what programs would be cut. Mr. Slater said his department wanted the authority to require auto- makers and related companies to report on foreign recalls. But he acknowledged under questioning that the information could also be obtained from foreign governments, though the United States does not normally trade information with highway safety regulators in other countries. The reason, he said, is a lack of a protocol by which governments could swap proprietary information without fear of public release. Senator Hollings expressed surprise that commercial attaches in American embassies in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Malaysia, three countries where Ford replaced Firestone tires on Explorers, had not informed the highway safety agency. Dr. Bailey said that if her office had known of those actions, combined with the trouble reports here, there would have been an investigation sooner. Instead, the tip-off for the federal government came from consumer complaints generated by news reports from a Houston television station, KHOU, she said. Several committee members voiced enthusiasm for giving the highway agency greater powers to demand information, including data on services provided under warranty, which is the type of data that Ford eventually used to expose the problem with Firestone tires. Several also called for enacting criminal penalties for companies that failed to report safety problems, a position even Ford and Firestone endorsed. Mr. Lampe of Firestone said that in hindsight his company had not looked at its own data properly. He added that the root of the problem might be Ford's recommendation to inflate the tires on Explorers to a relatively low range of 26 to 30 pounds. Firestone approved that range when the large, heavy vehicle first went on the market a decade ago. But looking back, he said, Firestone should probably have considered that more carefully, because under-inflated tires heat up rapidly and heat can cause damage. Consumers also often run their tires at pressures lower than what is recommended, he said. Several committee members also favored raising or eliminating the ceiling on fines to companies for failing to turn over information. Joan Claybrook, a former administrator of the highway safety agency and now president of Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader, derided the existing limits as ''a joke.'' The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is one of the few such federal agencies with no criminal statutes to back it up. | Rancor Grows Between Ford And Firestone |
1230134_1 | near the Romanian border. Mr. Milosevic, addressing some 10,000 supporters, praised his country's resilience and attacked the West and its supporters. ''This is the answer to violence and injustice, a proof of the civilizational superiority of our nation, undefeated and unconquered by evil,'' he said. Steven Erlanger IRELAND: POPULATION GROWING -- Ireland marked its tenth successive year of population growth, reaching a total of 3.79 million people in the year to last April, the highest level since 1881. Immigrants outnumbered people leaving the country for the fifth year in a row, by 42,300 to 18,200. Irish returning from abroad accounted for 43 percent of immigrants, the largest single group. Brian Lavery THE AMERICAS CANADA: TORIES DEFECT -- Accelerating the slow-motion implosion of the traditional conservative party, two Tory members of Parliament have defected to the Liberals. The move deflated the Monday night victory of Joe Clark, the Tory leader, who was elected to Parliament. Stockwell Day, leader of the Canadian Alliance, was also elected. With 57 seats, four times that of the Tories, Mr. Day will become leader of the opposition when Parliament reconvenes on Monday. James Brooke VENEZUELA: INVITATION TO RUSSIA -- In another indication of its increasingly prominent role in OPEC, Venezuela announced that President Hugo Chavez had invited Russia to join the oil cartel and that ''the Russian government is seriously studying the possibility.'' Energy Minister Ali Rodriguez is the president of OPEC, and the 11-member group will be meeting in Caracas on Sept. 27 and 28. Larry Rohter COLOMBIA: PEACE TALKS CONTINUE -- After meeting in Paris with representatives of the government of Colombia and the country's second-largest guerrilla group, the five nations acting as intermediaries in the decades-old civil conflict said they would soon visit an area in Colombia controlled by the group, the Army of National Liberation. The delegation will include envoys from Cuba, France, Norway, Spain and Switzerland who have been involved in peace talks that have made little noticeable progress. Larry Rohter ASIA CHINA: SMUGGLING TRIALS -- Trials will begin today in China's largest corruption scandal, the vast smuggling of goods through the southern port of Xiamen in a case that has implicated scores of senior customs, police and Communist Party officials. Hearings will get under way in four different cities in Fujian Province, officials told The Associated Press, but the number of defendants was not disclosed. Erik Eckholm KASHMIR: CEASE-FIRE RULED | WORLD BRIEFING |
1231777_1 | the oceans might sop up some of the energy accumulating in the air as levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases rise. Until now, scientists have only nibbled at such problems, using temperature and salinity records and other data gleaned over the decades by instruments mainly dropped along shipping routes. ''There are huge areas of open space with no information,'' said Dr. Thomas J. Crowley, an oceanographer and climate expert at Texas A& M University who is not directly involved with Argo. ''This could fill in those holes,'' he said, ''and give us a much better estimate of changes in the deep structure of the ocean.'' The American component of the project is being managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, within the Department of Commerce. In a telephone interview yesterday, Commerce Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said Argo stood to provide the first continuing globalmonitoring of the flow of energy around the oceans. ''What we've done in the past is piecemeal,'' he said, adding that Argo was particularly important for improving computer models used to estimate the extent of global warming. By tracking the flow of warmth from air to oceans, he said, the project ''will help figure out what it is we have to be doing in terms of greenhouse gas control.'' Argo is big science, probing all the world's oceans a mile deep, but done with simple, low-budget equipment: thousands of four-foot-tall torpedo-shaped devices, each of which costs about $12,000 to build and $9,000 more to monitor through 100 or so ups and downs before batteries die after four years or so. The data on temperature should help scientists understand how energy is exchanged between the air, shallow ocean layers -- which warm quickly -- and deeper layers of the ocean, which warm much more slowly, oceanographers said. The hand-off of energy from shallow water to the depths is poorly understood and extremely important for understanding how the oceans influence climate, said Dr. W. Stanley Wilson, the deputy chief scientist of NOAA. So far, the agency has received financing to pay for deploying and operating 187 probes, with a goal of getting enough support from Congress to activate another 1,125 devices. About 230 other probes have been financed by other countries, including Canada, France, England, Japan and Australia, with plans for 1,100 more. The probes are being dropped with the eventual goal of being a uniformly distributed monitoring network. | Experts to Pepper Seas for Clues to Climate and Weather |
