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403954_1 | department made a written request that Wechsler's lessees remove their possessions by a certain date, as a preliminary step to removing the structures. The department acted to remove the personal property only after its requests were ignored and the date fixed had passed without action. Department representatives found the doors to the cabins unlocked and unsecured. The department has held this property for over a year to be claimed by its owners. The column failed to mention that before the Appellate Division opinion referred to above, Wechsler excluded members of the public from the state-owned land on the theory that they interfered with his hunting and fishing rights. This was likewise rejected by the court. Since that time, the department has actively managed this property and held it open to public use with no problems. Everyone concedes that the Gorge is fragile; that is why the department's proposal is for public ownership as a unique area, not a park. Public use would be limited to a level that is consistent with the preservation of the resources. The column also suggested that the department has supplied misinformation to the press that "Wechsler was about to sell his land in the Neversink Gorge to a housing developer." The facts that are in the public record speak for themselves. There is presently filed against Wechsler's land in the Sullivan County Clerk's Office a legal notice known as a lis pendens. This will alert a title researcher that the title is in dispute, in this case because a New York City developer, Berne Investors Inc., contends that Wechsler has already signed a contract to convey all of this land and interests in the Neversink Gorge -- without, I might add, imposing any environmental restrictions whatsoever. Berne sued Wechsler to force performance of the contract. Wechsler moved to dismiss the suit; his motion to dismiss was denied, and denied again on appeal. The Neversink Gorge is in a pristine condition now, despite increasing development pressure. Can we be sure that it will be in this condition 50 or 100 years from now? Public ownership and management is one answer to this problem. It assures a stability and security in the preservation forever of unique natural resources that individual private stewardship, no matter how well intentioned, cannot provide. LANGDON MARSH Albany The writer is executive deputy commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. | Park Debate Continues |
401561_2 | try to enact legislation for protecting rapidly disappearing tropical forests. Their proposed law would require their Governments to enter negotiations on an international timber agreement. Such an accord would reduce timber cutting, improve economic returns to the the tropical countries and encourage the sustainable uses of the forests. Help for Malaysian State The legislators urged an 80 percent reduction in cutting in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, where, according to Hemmo Muntingh, a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, unrestrained logging has created a desperate situation that approached "ecological suicide" for much of Sarawak. The legislators called for a moratorium on log imports from Sarawak by the industrial nations. An official in the Malaysian Embassy here said logging in Sarawak had already been reduced. The official, who would not give his name, said he would not comment on any of the other statements made by the legislators at today's news conference. They also called on the United States, Canada, Japan, and the Soviet Union to draw up a treaty for protecting the ecology of the North Pacific where, they said, marine mammals, fish, and sea bird populations were being reduced very rapdily because of excessive harvesting and pollution. Senator Albert Gore Jr., the Tennessee Democrat who is Globe's new president, said: "Whether presidents or prime ministers act in these areas or not, parliamentarians will act. The people of the world want the environment to be protected and parliaments, by their nature, are closer to the grass roots." Praises From Japan Takashi Kosugi, a representative of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, said that the common positions taken by Globe had helped overcome resistance to environmental protection measures by the Trade and Finance Ministries of his Government. The legislators agreed on a letter to Maurice Strong, the Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, to be held in Brazil in 1992, urging that the conference take up as a primary issue "the burgeoning human population growth in the developing world." Unsustainable population growth, the letter said, threatens "public and private programs to improve health, combat poverty, raise education levels and improve the environment." The June 1992 conference, to be held in Rio de Janeiro, is expected to play a critical role in developing global programs for protecting the environment while promoting economic growth, particularly in the poorer nations of Latin America, Africa and Asia. | Legislators Seek Laws to Aid Environment |
399506_0 | You've packed for a week's vacation and the luggage you are entrusting to the airline contains some seemingly harmless items: matches, nail-polish remover, a cigarette lighter, a can of hair spray. But in the air, even in a suitcase, vibrations can ignite matches, chemicals in nail-polish remover and even a cigarette lighter, setting a suitcase afire. Aerosol containers can explode because of pressure changes at high altitude. Other potentially dangerous cargo are laundry and cleaning products, which can release toxic fumes and cause fires. Even camping gear can be hazardous: in 1988, a small kerosene camp stove, packed in a suitcase in the baggage compartment, caught fire and set the cabin of the plane ablaze. But the fire was extinguished and the plane was able to land; no one was injured. Because baggage on domestic flights is not screened for dangerous materials, Federal aviation officials ask passengers to doublecheck the contents of their luggage and remove items that are flammable or potentially explosive. The Air Transport Association, a private industry group, recommends that instead of packing any potentially dangerous products, travelers buy what they need once they reach their destinations. | Dangers Can Lurk In Luggage |
399583_0 | To the Editor: Readers alarmed by decimation of tropical rain forests should not be deluded by full-page advertisements of the Rainforest Action Network in your newspaper and others charging that the International Monetary Fund is one of the "world's leading architects of environmental destruction" (Oct. 15). I will reply briefly -- if only to minimize the felling of trees for newsprint. The I.M.F. is composed of 154 member countries and is the world's central monetary institution. It was created 45 years ago for the promotion of international trade and economic growth by helping countries to stabilize their currencies, battle inflation and build sound economies. More than 60 countries are receiving or negotiating I.M.F. assistance. Some 30 are African nations seeking to reverse a tragic fall in per capita income over the last two decades; in Latin America, many countries now have a chance to grow out of debt, and remarkable progress is being made in Eastern Europe, all in cooperation with the I.M.F. The I.M.F. also assists its members to improve their economic efficiency. By helping countries move from state-run to market systems and reduce their foreign debt to sustainable levels, it contributes to laying the foundation for long-term sustainable growth. It is such growth that will eventually prevail against poverty and in some ways help the environment, too. The fight against poverty is the only way to avoid a situation where people are driven to destroy irreplaceable environmental assets, such as rain forests. The I.M.F. coordinates advice and support with other international agencies with environmental concerns and expertise. Economic change and transformation are not costless. The I.M.F. encourages countries to develop social safety nets so that the more vulnerable segments of the population can, to the extent possible, be protected against the inescapable hardship of economic adjustment. The advertisement and solicitation were inaccurate in suggesting that I.M.F.-supported programs are financed solely by United States taxpayers. The United States and 153 other members own shares in this cooperative institution; these pooled resources are used to extend credit and technical assistance to member countries in need. By making a contribution to the financial resources of the I.M.F., each country -- including the United States -- also establishes a right to draw on the institution, which it can exercise when a need arises. An increase of the I.M.F.'s capital base is indispensable to enable it to face the unexpected needs of its | International Monetary Fund Helps Preserve the Environment |
404600_3 | it is oxidized or damaged by these unstable chemicals. If beta carotene can prevent the oxidation of cholesterol, it might minimize the damage to arteries. Though research with supplements is scarce, there have been a few studies that suggest beneficial effects of beta carotene. Dr. Harinder Garewal, associate professor of medicine at the University of Arizona Cancer Center in Tucson, Ariz., has been studying the effects of beta carotene supplements on pre-cancerous lesions in the mouth and has found that in 70 percent of the people tested, 30 milligrams of beta carotene a day reduced the size of the lesions and in a few cases returned them to normal. "My intuitive feeling is that if you used that in a population, you could perhaps decrease cancer," Dr. Garewal said. Laboratory and animal studies have suggested that beta carotene may also improve a person's immune function. "The bottom line is that in general there is an anti-tumor effect with agents like beta carotene," said Dr. Joel Schwartz, a researcher at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Part of this anti-tumor effect, Dr. Schwartz said, is the ability of beta carotene to enhance the immune system by increasing the production of white blood cells. Unlike vitamin A, which can be toxic in excessive amounts, beta carotene appears to have no dangerous side effects, even at high doses. The most visible side effect of too much beta carotene is that it can turn the skin orange. But the orange glow is harmless and fades once the intake of beta carotene is reduced. If the Physicians' Health Study proves that beta carotene supplements reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease, should supplements be taken as a preventive measure? Dr. Hennekens says no, but he does urge people to eat more carrots and green, leafy vegetables. "The diet should be altered to what we call the 'hunter-gatherer' diet instead of the omnivorous, high-calorie, high-fat diet that this society consumes," he said. Because estimates of the average beta carotene intake in this country range from 1.5 to 1.9 milligrams per day, supplements may be the only way for most people to get even close to the average 25 milligrams a day that the men in the Physicians' Health Study are consuming. Several one-a-day type vitamin supplements now include beta carotene. Still, no one knows the long-term effects of taking supplements. Dr. Garewal said at least | EATING WELL |
404701_0 | To the Editor: In New York State, the providers and consumers of services for people with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities have established a system for registering people waiting for services in a single computer data base. This system allows a count of the number of people waiting for service, their demographic profile and the kinds of services they are awaiting. The needs assessment survey is operated by the State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, through its local offices, with voluntary, not-for-profit service provider agencies, local governments and service consumers and advocates. Registration involves completion of a one-page form that provides basic demographic information on the person needing service and an indication of the types of service needed. The immediate goal of the system is to account for every person waiting for service. As of last Oct. 2, 11,170 people were registered. In the next year or two, we expect to have a near complete count. CHARLES BROWNING New York, Nov. 9, 1990 The writer is an assistant bureau director in the New York City Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Alcoholism Services. | Trusts for the Disabled Gaining Support; Service Census |
404646_0 | The largest study of its kind ever conducted has found that women who take estrogen after menopause run an increased risk of developing breast cancer. But experts said the findings did not mean that post-menopausal women should stop taking estrogen. The benefits of the drug are great, they said, and the increased risk of breast cancer is relatively small. The researchers, led by Dr. Graham A. Colditz of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, also found that a year after women stop taking the female sex hormones, the eadditional risk of breast cancer subsides. Epidemiologists and experts on breast cancer said the new study was notable because of its size and design. "This is a very important study," said Dr. Malcolm Pike, an epidemiologist at the University of Southern California who has studied the link between estrogen and breast cancer. Some Benefits and Risks Cancer researchers have spent years trying to clarify the risks women may face when they take estrogen after menopause. The hormone can prevent a dangerous loss of calcium from bones that occurs when the body's estrogen production falls at menopause. Estrogen may also prevent heart disease, the leading killer of older women. Studies have shown that estrogen can cause cancer of the uterus, a relatively rare and much less dangerous cancer. Far more troubling were studies suggesting that taking estrogen might also contribute to breast cancer, a major cause of death in women. The researchers followed 121,700 female nurses for 10 years, recording whether the women took estrogen after menopause and, if so, for how long. They found that women taking estrogen were 30 to 40 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than those who did not take the hormone. But this risk is considered small; it is only about half the risk a woman faces if her mother had breast cancer. Reducing Heart Disease Although women should know about the effects of estrogen, "the benefits almost certainly outweigh the cost in terms of risk," said Dr. I. Bruce Henderson, a cancer researcher at Harvard Medical School. For example, he said, if a woman has osteoporosis, a bone disease associated with a loss of calcium, she should be given estrogen. And it "unequivocally" helps women who suffer hot flashes with menopause, he said. While it has not been fully established how much estrogen helps to reduce heart disease, Dr. Henderson said, "the evidence is growing | Study Links Estrogen to Cancer, but Risk Is Slight |
402999_1 | full legal status after the collapse of Communist rule. "We must always bear in mind that these religious performed enormous services for the church." The issue poses serious problems for the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican, which does not permit married clergy and bars women from ordination. A recently concluded Vatican conference in Rome debated the issue of celibacy for priests before reaffirming church doctrine in this matter. Meanwhile, calls for greater roles for women within the church have been raised in many countries. Questions on Validity Church officials in Prague said that many of the cases here involved the troubled figure of the Rev. Felix Davidek, the Bishop of Brno, in Moravia, in the 1960's. Persecuted and imprisoned for many years by the Communist secret police, Bishop Davidek secretly ordained many men, some of them married, in a desperate effort to assure the survival of the clergy. Many candidates were simple, uneducated people, and it is not clear whether all the ordinations were valid. It was rumored that Bishop Davidek, who died in the 1970's, ordained women. Father Duka said no evidence exists to support this, but he acknowledged that women elsewhere were consecrated as deacons. "We are dealing with these cases," he said, "the women in the meantime have agreed not to exercise these functions." "It was a terrible time, with much persecution," explained Archbishop Giovanni Coppa, the newly-appointed Papal Nuncio, as he discussed the years when Czechoslovakia was ruled by people who were among the most zealously anticlerical Communists in Eastern Europe. "It is all under consideration at the Vatican. We just do not know how many are involved, the numbers are still coming in. Many are married, some have children. In many cases we simply do not know if the ordinations are valid." Training in Secret The secretly ordained priests were usually trained clandestinely in private apartments and homes, often by noted theologians visiting from abroad, including the Polish Dominican Jacek Sali, or the German theologian, Johann Baptist Metz. In the severest period of persecution, during the 1950's, ordinations also took place secretly in the detention camps and prisons where the clergy were interned. Later, in addition to those priests clandestinely ordained in Czechoslovakia, there were others who were sent for secret ordination in East Germany or Poland by bishops including Cracow's Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II. After their ordination the secret | Czechoslovak Church's Quandary: Married Priests |
403003_0 | To the Editor: While some may be excited about the new-found ability of postmenopausal women to become pregnant ("Menopause Is Found No Bar to Pregnancy," front page, Oct. 25), I am much more dismayed than excited by the prospect. As the case of surrogate motherhood in Santa Ana, Calif. (news article, Oct. 23), taught us, new technology in fertilization can make more problems in defining who are the parents than it solves by allowing an infertile couple to conceive. So, too, this new fertilization technique using donated eggs is sure to give rise to lawsuits that will vainly try to answer the question, "Who is the mother of this baby?" Now it's true that men have been semen donors for years, and the issue of paternity only rarely, if ever, comes up. But with women donating eggs there is much less anonymity, and there is a natural bond that a woman feels to her child. So it's a sad day for me, and for others who are confronted by these "new families." As usual, a sad day for me means a happy one for lawyers. JOSEPH M. SCHELLER, M.D. Associate Director Pediatric Teaching Program Mercy Hospital and Medical Center San Diego, Nov. 2, 1990 | Women Nowadays Take Pregnancy in Stride; Postmenopausal Puzzle |
397719_0 | The world's largest industrial nations agreed on Thursday to a global ban on dumping industrial waste at sea and then set the stage today for restricting the far greater volume of marine pollution discharged on land. "This is very promising," said Filip Facius, head of the Danish delegation, which co-sponsored the resolution to ban ocean dumping. "We see the meeting as a big step forward." The measure, which calls for phasing out industrial waste dumping at sea by 1995, was adopted late Thursday by consensus among the 43 nations represented at the five-day meeting of signers of the London Dumping Convention. It is legally binding on all 64 nations that have signed the 20-year-old treaty, including the United States, Britain, Germany, France, the Soviet Union, Japan and most other industrialized nations. The United States, which in 1988 passed a law halting ocean dumping of industrial waste, had initially opposed the international ban, saying more study was needed. The resolution was sponsored by Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Spain and Brazil. Under the measure, a survey will be conducted to identify areas suffering the worst effects of waste dumping. Member countries will be expected to prosecute their own flagships found violating the ban. | 43 Nations Agree to Ban Ocean Dumping |
