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378647_1 | how the global environment is changing. In a report requested by the White House, the panel of the research council found that Eos would leave a critical gap in efforts to measure the heating of the Earth's atmosphere in the 1990's. Looking at Delay for Eos Less elaborate satellites requiring less development could fill the gap and also provide other critical data in the short term, the panel said in the report, which was made public in Washington yesterday. It concluded that ''if budget constraints arise, it would be more desirable to delay the launch of Eos spacecraft than to forgo or diminish the effectiveness of the near-term missions.'' The panel members ''felt pretty strongly about that statement,'' said the group's chairman, D. James Baker Jr., an oceanographer who is the president of Joint Oceanographic Institutions Inc., a consortium that coordinates academic research. He said there was a ''very strong feeling'' in the scientific community and in Congress that ''we can't allow something that's going to happen in 1998 to delay our global change measurements.'' Both Dr. Baker and Lennard D. Fisk, the space agency's associate administrator for space science and applications, said they believed there would be money enough to pursue Eos late in the decade and also provide satellite measurements of important aspects of climatic change in the meantime. The National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is the major independent provider of scientific advice to the Government. Its study on Eos said at least one large 15-ton satellite was essential because 10 or 12 instruments must be grouped together on the same platform to monitor the Earth continuously from the same spot. NASA scientists say this is necessary if the project is to fulfill its mission of simultaneously measuring, for the first time on a global scale, many complex interactions of air, sea, land and living things that create and manipulate the Earth's climate. 'Very Positive Endorsement' The report issued yesterday is ''a very positive endorsement'' of that central concept, said Dr. Fisk, who also said he was pleased with the report over all. But the panel said many of the project's objectives could be achieved by replacing at least three Eos satellites with smaller satellites, some of which could be launched sooner. At least three large satellites must be placed in orbit at five-year intervals, Dr. Fisk said, to provide simultaneous | Scientists Back Smaller, Simpler Satellites for Monitoring Climate |
378670_0 | LEAD: State officials say they have definitively ruled out a higher than usual rate of cancer in this town, despite fears that an electric substation has caused illness along one street. State officials say they have definitively ruled out a higher than usual rate of cancer in this town, despite fears that an electric substation has caused illness along one street. Speaking to about 100 people at the town library Monday night, Sandy Geschwind, an epidemiologist with the State Department of Health Services, said the state had reviewed data about cancer in this coastal town east of New Haven and found no differences between its cancer rate and that of the state as a whole. The finding apparently ends the official inquiry into the contention by families on Meadow Street that a substation operated by the Connecticut Light & Power Company has caused five cancer cases in the last 20 years, most involving tumors in or near the brain. Power lines and substations that step down the current carried along high-tension wires emit electromagnetic radiation that some experts believe causes cancer. But no cause-and-effect relationship has been proved. Northeast Utilities, the parent of Connecticut Light & Power, has denied the substation has caused any illness. Using the Connecticut Tumor Registry, officials counted 10 cases of meningioma - a rare, nonmalignant tumor of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord - in Guilford from 1968 to 1988, a rate almost identical to the statewide average of about 1 per 100,000 people. Officials also found no extra risk to Guilford residents when it looked at the number of tumors of the central nervous system over the same period. | Town's Cancer Rate Is Termed Not Unusual |
379982_0 | LEAD: Every visitor to this mountainous park is warned not to approach or feed the grizzly bears. But the other night 180 paying customers at the daily Western cookout at Yancey's Hole got a rare close-up glimpse of a grizzly, and promptly abandoned their meals to him. Every visitor to this mountainous park is warned not to approach or feed the grizzly bears. But the other night 180 paying customers at the daily Western cookout at Yancey's Hole got a rare close-up glimpse of a grizzly, and promptly abandoned their meals to him. The grizzly, a 170-pound yearling, ambled into the campground, scattering humans just by reputation. He calmly lumbered from table to table, devouring the remains of 180 12-ounce steaks - rare, medium and well done - along with coleslaw, baked beans and watermelon. The visitors had paid $29.87 each for the meal and a horseback ride to the camp. With that meal the grizzly, Ursus horribilis No. 181, rekindled the debate over commercial activities in the park, where the giant bear has been staging a slow comeback from the brink of extinction. The National Park Service policy is to keep bear-human contact to a minimum and to insure a free-ranging grizzly population dependent solely on natural food sources, including berries, rodents and large mammals like deer. And so No. 181, which had bedded down last Wednesday waiting for more steaks, was quickly captured and relocated to a remote part of the park. Park officials do this to eliminate the threat to people and to prevent the bears from becoming dependent on humans for their food. ''Whenever there is conflict, the bear always loses,'' complained Don Bachman, program assistant at the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in Bozeman, Mont., a watchdog group that seeks to preserve the homes of animals of Yellowstone's 5.7 million acres. ''We are very much opposed to the behavior of the public taking precedence over the habitat of the bear. There's no need to have a dude ranch activity to appreciate the national park.'' For 40 summers now, visitors have climbed onto horses and wagons for the ride into the remote campground by a sagebrush meadow near the Tower Junction area of the park. The odor of sizzling steaks is bound to attract bears, Mr. Bachman says, thereby promoting the kind of contact that forces their removal. The concessionaire says every effort is made to avoid drawing | Yellowstone Journal; Cookout Crasher Rekindles Park Issue |
380127_0 | LEAD: Nigerian warships have captured a gunboat carrying weapons for a Liberian rebel group, a spokesman for the West African forces trying to impose a cease-fire said today. Nigerian warships have captured a gunboat carrying weapons for a Liberian rebel group, a spokesman for the West African forces trying to impose a cease-fire said today. Lieut. Col. John Dungs of the multinational force said the guns seized were destined for Charles Taylor, the leader of the largest group of rebels fighting to overthrow President Charles K. Doe. A Ghana News Agency correspondent traveling with the international force reported that 27 rebels were captured when the gunboat was seized as it prepared to attack two Nigerian frigates. One of the frigates was carrying a rival rebel leader, Prince Johnson, to Freetown to fly to a meeting in Gambia, Colonel Dungs said. Mr. Taylor, whose forces control most of Liberia, opposes the intervention by Nigeria, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Guinea. Journalists who had been covering territory controlled by Mr. Taylor left during the weekend after he accused an American journalist, Stephen Smith of Liberation of Paris, of being a spy. Mr. Taylor's men conducted a mock execution of Mr. Smith, firing just over his shoulders. Correction: August 29, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final Because of an editing error, a brief article yesterday about the Nigerian capture of a Liberian rebel gunboat referred incorrectly to the Liberian President. He is Samuel K. Doe. | Nigerians Capture Liberian Rebel Gunboat |
380085_4 | to shift orbits to cover targets of interest. The craft can see just about everything of military significance, including individual ships, tanks, planes, arms depots and logistics areas, indicating the state of preparedness of a foe. Peering Through Clouds In addition, the American Government in 1988 lofted the first of a new class of spy satellites that use radar to peer through clouds and darkness, advancing the art of spying from space. The satellite works by bouncing radio waves off the Earth, producing images regardless of weather or time of day. Radar can also easily penetrate sand. Dr. Zimmerman of Washington University said the spy radar satellite now in orbit was probably good at peering beneath some types of camouflage and at revealing tunnels and lightly covered facilities, especially in the arid regions of the Middle East. The drawback of radar imagery is that its resolution, or ability to differentiate details, is not nearly as high as that of the visible-light cameras on older spy craft. They can generally see the same types of military objects. All these different types of imaging satellites fly in orbits a few hundred miles high that loop about the earth's poles. As the earth turns, the area beneath the orbit changes, allowing a single satellite to pass over most of the earth's surface each day. A different class of spy satellite orbits 22,300 miles above the equator, moving at a pace that keeps the craft motionless relative to the ground. These are electronic ''ears'' that scoop up electronic signals, including those from radar and radio, from military and diplomatic communications. At least two of these satellites are usually on duty near the Asian landmass, capable of eavesdropping on conversations among battlefield units and military commanders in the Middle East. Dr. Cline, the former Central Intelligence Agency official, said the volume of signals intelligence was such that computers were used to search for key words and phrases that might prove significant. The computers could easily search through such transmissions in Arabic, he said. The Soviet Union is also clearly watching the activity in the Middle East with interest, experts say. On Aug. 3, a day after Iraq's takeover of Kuwait, the Soviets launched a photo reconnaissance satellite. ''It was clearly done in response to the invasion,''said James E. Oberg, a Houston-based expert on the Soviet space program. ''You can tell that because of the time | SATELLITES KEEP WATCH ON THE DESERT |
380042_2 | put her economics degree to work with the General Accounting Office, analyzing the effects of the Clean Air Act. Both had good jobs, but found them unsatisfying. ''One of the reasons I joined the G.A.O. was to serve the public,'' Mrs. Baden said. ''But it takes about a year for the reports to get out, and I found more immediate rewards in teaching.'' Spurred by their own idealism, publicity about an education crisis and the hope that ongoing changes are improving teachers' lot, others like Mrs. Baden are signing on. Reaching New Teachers, a nationwide recruitment campaign, receives more than 600 calls a day on its toll-free number. The Association of American Colleges for Teacher Education reports a 200 percent rise in enrollments of students who already have college degrees. Dozens of other programs at the nation's universities offer new programs for a master's degree in math and science education; others retrain teachers for math and science education. Most of these programs are designed as quicker alternatives to traditional teacher education courses. The programs vary widely in quality and include intensive master's programs as well as emergency certification programs that allow career-switchers or bright college graduates into the classroom after only a summer, or even a few days, of training. At least 32 states have adopted alternative certification programs. Researchers have found that such programs attract more members of minorities and more people who are willing to teach in inner-city schools. And advocates say that career-switchers or people who could take higher-paying jobs will not be willing to invest the time and money for traditional teacher-training programs. But Prof. Linda Darling-Hammond of Columbia University's Teachers College, among others, believes the programs with the scantest training undermine efforts to improve the status and professionalism of teaching by suggesting that practically anyone can walk into a classroom and start teaching. Her research showed that many graduates of such programs were not prepared for the demands of teaching. The only solution, she said, is to find money for better training. C. Emily Feistritzer, director of the National Center for Education Information, sees another pitfall: Many school administrators are reluctant to hire career-switchers, even if they are better qualified. Although some estimates are higher, her research indicates that 12,000 of one million teachers hired in the last five years came from such certification programs. ''I think there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that many | Efforts to Reshape Teaching Focus on Finding New Talent |
380079_1 | of endangered plants and animals; to make environmental education available to the Malagasy people; to give parks, preserves and other protected areas technical and financial support; to provide information for policy formation and to teach agricultural techniques that are less harmful and more supportive of development than current slash-and-burn methods. Conservation International was the first to negotiate a debt payment agreement with a developing country when it reached an accord with Brazil in 1987. Madagascar has reached earlier agreements, including one last year with the World Wildlife Fund. Kurt Low, assistant for the conservation finance program of the World Wildlife Fund, said the latest agreement was notable as the first to include trade debt. ''To date there have been no debt-for-nature swaps involving trade credits in principle or in practice,'' he said. This innovative agreement attempts to address economic, conservation and developmental needs simultaneously in Madagascar, an island of 228,880 square miles off the east coast of Africa that harbors plants and animals found nowhere else. More than 80 percent of its forests have already been destroyed, and the damage is irreparable, experts say. When forests in southern Madagascar are cut down, ''you're cutting down more ecological diversity than anywhere else in the world,'' explained Roderick Mast, director of the Madagascar program for Conservation International. Problem of Farming Methods Slash-and-burn agriculture, clearing land for cattle and using charcoal for fuel cause many of the island's environmental problems. Conservation International signed an agreement with the Central Bank of Madagascar on May 7 to allow the Government of Madagascar to cancel some debts to American exporters and banks. Steve Rubin, director of conservation finance at Conservation International, came up with the idea of simultaneously canceling trade credits and bank credits while doing research for a book on the economics of environmental issues, ''Untying Your Money,'' published in 1989 in Britain by Economist Publications. ''The original holders of Malagasy debt have no interest in further lending to the country, so they sell it,'' Mr. Rubin said. The lenders choose to sell the debt for a part of its value rather than risk the uncertainty of waiting for full repayment. The Bankers Trust New York Corporation holds much of the country's debt to banks; a French subsidiary of the International Business Machines Corporation and Honeywell hold trade credits and are negotiating with Conservation International. Jocelyn Rafidinarivo, the Counselor for Financial and Public Affairs of | Agreement to Preserve Environment Provides Help for Madagascar |
380091_2 | Environmental Protection Agency have found that it now costs 90 cents to $1.10 to buy methanol that will propel a car as far as a gallon of gasoline. And as part of an attempt to capitalize on this economic fact, the agency's emission-control technology laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., expects in about two weeks to begin testing the first prototype of an engine especially designed for methanol. American automobile manufacturers, meanwhile, have built engines designed especially for ethanol-fueled autos and installed them extensively in Brazilian cars. Within the last five years auto makers here and abroad have also brought to technological maturity flexible-fuel engines that burn methanol, ethanol and gasoline interchangeably, or any mixture of the three. The blending makes it possible for the alcohol fuels to replace gasoline gradually, with a minimum of disruption in the supply system. As part of its stringent new policy against air pollution, California is to serve as a pre-production testing ground for the cars. By the end of the century, electric vehicles may also be making a dent in urban transportation. All three major American auto companies have been working on new electric vans and cars. As part of a demonstration project, General Motors, for example, plans to begin production next month of the first 60 modern electric vehicles produced in this country. The years and decades ahead are likely to see a vigorous competitive struggle among these fuels and technologies, as well as compressed natural gas, which is being sold experimentally as an auto fuel in the United States. The potential of these alternatives as an antidote to dependence on imported petroleum is clear: foreign oil and petroleum products contributed 15.3 quadrillion B.T.U.'s, or ''quads,'' to the nation's energy consumption last year; the burning of gasoline, measured last year at 13.74 quads, can be said to have soaked up most of the imports. The extent to which alternatives could displace oil in energy sectors besides transportation is less clear, some experts say. ''In theory,'' alternatives based on renewable resources ''could be directed to the replacement of oil in all sectors,'' said Dr. Thomas D. Bath of the Solar Energy Research Institute, a Government-supported national laboratory in Golden, Colo. But it would take more money and time to direct alternative resources to specific oil targets in industry, businesses and homes than in transportation, he said. The gains would probably be incremental and piecemeal | Alternatives to Oil Move From the Lab to the Road |
375093_1 | who also is the medical director for the National Neurofibromatosis Foundation. ''It's a really thrilling advance in terms of understanding how brain tumors develop.'' The new results indicate that the neurofibromatosis gene normally works in the body to stem the growth of tumors. Researchers say the disease develops when a person inherits a mutant copy of the gene that is unable to perform its tumor-fighting tasks. So central does the gene seem to be to the growth and overall health of cells that investigators predict that the discovery of its function will yield deep insights into cancer and neurobiology. Results Called 'Very Gratifying' ''It's very exciting and it's very gratifying,'' said Dr. Michael Wigler of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, who has worked on problems related to the new finding. ''In science you so often have to work on a minute aspect of creation. Here they've hit upon something that is far more generally applicable.'' Dr. Raymond L. White and his colleagues at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City are reporting their latest results in today's issue of the journal Cell. On July 13, Dr. White and another team of scientists led by Dr. Francis S. Collins of the University of Michigan announced the isolation of the neurofibromatosis gene after a three-year search. In the new work, the Utah investigators have found that the gene produces a protein similar to a protein already thought to play an important role in the genesis of cancer. Many biologists are studying the familiar protein, known as the GTPase-activating protein, or GAP. By linking neurofibromatosis to a protein of such intense scientific interest, Dr. White and his co-workers virtually assure that biologists who had paid scant attention to the genetic disease will now leap on it for clues to carcinogenesis, thereby hastening research progress on numerous fronts. Benjamin Lewin, the editor of Cell, said that he knew the result would prove of such broad interest to biomedical experts that he rammed the paper through to publication in the uncommonly short time of two weeks. ''With seminal observations like this, which will spark a whole new field of inquiry, we felt justified in publishing this quickly,'' he said. 'A Dream Come True' Dr. Collins said he had made similar observations about the link between the neurofibromatosis protein and GAP, and has a | A Stroke of Luck in Tumor Research |
374945_0 | LEAD: Five people have been awarded the Charles Frankel Prize by the National Endowment for the Humanities. MORTIMER J. ADLER, the philosopher and author; HENRY HAMPTON, a documentary film producer; BERNARD M. W. KNOX, an author and a former director of Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies; DAVID VAN TASSEL, professor of history at Case Western Reserve and founder of National History Day and ETHYLE R. Five people have been awarded the Charles Frankel Prize by the National Endowment for the Humanities. MORTIMER J. ADLER, the philosopher and author; HENRY HAMPTON, a documentary film producer; BERNARD M. W. KNOX, an author and a former director of Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies; DAVID VAN TASSEL, professor of history at Case Western Reserve and founder of National History Day and ETHYLE R. WOLFE, a former provost at Brooklyn College, were recognized for their work in history, literature and other humanitites. The awards, $5,000 each, are named for the late professor of philosophy at Columbia University. This is the second year the Frankel Prizes have been given. | CHRONICLE |
314798_1 | step toward realism in the way people communicate with one another.'' Successful teachers have been using multimedia techniques for decades. They might employ, in different combinations, lecture, discussion, text, pictures, diagrams, music, laboratory experiments and, perhaps, a filmstrip or videotape. The result is usually a more effective learning experience than that produced by using one medium alone. With interactive multimedia, students can see information, hear it and, most important, manipulate it. Information no longer has to be presented in a fixed, linear format, start to finish, A to Z. Instead, students can rearrange material or focus on information to suit their needs and interests. ''Our technology taps the power of the users, whether they are teachers or students, to look at primary visual and textual documents and rearrange them in an order that makes sense to them,'' said E. Jane White, director of educational services for ABC News Interactive, a division of ABC News that develops multimedia software on laser videodisks. Some educators say the current generation of students are ''visual learners'' for whom video, animation and graphics are more powerful than books and blackboards. Others suggest that television has stimulated children's appetite for entertainment, and that multimedia makes education more entertaining, thus more effective. Either way, many educators are recognizing the potential of video-capable personal computers as teaching tools. Recent advances in technology have given some PC's the power to display video, to show high-resolution color graphics and animation, to play CD-quality sound or recreate speech, to store and retrieve vast amounts of data, to do so from remote data bases via modem and to give users access to information in an interactive way. Within months, computer add-in boards will be available that will enable some personal computers to capture video signals from a VCR, camcorder or cable television, and to display them on screen as part of a document. Big Industry Seen Powerful microprocessors, relatively inexpensive computer memory and other technological pieces are falling into place for multimedia applications, and some analysts foresee a multibillion-dollar industry emerging by the mid-1990's, with education and business training as the driving applications. Companies such as the International Business Machines Corporation and Apple Computer Inc. are already investing millions of dollars in multimedia research and development. Apple has been the leader in applying multimedia to education, but I.B.M., Commodore Business Machines Inc. and other companies have publicly entered the contest. Some interactive | Sensory Overload |
314680_5 | what it is to be. The new order needed a new language, or so he thought. Here is a sketch of his attempted putsch. The key idea is his rejection of the notion that man's relation to the world is one of subject to object. He rejected Descartes's model of man as a self that is conscious of the objects that make up the external world, and doubting his own ability to know. To illustrate this, Heidegger has a telling example of a man hammering a nail. He points out that unless something goes wrong (for example, if the hammer breaks) the hammerer is not aware of his tool as an object at all. He just gets on with it. Conscious awareness of an object is just not part of the job. Heidegger held that much, if not most, human activity is unguided by conscious awareness. It is selfless absorption in a task. Something similar is true, he thought, of ethical behavior. Instead of being a matter of deliberate, conscious choices between alternative courses of action, most ethical behavior is - and should be - largely automatic. Instead of trying to follow abstract principles, people should try to be ''authentic.'' They should have the sort of understanding of themselves and the world that lets them respond automatically (in an appropriate manner) to whatever situation presents itself. This is the part of Heidegger's thought that most influenced Sartre and the existentialists. The void created by existentialist anxiety - the recognition that there are no abstract principles to follow - is filled by nonrational commitment. With hindsight, it can also be seen as the part of Heidegger's work that meshes with inspirational totalitarian movements such as Nazism. The rhetoric of destiny, of a driving current of history to which man must commit himself, dovetails all too easily with some of Heidegger's early thinking, particularly his main work, ''Sein und Zeit'' (''Being and Time'') which was first published in 1927. His later work developed several new themes. For one thing, his writing became more historical. He tried to give an account of man's understanding of the nature of being in different epochs - especially in ancient Greece - leading up to the 20th-century view of life, which he found to be deeply flawed. In particular, he regarded it as overly technological, by which he meant that modern man saw everything, even himself, as | HEIDEGGER FOR FUN AND PROFIT |
314788_5 | we have a managerial tool to do it,'' Mr. Olson said. In the process the classroom teacher becomes the leader of an education team that includes paraprofessionals, teaching aides, computer-laboratory managers and volunteers. The other technological building block, and tool of cultural transformation, at Cougar Valley - one that turned out to be surprisingly important - has been the ''local area network'' linking all the computers in the school. Teachers and administrators use its electronic mail feature to take attendance, assemble lunch orders, schedule meetings and exchange information on items such as assignments for particular students. ''Not only does it free teachers from busywork, but they are no longer isolated from each other,'' Mr. Olson said. ''Even if they go through a whole day without seeing each other, teachers can work together. Education has become a collective enterprise.'' Students' habits have also been transformed by the new technology. For example, they write compositions on the computer. ''They're even putting out a newspaper,'' said Steve Anderson, the principal. ''I've never seen that before.'' They also used the computers to help organize a production of ''The Nutcracker.'' Attempts to create an electronic mail system for students, however, had to be scrapped when someone gained access to another student's electronic files and destroyed some work. Going electronic has not been problem-free. Becky Feller, a sixth-grader, commplained, for example, ''My parents don't think I get enough homework.'' One reason, Mr. Olson suggested, is that parents don't see the telltale paper trail and don't realize that much of the homework is now being done - more quickly and efficiently - in school on computers. ''We didn't realize how much communicating we were doing by sending home worksheets,'' he said. Mr. Anderson acknowledges that Cougar Valley has yet to tap the technology's full potential. Even now, teachers are considering putting in a voice-mail system so that parents can call after working hours and get oral reports on their children's progress. Ultimately, Mr. Anderson would like to see the entire curriculum tied into the computer, along with records of student performance. Among other things, this would eliminate much of the need for testing, since a teacher, parent or state education official could determine exactly where each student stood at a given point. ''The problem is that all the software programs are freestanding,'' Mr. Anderson said, and that the district's software doesn't dovetail with the schools' own curriculum. | Reform by High-Tech |