1231887_7 | 11 in 1996 and 20 in 1997 and 25 in 1998, but last year the rate doubled to 52 per 1,000 accidents. Other utility vehicles of similar vintage had tire-related rates fluctuating around an average 6 per 1,000 fatal accidents during the period. There were 40 Explorer tire-related fatal accidents last year, compared to 23 for all other sport utility vehicles built since the Explorer was introduced with the 1991 model. In addition, the analysis showed that during several years when Ford Explorers were equipped with both Firestone and Goodyear Tires, Ford Explorers produced in plants using Firestone tires had many more fatalities than Explorers at plants using the other tires. In the 1996 model year, Ford said, Firestone tires were installed on Ford Explorers in its plant outside St. Louis and Goodyear tires on its plant in Louisville, Ky. The data show that by the end of 1999, 18 fatal accidents involved 1996 Ford Explorers with tire problems that were produced at the St. Louis plant, while 3 involved vehicles assembled at the plant in Louisville. Ford officials said that in the following 1997 model year, they switched tire suppliers and installed Goodyear tires in the St. Louis plant and Firestone tires in the Louisville plant. All eight fatal accidents involving 1997 Explorers occurred in vehicles built at the Louisville plant, an analysis of vehicle identification numbers shows. The 1996 model year Explorers had more problems than any other year, 21 fatal accidents, compared to 5 for the 1995 model year and 8 for 1997. Ford officials, who analyzed warranty claims against Firestone, have concluded that tires produced in 1996 at Firestone's Decatur plant, had far more claims than any subsequent year, suggesting that production problems may have been particularly severe that year. The new data also document the role of hot weather and high speeds in the tire-related accidents. Forty percent of Ford Explorer tire-related fatal accidents occurred in the summer, compared to 28 percent for other Ford Explorer fatal accidents and 35 percent for tire-related accidents involving other sport utility vehicles. Fatal Ford Explorer tire accidents were also concentrated in warmer southern states, especially Texas, which had 18; Florida, 12; California, 10; and New Mexico and Georgia, which had 5 each. Where information on the speed of a vehicle was reported, the typical speed of a Ford Explorer in a fatal accident was 70 miles per hour. | Fatal Explorer Accidents Involving Bad Tires Soared in '99 |
1231888_2 | is certain to increase regulators' scrutiny of other brands of tires as well. While tire makers have long blamed customer neglect or abuse for tire failure, and have said some tires inevitably fail, Firestone's admission last week that it ''made bad tires'' appears to have opened the floodgates for lawsuits and regulatory action against other companies. The tires involved are the 16-inch ContiTrac AS tires, which were installed on half the Navigators in the 1998 and 1999 model years, which were the first two model years for the $45,000 luxury sport utility. Lincoln offered 17-inch tires as an option on the Navigator in these two model years, then made the 17-inch tires standard equipment beginning in the 2000 model year. The 17-inch tires are not being replaced. The far larger recall of Firestone tires, to which 88 deaths have been linked, involves the smaller of two sizes of tires installed on Ford Explorers. Bridgestone/Firestone is recalling 15-inch tires in that case, but not 16-inch tires. Smaller tires can carry less weight than larger tires of the same pressure, so they are subject to more strain when mounted on large, heavy sport utility vehicles. Ford's recommendation that the Explorer tires be inflated to 26 pounds per square inch has been criticized by some lawmakers and personal injury lawyers as insufficient. But the recommended pressure for the 16-inch tires on the Navigator is 30 pounds for the front tires and 35 pounds for the rear tires. Higher pressure tires can carry more weight. Ford documents given to Congressional investigators two weeks ago, which were quickly distributed to reporters, included a memorandum from Ford's Middle Eastern units more than a year ago warning that Continental tires on Lincoln Navigators there had sometimes failed. Another document in that collection showed that Ford had installed high-speed tires on its cars for sale in Saudi Arabia, but had not done so for its sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks sold there. By contrast, General Motors installs high-speed tires on all vehicles sold there, because the heat and fast driving there are a harsh combination for tires. Regulators opened a review last March of 47 million Firestone tires; they have not endorsed Firestone's decision to recall only 14.4 million of these tires, of which 6.5 million are still believed to be in use. Also under review are 16-inch Firestone Wilderness tires for Ford Explorers and Ford Expeditions. | Ford and Another Tire Maker Facing New S.U.V. Problems |
1231330_1 | Mark Durant, the assistant manager. In fact, the reports of tread problems on tires produced by Bridgestone/Firestone, whose Japanese parent, the Bridgestone Corporation, is the world's biggest tire maker, have given Les Schwab and other retailers a unforeseen chance to pick up business. Statistics out last week show that the tire market, sluggish for most of the year, has perked up. In August, sales of replacement tires -- those installed by retailers and dealers -- rose 11 percent over August of last year, according to Michelin North America. But as of the end of July, sales for the year were up just 1 percent industrywide and tire retailers were mired in the summer doldrums, in the words of Tire Business, a trade publication. NO more. Business is now booming -- even though the strongest time for tire sales is spring, before families go on summer vacations, and late fall, when the snow-tire business picks up. At times, the demand has seemed overwhelming. Over the Labor Day weekend, all 10 service bays were full at the Firestone Tire and Service Center in West Bloomfield, Mich., where nearly 200 discarded tires lay in a growing pile. Eight customers waited in vain to get attention at the Sears Automotive Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., as the phone rang unanswered with no clerks in sight. And customers stood in line on the curb outside a Discount Tire store in Ann Arbor, waiting for service after parking their vehicles on a grass median. Some of these customers may not need to replace Firestone tires, but have become more conscious of safety as a result of the recall. The Firestone situation ''definitely has raised awareness of tires, tire care and tire maintenance,'' said Tim Galloway, an assistant vice president of Discount Tire, a retail chain. Scott Blake, vice president for marketing at Michelin North America, added, ''All retailers have an opportunity right now to pick up business, but also to focus consumers on high-quality service and high-quality brands at a time when they're a little shaken.'' Mr. Blake expects consumers' heightened interest in tire safety to help come October, when Michelin rolls out the Cross Terrain, its first tire designed specifically for sport utility vehicles. The company was already making the tires before the Firestone recall, but has accelerated production to meet what Michelin hopes will be strong demand. Surveys conducted by CNW Marketing Research, which | Firestone's Crisis Is Other Dealers' Opportunity |