399345_0 | High school students demanding smaller classes, greater safety and vastly increased educational spending demonstrated in Paris and other French cities for the fourth straight day today, in a fast-growing movement that has thrown the Socialist Government on the defensive. With a big demonstration planned for Paris next Monday, the Government is groping for a way to appease the students, asserting that its recent increase in school spending of 9 percent a year already showed a big commitment to improving education. Following a decades-old French student tradition of mass protest in the streets, an estimated 15,000 students marched today in Toulouse, 10,000 in Brest, 4,000 in Rheims while a few thousand demonstrated at the Bastille in Paris as well as in Quimper, Toulon and Besancon. Student leaders say they hope the march in Paris on Monday will attract 100,000 students. These rallies come after a nationwide protest last Monday, in which more than 20,000 students demonstrated in Paris while tens of thousands of others marched in Lyons, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Montpellier. In banners and chants they demanded more money for education. 'We Want Cleaner Schools' "We want cleaner schools, more money to renovate them, less violence and more teachers," said Remy Lachaise, an 18-year-old student demonstrating today in Paris. After the protests gathered momentum late last month, the Government promised to hire 3,000 more teaching assistants, 1,000 maintenance people to brighten up the schools and 100 more security people. But the students say these measures do not go nearly far enough. "It's true they are making efforts, but when we're in school, we don't see that things have changed," Delphine Batho, president of one of the chief student groups, said in an interview. "The situation in the schools is unsatisfactory. There aren't enough desks, professors or classrooms. One can't work properly in these conditions. We need an emergency plan." The Tangible Issues Mindful of how the student demonstrations of 1968 helped push President Charles de Gaulle to resign, the Government of Prime Minister Michel Rocard is paying close attention to the protests, concerned that they could spiral into a major social and political crisis. President Francois Mitterrand has been eager to show his Government is listening. "Youth should be listened to when they say what they want today and what kind of world they would like tomorrow," he said. The current protests are different in many ways from the massive protests | PROTEST IN FRANCE GAINING MOMENTUM |
398830_6 | Zebra brownies, a layer of brownies and one of walnut blondies. The blondie part tastes like the bowl lickings. Scrumptious. A 1 1/2-pound box is $10 plus shipping. American Express, check or money order. Cutoff for Christmas orders: Dec. 10. 16. DIRECT MARKETING DE SANTA FE , 630 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, N.M. 87501; (800) 872-8787 operator 46, or (505) 982-5718. If you long for a taste of New Mexico, this company's catalogue can satisfy most cravings. The green chili bread, colored by tomatoes and heated by green chilis, is superb toasted. Bizcochitos, the crisp traditional Southwestern cookie with the flavor of anise, will delight a licorice lover. And a bottle of pinon and pear chutney is fiery and gingery, with a lovely crunch from the pine nuts. Green chili bread is $7.50 for a 1 1/2-pound loaf; a 7-ounce bag of bizcochitos is $3.25, and an 8-ounce jar of chutney $4.50. Shipping is extra. Mastercard, Visa, check or money order. Cutoff for Christmas orders, Dec. 10. 17. FROM THE RAIN FOREST , 8 East 12th Street, New York, N.Y. 10003; (800) 327-8496 or (212) 645-7177; fax (212) 675-5020. For a "politically correct" snack, try culinarily correct roasted unsalted cashews or Tropical Mix, a mixture of nuts and dried fruits from tropical and rain forests. Some of the money goes to Cultural Survival, a nonprofit human rights group that works with rain forest inhabitants. But these snacks can stand on their own. A 30-ounce can of Tropical Mix is $14.95, a 12-ounce can $6.95. Ten ounces of cashews are $8.50; 10 ounces of cashews and 12 ounces of Tropical Mix are $14.95 plus shipping. Mastercard, Visa, check or money order. Cutoff for Christmas orders; Dec. 14. 18. GRAFTON VILLAGE APPLE COMPANY , Route 3, Box 236D, Grafton, Vt. 05146; (800) 843-4822; fax (802) 843-2407. This shipper's nitrite-free bacon is the meatiest of its kind, with a very mild flavor. The flavorful Canadian bacon is so lean the Surgeon General might recommend it. The latter is $16.15 a pound, and the nitrite-free bacon, $10.75. Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, check or money order. Cutoff for Christmas orders; Dec. 6. 19. GREEN MOUNTAIN COFFEE ROASTERS , 33 Coffee Lane, Waterbury, Vt. 05676; (800) 223-6768; fax (802) 244-5436. Just as environmentally helpful as the From the Rain Forest snacks and just as good is Rainforest Crunch. This butter brickle, | Mail-Order Eating, From Stew to Nuts |
398867_0 | Bishop Cahal Daly, an outspoken critic of the Irish Republican Army, was named Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland today. Archbishop Daly, who had been Bishop of Down and Connor, the diocese that includes Belfast, becomes the spiritual leader of four million Roman Catholics in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. He told reporters he was overwhelmed by his appointment and said there was a greater need than ever to work for peace after two disastrous decades of violence. The appointment of Archbishop Daly was announced by the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Emmanuel Gerada. He replaces Tomas Cardinal O Fiaich, who died of a heart attack on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in May. At 73, Archbishop Daly is the oldest prelate to hold the post in 170 years. Denounces the I.R.A. A leading intellectual in the Irish church who helped write the emotional appeals for peace made by Pope John Paul II when he visited Ireland in 1979, Archbishop Daly has fought to loosen the I.R.A.'s grip on the Catholic nationalist community in the ghettos of Belfast. The I.R.A. is fighting to end British rule of Northern Ireland. He denounced the organization after two British soldiers were dragged from their car, beaten and shot dead after apparently straying into the path of an I.R.A. funeral in 1988. "For God's sake rid our hearts of this poison," he said after the killings. "Evil must be rejected totally and unequivocally. There must be no ambivalence, no double standards, no selective indignation." "The real face of I.R.A. violence was shown and it was horrible to see," he added. Condemnation Not Enough Bishop Daly also sharply criticized the I.R.A. for killing 11 civilians at a war memorial ceremony in Enniskillen in 1987. He persuaded Northern Ireland security forces to stop policing funerals so closely that they often ended in clashes. Today, he said condemnation of violence was not enough, adding that one had a duty to remind governments and politicians of their responsibilities. He said violence thrived when there was a political vacuum. Under church law, Archbishop Daly, who suffered a minor heart attack in 1982, will be asked to offer his resignation in three years to the Pope, who can let him stay on in the job. | Outspoken Critic of the I.R.A. Is Named Primate of Ireland |
398730_0 | After five weeks of wrangling about the future of small farmers, the members of the European Community agreed tonight that reductions in agricultural subsidies should be part of their negotiating position in the current round of worldwide talks aimed at freer trade. Although purposely vague, the European position generally backs what would in effect be a 30 percent cut in both price supports and tariffs on farm imports in the 10-year period under negotiation, which is retroactive to 1986 and extends to 1996. Both the United States and a group of big farm exporters, including Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil, known as the Cairns Group, have declared negotiating positions embracing 75 percent cuts in price supports and 90 percent cuts in export subsidies. The five-year farm portion of the budget package worked out in the United States Congress last week provides for 25 percent cuts in agricultural subsidies by Oct. 1, 1995, as a down payment toward reaching the 75 percent goal over 10 years. Deadline Draws Nearer Frans Andriessen, the European Community Commissioner in charge of negotiating for the 12-nation trade bloc, said the compromise was "a positive step" even though it eliminated some free-trade measures originally proposed. The worldwide trade negotiations are the final phase of what is known as the Uruguay Round of talks being held under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The talks are scheduled to end on Dec. 7, and many issues remain unresolved among the group's 105 member nations. Renato Ruggiero, the Trade Minister of Italy, the country currently heading the European Council, said he hoped today's action would lead to a "more realistic" GATT negotiation on farm subsidies. Mr. Andriessen spoke scornfully of the Reagan Administration's original 1988 proposal for the elimination of farm subsidies over 10 years. He said the proposal had made it more difficult for the European countries to reach agreement among themselves. The United States, which has increasingly come to rely on farm exports to help its balance of payments, has taken a hard line against the elaborate European system of farm price supports and export subsidies. In Washington's view, America's large and efficient farms would clearly have an advantage in a world market that lacked subsidies. Europeans have replied that the American system also subsidizes farm products but in a way that is different from Europe's. At the heart of the dispute is | Europeans Reach Accord On Farm Aid |
398768_0 | Nearly two decades after the authorities here embarked on a sweeping program of public-sponsored birth control, Mexico has become a model of effective third-world family planning. But in a Latin American culture of machismo, where a man's virility is still measured by the offspring he sires, officials say the responsibility for avoiding too many children has been assumed almost entirely by the women who would bear them. Not only do most Mexican men eschew the use of contraceptives for themselves, many also adamantly forbid their wives to use any sort of birth control, fearing that it could diminish their manhood or promote infidelity. As a consequence, medical officials say, as many as 60 percent of women who receive state-sponsored birth control do so secretly, without the knowledge of their spouses. Family planning is dominated by contraceptive methods that do not involve the participation or even the knowledge of the male partner. And health workers say that women who are found to be practicing birth control surreptitiously often face emotional and even physical abuse from their husbands. "The men think their wives are going to make them wear horns," said Alicia Hernandez Gomez, who works as a Government family planning aide in a tiny examining room attached to her ramshackle home in Santa Maria Tianguistengo, about 75 miles southwest of Mexico City. "The women have to do everything by themselves." In dusty rural villages such as this, where even dirt roads and electricity do not always reach local residents, Mexico's all-out campaign against population growth has made visible progress through an extensive network of local clinics and health workers. Since 1973, when birth control was made a national priority and the right to family planning was even inserted in the national Constitution, Mexico's annual population growth has fallen from roughly 3.2 percent to 2.2 percent. More than half of all Mexican women of child-bearing age now use some form of birth control, and the number of children in the average Mexican family has also fallen from more than eight to roughly four, health officials say. But doctors, patients and Government family planning officials say that further progress toward controlling the growth of Mexico's population is likely to depend less on financial or logistical constraints than on the Government's success in breaking down long-held cultural stereotypes about sexual roles. Throughout the country, and especially in traditional rural areas, the most common and | In Mexico, Machismo Slows Family Planning |
404269_0 | Banana farmers in the Caribbean are worried about the economic changes in Europe, which they fear could kill their industry. With trade barriers among members of the European Community scheduled to end in 1992, St. Lucia and other islands in the Windward chain stand to lose the protection they have long enjoyed for their bananas in the British market, where the overwhelming bulk of the crop is sold. Producers of other traditional Caribbean exports, like sugar and bauxite, are also concerned that the new rules will put an end to the preferential arrangements that they rely on to compete with rivals in Latin America. Because of the hilly terrain and the abundance of small-scale farmers, who often hold other jobs in the civil service or tourism, bananas grown in the Windwards suffer quality problems. This may help make rival Latin American crops even more attractive in post-1992 Europe. "Nineteen ninety-two is an immediate problem, and our first challenge is getting the quality up to Latin American standards," said Michael Lansiquote, general manager of the St. Lucia Banana Growers Association. "To say that doom is not one of the possibilities we face would be unrealistic." Problem With Spots Politicians and diplomats from the Windwards have been traveling through Europe in an effort to secure a continuation of market guarantees and find new customers in countries like the Soviet Union and Poland. At the same time, researchers are studying a mysterious affliction that gives the region's winter bananas spots of discoloration under the peel. The spotting does not affect the taste of the banana, but lessens its appeal in a market that places a high premium on appearance. "During the good months our quality is even better than Latin America," Mr. Lansiquote said, referring to the months from February to August when discoloration problems are at a minimum. "But in the down months, our quality is only 50 to 60 percent of theirs." At the Caribbees Estate, a 120-acre farm where vast expanses of bananas nod in a gentle breeze under an elegant canopy of coconut palms, the quality problems that plague many of the smaller producers have been nearly eliminated. But problems remain. Shortage of Workers "As far as I am concerned I can compete," said Rolin Fernand, manager of the estate, which produces about 1,000 tons of bananas a year for export. "My biggest problem right now is a shortage | Europe 1992 Changes Worry Caribbean Banana Farmers |
404140_2 | in space, from as few as 1,000 to more than 100,000. Scientists familiar with the project credit Dr. James Gunn, an astrophysicist at Princeton, with designing the telescope, which would be the first to combine from the outset modern optical, detector and computer technologies. The mirror, for example, will be shaped to collect light accurately from a wide swath of the sky, with a 30-inch corrector plate to eliminate distortions in wide-angle imagery. The camera will contain 30 digital light sensors called charge-coupled devices. The light registers on these electronic detectors and is stored in digital form in computers that create images. The array of these electronic devices will be the largest ever assembled in astronomy and, with an efficiency in light detection far superior to photographic plates, will be able to record 120 million points of light at a time. Another instrument attached to the telescope will be a robot-controlled spectrograph for measuring the wavelength, or color, of light from as many as 600 stellar objects at once. Because the wavelength of light from an object reddens as the object recedes, and because distant objects are receding more rapidly than those nearby, the spectrograph measurements should enable astronomers to determine the objects' distance and thus create a three-dimensional map. Scientists estimated that the depth of the sky map should correspond to 20 percent of the "look-back time" to the Big Bang, the theorized explosive birth of the universe 10 billion to 20 billion years ago. NASA Blamed in Hubble Flaw HARTFORD, Nov. 25 (AP) -- A member of an investigating panel says the same management climate that led to the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 was to blame for the flawed mirror that prevents the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope from focusing clearly. The panel's final report on the telescope is to be made public on Tuesday. It will criticize both NASA and the mirror's manufacturer, the Perkin-Elmer Corporation, said John Mangus, head of the optics branch of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's space technology division. As in the case of NASA's failure to respond to evidence that seals in Challenger's booster rockets were flawed, Mr. Mangus said, the flaws in the manufacture of the 94 1/2-inch telescope in 1980 and 1981 can be partly traced to a management climate in which engineers were discouraged from bringing potential problems to the attention of their superiors. | New Telescope to Enable Mapping Of More Than a Million Galaxies |
400591_0 | To the Editor: "Striking Out at Public Order" (editorial, Nov. 2) raises an excellent point and focuses our attention on the serious development of violence in our streets as the result of The Daily News strike. Yet you lost an excellent opportunity to question why there has been an increase in strike-related violence in this country. With the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, William N. Cooke writes in "Union Organizing and Public Policy" (Upjohn Institute, Kalamazoo, 1985) that the legal system has attempted to restrain the hands of both unions and employers, seeking peaceful resolution of disputes by balancing the power of both parties and restricting activities disruptive to commerce and, hence, the public. This balanced legal framework, which served the country successfully for 30 years, was destroyed in eight by the Reagan Administration. As Mr. Cooke states, current application and inadequate enforcement of the law have allowed the pendulum to swing out of balance. He writes: "In 1981 there were nearly 10,000 charges against employers to bargain in good faith, a seven and a half fold increase since 1950. In 1981 over 25,000 workers received back pay because of employer discrimination, more than 11 times the 1950 figure of 2,250. For those unfair labor practice cases that need to be resolved at the National Labor Relations Board level, a median delay of 490 days was incurred in 1981." How is the failure of American labor law to serve the working people of this country related to the violence erupting in the streets of New York? Simply, the perceptions of the workers have changed. They have lost faith in the law, the collective bargaining system and, most important, in the fairness of the system. As William H. Wynn, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers states in the Cooke volume: "The National Labor Relations Board was originally established to move labor management relations out of the 'law of the jungle.' The ideologues appointed by the Reagan Administration have accelerated a process that began years ago to gut the protections for workers contained in the labor laws of this country. As a result, labor management relations are back in the jungle." If this seems far-fetched, let us examine circumstances very similar to The Daily News strike that occurred almost 100 years ago in the steel mills of Homestead, Pa., where Henry Clay Frick had just become Andrew Carnegie's | Labor Relations Regress to Robber Baron Era |