314867_3 | lively amalgam of blues music, cuisines Cajun or Chinese, local crafts. But Lake Merritt serves primarily as an enduring reminder of the area's natural habitability, still a bird watcher's dream home to geese, pelicans and an aviary for migratory birds. Logging provided much of the early impetus for the city's growth. The elaborate mansions and dance halls of San Francisco's Barbary Coast were constructed largely from redwoods that choked the upper flanks of Oakland's hills. Despite a pace of defoliation to rival anything in the Amazon rain forest, Redwood Park - as well as the adjoining preserves of the 60,000-acre East Bay Regional Park District - still houses quite a few of the species for which it is named. The 2,162 acres of trails, meadows and lakes make the term ''park'' seem awfully meager. Along with the smaller Huckleberry, Roundtop and Anthony Chabot, Redwood forms an urban wilderness. Visitors who don't have the time or money to drive hundreds of miles up the north coast can get a pretty close approximation of unspoiled California flora and fauna with a hike through Oakland's hills. Along the park's approach up Joaquin Miller Road, near the estate of this self-styled poet laureate of fin-de-siecle California, there's still evidence of why he once declared, ''Thou Rose-land! Oak-land, thou, mine own! Thou shalt be the Throned Queen of this vast west sea!'' The prophecy never did come quite true, though, in sheer tonnage of cargo, the Port of Oakland has now outstripped San Francisco many times over. Its containerized operations can be viewed from the city's tiniest park, Portview, basically just a watchtower with snack bar at the far western end of the Seventh Street, providing a seagull-style view of the cranes and lifts and, of course, the bay. A sense of the active waterfront can be felt most sharply in Alameda, a quiet community built on a sand bar facing Oakland, with its many marinas, shipyards, naval base and beaches. It would become a railroad town - its late-night dark is filled with the sound of locomotive whistles and train disassembly. It is, after all, the great Western terminus of the first transcontinental route, the end of the line in more ways than one. As a result, Oakland has taken on the character brought by various waves of arrivals: first, as a once-huge transplanted Midwestern drugstore, soberly middle American, and much later, with the | The Other City By the Bay |
314627_0 | LEAD: IT has been 30 years since mentally retarded children were removed from seclusion and allowed to participate in public education. IT has been 30 years since mentally retarded children were removed from seclusion and allowed to participate in public education. Initially, this was accomplished guardedly, and for years, for a variety of reasons, many were still excluded. It was not until Public Law 94-142 in 1975 that the barriers fell completely, resulting in almost zero rejection rate for retarded children in public schools. This, plus court decisions and the trend toward deinstitutionalization, made it incumbent upon school districts to provide training for many of the most profoundly retarded children, plus a variety of children with multiple handicaps. The districts have complied with varying degrees of success and enthusiasm. The next major trend in society toward the humane accommodation of the mentally retarded was group homes in communities. Initially, there had been serious opposition, but one now senses that there is a growing acceptance of their need and value. The focus is now on vocational accommodation. How has and how will society accommodate these people, particularly when they are beyond educational years? Will there be enough support systems to enable them to continue living with their families, if so desired? Will there be enough group and foster homes to allow for more independent living? What will be the long-term vocational opportunities? Historically, people with mild mental retardation (I.Q.'s 60 to 80) have been marginally accommodated by society, with the combination of classes for the educably retarded and the early termination of school to work at menial jobs. Most have been able to melt into society, marry, reproduce, and function reasonably well, though often requiring the assistance of social agencies. People with moderate retardation (I.Q.'s roughly 30 to 55), those whose education had to be fought for, have for the most part been accommodated in sheltered workshops. These facilities vary, but in general they are factory settings, run by support agencies, subsidized by donations and governmental aid. They offer differing but minimal remuneration to their clients, as indicated by the fact that often it will cost more for transportation than is accrued in wages. As unbalanced as this may seem, with the exception of a select few who could function marginally at community level employment, sheltered workshops were the ultimate of what was hoped for. They offered a feeling of productivity, | What the Retarded Need: Social Skills |
314694_0 | LEAD: Special reports in this issue include: Special reports in this issue include: * Scrutinizing science education. * Treating children's trauma. * Striking textbook gold. * Quizzing quotes: who said what. * Cutting extracurriculars. | Special Today: Education Life/Section 4A |
314870_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: When one was raised in a place as remote as northern Vermont, it comes as quite a surprise to see an article promoting the area as a base for sightseeing (''Where Vermont and Quebec Meld,'' Travel, Sept. 24). The article, which recently came to my attention, nicely captures the similarities and distinctions between the American and To the Editor: When one was raised in a place as remote as northern Vermont, it comes as quite a surprise to see an article promoting the area as a base for sightseeing (''Where Vermont and Quebec Meld,'' Travel, Sept. 24). The article, which recently came to my attention, nicely captures the similarities and distinctions between the American and Canadian cultures. My memories of growing up in Newport, Vt., in the 1960's and early 1970's include many reminders of the two cultures. To keep up with American rock music, I listened to a French-language radio station based in Sherbrooke, Quebec, which played many English-language hits. I knew many native Vermonters who spoke only French and many more who were bilingual. Canadian holidays, including French Canadian holidays such as St. Jean Baptiste Day, brought thousands of tourists to Vermont for shopping and sightseeing. My family occasionally bought groceries in Canada, but we could not buy sugar there because Canada obtains much of its sugar from Cuba, and Cuban products could not be brought into the United States. As the article suggested, restaurants in Canada offer many French Canadian dishes not often available a few miles away in Vermont. One treat not mentioned, but which I recommend to anyone with a sweet tooth, is tarte au sucre (maple sugar pie). RICHARD R. PETERSON New York, N.Y. | Vermont |
316542_2 | the merrier,'' says a Baptist, Phyllis Krilovich of St. James. Dropout Prevention The mothers lined up with their children at the school bus stop. When the yellow school bus arrived, they got on, children and mothers. Teen-age mothers and their toddlers go to school every day in Bellport, part of an unusual program sponsored by Boces II of Suffolk County. It's called EPPA, Educational Program for Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents. There are 88 babies and 112 mothers enrolled in the program. The mothers range in age from 13 to 21, their children are from 2 weeks to 4 years old. Acronyms and statistics aside, for many the program means the difference between a life on welfare and a productive career. ''When I found out I was pregnant I didn't know what to do,'' said Marie Holland of Coram, 16 years old, and now the mother of Karena, 2 months old. ''But then I heard about this program and I knew this was the place for me.'' Supplying education to teen-age mothers and day care for their children ''is dropout prevention,'' said Ronald Black, the principal of the Boces II Brookhaven Technical Center. ''We want to break the cycle of staying home and going on welfare once you have a baby,'' Mr. Black said. ''We teach the girls how to earn a living for themselves and their child.'' The mothers are taught academic subjects as well as occupational trades. The babies are taught socialization and routine. ''This is not just baby-sitting,'' Mr. Black said as he took a visitor or a tour of the nursery rooms. From newborns sleeping in their cribs to toddlers being taken on a cart ride through the hallways, children seem everywhere. Volunteer grandmothers, like Mary Schilb and Virginia Gibbs, help take care of them. More volunteer grandmothers are needed, Mr. Black said, since more teen-age mothers are signing up for the program. ''Educationally, we're trying to hold on to them,'' he said. ''I got a call from a grandmother whose daughter graduated from here last year,'' said Carole Rockman, the center's social worker. ''She said, 'I want you to know that today is the first day of college for my daughter. She couldn't have done it without the program.' '' Stray Cat Blues ''People who have cats are panicky,'' said Muriel Deitch of Smithtown. ''They are frightened to let their pets out to go to the | Long Island Journal |
316482_0 | LEAD: THE PRESENCE OF MYTH By Leszek Kolakowski. Translated by Adam Czerniawski. 138 pp. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. $19.95. THE PRESENCE OF MYTH By Leszek Kolakowski. Translated by Adam Czerniawski. 138 pp. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. $19.95. This book was first published in 1972, in Paris but in Polish. The philosopher Leszek Kolakowski wrote it in 1966, the year he was expelled from the Communist Party; two years later he lost his professorship at Warsaw University and was forced into exile. It is easy to understand why the Polish censors should have wanted to prevent the publication of a book that challenges every orthodoxy. Aware of the subversive power of all genuine philosophy, Mr. Kolakowski has often liked to play the part of the jester whose lack of authority allows him to challenge established dogma. A healthy society needs its jesters. Thus Poland needed and still needs Mr. Kolakowski (he is now a professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and a fellow of All Soul's College, Oxford), as we, especially those of us who are philosophers, also need him. Like Ludwig Wittgenstein in the ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,'' Mr. Kolakowski in ''The Presence of Myth'' claims that the extent to which the thoughts expressed in this brief, brash book are the author's own is of small significance. His ''concise summary of a nonexistent treatise, which its potential readers will in all probability be spared'' thus does not bother with footnotes, quotations or documentation, and it announces more than argues for its theses. But just this ''lack'' makes this an engaging book; more than most, it invites us to think for ourselves. Mr. Kolakowski's point of departure is the sharply drawn opposition of myth and science. The latter he understands as ''the extension of civilization's technological core. In the scientific sense, 'true' means that which has the chance of being employed in effective technological procedures.'' Few philosophers or scientists would be satisfied with such a reductive understanding of truth. Much too quickly Mr. Kolakowski reduces knowledge to scientific knowledge, and scientific knowledge to what helps us master the environment. But is the point of science to get at things as they really are, whatever that might mean? Is it not rather to give us control of the world? In the world known to science we find no value or purpose that would allow | OUR ANALGESIC CULTURE |
316749_2 | in Houston, praised the piloting skills of Captain Brandenstein and Lieut. Comdr. James D. Wetherbee of the Navy, saying that their maneuvering of the shuttle in the rendezvous with the satellite was ''even better than we supposed.'' Mr. Pennington said the pilots carried out a surprisingly fuel-efficient rendezvous, using much less steering propellant than had been budgeted. This left them with more than ample fuel reserves for the planned 10-day flight. Tests on Fliers Themselves Among the crew's activities for rest of the mission will be continuing 11 medical tests to understand the changes that the human body undergoes in the microgravity environment of orbit. One of the astronauts, G. David Low, is collecting data daily on each crew member. The objectives will be to document decreases in heart size, changes in heart rates and changes in inner eye pressures and in the retina. Other tests should determine whether immune systems are altered in space flight. The astronauts are also taking prescription drugs to treat the motion sickness that has afflicted more than half of all American and Soviet space travelers. Marsha S. Ivins has been operating experiments in the growth of crystals and the behavior of fluids in the microgravity environment. Today she reported a possible crack in an ampule holding a solid sample of indium, a material being used in crystal-growth studies. Mr. Pennington said this particular experiment was ''temporarily suspended'' until the astronauts, advised by scientists from the ground, could determine the nature of the malfunction and whether it posed any hazard. Tests About Ground Sites One experiment, conducted for the first time on this mission, is a test of a new technique for determining the precise latitude and longitude of known ground sites. The astronauts used a modified Hasselblad camera equipped with a wide-angle lens. They would take two photographs of the same target at 15-second intervals. The data were then fed into a small computer to calculate the site's precise longitude and latitude. The experiment is expected to assist oceanographers to determine the location of objects observed from space, particularly transient features. The planned long duration of the Columbia's flight itself is an experiment. Most shuttle missions run about five days. The Columbia has been supplied with additional fuel and oxygen for 10 days, or 12, if necessary, in a test associated with plans to modify shuttles for flights that last up to 30 days. | In Space News Conference, Astronauts Hail Their Good Catch |
320384_0 | LEAD: Bulldozers and drill platforms have come here to the Wao Kele O Puna, the last big tropical rain forest in the United States, where a showdown over the fate of this jungle may ultimately determine the fate of modern Hawaii as well. Bulldozers and drill platforms have come here to the Wao Kele O Puna, the last big tropical rain forest in the United States, where a showdown over the fate of this jungle may ultimately determine the fate of modern Hawaii as well. The roads that have been hacked through the humid forest form the rough beginnings of a plan to turn the east rift of the Kilauea Volcano into one of the world's largest geothermal power plants. By tapping into the steam beneath the erupting volcano on the big island of Hawaii, political and business leaders hope to free themselves from a heavy dependence on foreign oil and to provide electricity for future development. But critics say the plan to industrialize much of the forest would not only destroy an ecological treasure, but could also burden a generation of Hawaiians with unwanted real estate development and debt. Pressures Pro and Con ''Why should America's last big tropical rain forest be sacrificed so all the new hotels can run their air-conditioners?'' asked one opponent, Russell Ruderman, a biologist. Gov. John D. Waihee 3d said the project had put tremendous political pressure on him. Environmental groups, led by the Rain Forest Action Network in San Francisco, are urging tourists to boycott the state to protest development in the rain forest. Tourism, an $8 billion industry built around more than six million visitors to the islands every year, is the economic engine that runs Hawaii. Although Hawaiian government officials say they are not sure how much the boycott is hurting them, they are stung by the criticism. ''This is not Brazil or Peru,'' Governor Waihee said, responding to critics of tropical deforestation. He said he supported the development of geothermal plants as the key to Hawaii's energy future, but added, ''That doesn't mean geothermal power has an absolute right to destroy a rain forest.'' Small but 'Fascinating' The forest is small by South American standards, with 27,000 acres much smaller than what is destroyed in South America each week. But the plan to cut roads, build power plants, and string electric transmission lines through Wao Kele O Puna (the name | Energy Project Imperils a Rain Forest |
320409_0 | LEAD: Researchers have found preliminary evidence that fluoride causes cancer in male rats, Federal officials said today. But they cautioned that the study did not suggest that the fluoride in water and toothpaste would cause cancer. Researchers have found preliminary evidence that fluoride causes cancer in male rats, Federal officials said today. But they cautioned that the study did not suggest that the fluoride in water and toothpaste would cause cancer. Studies sponsored by the National Toxicological Program examined 1,360 mice and rats. The unexpected findings showed that a handful of cases of bone cancer might be attributed to fluoride-spiked water that the animals received in their diet. The cancers occurred mostly at doses 50 to 100 times the amount humans ingest from water or toothpaste, said James Brown, a spokesman for the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. The cancers occurred only in the male rats. For 40 years, health officials have advocated the use of fluoride in toothpaste and drinking water because it has been shown to reduce cavities by 50 percent. Extensive epidemiological research was done by the National Cancer Institute and others in the 1970, said Dr. Samuel Broder, director of the National Cancer Institute. ''The issue has been looked at carefully in the past,'' Dr. Broder said, ''and there is just no evidence in humans for a connection between fluoride and cancer. But we will revisit the data again.'' The kind of cancer the mice and rats in the study got was bone cancer, which in humans accounts for only about 2,000 of the 1.1 million cancers recorded each year in the United States. The mice and rats were put in groups of 50. Among 50 male rats, one bone cancer was found at the medium dose of 45 parts per million of fluoride and four more bone cancers were found in the male rats at the dose of 79 parts per million fluoride. Mice did not show any bone cancers, nor did the female rats. The study is not strong evidence, but is ''a weak signal'' that fluoride can cause cancer, said a Federal official who is familiar with the study. Because the bone cancers occurred only in male rats and not at all in mice, in light of previous studies, ''the controlling data must be the human data,'' Dr. Broder said. | FLUORIDE HELD CLUE TO CANCER IN RATS |
320382_3 | security has been directed chiefly against the threat represented by a lone outsider. Such a person, she added, often is an irrational passenger who has done little advance planning before trying to hijack or sabotage a plane. Aimed at Sophisticated Attacks The Baltimore/Washington project is intended to guard against more sophisticated threats, she said. Those would include people who plan their actions more deliberately, who could be disgruntled airline or airport employees or professional terrorists. Officials said the threat in this country from organized terrorist groups has to be addressed differently than it would be if foreign airports were being dealt with, officials said. ''In this country, you can't have a constantly armed airport,'' Ms. Olascoaga said, alluding to the fact that heavily armed troops are commonplace in some overseas terminals. Improving security for flights to the United States from abroad is complicated by issues of diplomacy and differences in regulations and operating procedures. But lessons learned from the test program here could be applied to those flights, officials said. Details of Program The program drawn up by the Sandia-led study group calls for testing that includes the following: * Improved screening of passengers and luggage. This will involve use of advanced detectors of explosives and X-rays. It will also involve psychological testing of workers doing the screening, advanced training techniques and improved pay. * Expanding the system, much of it automated, that will control access of aviation employees as well as outsiders to ramps, planes and other sensitive areas. These people would also be screened for weapons. * Use of closed-circuit television for quick assessment of the validity of an alarm and the degree of danger. * Improvements in communications to speed the dispatch of the ''response force'' and stationing this force in better locations, probably between screening points and boarding gates. ''That way, the adversaries would be coming toward you instead of your having to chase them,'' says Dr. Lyle Malotky, manager of the F.A.A.'s security technology branch. * Installing turnstiles or revolving doors at screening points that could help prevent intruders from reaching planes. The doors could be locked by computerized devices operated by security workers. The Baltimore/Washington airport was chosen for the project partly because it is close to the F.A.A. headquarters in Washington and the agency's Technical Center in Atlantic City, and because of its pioneering work in security.USAird(Pacific Southwest Airlines)Pan Amd(Pan American World Airways) | Security System at Nuclear Sites Adapted for Use at Airports |
320333_1 | and occupation, people can contribute comprehensive daily diaries, one or two lines or anything in between. Their names, addresses and other personal details are confidential. Three times a year, the archive mails to contributors questionnaires or so-called directives, which include one or more topics that volunteers are asked to write about within the context of their own experiences and attitudes, as well as what they see and hear around them. One recent directive began with the premise that people are guided by rules of conduct - usually unspoken - whether they call them manners, politeness, etiquette or other terms. It then asked contributors to describe what they viewed as appropriate behavior for different situations and how their own behavior and those of others compared. Another directive asked for views on the use of ''relaxants and stimulants,'' including illegal and prescribed drugs, coffee, food and cigarettes. Still another asked contributors to write a detailed account of their activities on June 15 of last year, from the time they got up in the morning to the time they switched off the lights. No detail was too trivial. Educating About AIDS One directive a couple of years ago asked contributors for their views on the British Government's campaign to educate people about AIDS. What the archive received were not just reflections on the campaign but ideas, opinions and experiences that highlighted the complexity of the issue. A retired woman, 69 years old, said in her response to the query: ''My little 9-year-old granddaughter came in from school one day and said: 'I know how you don't get AIDS. You have to wear a condom.' '' ''What worries me most about AIDS,'' a 33-year-old journalist wrote, ''is the freedom it gives to petty little bigots to say 'I told you so.' '' The founders of the original Mass Observation social research organization were not formally trained as social scientists. One of them, Tom Harrisson, was a self-taught social anthropologist and bird watcher who decided to watch people in Britain because he decided that they were just as exotic, unique and fascinating. Charles Madge was a newspaper reporter and poet and the third founder, Humphrey Jennings, was a documentary film maker. The Press vs. the People What the men shared was a view that the press did not accurately portray how people lived and what they believed. They set out to prove it after the | Falmer Journal; When No Detail Is Too Trivial, Write It All Down |
318888_4 | Stock Up Several miners have boasted that they flew in enough provisions last month to enable them to hold out in the jungle until March 15, the day Fernando Collor de Mello is to be inaugurated as the next President of Brazil. Mr. Collor, a free market conservative, easily swept the Amazon in the December elections. Roraima voters gave him his largest state margin in all of Brazil. Mr. Collor has not made public his stand on the gold miners. Early this month Rubem Vilar, a senator from Mr. Collor's home state, Alagoas, traveled to Boa Vista to express solidarity with the miners and to report by telephone to the President-elect, who was on vacation in Europe. On Monday, one of Mr. Collor's environmental advisers, Apoena Elles, said of the Yanomami lands, ''Now the situation has reached such a point that it is practically impossible to evacuate the area.'' To lure the miners out of the woods and to defuse the threat of violence in Boa Vista, Brazil's Justice Minister announced last week that a deal had been reached to allow the miners to prospect for gold in 2,567 square miles of national forest in Roraima. Accord an 'Escape Valve' ''We have reached a solution Brazilian-style - with sugar and affection,'' the minister, Saulo Ramos, announced on Jan. 9. ''Taking out the miners is not like lining up pupils at a boarding school.'' Romeu Tuma, director general of the federal police, hailed the arrangement as an ''escape valve.'' An accord signed by Roraima State officials and miners' representatives requires the miners to deliver their firearms to the police, adopt equipment to cut the use of mercury in gold refining and pay a tax to be used to build and support schools and medical clinics for the Yanomami. ''Gold miners are not animals to be hunted in the forest,'' said Romero Juca, the Governor of Roraima. But Indian rights groups, Catholic church leaders, environmentalists and federal prosecutors immediately denounced the arrangment as a violation of a judge's order last October that the miners be withdrawn from all Yanomami lands, an area twice the size of Switzerland. Critics said the new arrangement would set a precedent for opening up the two-thirds of Yanomami lands that are now classified as national forests. 'A Complete Disaster' ''It will be a complete disaster because the miners leave a trail of devastation wherever they go,'' said | Gold's Lure vs. Indian Rights: A Brazilian Conflict Sets the Amazon Aflame |
318664_5 | in classic films and in television programing we've seen various human activities explored. Even a well-done sitcom can explore questions of value and behavior, family interaction or the issue of intolerance. But television is certainly not a paragon of virtue. Unfortunately we don't always have a high level of programing to choose from and therefore get distracted by many questionable presentations. But overall, I don't think it's a wasteland. Q. Has there been an increase of student interest in the humanities? A. I've seen an increase in the last five years of more students pursuing course work in English, history, the performing arts, philosophy and language. Some say students are marching away from business. Students have decided, for complex reasons, to pursue fields in the humanities because they feel that these four years are simply not there for vocational or training purposes. To some degree they've been made aware that business and industry are looking for liberally educated graduates, that the professional side of their education, while very important, should be complimented by a strong commitment to the humanities. Q. How should someone who does not have the time or resources to attend college go about studying the humanities? A. A good place to start is the public library, many of which offer fine reading and discussion programs. If you do decide to do this on your own, I suggest focusing on an area of history you're interested in and reading as many historical accounts and novels of the period as you can. But there is no getting around the fact that a structured environment is the most accepted way of pursuing a discourse with the humanities. Q. What drove you to study the humanities? A. My introduction to the humanities began when I was a child. My father was an educator and books and discussions were always an important part of our home life. I developed an early interest in reading about the history of the Civil War. Later I moved into the classic Roman and Greek texts. By the time I reached high school, I had become fascinated with exploring why things happen. This interest led me into higher education. Q. Many people believe that we're living in the most exciting period of history. As a historian, what's your response? A. Similar feelings have been expressed consistently throughout history, except during times of disruption. If you go back | 'What It Means to Be a Human Being' |