1231226_0 | To the Editor: No biotech foods contain fish genes. Several years ago, a company investigated whether a gene from a cold-tolerant fish would allow frozen tomatoes to thaw without turning to mush. The public was uncertain about the transfer of genetic codes from fish to fruit, so the project was dropped. since few if any genes are species-specific, this type of transfer is probably not needed, but the anti-science groups continue to bring it up to raise fear. Mr. Flanagan insults farmers' intelligence by citing a study that alleges that the herbicide-tolerant soybeans they plant on 61 percent of soybean acres produce less yield than other soybeans. In fact, the study compared old, phased-out lines of biotech soybeans with new lines of conventional soybeans. New, improved varieties of seed generally outperform older ones. The preponderance of data shows no difference in yield potential between herbicide-tolerant soybeans and their conventional counterpart. Scientific agencies around the world have endorsed the soundness of the regulatory procedures and the safety of crops modified by biotechnology. A recently released study estimated that the European Union's mandatory labeling policy will increase food costs by 17 percent. Over 70 percent of United States consumers support the federal policy, which requires labeling only if a biotechnology-enhanced product is different in nutritional value or safety. There is no reason why American consumers should have to pay the price of mandatory labeling. CHRISTINE M. BRUHN Davis, Calif. The writer is director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California at Davis. | Be More Clear On What's in Soup Cans |
1231115_2 | to Long Island for business through La Guardia or Kennedy airports. Obviously, they still do. But more and more they're coming through MacArthur and want to stay within a few miles of where they're working.'' John Tsunis, the managing partner in Long Island Hotels, is putting up two hotels near the Long Island Expressway and has the business market as his target: a 136-room Holiday Inn Express at Exit 56, near Hauppauge, and a 160-room Hampton Inn at Exit 63, near Holtsville. The first is scheduled to open in December, the second next spring. Although neither hotel will have food and beverage service, both will have exercise and meeting rooms. ''Two international corporations are headquartered within a few miles of each other on the L.I.E.,'' said Mr. Tsunis, who was referring to Computer Associates and Symbol Technologies. ''They drive business and create an enormous ripple effect.'' Much of the surge in business travel is coming through MacArthur Airport. Its growth -- more gates and flights -- represents a convenient bonanza to business travelers. It's estimated that half the passengers at MacArthur are on business. That represents a sea change for the airport, which had been run by the Town of Islip primarily as a convenience for residents. Until well into the 1980's, amenities were few: passengers collected their luggage on the sidewalk outside the terminal, for example. A $14 million face lift, completed earlier this year, added more parking and renovated the terminal but did not improve access to public transportation. ''When the airport was renovated, there was talk of relocating the terminal to the north end,'' said Charles Baldassano, the Ronkonkoma architect who handled the project. Rather than moving the terminal, which would have put it about two miles from the Long Island Rail Road's Ronkonkama station, the town board voted to expand parking, to about 3,000 spaces. ''The sense I got,'' said Mr. Baldassano, ''was 'Keep it local.' '' That became problematic in March 1999 when Southwest Airlines announced the that it would begin low-fare service from MacArthur to Chicago, Washington and several other cities. The budget airline continues to increase its service, most recently adding a $49 one-way flight to Providence, R.I. Other airlines have since added flights or lowered prices, a phenomenon the airline industry calls the Southwest Effect. Many business travelers say MacArthur became a business airport the day Southwest arrived. Now, about a third | From MacArthur, a Bonanza in Business Travel |
1231095_0 | THE brown ducks swimming in the inlets, the gulls swooping low in the sky, the herons stalking fish in the shallows -- all are testimony to the diverse ecology of Long Island Sound. They could also be advertisements for the environmental center about to open in a 200-year-old converted house in Cove Island Park in Stamford. The Sound is a delicate estuary within 50 miles of 25 million people. Those humans -- and the threats their activities pose to the health of the Sound -- motivated Len Miller to found an organization in 1989 to educate people about the wonders of Long Island Sound and the dangers it faces. SoundWaters began with a schooner that serves as a floating classroom where students learn through a hands-on curriculum. The ship also offers programs for adults, including lectures presented by ecologists, musicians, artists and historians; teacher-training workshops; and weekend ecology sails. SoundWaters then expanded to offer land-based programs, including classroom workshops and field trips, summer camp, community gardens, and nature programsfor older residents. ''I felt that if there is going to be any improvement in Long Island Sound,'' Mr. Miller said, ''there must be two things: education and cooperation between corporations, government and individuals. There was criticism of me back in '89, people who said you could not have cooperation between environmentalists and corporations,'' but he pointed out that today the groups more commonly work together. He said the SoundWaters Community Center for Environmental Education, which will have its grand opening next weekend, will greatly enhance the opportunities to provide education to people of all ages. The center is taking shape in the rehabilitated Holly House, a mansion that was built during the 18th and 19th centuries. It looked well-maintained on the outside, but the inside had almost rotted away, said Bill Boysen, executive director of SoundWaters. It had to be completely rebuilt, and that gave the group the opportunity to build a model of environmentally responsible development. The large room that will be a lecture hall keeps the building's original oak flooring, but other rooms downstairs have floor coverings made of recycled tires, while the carpeting in offices upstairs is made from recycled plastic bottles. In the laboratory and classroom in the back, cabinets and countertops were milk jugs in a previous life. The tile in the bathrooms was once auto glass. The paint used throughout is low in volatile organic | The View From/Stamford; Center Aims to Educate On Long Island Sound |
1231066_5 | the face. The blast of heat is only part of the shock. There is also the abrupt transition from the visual to the physical, from the sphere of retinal experience to a world where eye and brain are but two organs in a wholly constituted body. This is what an art museum is supposed to do, you might say: create a space ruled by the sense of sight. But to become aware of this specialized function is to see that Moneo's building is part of the general fragmentation of culture after all. And this awareness extends to the urban context. Like the Beck, the great majority of our buildings are dedicated to the creation of visual effects. In this sense, the Beck symbolizes architecture's role in the detachment of the eye from the rest of nature. The interesting thing about fundamentalists is the many fundamentals that their thinking does not take into account. Architecture's obedience to the eye is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of building. The ancient Mediterranean sculptures that greet visitors to the Beck building served a religious function. Greek sculpture, for example, was attached to the temple, which itself derived its meaning and value from the sacred earth site on which it stood. Differentiation -- into bodies, selves, disciplines, sites and cities -- was seen by the Greeks as a dreadful if necessary part of life. From it grew tragic theater. The differentiation of space into the modern art museum is also wonderful and terrible. For the Greeks, art as well as religion supplied the connective tissue that prevents differentiation from pulling human life to pieces. For us, art is a thing apart. In a modern democracy, it is neither possible nor desirable to return to the Greek model. But it is possible to imagine how, working within the logic of art, the Beck Building might have articulated the tragic as well as the triumphal dimension of the modern art museum. The museum's collection is traditionally organized by region, chronology and school. Overall, it traces a narrative of progressive abstraction, from funerary sculpture, created for the body and the earth, to the thin, gorgeous lines of an Agnes Martin painting and spare geometric shapes of the museum's sculpture garden, created in 1986 by Isamu Noguchi. Along the way, we pass through the Italian Renaissance and the modern transition from the sacred to the secular, from | The Air-Conditioned Reverie of a Fundamentalist |