400719_2 | house that specializes in literary fiction and nonfiction. Keitha Capouya, president of New Amsterdam, said "To show the folly we are capable of, we had not even started our publishing house when we bought an option on all Kadare's works." ("We" includes her husband, Emile, the company vice president.) The Capouyas read the French translations of Kadare's novels, and what attracted them, Mrs. Capouya said, was his literary quality and psychological penetration. The first Kadare novel published by New Amsterdam was "Chronicle in Stone" (1987). In The New Yorker, John Updike pronounced it "a thoroughly enchanting novel -- sophisticated and accomplished in its poetic prose and narrative deftness, yet drawing resonance from its roots in one of Europe's most primitive societies." That was followed by "Doruntine" (1988), a parable of love and death, and "Broken April" (1989). The forthcoming novel, "The General of the Dead Army," had actually been published in 1971 by Grossman Publishers. (Grossman, bought by Viking Press, had been celebrated as the publisher of Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed.") Mrs. Capouya said that Mr. Kadare's novels have "sold decently," and that "Chronicle" has been added to college courses on Eastern European literature. New Amsterdam has translations of two other Kadare novels, which will be published in due time, while two more are currently being translated into English. Rain Forest Still Topical Amid the many recent books about the destruction of the rain forest, Citadel Press has reprinted "Witch Doctor's Apprentice: Hunting for Medicinal Plants In the Amazon," by Nicole Maxwell. Published in 1961 and reprinted in 1975, the book was warmly reviewed by such experts on the Amazon as Richard Evans Schultes, the former director of Harvard's Botanical Museum, but it sold few copies because until recently there was little interest in the rain forest. Ms. Maxwell, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, celebrated her 85th birthday a few weeks ago. Currently at the Institute for Botanical Exploration at Mississippi State University, she is planning to return to the jungle in which she has spent many of the last 42 years. "It's been almost two years since I've been in the jungle, and I'm getting itchy to get back," Ms. Maxwell said in a telephone conversation from Starkville, Miss. "It's my only addiction." Ms. Maxwell said that while the destruction of the rain forest continues, she is more optimistic about its preservation than she has | Book Notes |
400570_0 | With Paris nursing its wounds after looting and violence disrupted a huge demonstration here on Monday, French high school students announced plans today to continue their campaign of protests against overcrowded classrooms, inadequate security and too few teachers. Although the Government responded to Monday's heavy student turnout by promising an emergency plan to help the country's 4,700 high schools, a student protest committee called for new demonstrations in Paris and otherFrench towns and cities on Friday. The Government faced growing criticism not only for failing to respond to the students' demands but also for not controlling vandals who used Monday's demonstration to cause trouble. While the teen-age students marched peacefully from the Place de la Bastille into the Latin Quarter on their way to the Champs-Elysees, older youths, many wearing masks and carrying truncheons, looted shops in Montparnasse, burned cars and repeatedly attacked the police. As a result of more than four hours of disturbances, 83 youths were arrested, close to 200 police officers were hurt,around 100 cars were burned and some 120 stores were looted. Even the metro station at the Pont de l'Alma, where the police prevented rioters from crossing the River Seine toward the Champs-Elysees, was damaged by fire. Today the police chief of Paris, Pierre Verbrugghe, defended the action of the police, arguing that it was more important to protect the 100,000 students than to attack the 1,000 or so vandals who, he admitted, acted "with a speed, violence and tranquil cynicism that surprised us." Opposition political parties nonetheless criticized the Interior Minister, Pierre Joxe, for the slow and inadequate response by the police, noting that looting during a smaller demonstration one week earlier had served as a warning that bigger trouble could come Monday. Aware of considerable public sympathy for the students and mindful of the widespread demonstrations by university students that rocked France in 1968, the Government has been anxious not to be seen as repressing the three-week-old movement. President Francois Mitterrand, who received a student delegation on Monday, has suggested that the Government of Prime Minister Michel Rocard should listen to the students' complaints. Several prominent ministers as well as Pierre Mauroy, secretary general of the governing Socialist Party, have distanced themselves from the Education Minister, LionelJospin. Some French newspapers, including Le Monde, have even speculated that, unless the crisis is rapidly resolved, the tensions created by the student movement within the Government | As Paris Mends, Students Plan More Protests |
400405_0 | Bending to pressure from a student protest movement that put more than 100,000 demonstrators onto the streets of Paris today, the French Government announced an "emergency plan" to improve conditions in the country's 4,700 senior high schools. About 150,000 students marched peacefully in dozens of other French towns and cities, but the demonstration in Paris ended in confusion after gangs of troublemakers began looting stores, attacking journalists and clashing with the police in Montparnasse and other Left Bank neighborhoods. Later, the police used tear gas and water cannons to prevent groups of youths, some wearing masks and hurling stones, from crossing the River Seine. At least 50 people, including 12 policemen, were wounded, and 10 cars were set on fire along the Quai d'Orsay near the Foreign Ministry. The huge turnout of students here and elsewhere in France nonetheless underlined the strength of a movement that in barely three weeks has posed the Government of President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Michel Rocard with its most serious social challenge in two years. Set Off by Rape of Student The movement was set off by the rape of a student in a high school in a Paris suburb in late October. Complaints about inadequate security soon led to broader demands for increased government spending to end overcrowding in classrooms, to increase the number of teachers and to improve schools. Significantly, the movement, which is being coordinated by three ad hoc student committees, has won considerable public support across France, not only from several teachers' unions and major political parties but also from local mayors and parents' associations. In a conciliatory gesture, Mr. Mitterrand, who has previously expressed sympathy for the students, received about 20 of their representatives tonight. An official spokesman said he endorsed their demand for greater "democracy" at school and said their other claims should be discussed. Earlier, after meeting the same group, Education Minister Lionel Jospin, whose handling of the crisis has been widely criticized, promised that the details of an emergency plan would be discussed with student leaders this week. In France, administration and financing of all secondary education is centralized in Paris. Students Want Further Increases The Government, which has announced a 9 percent increase in its education budget for 1991, has already agreed to create 1,000 maintenance jobs, 100 supervisory posts and 3,000 security positions in the high schools. But student committees have said this | France Yields to a Huge Student Protest |
400334_7 | and an 80-horsepower motor. In 1988, Mr. Mullen said, the robot picked up 10 tons of wreckage from a Boeing 747 that fell into 15,000 feet of water off Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. He said South African Airways rebuilt a quarter of the jet to try to find out why the pilot lost control after a fire. Everyone aboard was lost. They determined that the noxious fumes from the fire in the rear cargo hold circulated into the cockpit, Mr. Mullen said. In 1983, he said, his company used robots to recover about 10 tons of the Air India jet that blew up off the coast of Ireland and sank in 6,700 feet of water. Investigators wanted to look for traces of a terrorist bomb. Role of Computers And Fiber Optics Jim McFarlane, president of International Submarine Engineering Ltd., a robot concern in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, said a driving force in the evolution of robots was the increasing power of small computers. "It's mainly high-density electronics that make it possible to control something remotely," he said. "It's a computer down there." In 1986, he said, one of his company's robots recovered a Handley-Page-Hampden bomber that was lost off British Columbia in 1942. "We got the whole thing by putting nylon slings around it and lifting," he said. "It's being restored." Dr. Yoerger of Woods Hole said a big advance in the field was the use of fiber optics, thin strands of glass that can transmit prodigious quantities of data on laser-generated light waves. "Fiber optics are used for everything but power -- all command and control for the vehicle, all sonar, all video," he said. A principal user of deep-sea robots is Dr. Robert D. Ballard, a Woods Hole scientist who led the expedition that in 1985 located the Titanic nearly two and a half miles down. Dr. Ballard, who opposes the salvage of historic wrecks, only took pictures. But in 1987 a French team used robots to recover more than 300 artifacts from the wreck, including china, a chandelier, a small safe and a leather bag containing jewelry. In 1989, Dr. Ballard used an ocean-crawling robot to find the Nazi battleship Bismarck in more than 15,000 feet of water off the French coast, providing evidence suggesting that the ship was scuttled rather than sunk by British bombardment. Experts say the robots likely to appear in the near | Undersea Robots Open a New Age Of Exploration |
400430_0 | Using bulldozers and loads of sand, more than 300 firefighters battled a blaze at a tire dump for 10 hours before containing it early today. The blaze, which began among more than 25,000 tires on Sunday near the Pinelands, was contained about 3 A.M. today. The cause was still being investigated. Small mounds of tires continued to smolder late today as crews buried piles of tires under soft sand. Scores of nearby trees were scorched by the fire, the second at the site in recent years. | Fire Contained at Tire Dump |
402196_0 | Poland's trailblazing economic program to replace Communism with capitalism has slashed inflation, stabilized the nation's currency and made food lines a thing of the past. But the program now faces one of its biggest tests: reversing the huge drop in economic output that Poland has suffered. The program has reached a decisive juncture as pressures mount for the Polish Government to spur growth after a plunge of more than 25 percent in production this year, according to official statistics. What is more, consumer purchasing power has fallen by a third, and beggars have become a common sight on Warsaw's streets. "The key issue today is to overcome the economic downturn," said Ryszard Bugaj, chairman of the economic committee in the Polish Parliament's lower house. Drop Exceeds Predictions Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz had originally predicted that his stringent economic plan would reduce production by only 5 percent this year, but th downturn has been far worse than that, partly because of the recent oil shock and an unexpectd plunge in trade with the Soviet Union and East Germany. As Mr. Balcerowicz comes under pressure to adapt his program to focus more on lifting growth and living standards, many economists worry about a fundamental question: How can the Government stimulate more growth without generating an outburst of inflation that will undo much of the progress already achieved? "The program is at a pivotal moment," said Jeffrey Sachs, the Harvard University economics professor who has advised the Polish Government on its economic changes. Professor Sachs worries, for instance, that a poorly structured effort at economic stimulus could re-ignite inflation and produce an unwieldy budget deficit. Need Seen for Stimulus But many Poles say that some stimulus is needed soon and that the straitjacket Mr. Balcerowicz's anti-inflation program placed on the economy must be loosened. Otherwise, they add, industrial output will continue to flounder and many enterprises will go bankrupt. "In many companies, the people are there, the raw materials are there, but there is no money to push everything forward," said Andzrej Wroblewski, editor of Gazeta Bankowa, the nation's leading business journal. "That is the weak point of the Balcerowicz plan." To be sure, the plan has scored several notable successes. It stabilized the Polish currency, the zloty, and ended a currency black market that disrupted the economy. It laid the foundation for a rapid expansion of the private sector: Warsaw is dotted | Poles Seek to Reverse Output Drop |
402210_5 | because they contain essential information: medical evidence of disability, family income data, and names and addresses that would help the Government track down people eligible for payments under the Supreme Court ruling. But Mrs. Hinckley at the Social Security headquarters said it would be "inordinately burdensome" and "extremely costly" for the Government to retrieve the files. In addition, she said, some of the folders may have been lost or destroyed. Even if they can be located, she said, "the old files will not be useful" because they are outdated. To fetch all the files would be a "massive undertaking," Mrs. Hinckley said, noting that the Government denied claims or terminated benefits for 283,360 children from May 1983 to February 1990. The Supreme Court decision, Sullivan v. Zebley, affects a nationwide class of poor disabled people who were under 18 years old when they applied for benefits. Lawyers for the Government and the children disagree over how many youngsters should be allowed to take advantage of the ruling. The number would grow to 400,000 if the Government agreed to pay benefits to those denied aid since 1980. It would reach 600,000 if eligibility went back to the start of the program in 1974, as the plaintiffs want. Supplemental Security Income is the only Federal program that provides cash assistance to children based on disability and financial need. The average benefit for disabled children is $331 a month. In most states, beneficiaries also automatically become eligible for Medicaid. The Medicaid coverage may be more valuable than the cash because disabled children often have huge medical bills. In the past, children who were blind or deaf or mentally retarded, with an I.Q. of less than 60, could qualify for benefits relatively easily. But youngsters with more subtle or complicated impairments were often turned down. In May, the Government and lawyers for disabled children agreed to an "interim standard" to be used in all new and pending cases. Under that standard, the Government must carefully assess each child's abilities. No Appeal if Claim Denied The standard includes one highly unusual restriction on the rights of disabled children: If their claims are denied, they may not appeal to an administrative law judge or to a Federal court. That restriction was supposed to be temporary, until a permanent regulation was issued, but no such rule has yet been published. Among those who have raised questions about | Despite Order, U.S. Stalls Aid to Poor Children |
402160_1 | against a grocery store in Brooklyn owned by Korean immigrants. "The most elaborate and sophisticated plans for districts have come from Asians in Queens and Manhattan," Mr. Macchiarola said. The lawsuit, though, is about principle, not process; about means, not ends. The lead plaintiff is Richard Ravitch, who resigned as chairman of the Charter Revision Commission to run for mayor last year. As chairman, he said, he "raised the issue of enlarging the City Council, and my motive was to insure more racial minority representation." Expanding the number of members by shrinking the size of districts, he said, is preferable to "putting in a statutory or constitutional document an ethnic requirement for a government body." Mr. Ravitch described such quotas as "morally unsound." Edward N. Costikyan, the plaintiffs' lawyer, agreed that the charter requirement "poisons other things, so that pretty soon it's O.K. to do it someplace else." "Pretty soon," Mr. Costikyan said, "you're going to have black schools." Under Mr. Ravitch's successor, Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., the Charter Revision Commission voted to enlarge the Council. But it went one step beyond by requiring the mayor and City Council leaders to appoint a districting panel that mirrors New York's population. Mr. Schwarz called that requirement a reasonable response to minority-group concerns that the political system was rigged against them. He contrasted the requirement with racial quotas for college admission or for hiring that, because they are exclusionary, turn rejected contestants into victims. Critics counter that potential victims in this case are members of ethnic, religious or income categories excluded from competing for the commission because of the quota for minority groups. The Justice Department held that the means employed by the Charter Commission served "a legitimate remedial purpose." Courts have permitted quotas to remedy prior discrimination. But Mr. Costikyan said the history of disproportionately low political participation by members of minority groups, particularly in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, was not reason enough to do so in this case. Nonetheless, Victor Kovner, the city's Corporation Counsel, expressed confidence that the city would prevail, as it did in another suit against the charter last month -- this one challenging the prohibition against electing some city officials serving simultaneously as political party leaders. "Philosophically, the suit makes some sense," said Mr. Macchiarola, the chairman of the districting panel, to which the Mayor and Council leaders appointed seven whites, four blacks, three | Metro Matters; Is Panel Set Up To Curb Bias Itself Unlawful? |
402184_0 | France's Socialist Prime Minister, Michel Rocard, today faces the most serious political challenge since he took office 30 months ago -- a censure vote in the National Assembly in which conservatives and Communists are expected to combine against him. If his opponents win a no-confidence vote related to a social security tax measure, Mr. Rocard's Government could fall. The situation also reflects strains in the relationship between Mr. Rocard and the Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand. The censure vote was put forward on Friday by conservative deputies who are supported by Communists. The vote expected on Monday comes amid a general climate of discontent with the Government, underlined in sweeping waves of demonstrations by tens of thousands of high school students over the past two weeks who have marched to demand smaller classes, larger school budgets, more teachers and better education. The huge demonstrations in which more than a 100,000 students took part at one time were coupled with acts of violence, looting and burning that further added to the discontent among students and many members of the Assembly with the performance of Mr. Rocard's Government. The students said they planned more demonstations to back their demands. On Friday 300 students blocked a train station. The Government was so badly shaken by previous angry demonstrations it has rushed to commit more than $1 billion in additional spending on education, even though France already boasts an education budget that exceeds its military budget and that had been raised by 9 percent for 1991. Even so, the students who met with President Mitterrand over the issue last Monday said it was still not enough. Mitterrand Seen as Unsupportive The situation for Mr. Rocard became more critical after Mr. Mitterrand, who picked him 30 months ago to serve as Prime Minister, appeared in his meeting with representatives of the students to side with them and against Mr. Rocard. Mr. Mitterrand agreed that the students' complaints were valid and the students came out suggesting that Mr. Mitterrand left them with the impression that it was all Mr. Rocard's fault. Their remarks fueled already rampant speculation in the French press that Mr. Mitterrand may be planning to dump his Prime Minister, even if the vote of no confidence failed to win a majority. What brings the whole issue to a climax is Mr. Rocard's attempt on Thursday to ram through Parliament a bill calling for a | Censure Vote May Topple Government in France |