318835_1 | out. If some event makes passengers anxious, they may find themselves in a tug of war between saying nothing - and letting the trip continue, presumably without event - or pointing out a problem and creating a fuss. A couple traveling from Kennedy International Airport to Paris last November got caught in this bind. The couple, Robert and Betsy Kunkle, were to take Pan Am Flight 114 to Paris; the plane was to go on to Geneva and Tel Aviv. While they were waiting to board, Mr. Kunkle noticed two young men with six large red carry-on bags at their feet marked as the property of a Government ministry in Baghdad, Iraq. He commented that it was possible that the bags had not been put through the X-ray machine because of rules on diplomatic immunity. He asked the security guard, who confirmed that the pouches had not been put through the machine. Mr. Kunkle then asked a Pan Am employee, who talked to the guard, who added the information that a record of the six diplomatic pouches had been entered in a book. The diplomats boarded the plane, and the Kunkles decided not to take that flight. Pan Am began to shift the Kunkles to another flight. According to Mrs. Kunkle's account, Pan Am employees were eager to keep discussion of the matter from being heard by other passengers, but four people overheard and also decided not to take the flight. They were reassured by Pan Am people that there was no need for concern. When Mrs. Kunkle saw the second officer in the boarding area, she spoke to him about the bags and this ultimately involved the captain. Mrs. Kunkle said that as the flight officers and others adjourned to a side room to discuss the matter, she heard the captain say he was not going to pilot the plane with the bags aboard. (Pan Am said it could not disclose the pilot's name, in response to a request to interview him.) The officers and others then boarded the plane and later, Mrs. Kunkle said, the two Iraqis with their pouches were escorted off the plane. The Iraqis were angry, she said, but the Pan Am people said that the captain had the final word, diplomatic immunity or no. The Iraqis were told, her account continued, that they could have their pouches X-rayed and take them aboard, but they | Airport Security: A Case in Point |
318954_1 | the dead end, and, in the final analysis, to normalize the situation concerning Nagorno-Karabakh. By acting in this way, we proceeded from the conviction that violence, enmity and continuation of the conflict would not result in anything good but would only poison the atmosphere still further and lead to still greater loss of life and breed more violence. Decision of Supreme Soviet Unfortunately, under these conditions party, local-government and state bodies of the two republics did not show due responsibility, but thoughtfulness and quite often conceded principled positions under the pressure of nationalist groups. This is how it happened lately when sessions of the Supreme Soviets of Armenia and Azerbaijan took decisions that run counter to the Soviet Constitution. They not only failed to promote the normalization of the situation but, on the contrary, aggravated it and heightened confrontation. Neither side listened to the voice of reason conveyed with particular forcefulness from the rostrum of the second Congress of People's Deputies. The situation was made use of by antisocial, antipopular elements for further stirring up enmity and exacerbation of the conflict. Armed clashes began, particularly in border areas and in places where Armenians and Azerbaijanis lived side by side. On Jan. 15 this year, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet had to adopt a decree introducing a state of emergency in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region and in some other areas of Azerbaijan and Armenia. Calls to End the Violence It would seem this measure should have stopped violence and brought to reason extremists and the leaders of popular fronts that plunged their peoples into an abyss of chaos and suffering. But the voice of reason, the voice of the Soviet public and all peoples of our country was ignored this time too. The calls for dialogue, conciliation and tolerance remained unheeded. Moreover, militant national-careerists continued to heat up the situation, form groups of militants and to blockade roads and airports. Attacks on servicemen, arms depots and law enforcement agencies became frequent. The events assumed a particularly tragic character in Baku: rampages, killings, and the driving of innocent people out of their homes and to beyond the republic. Extremist forces' actions in Azerbaijan assumed increasingly overt anti-state, anti-constitutional and anti-popular character. The legitimate authorities were forcibly debarred from performing their functions, and Government structures were disrupted in a number of areas. Engineering and technical facilities were destroyed along hundreds of kilometers | UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST: Gorbachev; Soviet Chief's Address On Azerbaijan Fighting |
318661_3 | been plagued with delays because of its small staff and high employee turnover. ''But when it comes to public safety, that's no excuse,'' said Mr. Khona, the Bethel engineer. Order From the State The Bethel bridge, on Old Shelter Rock Road, rests above the East Town Swamp. It serves as the main link between Bethel and Danbury and was considered hazardous by the State Department of Transportation, which told Mr. Khona in the spring of 1987 to make the necessary renovations. ''The railings were falling apart, and it needed to be expanded to two lanes to accomodate the traffic,'' he said. ''It was not what you'd call safe.'' Mr. Khona called the Corps of Engineers in May 1987 and was told that the project would probably require a general permit - issued for minor construction projects that have no impact on the wetlands and are essential to a town. Then he received approval from the Inlands Wetlands Agencies in Danbury and Bethel and again spoke with another official from the corps, who assured him he would qualify for a general permit. Maps and Documents But in February 1988, he was told that the town would not qualify for a general permit and that it must submit an application with detailed maps as well as a complete description of the work involved. Mr. Khona spent several weeks compiling the necessary documents and submitted them in May. Two months later, the corps approved the town's application to renovate the bridge. ''All this time I was in this emergency situation to get this bridge fixed,'' said Mr. Khona. ''If a car would have gone into the swamp, the town would have been held responsible.'' He added that the renovations, which included expanding the bridge to two lanes, were completed in two months. Mr. Valiton of the corps, though unfamiliar with the bridge project, said he regretted the incident. ''There's no question that if there is a project of public safety that didn't get approved quickly it certainly wasn't deliberate,'' he said. ''We try to single out any project where the public safety is concerned. On the other hand, we've got anywhere from 30 to 50 people handling applications and any one of these people may decide to leave the agency in the middle of a project. In other words, if a new and inexperienced person receives the application and doesn't realize that it's | Wetlands Protection Brings a Backlog to Projects |
318741_4 | Silverado Savings and Loan into trouble. Those men (and a few women) were paying themselves some of the highest salaries in America even as, it is alleged, their companies were being wildly mismanaged. John Gotti, you poor devil, those savings and loan guys and others like them at some entertainment companies know the score. Just consider Steve Ross, chairman of Warner Communications Inc., who is paying himself about $200 million over the next five years. Why bother to sell numbers or drugs or prostitution? Just write out a check with the stockholders' money, made payable to yourself. Have your lawyers certify that it's fine. That's American business today, John, and you missed out. Or buy your company away from your stockholders at less than its real value. Use the stockholders' money to hire the lawyers and bankers to help you take away their money. Go ahead. It's cool. It happens every day. No one gets shot. Or buy a piece of your company. Or award yourself a control block of preferred shares. Or use your company's working capital to buy bonds and get tips on takeovers in return, as many of Drexel Burnham Lambert's players are alleged to have done. That's modern organization. That's modern crime. The Securities and Exchange Commission won't bother you. There will be a private plaintiffs' suit, but it will get settled - with the money of the stockholders - and you get away clean and rich. And you don't have to give a thing in return for all that money in this new world. The old-style organized criminal had at least to deliver gin or prostitution. But the new way, the Wall Street way, means you don't deliver a thing. You run the company into the ground, you take from the stockholders unreasonably. You sell a worthless bond, and nobody lays a hand on you. It is a lesson for you, John Gotti. If you have young relatives, don't teach them the fish wholesaling business, and forget linen supply. If you want to do someone a favor, try corporate finance at a big-name school. Try calling in some favors in Vegas to get them started in mergers and acquisitions at a big firm in Beverly Hills or New York. The world has changed. Be in finance. Be in management of a public company. They learned from you and now you can learn from them. FORUM | The New Organized Crime |
318129_2 | Building, which serves 60 airlines and up to 4,000 travelers an hour. The immigration and naturalization hall has been doubled in size, eliminating the ''sheep barn,'' the crowded hallway that served as the introduction to the United States and New York City for millions of confused, tired passengers. Baggage belts and the customs halls have also been upgraded. A new area for airlines to collect baggage from passengers with connecting flights has been built, eliminating an archaic system that helped contribute to Kennedy's ranking as one of the worst airports for lost luggage. ''Kennedy compares favorably with any other airport I've been in,'' Tony Bromell of Limerick, Ireland, said after he arrived during the peak holiday season in December. His bags were delivered to the customs hall after only 10 minutes, he said, adding that ''for the first time ever, they were all together.'' Steps have also been taken to make the airport friendlier. In 1988 the Port Authority introduced individual luggage carts, long a staple in international airports around the world, and now the United States Customs Service is allowing skycaps to help arriving passengers with their bags starting at the belts, instead of waiting until they are through customs. In addition, a surge in crime that followed the introduction of the carts has been reduced by eliminating a 25-cent deposit. Hustlers who began collecting unreturned carts for the quarter deposits had also preyed on travelers, demanding tips and stealing bags. Last year through November, there were 3,000 larcenies, a 9 percent decline from the 3,324 in the same period in 1988. Luggage thefts declined 13.5 percent, to 1,788 from 2,068. Kennedy, Adviser Says, 'Needs Help Desperately' Consumer groups, like the International Airline Passengers Association, report no more complaints about Kennedy than about any other international airport. Yet anecdotal horror stories abound. Carl Spielvogel, the chairman of Backer Spielvogel Bates Worldwide Inc., the advertising agency, said he is astounded at the time needed to get to Kennedy. On his most recent trip, to Italy four days before Christmas, he left midtown Manhattan two and a half hours before his flight. ''It took us two hours and 15 minutes,'' he said. ''When we got on the flight going to Rome, there were three very agitated women who had missed the flight to Milan because they had not left enough time.'' Though the number of people traveling through Kennedy climbed in | On Land and in Air, Kennedy Delays Persist |
318169_0 | LEAD: The Soviet public is receiving only incomplete news reports on the violence raging in the southern Soviet Union as editors in Moscow are asserting that the problems of coverage are similar to those involved in reporting foreign conflicts. The Soviet public is receiving only incomplete news reports on the violence raging in the southern Soviet Union as editors in Moscow are asserting that the problems of coverage are similar to those involved in reporting foreign conflicts. Unlike foreign correspondents, who have been banned from traveling to the areas where the nationalist conflicts are raging, Soviet reporters have access to the regions. But they have been shot at, beaten, threatened and had their cameras smashed, as groups of h Armenians and Azerbaijanis accuse them of distorting the truth about their battles. Another hindrance to coverage is a paradoxical consequence of an increasingly independent Soviet press. It appears that officials who might have once confided crucial information to Soviet reporters on the assumption that tight censorship would prevent the news from being made public are now treating their increasingly aggressive domestic press with the wariness once reserved for foreigners. In that atmosphere, it has been nearly impossible to form a comprehensive picture of what is going on throughout the tumultuous region and what set off the latest burst of violence. A Dangerous Conflict ''Without a doubt, this is one of the most difficult stories we have ever had to cover,'' said Viktor F. Gorlenko, a deputy editor at Pravda, the Communist Party daily. ''Thankfully, none of our reporters has been physically attacked. But they have been harassed by both sides. Everyone is always trying to sell you their story and it's very difficult to distinguish the truth. In a situation like this, the truth of what is happening is different to different people.'' Western reporters here are accustomed to relying on telephone interviews and Soviet news accounts of events in turbulent regions of the country, since even in these days of openness, Soviet authorities regularly close cities torn by political turmoil. The official reasons given for the bans are to protect the foreign press corps. Soviet journalists are allowed to travel at will in their own country, but it is not unusual for them to have learned of unrest and turmoil only after the worst of it has passed. But the near civil war in Azerbaijan has been the first time | Soviet Press Disrupted By Republic's Violence |
318186_0 | LEAD: Charles Hernu, a French Socialist politician whose time as Defense Minister in the early 1980's was clouded by scandal, died of a heart attack Wednesday in Villeurbanne, a Lyons suburb where he had been Mayor for more than two decades. He was 66 years old. Charles Hernu, a French Socialist politician whose time as Defense Minister in the early 1980's was clouded by scandal, died of a heart attack Wednesday in Villeurbanne, a Lyons suburb where he had been Mayor for more than two decades. He was 66 years old. At his death, Mr. Hernu was a deputy in the French National Assembly. While he was Defense Minister, from 1981 until 1985, France became less isolationist in its military policies, and he oversaw the formation of a Rapid Deployment Force meant to intervene swiftly should West Germany come under threat first. Then came the incident involving the Greenpeace environmentalist organization in July 1985. Then French secret service frogmen affixed magnetic mines to the hull of the Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace vessel preparing to leave a New Zealand port to protest French nuclear tests in the Pacific. The explosion sank the ship and killed a Greenpeace photographer. Mr. Hernu initially said he bore no responsiblity for the incident, but only days later he resigned. Eventually, after two months of repeated denials, the French Government admitted that its agents had carried out the sinking under orders. Whether Mr. Hernu himself played a role in the matter has not been disclosed. Widespread Sympathy After his resignation, Mr. Hernu apparently benefited politically from widespread sympathy; he was seen as a person who had assumed responsibility for the Greenpeace affair in silence and with courage. Eugene Charles Hernu was born July 3, 1923, at Quimper, a port in Britanny. At 19, after attending secondary school in Lyons, he joined the French Resistance, which harried the German occupation forces in in World War II. In the Resistance, he formed an enduring friendship with Francois Mitterrand, now President of France. Later in the war he joined the army. Afterward he went into journalism, and in 1951 he entered the political world, where he was a protege of the Socialist leader Pierre Mendes-France. He was elected to a first term in the National Assembly in 1956 and was also a deputy in the 1970's as well as the 1980's. He was first elected Mayor of Villeurbanne in | Charles Hernu, Official in France Hit by 1980's Scandal, Dies at 66 |
316374_1 | Columbia is a secret military effort to make ''Stealth'' satellites that are difficult to track by radar. The experiment was described in a space agency document in 1984. Stealth technology centers on the use of radar-absorbing composite material and special shapes that reduce radar echoes. The Stealth, or B-2, bomber was unveiled in 1988, and a Stealth jet fighter made its military debut in a recent bombing run in Panama. While little is publicly known about the many applications of Stealth technology, the Federal document suggests that it is being evaluated for use in space. Most space tracking is done by radar on the ground. Series of Tests Listed The 190-page document published by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration lists a series of tests being conducted for the Defense Department to find the best material for the construction of advanced new satellites and spacecraft. ''Although many materials appear to be satisfactory for a variety of applications,'' the document says, ''there is insufficient knowledge of the physical and optical properties of these materials after long periods in space.'' The document lists one of the experiments aboard the Long Duration Exposure Facility, which was recovered yesterday after nearly six years in space, as ''radar camouflage materials,'' saying the main experimenter is Gary Grider at the Air Force Wright Aeronautical Laboratory near Dayton, Ohio. The satellite holds 57 experiments, including some designed to test how well materials survive in space. In a telephone interview, Mr. Grider said he could make no comment on the project. ''Some of the stuff is classified,'' he said. Deceptive Spy Satellites Stealth satellite projects have long been rumored to exist, with some private experts suggesting that small test satellites have already been deployed by various shuttle missions. One purpose of such satellites would be to spy on enemies without their knowledge. American spy satellites are extensively tracked by Soviet radar so that secret ground operations can be curtailed or covered up when they are known to be under observation. ''Camouflage in space'' is essential if satellites are to outwit such monitoring, Angelo M. Codevilla, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution in California, wrote in ''Soviet Strategic Deception,'' a collection of reports published by the Hoover Institution. While it may be difficult to make spy satellites completely disappear from Soviet radar scopes, he said, the selective use of Stealth techniques could easily disguise their true mission. | Retrieved Craft Tested Stealth Materials |
316422_0 | LEAD: John Cardinal O'Connor of New York will ordain a married man with four children to the priesthood today. John Cardinal O'Connor of New York will ordain a married man with four children to the priesthood today. The ordination of Trevor Nicholls, a former Anglican priest, will be performed under a special ''pastoral provision'' approved by Pope John Paul II in 1980 to accommodate married Anglican priests and Lutheran ministers who have converted to Roman Catholicism. Two Catholic groups who oppose the celibacy requirement for the church's clergy plan to go St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, where the ordination is to take place at 10 A.M. Members of the groups, Corpus, a national organization of former priests, and the Renewal Coordinating Committee, based in New York, hope to distribute a statement supporting the ordination but asserting that it reveals ''the contradiction within the Catholic church.'' ''The same church that says to Father Nicholls that he can be married and be a priest says to its own priests that they may not marry and be priests,'' the statement says. Mr. Nicholls, who is 47 years old, converted to Catholicism in 1975 in England. He now teaches at Coleman Catholic High School in Kingston, N.Y. A small number of former Anglican priests with families have been given posts with low visibility after being ordained in the Catholic church. In New York, the Rev. Marc Oliver, another former Anglican priest, was ordained last May and is assigned to a training program at St. Joseph's. 2d Woman as Bishop The Rev. Penelope Ann Bansall Jamieson, the second woman chosen as an Anglican bishop, will be consecrated in June or July, a spokesman for the Anglican Church of New Zealand says. Mrs. Jamieson was elected in November, just a year after the Rev. Barbara C. Harris was elected suffragan, or assistant, bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Massachusetts. The choice of Mrs. Jamieson, who will head the diocese of Dunedin in New Zealand, stirred far less debate than the election of Bishop Harris. Mrs. Jamieson will be the first woman to head a diocese in any of the 27 national churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The 200,000-member Anglican Church of New Zealand has ordained women for 12 years, and almost 100 of its 800 priests are women. Mrs. Jamieson, 47 years old, earned a doctorate at the University of Wellington. Ordained a priest in | Religion Notes |
314190_3 | motion. Many Technologies Improved General Motors executives said the Impact represented improvements in a variety of technologies and design elements rather than any single breakthrough. Using technical and design experience gleaned from an experimental, solar-powered vehicle called the Sunraycer developed several years ago, the company and a number of outside partners improved the durability of the battery system, developed an aerodynamic design that reduces wind resistance by more than a third, produced a more efficient motor and even developed special tires that lessen drag. ''It's a total system approach,'' said John S. Zwerner, a top engineer at General Motors. ''Every detail has been important.'' General Motors has so far built only a single prototype of the Impact. It is powered by 32 traditional lead-acid batteries, the same kind used on most cars today. The batteries can be recharged using an extension cord and regular household current. The car has two electric engines, each of which drives one of the front wheels. Unlike many other previous electric cars, the Impact does not have an auxiliary gasoline-powered engine. Detroit has tinkered with electric engine as long ago as 1916, but much of the research in the field lately has been into small trucks and vans used for short-haul urban deliveries. With the Impact, General Motors is for the first time considering selling an electric vehicle for primary use as a passenger car. Operating Costs Doubled General Motors executives said that at current prices, it costs about $40 a month to fuel and service a car in the Los Angeles area that is driven 10,000 miles a year. The power cost for the Impact would be only $5 to $12 a month, they said, but the batteries would have to be replaced every two years at a cost of $1,500, bringing the operating cost of using the car to about twice that of a gasoline-powered vehicle, $960 in two years. But they are making rapid improvements in battery life and hope operating costs will be on a par within two or three years. General Motors said work on the Impact was done within the company's design centers as well as by Aerovironment Inc., a California company that did much of the engineering and construction work. Among the other partners on the project were the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, which developed the car's low-resistance tires, and Alcoa, which made the lightweight aluminum wheels. | G.M. Displays the Impact, An Advanced Electric Car |
320007_2 | with an intensity of less than 75 decibels are unlikely to cause hearing loss even over a long durations of exposure. The sound level of ordinary speech is about 65 decibels, and 75 decibels is equivalent to the noise from a dishwasher or vacuum cleaner. But exposure to sound levels above 85 decibels are potentially hazardous if endured for 8 hours a day for prolonged periods, the report said, and higher levels could cause permanent damage from shorter durations. The panel noted that 85 decibels is roughly equivalent to the sound of a power lawn mower or a food blender. While 10 million of the 28 million cases of hearing loss that afflict Americans are associated with loud noise, experts said it was unclear if the incidence of impairment had risen in recent years because few studies of the problem had been made. Dr. Brookhouser said that although some sources of intense noise like certain occupational settings have existed for decades, there were some newer problems to which many people were exposed, including rock concerts and personal stereos. Hazard From Personal Stereos Dr. William W. Clark of the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, who studied noise exposure from leisure activities, noted in a presentation prepared for the panel that personal stereos can produce up to 115 decibels through their earphones, which makes them potentially hazardous at maximum volumes. In addition, the report said several studies indicate that rock concerts have sound levels of more than 100 decibels. The panel's report said more research is needed on how different types of noise damage the hearing. Most structures of the inner ear can be damaged by loud sounds, including all cell types in the cochlea, which contains the highly specialized hair cells that turn vibrations into electrical impulses that go to the brain. Loud noise may cause structural changes in these hair cells and the swelling of auditory nerve endings leading from them that may be reversible if they are not too severe, the panel said, but repeated exposure can destroy the structures. The report called for more research on why some people appear less susceptible to hearing damage than others, more work on how repeated exposure to noise may contribute to the hearing loss normally seen in the elderly, and the development of a good animal model for human hearing on which detailed work can be conducted. HEALTH | Risk of Hearing Loss Is Growing, Panel Says |
320047_3 | Fishermen here complain that the restrictions would cover only boats from the United States. Vessels from Spain, Canada and Japan, the other large swordfishing nations, would be free to continue their free-fishing ways and increase exports to this country. ''The fishermen have legitimate complaints,'' said David Crestin, deputy director of the Office of Fishery Conservation and Management at the Marine Fisheries Service. ''But if the United States wants to take a leadership role in conservation, we can't sit back.'' New Look at Ruling Since Colonial days, New York State has recognized the Shinnecock Indians as a tribe. Now the 350 Shinnecocks who live on an 800-acre reservation in Southampton are debating whether to seek tribal status with the Federal Government. On the surface, the issue is not cultural identity but gaining another source of money and, perhaps, assistance: The designation would make the tribe eligible for education, health and governmental administration programs under the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Shinnecocks are already eligible for other Federal aid, like nutrition programs for the elderly. But perhaps more important, many Shinnecocks are questioning whether their traditional form of tribal government - three male trustees elected by the men of the tribe - is fit to deal with the same complex problems that all communities face today: land preservation, family violence, drug and alcohol abuse. ''The tribal government is not up to that challenge,'' said Roberta Hunter, 38, a member of a newly formed women's group on the reservation. The group is pressing the trustees for a full public discussion of the Federal recognition issue, the right for women to vote in tribal affairs and a more active role in regaining ancient Shinnecock lands. ''There's plenty of potential here,'' said David Bunn Martine, a 29-year-old painter who has advocated a more progressive government. ''But too many people are satisfied with the status quo.'' The News and Then Some Just how many articles about zoning boards and chambers of commerce can anyone really read? That's the question that people in Sag Harbor are asking these days as a battle of weekly newspapers in this old whaling village shows no signs of waning. It started a little over a year ago when Gardner Cowles 3d, the scion of the Midwestern newspaper family, bought the 129-year-old Sag Harbor Express. The publisher of a venerable weekly in nearby East Hampton, Helen S. Rattray, jumped into the fray | The Talk of the South Fork; Baymen Find No Warmth This Winter |