1231331_2 | the problem worse. As John Lampe, Firestone's executive vice president, has mentioned over and over, vehicles are supported mostly by the air in a tire, although the structure of the tire itself plays a role. Lousy tires with little air in them -- the tires also seem to have been prone to leaks -- are a doomed combination. Yet tire problems alone do not explain the extraordinary deadliness of crashes involving Firestone tires. The number of the tires replaced under warranty before the recall, a rough indication of how often the tires were falling apart, was fairly low, just four-tenths of 1 percent, according to documents obtained by Congressional investigators. The problem lay in how often people were killed when the tires failed. The death rate per 1,000 warranty claims appears to have been more than 80 times higher in the current recall than in the only other big tire recall in American history, the 1978 recall of Firestone 500 tires. The deadliness of the tire failures is particularly surprising because all of the vehicles equipped with the current tires had smooth interiors with rounded edges designed to cushion occupants during impacts, and many had air bags. Yet occupants were more likely to die than in the cars of the 1970's, which still had plenty of sharp edges inside and no air bags. And most people in the 1970's did not use seat belts. One reason that the current crashes are so lethal may be that people have been driving faster since the end of the national speed limit of 55 miles per hour. Most of the deaths for which a speed is known were in sport utilities going faster than 55, and even a seat belt and air bag provide limited protection at such speeds. But a big part of the answer seems to be that most of the deaths linked to the current bad batches of Firestone tires occurred in sport utilities that rolled over, something that few of the cars with bad tires in the late 1970's did. One striking feature of the current string of crash deaths is that all involve sport utilities, usually Ford Explorers, even though an unknown but apparently substantial number of the bad tires were also mounted on pickup trucks. Fully 80 percent of the deaths in sport utilities involved rollovers, the deadliest kind of crash. Rollovers have been a problem for | Ideas & Trends: Don't Tread on Me; A Road to Truth Paved With Fingerpointing |
1231121_2 | whose work is familiar and who specialize in people are included. Works by Lee Friedlander strategically show up numerous times. The work of Helen Levitt is described in wall text as lyrical and does seem to be counterpoint to other more hard-edged work. Some younger photographers, a couple of them recent Yale graduates, are notable for the expansive size of their photographs. A lot of empty space surrounds the figure in Dawoud Bey's ''Man Looking at Pants on Fulton St.'' Katie Murray, who got her degree this year, capitalizes on the long arcs and other long lines of car windows to frame her figures. Hers are the only color photographs in the first section of the exhibition. Like the curators, viewers will be disarmed by a section of photographs of charming children including ''Nancy, Danville, Va.'' by Emmet Gowin. Most of them are by Judith Joy Ross. The second section of the show lives up to the exhibition's title for it features a lot of paintings that were clearly influenced by photography. William Beckman and Gregory Gillespie's self-portraits are meticulous and therefore very much like photography. The grainy gray background of most of Richard Artschwager's paintings is meant to simulate the static snow on early television sets. Several portraits by Chuck Close clearly display a dependence on photography, but viewers will be intrigued by some of his recent works, based on old-fashioned daguerreotypes that dispense with the grid. But the grid is appropriated in miniature by the Korean-born American Do-Ho Suh, who lines up a multitude of tiny high school yearbook photographs from Korea. The point, say the curators, is a ''flattening of personal difference under a collective national identity.'' Collective regional identity is the theme of a second show at Yale. ''Southern Exposure: Works by Winfred Rembert and Hale Woodruff.'' What unites the two artists, other than a vivid portrayal of life, is a reliance on unusual or lowly art materials. The Woodruff works, selected from a portfolio bought by the gallery, are linocuts, made by carving and inking cheap flooring material. Mary Kordak, the museum's education curator who organized the show, says that linoleum has a ''rich expressive character,'' and Mr. Woodruff exploited this to the fullest with sharp, rapid alternation of black and white. The result is that even the most laconic images, such as a man on a mule, look like conflagrations. It's as if the | Faces in Photographs; A Region Vividly Portrayed |
1231319_1 | Messenger not only reduced or eliminated the need for traditional chemical pesticides but also improved crop yields by 10 to 20 percent, without leaving harmful residues in the environment, according to its prospectus. Industry analysts say Eden crossed an important hurdle last April, when the Environmental Protection Agency gave it approval to sell Messenger on the condition that the company conduct four other studies by April 2001 to further demonstrate the product's safety. In August, Eden began selling Messenger to farmers in Florida. Eden still has a long road ahead. For one, the company generated just $115,000 in revenue, all from consulting, in 1999. And the biotechnology industry has also seen its share of one-product companies that have tried to market their discoveries without the support of sizable, well-heeled partners. According to its prospectus, Eden is still looking for some big partners to team up with. Production has been another problem. According to the prospectus, Eden still has to show that it can make large-enough quantities of Messenger without compromising product quality. The company wants to use up to $20 million of the proceeds from its offering to expand its manufacturing facilities, a process that could take up to two years. STILL, the prospects for a company like Eden Bioscience aren't as dour as they might have been just a few years ago, analysts say. G. Steven Burrill, the founder of Burrill & Company, a private merchant bank in San Francisco, said that the venture capital fund his company started in 1998 for agriculture and agricultural biotechnology companies had done well, raising about $85 million and generating a 300 percent return on the 13 companies in which it has invested. ''There are a lot of interesting investment opportunities in this area,'' Mr. Burrill said. Consumer and environmental groups have raised protests about genetically modified foods, but some agricultural biotechnology companies have done well in finding investors who recognize technologies, like Messenger's, that do not modify a plant's genetic material, he said. He added that Paradigm Genetics, a biotechnology concern in Research Triangle Park, N.C., is another business that is not modifying genetic material but is aiming at the crop production market, though as part of a larger business strategy. Paradigm's stock, which Mr. Burrill's company helped to take public, has risen from an initial public offering price of $7 in May to $19.38 at the close on Friday. Robert Gardiner, | A Biotechnology Sprout In Arid Market Ground |