402229_0 | Two crewmen from a trawler were being held by the Federal authorities today on assault charges after a shipboard disturbance over unpaid wages. The skipper of the 205-foot Arctic Hero had barricaded himself inside the wheelhouse and the chief engineer had locked himself in engine room, after about seven of the 45 crew members ran wildly through the vessel on Friday, Coast Guard and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said. The incident occurred in international waters in the Bering Sea, 900 miles southwest of Anchorage. Damage to the ship, which is based in Seattle and catches and processes fish, was estimated at $25,000. The Coast Guard intercepted the vessel after the captain called for help. | Two Crewmen From Trawler Are Held After a Disturbance |
402630_1 | protests in 1985 "reactionary" -- and the students decided not to hold an illegal protest, the teacher said. Tensions with Japan came to light last month, over Tokyo's plans to send troops to the Persian Gulf and over a territorial dispute about some uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. The dispute about ownership of the islands, called Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu Islands by China, aroused a storm throughout the Chinese-speaking world and led to anti-Japan demonstrations in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Chinese and Japanese Governments seemed to prefer to allow the matter to die down, and the leadership in Beijing may have been worried that nationalist demonstrations would spread to the Chinese mainland. In 1985, university students in Beijing and the central Chinese city of Wuhan protested against Japan, accusing it of economic imperialism and of trying to cover up World War II atrocities. The 1985 protests were also critical of the Chinese Government, for not defending the national honor and for allowing China to become so weak that such humiliations were possible. University campuses brim with discontent these days, and the Government may fear that students would seize upon a non-political issue to start a new round of anti-Government protests. The latest issue to bedevil relations is the assertion by a prominent Japanese nationalist that China has greatly exaggerated the Japanese Army's atrocities during the 1937-38 "Rape of Nanjing." The comment was made by Shintaro Ishihara, who is best known for his book "The Japan That Can Say No." After a delay, as China's Propaganda Department was apparently deciding how to handle the matter, People's Daily published an article attacking Mr. Ishihara under the headline "Lies Cannot Obscure Facts Written in Blood." Mr. Ishihara then suggested that itwas his detractors who were the liars. After another delay, People's Daily responded with a long, stinging article on Sunday, accompanied by an editorial cartoon of Mr. Ishihara and two photos of what it said were Japanese atrocities during the Rape of Nanjing. "The troops of Japanese aggression committed monstrous crimes at Nanjing 53 years ago," the People's Daily editors wrote in a note above Sunday's article. "With extreme brutality and cruelty, they killed more than 300,000 Chinese." Some Western estimates of the number killed are lower, but historians generally agree that the casualties were enormous and that the incident left a major imprint on the Chinese psyche. | To Quiet Its Own Critics, China Aims at Japan |
402700_4 | of frequencies with each computer decoding only the signal of the computer with which it is communicating. This system divides and distributes the signal across many different frequencies, with only a little data on any one frequency at a time. NCR was forced to use this technique because its product uses radio frequencies shared by products that cause interference, like wireless microphones, some walkie-talkies and theft-prevention devices at department-store exits. Motorola's Approach Motorola has taken a different approach. The Federal Communications Commission in April granted the company exclusive rights in all the nation's larger cities to several microwave frequencies. Because interference with other devices is not a problem, Motorola will be able to forgo coded signals and use the better-known technology of several computers each taking turns a few milliseconds long on the same frequency. What has prevented electronics companies until now from using products that take turns has been the problem of echoes. Stray signals can bounce off walls and arrive out of turn at a receiver, interfering with the next computer's signal. Motorola says it has solved this problem. Instead of broadcasting a signal that covers an entire office, its product uses a hexagonal antenna that sends a tight beam to the intended receiver. "It's kind of like looking through a telescope at another guy looking at you through a telescope," said Alan P. Zabarsky, the general manager of Motorola's unit for wireless computer networks. Concerns Over Health Public concerns that high-frequency radio waves and microwaves pose a cancer risk are a drawback, although little energy is used to send signals. "I don't think there's any hazard at those levels, but try to convince people of that," said Richard C. Allen, president of Photonics. NCR says its system uses only a tenth of the maximum power allowed by even the world's most stringent health regulations. Motorola says its higher-frequency signal uses only 4 percent of the power of NCR's system because the signal is sent in only one direction. "When I broadcast focused, I broadcast less, because I don't spray it everywhere," Mr. Zabarsky said. Doing away with the wires that connect computers still leaves the snarls of telephone lines that wiggle through most offices. Motorola is testing tiny wireless telephones using different microwave frequencies from its computer connections, and Mr. Staiano acknowledged that combining these telephones with the wireless computer links was a likely move. BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY | Cutting the Computer Wire Snarl |
399632_2 | conserve energy and valuable resources, the National Polystyrene Recycling Company was started in June of 1989. It is the nation's first network of polystyrene-recycling centers. By 1995, the company's goal is to recycle 250 million pounds of polystyrene annually -- a goal consistent with the United States Environmental Protection Agency's 1989 solid-waste reduction plan. Last year, the recycling company's first operation, Plastics Again, in Leominster, Mass., removed through recycling 1.5 million pounds of used polystyrene from New England landfills and incinerators. Today, more than 1,100 separate locations are currently recycling polystyrene through the recycling company's centers in Brooklyn and Leominster, and four more are under construction. The Federal Environmental Protections Agency estimates that all polystyrene packaging accounts for less than two percent of our solid waste by volume and only one-half of one percent by weight. Polystyrene food packaging represents an even smaller amount. Foam materials are sometimes perceived negatively, because they don't biodegrade. In fact, today's landfills are mostly storage bins; numerous materials are not breaking down. The Garbage Project at the University of Arizona, headed by Prof. William Rathje, identified corn on the cob from 1971, which is technically edible, and newspapers from 1952, which are readable. That's why it is essential that we recycle those materials with secondary value, such as polystyrene. Furthermore, some people believe that we should abandon the use of polystyrene because it can become litter. This will not address the root of the littering problem, which, as Keep America Beautiful Inc. states, is a behavioral one. Indeed, you will find substitute materials littered over the Connecticut landscape. Our industry supports Keep American Beautiful's approach that promotes litter prevention through public awareness and personal responsibility for a clean, wholesome environment. To make foam food-service products, manufacturers use compounds to inject air into polystyrene. A few years ago, it was determined that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to the damage of the ozone layer. Even though only a small percentage of our industry ever used chlorofluorocarbons, we took a leadership role and, along with the support of three national environmental organizations (Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund), phased out the use of fully-halogenated chlorofluorocarbons in 1989. Most polystyrene manufacturers use compounds that cause no harm to the ozone layer. A small number of manufacturers, because of technical considerations, are still using HCFC-22, a product endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency because it | Recycling Polystyrene Is the Best Solution |
399672_0 | Your report on the learning disabled was a disservice to both parent and professional. How it missed the landmark study, a veritable watershed, the study of a sample of 35,000 children tested at 7 years of age in the 1970's by Broman et al ("Low Achieving Children") is baffling. There, in plain English, is the most inclusive statement of the "causal factors" which "lie not in their physical condition but in the family and cultural context, that is, the inability of parents with an abundance of stresses and a paucity of resources to adequately raise their children." To be accurate in using the term learning disability, look for academic or behavioral problems and whatever else that is troublesome and then check out the family as a whole as needing help. H. BLAU Glen Oaks The writer is a retired educator of learning-disabled children. | Responding on the Learning Disabled |
399888_0 | A MINOAN BRONZE HEAD of a gently smiling youth, wearing a pigtail on the top of his shaved head, exudes enormous charm out of all proportion to its inch-and-a-half height. The Lilliputian study is the centerpiece of "The Art of Prehistoric Greece," an exhibition at the gallery of Michael Ward, 9 East 93d Street in Manhattan, through Jan. 12. "It's the first piece I acquired for this show," said Mr. Ward. "There are no other bronzes like it." Stylistically, the small metal sculpture differs from the only other existing votive head in bronze, but is similar to Minoan stone and ivory heads. The smile on the elfin face is haunting, as tender as any in the archaic Greek art of the sixth century B.C. Spanning 4,000 years, the exhibit includes objects from four periods, most of which were uncovered over the last century. Among the earliest are the terra cotta goddesses, fleshy-looking neolithic works dating from 5,000 to 4,000 B.C. These voluptuous women and a bulbous neolithic bowl contrast sharply with the sparely conceived white marble Cycladic idol and vessels (3000 and 2200 B.C.), the energetic realism of the muscular Minoan bronze figures (2000 to 1400 B.C.) and the boldly stylized organic images depicted on Mycenaean jugs and jewelry (1400 to 1200 B.C.). Mr. Ward said the exhibition is the first of Greek prehistoric art in New York City since 1965. "This show would have been impossible to organize until very recently," he said. "We knew about these peoples through the Greek myths. However, the type of objects on view were only excavated or identified over the last century. The shaft graves were uncovered at Mycenae in the 1870's; the Minoan palace at Knossos was excavated around 1900 and the neolithic settlements were discovered from the turn of the century on into the 1920's." Compared to Cycladic art, which has been widely collected and well exhibited in recent years at several museums and galleries, prehistoric Greek objects are relatively unknown. Mr. Ward attributes this to the fact that there is very little such material in museums and private collections outside of Greece. The works in the show -- 47 seals, jewelry, figures, vessels, a lamp and a double-ax blade -- only became available on the market over the last year. They range in price from $3,800 for a Minoan stone bead in the form of a bull to $500,000 for | A Gentle Smile And the Art Of Ancient Greece |
399958_0 | I ride an old motorcycle. It breaks down regularly, and the guy who used to do the repair work went bankrupt and left town. I called around, and the only place willing to do the work now is about an hour away, a chopper shop where the local motorcycle gangs get their bikes fixed. The inside of the shop is black. Everything is black -- tires, grease, the owner's beard. The windows are painted over, and the light comes from flickering fluorescents. Old glass cases that might once have displayed candy in a general store now hold metal objects for sale: oversized pistons, knives, heavy belt buckles. Calendars hang on every dark wall. Anywhere you look you can see what day it is, and at the same time see a girl in a bikini bent over a chopper, looking back at you. The owner is behind a display case. With my eyes still adjusting to the dim light, it's hard to make him out clearly. He asks me what I want, as if I'm in there by mistake, and I tell him I called earlier and explain what I need. As I talk to him, a strange thing happens: my voice falls inexorably lower, becomes tight and flat, some version of manly. My usual syntax changes as I bend my sentences away from complex construction and, in the bending, make them even more awkward than they might have been without the effort behind them. I swear liberally, and drop the "g's" in my "ing's," and when I stop talking I keep my molars pressed together and grind them, almost as if I'm chewing gum. I don't try to do this, I just do. I can't help myself. Standing in the darkened room, I feel like a male dog, seemingly nonchalant, indicating my capacity for aggressiveness while consciously containing it. In fact, the shop has a dog that has been moving slowly toward me as I talk. It's a bitch, and that's what the owner calls her. "That's her name," he says. She's a sad-looking cocker spaniel, made mean by meanness, and moves as if to snap at me. I step sideways. "Get back, Bitch!" says the owner, and the dog retreats to her greasy sleeping pad. A shaft of light cuts into the shop when the outside door opens and my wife and 2-year-old daughter appear -- they're tired of | About Men; How Sweet The Sound |
399816_0 | THE Art Museum at Princeton University is a major exhibition in itself, particularly now that it has been refurbished -- and enriched by new acquisitions. Custom dictates, however, that temporary installations get the ink, and the two currently on view are certainly worthy of attention. One is "The Coroplast's Art," which is a group of Hellenistic terra cottas marshaled by Jaimee Uhlenbrock, associate professor of art and archeology at the State University of New York's College at New Paltz. The other is "Drawings From the Philip Guston and Clark Coolidge Exchange," from the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass. When Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., his empire extended from Sicily to the Indus Valley and down to Egypt, and "Alexandrias" were all over the place. But the political unity, which disintegrated at the young general's death, was achieved at some cost. Athens had long lost its primacy in the Greek world, and now the balance between the city-state and the individual was going, too. To paraphrase Professor Uhlenbrock's catalogue, Hellenization involved the exchange of ideas as well as goods. As the process wore on, religions promising personal salvation developed in the West, along with philosophies like Epicureanism, which advocated remoteness from the world as a way of dealing with its randomness, and Cynicism, which renounced it altogether in favor of moral anarchy. "The immensity of the Hellenistic world," Professor Uhlenbrock says, "fostered a feeling of smallness and inconsequence for individuals, who embraced various modes of self-expression to assert their importance." An era that ended with the introduction of Christianity, it seems to have been a tryout for the present, post-Christian period and, needless to say, it is clearly reflected in the art. Clay figurines appeared in Athens as early as the seventh century B.C., but the heyday of the coroplasts, the craftsmen who mass-produced these small sculptures, was the Hellenistic period. Terra-cotta workshops flourished all around the Mediterranean until the late first century B.C., most of them taking their cue from the Tanagra figures that began issuing from Boeotia in the early fourth century. Drawn from various locations, the 52 examples in the show come in red, yellow, gray and brown clays, some showing traces of the pigment. Figures, torsos, heads and masks, they look well in Plexiglas cases set on pale blue pedestals. There are personifications, like the Winged Victory illustrated and an Aphrodite or two; otherwise, subjects | Small Hellenistic Sculptures And a Painter's Rebellion |
399746_0 | SETI, PHONE HOME In our human infancy, we may think that interstellar communication is possible only by means of our present technology -- specifically, radio waves. But what if extraterrestrial civilizations have developed means of communication far more subtle and advanced than ours -- communication through telepathic brain waves, for instance? We have as yet no means to intercept such messages, do we? SI LEWEN New Paltz, N.Y. | |
399602_2 | today, the major objections were cost and environmental factors. In 1976, Congress directed the corps yet again to study flooding in the basin. After reviewing more than 150 alternatives, the corps singled out 35 economically feasible plans, and in 1984 state officials selected the tunnel option for further development. Gov. Thomas H. Kean endorsed the plan formally in 1988. After still more tinkering, task forces and public hearings, Congress authorized $890 million for the tunnel in the final hours of its session last month. The project was approved as part of a broader Water Resources Development Act and now needs only President Bush's signature to clear its last legislative hurdle in Washington. Congress also approved a financing measure in October that sets aside $5.8 million for tunnel design work in 1991. Mr. Roe describes the plan as "an extraordinarily productive environmental program," saying that the tunnel bill protects 5,200 acres in a permanent "wetlands land bank." Mr. Roe also has the backing of Representatives Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of Englewood, and Dean A. Gallo, Republican of Parsippany-Troy Hills. Senators Frank R. Lautenberg and Bill Bradley, both Democrats, also endorse the plan. But environmentalists, led by the Passaic River Coalition, an anti-tunnel group, protest that construction will destroy up to 900 acres of freshwater wetlands that provide a sanctuary for North American plants and animals. Corps officials have promised to replace or revive the wetlands, but environmentalists say that such mitigation efforts are rarely successful. "I say this project is going to be the geologic and the hydrologic equivalent of the Hubble Space Telescope -- a fiasco," said William Neil, assistant director of conservation at the New Jersey Audubon Society. "If we approve it and it goes through, we are going to have enormous regrets, environmentally and financially." Environmentalists also fear that the tunnel will disrupt the river bottom and cut into ground-water recharge areas for North Jersey aquifers, threatening drinking water supplies for millions of residents. Critics said other major corps projects in the Mississippi Delta and the Florida Everglades had failed miserably. In Florida, state and Federal officials estimate it will cost $93 million to $276 million to undo the environmental damage caused by a canal the corps dug through the Kissimmee River in 1971. The Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway, constructed in 1971 to provide inland navigation in Alabama and Mississippi, also has destroyed much of Louisiana's most fertile wetlands, | Flood Tunnel Plan: A State-U.S. Split |