320145_1 | pretrial hearing General Noriega need only show the material to be relevant (as broadly defined by Federal Rule of Evidence 401) to his defense. Suppose, for example, that Government documents show that the National Security Council knew of General Noriega's drug activity, but chose to condone it because of his assistance in training Nicaraguan contras; General Noriega may argue that these documents tend to show that the United States approved his alleged drug trafficking. Since deciding the persuasiveness of evidence is the province of the jury, and not of the judge in pretrial hearings, the material would likely be admissible. Assuming the court finds the classified information relevant to the defense, the Government may move to substitute a summary of the material or a statement admitting the essential facts. Senator D'Amato states that ''the Government must be given the opportunity to modify the material,'' obscuring that a judge must disallow the revisions unless the modified materials ''provide the defendant with substantially the same ability to make his defense'' as the original documents would - 18 U.S Code app. s 6(c)(1). If the court refuses to permit modifications, use of the classified materials may be barred only upon the filing of an affidavit by the Attorney General, which under the Classified Information Procedures Act obliges the court to dismiss the relevant charges or take other remedial action to protect the interests of the defendant. This scenario was recently played out for the first time in the Iran-contra prosecution of Joseph Fernandez led by Lawrence Walsh. Similarly, the threat of such an affidavit caused Mr. Walsh to drop key conspiracy charges in the Oliver L. North trial. It is ironic that Senator D'Amato's article, which argues against General Noriega's likely use of classified materials, invokes Mr. North as an example of a highly publicized defendant who received a fair trial. It bears noting that the fair trial concerns in the North case were substantially different from those in the Noriega prosecution. Surely, Senator D'Amato recalls the strong public approval of Mr. North expressed in many quarters. One is hard pressed to believe that the news media portrayal of General Noriega over the last two years will predispose any potential juror to view him in so favorable a light. MARK ECKENWILER New York, Jan. 6, 1990 The writer is a law student at New York University, where he is on the Law Review. | Noriega's Trial Not Like North's |
319969_2 | A regular workout ''strengthens the body, relaxes the mind and toughens the spirit,'' Ms. Reed said. ''It can prove to you that you have what it takes to do what is necessary.'' For disabled youngsters, physical activities can foster independence and help their parents let go once they see what the children are able to accomplish on their own. At the Children's Hospital in Denver, the innovative Handicapped Sports Program, now 20 years old, includes downhill skiing, river rafting, horseback riding and golf. One notable beneficiary was a 15-year-old boy born with a spinal defect. He has no lower left leg and wears a brace on his small, weak right leg. The boy learned how to ski on one ski with two outriggers, which are special forearm crutches with ski tips. Skiing strengthened his muscles, improved his coordination and got him out of the house. He made new friends and found independence and self-confidence. The Special Olympics is another program that fosters achievement and independence among the disabled. This international program, which is intended for people over 8 years of age who are mentally retarded, provides sports training as well as Olympic-style competitions in 22 sports. Many of the 750,000 participants are also physically disabled, but ranking systems give everyone an equal chance to be winners. Helpful Movements Dr. Seymour Pedinoff, who specializes in rehabilitative exercise, urges daily exercise for people with physical limitations. Isometrics, in which muscles are contracted without any joint movements, can be used to increase muscular strength in almost any patient, he said in an interview with Patient Care magazine. Typical exercises include making a fist and pressing palms together. Isotonic exercise, in which muscles are contracted as joints move, can increase endurance and help maintain range of motion in the joints. Chair sit-ups are particularly helpful isotonic exercises for people in wheelchairs. While grasping the arms of the chair, the person lifts himself off the seat. The exercise strengthens muscles in the arms, neck, shoulders and abdomen. Dr. Pedinoff, the director of rehabilitation medicine at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, N.J., recommends swimming as an ideal activity for people who are physically limited. Those who do not swim can perform isotonic exercises in the water. At the Moss Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia, the disabled are offered a course in the wheelchair equivalent of martial arts to enhance self-protection as well as strength and coordination. Participants learn | Personal Health |
319928_2 | will mark a transition from the last eight months of tensions and antagonisms to a more conciliatory period in which the country can return more to normal. Many Still in Prison The lifting of martial law nearly two weeks ago has had a somewhat soothing effect, and many residents have been able to forget their hostilities for a time and focus not on ideology or politics but on matters like the best recipe for making jiaozi, the Chinese dumplings eaten over the holiday. ''Tightening control this time of year wouldn't do any good, would it?'' a senior Chinese official said. The official would not comment, however, on whether the loosening was only temporary, and many Chinese doubt there has been any fundamental change in the Government's approach. They note that hundreds, and more likely thousands, of dissidents remain in prison, and that the authorities are continuing tight surveillance over the population. Most fundamentally, they say, there is no prospect that the leadership is willing to respond meaningfully to the nation's aspirations for greater democracy. But in many small ways the atmosphere is more relaxed. Some Chinese who have seen dress rehearsals for the New Year's Eve entertainment show on television - one of the most-watched productions all year and sometimes a gauge of the cultural atmosphere - said it does not have much political content. While it mentions issues like family planning, it does not include denunciations of ''counterrevolutionaries,'' they said. A Tough Balancing Act Over all, they added, the program is similar to last year's, when the artistic world was considered by some intellectuals to be at its most vibrant. Improving its image while maintaining control will be a tough balancing act for the leadership, many Chinese say. These are times of thrift, with the national economic retrenchment program well along, and as economic growth slows there is only so much prosperity to go around. Already, officials have reported that the Government has warned employers not to give too much food away to employees. But not many ''work units'' seem to be listening, for many employers are providing as much as ever. Between the gift-giving and exchanging of goods there also are whispers of comparisons with last year. How much the workers receive is often taken as a measure of concern for them by the work unit and in some cases the state. The amount also depends on the | Beijing Journal; With Fish as Bait, the Leaders Troll for Approval |
319198_2 | and recruit a lesbian candidate at the same time. After a national search, they chose Ms. Zillhart and Ms. Frost, both graduates of the Luther Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul, who have lived together for five years. The two women were certified for ordination but later withdrew so they could live openly as a gay couple. The two churches that hired the gay ministers came to their decisions by very different routes. Half the congregants at St. Francis are gay and consider it their mission to have a gay minister, said the pastor, the Rev. James DeLange. At United Lutheran, which has no openly gay members, the pastor, the Rev. John Frykman, called it ''a justice issue.'' On Saturday, robed in white, the three candidates were welcomed into the church by about 40 Lutheran ministers, who conducted the ordination rites in place of the bishop. The sermon, a militant call for gay men and women to lead ''unapologetic'' lives, was delivered by the Rev. Carter Heyward, a lesbian who is a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., and who was ordained in an unauthorized ceremony before the church accepted women as ministers. Lutheran officials say they are sympathetic to those excluded from the ministry and have embarked on a study of sexuality and church policy. But they say the explicit challenge by the San Francisco churches is more likely to polarize the debate than to advance it. The two churches take exception. ''They are asking these people to stay ashamed while the church gets its act together,'' Mr. DeLange said. ''For the people living this every day, this is not a theoretical issue, not something to be endlessly debated. And like any large institution, our church is not going to be changed from the top down, but from the bottom up and the edges in.'' The three new ministers said their challenge had already succeeded by forcing the church to grapple with an issue it would rather defer. They said they expected their congregations to be punished and their ordinations invalidated, at least temporarily. ''It may not be this ministry; it may not be Ruth, Jeff and Phyllis,'' said Ms. Frost, a third-generation Lutheran pastor, whose late father was an esteemed theologian. ''But if it is not Ruth, Jeff and Phyllis now, it will be Susan and Peter and whoever later on, because this will happen. This | San Francisco Journal; Milestone In Church: Gay Clergy Ordained |
320994_2 | at peak hours, tightened security measures force travelers to check in an hour, or maybe even two, before the theoretical departure time. Many passengers show up early because they had to get out of their hotel at noon or 1 P.M. and don't know where to go with their luggage except to the airport. They will have several hours to kill before a late-afternoon or evening flight. Then there are the compulsive types. ''I am one of those,'' said Bob Morgenstern of New York, my seatmate on a recent Swissair flight to Zurich. ''I always give myself plenty of time to get to J.F.K. or La Guardia because I am afraid the cab will have a flat tire or the airport bus will get stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. Also, I'd hate to get bumped off an overbooked plane, and I want to be sure to get an aisle seat.'' At his destination Mr. Morgenstern's bags are invariably among the last to tumble out onto the carrousel, when he is already fearing they have been lost; they were in the container that was loaded first and pushed deep inside the luggage hold. After all the waiting at the check-in counter, after passport and customs controls, and after the luggage searches and electronic scanning, passengers will find themselves sitting on rows of plastic chairs. They stare at the electronic departures sign and the closed boarding gate, are defenselessly exposed to Muzak, and wonder whether the public-address system just gargled out that it was their flight that was delayed ''for technical reasons.'' SOME airports in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa give departing passengers such a thorough going-over that they feel like espionage or murder suspects, and then keep them endlessly in grim spaces that look like holding pens of their governments' secret police. Eleven years ago I sat for two hours in a bare hall at Mehrabad Airport in Teheran with 40 or so fellow detainees, many of whom were clearly worrying whether they would eventually be allowed to board an Alitalia jetliner that was nowhere to be seen. When we did get airborne, most passengers applauded, some shook hands and a few started crying. There are airports one loves to leave. In such cheerless surroundings as Mehrabad's, a passenger feels like a prisoner who must learn to endure the monotony of the cellblock. Travelers who have recently visited | At Airports, Can Time Be Made to Fly? |
320953_0 | LEAD: Once gadgets of the rich and powerful, cellular telephones are moving into the mainstream. Still primarily business tools, the phones are increasingly showing up in the cars, handbags and pockets of the elderly, housewives, outdoor enthusiasts and others who need instant communications. Once gadgets of the rich and powerful, cellular telephones are moving into the mainstream. Still primarily business tools, the phones are increasingly showing up in the cars, handbags and pockets of the elderly, housewives, outdoor enthusiasts and others who need instant communications. Consumers are signing up for cellular service in record numbers, attracted by declining equipment costs and new portable phones small enough to fit into shirt pockets. Some industry analysts predict that portable telephones (which, unlike mobile phones, can be carried outside cars) will become as common, by the next decade, as videocassette recorders and microwave ovens. ''We are looking at the dawn of an explosion in cellular telephone usage that will lead to stiff competition and better, more innovative products and services for consumers,'' said Steve Sazegari, an analyst with the Dataquest market research firm of San Jose, Calif. With demand for cellular service increasing rapidly, equipment makers and service providers are scrambling to capture a larger share of the market. Service providers are offering discounts, and the cellular carriers are installing digital equipment to serve the deluge of new subscribers. Equipment manufacturers have reduced the average price of a car, or mobile, phone to about $400 including installation, from about $2,000 six years ago. They are battling to produce phones that are smaller, more powerful and safer to operate while driving. Sales from cellular service are expected to top $4.4 billion this year, up from an estimated $3.3 billion in 1989. Equipment sales, $620 million in 1989, should reach $655 million in 1990. The United States had more than 2.7 million cellular subscribers - mainly doctors, lawyers, executives and other professionals - in June 1989, according to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. In 1988, subscribers increased 67 percent, to 2.06 million. Still, the price of cellular service will have to drop substantially before there is a phone in every car or pocket. A typical cellular customer now pays about $100 a month. Cellular carriers recently introduced discount plans that allow heavy users to pay a high monthly charge of $35 to $50 and low usage rates of about 30 cents to 40 cents per | All About/Cellular Telephones; A Gadget That May Soon Become the Latest Necessity |
321089_0 | LEAD: While I do not disagree that education spending can be reduced, such reduction should not and must not target students with special needs. While I do not disagree that education spending can be reduced, such reduction should not and must not target students with special needs. In 1972, P.A.R.C. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the ''Right to Education'' case, declared that no child is uneducable. This landmark Federal court case was a forerunner to the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This law states that all handicapped children are entitled to a free and appropriate public education. Yes, appropriate education for a child who is severely or profoundly retarded may mean learning to walk or to use a spoon or even to brush his teeth. I beg to differ with Ms. Goldblatt as to who should teach these life skills. Teachers who choose to teach students with severe handicaps receive training to teach those skills. A much respected educator from the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Lou Brown, believes that we need the brightest, most creative teachers for students with the most severe handicaps. The Federal Government has shown the wisdom to mandate education for all handicapped children (and has most recently extended that mandate from birth onward). Within the mandates are funds so that special education is not a burden on local school districts. LINDA PAUL Melville | Special Care For Special Needs |
321347_0 | LEAD: Jane Goldblatt's letter of Dec. 24 is timely in that it addresses an issue that Federal courts have recently decided. The issue concerns the education of all children, regardless of the extent of their handicaps. Jane Goldblatt's letter of Dec. 24 is timely in that it addresses an issue that Federal courts have recently decided. The issue concerns the education of all children, regardless of the extent of their handicaps. The Supreme Court, at the end of November, declined to review a lower court ruling that reaffirms the obligation of local districts to educate all children, including those with the most profound handicaps. In this case, a 13-year-old boy in Rochester, N.H., had been denied public schooling by his local district because of the profound nature of his handicaps. The Rochester School District intended to appeal a court order that mandated public education services for the boy. By declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court upheld the principle of a free public education for all. Most likely, Ms. Goldblatt would argue with the definition of education as it applies to persons with serious handicaps. She seems to consider education strictly in terms of the transmission of traditional academic subjects to students who are deemed capable of learning. Like many others, Ms. Goldblatt is conscerned that our schools maintain standards that promote the interests of an academically elite student body. Fortunately, there are many people in our society who would disagree with Ms. Goldblatt. These individuals recognize that our country upholds values that respect individual differences and provide opportunities to all persons regardless of race, gender, religion, physical or mental attributes, wealth, and so on. Such values are reflected in our society through our public schools, which are intended to educate all children regardless of their differences. John Dewey is often cited as the foremost representative of this position. Dewey defines education thus: ''Since growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself.'' With this more liberal definition of education, persons with the most severe handicapping conditions are considered capable of learning, for everybody has the ability to change and grow. The broader definition applies to all in the educational process, although it recognizes that personal goals may vary from person to person, depending on the extent of individual abilities and disabilities. Thus some students in our schools may strive | Obligation to Educate The Handicapped |
321001_1 | requires the skills of a paralegal researcher, if not an attorney. To know your rights on a flight, you must read the fine print of the contract you signed, perhaps without a thought, when you bought your ticket. And the fine print is not on the back of the ticket, but in a detailed document called the ''conditions of carriage,'' which the passenger ordinarily never sees. There are legislative efforts under way in Congress to better protect the rights of travelers in an era of deregulation, intense competition and growing air travel. But prospects for such legislation appear dim; similar efforts died in 1988. One provision of the bills drafted by Representative Fortney H. (Pete) Stark, a California Democrat, and Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat, would prohibit airlines from canceling flights for reasons unrelated to weather or safety. The Metzenbaum bill would bar cancellations within 24 hours of scheduled departure; the Stark bill would bar them three days in advance, and compensate passengers in cash for violations. In the meantime, a concise guide to the airline customer's current rights is the pamphlet ''Facts and Advice for Airline Passengers,'' published by the Aviation Consumer Action Project in Washington. The pamphlet can be obtained for $2 from the group, which is affiliated with Ralph Nader's Public Citizen organization, at Post Office Box 19029, Washington, D.C. 20036. The answers to Mr. DaSilva's questions on bumping take up two of the pamphlet's 23 pages. All airlines overbook their flights in anticipation that some passengers with reservations will not show up. When the calculations go awry, it is perfectly legal for the airlines to tell passengers with reservations that they cannot get aboard. Usually, the airlines attract enough people to be bumped voluntarily, often in exchange for free tickets. But that is not always possible, especially on international flights when few volunteers come forward. BRIEFLY, a passenger who is bumped involuntarily from a flight has the right to a flight leaving soon on another plane or to cash compensation. If the airline can get you to your destination within an hour of the originally scheduled time, there is no further compensation. If the alternative flight arrives between one and two hours late, you must be paid cash compensation equal to the fare of the original, oversold flight, up to $200. If the delay is two hours or more (four hours or more on | Fine Print Governs Your Rights in the Air |
320981_4 | average butterfly lives for a week or so, though some do live longer. Most butterflies feed on nectar, which is like sugar, a quick energy source. They expend themselves in a week.'' Beyond the lab is the North American Aviary, which houses species native to Florida and the South, including the zebra, Julia, monarch and giant swallowtail. The brightly colored insects fly freely around visitors, sometimes alighting on one's shoulder. ''They love people,'' Mr. Boender says. ''They've been born with them. You never see butterflies this close to you in the wild.'' The North American Aviary is also home to part of the huge floral collection Mr. Boender has amassed in his travels in North and South America and the Caribbean. ''We display approximately 100 flowering orchids at all times,'' he says. ''And we have one of the largest collections of passion flowers in the world.'' As is true of almost all the flowers, there is a butterfly connection. ''There's a whole family of butterflies - the Heliconidae - that feeds on passion vines,'' he says. Beyond this aviary is the Basket Walk, lined with nectar-producing blossoms and pupa-emerging cases. On this day, pupa recently arrived from Malaysia are ready to emerge. Dozens of them hang from pins on the undersides of shelves in the cases. Some are green and look like strange, twisted leaves; others are silver and gold and look like expensive earrings from Tiffany's. THE next room is the Tropical Rain Forest, the main aviary. In this 8,000-square-foot screened elliptical building, hundreds of tropical butterflies roam freely, along with yellow, white, blue and green parakeets, amid a landscape that includes a waterfall, observation decks, bridges and a pool with Technicolor Japanese koi. A tropical rain shower falls every five minutes. The Brazilian owl butterfly - the world's largest, with a wing span of 6 to 8 inches - is king here. Owls are everywhere, hanging on trees and using their many-shades-of-brown bodies for camouflage, resting on the underside of rock tunnels, sitting on the rotten fruit they love to eat or even clinging to the fingers and shoulders of guides. Unlike the owls, most of the butterflies in the rain forest are bright and luminous. ''The color here becomes more spectacular,'' Mr. Boender says. ''As you get nearer the Equator, many of the colors become brighter. There are more reds, blues, greens, all the iridescent colors, to | A World Of Butterflies In Florida |
321106_2 | were this a film rather than a play. She does this in two respects, but with apparent hesitation. In several scenes she uses the character of a quirky hired hand as a commentator, and she approaches a few moments silently with choreographic intent, most effectively in the death of the book's two lovers. The adaptation is less rewarding in its use of music. Kim D. Sherman's mild background score makes one more aware of the misleading similarities between this show and a musical like ''Oklahoma!'' The two share a frontier landscape, but the Cather novel is an unrelenting view of survival on a bleak prairie, far closer to the film ''The Emigrants,'' in which stoicism beomes self-denial. The soul of ''O Pioneers!'' is the heroic character of Alexandra Bergson. As a teen-ager in a barren stretch of Nebraska, she is forced to take charge of her family after the death of her father. She becomes a humane symbol of Miss Cather's conviction that ''the history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.'' At the same time, her youngest brother, Emil, represents the possibilities of the immigrant experience. The wisest decision in Mr. Kuhlke's production was to cast Mary McDonnell as Alexandra. The role brings out the steeliest and the most sensitive side of this actress and, reflecting her character, she herself becomes the bulwark of the production. In a subtly shaded characterization, she delineates the progression of Alexandra from a willful adolescent to a kind of earth spirit, someone whom Miss Cather identified with the land itself. It is a performance deserving of a more generous adaptation. Randle Mell, playing opposite Ms. McDonnell as her lifelong friend, Carl Linstrum, projects the decency of his searching character. It is a supporting role that echoes throughout the story, expressing the world beyond this small Nebraska town. Neil Maffin and John Carpenter are helpful as Emil and the hired hand (who walks with bare feet even in the coldest weather). The rest of the large cast is problematic, beginning with Jennifer Rohn, who misinterprets her character's vivacity for artificiality and seems far too contemporary; Thomas Schall, who is unable to don his character's comprehensive mantle of anger, and Kate Phelan, who turns Alexandra's sister-in-law into a caricature. Sharper acting would certainly be beneficial, but it would not overcome the limitations of the adaptation or of Mr. Kuhlke's | Review/Theater; Bonding With the Land In Cather's 'O Pioneers!' |
321140_0 | LEAD: THE changes sweeping Eastern Europe are stirring hopes here and in some quarters of Havana that Fidel Castro's long reign over Cuba may be coming to an end. ''We are sure something has to happen in our sad country,'' a dissident in Havana wrote to a friend in the Miami area, where more than 500,000 Cubans have fled since Mr. THE changes sweeping Eastern Europe are stirring hopes here and in some quarters of Havana that Fidel Castro's long reign over Cuba may be coming to an end. ''We are sure something has to happen in our sad country,'' a dissident in Havana wrote to a friend in the Miami area, where more than 500,000 Cubans have fled since Mr. Castro took power in 1959. Anticipation in Miami has reached such levels that the police have prepared plans to control celebrating crowds of Cuban exiles on the day Mr. Castro falls. But many experts on Cuba, including Bush Administration officials, say the anticipation represents only the dreams of Mr. Castro's enemies. ''We don't see much in the way of political change in Cuba in the wake of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,'' said an Administration official who wishes Mr. Castro only the worst. ''My guess is that Castro is relatively secure.'' The hopes that the Cuban leader is on the decline are based on his isolation as the only Soviet ally outside Asia to resist a trend toward market economies and increased personal liberties. In addition, the Soviet Union may be less willing to bolster the struggling Cuban economy, making life more austere. Indeed, 75 percent of Cuba's trade is with the Soviet Union and most of its economic aid, about $13 million a day, comes from Moscow, much of it in the form of subsidies. The Soviets buy Cuba's main export, sugar, at more than double the world price and provide petroleum at special low prices, which allows Cuba to sell some of it for hard currency. An abrupt end to the economic assistance would be catastrophic. Moscow's diplomats say that a decline in aid and trade is likely as Soviet industry becomes more profit-oriented and more cash is required for domestic development. But they insist that any reduction will be gradual. Experts on Cuba say this is likely to hold true because Moscow still wants the use of Mr. Castro's island for electronic surveillance of the | Other Walls May Fall, But in Fortress Cuba Castro Stands Firm |
315529_0 | LEAD: At the Consumer Electronics Show here this week, a company introduced a portable handset system that allows people with cellular car phones to receive calls up to 1,000 feet from their vehicles. At the Consumer Electronics Show here this week, a company introduced a portable handset system that allows people with cellular car phones to receive calls up to 1,000 feet from their vehicles. The handsized device, made by Advanced Cellular Technology Inc., fits inside a shirt pocket and has a 24-hour battery life. To talk on the system, users must press a button on the handset. The system, called Celltalker C-1000, is a ''walkie-talkie'' extension of the cellular car phone in much the way that a cordless phone is a radio extension of the base station in the home. For years, people with cellular telephones in their cars have complained that they often miss important calls when they stop for a bite to eat or to visit a client. To remedy that, many connected their car horns to their cellular phones so that the horn would beep when the phone rang. But often they could not hear the horn inside a restaurant or office building, or failed to get to the phone before the caller hung up. Now Advanced Cellular, based in Santa Clara, Calif., believes it has solved the problem. ''This new product eliminates the anxiety of missing urgent telephone calls because you are away from the car,'' said Dean Antonis, Advanced Cellular's president. ''It allows people who have invested in a stationary car phone to enjoy the benefits of a portable cellular phone.'' Advanced Cellular spent $100,000 to develop the system over the last 14 months. The Celltalker, which sells for $175, is similar to a child's walkie-talkie unit in both appearance and sound quality. Advanced Cellular expects at least 5 percent of the 2.4 million cellular phone owners in the United States to be interested in the extension system, which is available from cellular phone-service marketers. BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY | Answering the Car Phone When Away From the Car |