1231051_0 | THINGS change, to quote the title of a David Mamet movie, and in the restaurant business change is virtually built in. That is why from time to time we like to look in at places that provided memorable dining experiences in the past. Following are observations from several of our most recent revisits. It was five years ago when tiny LA COLLINE VERTE in Fairfield lighted up the Connecticut dining scene with its witty decor and masterly cuisine. With memories of many exemplary meals enjoyed there, we recently returned to the charming, inn-like French restaurant. We are happy to report that very little has changed. Service is still polished (if a tad slow on a busy Saturday night), except for the annoying habit of clearing plates before everyone is finished. Ah, but the food was as ambrosial as we recalled. One appetizer, carpaccio de coquilles St.-Jacques (chopped sea-scallop carpaccio with artichokes, carrots julienne and droplets of balsamic and shallot vinaigrette), would be difficult to surpass. Warm duck pate with nuts in puff pastry, a velvety lobster bisque, and satin-smooth slab of foie gras, all reached heights of subtle perfection. Most entrees were presented in round stacked decks, but, unlike Pisa, these towers didn't lean. A mille-feuille de crevettes aux pommes et epinards piled shrimp, tart apples and spinach in a Napoleon with a soupcon of pickly warm brandy vinaigrette. Braised monkfish was layered with vegetables and spinach in a tangy red pesto dotted with bits of black (canned!) olives. Pistachio-crusted, crispy sweetbreads came with a smidgen of quince compote, sherry wine and black cherry jus. Our only non-towering entree was roasted and flambeed, succulent baby Cornish hen, accompanied by chopped cabbage and bacon sauce. Desserts were exquisite, served in refined portions. We reveled in an oven-hot, fluffy raspberry souffle garnished with raspberry coulis as well as a flourless chocolate cake, a true orgy of chocolate intensity. As lagniappes, there were flaky cheese straws to begin the meal, petits fours to end it. Happily, La Colline Verte still deserves an Excellent rating. La Colline Verte (1950 Bronson Road, Fairfield; 203-256-9242). Dinner entrees $18 to $28. All major credit cards accepted; reservations essential; jacket and tie suggested for men. SOLE RISTORANTE in New Canaan was notable in reviewing visits in 1998 for its food, its stylish decor -- and for the decibel level of a rock concert. Subsequent visits have convinced us | Second Chances: A Roundup of Revisits |
1231072_1 | of productions all over the world, including operas and Greek and Shakespearean drama cycles. Now, at age 70, he is undertaking another bold venture, one that follows the trend in recent decades of marathon productions by master directors. If the theatergoing public's response to such lengthy, and inventive, presentations is any indication -- witness the enthusiasm for Peter Stein's 18-hour version of Goethe's ''Faust,'' Peter Brook's ''Mahabharata,'' Shi-Zheng Chen's ''Peony Pavilion,'' Ariane Mnouchkine's ''Atrides'' and the works of Robert Wilson -- ''Tantalus'' is bound to provoke a good deal of interest, especially since it offers a new take on a venerable myth. In tackling this enterprise, Sir Peter has assembled a cast of 18 American and 4 British actors; a Greek stage and mask designer (Dionyssis Fotopoulos); a Japanese lighting designer (Sumio Yoshii); an Irish composer (Mick Sands) and an African-American choreographer (Donald McKayle). Edward Hall, his son, is co-director. By mid-summer, preparations for the opening were well under way, and Sir Peter and the cast, who had been rehearsing nine hours a day for four months, were deep into the work. After a rehearsal, Sir Peter, still full of energy, retired to his office for an interview. ''The Greeks and their philosophy have always fascinated me,'' he said. ''I like them because they've always asked a lot of questions and had the temerity not to give many answers. And I love that. They are about ambiguity and contradiction. That's why I like their invention of many gods. If one isn't working for you, you try another one.'' He added: ''The thing is to endure with a certain amount of nobility, a certain stoicism, and a certain amount of charity. And I think these are still pretty good values. Greek myths are rattling good stories, and they are absolutely at the center of our political and psychological thinking, our ideas about family and power, men and women, war and peace.'' Sponsored by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company, ''Tantalus'' runs here through Dec. 2 and will tour England beginning in January, ending at the Royal Shakespeare's Barbican Theater in London. The opening performance, as well as three others during the Denver run, will be one-day marathons; the others will take place over two consecutive days. To accompany the performances, the Denver Center will mount a multimedia exhibition on the history of classical | Mobilizing to Stage an Epic, Brutal Trojan War |
1231225_0 | To the Editor: The Soapbox ''Mmm, Mmm, Genetically Engineered'' (Aug. 27) by Jerry Flanagan assures us that yellow journalism is alive and well in New Jersey. Are we to believe that, as this patchwork of innuendo and less-than-half-truths implies, that Cambell Soups are harmful, in spite of their certification for soundness by both the Federal Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration? The essay mentioned a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that found that when a Brazil nut's gene was engineered into soybeans, people with nut allergies would have react badly to the beans. To raise this issue disregards the facts. Well before the soybean with the Brazil nut gene was ready for marketing, the seed company, Pioneer Hi-Bred, brought the new beans to the University of Nebraska to evaluate allergic potential. The results showed that the beans could induce an allergic reaction. Knowing that allergic reactions to Brazil nuts were on the order of one in 100,000 and that the number of potential deaths from eating the beans would be less than two a year, the company canceled its soy bean program. That's what Mr. Flanagan should have told us. If Campbell's vegetables contain Brazil nut genes, fish genes or antibiotic marker genes, he should say so. Innuendo is uncalled for. MELVIN A. BERNARDE Princeton | Be More Clear On What's in Soup Cans |