399738_1 | PLAYING THE RECESSION More Berths, but Higher Air Fares Through the last decade, the outlook for the cruise business has been as sunny as the Caribbean skies. Although most companies are private and need not release figures, analysts say industry revenues and profits have been growhing consistently. Industry executives say they have just begun tapping the market. Mr. Dickinson estimates that only about 6 percent of all American vacation travelers have tried a cruise. The Cruise Lines International Association, a trade group, says the market for cruises in North America could reach $55 billion to $60 billion a year -- 10 times the level of sales today. Growth is limited only by space on board, said Michael G. Mueller, an analyst for Montgomery Securities. Cruise lines "have always been able to fill up the new capacity," he said. Demographic trends are also on the industry's side, he added. "As more people get older," he explained, "they have more disposable income." One other favorable current is the weak dollar. Some travelers, discouraged by the cost of visiting Europe, might settle for a Caribbean cruise instead. Of course, not everyone believes the industry can sail through a recession, especially not smaller operators with aging ships. Larry Fishkin, president of Cruise Line Inc., in Miami, which buys wholesale blocks of space then retails the berths to passengers, said that several small operators had called him in alarm over low bookings. Mr. Fishkin can offer little comfort. Autumn is always a slow season, with price breaks the norm, but he has found that discounts are especially deep this year. "I've seen prices for this period as low as I've seen them in seven or eight years," he said. Carnival was offering a rate of $695 for a seven-day cruise to repeat customers, he said. Sally Smith, an analyst with Alex. Brown & Sons, said that the industry is being squeezed from two sides. Cruise operators, who usually buy plane tickets in bulk, are unable to pass along the entire 15 percent fare increases levied by airlines since August, when the Middle East crisis sent fuel prices soaring. The ships' own fuel costs have risen, too, but these usually account for less than 5 percent of their expenses. Ms. Smith said that the demand for cruises grew straight through the last recession, in 1982. But she added that the industry then had far fewer berths | All About/Cruise Lines; A Deluge of Growth in the Floating Vacation Market |
399627_2 | conserve energy and valuable resources, the National Polystyrene Recycling Company was started in June of 1989. It is the nation's first network of polystyrene-recycling centers. By 1995, the company's goal is to recycle 250 million pounds of polystyrene annually -- a goal consistent with the United States Environmental Protection Agency's 1989 solid-waste reduction plan. Last year, the recycling company's first operation, Plastics Again, in Leominster, Mass., removed through recycling 1.5 million pounds of used polystyrene from New England landfills and incinerators. Today, more than 1,100 separate locations are currently recycling polystyrene through the recycling company's centers in Brooklyn and Leominster, and four more are under construction. The Federal Environmental Protections Agency estimates that all polystyrene packaging accounts for less than two percent of our solid waste by volume and only one-half of one percent by weight. Polystyrene food packaging represents an even smaller amount. Foam materials are sometimes perceived negatively, because they don't biodegrade. In fact, today's landfills are mostly storage bins; numerous materials are not breaking down. The Garbage Project at the University of Arizona, headed by Prof. William Rathje, identified corn on the cob from 1971, which is technically edible, and newspapers from 1952, which are readable. That's why it is essential that we recycle those materials with secondary value, such as polystyrene. Furthermore, some people believe that we should abandon the use of polystyrene because it can become litter. This will not address the root of the littering problem, which, as Keep America Beautiful Inc. states, is a behavioral one. Indeed, you will find substitute materials littered over the Connecticut landscape. Our industry supports Keep American Beautiful's approach that promotes litter prevention through public awareness and personal responsibility for a clean, wholesome environment. To make foam food-service products, manufacturers use compounds to inject air into polystyrene. A few years ago, it was determined that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to the damage of the ozone layer. Even though only a small percentage of our industry ever used chlorofluorocarbons, we took a leadership role and, along with the support of three national environmental organizations (Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund), phased out the use of fully-halogenated chlorofluorocarbons in 1989. Most polystyrene manufacturers use compounds that cause no harm to the ozone layer. A small number of manufacturers, because of technical considerations, are still using HCFC-22, a product endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency because it | Recycling Polystyrene Is the Best Solution |
399665_0 | The article "The Learning Disabled: Challenge to Identify" [ Oct. 7 ] points out the need for independent, comprehensive evaluation of children who pose problems to the school. This is especially true in the Riverhead district, where the Superintendent's wishes are expected to be exactly affected by clinical as well as all other staff. Identification and special education work well when aimed at improving learning. The entire district becomes handicapped, however, when special education is used to segregate the poor and minority and transient child from the mainstream. Too many poor, minority and transient students stay too long in special-education classes with curricula too narrow and abbreviated to prepare them for ever entering the mainstream. When pressure is exerted on special-education teachers to keep their students out of the way, discipline can override learning as a goal. Sitting still can become an academic achievement. Special education then becomes one of the subtle subconscious ways a school perpetuates the development of underclass. Schools have dysfunctions, too. Assessment teams often have the narrowest view of "developmental norms." These correlate with Fischer-Price educational toys and nursery-school training. Poor children who pose problems to the school often do not pose real developmental problems at all. Unable to "skip to my Lou," they may dance with perfect coordination to complicated rhythms, recite from memory several rap lyrics, count change and estimate costs. When appreciated and enjoyed, such children want to learn. MOLY ROACH Calverton The writer is a retired psychiatric social worker. | Responding on the Learning Disabled |
399670_0 | The article is unfortunately typical of journalistic naivete (blindness?) in catering to the educational establishment party line about treatment of kids who aren't learning as fast as their peers. The entire focus of the article assumes that all problems reside in the child. The teaching-learning dialogue is a two-way street -- an interaction between the professional (the school) and the client (the student). Acting as the professional, the school is supposed to manage (the key word) its end of the dialogue, such that learning occurs in the client. If the dialogue has somehow broken down (learning has not occurred), should not any worthwhile investigation look in both directions, evaluating not only the degree of fault in the client, but also the degree of contributory imperfection on the part of the professional? But the standard procedure is quite one-sided: A procedure is set in motion to attempt to "identify" a "disability" in the student so that he can be "classified." The practice rests on two important hypotheses: 1) That valid methods exist for diagnosing "learning disabilities." 2) That for children who cannot be shown to have an identifiable learning handicap, regular classes, methods, curricula, etc., constitute an acceptable quality of "appropriate instruction.' Over the past 15 years, the establishment sold, and the public bought, both hypotheses. But, should either (or both) prove to be not valid, the procedures based thereon could prove quite bizarre and maladaptive in our nation's efforts to educate its children. It needs to be asked whether appropriate placements were made and appropriate instruction supplied in the light of the client's previous responses. (If he had been given second-grade work to do when he obviously had not mastered first grade, then the system subjected him to treatment that failed the criterion of appropriate instruction.) The fact that parents generally tolerate a one-sided investigation suggests that they have bought not only hypotheses 1 and 2, but also a third, that the school system functions as the ideal implementer of the first two hypotheses and can do no wrong. As the investigation proceeds and if the testing shows he has something called a learning disability, he is entitled to "appropriate instruction in the least restrictive environment." If it's his fault, he gets benefits of special attention. But, if the tests come up negative, that there's no fault in the student, he gets no special classes or consideration of appropriateness. This | Responding on the Learning Disabled |
400040_6 | child and her synthetic hormone intake. Studies have shown that women over the age of 30 who take birth-control pills in low doses for short periods of time probably don't have any higher risk of developing cancer. But if taken in high doses for more than 5 or 10 years, it may predispose women to developing breast cancer. Hormonal-replacement therapy for post-menapausal women remains a very controversial issue. However, given estrogen and progesterone cyclically, studies have shown that it does not increase the risk of developing breast cancer. Hormonal levels have only a partial influence in the development of the disease. Q. What are the most common benign breast conditions? A. Fibrocystic conditions, the response of the breast tissue to hormonal changes, which occurs mainly in premenopausal women, are very common. It does not mean that a patient has a predisposition to breast cancer. However, a small group of women with fibrocystic disease may develop into a high-risk category for breast cancer. Others include fibroadenomas, which are solitary, moveable lumps. They are usually small, but if they grow to a large size, then they may become premalignant or malignant. By and large, all fibroadenomas are benign. Q. What kinds of psychological support does the center offer? A. We have a social worker on staff who will not only offer comfort to women who have been diagnosed with cancer but can also let them know of cancer support groups for patients and families. For women who will be getting radiation or chemotherapy, we have a Look Good, Feel Good program, sponsored by the National Cancer Society and various cosmetology associations around the country. Basically, it helps women explore how to care for their skin and hair while going through radiation or chemotherapy. Plastic and reconstructive surgery options for women who decide to have a mastectomy can also be discussed. Q. What do you feel is the most important research being done? A. Since there has been a hereditary link to breast cancer, studies are now being done on genetic analysis. It's possible that in the next decade or so, women who have a family history of breast cancer can come in for a genetic screening by way of a blood test or a normal-tissue biopsy, which could tell us if she is predisposed to breast cancer. That seems to be among the most promising research. CONNECTICUT Q&A: DR. T. S. RAVIKUMAR | New Yale Program Treats Breast Cancer |
400023_0 | A VAST wilderness preserve in Indiana may seem unlikely as corn fields in the northern tundra, but that is just what Representative Don Young of Alaska proposed -- seriously, he said -- in the waning days of the Congressional session. Mr. Young, a Republican who is the lone Congressman from the 49th state, was trying to make a point about legislators from other states who meddle in the affairs of Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and other parts of the West. His protest fell mostly on deaf ears; in the last days of the session, Congress passed the Tongass Timber Reform Act, which prohibits logging on more than a million acres in the vast temperate rain forest of southeast Alaska. What particularly irritated Mr. Young was the fact that the measure was initiated by a New Yorker, Representative Robert J. Mrazek, a Democrat from Long Island. "Bob Mrazek never saw a tree his entire life until he went to Alaska," said Mr. Young, who has long thundered against politicians from urban areas who have taken a special interest in public lands of the West. As the debate over protection of old-growth forests in the Northwest and Alaska has shown, major Federal land decisions are increasingly being made over the objections of politicians from the affected states. "In the old days a lot of politicians would have been fearful of intervening in somebody's regional issue," said Representative Norm Dicks, a Democrat from Washington. "That's no longer the case. But we still think we know how to deal with some of the these problems better than our colleagues." Environmentalists have learned that taking their case to a larger national audience may be the best strategy for preserving forests. In the case of the Tongass National Forest, a 17-million-acre expanse of southeast Alaska that is slightly larger than West Virginia, opponents of the Goverment-subsidized logging program took their campaign to the court of world opinion, a strategy that seems to have paid off. When Senator Tim Wirth, a Colorado Democrat, was in Brazil earlier this year on behalf of an effort to save the tropical rain forest of the Amazon basin, the first thing Brazilian President Jose Sarney asked him was, "What about the Tongass?" The bill passed by Congress, and expected to be signed by President Bush, would repeal a mandate to cut 450 million board feet of timber annually for the exclusive | Ideas & Trends; Fighting for Control of America's Hinterlands |
399666_0 | I am a parent of a dyslexic child. If the New York State Department of Education had its way, he certainly would have been labeled as "learning disabled." Over the years I have grown to hate that term. The term "learning disabled" has no meaning. It was created as an umbrella term by the Federal Government in the mid-1970's. It was put into Federal law as a guideline to work with a broad array of neurologically impaired individuals, including dyslexics, aphasics, brain damaged and others. Since the inception of this Federal law, many have tried to get proper services, educationally and otherwise, for the learning-disabled children. Primarily because educators and psychologists have had so little understanding of what learning disability actually is, and how to remediate it, children with learning disabilities suffered from too little or inadequate services. Contrary to what the article states, individuals, must, as one of the criteria, possess an average or above-average I.Q. to be classified as learning disabled. Many parents fought the New York State Department of Education to try and make state education law more specific in defining what constitutes learning disability, so that this population would not slip through the cracks of the educational system. The educational system would hand a diploma to a person who is ready to graduate from high school but unable to read or write. State Education watered down special-education law for this population year after year. Some of us just became sick and tired of fighting the system, from the classroom teacher right on up to the New York State Commissioner of Education. If I had not transferred my son from a public school system (after completion of eighth grade, actually reading many grade levels lower), to a private school, one that was well equipped to educate dyslexic children, I seriously doubt that he would be in a graduate program at New York University today. Sad to say, college-level special- and regular-education programs could strengthen their curriculum in the area of learning disabilities. Then teachers and other personnel would be better prepared to recognize this population as soon as academic failure begins. The emotional problems begin because of the level of frustration these children experience when they know that they can't keep up academically with their peers. Learning disability is truly a silent killer. Not in the physical sense, but certainly in school success, ambition, self-esteem and other | Responding on the Learning Disabled |
404777_0 | An article yesterday about a study of estrogen and breast cancer omitted the name of the medical journal that reported the research. It is The Journal of the American Medical Association. The article also misidentified a cancer researcher at Harvard Medical School. He is Dr. I. Craig Henderson. Because of an editing error, the article referred incorrectly to an epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute. The epidemiologist is a woman, Dr. Louise Brinton. | Corrections |
404810_3 | study. It is far easier, they say, to go directly into the work force with a bachelor's degree. The Wages of Poor Schooling Recognition is growing that many American students cannot make the grade in the demanding graduate and postgraduate levels because they have not received adequate training and motivation, especially in the sciences, from kindergarten through college. "Our graduate schools are extremely attractive internationally," said Peter D. Syverson, director of information services for the Council of Graduate Schools, a national organization. "We get terrific applications from abroad, but not the same level and quality of applications from American students." In every field surveyed by the Council of Graduate Schools, the percentage of Americans earning advanced degrees declined over the last two decades. The drop has been steepest in technology and the hard sciences, where the work is among the hardest and the salaries generally lower than in professional fields like medicine and law. A survey released this month by the American Mathematical Society showed that 57 percent of the 933 mathematics doctorates awarded last year were given to noncitizens. Students from other countries have filled seats once held by Americans. For instance, foreigners at Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences have increased 47 percent in the last five years. At the University of Pennsylvania, nearly 43 percent of the graduate students in the college of earth and mineral sciences come from other nations. Half of the electrical engineering graduate students and almost 58 percent of the civil engineering students at the University of Texas are noncitizens. Once Europe, Now Asia In 1986, foreign applications actually outnumbered domestic ones at Ohio State University, which has one of the largest graduate-school populations in the country. About 23 percent of its 10,493 graduate students are foreigners. The new academic immigrants reflect the shifting economic and political world. Europeans once dominated but now students from Taiwan, Korea, India and the People's Republic of China outnumber all others. Most of the students are men but the number of women is rapidly increasing. The chemistry department at Rutgers University, for instance, has around 160 students, about 100 of them noncitizens and most from the People's Republic of China. "If this keeps up," said Dr. Martha A. Cotter, vice chairwoman of the department, "in another 15 years it's not going to be 'My teaching assistant has an accent,' but 'My professor has an accent.' | Graduate Schools Fill With Foreigners |