322014_0 | LEAD: Sugar futures prices fell sharply yesterday in the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange after a rally, prompted by a forecast of reduced world production, sputtered and failed. Sugar futures prices fell sharply yesterday in the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange after a rally, prompted by a forecast of reduced world production, sputtered and failed. In other commodity markets, grain and soybean futures fell; energy futures were mostly lower, and livestock and meat futures were mixed, Sugar futures settled 0.36 cent to 0.46 cent lower, with the contract for delivery in March down 0.43 cent at 14.44 cents a pound. The market rallied strongly early in the session after the West German statistical firm F. O. Licht released a revised 1989-90 world sugar production forecast of 106.5 million metric tons, about 1.2 million tons below its previous estimate. Licht said that crops in several countries had not lived up to expectations and that the resulting tightening of supplies had created the potential for explosive upward price movement if a large consumer country like the Soviet Union, China or India begins to buy large quantities. Unconfirmed rumors of Soviet buying kept traders on edge last week. The March contract rose up to 15.05 cents a pound, but buyers turned sellers when it became apparent the March price would not top its lifetime high of 15.38 cents. ''The thing just fed on itself, and we had the market ending flat on its face,'' said Arthur Stevenson, an analyst with Prudential-Bache Securities Inc. in New York. Grain and soybean futures settled moderately lower on the Chicago Board of Trade following a report that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev might resign as Communist Party chairman in the Soviet Union. The midafternoon report on the Cable News Network stirred fears of a change in the Soviet Union toward more isolationist policies and less foreign trade, including fewer purchases of foreign grain. The report overshadowed bullish sentiments linked to the strong rebound on Monday in the soybean market, which some analysts had said could mark a turnaround in the market's six-week decline. Energy futures ended mostly lower on the New York Mercantile Exchange ahead of the American Petroleum Institute's weekly inventory report, which showed larger-than-expected supplies across the board. The institute reported a smaller-than-expected 678,000-barrel decline in crude-oil supplies last week, a 7.3-million-barrel increase in gasoline supplies and a 4.7-million-barrel rise in supplies of petroleum distillates, which | Sugar Prices Fall Sharply; Grains and Soybeans Drop |
322084_2 | has paid the bill. In some instances, the hackers actually removed the secret instructions from the microprocessor in old decoders, copied the instructions and installed them in other decoders. Should hackers try to extract the decoding instructions from the new integrated circuit, the new device will automatically erase them, General Instrument said. Its engineers developed the new device over three years at a cost of about $30 million. In addition, General Instrument plans to make differing versions of the new device that while receiving the same signal will make it even more time-consuming for the hackers to break, Mr. Dunham said. But introduction of the new decoder has started a debate over whether owners of the old decoders will continue to receive their programming. While General Instrument and many program suppliers say they will, some owners of the old decoders think the suppliers will one day stop sending signals that can be unscrambled by those decoders because they are not as secure. The old decoders can be replaced at a cost of $129. Indeed, while the new decoder is expected to thwart piracy, the existing one remains vulnerable. That is where the crackdowns have had some effect. Nowhere has the campaign to stop such theft been more evident than in this city, the self-proclaimed entertainment capital of the world. Sports and movie programming are essential for the many bars, restaurants and hotels here. Dealerships Raided One recent morning, Federal agents raided four electronics dealerships selling illegal decoders. Later that day, the agents entered about 20 bars and restaurants - including Art's Place, a bar owned by the Mayor's father - and confiscated decoders the businesses had bought from the dealers. The targets were identified by undercover law-enforcement agents who went to the dealerships posing as potential customers, and then used the dealers' sales records to track down buyers. Simply owning an altered decoder is illegal. Law enforcement officials and industry executives say such raids in Las Vegas, where the majority of satellite systems purchased from dealers are thought to contain illegal decoders, attest to their success in fighting satellite piracy. In the last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has conducted similar raids in about 15 other cities. ''We have effectively shut down most of the illegal satellite equipment vendors in the Las Vegas area,'' said Dave Shepherd, supervisor of white-collar crime for the F.B.I.'s office here. The most significant | A New Decoder to Foil Satellite-TV Pirates |
322176_0 | LEAD: Tomato Juice, Anyone? Tomato Juice, Anyone? ''Orange juice is going to get expensive,'' said Dan Shafer, director of communications for Coca-Cola Foods, which makes Minute Maid Orange Juice products. The freeze in Florida at the end of December reduced the crop by 30 percent, driving prices up. In some Manhattan supermarkets the price for half-gallons of not-from-concentrate orange juice is $3.59 and expected to rise further. While the freeze caused a shortage of juice made in the United States, producers usually make up for shortfalls by buying concentrate from Brazil. But Brazilian producers have taken advantage of the situation and increased their wholesale prices, from $1.37 a pound before the freeze to $1.92 a pound last week. Dr. Bob Behr, economic research director for the Florida Department of Citrus, said the full impact of the price increases will probably not be felt until late February. Prices had been reduced in October, making the increases appear that much more dramatic, he noted. ''Retail prices are due to go up around 20 percent,'' he said, ''but on the basis of yearly averages, we expect that orange juice will cost about 8.5 percent more this year than last year.'' Prices for grapefruit juice will also increase, but not as sharply, he said. Abundance From Chile Now for some good news. Thanks to a very large harvest in Chile, fruits like peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and cherries are more abundant and better quality, with more juice and flavor, than ever before. ''It's like summertime here with all the fruit,'' said Joe Doria, an owner of Grace's Marketplace, 1237 Third Avenue (71st Street) in Manhattan. And prices, often $1.29 to $1.99 a pound in supermarkets, are also down. Fruit labeled ''tree-ripened'' is likely to cost around $1 a pound more but will be sweeter. Some markets have excellent fruit that is fully matured, at $4 to $5 a pound. But there is also some more bad news. The Florida freeze affected some vegetable crops, reducing supplies, driving prices up and diminishing quality. Eggplants, tomatoes, zucchini, green peppers, cucumbers, green beans and arugula are very high at the moment. Corn on the cob is 75 cents to 85 cents an ear. ''The effect on tomatoes was horrendous,'' said Rob Bildner, owner of RLB Food Distributors in West Caldwell, N.J. ''The wholesale price has more than tripled. Comparatively speaking, it makes the Israeli tomatoes a better | FOOD NOTES |
321974_0 | LEAD: rrCommunicating by personal computer has long required a telephone. But yesterday the International Business Machines Corporation and Motorola Inc. announced a joint venture to make it possible for roving employees like sales and repair personnel to reach their computers at headquarters by radio waves. rrCommunicating by personal computer has long required a telephone. But yesterday the International Business Machines Corporation and Motorola Inc. announced a joint venture to make it possible for roving employees like sales and repair personnel to reach their computers at headquarters by radio waves. I.B.M. and Motorola have established a new company, Ardis, to offer a service that will permit high-speed data communications in more than 8,000 American cities over a network of radio towers that I.B.M. has built to connect telephone lines. The system, which will begin operation in April, permits the use of portable or desktop computers or special handheld computers for sending or receiving messages or data at high speed. The companies said the new service, which will cost $50 to $300 a month, might be used to enter sales orders from the field or for communications with delivery people. Industry executives said that in the future many computers would be linked by radio or cellular telephone, making it easy to send and receive data stored on computerized data bases. Such networks will make portable personal computers valuable to people beyond executives, they said. Radio communications might enable personal computers to offer information like maps or guidebooks for travelers. I.B.M. already uses a radio network for its 16,000 I.B.M. and 2,000 ROLM service people. That network was installed by Motorola in 1983. Other companies are offering similar radio data communications systems. For example, Agilis Inc., a Mountain View, Calif., company, has introduced I.B.M.-compatible computers that communicate by radio. Eventually, this system could compete with advanced cellular telephone systems. BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY | Expanding PC Use With Radio Waves |
315377_3 | in his courtroom last week, said he did not know where the defendant would be moved. ''That is something that they do not advise me about,'' he said. ''I'm not really concerned with where he is or how he's being handled, as long as it's done properly.'' Judge Predicts Shorter Trial Judge Hoeveler also spoke about his expectations of the time and unusual circumstances involved in trying General Noriega. He questioned the defense lawyers' predictions that a trial could last as long as a year. ''I can't conceive of that. The idea that the trial would take a year doesn't seem realistic,'' he said, adding that a few months was more likely. The judge, who was appointed to the Federal bench in 1977, said he had never presided over a case of such worldwide attention. ''It has some very interesting and complex legal issues,'' he said. The next stage in the proceedings, he said, will probably be motions from the defense lawyers, who expect to ''attack the jurisdiction of the court'' in the case of a fallen foreign leader. ''The court,'' he said, ''has got to determine whether or not it has jurisdiction.'' Judge Hoeveler then said he expects the defense to seek intelligence documents relevant to the case and then raise questions on whether General Noriega could get an unbiased jury here. ''That might present some problems,'' the judge said. No Decision on 2 Others The judge also said he had not decided how to rule on motions of two defendants indicted with General Noriega, who have asked to be tried separately, arguing that publicity about General Noriega would prejudice their own cases. ''I haven't decided yet,'' Judge Hoeveler said. ''It depends on the extent of involvement of them'' with General Noriega. He said he would not discuss how he would rule, but acknowleged that it is usual for a judge to rule in favor of defendants who want to be tried separately. There also have been talks about adding prominent lawyers to General Noriega's legal team, which now consists of two Miami lawyers, Frank A. Rubino and Steven Kollin. Richard (Racehorse) Haynes, the Houston lawyer who gained national attention in the 1970's by defending Cullen Davis, the Fort Worth oil tycoon, and John Hill, a Houston doctor, in celebrated murder cases, has been approached by representatives of General Noriega about joining his defense, said Judy Fogarty, Mr. Haynes's | OFFICIALS PLANNING TO MOVE NORIEGA |
315454_4 | health professionals no longer believe this, the belief is still common among the public. ''The old idea of a change-of-life emotional crisis in women is a myth,'' Dr. Pasnau said. ''Women going through menopause are no more likely to suffer depression than are women of other ages, nor than men, for that matter.'' While there is an increase in depression and suicide among men and women aged 60 and older, he said, studies that have examined the timing of menopause and rates of depression find no connection. The most systematic such study was done in Sweden in 1985. The possibility that menopausal depression was a myth was suggested in the 1970's by Dr. George Winokur at the University of Iowa and Dr. Myrna Weissman, then at Yale. It was confirmed in a 1986 British study that found a rise in the rate of depression among women aged 45 to 49, compared with women of other ages. But the rise in depression was strongest among women who had not yet reached menopause. On the other hand, women who undergo mastectomy are highly vulnerable to psychiatric difficulties after surgery, Dr. Pasnau said. In a study he published in The American Journal of Psychiatry in January 1985, a quarter of the 63 women studied reported suicidal thoughts within a year after the operation. The article did not say whether any actually committed suicide. Having reconstructive breast surgery, however, significantly reduced the emotional distress in the women; the sooner they had the reconstruction, the less distress they suffered. ''The greatest problem is a feeling of the loss of femininity,'' Dr. Pasnau said. ''Those who had the reconstruction right away never had to mourn that loss.'' Less Drastic Surgery Women who were treated for breast cancer with lumpectomy, a less radical form of surgery, plus radiation, fared much better a year later in terms of sexual relationships and feelings of attractiveness, according to findings reported in the current issue of the journal Psychosomatics. In a lumpectomy, only the tumor is removed, rather than the entire breast, leaving fewer physical scars. Dr. Gerald Margolis, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, studied 54 women who had either a lumpectomy or mastectomy. He found that a year after the operation, 78 percent of the mastectomy patients felt badly about how they looked undressed. But of those who had the lumpectomy, 97 percent reported no change | Wide Beliefs On Depression In Women Contradicted |
315347_0 | LEAD: The Federal Government and 44 states are not providing adequate programs to help children in need and the nation is falling behind other industrialized countries in reducing infant mortality, the Children's Defense Fund said today. The Federal Government and 44 states are not providing adequate programs to help children in need and the nation is falling behind other industrialized countries in reducing infant mortality, the Children's Defense Fund said today. The Washington-based fund, which lobbies for social welfare programs, said the United States was trailing most other industrialized nations in categories like immunization against polio and other childhood diseases and preventing teen-age pregnancy. It issued its 1990 report today. The study also ranked the 50 states and the District of Columbia according to their efforts in child welfare. Similar Report Is Issued Another Washington-based group, the Center for the Study of Social Policy, made public a similar ranking today. The center is a research group that does no lobbying. Both studies listed Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont as making the greatest effort for children. The fund listed Maine, Minnesota and Delaware as making at least an ''adequate'' effort. The center ranked New Hampshire and Wisconsin among the top states. The lowest ranking on the fund's list were New Mexico, South Dakota, Kansas, Idaho and Colorado. The center ranked as lowest Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and the District of Columbia. New Jersey ranked near the top on both lists; New York was near the top of the fund's list and near the middle of the center's list. How Figures Were Created The fund rated states on whether they had achieved the Surgeon General's goal of reducing infant mortality by 1990 to 9 or fewer deaths per 1,000 live births - or reducing to no more than 5 percent of all births the proportion of infants born at low-birth weight. The fund also studied whether states had reduced the percentage of children in poverty or had seen to it that 90 percent of babies were born to women who began prenatal care in the first three months. Each study used as indicators the percentage of children living below the poverty line, the percentage of births to teen-age mothers, the unemployment rate among teen-agers and the rate of high school graduates. Study on Aiding Children Set The fund also considered states' performance in programs like supplemental Medicaid assistance and nutrition assistance for poor | 2 Studies Rate U.S. and States On Meeting Children's Needs |
315476_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: Nuclear power may not be inherently unworkable, but it is being rejected worldwide for precisely those reasons you mention in ''Revive the Atom'' (editorial, Dec. 8): bad economics, poorer safety and a lack of trust by the public. You imply that the antinuclear movement is a United States phenomenon, but nuclear power has never faced such determined opposition around the world. In Western Europe, France remains the only country with an active nuclear construction program, but France plans to order only one new plant in the next four years. The country has also seen an upswing in demonstrations - from across the political spectrum - against nuclear plants and waste dumps. Britain's hopes for a new line of plants, based on the Sizewell-B P.W.R. reactor, have collapsed. This followed government attempts to get a resistant financial community to swallow the uneconomic nuclear stations. Elsewhere in Europe, the talk is of wastes and decommissioning, not construction of new plants. Glasnost in the Soviet Union has been harsh on nuclear power advocates, with at least 10 plants closed or canceled in the last two years. This month, Hungary canceled plans to build four Soviet-style nuclear plants. Faced with the largest popular movement since World War II, Japanese industry and government are scaling back ambitious nuclear expansion plans. Taiwan saw its third attempt to construct more plants stopped by domestic opposition this year. South Korea saw its first anti nuclear demonstration a year ago; now the government faces a coalition that has succeeded in halting planned expansion and is calling for shutdowns. The notion that there are new environmentally benign and safe designs of nuclear plants that will alter public opposition is misconceived and not even shared by some in the industry. A study by the British Atomic Energy Authority found that the new designs may be just as vulnerable to structural failures as the old. Even the industry's trade journal, Nucleonics Week, states that ''experts are flatly unconvinced that safety has been achieved - or even substantially advanced - by the new designs.'' If companies say the newly designed nuclear power plants will be cheaper to build than coal-fired power plants, I say let them pay for them on their own. We've already poured a trillion dollars into nuclear power since World War II. I'd rather spend the money on cleaning up nuclear wastes and | Opposition to Nuclear Power Grows Stronger |
313507_1 | hoping to force up the price of futures contracts for juice concentrate on the New York Cotton Exchange. Of Brazil's predicted production of 900,000 tons this season, about 400,000 tons have been sold, giving growers and processors hopes for a windfall. Prices for frozen concentrated orange juice for delivery in January soared 21 percent during the holiday-shortened four-day trading week, settling Friday at $1.6565 a pound on the New York Cotton Exchange, compared with $1.37 a week earlier. Frost-Free Zone Concentrated largely in the frost-free interior of Sao Paulo State, Brazil's orange juice industry grew in the 1980's to become the source of the nation's third-largest agricultural export after coffee and soybeans, according to the foreign trade department of the state-owned Banco do Brasil. Built on cheap land, labor and a temperate climate, the orange juice industry is a national success story. The first significant exports started in 1962, the year of a Florida freeze. Helped initially with low-interest farm loans, Brazilian orange groves have steadily expanded, to about 175 million trees today from 39 million in 1970 and 106 million in 1980. The 1989-1990 crop - about 280 million 90-pound boxes - is expected to be about s third larger than last year's crop of 210 million. About 85 percent of the national crop is crushed into frozen concentrate for overseas export. Leaders of the Industry The two titans of Brazil's orange juice industry are Sucocitrico Cutrale S.A. and Citrosuco Paulista S.A., which each account for about 28 percent of exports. Other large companies are Frutesp, with about 11 percent of exports, Cargill with about 7 percent of exports, and Montecitrus with 6 percent. In Sao Paulo state, 12 million trees were planted during the last crop year, double the rate of the early 1980's. Three large projects are under way there: Citrol Bartol plans to build a $12 million orange juice processing factory in Bebedouro; Royal Citrus is investing $25 million in a factory in Taquaritinga, and the Votoranti Group plans to plant three million trees and build a $30 million processing plant in Itapetininga. Move to the South Recently, the industry started spreading to areas in Brazil's south. This year, an orange juice concentrate factory opened in Rio de Janeiro state and over the next five years Parana state is to benefit from a $150 million investment in orange plantations and a factory. To sell this growing | The Freeze In Florida Aids Brazil |
313598_0 | LEAD: A new wheel for cyclists has bypassed conventional spoked designs in favor of aerodynamic blades. A new wheel for cyclists has bypassed conventional spoked designs in favor of aerodynamic blades. Specialized Bicycle Components, a firm based in Morgan Hill, Calif., developed the wheel with engineering expertise from the Du Pont Company of Wilmington, Del. Mark Hopkins, a senior engineer at Du Pont and co-inventor of the wheel, says that each blade is shaped to behave like an airfoil. By reducing wind resistance, the bladed wheel has 'one-third less drag than a conventional spoke wheel,' Hopkins said recently. His performance claim is based on wind tunnel tests. The bladed wheel is designed for road bikes. It is made with a foam core and molded with Kevlar, a Du Pont material known for its strength, and carbon fiber in an epoxy resin. The rim is aluminum. The composite wheel weighs about the same as a spoked wheel. Although the wheel was still in its development stages when the Ironman Triathlon World Championship took place last October in Hawaii, designers predict that the bladed wheel will show up in the Ironman next year. Hopkins estimates that a bicycle with the new wheel can shave 10 to 15 minutes from the best time for the 112-mile Ironman bicycle competition. The Specialized wheel is expected to be available in bike shops by early March. It will cost about $750 (for one wheel). ON YOUR OWN | Wheels On Cutting Edge |
313521_3 | re-chartered at $14,500 a day. But many people in the industry think shipping rates will have to rise 40 to 60 percent before shipowners feel confident enough to place large orders for new ships. 'It's Too Risky' Shipowners recall that in the past big orders were placed in the middle of an upswing in cargo rates and the ships were delivered several years later, when the industry was in a recession. ''You can't order now and get a ship a year from now,'' said Roberto Giorgi, a managing director of V. Ships, a large shipping company. ''If you order now, it's delivered in 1992 or 1993. It's too risky.'' He and other shipowners cite the example of the Sanko Steamship Company, a Japanese shipping concern that was forced to seek bankruptcy protection in 1985. The company, an operator of large tankers, with 263 vessels, had ordered about 150 new ships during the upturn that began in 1980, only to have most of them delivered after shipping rates had fallen. Another reason for the slow growth in new orders, Mr. Papachristidis said, is that banks were more generous with credit in the past because businesses often agreed to long-term charter rates for a new ship. The long-term rates guaranteed a certain revenue even when spot rates fell and helped assure the owner and the bank that the cost of the ship could be paid off. Uncertainty About Rates Now, because of greater uncertainty about the course of rates, businesses are more reluctant to lock themselves in for 10-year agreements. What is more, governments in nations like Japan and South Korea have reduced or eliminated subsidies for shipyards, vastly increasing the cost, and therefore the risk, of ordering new ships. Some industry people predict that many of the reclusive families that own important shipping companies will therefore be forced to disclose their finances and operations to attract capital from the public markets. ''The older generation resists, seeking to keep it in the family by inheritance and marriages,'' said Costas Grammenos, a professor specializing in shipping at the City University Business School in London. ''A large percentage of the new generation have studied the industry and favor a different approach.'' He said younger members of ship-owning families who favor a more open and modern company might be in conflict with their more conservative elders. Time-Consuming and Expensive Even if money can be raised | Longer Lives for Aging Cargo Ships |
318280_0 | LEAD: Day of Two Suns U.S. Nuclear Testing and the Pacific Islanders By Jane Dibblin Maps. 299 pages. New Amsterdam Books. $24.95 hard cover; $12.95 paperback. Day of Two Suns U.S. Nuclear Testing and the Pacific Islanders By Jane Dibblin Maps. 299 pages. New Amsterdam Books. $24.95 hard cover; $12.95 paperback. Nuclear disarmament and human rights are linked in ''Day of Two Suns,'' a cri de coeur intended to raise the reader's consciousness about the plight of the island people living near the American missile testing area in the Pacific Ocean. An even larger aim of this impassioned book is to stop nuclear testing altogether by shutting down the Kwajalein Missile Range (a nonnuclear test site) and thereby help to reduce the momentum of the nuclear arms race. Considering the easing of the cold war, the great hopes for change in Eastern Europe and accelerating discussions about disarmament, the notions expressed in ''Day of Two Suns'' for making these Pacific islands more pacific do not seem too far-fetched. The sail-in protests against military installations in the Marshall Islands are described here - often in the voices of the islanders trying to return to their endangered homes -by Jane Dibblin, a writer for the New Statesman in London and former deputy editor of the Journal of European Nuclear Disarmament. Her book centers on the inhabitants of two atolls in the Marshalls - Rongelap, evacuated because of radiation from postwar nuclear tests, and Mejato, where most of the people now live and dream of returning to Rongelap when it is considered safe from radiation and missile testing. The United States conducted nuclear tests after World War II on Enewetak and Bikini atolls. There have been no nuclear explosions above ground since 1963, but radioactivity remains and almost immeasurable damage has been done to the health of the islanders. An agreement provides for settlement of all claims arising out of the nuclear tests on both atolls. Although the Marshall Islands is now a sovereign republic rather than a trusteeship, a subsidiary agreement allows the United States continued use of Kwajalein Missile Range. Intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California - without nuclear weapons -and splash down in the forbidden Kwajalein test area. Ms. Dibblin writes that a review of Department of Energy data revealed that people still living on Rongelap had depressed white-blood-cell counts and high levels of | Rights and Wrongs In the Marshall Islands |
318342_2 | Chancellor last fall came when the school system was under fire not only for poor academic performance but for a two-decade-old system of decentralization, which appeared to be producing a slew of scandals. In New York City, the board's central headquarters runs the city's high schools while 32 local school boards have jurisdiction over the elementary and middle schools in their areas. The Chancellor has oversight, including maintaining citywide educational standards. In the last year and a half several boards have been accused of corruption, cronyism and incompetence. Stories surfaced of board members who demanded jobs for relatives or had school pianos delivered to their living rooms. Mr. Fernandez promised changes including taking decentralization beyond the school boards and into the schools. He said he wanted more decisions made at the schools, by a committee of the principal, teachers and sometimes, parents. The idea is to allow schools to meet the needs and desires of the local community better: A school could, for instance, decide to stay open longer or spend money on a certain language course. 'Get Ready!' But Mr. Fernandez had been in New York less than week when he warned that he would take command of schools and school boards that do not measure up to his academic standards. ''Get ready!'' he said. ''I'm not shy about superseding. There's going to be a lot of that taking place until the message gets out.'' Stanley S. Litow, the Deputy Chancellor of Operations, said the Chancellor intends to give more power to the schools. But he will not go so far as to allow a school or school board to make a decision that interferes with good education. ''We want to give them an opportunity to make a decision,'' Mr. Litow said. ''But we have to maintain a standard of performance.'' Dale Mann, a professor at Teachers College of Columbia University who has studied decentralization, sees Mr. Fernandez's assertiveness over the system as the first step toward rebuilding local control. 'A Three-Step Dance' ''It's a kind of a three-step dance,'' Mr. Mann said. ''The first step has been a negative one but it asserts some citywide authority. The second step is to invite people to dance - to build a team. The third step is to get what he needs in the classrooms.'' ''Decentralization is like a Federal system with checks and balances,'' Mr. Mann said. ''A strong executive | Using 2 Ways to Run One School System |