1233636_1 | a tunnel,'' Mr. Comley said as he punched up her number for the umpteenth time. Many of these calls are flowing over the newly upgraded digital network of Telstra, Australia's publicly traded but still state-controlled phone company, which has prompted company executives to strain for superlatives. ''For telecommunications, these Games have produced the largest concentration of demand for services at any singular event ever,'' said Brian Pilbeam, general manager of Olympics services for Telstra. Verifying such claims is tricky, but Telstra's numbers are impressive by any measure. The company connected 500,000 mobile calls in Olympic Park on the first day of the Games. About 125,000 of those were made inside Stadium Australia, which was packed with 110,000 people for the opening ceremony. Telstra experienced huge spikes in use at dramatic moments, like when the Olympic torch was lighted and when the athletes entered the stadium. Plenty of those calls were made by the athletes themselves, some of whom were too busy racking up long-distance charges to wave to the crowd. Telstra said it was fairly simple to equip smaller arenas, like the Aquatic Center, with an adequate cellular network. The engineering challenge was how to equip the enormous Olympic stadium. The company installed a galaxy of microcells -- many hidden in lampposts -- that shower a signal over the audience in much smaller segments than a typical macrocell. This allows slices of the radio spectrum to be reused more efficiently, expanding its capacity beyond that of a normal network. ''We believe it's the densest cellular network in any structure in the world,'' said Anthony Goonan, regional manager of Telstra's mobile division. He said the network's only potential rival had been at the Stade de France in suburban Paris, where the World Cup soccer final was played in 1998. Mr. Goonan carried three phones around the stadium throughout the opening ceremony, testing Telstra's service against those of its rivals, Optus and Vodafone. They are allowed to lease capacity on Telstra's network inside the stadium, but must complete calls on their own networks. ''Our objective was for people to get through the first time, most of the time,'' Mr. Goonan said. ''The congestion levels were quite low, and we didn't have any complaints from customers about poor service.'' Not surprisingly, Mr. Goonan said he had more trouble making calls on the two other services. Although Telstra has the biggest market share here, | If Cell Phones Were Sport, A Platinum Medal for Aussies |
1228036_0 | After the last huge recall of Firestone tires in 1978, when tread separation problems resulted in hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths, Congress and regulators made a series of proposals to tighten federal tire standards. But the standards were not revised, and many of the same problems, including some that the proposals were designed to address, have arisen again in the 14.4 million Firestone tires being recalled now. A Congressional report on the 1978 recall of 14.5 million Firestone 500 tires pointed out that the steel-belted radial tires had easily passed the government's tests -- devised in the late 1960's for biased-ply tires, an earlier technology -- but still failed in large numbers on the road. Carter administration officials imposed one new requirement on the auto industry in 1980 and began drafting new tire regulations, government documents from that period show. But all the moves to tighten tire regulation were stopped after Ronald Reagan became president and sought to reduce the regulatory burden on the then-beleaguered American auto industry. The only new rule, involving the disclosure of tires' capacity to carry weight, was rescinded. Also canceled were plans for more stringent tests and for mandatory devices to warn motorists when their tires became underinflated. Some of the regulatory initiatives abandoned in 1981 are likely to come up again this week, as Congressional committees hold hearings into the current recall. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received more than 1,400 complaints about Firestone ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT tires, the bulk involving tires installed on Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles. The complaints and data supplied to the agency by Firestone attribute 88 deaths to the tires. Firestone has recalled all ATX and ATX II tires of the P235/75R15 size, which were made from 1990 to 1996, and has recalled Wilderness tires of the same size made since 1996 at its factory in Decatur, Ill. The safety agency is also reviewing whether many more Firestone tires may need to be recalled. On Friday, it issued a consumer advisory suggesting that motorists replace another 1.4 million tires that Firestone has refused to recall. Firestone estimates that 6.5 million of the 14.4 million tires covered in the current recall are on the road, and fewer than half those covered by the advisory. Two provisions dropped in the early 1980's clearly would have made the current episode easier for consumers. One would | Stricter Rules for Tire Safety Were Scrapped by Reagan |
1227929_0 | As Congress begins hearings this week on the recall of 6.5 million Firestone tires, questions will be raised about why the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn't take action sooner against Firestone and the Ford Motor Company over tire blowouts and resulting rollovers of Ford Explorers. One answer is the agency's budget, now more than 30 percent lower in real dollars than it was in 1980. A 50 percent cut during the Reagan administration still hampers the agency's capacity to regulate an ever-growing automobile industry. Congressional interference on behalf of industry in safety recall cases has also shackled the regulators, and they lack needed authority to police automakers. When it is time to drop the enforcement hammer, the safety agency can strike only lightly. The maximum penalty it can impose on Firestone or Ford is $925,000 for refusal to recall products. The penalty for withholding a document is a pitiful $l,000, no matter how long it is withheld. And there are no federal criminal penalties for these violations, regardless of how many people are killed by a company's reckless behavior. The agency sent legislation to Congress in March to increase penalties, but the proposal for a maximum of $4 million in fines is still far too low to ensure deterrence of large corporations. The agency's standards for tires and the strength of automobile roofs are 30 years old. Existing tests for roofs are virtually useless in protecting occupants in rollovers. Over and over, the auto industry has succeeded in stopping strong safety measures like a rollover prevention standard and my proposal for tire inflation indicators on dashboards. Ford and Firestone now argue that consumers helped cause the current problem by not properly inflating Firestone tires. Would these standards and legislative authority have prevented this disaster? Absolutely. But the agency must also be more proactive: seeking information about defects from repair shops, fleet owners, insurance companies, and lawyers for crash victims; issuing consumer alerts about possible defects and gathering facts from the public; and using its subpoena power to prevent the auto industry from withholding information. When regulation of automobile safety is hampered or lax, the public pays the ultimate price. Joan Claybrook is president Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group. She was administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 1977 to 1981. | Congress's Part in the Firestone Crisis |
1227982_5 | that workers brought in under such programs drive down wages and essentially are easy-to-exploit captives restricted to working for one company. The Clinton administration, mindful of Silicon Valley's political contributions and organized labor's political muscle, has signaled that it favors increasing the number of high-technology visas, but not those for unskilled workers. ''In high technology, we are now trying to meet a real spot shortage,'' Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman said. ''But when you talk about jobs in the hotel industry and other areas, there's still a lot of untapped employment potential in the nation, and I believe that we can meet those demands with Americans.'' This debate is influenced heavily by the way immigration creates different winners and losers. American businesses, ranging from motels and lettuce farms to corporate giants like Intel and Apple, benefit from the influx of immigrants. But the National Academy of Sciences study found that immigrants, especially illegal, unskilled workers from Mexico and the rest of Latin America, have pushed down wages for American-born workers with less than a high school education by 5 percent. That study found that immigration increased the nation's economy by $10 billion -- a tiny amount in a country with a gross domestic product of nearly $10 trillion. ''The real impact of immigration is not to increase the size of the pie, but to redistribute the pie,'' said George J. Borjas, a Harvard University professor of public policy. ''If you happen to have the type of job that competes with immigrants, you're often hurt, but if you're a company or an upper-middle-class person who hires immigrants, then you benefit.'' In recent months, one of the biggest changes has been the softening stance of labor unions toward illegal immigrants. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has called for repealing the law that bars employers from hiring illegal immigrants -- a law organized labor lobbied successfully for in 1986. While still favoring strict limits on the number of immigrants entering the country, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. has reversed itself by calling for the granting of legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. Giving them legal status, union officials said, would make it harder for employers to exploit them and hold down their wages. ''There was a recognition of how immigrants are being discriminated against and of the indignities they suffer,'' John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said. ''We saw that the present immigration policies weren't | FOREIGN WORKERS AT HIGHEST LEVEL IN SEVEN DECADES |
1227721_1 | effectively did the same thing. We do not invest in midcaps for diversification. We think the real opportunity for investing in midcap companies is that you have a population of companies with revenue and earnings growth rates that are very similar to smaller companies, but with proven managements, and which can go through very extended growth phases. That is the goal and objective of midcap investing. Q. Why are midcaps doing so well now? A. They were good performers in 1999 as well. Liquidity plays an important role. When growth was available in large-cap stocks, as it was in 1997, 1998 and last year, there was very little reason for growth managers to migrate down the capitalization spectrum in search of growth. And managers are finding a lot of growth in the midcap arena. Q. What characteristics do you look for? A. We are pure bottom-up growth investors who focus on exceptionally strong revenue growth. Revenue growth is the most sustainable source of earnings growth. And revenue growth is also the best way to measure, monitor and evaluate the health of a company. Also, I am not going to sell a stock just because it reaches some level of market capitalization. That decision is based entirely on the operating characteristics of the company. Nearly 70 percent of the MidCap fund is in technology stocks. Revenue growth for the companies we are invested in is in excess of 80 percent. The composite earnings growth rate is about 35 percent. And the average price-to-earnings ratio is 54. That price-to-earnings ratio is more than double what the S.& P. 500's is, but the earnings growth rate of the S.& P. 500 is roughly 10 percent. So earnings of companies in our portfolio are growing 3.5 times that rate. Q. For the last year or so, the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates to slow the economy. If growth slows, will that have an adverse effect on your portfolio? A. A slow-growth economy is a favorable climate for growth investing over all. That is because if you view growth as a commodity, when the economy is robust, growth is plentiful, and many companies have it. It's when growth becomes scarce that companies that can exhibit strong revenue and earnings growth get higher premiums. I might add that since we take our cues from the companies we are analyzing and meeting with, right now | Bumper Crop From the Middle Ground |
1227770_0 | For years, the woman heard the moaning of animals. Finally last month she could not stand it any more. She called a newspaper to report that a restaurant nearby was keeping three black bears in tiny cages, milking their gall bladders of bile to sell for its reputed medicinal value. After a sensational account in The Beijing Morning Post of Aug. 12, officers of the Beijing Forestry Bureau raided the restaurant, to the south of Beijing. They hauled the bears to the Beijing Wildlife Rescue Center and began a criminal investigation of the restaurant owners, who did not have a permit to keep bears in captivity. The bears are still recovering from their ordeal and may wind up in a special reserve or a zoo, in an episode that reflects changing attitudes about animal welfare among China's emerging middle class. Six months ago, the Beijing municipality (which includes large rural areas surrounding the dense city) did not have a wild animal rehabilitation center, a result of budget problems as well as a traditional lack of concern many Chinese have toward other species. The new center has been financed as a public service by a private handicrafts company, but operates under the authority of the Beijing Forestry Bureau. It takes in injured animals like hawks as well as valuable birds or reptiles seized from wildlife smugglers. The center, which has only been operating since May, has been almost overwhelmed by the demand for its services. ''Public awareness about wildlife protection is rising, and more people are reporting injured animals,'' said Chen Shu, the center's manager, ''but we never expected bears.'' The travails of the three black bears also set off renewed debate about the practice of bear farming for bile, which Chinese authorities have promoted as the best way to combat poaching of wild bears to supply the market. One of the bears recovered was found to have a tube dangling from an open sore; its other end was inside the animal's gall bladder. After being taken to the Beijing Wildlife Rescue Center, a specially experienced foreign veterinarian was invited in to remove the tube. Traditional Asian medicine holds that bear bile can help treat a variety of maladies, from eye disease to hepatitis to cancer. Less formally, bile products are sold as general enhancers of health. In the past, large numbers of wild bears were killed for their gall bladders | Near Beijing, Three Bears Find Rescue And Refuge |
1227770_2 | One of the bears recovered was found to have a tube dangling from an open sore; its other end was inside the animal's gall bladder. After being taken to the Beijing Wildlife Rescue Center, a specially experienced foreign veterinarian was invited in to remove the tube. Traditional Asian medicine holds that bear bile can help treat a variety of maladies, from eye disease to hepatitis to cancer. Less formally, bile products are sold as general enhancers of health. In the past, large numbers of wild bears were killed for their gall bladders and other products. But in recent decades, as the government outlawed such killings, it encouraged bear farms as a substitute. In the 1980's, thousands of bears were captured and today 7,000 bears are kept on 247 licensed bear farms where they are bred and tapped for bile. Chinese officials defend bear-bile farming as the safest way to meet the demand. ''If one bear on a farm produces bile for 10 years, then the lives of 400 wild bears will be saved,'' said Fang Zhiyong, a senior wildlife official, in a recent newspaper interview. In the early 90's, the International Fund for Animal Welfare publicized the abysmal conditions on some farms, where bears with long festering sores were locked in tiny cages, and Chinese officials have acknowledged that some farms are substandard. This summer, China signed an agreement with the Animals Asia Foundation, a private group based in Hong Kong, under which many smaller and poorly run farms in southern China will be closed. In the next five years, 500 bears will be released to a natural reserve to be run by the foundation in Sichuan province. Officials pledged to reduce bear farming further over the next 15 years, with a long-term goal of ending the practice. But they pointedly said it would not be outlawed so long as there is market demand. They also insist that well-regulated, large farms can offer more humane living conditions and methods of bile extraction. Wildlife advocates take heart in signs of changing public attitudes about animal welfare, and evidence that fewer medical practitioners prescribe bile. ''The demand for bile has dropped and the price is going down,'' said Grace Ge Gabriel, head of the Beijing office of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. The group is now working with traditional medical practitioners around Asia to promote herbal and synthetic alternatives to bile. | Near Beijing, Three Bears Find Rescue And Refuge |