403594_1 | reassuring A 1974 law provides monthly Social Security stipends and Medicaid coverage to adults too disabled to work and poor children with handicaps "of comparable severity." The agency evaluates adult applicants by comparing their impairments with a list of common disabilities. It then follows up with examinations for those whose handicaps don't match those on the list. For children, however, Social Security approves benefits only for those with disorders that match the list. There's no follow-up. The individual evaluations for adults, the agency says, are necessary to determine whether a person can hold a job. That's not relevant for children. The policy overlooks many severely impaired children -- those, for example, with multiple disabilities but none severe enough to meet the list's standard. One such child, Brian Zebley, suffered from brain damage, paralysis, mental retardation, developmental delay and eye problems. Refused his benefit, he became the focus for a class action suit filed in 1983. In February the Supreme Court, unimpressed with the employability argument, said the rules discriminated against children. Children's handicaps, the majority found, could easily be measured according to basic skills like walking, talking, dressing and washing. Putting that decision into practice requires a new regulation. Yet the deadline of Aug. 31 came and went without one. In the meantime, officials say, nobody's been hurt, because the agency now evaluates children on an individual basis according to a temporary regulation. Lawyers for Community Legal Services, the Philadelphia agency that brought the class action, say that's only part of the story. The agency is obliged to review the hundreds of thousands of applications rejected under the old system. Those reviews can begin only when the final rule is in place -- and they involve big money. Some 283,000 claims have been denied since the Zebley suit was filed in 1983. The retroactive benefits to those who qualify under a new rule could reach $3 billion. Under a compromise being discussed by the litigants and the court, the retroactive date could be pushed back to 1980, raising the payments even higher. Federal budget makers might be forgiven for recoiling from such numbers. But the law is the law, and its intent, affirmed by the Court, reflects legislative decency at its best. Social Security can make amends for the Reagan Administration's infamous stonewalling of the Federal courts on adult benefits by moving swiftly and generously to give children their due. | Still Cheating the Disabled |
403637_0 | It happened in cars and in office copiers. Now the computer industry, a star of the American economy, is being threatened by a new wave of small Japanese products. In the last two years, lightweight portable computers have become the fastest-growing part of the computer business. And as the machines get smaller and smaller, the Japanese have used their expertise in miniaturizing computer electronics to strengthen their foothold, industry executives and analysts say. "What is happening is a new kind of product coming into the industry: high-volume consumer computers," said Andrew S. Grove, president and chief executive of the Intel Corporation, which makes the microprocessors that serve as the brains of most personal computers. "As this hits, the center of gravity of the industry will move to Japan." 'Heading Into Trouble' The American computer industry, he added, is "heading into trouble." But others say the American computer industry still leads the world by far and continues to innovate. They add that earlier warnings about Japanese gains in the computer market proved unfounded. Portable computers include laptops, which weigh up to 17 pounds and can be carried around and propped up on the lap for typing, and notebook computers, which weigh four to seven pounds. In addition, industry experts say, entirely new kinds of small computers are coming to market, including tiny "palmtop" computers that weigh one to three pounds and mobile message-sending computers that communicate by radio. Additional uses of computers might result from yet another new class of small machines that recognize handwriting and are operated by writing with a stylus instead of typing on a keyboard. Growth Predicted for Portables Nearly 40 percent of personal computers sold in the world in 1994 will be portable machines, compared with only 14 percent now, predicts Dataquest, a market research concern based in San Jose, Calif. Japanese companies, which have only a 9 percent market share in the American personal computer market over all, sell about 40 percent of the portable computers, according to market research firms. The figure represents only the machines with Japanese brand names. Japanese companies have not been successful to date in the American personal computer market because they have had trouble keeping up with rapid changes in the industry and have lacked strong distribution and software. While they have not sold many complete machines, Japanese companies have instead become major suppliers of components needed to make | Japanese Portables Threaten American Lead in Computers |
401434_2 | planning techniques. Playing on racial fears of a largely Indian population, a military Government in the late 1960's shut down foreign-financed family planning clinics, asserting that they were outposts of imperialism. The clinics reopened in the 1970's, but Peru retained one of Latin America's highest growth rates -- about 2.5 percent a year. For example, the population of Lima increased tenfold over the last half-century -- transforming the nation's capital from a city of 600,000 in 1940 to a metropolis of six million today. Peru's population is expected to rise from 22 million to 30 million by the turn of the century. "We don't want a country populated by children feeding themselves from garbage dumps," Mr. Fujimori told foreign reporters last week in what amounted to an appeal for foreign aid for family planning programs. Coinciding with Peru's rapid urbanization and economic stagnation, more and more Peruvian women tell poll takers that they want to have access to birth-control methods. About half the women who want birth control have access to it, said Carlos E. Aramburu, president of the National Population Council, a Government group. Despite the interest and the need, Peru's civilian presidents of the 1980's shied away from embracing the issue for fear of tangling with the Catholic Church in a country that is nominally 90 percent Catholic. But Mr. Fujimori is a newcomer to politics who enjoys attacking establishment institutions. Mr. Fujimori was helped by another factor late last month when he announced the birth-control program: a deep recession. A radical austerity program has cut economic activity by 20 percent, forcing most families to further reduce tight budgets. Before the economic crisis, 20 percent of pregnancies in Peru ended in abortions, according to estimates, apractice that is to remain illegal here under the Government plan. Despite steady criticism by Catholic leaders in radio and television debates, a recent survey by the Apoyo polling group found 80 percent popular approval for the Government's family planning program. Starting this month and using a $1.2 million grant from the United Nations, the Peruvian Government is to offer free condoms, intrauterine devices and birth-control pills in all state-run health clinics. Meeting last week in the Archbishop's Palace, the Peruvian Bishops Conference showed no intention of accepting the free-condom plan. "We have to totally condemn and reject with energy any violence practiced by authorities in favor of birth control," the bishops said. | Peru's Church Battles a Contraception Plan |
401241_1 | issues of our time." A Distant Agenda? But Wednesday's meeting provided another image -- of Bishop Kenneth E. Untener of Saginaw, Mich., pleading with his colleagues not simply to repeat, no matter how gently, the papal condemnation of contraception but to grapple candidly with the objections raised by many Catholic lay people. Even those bishops who admired Bishop Untener's appeal for an open re-examination of the issue doubted that it would be acted on. "The agenda was distant from the anxieties and hopes of people back home," said Bishop William E. McManus, the retired bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind. "If this trend to talk from the top down continues, we will not be heard because we have not listened." The bishops face major issues affecting the internal life of the church. There is decline in the numbers of priests and, some would add, in their skills and suitability. Many women are disaffected from the church, some under the banner of feminism, others who think the church has already made too many concessions to feminism. The rejection of Catholic teaching on sexual morality is widespread. Church budgets are being cut back at every level, from parishes to the National Conference of Bishops itself. The bishops did not entirely ignore these issues, but they seemed to nibble at their edges rather than confront them head on. Today, for example, they passed guidelines for approving new translations employing non-sexist language in the biblical texts used during Catholic worship. A Cautious Course The guidelines steer a cautious course, rejecting "blanket substitutions" for traditionally masculine language but recognizing that words such as "men" or "brethren" or "forefathers" are "increasingly seen to exclude women." The guidelines affirm "the traditional biblical usage" for naming the persons of the Trinity as "Father," "Son" and "Holy Spirit," although they approve substitution of "God" or "Lord" for repeated use of a masculine pronoun for the divinity. The guidelines passed on a voice vote, those favoring to change clearly outnumbering those who feared that traditional doctrine was being distorted to accommodate contemporary concerns. At the same time, a much more direct confrontation of women's concerns, the pastoral letter on that topic undertaken by the bishops seven years ago, was off the agenda almost completely after being the target of attacks from both liberals and conservatives and the victim of a Vatican request for further consultation. The pastoral letter on women's | Bishops Prefer Problems on Outside |
401219_3 | Mr. Teixeira, a free-market economist, startled many Brazilians by proposing a long-term solution: ending the company's monopoly, which under Brazil's 1988 Constitution encompasses exploration, production, refining, importing and exporting. Later, Mr. Collor seemed to endorse this idea, suggesting that a revision of the monopoly should be a task for Brazil's newly elected Congress, which will have power to amend the Constitution after 1993. Perhaps nowhere in Brazil is the monopoly's restraining impact more evident than in the Amazon region. From 1917 until today, only 229 exploration and production wells were drilled in the region's 1.5 million square miles. "That's a very big area and very little research," Mauro Mendes, production supervisor for the upper Amazon region, said at this camp, which is reached by a two-hour flight from Manaus. Aided by Technology But in 1986, with the help of new technology, Petrobras geologists found oil here, 100 miles inland from the Solimoes River. Instead of probing from rivers, the traditional means of access in the Amazon region, teams were transported by helicopter. Geologists were aided by aerial studies that assess the density of rock and other structures beneath the surface and by three-dimensional seismic surveys. A big challenge has been to get the oil out. From November through June, tropical rains swell the Urucu River, allowing barges to bring in provisions and to ship out oil. During the rest of the year, the river is low, the barges stranded. To allow year-round pumping of oil, Petrobras built a 23-mile pipeline to the Tefe River, which is always navigable. To allow for increased production, construction started in October on a larger 10-inch pipeline. Concern for Rain Forest Ecology Brazil's decision to tap its Amazon oil resources has come at a time of growing international concern that oil development can damage the delicate ecology of the rain forest. "Cutting the trees down is not the only way to destroy the forest," Judith Kimerling, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a telephone interview from New York. "You can destroy the aquatic ecosystem through pollution." "Amazon Crude," a new book by Ms. Kimerling, details the ecological impact of oil production in Ecuador: pollution of streams with toxic drilling muds, chaotic colonization by peasants following oil company access roads, violent confrontations with Indians, air pollution from burning associated gas, and oil spills. Scientists to Prepare Plan Petrobras's overseas arm, Braspetro S.A., | Brazil's Remote Amazon Oil Effort |
401219_4 | to get the oil out. From November through June, tropical rains swell the Urucu River, allowing barges to bring in provisions and to ship out oil. During the rest of the year, the river is low, the barges stranded. To allow year-round pumping of oil, Petrobras built a 23-mile pipeline to the Tefe River, which is always navigable. To allow for increased production, construction started in October on a larger 10-inch pipeline. Concern for Rain Forest Ecology Brazil's decision to tap its Amazon oil resources has come at a time of growing international concern that oil development can damage the delicate ecology of the rain forest. "Cutting the trees down is not the only way to destroy the forest," Judith Kimerling, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a telephone interview from New York. "You can destroy the aquatic ecosystem through pollution." "Amazon Crude," a new book by Ms. Kimerling, details the ecological impact of oil production in Ecuador: pollution of streams with toxic drilling muds, chaotic colonization by peasants following oil company access roads, violent confrontations with Indians, air pollution from burning associated gas, and oil spills. Scientists to Prepare Plan Petrobras's overseas arm, Braspetro S.A., operates in Ecuador. To avoid repeating at home what happened elsewhere, Petrobras commissioned a team of 10 international scientists to prepare a plan for minimizing environmental impact. First, the company closed off its 1,985-square-mile concession to anyone not established before 1986. As a result, the area has no shantytowns, squatters or subsistence farmers. No Indian communities are known to be in the area, said researchers at the Ecumenical Center for Documentation and Information, an independent information bank for Indian affairs in Sao Paulo. "These roads lead to nowhere," Mr. Alves said, pointing to a map showing a network of dirt and asphalt linking oil wells. "Imagine that we are on an offshore platform -- only here the sea is green." Area Free of Malaria With virtually all access restricted to the company airstrip here, Urucu is one of the Amazon region's few areas that are free of malaria. All arriving workers submit to blood tests for malaria. Using a technique that not only minimizes deforestation but also saves money, Petrobras clusters up to five wells in one forest clearing. After one well is dropped vertically, other wells are drilled, slanting outward in different directions. To date, 3 wells have been | Brazil's Remote Amazon Oil Effort |
398404_0 | It could be the script for a Grade B movie -- "Reptile Revenge of the Rain Forest." Wild alligators rise from the polluted waters of Brazil's coastal cities and terrorize boaters, joggers and children's birthday parties. But here in this steel-and-glass metropolis of 12 million people, South America's largest city, the reptile invasion is real. In October, firemen fished 11 alligators -- one adult and 10 babies -- from city rivers and lagoons in city parks. Since March, firemen in Rio de Janeiro have wrestled four adult alligators snapping and thrashing into captivity. The alligators were snared in two city parks and in a sailing basin surrounded by luxury high-rise apartment buildings. Survival Despite Effluents "I have never seen so many alligators in Brazilian cities," said Claudia Terdinan Schaalnann, a biologist with the Tiete Ecological Park here. Biologists say they are amazed that the alligator species, commonly called "yellow snouts," can survive in the highly polluted waters of Brazil's coastal cities. Here in Sao Paulo, for example, the Tiete River serves as an open sewer, receiving a daily load of 1,300 tons of industrial and household effluents. Normally a rare sight in cities, the alligators are losing their native habitat, the Atlantic rain forest. In recent decades, that coastal forest has shrunk to 2 percent of its original size. Another reason for the reptile invasion may be a new boom in tourism to the Pantanal in Brazil, South America's largest wetlands. Crackdown on Wild Animals Some visitors to the Pantanal, where the hotels are booked solid, are apparently bringing baby alligators home as souvenirs. "With the crackdown on keeping wild animals at home, many people are getting rid of alligators," Ms. Schaalnann, said, referring to a series of publicized raids by Brazil's environmental-protection agency against clandestine wild-animal markets. When a four-foot alligator was spotted on Oct. 19 sunning itself on the banks of the Tiete, traffic on a major riverfront artery screeched to a halt as drivers abandoned cars to get closer looks. Only after police agents moved in, issuing tickets, did highway traffic start moving again. Firemen were unable to capture the reptile, which had also been sighted in August. Four days later, a second alligator was spotted in the equally fetid waters of the Pinheiros River here. After capture, it was found to be four feet long and to weigh 65 pounds. Pro-Alligator Sentiment The alligator that got | Sao Paulo Journal; The Pollution Is Horror Enough. Now Alligators. |
398337_0 | Responding to warnings that the United States is running short of skilled professionals, a new immigration measure is about to open the nation's doors to people like Kap Pyo Kwon, master of a rare and specialized computer art that is vital to the airline and banking industries. "It was very difficult to come over here," said Mr. Kap, a 34-year-old Korean who was courted by companies in several nations but chose to endure the delays of American immigration law. The new measure, which is the first major revision of immigration standards in 25 years, demonstrates that the United States is now seeking not only the tired and poor of the world but also its most highly skilled, its scientists, engineers, artists, athletes, inventors, and even its millionaires. "Since the labor market has become more international and since the business of the United States has become more international, incorporating foreign workers in a regularized way is something that has to be done," said Sam Myers, president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Businesses, universities and research institutions have supported this view, asserting that American education is not meeting the nation's need for skilled professionals, particularly in mathematics, engineering and the sciences. But representatives of some minority groups contend that reliance on immigration could lead to an abandoning of the nation's responsibility to develop the skills of current citizens. Proponents of the measure agree that education needs to be upgraded but say there is a gap between the supply and demand for skills that can be filled only by highly qualified immigrants. And owing to trends in American education, growing numbers of the most highly qualified graduates are foreigners who because of their immigration status under the current law cannot easily be hired by domestic companies. Raising the Quotas In a declaration of Washington's intent to compete aggressively in the international labor market, the measure, which President Bush has said he would sign, nearly triples the quota for skilled professionals to 140,000 a year, from 55,000. These numbers come within a broad new immigration framework that initially increases overall annual quotas to 700,000 immigrants, from 500,000, maintaining an emphasis on reunification of families while expanding quotas for European and African immigrants. The measure also eases restrictions on the entry of certain classes of people, including Communists, homosexuals and people with AIDS. As much as anything, the measure is characterized by its recognition | For Skilled Foreigners, Lower Hurdles to U.S. |