318360_1 | seized in Panama. He also declined to say what specific documents he had in mind in making the request. ''We want to see everything they have,'' he said. But he added, ''There are things we have in mind.'' Despite objections by the prosecutors, General Noriega was excused by the magistrate from attending the hearing, which was called at his lawyers' request. General Noriega has told his lawyers that he would rather stay confined to the courthouse cell here than transfer to a prison out of town that is better equipped for long-term prisoners, according to a defense motion made public today. The general has been held in the cell since he was formally charged Jan. 4. His lawyers, Mr. Kollin and Frank A. Rubino, said in their motion that they discussed the ''possibilities of transfer'' with General Noriega on Jan. 11. ''General Noriega is satisfied with the surroundings provided to him by the United States Marshals Service,'' the motion said. ''He unequivocally feels that unlimited personal and telephone access to his attorneys far outweighs any other possible needs, such as immediate medical treatment, social services or exercise.'' Prosecutor Opposes Inventory In their motion on the documents, the lawyers said that they had information that Myles H. Malman, an assistant United States Attorney, traveled to Panama City last week to review items that were seized and that Mr. Malman ''has been in contact with United States military officials who may presently be in control of these items.'' Michael Sullivan, an assistant United States Attorney, would not comment after the hearing on Mr. Malman's reported visit to Panama. In the courtroom, he asserted that the defense request for an inventory of documents was unrealistic because it was not specific in citing documents that were relevant to the case. But Magistrate Turnoff said that by Thursday the Government had to provide an inventory of documents from General Noriega's homes. He stipulated that date because the defendant's hearing on a request for bail is Friday, and the defense said the documents could be relevant to that hearing. The motion by General Noriega's lawyers to halt a planned transfer of the Panamanian to a more secure Federal penitentiary resulted in a hearing last week at which Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler temporarily put off the move. The lawyers contended that a transfer would violate General Noriega's constitutional right of access to his lawyers. The | U.S. Is Told to Preserve Noriega Data |
316118_1 | wait for their luggage and single out people for an interview and a luggage search, rather than having all travelers line up for individual questioning and baggage checks. Officials also select passengers on some flights for extensive interviews and luggage searches. The system, introduced so far in Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, San Juan and San Diego, seems to be working. In Los Angeles, one of the first airports to adopt the procedures, delays are down significantly and duty collections are up, Mr. Bartol said. Airline industry officials are not so confident about the system. ''My impression is that customs service at U.S. airports for international flights could be as bad this summer as it has ever been,'' said James K. Gordon, director of international affairs at the Washington-based Airport Operators Council International, the industry association for airport managers. Dean Sparkman, an aviation consultant in Washington, agreed. ''While customs said they will have all the facilities manned that they need,'' he said, ''we are not convinced at this point.'' The problems stem from the enormous increase in international air traffic to the United States, with a record number of foreign tourists expected this summer. In the first nine months of last year, 14 million foreign tourists visited the United States, with the number projected for the year at 17.5 million when the count is completed. In 1985, the number of foreign visitors was 10.7 million. Delays for Americans, Too Americans face the same crowds at baggage belts and in customs halls on their return from vacations abroad. Last year the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations sponsored group, recommended that member nations strive to get passengers through immigration control, baggage claim and customs in a maximum of 45 minutes. At Kennedy International Airport, the country's largest international gateway, officials have met that guideline most of the time, with delays running 30 minutes to an hour for foreign visitors. At Miami International Airport, the second largest international gateway, it typically takes foreign passengers 35 to 40 minutes to pass through immigration inspectors, collect baggage and clear customs. But the airport is ''constantly short of customs inspectors'' and needs 25 more agents to handle the growth expected this summer with the opening of a second international arrivals building, said Peter Reaveley, Miami's chief of aviation development. Even if, as expected, he gets the additional agents, Mr. Reaveley said he would | Customs Is Testing Plan To Ease Airport Delays |
317804_1 | those who have just been hit with an increase, to 7.65 percent, in payroll taxes deducted from their earnings. This would be a tax cut, moreover, in what can plausibly be termed - as it has been, repeatedly, in this space - the most regressive U.S. tax. All workers pay the same rate, whether they make $20,000 a year or $250,000; the earnings on which the tax can be imposed (now $51,300) are also the same. Someone making that much pays the same dollar amount as a person making $250,000. And all income other than wages is exempt. Repealing the most recent rise in this onerous tax would benefit greatly those who have suffered most in the economy of the Reagan-Bush years: high school graduates and dropouts, most of whom are payroll workers. Peter Passell reported in The New York Times on Jan. 17 that from 1979 to 1987 their real earnings fell by 9 and 15 percent respectively; in the same years, the real earnings of college graduates rose by 9 percent. A bird in the hand, moreover, is proverbially worth two in the bush (no pun intended). Higher retirement benefits for low-income workers, as well as the Federal earned-income tax credit for poor families, make up in some degree for the regressivity of the tax Mr. Moynihan wants to cut. But benefits are far in the future, and workers are suffering stiff payroll tax deductions now while trying to make ends meet. Nor is it only to workers that a payroll tax cut would appeal, because Social Security deductions from a worker's wages have to be matched by his employer. That's a heavy cost of doing business, from which many an employer would like to be relieved -particularly small-business people who hire only a few workers. Thus, a proposal appealing on its own terms, to workers and employers alike, also stands in stark contrast to one of George Bush's top priorities: a capital gains tax cut. No matter how he defends this scheme, it would be of no immediate relief to most low-income Americans and would yield its primary benefits to wealthy investors. Its trickle-down effect on employment and job creation would be speculative at best. It's possible, in fact, that a sizable reduction in the Social Security payroll tax would produce at least as many new jobs and pay increases as would Mr. Bush's capital gains tax, | Turning the Tables |
317783_3 | 18 percent, to $4 billion, from $4.9 billion. Contributing to that decline, imports of Japanese cars fell to $1.6 billion, from $1.9 billion in November, apparently reflecting the broad weakness in the United States car demand. There was an even sharper drop in the United States deficit with the newly industrialized countries of the Far East. The combined deficit with Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore fell 25 percent, to $2.1 billion from $2.8 billion, with each showing a smaller surplus. The surpluses have been a source of trade friction with the United States. Analysts cautioned, however, that these country figures are subject to wide month-to-month swings and that they are also not adjusted for seasonal variation. At the same time, the American deficit widened by about $100 million each with West Germany, France and Britain and by about $400 million with Canada, the United States' biggest trading partner. For the first 11 months of 1989, the trade deficit eased by $6 billion, to $101.7 billion, compared with the corresponding period in 1988, a result that Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher called fundamentally ''in line with our expectations of continued moderate improvement'' in 1990. Exports Tapering Off But exports have tapered off since early in the year, while imports have leaped to record levels. Even had there been no Boeing strike, November exports would have been less than in June, analysts said. Over all, the November export change reflected a $1 billion decline in capital goods, like electrical machinery, sent overseas by United States companies and a $200 million decline in industrial supplies. There were small increases in exports of consumer goods, foods and other merchandise. In imports, the value of industrial supplies brought into this country fell $800 million, while capital goods climbed $500 million. For manufactured goods alone, which include plastics, furniture and motorcycle parts and is a category that is not adjusted for normal seasonal fluctuations, exports fell $1.9 billion, to $22.5 billion, while imports fell $2.2 billion, to $32.8 billion, from October levels, the report showed. In agriculture, exports rose $300 million, while imports were about unchanged, to produce a trading surplus of $1.8 billion. In today's report, the $10.2 billion deficit initially reported for October, previously the highest of 1989, was revised upward, by about $50 million. Imports, which were at a record level, rose slightly to $41.3 billion, and exports also were revised higher. | Trade Gap Widened in November |
317066_3 | York. But in Connecticut and New York the project still must receive final approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers, which have held several public hearings over the last four years, including four in Danbury and Albany last week. Iroquois officials are confident of approval but are concerned that Connecticut may challenge Federal jurisdiction over the pipeline and delay, if not stop, the project. It has been criticized by virtually every state politician, including Gov. William A. O'Neill, on environmental and economic grounds. The pipeline would take a year to build; the company expects the project to be approved by the end of this year and completed by the end of 1991. ''We will be in operation as scheduled,'' Mr. Davis said. 'Big Bucks Talking Here' The grass-roots opposition in Connecticut, though less strident than it once was, remains troublesome to Iroquois. At a public hearing this week, about 100 people criticized Federal officials. ''This is a real joke!'' yelled Lola Shumlin, a Sherman resident. ''You don't care if you hurt these residents, because it's big bucks talking here.'' ''There is still a lot of battle left in most of us,'' Mr. Dutton added. But more common are moderate assessments like those of Sherman's First Selectman, Kenneth F. Grant. ''Nobody wants it in their backdoor yard,'' he said. ''But if we're going to have it, then we want to have it where we want and in a manner we want.'' Opponents contend that the project will ruin valuable farmland, wetlands and natural areas, as well as several golf courses and parks. They also believe that the economic need for the pipeline has not been established. Need for Gas Is Questioned ''We're not opposed to gas,'' said Karen Ann Hayward, a consultant for the Housatonic Valley Association in Cornwall Bridge. ''We're opposed to how this project is totally disregarding the environment, particularly if there is no need for it - and the need has not been shown.'' Iroquois officials have argued that natural gas is needed because it is less polluting and more available than oil, on which the region is now heavily dependent. The pipeline would carry 125 million cubic feet of gas daily to New York City and Long Island and 144 million cubic feet a day to Connecticut customers. In all, 576 million cubic feet of gas would be carried daily on | Rage Over a Gas Pipeline Appears to Cool in Connecticut |
317034_0 | LEAD: The percentage of low- and middle-income black and Hispanic youths entering college from high school declined sharply in the past decade, the American Council on Education reports. The percentage of low- and middle-income black and Hispanic youths entering college from high school declined sharply in the past decade, the American Council on Education reports. The report, to be released Monday, said that on the basis of Census Bureau figures, the percentage of low-income black high school graduates between 18 and 24 years of age who went to college dropped to 30.3 percent in 1988 from 39.8 percent in 1976. For similar Hispanic graduates, the rate fell to 35.3 percent from 50.4 percent over the same period, ''indicating an educational failure rate of intolerable magnitude,'' the researchers reported. ''Since the mid-1970's, the college participation of African Americans and Hispanics has been a picture not of progress but of major regression.'' Comparison With All Groups The percentage of low-income white high school graduates attending college rose slightly in the period, to 38.8 percent from 36.8. For all races and incomes, college enrollment increased to 57.5 percent in 1988 from 53.4 in 1976. Student aid programs increased the number of low-income students attending college in the 1960's and 70's. The report concluded that ''comprehensive and sustained efforts are needed at the institutional level to recruit, retain, and graduate larger number of minority students.'' Deborah Carter and Reginald Wilson compiled the study for the Washington-based education group. . The study said the bulk of the black and Hispanic youths, 51 percent and 45 percent, respectively, were from families with under $18,581 a year. Only 8 percent of the black youths and 5 percent of the Hispanic youths were from families with annual incomes above $52,120. The Sharpest Declines In the late 1970's and early 1980's, the report said, middle-income blacks and Hispanic youths showed the sharpest declines in college attendance. By 1988, only 36.2 percent of middle-income blacks who graduated from high school attended college, as against 52.7 percent in 1976. The corresponding rate for Hispanic youths was 46.4 percent in 1988, as against 53.4 percent in 1976. The report showed that when minorities - blacks, Hispanic people, Asian Americans and American Indians -were grouped together, the number of degrees they earned increased from 1976 to 1987. The increase in bachelor's degrees was 30.9 percent, qnd in first-professional degrees, 63.4 percent. But when | Mid- and Low-Income Minorities in Decline on College Rolls |
313656_5 | the Interior Ministry, which ran the Securitate and the Department of State Security. The wiretaps were requested, according to the documents, to determine ''with what persons the target has telephone contacts, their telephone numbers, if there are discussions of a hostile character toward the policy of the party and our state policy, and if there are any indications that we can find about the intentions of the target to leave the country illegally.'' Other wiretaps were designed to find out what links the 48-year-old economist had with another resident of Focsani, identified as Edi Strautiu, according to the copies made available. An unidentified person in Strasbourg, France, in 1985, said, ''About your problem, I cannot give you good news.'' The letter did not say what the problem was. In a telephone interview, Mr. Pavaloiae said he had seen other files listing all his close friends and chronicling attempts to induce them to testify. One file listed a denunciation of him by a schoolteacher with whom he had mutual friends, he said. His dossier had been among ''thousands'' filling a bunker from floor to ceiling in the security-police headquarters in his hometown. His associates, who brought the documents to Bucharest and who asked not to be identified, said the files, discovered around 3 A.M. on Dec. 23, seemed to cover many of the adults among the Focsani area's population of about 100,000. Applied for Emigration Mr. Pavaloiae said he suspected that his friends had denounced him and had sensed that he was under surveillance, adding, ''But I could not imagine it was really happening.'' Eight months ago, Mr. Pavaloiae said, after he remarried -to a second wife of Jewish descent after a divorce from his first wife - he made a formal application to the authorities to emigrate to Israel along with their 5-month-old son, thinking to take advantage of Mr. Ceausescu's permissive policy toward Jewish immigration. It was not known tonight what the result of that application had been. But he said his story was not over. He had taken his personal files home from security-police headquarters to study them. Then came a knock on his door. Army officers, he said, had come to demand the return of the documents Sunday, and his fear of the authorities had revived. ''I was very scared,'' he said. ''I want to give my name to American journalists in case something happens to me.'' | Upheaval in the East: The Dossier; Rumanian Finds His File: 12 Years of Being Watched |
315097_2 | amount would be 578 million cubic feet a day. 'Last Stronghold' for Oil ''This area is the last stronghold for heating oil,'' said Robert J. Reid, a Canadian pipeline engineer who is president of Iroquois Gas Transmission System, a consortium of 21 Canadian and American companies. One reason is that oil from Gulf Coast or Caribbean refineries is easy to transport by tanker to New York and Boston, and in barges up the Hudson and Connecticut rivers. If it were used exclusively in homes, gas from the Iroquois pipeline could meet the energy needs of one million of them, he said. If the gas replaced oil, it would displace more than 30 million barrels a year, assuming that the pipeline averages 80 percent of capacity, as its sponsors say it will. (In practice, experts expect that much of the new supplies will meet growth, thus preventing increases in oil imports.) Mr. Reid said the project, scheduled for completion in 1991, could be doubled in capacity by adding compressor stations. Aided by Federal Policy The Iroquois pipeline and the other projects that would increase gas deliveries in the Northeast are the result of a policy set in motion in the summer of 1987 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to stimulate pipeline construction. The commission declared an ''open season'' for pipeline applications in the Northeast, then urged applicants to merge their projects to eliminate competing proposals. Last January, the commission tentatively approved Iroquois, which would run from Waddington, N.Y., on the St. Lawrence River, under the Hudson near the bridge that carries Interstate 84, through the southwest quarter of Connecticut, and from Milford across Long Island Sound to Huntington, L.I. The commission also approved a proposed Champlain pipeline, which would run 340 miles from the Canadian border near Philipsburg, Quebec, through Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, ending near Boston. But the sponsors of that project have put it on hold. As Iroquois's prospects became stronger, potential suppliers for Champlain dried up, largely because of peculiarities in the system used to set prices on the Trans-Canada pipeline, which would supply both projects. #18 Projects Cleared In all, 18 projects received preliminary approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The projects carry a total of three billion cubic feet a day of new capacity, said Robert H. Schroeder, chief of the market analysis branch at the commission. Some of the pipelines will replace | In Northeast, a Battle Over Fuel |
315248_1 | team that killed a dozen Black September terrorists, unfortunately including an innocent Arab; he infiltrated Idi Amin's Uganda to advance the rescue of hostages at Entebbe; then he became the Mossad's key man in Central America, harassing aid to P.L.O. terrorists by Cuba and Nicaragua. In the mid-1980's, he apparently retired from espionage to go into business for himself. What does a former hit man, counterterrorist and clandestine border-crosser do for a living? We ought to be able to find out. The Israeli Government, dutifully following the zigs and zags of U.S. diplomacy in Central America - which swung from Noriega as paid C.I.A. agent to Noriega as despised drug-runner - disclaimed all responsibility for Mike Harari's private actions in support of the defiant dictator. The first issue: How much responsibility does a nation have for the acts of its nationals abroad? Every country has its wrongoes; does the U.S. have to apologize for American racketeers abroad? To an extent, yes. The obligation of the home country is to cooperate in the prosecution of its errant nationals, within human-rights limitations, especially when those nationals run home for cover. Should a U.S. grand jury want to interrogate Mr. Harari, or if a warrant is issued, the Government of Israel is duty-bound to help produce or apprehend him. But what if the suspect is a kind of hero -- an Ollie North or a Rafi Eytan? What if he knows too much about national secrets, and if his arrest abroad might compromise the security sources of his country of origin? Now we're in the gray area in which governments are so susceptible to graymail. We recently set a bad precedent by bowing to the threat of a C.I.A. operative to reveal secrets in defending himself; suddenly, in the Noriega case, that weight of embarrassment seems not controlling. The Thornburgh criterion: protecting our national secrets is not as important as protecting our native agents. All nations with extensive intelligence services and anti-terrorist teams are faced with a growing menace of renegades and retirees - men trained to circumvent the local law, who are coming in from the cold to cash in on their experience. The answer should be a tough-minded one taken from the organized underworld: You can never retire from the Service. Whatever you do after you leave must have the written approval of the government in which you served. But don't | The Lethal Fist |
319295_0 | LEAD: THE tiny dart-poison frogs of the American tropics are helping scientists understand nerve and muscle cell functions that play a central role in a variety of devastating disorders, from abnormal heart rhythms to Alzheimer's disease. THE tiny dart-poison frogs of the American tropics are helping scientists understand nerve and muscle cell functions that play a central role in a variety of devastating disorders, from abnormal heart rhythms to Alzheimer's disease. Researchers say they believe the potent toxins produced by this endangered family of frogs could one day lead to new and better drugs to stimulate the heart and brain, control pain and relieve muscle spasms. The frogs are often brilliantly colored and are known for their sophisticated reproductive behavior, as well as for their deadly toxins. One member of the family, Phyllobates terribilis of western Colombia, has for centuries served Indian hunters, who tip blowgun darts in the toxin. As one of the deadliest natural substances known, the toxin from just one terribilis frog less than an inch long is capable of killing 50 humans. Habitat Is Threatened The entire family of frogs is now threatened by the destruction of their habitat, the lowland tropical rain forests of Central and South America. Fearing that valuable species will die off before they have been discovered and their toxins analyzed, researchers are rushing to collect and categorize the many different members of the family. Leading the quest are Dr. Charles W. Myers, curator in herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History, and Dr. John Daly, a biochemist at the National Institutes of Health. Herpetology is the study of reptiles and amphibians. The two scientists are now in their 14th year of collecting and identifying dart-poison frogs and their defensive chemicals. Largely through their efforts, more than 200 different toxins from about 50 of the 120 known species in this family are now known. Dr. Myers, who has discovered dozens of species, said some may exist only in small areas. When a part of the rain forest is destroyed, species of potentially useful frogs may be lost, along with other plants and animals. The toxins, which are secreted through glands in the skin when the frogs feel threatened, are chemicals called alkaloids. They are close kin to substances like caffeine, nicotine and morphine. Nearly all alkaloids are found in plants; only a few animals produce the chemicals. Developing Drugs Based on | Using the Toxin From Tiny Frogs, Researchers Seek Clues to Disease |
319437_2 | weaponry of the rebels, who in the last several years have captured divisions worth of Soviet weapons from the demoralized Ethiopian Army and are said by Western military analysts to have recently acquired a fleet of up to 24 high-powered speedboats for patrolling the Red Sea. Three Speedboats Attack Capt. Andrzej Sikorski, the 60-year-old skipper of the 400-foot-long Boleslaw Krzywousty, said the guerrillas suddenly appeared in three speedboats toward evening on Jan. 3 and ignored all pleas to stop their onslaught. He said that he obeyed their demands to stop and that the ship was clearly flying the Polish flag, as well as the Ethiopian flag, as required when entering national waters. ''I was absolutely shocked,'' said the captain, who was on his last voyage before retirement. ''We were waiting for them to stop fighting.'' He shouted from the bridge through a bullhorn that it was a Polish ship. ''But there was no discussion from the first shot,'' Captain Sikorski said. ''They started shooting all the time. All the starboard side was like a net. The fire blew up after 10 minutes, after the second or third shot.'' One of the fighters, armed with a four-barreled machine gun, kept firing ''like a cowboy.'' Another aimed with a recoilless cannon. Another boat sported the bazooka. Aimed at Lighted Portholes As darkness fell and the crew put on lights in the cabins to find fire extinguishers, the guerrillas aimed at the portholes that had lights on, Captain Sikorsky said. The ship was enveloped in black acrid smoke when the crew was forced to leave in lifeboats. When the guerrillas encountered the crew face to face in the lifeboats, their first question was: Are there any Russians? ''We said there are only Polish people,'' Captain Sikorsky said. ''No Communists?'' the guerrillas asked. ''No,'' Captain Sikorsky said he had replied, adding with a grin that almost everyone on board was a member of Solidarity. Dismissive of the slow-going Polish lifeboats, the guerrillas transferred their captives into two of their speedboats, one of them with two 85-horsepower engines, and took them north at a fast clip for eight hours in darkness. For a day, uncertain where they were or whose hands they were in, the crew sat on the northern beach, visited now and then by an Eritrean reber who spoke four European languages fluently and rode on a motorcycle to fetch cigarettes for the | Polish Crew Tells of 3-Week Ordeal After a Red Sea Attack |
319299_0 | LEAD: HONG KONG, a leading center for the manufacture and export of ivory objects, has been exempted by the British Government from a worldwide ban on the trading of ivory that went into effect last Thursday. HONG KONG, a leading center for the manufacture and export of ivory objects, has been exempted by the British Government from a worldwide ban on the trading of ivory that went into effect last Thursday. But the exemption lasts only six months and applies only to an estimated 670 tons of raw ivory that Hong Kong manufacturers and dealers had in stock when the ban began. Moreover, a spokesman for the British Deparment of the Environment said ivory sellers in the British crown colony were prohibited by London from trading with any country that honors the global ban, including Britain itself. Douglas Hurd, the British Home Secretary, told Parliament last week that the action would give Hong Kong traders time to dispose of their ivory and would enable carvers and other ivory workers to find other jobs. The spokesman for the Department of Environment said that the action was taken because ''we needed Hong Kong's wholehearted support in implementing the total ban'' on trading in ivory. Under the terms of an international convention intended to stem the ivory trade and halt the illegal killing of African elephants, any of the convention's 103 member nations was permitted to opt out of the ban before it went into effect. China was the only ivory-consuming country to do so, and conservationists who keep track of the ivory trade say they believe that Hong Kong's huge mainland neighbor will become the main market for the colony's remaining ivory. Five other countries, all African ivory producers, also exempted themselves: Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Malawi and Botswana. Britain's decision was seen in London as a gesture of support to Hong Kong at a time when the colony's residents are jittery about what will happen when the colony reverts to Chinese control in 1997. Nearly 2,000 of its residents earn their living as ivory carvers, according to the World Wildlife Fund. They are said to have had little work since several consuming countries, including the United States and Japan, stopped importing ivory last summer. Hong Kong also suspended its ivory imports then. Most countries opting out of the ban had been expected to do so, but the British decision on Hong | Britain Exempts Hong Kong From Ivory Ban |