1227424_0 | The End of the Past Ancient Rome and the Modern West. By Aldo Schiavone. Harvard University, $45. Modern history begins with the Renaissance, a period that thought of itself as bringing back to life the classical culture nearly extinguished during the Dark and Middle Ages. But why this near-death experience of a civilization that by the second century A.D. had established over a wide swath of Europe, Africa and Asia a hitherto unknown degree of political organization and economic integration? Why did the Roman Empire decline and fall instead of developing into some version of the world as we know it? This is the question Aldo Schiavone, a professor of Roman law at the University of Florence, asks, and answers, in this fascinating book. War, the founding virtue of the Roman Republic, became the engine of imperial wealth. While most people lived in rural poverty, military conquest supplied the urban elite with tribute, land and millions of slaves. Trade, a seemingly modern element, rested on slave labor, incompatible with a generalized market economy. The association of work with slavery transformed the aristocratic disdain for labor into an inability even to think about improving productivity. The system could therefore grow only until its expenses overwhelmed the flow of booty. The result, Schiavone argues in prose both readable and learned (smoothly translated from the Italian by Margery J. Schneider), was an institutional and intellectual gulf between the ancient and modern worlds so deep that it took a catastrophe -- the fall of Rome -- to pass from one to the other. Paul Mattick | Books in Brief: Nonfiction |
1227835_0 | A plan by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin of France to give limited self-rule to the island of Corsica has caused turmoil in France's political class and led Interior Minister Jean Pierre Chevenement to resign in protest. Any degree of regional autonomy is a deeply sensitive constitutional issue in France. But the plan has also gained wide backing, including from Corsicans, because it aims to strengthen moderates and end the violent campaign of separatists, who have thrown bombs and practiced political killings for almost three decades. Marlise Simons AUGUST 27-SEPTEMBER 2 | The French and Corsica |
1227791_4 | on replacement tires and had not pointed it out to regulators. G.M. officials were dismayed by the advisory, which included 40,000 tires installed at the plant on 1991 Chevrolet Blazers in addition to off-road tires sold by Firestone dealers. As Ford has stepped up the pressure on Firestone, it has also done so indirectly on other automakers, by having engineers cut apart recalled tires to check for tread separation. The company announced a week ago that it had found separation rates in Firestone tires from Venezuela that were 500 times higher than the rates among recalled tires in the United States. Ford has already replaced Firestone tires on Explorers in Venezuela at its expense after Firestone refused to conduct a recall. Brook Lindbert, G.M.'s director of wheel and tire systems, said late Friday that G.M. has not encountered problems with Firestone tires and planned to continue buying them. G.M. has not cut apart Firestone tires to check for tread separation, and does not plan to do so, Mr. Lindbert said. Tread separation can be spotted through examination of the tire by a trained mechanic who looks for bulges or scalloping where the tread meets the sidewall, he said. Some drivers can notice a bumpiness in the ride of a vehicle with tire treads that are beginning to separate. But Mr. Harmon of Ford questioned whether external examination could spot tread separation. ''Sometimes that's true,'' he said. ''but from what we understand, in many cases there's no warning.'' He said Ford engineers had examined tires with no visible signs of problems on the outside, which, when cut apart, showed that the tread was separating. Although Ford and G.M. are Firestone's largest customers, Ford buys a higher percentage of its tires from Firestone than G.M. DaimlerChrysler has long relied on Goodyear and Michelin. In a sign that Ford's efforts to avoid blame for the tire problems may be paying off, sales of Ford Explorers and of Ford vehicles in general have stayed strong despite the recall. George Pipas, a Ford market analyst, predicted last Monday that Explorer sales in August would be in the ''high 30,000's,'' but might fall short of the 39,000 Explorers sold in August last year. But Ford announced on Friday afternoon that it sold 40,157 Explorers last month. Because dealerships were open one more day in August this year than in the same month last year, the daily | Dealers Struggle to Cope With Rush to Replace Firestone Tires |
1227580_5 | with our existing staff. It was just a nightmare trying to keep the inventory straight, not to mention it cost a fortune between leasing and personnel resources. So we contracted.'' As Dr. dt ogilvie, associate professor of strategic management at Rutgers University School of Business, put it: ''If you are going to keep your documents on-site, as time goes on you're going to have more space devoted to your documents than to your business. Commercial storage companies do it more efficiently, cheaply and give you better service.'' Mr. Kroll scoffs at the notion that paper is disappearing. ''Just look at lawyers,'' he says. ''Their main product is paper.'' Even the technology companies store a lot of paper, he added. ''There's more paper now than there ever, Dr. ogilvie noted. ''We do more diverse things, make duplicates of E-mail messages. And because this is a more litigious environment, people want to document everything and there are legal requirements stipulating how long different types of documents must be saved.'' Convincing potential customers that it is cost-effective to store their records with his company has not been hard, said Mr. Kroll, and he explained it this way: ''I go to a law firm. They say to me, No problem. We have it covered. How do you have it covered? We have it stored at the local mini-warehouse down on Route 22. I say to the lawyer, Excuse me, who is in charge of that? They say, Oh Sara. She sits in the front and the key is in her drawer. So when you need something you tell Sara? How much do you pay her $15 an hour? She drives in her car, gets there and the box she needs is on the bottom and now she has to drive back to get you? And she schleps you back to get the boxes and how long did that take? About two hours? And how much do you get paid? Two hundred dollars an hour? Four hundred dollars? I'm going to do it for $1.75.'' Mr. Kroll remembers what it was like to try sell children's outerwear to buyers. ''They want the button here, you got the button there,'' he remembered. ''They want the blue, you got the red.'' Convincing someone to store their records, he said, ''is easy compared to selling a snowsuit to a buyer at J. C. Penny's.'' NEW JERSEY & CO. | In the Paperless Era, the Problem Is Too Much Paper |
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