397310_0 | The Drug Enforcement Administration said today that it would review persistent claims that an American who died in the terrorist bombing of Pan American Flight 103 in 1988 was an agency informant who smuggled the bomb onto the aircraft in the mistaken belief that it was a shipment of heroin. In a written statement, the agency said that "no evidence has surfaced to substantiate such a claim," which has been repeated in various forms in the world press and was broadcast again on Tuesday by NBC News and ABC News. But the drug agency said it would review its files to determine whether the American, 20-year-old Khalid Jaafar, was known to have any ties to the Drug Enforcement Administration or to narcotics smugglers. Other Federal officials with firsthand knowledge of the international investigation into the Pan Am bombing said today that the NBC and ABC reports are groundless. 'There's Nothing to It' "The Jaafar story has been going around almost since the bombing took place," an official said. "It has been looked at, and there's nothing to it." That official said a "complete forensic examination" of luggage from the Pan Am flight also concluded that no hard drugs were aboard the aircraft. A White House commission studying aircraft terrorism concluded in May that the Drug Enforcement Administration was not connected to the bombing. The New York Times reported this month that international investigators had concluded that the bombing was carried out by Libyan intelligence agents working from the Mediterranean island of Malta, the originating point for an Air Malta passenger flight that connected with Pan Am 103 in Frankfurt. Passenger Log Is Missing A similar report in L'Express, the French news magazine, which was confirmed today by Bush Administration officials, said the passenger log of the Air Malta flight has disappeared. Mr. Jaafar, of Detroit, boarded Pan Am 103 in Frankfurt and flew to London, where most of the jet's passengers and luggage were shifted to a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. The aircraft blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, about an hour after taking off from Heathrow Airport outside London, killing 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground. The NBC report said Mr. Jaafar might have been involved in a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation into the smuggling of heroin aboard Pan Am jets that passed through Frankfurt. The report said that the drug agency and the German authorities | D.E.A. to Review Claims of Role By Agent in the Pan Am Bombing |
397250_0 | Women who exercise, even those dedicated women who run marathons, are no more likely to have menstrual disturbances than women who do not exercise, a new study has found. For more than a decade, female athletes have been warned that intense exercise can disrupt their menstrual cycles, stopping them from ovulating. As a consequence, they have been told, they will make less estrogen. A lack of estrogen will make calcium leach out of their bones, and this will set the stage for osteoporosis, the crippling bone disease, later in life. But the new study, reported today in The New England Journal of Medicine, found no such exercise effect. Instead, the investigators, led by Dr. Jerilynn C. Prior of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, found to their surprise that subtle menstrual-cycle irregularities plagued exercisers and nonexercisers alike, causing many healthy young women to lose spinal bone at an average rate of 2 percent a year. Prior said most previous studies did not look at groups of exercising and nonexercising women over time but instead documented menstrual problems in women who were exercising. Such studies, she said, "cannot show cause and effect." But she said society had somehow leaped to the conclusion that exercise causes menstrual problems. Even a Marathon Won't Hurt The idea that women cannot train too much, "tends to confirm our cultural ideas," Prior said. "We've come to tolerate exercising women, but we still think there is something suspicious about it, it is just not quite right." But women who were ovulating before they started exercising will not be hurt even by running a marathon, Prior stressed. In her study, Prior selected 66 women aged 21 to 42 who had had two consecutive normal menstrual cycles before the research began. One third of the women began training for a marathon during the study, one third ran regularly but less intensively, running more than an hour a week, and the rest did not exercise regularly. The investigators found that about only 20 percent of the women in the study had normal menstrual cycles every month of the yearlong study. The others had some menstrual cycles that lacked sufficient progesterone, a female sex hormone produced after ovulation. Because these women were making nomral amounts of estrogen, Dr. Prior suggested that it was a lack of progesterone rather than estrogen that led to the bone loss. Some of the women | Intense Exercise Safe for Women, Study Says |
402013_1 | suburb of Shaker Heights. "My mother's reaction was: 'Clean up under your beds. The police will be looking for bombs, and I don't want them to find any mess under there.' " Ms. Campbell, currently the head of the American office of the World Council of Churches, will take the helm of the National Council in March. She will succeed James A. Hamilton, a United Methodist layman, who did not run for re-election. Mrs. Campbell will be the second woman and the first female minister to serve in the post in the organization's 40-year history. The National Council of Churches is the nation's largest ecumenical body, encompassing 32 Christian denominations with 42 million members. These include the so-called mainline churches, like the Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians; the historically black churches, like the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Orthodox churches, including the Antiochian, Armenian, Coptic, Greek, Syrian and the Orthodox Church in America. Policy and Charity While the denominations act independently, the council links them in activities from interfaith dialogue to overseas relief. The council also issues public-policy statements, like the one approved this week condemning the American military buildup in the Persian Gulf. The council suffered a loss of influence and a decline in membership in the 1980's, when it was overshadowed on the national scene by the Roman Catholic bishops, who spoke out on nuclear arms and abortion, and the evangelical Protestant churches, who made their influence felt through organizations like the Moral Majority. It was also battered by internal divisions and strife that resulted from a huge reorganization. In an interview, Ms. Cambell said she did not expect the council to return to the influence it exerted in 1958, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower laid the cornerstone for its headquarters at 475 Riverside Drive in Manhattan. "I'm not nostalgic," she said. "I think we need to be as strong a voice as we can exercise in this period of history." Searching for the Spiritual "Never during the 20 years I have worked within the ecumenical movement have I sensed a time when unity was more urgent," she added. "We are a nation on the brink of war, faced with increased racism and economic insecurity. We are a people searching for spiritual answers in the face of an uncertain future." Ms. Campbell said she hopes to strengthen the council by emphasizing its variety of churches, and by reaching | WOMAN IN THE NEWS: Joan B. Campbell; 'Seasoned Ecumenist' Takes Charge |
402042_4 | refugees from the left-wing terrorism that plagues the Peruvian Andes. Peru's Government calculates that one million people of the nation's population of 22 million depend on coca harvests for their livelihood. Probably the nation's largest export, Peru's coca-leaf harvest annually sells for $1 billion to $1.5 billion. Climbing behind the wheel of his car for a tour of the town, Mr. Diaz said that the major obstacle blocking a switch to legal crops is transportation. He said the road to Lima was so bad that it takes 38 hours for a truck to travel the 270 miles to the capital on the Pacific Ocean. Because of high transportation costs, bribes demanded by guerrillas and policemen, and export monopolies, coffee growers in the valley receive only 30 percent of their export price. In constrast, American farmers generally receive 90 percent of the price of products at the port, according to the Institute of Freedom and Democracy, a free-market research group that prepared Mr. Fujimori's anti-drug proposal. "To send a load of wood to the coast is as expensive as sending the same wood from the coast to Rotterdam," said another member of the city tour, Rolando del Aguila Hidalgo, adviser for the newly created Institute for the Integrated Development of the Upper Huallaga. Change 'If It's Profitable' On the city tour, Mr. Diaz took pains to point out the kind of American aid that locals appreciate: a steamroller, three dump trucks and a road grader, all provided by the United States Administration for International Development. Working on clearing new city streets, the American-provided road building equipment is the kind of development aid that residents here say could eventually allow crop substitution. "All our 1,400 members grow coca," Justo Silva Vallon, manager of the Upper Huallaga Agricultural Cooperative, said in an interview at the cooperative's newly inaugurated office building. "The peasants want to change -- if it's profitable," he continued, referring to such alternative crops as coffee, cocoa and corn. A more militant stance was taken by Mario Campo Roldon, a board member of a new group, the Defense Front Against Coca Eradication in the Upper Huallaga. "We are tired of studies, speeches and promises," Mr. Campo said, his chest glistening with sweat in the Amazon heat. "We want to substitute, but we want concrete facts -- better roads, agricultural extension services." Growers here said they were skeptical of Mr. Fujimori's drug | Peru Suggests U.S. Rethink Eradication in Land Where Coca Is Still King |
401939_3 | that might cast a negative light on Jews, some people have questioned his own Christian faith, Mr. MacLennan said. He stressed, however, that his intention was to develop a wider understanding and appreciation of the "integrity, importance and value" of both religions. Rabbi Stern said he agreed with the minister that the goal of interfaith relations was not to make religious groups more alike. "In an enlightened community, we are true pluralists," he noted. "We allow each other the right to be what each other is." A Sense of Personal Trust He said one of the "great rewards" of his many years in the community has been his relationships with other members of the clergy in the vicinity. For some years, a loosely organized group of ministers and rabbis from some of the 22 houses of worship in Scarsdale and Hartsdale has met to discuss common issues. Rabbi Stern said a deep sense of personal trust had developed among the clergy members, which enabled them to transcend differences and deal effectively with problems. He recalled being invited to speak at a Scarsdale church when the congregation and minister alike were upset about Israel's actions in the Middle East and disturbed by the feelings the issue stirred in them. "Anti-Semitisim is a toxic fluid that spurts up sometimes," the rabbi acknowledged. "If you can dig into the real stuff than you're on a level that's productive." Rabbi Stern also noted that there were many shared areas of interest in the "so-called liberal wings" of both Christianity and Judaism, like the role of women in the clergy and non-gender language. He pointed out that many local spiritual leaders were actively involved in the same non-religious issues of homelessness and affordable housing for the elderly. Rabbi Stern and Mr. MacLennan have taught an adult-school course together on Judaism and Christianity. Recently, they both took part in an interfaith luncheon held at the Hitchcock Church. Other Participants Among the other members of the clergy participating in the Thanksgiving service is the Rev. William J. Winterrowd, the rector of St. James the Less Episcopal Church here. He has been elected as the new bishop of Colorado, a position he will assume in January. The church offerings on Thursday will be donated to Stop Wasting Abandoned Property, a Yonkers organization that helps rehabilitate housing. Although Mr. MacLennan will not preach at the service, he has his | A Thanksgiving Celebration Of the Communal Spirit |
401932_1 | a strong sense of public relations, and his remarks, as paraphrased in the Sept. 30 article, seem calculated toward this end. He wants to do something for students and if he cannot, the budget crisis is set up to be blamed. For example, "he would like to see a resource center for students with peer tutoring, computer-assisted instruction and workshops on learning skills." It sounds good, but it is a tired idea that has a price tag. Variations on it have been tried at universities all over the country, including Rutgers. Reported results are usually anecdotal and come most often from people who have some sort of vested interest in it. But what about the component parts? Peer tutoring means that a successful student teaches an unsuccessful student or small group; it is usually supplemental instruction for a particular course. At Rutgers it has waxed and waned for many years. One problem is that the tutor knows the subject but has little or no experience in teaching it. The results can be mixed, but are most often unmeasured. Computer-assisted instruction, on the other hand, has a state-of-the-art sound to it. It may work well, but it has to be expensive. This seems to be an unlikely solution in the foreseeable future. Rutgers does, of course, offer noncredit courses for students who have deficient skills in areas like reading and mathematics, and has relied on the workshop model in the past. The now defunct Douglass/Cook Writing Center used peer tutors to help students improve writing skills; an experimental course in critical thinking was tried, to cite but two examples. The idea of skills workshops or courses is obviously not new. They have been tried sporadically over the years, but for the most part results were not measured. Success that carried over into credited courses went unnoticed. Failure could be inferred from the large number of faculty complaints. Now, in what looks like an effort to engage the public, Dr. Lawrence offers recycled solutions to longstanding problems. Perhaps it would have been better to tell us about the extraordinary complexities of the learning process. There are, after all, faculty members who do research in this area, and maybe they can help find better solutions. At the very least, they and their colleagues are capable of setting up objective measures to test the effectiveness of programs currently in place. RUTH H. GOTTDIENER Ridgewood | 'Recycled Solutions' At Rutgers |
402516_5 | property of having infinitely many parallel lines passing through a point. One of the characteristics of ordinary space is that there is only one line that is parallel to another and goes through a given point. The space, called hyperbolic, on Dr. Gunn's computer screen, can be completely filled by packing it with docdecahedrons, twelve-sided solids, just as ordinary space can be completely filled by packing it with cubes. Dr. Gunn said that by moving around in hyperbolic space, watching the changing scene on his computer screen, "you get a visceral understanding of movement," in this strange world where space is warped. Dr. Arthur J. Olson at the Scripps Clinic Research Foundation in La Jolla, Calif., is using computer imagery to visualize tiny molecules. For decades, scientists have studied individual molecules by bouncing X-rays off of them and measuring how the X-rays bounced back. But it was a long and laborious process to go from the X-ray patterns to a picture of a molecule. Scientists had to build physical models out of brass, a process that took months. In the mid-1970's, researchers developed ways to have a computer build the models, but computers then were so expensive that they were inaccesible to many scientists. Now, Dr. Olson said, computers that once cost $150,000 or $200,000 cost just $10,000. Things that were possible in the 1970's "with heroic effort," are becoming routine, transforming the field, Dr. Olson said. "Computations that would have taken a days or weeks now take a day," he said. An Image of Polio Virus Dr. Olson recently used computer graphics to understand how a polio virus assembles itself. By asking the computer to calculate the electric field around the identical proteins that form the virus coat, he realized that these proteins have different charges in different areas. They come together like magnets, with the positively charged section of one area of a protein hugging the negatively charged area of another. Computer graphics is also allowing scientists look at the bottom of the sea without ever going down there, said Dr. Kenneth Stewart of the Woods Hole Oceanograhic Institute in Massachusetts. Dr. Stewart takes data from sonars, acoustic sensors, lasers and cameras to build three-dimensional computer pictures of the sea floor. Last spring, Dr. Stewart was contacted by archeologists who wanted to learn more about the wrecks of two ships, the Hamilton and the Scruge, which were sunk | Shaping Floods of Data, Computers 'See' the Unseen |
402549_2 | world's smallest desktop 386SX." When the user goes on the road, the auxiliary monitor and keyboard are simply disconnected. AST Research can be reached at (714) 727-4141. The Compaq LTE 386s/20 has one big advantage over the AST and most of the other notebooks, however: it is available now. With few exceptions, the others have not yet received approval from the Federal Communications Commission. (AST Research has its own F.C.C.-approved testing laboratory, company officials say, adding that based on preliminary tests, they are confident that F.C.C. approval is easily attainable.) The F.C.C. is the Government agency responsible for making sure that computers and other electronic devices do not emit electronic signals that can interfere with other electronic devices. For example, computers with inadequate emissions shielding can cause "radio pollution" that interferes with television signals or radio communications. Many people who use computers in their homes have discovered, after much frustration, that their home PC's are polluting the airwaves. Worse, some people find that their neighbor's PC is the culprit. In some cases, according to F.C.C. records, the interference can extend almost a mile. The best way to determine whether the computer is guilty or not is to turn it on and off, checking the effect on other electronic devices nearby. There is no evidence that radio frequency emissions of the strength associated with personal computers are biologically harmful to humans. In most cases the interference is merely annoying, causing a nearby television set to go haywire or garbling radio reception. In other cases, however, the emissions are potentially dangerous. Uncertified computers, including electronic cash registers and video arcade games, have interfered with police and F.B.I. communications systems and with airport traffic control systems. The F.C.C. last month fined three computer dealers in San Diego, Calif., for selling machines that were not F.C.C. certified. Any computer that does not have an F.C.C. certification label is probably being sold illegally, said June Butler, an F.C.C. spokeswoman. Ms. Butler says the agency conducts spot checks of computer models to guard against any company that might take a well-shielded model for testing, then sell models with less shielding, or shop for a lab willing to give a favorable report on a faulty model. The issue of radio frequency emissions is expected to get bigger as computers get smaller and as microprocessors operate at ever-higher frequencies. Notebook PC's are especially difficult to shield. PERSONAL COMPUTERS | A Standout in a Crowded Field |