315997_0 | LEAD: THOSE taking the pulse of future automobile design often look beyond industry soothsayers to concept cars. If Nissan Design International Inc.'s Gobi concept car, introduced last week at the North American International Automobile Show in Detroit, is any indication, trends for the 1990's will include soft squeezable materials and a separation of components vaguely reminiscent of deconstructivism. THOSE taking the pulse of future automobile design often look beyond industry soothsayers to concept cars. If Nissan Design International Inc.'s Gobi concept car, introduced last week at the North American International Automobile Show in Detroit, is any indication, trends for the 1990's will include soft squeezable materials and a separation of components vaguely reminiscent of deconstructivism. The little truck with its egglike cocoon form is divided into zones. Rather than integrate the components into ''one boring shape,'' the designers have treated areas of the assymetrical interior independently. The drivers' seat is an ''orthopedically fitted work station.'' Traditionally wasted space under the truck bed is used for four rubberized lockable storage compartments that hold skis, soda, camping equipment and other items. Instead of a typical glove compartment, the Gobi has a canvas bag held in place by Velcro, which the driver can remove. CURRENTS | From Nissan, The Future On Wheels |
315834_4 | the children care for or come in contact with include not just dogs and cats, but also farm animals, hawks and falcons. In one program, children travel with some of the farm animals to inner-city neighborhoods. There the children act as handlers for the animals while other children, most of whom have never seen a farm animal, visit with them. The children also act as guides annually for the more than 30,000 children from city schools who come to Green Chimneys for a day to experience a farm. ''You can't stay sad when you're cuddling a rabbit or riding a horse,'' Dr. Ross said. ''No matter how rotten you feel, animals are accepting.'' Green Chimneys opened in 1948, but Dr. Ross said that only in the last decade have counselors begun to understand the full scope of the therapeutic advantages of contact with the farm animals. Daily contact with animals and responsibility for their care offers the children ''a sense of self-worth,'' he said. ''For many children whose nurturing has been faulty, taking care of an animal can interrupt the cycle of abuse repeating itself over generations,'' he said. ''They can learn to be care-givers, even if they haven't been well cared for themselves.'' Tending Injured Animals The most recent program at the center has children tend injured wildlife. The animals are released, if possible, once nursed back to health. ''It's an especially powerful experience for these kids, who are wounded themselves in a sense,'' Dr. Ross said. ''If you can take care of a disabled animal and see that it can survive, even with a leg missing, then you get the feeling you can survive yourself. It's a bit corny, but true.'' Similar advantages to using a pet during therapy have been found in work with adults who are particularly hard to engage, like those with neurological damage or the aged. In a study last year at the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital in Brockville, Ontario, a dog came along with the therapist to treatment sessions with selected patients. When videotapes of sessions with the dog present were compared with regular therapy sessions involving other patients, the dog's presence was found to improve the rapport between patient and therapist. Dr. Gary Gerber, a psychiatrist who conducted the study, said that when the patients saw the therapist being friendly with the dog, they seemed to develop greater trust in the therapist. HEALTH | Children and Their Pets: Unexpected Psychological Benefits |
315983_0 | LEAD: THE National Endowment for the Arts has published a resource for designers, ''By Design 2,'' that describes all the design projects it sponsored from 1977 to 1987. THE National Endowment for the Arts has published a resource for designers, ''By Design 2,'' that describes all the design projects it sponsored from 1977 to 1987. ''It will help designers because if they get an idea, they can check to see if someone has done it before,'' said Marcia Sartwell, the senior editor in the endowment's design arts program. ''Designers can build on, rather than duplicate, a project.'' In the years covered by the book, the endowment gave 2,400 grants to individuals and organizations representing various design fields: architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, fashion, industrial design, graphic design, historic preservation and urban planning. The book is a sequel to ''By Design,'' which covered the previous decade. Four chapters take up design as it affects the community, the environment, the arts and the individual. The largest chapter, with 660 projects, is devoted to city design. ''These projects have made a great difference in the way our cities look,'' Ms. Sartwell said. Design seminars and exhibitions are covered by one chapter, and award-winning Federal projects by another. One grant went to John Margolies of Manhattan, an author and a lecturer on architectural subjects, who photographed and analyzed Main Street architecture in small and medium-size cities in the Midwest. His research, described in the book, concentrated on movie theaters, civic structures, banks, storefronts and industrial buildings. In a 1986 project, the University of Oregon used computer models to study how proposed recreational and housing developments might affect a 40-mile stretch of the Columbia River Gorge. The findings have been used to review other proposals for the area. ''Studying how things affect the environment is one of the new trends in design arts and landscape architecture,'' Ms. Sartwell said. Another grant was used in connection with the continuing work on the north and south towers of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan. The cathedral's Stoneyard Institute received funds in the early 1980's for a four-year program to train minority workers in stonecutting, and stone carving using both 13th-century and modern tools. Eight people completed the training. The design arts program of the National Endowment for the Arts takes as its philosophy a remark by a Roman tribune in Shakespeare's ''Coriolanus'': ''What is | Looking Back for Designs of the Future |
317273_4 | genes. This attachment protects the antibody from the hostile enzymes and guides it to a cell membrane where the assembly of the antibody is completed and is then secreted. If the plants are grown in liquid, they will secrete the protein into it; from there the protein can be extracted. A Dutch company, Mogen, used a similar technique to produce serum albumin in potatoes. And a Belgian company, Plant Genetic Systems, introduced the brain protein enkephalin into rape plants. The second strategy, pursued by Biosource Genetics, temporarily introduces human genes into adult plants. The company has developed a technique in which a new gene is carried into plant cells by an RNA molecule that multiplies and spreads itself and the foreign gene to neighboring cells. Within days, the entire plant is producing human protein. The RNA degrades with time, said Mr. Erwin, the Biosource president, and the foreign gene is never passed on to subsequent generations. The plants are harvested and ground up, and the desired protein is extracted. Genetic Sun Screens The company's first commercial product is human melanin, which is produced in a variety of plant cells. Several pounds of pure melanin have been sold to a joint venture of William H. Rorer Inc. and Advanced Polymer Systems that plans to market a sun screen. Conventional sun screens contain a chemical compound that both absorbs and scatters the ultraviolet light that causes sunburn, said Dr. Miles Chedekel, a research scientist at Biosource Genetics. Human melanin is better at scattering ultraviolet rays, he said, and offers more protection. The melanin is incorporated into microscopic sponges that are applied as a cream. Rorer and Advanced Polymer Systems are working on sun screens that will deflect all the ultraviolet light. Mr. Erwin said his company was also using tobacco plants to produce interleukin-2, an anti-cancer agent derived from the human immune system. He recently met with Gov. James G. Martin of North Carolina to discuss conducting outdoor tests in that state's tobacco fields. These technologies, the scientists said, can also be used to produce hard-to-synthesize drugs inside plants. For example, eincristine, a cancer drug, is now extracted at high expense from the periwinkle plant. Dr. Hiatt said the gene for eincristine could be inserted into tobacco cells, which are easy to manipulate, to produce the cancer drug more cheaply. Finally, the technology is being used to give plants new genes that | Human Genes Turn Plants Into Factories For Medicines |
317378_2 | will be easier to attract European talent than it was a century ago when opera companies had to travel almost 1,000 miles by steamship from the mouth of the Amazon to this city on the Rio Negro. The Hope for Tourists Mr. Bicudo hopes that new air routes combined with a boom in Amazon tourism will draw American audiences to help fill the 685-seat theater, which is a copy of La Scala in Milan. The restoration of this city's neo-classical landmark involved meeting the challenges of preserving a European-style structure in the Brazilian tropics. ''Termites caused the most damage to the Teatro Amazonas,'' Iron Moreira de Rocha, the supervising construction engineer, said at the site. Termites destroyed 131 square feet of moldings, columns, support beams, window frames and parquet floor tiles. The larvae of thousands of termites infested the velvet covered orchestra seats. Comagi Construction Ltd., the company in charge of the restoration, said 15,115 quarts of insecticide were used on the termites. Soaking, dripping, injecting, painting and gassing were among the techniques used to apply insecticide to the wood. For future treatments, workmen riddled moldings with a hidden system of copper tubing and spread 5,000 quarts of insecticide in the grounds around the theater. The Endless Fungus War The Teatro Amazonas has also suffered from the frequent torrential rains of the Amazon. In Manaus, rain falls 165 days a year. Century-old gutters and drainspouts had to be cleaned, and most of the building was waterproofed. Because of the rain and termites, most major buildings in this city of one million inhabitants are now made of reinforced concrete. Humidity coupled with heat - the average mean temperature is 86 degrees - means that fungus splotches the walls of many buildings here, cement and wood alike. To keep such dinginess from spreading, all the outside walls of the theater have been treated with fungicide, which also was mixed with the pink paint used for the final coat. The use of pink, controversial to many residents accustomed to gray, stemmed from painstaking research on the building, which is now undoubtedly the most studied structure in the Amazon. Reflecting local pride in the theater, a historian, Mario Ypiranga Monteiro, culminated 30 years of research with the publication of a three-volume history called ''Teatro Amazonas.'' Opting for Opulence Work started on the theater in 1884, when this booming city of 45,000 people was awash | Opera Is Ready for a Comeback in the Amazon |
319681_1 | ways - often with the connivance of legitimate businesses - to hide their assets. ''He probably did the best job of all dealers out here of getting his money into legitimate businesses,'' said Sgt. Michael McGuiness of the Queens Narcotics Division. ''Tommy's a smart kid.'' Mr. Mickens made most of his purchases in cash - sometimes carried in plastic shopping bags - and despite Federal laws that require the reporting of cash transactions involving more than $10,000, he had no trouble finding lawyers, merchants and real estate agents who would look the other way. As head of a 50-person organization that controlled the flow of drugs in the Laurelton and Springfield Gardens neighborhoods near Kennedy Airport, Mr. Mickens was one of hundreds - no one knows the precise number - of dealers who in the decentralized world of the drug trade constitute its middle management, investigators say. Often these are unschooled youths who, in their late teens or early 20's, displayed enough guts and guile to move up from the street corners where they sold crack to where the real money could be made: heading gangs distributing drugs in fairly well-defined territories. ''For every neighborhood in New York, there is someone like Tommy Mickens,'' said Special Agent Jim Triano, who heads the forfeiture and assets seizure team in the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. ''The police generally know who they are.'' Kirby Heller, the assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted Mr. Mickens, said in an interview: ''The downfall of Tommy Mickens was that he was too extravagant in his life style. If he wasn't riding around in a Rolls and buying a fancy car every few months we still might have gotten him, but it would have been more difficult.'' He called himself Tony Montana, after the drug-trafficking protagonist played by Al Pacino in the 1983 film ''Scarface.'' And at his apex Mr. Mickens was, along with dealers like Lorenzo ''Fat Cat'' Nichols, Howard ''Pappy'' Mason, and Kenneth McGriff, one of the drug kingpins of Queens. ''He ran Merrick Road,'' said a detective who spoke on condition that he not be identified. ''On almost every corner you had about five guys who did crack, and it was all his organization.'' After his arrest in May, 1988, law-enforcement officials were able to trace and seize about $2.5 million in assets. But they said that that was only | A Drug Dealer Finds Many Eager To Launder His Drug Money |
319791_2 | vehicles will be in fleet use. Mr. Mauldin refers to electric energy from the sun. Probably the best concept for solar energy in personal transportation is the Sunraycer developed by Paul B. MacReady's staff at AeroVironment and General Motors engineers. It contains voltaic cells, which transform solar power to electrical power mostly by expensive gallium-arsenide solar cells with a conversion efficiency of some 22 percent. Honda is building a $13.5 million factory to produce these highly efficient cells (news story Jan. 22). But cheaper and lower-efficiency silicon cells are being used in experimental solar-powered cars. With a vertical sun, Sunraycer develops some 1,500 watts (two horsepower). Through efficient transfer, a high proportion reaches the drive wheel. Sunraycer's weight is 396 pounds. The vehicle has attained speeds of 50 m.p.h. with only the sun as a source of power. When run by solar-charged battery, it has gone beyond 70 m.p.h. To the credit of General Motors, it has provided seed money and next June is sponsoring 32 selected colleges and universities to participate in an all-solar-powered car race from Florida to Detroit. Moreover, General Motors has just announced the Impact (Jan. 4), an all-electric two-place subcompact coupe with a fiberglass body. Body, power and drive system are well designed for volume manufacture now. The vehicle is said to have a range of 120 miles at 55 m.p.h. with a single battery charge. In response to Mr. Mauldin's criticism of automotive engineers, to be fair, one should realize gasoline contains some 600 times more energy per pound than a good lead-acid battery. And even though an electric motor is four to six times more efficient than an internal combustion engine, there is still an advantage of 100 to 150 in favor of gasoline as a power source. Moreover, today's automobiles can be fueled in three to five minutes. In contrast, any reasonable electric charging station requires hours to resupply a battery. One might suggest a battery interchange. In practice the task is not easy because of the mass as well as the presence of 100 to 200 volts and little resistance, a hazard an engineer will appreciate. Heating and cooling add to the problems of the all-electric car, although several solutions have been tried. It can be hoped progress will continue on alternate-power forms for the personal car. The task, however, is not easy. ERNEST H. WAKEFIELD Evanston, Ill., Jan. 23, 1990 | Why There's No U.S. Market for Electric Cars; Experimental Models |
319604_1 | indicated a willingness to modify the agreement but not to suspend it. Virtually all unionist leaders still insist that some form of suspension is a precondition for talks. Attacked by Paisley Indeed, the Rev. Ian Paisley, who heads the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, immediately attacked Mr. Haughey's proposal and said the British-Irish agreement would have to be suspended for talks to be held. Calling Mr. Haughey's invitation to talks ''another gimmick,'' he said, ''Unionists will not be sitting down with Dublin to discuss the future government and internal affairs of Northern Ireland.'' Peter Brooke, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, said this month that he thought that the climate had improved enough for there to be talks about returning governing powers to Northern Ireland. It has been governed directly from London since 1972, three years after fighting broke out between Catholics and Protestants. Political commentators, however, questioned whether Mr. Brooke's hope was based on fact or was merely the latest attempt by yet another new Northern Ireland minister to break the political deadlock. Mr. Brooke assumed his post in July. A New Agreement? Then last weekend, two senior members of the Ulster Unionist Party, the largest of the two Protestant parties, seemed to make an overture. The two, Jack Allen and Jim Nicholson, said they thought there might be an opportunity for talks if Dublin or London would consider alternatives to the British-Irish agreement. In response, Mr. Haughey said in a statement that if ''a new and more broadly based agreement can be reached by direct discussions and negotiations between all the parties involved, the Irish Government will be prepared to contemplate, in agreement with the British Government, a new and better-structured agreement or arrangement to replace the existing one.'' Political analysts said in the last year or so there has also been a softening in the stand of some other unionist leaders, including Peter Robinson, deputy leader of the Democratic Unionists. ''People in both main unionist parties are arguing in effect that they have to make a reasonably generous offer to share power with the Catholics,'' said Paul Bew, professor of Irish politics at Queens University in Belfast. Moves by Thatcher He speculated that one reason for the moderation was that the British Conservative Party, headed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is trying to build on its tiny base in Northern Ireland, which could hurt the | IRISH LEADER BACKS TALKS ON ULSTER |
319636_1 | detailing actions taken to improve the lot of women. But some speakers Monday said that while 101 countries had ratified the treaty, few had made any significant efforts to eliminate discrimination against women. Broader Recognition Sought At a three-day seminar held in conjunction with the United Nations session at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City at the weekend, Arvonne Fraser, an American co-director of the International Women's Rights Action Watch, said, ''The world does not recognize that there is a women's human rights document, and this is an effort to broaden that recognition.'' ''Custom and tradition have always been to subordinate women,'' added Ms. Fraser, whose group organized the conference. ''So we have to move to legal guarantees that say we are not subordinate.'' While some voiced great hopes for the convention as a women's Magna Carta, others said there was a long way to go. ''We have not traveled as far or as fast as we had hoped,'' Ms. Anstee said. Several countries have approved the convention with reservations. Bangladesh, for example, ratified the convention in 1984 but expressed reservations about an article that compels governments to adopt legislation prohibiting discrimination against women. Sara Longwe, the chairwoman of the Zambia Association for Research and Development, said women were still living as they did a decade ago in Zambia, which also approved the convention. Women carry water over great distances, chop wood and pound grain, she said. While the United States joined the General Assembly consensus in adopting the convention, the Senate has not approved it. Treaty Before Senate Asked why the treaty had not been approved, a State Department spokesman, Fran Westner, said today that it was before the Senate. A spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d had classified it as ''under review, which means this Administration is not pushing it.'' Other countries that have not approved the convention do not seem much closer to changing their minds. C. L. Kundu, the director of the Women's Studies Research Center at Kurukshetra University in India, which did not approve the convention, said women in his country were still subjected to practices like widow burning in the name of tradition and culture. Some countries that have ratified the convention were reported to have made moves toward fulfilling its goals. Hanna Beate Schopp-Schilling, the director general of the Ministry for Youth, Family, | U.N. Women's Rights Convention, 10 Years Old, Gets Mixed Review |
319627_0 | LEAD: Recent Bush Administration trade decisions are squeezing Colombia's earnings and making its war against cocaine trafficking more difficult, the country's Ambassador, Victor Mosquera Chaux, said today. Recent Bush Administration trade decisions are squeezing Colombia's earnings and making its war against cocaine trafficking more difficult, the country's Ambassador, Victor Mosquera Chaux, said today. Three weeks before President Bush is to meet the Colombian President, Virgilio Barco Vargas, and other Andean leaders at a summit conference on drugs in Cartagena, Colombia, Mr. Mosquera held a news conference here to criticize American actions affecting Colombia's top legal exports: cut flowers and coffee. He said the Administration's policies could cut Colombia's foreign earnings by hundreds of millions of dollars a year at a time when his country has had to ''earmark a good portion of national resources for that heroic fight'' against drug trafficking, ''which Colombia is waging on behalf of the whole of mankind.'' Mr. Mosquera said a move to impose a Federal import surcharge on Colombian flowers, after a finding that Colombia was ''dumping'' them in the United States at below fair market value, could put a serious dent in the country's $200 million-a-year trade in cut flowers. He also said that a decision by the United States to pull out of negotiations on a new coffee agreement, causing prices to plummet, will cost Colombia $500 million a year. Flowers Are Widely Distributed The freshly cut flowers, airfreighted daily from Bogota in air-conditioned Boeing 747's, are sold in 35,000 American florist shops and 10,000 supermarkets. A preliminary decision by the Commerce Department on Jan. 5 could mean that the surcharge, imposed retroactively on importers, would rise by 50 percent to $8 million, weakening the competitiveness of Colombian flowers. The decision, which could be overturned when the department makes a final determination in April, is based on an earlier finding that Colombia's dumping was harming domestic growers. The breakdown in the International Coffee Agreement, signed by 74 producing and consuming countries to regulate coffee prices by controlling the quantity of exports, resulted from demands by the United States. Washington wanted greater imports of higher-quality coffees and elimination of discounting that it said was hurting American companies. Its decision not to continue to negotiate caused a sharp drop in international coffee prices. Coffee Price Drops by a Third The agreement, which has maintained order in the world market for the past 27 years, | Colombia Envoy Angry About U.S. Trade Policy |
359057_1 | of this century over why some nations, however poor in resources, make life better and others fail. ''People cannot be reduced to a single dimension as economic creatures,'' William H. Draper, administrator of the Development Program, says in an introduction. In an age of democratic urges, he says, factors like longevity, education, human rights and political freedoms must be part of growth. #15 Countries Are Cited The report singles out 15 countries that have achieved relatively high levels of development in democratic, or ''reasonably democratic,'' settings. These are Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. ''Life does not begin at $11,000, the average per capita income in the industrial world,'' it adds. ''Sri Lanka managed a life expectancy of 71 years and an adult literacy rate of 87 percent with a per capita income of $400.'' In South Asia, Sri Lanka is the exception. The nations of this region - from Afghanistan through Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bhutan to Bangladesh - are all among the countries where human development is lowest, the report says. The findings confirm what is daily becoming more readily observable: that the Asian ''miracle'' is largely confined to Southeast Asia and East Asia, and that claims by India that it be included among newly industrializing countries cannot be justified in broader development terms. South Asia Lags in Vital Areas In plotting regional aggregates of human development over nearly 30 years, South Asia falls behind all other regions of the world except sub-Saharan Africa in improving calorie intake, life expectancy of children under 5, adult literacy and access to basic health care. Meanwhile, populations continue to grow at a very fast rate in an area where more than a billion people are already straining natural resources and where governments are spending large amounts of their revenues on the military and law enforcement. By virtually every measure of material human progress, China, the world's most populous nation, outstrips India, a democratic country whose leaders contend that the Chinese have been more successful only because they apply policies coercively. The report introduces a new measure of growth, the Human Development Index, based on a three-step calculation of deprivation measured in three basic variables: life expectancy, literacy and real disposable income. The report is published by the Oxford University Press in Oxford, England, and in New York. | Higher Incomes, U.N. Finds, Do Not Assure a Better Life |
358989_1 | anomaly's threat has affected planning for the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope now orbiting the Earth, for the $150 million Astro-1 mission now awaiting a ride into orbit on the space shuttle Columbia and for a host of other advanced telescopes scheduled for launching in the 1990's. To offset the effect, scientists are taking precautions like radiation shielding and the careful scheduling of observing time so periods of low activity are coincident with passage through the anomaly's dangers. ''It's becoming more important as the sensitivity of detectors goes up,'' said Dr. Edward J. Weiler, head of ultraviolet and visible astrophysics at the Washington headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Learning to Live With It Dr. Robert C. Bless, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin who heads work on one of Hubble's instruments, said: ''It's a pain, but one you learn to live with.'' John E. Pike, head of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, a private group based in Washington, said the anomaly was a pervasive problem for space scientists. ''It's like the Sargasso Sea,'' he said. ''It's a constant hazard to navigation, even though most people have never heard of it.'' For more than a century experts have known about the weak spot in the magnetic field off the coast of Brazil. Today scientists say the reason is that the Earth's magnetic core is located some 250 miles from the planet's center. This displacement is in a direction away from Brazil, weakening the field there. Discovered in 1958 The effects in space of the South Atlantic Anomaly were discovered in 1958 as the Earth's radiation belts were mapped for the first time, according to Dr. James A. Van Allen, the University of Iowa physicist who discovered the belts and their dip over the South Atlantic. ''You have to view any data obtained in that area with great suspicion,'' Dr. Van Allen said. The particles of radiation are most often electrons and protons trapped in the Earth's magnetic fields. The anomaly had a relatively small impact on the sturdy craft of the early space age. But as the sophistication of the spacecraft grew, and their sensors became more delicate, the anomaly's particles caused increasing havoc. Dr. Bless, the University of Wisconsin astronomer, said he and his colleagues had serious trouble with an astronomy satellite lofted in 1968. ''Occasionally we would be wiped out in areas | 'Dip' on Earth Is Big Trouble In Space |
359087_1 | Koloskov, the president of the Soviet Union Football Federation, announced recently that each Soviet player would be rewarded $30,000 if the team won the World Cup. Asked Again and Again And because Azeglio Vicini, Italy's coach, has announced he would not allow his players to have sex during the tournament, just about all the other 23 World Cup coaches have been asked time and again for their views on the subject, Gansler included. Gansler, whose team is generally regarded as an underdog, has always taken the highroad answering as he did again today when a well-dressed Italian journalist broached the subject by saying, ''Sex is very important to Latin peoples. . . .'' Gansler interrupted. ''Sex is very important in America, too,'' he said. ''That's why there are 250 million of us.'' In a way, the fact that Gansler had few other thorny issues to address at this point in preparation reflects an uncommon serenity about his team so close to its first game. As a group, the American players appear calm, focused and unfettered by outside distraction or internal unrest. For now, the starters are happy to be starters; the substitutes are happy to be on the team. No one has complained about the training facilities, a complex normally used by Italian Olympic athletes. 'Nervous Energy' There is almost a perceptible lack of tension of any kind. When the morning workout ended today, most players left the training field for a sightseeing tour to Pisa, some 10 miles away, and the famous Leaning Tower. Several others remained in the field, kicking balls at the goalkeeper, Tony Meola. ''They have a lot of nervous energy,'' Gansler said, nodding toward Meola and the others. ''You've got to let them spend it.'' Even potential issues have failed to materialize. In the locker room last Saturday night in St. Gallen, Switzerland, after the Swiss team had defeated the Americans in their final preparation game, 2-1, Eric Wynalda was fuming about his poor play. Until a month ago, Wynalda was strictly a forward and one of the leading scorers for the team. But when Peter Vermes returned from his league play in the Netherlands, taking Wynalda's position, Gansler moved Wynalda to a wing in the midfield, which requires him to play far more defense. Wynalda's only goal since came early last week in a 4-1 victory over Liechtenstein, a team that hadn't played together | U.S. Taking the Highroad on the Big Question |
363262_6 | rid of, like gifts that people sent and you don't know what they are,'' Mr. Rosegarten said. ''I also have three grown sons. That means three footballs, three baseball gloves and three pairs of hockey skates.'' The only problem facing Mr. Rosegarten, he said, ''is how to get all this stuff down to the garage sale.'' ''It's not like it's in my garage.'' Third-Grade Landowners What a bargain. A real-estate partnership from St. James is picking up southern real estate at $50 an acre. The group recently purchased 20 acres for $1,000. If they buy 20 more, they can have a tract named after them. Of course, accessibility is a problem. So are snakes and creatures that go ''aaak'' in the night. But the third graders at the St. James Elementary School don't seem to mind. ''They talk of nothing else,'' said their teacher, Joan Fletcher. The southern real estate that the 8- and 9-year-olds now own is part of the rain forest in the Monteverde region of Costa Rica. They found out about the land through Dr. Barbara Bentley, a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a plant ecologist. Dr. Bentley was invited to speak to Mrs. Fletcher's class by her daughter, Jocelyn Bentley-Prestwich, who is in the class. Dr. Bentley explained a few rain forest facts. ''Fifty percent of the organisms on earth occur in the rain forest,'' she said. ''And many of the plants that give us drugs for medical treatment are found there as well.'' ''We are losing rain forests at rate of 80,000 acres a day,'' she said. ''That's as if Long Island disappeared in 15 days. The rain forest is going to be gone by the turn of the century if we don't do something right now.'' The students decided they had better do something right, right now. When Dr. Bentley told them about the International Children's Rain Forest in Costa Rica they became instant real-estate entrepreneurs. To raise the money, two third-grade classes, Mrs. Fletcher's and Eileen Pereca's, had a used-book sale. They sold 5,000 books in two days. ''And that was at 25 cents a book,'' Mrs. Fletcher said. They hope to raise more money next year, and perhaps someday visit their property. They could see it, Dr. Bentley said. ''They might have to walk a day and half,'' she said, ''but they could see it.'' | LONG ISLAND JOURNAL |
363655_1 | in 1980 to 7,654 last year. And even in Tokyo, which has extremely low crime rates per capita (there were 121 murders last year), police are worried about increasing numbers of larcenies by foreign visitors against foreign visitors. Nonetheless, some world cities have enviable safety records. In Tokyo, passers-by leave unattended luggage alone. In Geneva, crime is so rare that purse snatchings are reported in the local papers. And in Vancouver, British Columbia, there is little violent crime , though car thefts have risen markedly. In Hong Kong, the concern is whether or not the pearls are real. While there are substantial variations in safety from city to city , criminologists at the Rand Corporation, a research organization in Santa Monica, Calif., say that the worldwide crime rise is due in part to drugs. Tourists - and their cash and easily sold cameras and personal stereos - are targets for addicts. Whatever your destination, there are precautions to take before leaving home, as well as on the road. The American Society of Travel Agents, a trade group representing 21,000 agents in 129 countries, urges travelers to make several copies of passports, traveler's checks, credit cards, and airline tickets and other travel documents. The society says one copy should be left with a relative or friend at home. Another should be stowed in a suitcase away from the originals. Take most of your money in traveler's checks rather than cash; record the serial numbers, denominations and location of the issuing bank or credit agency. Keep this information separate from the checks. If you carry a shoulder bag, keep it closed when you are on the street and hold it close. Do not carry a wallet in your hip pocket or inside jacket pocket, but in a front pants pocket. If you are driving, carry handbag or camera in the center of the car, out of reach of thieves who reach through windows. Be alert in places like train stations that are full of tourists. At the beach, don't lock clothes and valuables in your rented car. The State Department suggests booking a hotel room between the second and seventh floors - high enough to deny burglars easy access and low enough for fire equipment to reach. Following are safety profiles of 22 world cities, arranged by continent, and particular scams to watch out for, as reported by Times correspondents and contributors. | Staying on the Safe Side |
363627_0 | LEAD: Bumped From a Flight Bumped From a Flight Q. My husband and I were recently ''bumped'' from an Alitalia flight to Rome. We arrived at the ticket counter 40 mintues before the flight, because of delays in traffic, and were advised that our seats had been sold. We took a later flight to London and a connecting flight to Rome the next afternoon, losing a full day of our vacation. Are passengers on international flights entitled to be compensated for the inconvenience and loss of time resulting from overbooking as are passengers on domestic flights? - Denise G. Rabinowitz, Tuxedo Park, N.Y. A. Passengers on international flights from the United States are entitled to compensation if they are bumped because of overbooking. If the airline cannot put bumped passengers on a flight that will arrive within four hours of your original flight, the passengers are entitled to two times the price of the one-way fare to the destination or $400, whichever is lower. The computation is not based on half the round-trip fare, which is often less than the one-way rate. For domestic travel, if the airline cannot provide a flight that arrives within two hours of the originally scheduled time, passengers are entitled to double the one-way fare or $400, whichever is less. If passengers get to their destination between one and two hours of the original flight, they are compensated the one-way fare or $200, whichever is less. To qualify for compensation, passengers must check in no later than the time recommended by the airline. A spokesman for Alitalia said that international passengers are advised to report two hours before flight time. Therefore, you were not entitled to compensation. Other exceptions: if passengers are bumped because a connecting flight is late, if the flight is on a plane with fewer than 60 seats, or if the flight orginates outside the United States. A Parrot to Canada and Back Q. I am hoping to travel to Canada this summer in my car with my Amazon parrot. What kind of documentation do I need? - Betsy Cramer, Ipswich, Mass. A. Canada does not require a permit for bringing in one or two birds of the parrot family or songbirds. You simply fill out a form (AGR 1553) when you enter, declaring that the birds have been in your possession for the previous 90 days and have not been in | Q and A |
363460_5 | would force the Government to give up usable frequencies totaling 200 megahertz. The Bush Administration has refused to support the bill, although it has not actively opposed it. Political debates over frequency allocations have moved slowly in part because of their technical complexity. The electromagnetic spectrum is an immense range of energy waves at varying frequencies, including everything from radio waves and microwaves to visible light and X-rays. In broadcasting, the information to be conveyed is converted to an electrical signal that is transformed into radio waves or higher-frequency microwaves of a particular frequency, or channel. These waves are then broadcast to antennas of receivers, which convert them back into electrical signals that re-create the information. Frequencies Allocated in Europe A home or car radio receives music and voices on frequencies low on the spectrum. Television and cellular telephones use higher frequencies. Communications satellites and the private microwave links of long-distance telephone companies and other corporations use an even higher part of the spectrum. Now, with virtually all usable frequencies actually being used, the debate is fiercer. Wallet-size portable telephones that can make and in some cases receive calls are in production and in limited use in Britain, but cannot be used in the United States except in small test areas, for lack of frequencies. West Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, Belgium and Finland have allocated frequencies for the telephones, and their national telephone companies are negotiating or have signed contracts to buy the needed equipment, said Timothy P. Lowry, the director of mobile systems at GPT Ltd., Britain's leading producer of telecommunications equipment. Handicap Seen for U.S. Industry ''For American industry, not allocating frequencies is a handicap, because they don't have a home market in which to build up sales,'' he said. One reason for the frequency shortage in the United States has been that frequencies have long been handed out without charge in a highly subjective process involving numerous lawyers, lobbyists and elected officials. Once allocated, frequencies can be bought and sold by the license holders, and some critics of the system have said this provides the initial recipients with a windfall. But the traded frequencies may be used only for their original purpose, even if it no longer seems so pressing. The F.C.C. can issue waivers but seldom does so. As a result, one band of frequencies may receive very heavy use while another band of | The Elbowing Is Becoming Fierce For Space on the Radio Spectrum |
361498_2 | came seven years after Mrs. Adan had won a judgment against Mr. Abbott, only to see him block a trial to set an award through legal motions filed from his cell in Auburn State Prison. The award caused Mr. Abbott to peer at the jurors with a quizzical look. Then, shaking his head, he told Acting Justice Carol H. Arber, ''It is a little excessive, your honor, I would say.'' In contrast, after receiving the verdict with relative equanimity, Mrs. Adan and her family whooped with undisguised joy as they left the courtroom. Mrs. Adan said that the verdict ''was all I could do for my husband'' and that it meant ''society has tried to balance what he suffered so he can rest in peace.'' ''It's delightful,'' Mr. Howard said. ''Just to know that Abbott will never earn a penny from anything he ever writes. It's the first thing we've had to smile about in nine years. If he slows down, we'll send him a word processor.'' ''What he did was vicious as hell and the devil got his due,'' said Kenneth Fishman, Mrs. Adan's lawyer. In his rambling closing statement to the jury on Thursday, Mr. Abbott asked the jurors not to award anything to Mrs. Adan and bitterly criticized her for demanding any financial damages for the death of her husband. 'I'm No Savage' In her $10 million suit, Mrs. Adan contended that her husband had suffered horribly before he died and that he would have had a good chance of being a successful actor had he lived. But Mr. Abbott argued that he had been so adept and swift with his knife that Mr. Adan had never felt any pain or suffering. ''I'm no savage,'' he said, adding that he could have caused more pain and suffering had he chosen. But the jury disagreed and awarded Mrs. Adan $5.575 million for the financial loss resulting from her husband's death and $2 million for the pain he suffered after Mr. Abbott plunged a knife into his chest. In disjointed cross-examinations of the witnesses appearing against him, Mr. Abbott portrayed himself as ''as good as any writer in this country'' and asked everyone, Justice Arber included, if they had read ''Belly of the Beast,'' a compilation of letters he wrote to Norman Mailer in which he detailed the brutality of prison life. Wearing a brown tweed jacket and jeans | Author Is Told To Pay Millions For '81 Slaying |
361449_1 | difference has crept in: ''so long as the military structure remains what it is today,'' as Prime Minister Michel Rocard noted afterward. Fudging to presage a reversal is also part of de Gaulle's heritage, as when the general told French colonists fighting Algerian independence, ''I have understood you.'' Suggestive phrases, muted debate, praise of de Gaulle's capacity to ''adapt to circumstances'' signal a reconsideration of Paris's alliance policy now. France holds the key to the new problems of remolding NATO so that it can survive well beyond the collapsing Warsaw Pact, encompass a united Germany without discrimination and help Moscow accept what it cannot prevent. The NATO summit meeting next month is to review its mission and doctrine as the Soviet threat recedes. France is among the allies most determined that the alliance continue to exist. It accepts none of the Soviet suggestions for a ''new European security system,'' not dissolving alliances, not German neutrality, and certainly not the ''French model'' for Germany, a national military outside allied command. The logical solution is for France to join the command. The main obstacle is the political oath of exclusive national control of defense, though French experts have long conceded in private that it is an illusion, relying on American support and contradicted by all sorts of practical involvement with NATO. It was even revealed last year, without cries of horror or betrayal here, that the U.S. played a critical role in helping France build its nuclear Force de Frappe, the keystone of ''independent defense.'' There are many signs that public insistence on the old policy is as superficial as American opinion against recognizing Communist China proved to be when President Nixon defied conventional shibboleths and flew to Beijing. Instead of outrage, the reaction after decades was, ''At last.'' Former Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, leader of the neo-Gaullist party, has tested the waters most boldly. He has put the right twist on the approach. De Gaulle was rejecting American ''domination,'' he said recently, ''a waiting arrangement for the day when Europe would at last be able to take its fate in hand.'' The time has come, he said, for France to take ''a direct part'' in the defense of the Continent. He even suggested including its tactical nuclear weapons and possibly a strategic nuclear agreement with Britain. But he made clear this ''Europeanization'' must not exclude the U.S. Mr. Chirac proposed ''parallel'' | NATO A la Francaise |
364635_1 | advocacy organization, who was at the meeting. Mr. Mendoza said Mr. Frohnmayer had referred to ''things beside artistic quality that had to be taken into consideration'' and that he had said ''it is our job to recognize the political realities.'' Ms. Finley was attacked in a recent syndicated newspaper column by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, who cited one of her works, called ''We Keep Our Victims Ready,'' as an example of the endowment's willingness to help pay for exhibitions that might be considered obscene. Ms. Finley, who appeared nude with chocolate smeared over her body, said she intended the work as ''a symbol of women being treated like dirt.'' Ms. Finley said in a telephone interview that she had never heard officially whether her application for a solo performance grant had been recommended for approval by the theater peer panel. The artist, who is to appear at Lincoln Center in New York on July 25, said she was outraged by recent events and by Mr. Frohnmayer's reported remarks about her application. ''I am an artist that has been presented by the U.S.I.A. in Europe, in Finland and in Germany, and yet here in my own country, I am being put into a postiion as a sacrifical lamb without anyone from the endowment talking to me about it. ''I have a long history of performing and the credentials that come with being a serious professional artist. But I have been made a fool in the press; I have been dismissed by William Safire, Evans and Novak and William Buckley, none of whom have seen me perform. And they distort what I do. There is a blacklist being compiled in this country by certain people about those who have a different point of view from theirs.'' Listeners Are Disturbed It was unclear why Mr. Frohnmayer would have been so candid, especially when he has been so quiet recently. There was speculation that Mr. Frohnmayer, frustrated about the continuing dispute over Government support for the arts, might simply have felt more comfortable back in the Northwest, his home territory, and wanted to convey his personal feelings in a blunt way with longtime friends and colleagues. The private discussion took place before Mr. Frohnmayer's formal address at the annual luncheon of the Corporate Council for the Arts at the Westin Hotel in Seattle. ''He said he was still committed to the panel review | Frohnmayer Said to See Peril to Theater Grants |
359753_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: Anthony Lewis's column ''A Rage to Kill'' (May 18), on the death penalty in the United States, touches on a cultural attitude that appears in many areas of American life, and not just the popular sentiment about criminal justice. An obsession with killing appears in the popularity of movie violence, the fascination with contact sports (and the injuries they produce), the use of the word ''competition'' as a euphemism for bullying (or just general nastiness), the mistreatment of animals (for example, ''road-kills,'' ''rattlesnake roundups'' dogfights) and in the emphasis given to violent events in the news media. All of these are symptoms, but what is the disease? Part of the answer might be that the people who love violence as adults learned it as a way of life during childhood: psychological studies indicate that those who were abused as children tend to be abusive as parents. One might ask, ''What does this have to do with ordinary people?'' The answer is that one probably cannot draw a clear-cut line between abuse and normal discipline. As a result, it is conceivable that an attitude euphemized as ''being tough,'' or ''making a man of him'' (one's child) may pass from one generation to the next and eventually become a cultural norm. This implies that we have developed a culture of violence, which might be traceable to the pioneer experience of living in a rough, new land. One wonders how the stress of living on the frontier might have affected the behavior of parents toward children and, ultimately, the attitudes of subsequent generations to life in general. When 12 families of new settlers live stuffed together in a cabin in the middle of the Great Plains in the dead of winter, one would expect some long-lasting psychological trauma as a result (see ''The Old West,'' U.S. News and World Report, May 21, 1990). Circumstances like this must have occurred repeatedly since the founding of the Jamestown colony in 1607. Another component of this background might be the secularization of Calvinist values, in the form of such notions as restraint (especially of emotional expression), stoicism, the elect (good guys) versus the nonelect (bad guys) and of extremely stern (often physical) family and community discipline as virtues in their own right. A third element underlying our proclivity for anger and its violent expression would appear to be frustrated | Violence, as American as Apple Pie |
359667_2 | that in nine major tropical countries, the estimates of total annual losses of tropical-forest acreage were about four times as high as estimates from the years 1981 to 1985. The nine countries were Brazil, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Cameroon and Myanmar (formerly Burma). Dr. Hammond said, however, that in Brazil, the rate of deforestation declined in 1988 from 1987, largely because the levels from the latter year were the highest on record. As the tropical forests shrink, their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide declines, hastening the onset and increasing the magnitude of the warming phenomenon. And as the vegetation from the cut forests decays or is burned, it emits more carbon dioxide. The tropical forests also contain the largest and most diverse populations of plant and animal species of any habitat. As the forests vanish, so do many of these species, many before they ever have been discovered, named and analyzed. Tropical forests have infertile soil because most of the nutrients are in the vegetation, not the soil. Thus, when these forests are cleared they tend to regenerate slowly, if at all. 'An Unparalleled Tragedy' ''Tropical deforestation is an unparalleled tragedy,'' said Mr. Speth. ''If we don't reverse the trend soon, it will be too late.'' Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in a statement: ''This is the first reliable data we've had on tropical deforestation in 10 years. A situation we knew was bleak is now shown to be truly horrendous.'' The World Resources Institute report was prepared in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Program and the United Nations Development Program. Joan Martin Brown, special adviser to the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said at the news conference that her organization did not have its own capacity to do the kind of research contained in the report. Since preagricultural times, the report said, the world has lost about one-fifth of all its forests, from more than 12 billion acres to under 10 billion acres. In the past, most of the losses were in the temperate forests of Europe, Asia and North America. In recent years, however, it is the tropical forests of the developing countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa that have been disappearing most rapidly. Forests Without Trees Brazil, with the largest remaining tropical forest area, is also experiencing the worst | Loss of Tropical Forests Is Found Much Worse Than Was Thought |
359659_0 | LEAD: A team of scientists here has produced the nation's first genetically engineered calves, a new milestone in using advanced genetic technology to alter food-producing animals. A team of scientists here has produced the nation's first genetically engineered calves, a new milestone in using advanced genetic technology to alter food-producing animals. Four calves born in the last 15 months on a farm near Marquez, Tex., 120 miles north of Houston, have genes from other species, including humans. Researchers expect the genes, inserted into fertilized eggs removed from the womb, to speed growth and make cattle leaner. The four calves are a first step in understanding how direct genetic manipulation of the chromosomes of cattle will affect meat and milk. In producing the genetically engineered calves, which look no different from ordinary calves, scientists in the United States have completed their goal of inserting foreign genes into the chromosomes of every important food animal. The breakthrough holds the promise of eliminating many steps in the long and costly process of cattle breeding, and also of producing superior livestock with traits that until now have existed only in theory. There have been no striking changes in three of the first four genetically engineered cattle, but scientists say the fact that the new genetic traits became a permanent part of the chromosomes shows that an important technical boundary has been crossed. Federal regulators said they had several concerns about how genetic transformations might affect the quality of meat and milk, and these issues are being reviewed by the Department of Agriculture. Animal welfare groups and some family farm groups have been worried as well about the new technology's potential to harm animals, the environment and smaller producers who could be forced out of business. Gene-altered cattle have been developed in Canada and Europe, but the achievements, reported in specialized technical journals, have received little attention outside the small fraternity of scientists conducting animal reproductive research. The procedure has been done in pigs, sheep, goats and chickens, but scientists say the genetically engineered calves represent a significant step in using the technology because cattle are much more complicated to work with and far more important economically. Farm specialists say the technology holds vast promise for altering production practices and changing the structure of the nation's $35 billion beef industry and $20 billion dairy industry. For instance, cattle companies could offer McDonald's beef animals specially | Texas Researchers Develop 4 Gene-Altered Calves |
358119_6 | $80 million to improve its terminal at Kennedy in cooperation with United Airlines, which formed a marketing alliance with British Airways under which they feed each other passengers and jointly market their flights. Mr. Falkner and Mr. Murphy both believe that Kennedy will continue to see its share of international passengers drop as domestic carriers add foreign flights at their hubs. Delta, for example, will have four international gates at a new terminal being built at Orlando International Airport, where the airline now has a flight to Frankfurt. Expansion in Atlanta Delta is also seeking to have a concourse added at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta. The carrier began international service there in 1978 with a daily flight to London. It now has eight daily flights to Europe. Trying to make up for the loss of passengers at Kennedy from other airlines, Pan Am and T.W.A. have tried to build up their own domestic networks to feed passengers to Kennedy. T.W.A. acquired Ozark Airlines and has built a hub at St. Louis. Carl C. Icahn, the chairman of T.W.A., has unsuccessfully sought to strengthen the network by trying to buy carriers like Eastern, most recently last year. But maintaining domestic networks is becoming more difficult for both carriers as their United States competitors add flights abroad. Delta Air Lines, for example, now flies directly from Cincinnati to London and Frankfurt and plans to add Paris on July 1. Pan Am flies a Boeing 727 to and from Cincinnati to bring passengers to its international hub at Kennedy. That is highly inefficient because the plane must often lay over at Cincinnati for up to 16 hours before its flight back. Advantage for Domestics For overseas flights that do connect at Kennedy, the United States airlines count on the ability to bring passengers directly to their terminals, enabling them to board international flights easily. That gives them an advantage over foreign carriers, which cannot operate domestic flights. The reluctance to give up such an advantage was an important reason that the domestic carriers were unwilling to support the Port Authority plan for a $1 billion central terminal and monorail system. The Port Authority said last month that it would put off the project. Under the Port Authority plan, passengers on all domestic and international flights would have checked their luggage at the central terminal at Kennedy and then boarded the monorail to | Kennedy Still No. 1, but Slipping |
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