402552_2 | plants, sinks into the ocean or remains trapped in the atmosphere, he said. The rest is unaccounted for. Despite not knowing where the missing carbon goes, scientists say there are two fundamental ways to balance the carbon budget. One, discussed at a recent international gathering in Geneva, is to decrease carbon emissions. A second, discussed by the workshop, is to increase the amount absorbed by natural processes. Trying to 'Prime the Pump' The ocean water absorbs about two billion tons of inorganic carbon each year as air meets water all over the globe, Dr. Banse said. But the ocean also contains tiny plants that consume carbon dioxide falling into the upper layers of water. If one thinks of the plants as a biological pump for removing carbon, said Dr. Banse, "perhaps we can prime the pump" by increasing the amount of plant life in the oceans. One scheme calls for making the Antarctic Ocean bloom with algae by adding iron as a fertilizer. It is based on a hypothesis developed by Dr. John Martin of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in Moss Landing, Calif. Deep oceans in the southern hemisphere, remote parts of the equatorial Pacific and the northern Pacific are almost devoid of small marine life despite having rich sources of nutrients, Dr. Martin said. For some reason, algae do not grow well in these remote oceans. Dr. Martin says the reason is insufficient iron. Like all plants, he said, algae cannot make chlorophyll without iron. The Antarctic and other remote oceans have very little iron, he said, and hence very little algae. The reason those oceans have so little iron, Dr. Martin said, is that they are too far from land, which is the source of iron in the oceans. Tests Seem Promising Dr. Martin supports his hypothesis with data other scientists have obtained from samples of ancient ice taken from Antarctica and Greenland. Ice laid down during glacial periods contained 50 times more iron-bearing dust and far less carbon dioxide than ice formed today, he said. This could mean the iron dust made algae thrive in remote oceans and use huge amounts of carbon dioxide, making the world colder, Dr Martin said. To test his hypothesis, Dr. Martin recently collected bottles of water from the north Pacific far from the Alaska coast. He found very little algae in the water. But when he added iron to some | Ideas for Making Ocean Trap Carbon Dioxide Arouse Hope and Fear |
404480_0 | The Prodigy Services Company, an in-home shopping and information service for personal-computer users, has issued guidelines restricting its electronic mail service. The move, made last week, was in response to criticism from users that restrictions Prodigy placed earlier this month on the use of its electronic bulletin boards and the imposition of a special surcharge for electronic messages were a form of censorship. The issue reached a climax earlier this month when Prodigy terminated the accounts of a dozen members who had complained directly to the company's advertisers and tried to start a boycott of the advertisers on Prodigy. The dispute has generated embarrassing publicity for Prodigy, a joint venture of the International Business Machines Corporation and Sears, Roebuck & Company. It has also led analysts to question whether the service had misjudged its market and raised legal questions about First Amendment rights in the computer era. Prodigy offers electronic shopping, information and communications services that can be used on personal computers equipped with modems that connect terminals to the telephone system. Prodigy subscribers can purchase groceries or airline tickets, shop for and order merchandise through electronic catalogues, read the news or send messages to friends and business associates. The service, which was recently made available nationally, charges a fee of $12.95 a month, with discounts for long-term purchases. But earlier this month, the service instituted a surcharge because it said a small group of its customers were using Prodigy as a "high volume" electronic-mail network, sending messages to hundreds of Prodigy customers at a time. This was something the company said it had not expected and could not afford to provide at its current fee. Beginning on Jan. 1, Prodigy will charge each household a 25-cent fee for each message over 30 a month. Prodigy officials said yesterday that the decision to charge the surcharge was made because Prodigy would lose millions of dollars a year if the high use of electronic messages by a small group were to continue at the current rate. "It was expensive for us because the volume of these messages was increasing by as much as 20 percent each month," said Geoffrey E. Moore, Prodigy's director of market programs and communications. He said that the company was being forced to add additional equipment to accommodate the fraction of its members who are high users of electronic mail. "We never envisioned Prodigy for intensive use | Home-Computer Network Criticized for Limiting Users |
404303_1 | Developing countries, which are being asked to open their markets in high technology and services, are pressing for greater access in textiles and food in the markets of the industrial countries. The world's trade rules were written 43 years ago and codified as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, known as GATT. They define what fair trade is and set rules for settling disputes. They impose penalties for unfair pricing, unfair subsidies and other trade violations and encourage member nations to promote even more international trade. The alternative to GATT is bilateral bashing, in which countries square off against others that they believe are trading unfairly. In such cases, one government will curb the imports of certain goods, as the United States did in 1987, when it accused Japan of failing to comply with an agreement on fair trade in semiconductors and imposed $300 million in sanctions on a variety of Japanese electronics shipments. Some of those restrictions have been lifted, but $165 million of Japanese products, including laptop computers and power hand tools, are still assessed a 100 percent retaliatory duty when imported into the United States. Retaliation Countered Such steps invite counter-retaliation, and as nation after nation responds to grievances by erecting barriers, the danger grows that trade will dry up. The extent to which GATT rules have been overtaken becomes clear by a brief look at the communications sector. When the agreement was reached, business documents were sent across the ocean by ship or propeller aircraft; they now travel over telephone lines from computers and facsimile machines, arriving in seconds. In 1950, a 10-minute telephone call between the United States and Britain cost $209; it now costs as little as $9.90. Such changes have made it far easier to conduct business internationally. Not Covered by GATT Rules As more and more companies began to cross national borders, competition rose, economies of scale were realized and prices of many goods and services were driven down. These changes mean that more than a third of today's worldwide trade of $4 trillion is not covered by GATT rules, or not covered adequately. No rule, for example, forbids the piracy of Paul Simon cassette tapes, which sell for up to $10 in the United States. Unauthorized copies are sold in Thailand for $1.25. Popular software is also unprotected, and the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, which sells in the United States for | Freer World Trade Falls Victim to Its Own Success |
404303_5 | unsuccessful, leaving a wide variety of import barriers and subsidies, including export subsidies, that make farm trade the most protected and distorted of any sector in the trade panoply. $250 Billion Farm Cost The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has found that it cost taxpayers and consumers in the world's 24 richest countries $250 billion last year to shelter their farmers from competition. That is five and a half times what these countries give in official aid to developing nations. Although the United States protects dairy, sugar, peanut, cotton, grain and other sectors through subsidies and import quotas, Washington has offered to drop most of its protection if the European Community and other nations will go along. The community -- with 10 million farmers, five times the number in the United States -- has balked. Jacques Delors, president of the community's Executive Commission, complained earlier this month at a meeting of European foreign ministers that American negotiators were treating Europeans like "plague carriers." But Japan, which is reluctant to open up its totally protected rice market, has also balked. Because of Japan's barriers against rice imports, rice in Tokyo costs seven times what it does in the United States. Although Japan has been a great beneficiary of trade liberalization, the rice issue has kept it from taking a leading role in the round. The Japanese reluctance has been a source of considerable disappointment to Bush Administration officials. Expanding Farm Exports As great as the gulf is on the issue of farm subsidies, agriculture remains the linchpin in the current talks. Washington believes that a sharp cut in subsidies could expand world agricultural exports by $100 billion a year. Congressional agricultural committees are unlikely to support a trade agreement without such a provision. And other farm exporters like Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia could refuse to make concessions on services and intellectual property that are needed for a package to come together. Many developing countries are also concerned about what is known as the multifiber arrangement, a comprehensive set of import quotas that have governed trade in textiles since the early 1960's. Three times in the last five years, Congress has voted for legislation that would make textile trade more restrictive. Supporters could never quite get enough support to overcome Presidential vetoes, but the effort still shows that selling any agreement to Congress that opens trade in | Freer World Trade Falls Victim to Its Own Success |
404304_13 | benefits and the grant run out, he said he will try to work part time. The college prepares about 5,000 of its 10,000 students to transfer to universities, although only about half of the 5,000 do, and the rest for jobs that require skills: accounting, hotel management, computer services and a variety of medical specialities. The president of the college, William Campion, said the average age of the job-training students is 29 and of women studying nursing 34. "They're here to increase their wage-earning skills," he said. "They're tired of being in that vast army of retail clerks, compounded by the fact that their creditors are pounding at the door." The younger these workers, the greater their expectations of high incomes and a better life. Ms. Sowell, for example, said she fully expects to own a home. "I just can't say when," she said. But those who are just a few years older are more apprehensive. Gary Colon, 33, brought his wife, 10-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son to town in their home, a trailer, to look for work. Mr. Colon graduated from high school in Queens, and like Mr. Pulley he spent a year in college and later became an electrician. He, too, was laid off after working for a year in Orlando, where he earned $8.50 an hour. And that was after being laid off after three years in Texas. Don't Want to Be Laid Off' "Maybe I'm doing the wrong things," Mr. Colon said. "I'm not really looking for a higher wage, not that I don't want it. I just don't want to be laid off next month and then the next month. I want security for my family and health benefits." He contrasted his experience with that of his father, who stopped school in the fourth grade but retired with a good pension after a long career as a laborer with an electrical power utility in Puerto Rico. He said his mother never worked. "My father would have gotten mad if she ever even thought of it," he said. "But I want my wife to work, at least part time." In some communities, workers find some compensation for low wages in low prices, but that has not been the experience of workers who moved here. Ocala's cost of living is about the same as the national average, while the wages are well below. Ms. Sowell, an articulate | Youths Lacking Special Skills Find Jobs Leading Nowhere |
404494_4 | of the police. Unfortunately, enforcement varies with the part of town and the susceptibility of the officers to outside inducements. To be fair, Western diplomats say, the police can also be sued for wrongful prosecution. But the federation has started 3,000 cases in the last two years, and nearly 1,000 violators have been sentenced. Penalties tend to be fines of $800 to $4,000, and sometimes a brief jail sentence, usually commuted to probation. If convicted again within a year, probation is revoked. But the shop owners, who hide behind front companies, are almost never caught. Instead, they nominate a staff member to pay the fine and take the sentence. If the shop is raided again, they nominate a different staff member, so few offenders ever spend time in prison. Western diplomats and business representatives say Thai pirate companies are waging a concerted campaign against enforcement, including threats of violence. Thailand's public prosecutors are increasingly reluctant to push these cases and insist on overwhelming documentation. In one instance, a diplomat said, the prosecutor wanted the original signed contract between CBS Records and a well-known artist. Senior Western diplomats give reasonably high marks to the Government, which has committed itself to new and stronger laws on patents and trademarks, which affect pharmaceuticals and fashions respectively. The Real Issue But the copyright issue, everyone agrees, is not about legality but enforcement. Saying it was exasperated by Thailand's refusal to act against its pirates, an American industry group, the International Intellectual Property Alliance, filed a petition in Washington on Nov. 16 under Section 301 of the Trade Act, which could result in sanctions against Thai trade with the United States. The group, which includes the Motion Picture Export Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, accused the Thai Government of wholesale failure to enforce copyright protections and punish pirates. The office of the United States Trade Representative has 45 days to decide whether to accept the petition, but industry representatives say they expect the Bush Administration to support them. A senior Western diplomat who has been dealing with this issue for three years said, however, that the Thais were making an effort. And he noted that demand was as much of a problem as supply. "I find it amusing," he said, "that those people who come to Thailand to complain about piracy usually go home with cheap tapes in their suitcases." | Thailand Is the Capital of Pirated Tapes |
404493_0 | Concerned about the public's acceptance of the use of genetic engineering in producing fresh and processed foods, a California company today became the first in the agricultural biotechnology industry to ask the Food and Drug Administration to study the safety of a new tomato and two other gene-altered crops. The three crops, produced by Calgene Inc., a 10-year-old biotechnology company in Davis, Calif., contain a foreign gene that makes the plants resistant to an antibiotic that normally kills plant cells. The resistance gene is widely used by plant biotechnologists to check whether foreign genes have become incorporated in a plant's cells. Plants that survive exposure to the antibiotic are known to have been genetically transformed. Typically, the resistance gene is attached to the gene for a more useful trait, like the ability to make substances lethal to insects. <> <> The resistance gene produces an enzyme that is not viewed by the scientific community as a hazard to health. But in voluntarily submitting their crops for review by the F.D.A., Calgene executives said they wanted their products to be the Government's first test of the scientific and technical issues involved in reviewing the safety of genetically engineered food crops. Calgene is one of 17 companies in the United States that have developed nearly 70 different food crops, including potatoes, cucumbers and cantaloupes that contain new proteins, enzymes and other substances likely to reach the American dinner table. "What we hope is to validate the fact that F.D.A. has the resources to do this effectively," said Roger H. Salquist, Calgene's president and chief executive . Other experts in the regulation of biotechnology products said today that Calgene's voluntary action raised new questions about the Government's ability to regulate genetically engineered plants. Although the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act gives the F.D.A. broad authority to protect the nation's food supply from additives, food colorings, poisons, etc., the agency does not have any specific regulations for overseeing genetically engineered plants. "Are we going to depend on companies voluntarily coming forth because of their concerns about product liability and public acceptance?" asked Dr. Margaret G. Mellon, director of the National Wildlife Federation's Biotechnology Policy Center in Washington. "That's not enough for us because there are companies that are not going to be concerned. As long as there is no legal obligation to do so, they are going to avoid the process of a lengthy | F.D.A. Ruling Sought For Engineered Crops |
404471_0 | An article on Friday about animal rights advocates and their confrontations with hunters referred incorrectly to hunting regulations in California. For two years there has been a moratorium on bow hunting of black bears; bow hunting in general has not been outlawed. | Corrections |
401065_1 | includes a reassertion of the official condemnation of contraception. Bishop Untener acknowledged that the condemnation was expressed "with much sensitivity." But taking issue with the document's assertion that "God's spirit is acting" through the official teaching, he said the spirit was also found in the minds of Catholics as a whole; it "acts through the entire people of God in developing doctrine." The document says those who dissent should study and pray over their position. Bishop Untener said dissenters could reply, "We will if you will," and he asked his colleagues to do the same. Before the guidelines were approved by the conference, Bishop Untener called for widespread consultation among all Catholics. So did a more conservative colleague, Austin Vaughan, Auxiliary Bishop of New York, who spoke for Catholic parents who are suspicious of sex education programs in the schools. Arguing that these parents deserved more of a hearing, Bishop Vaughan told his fellow prelates: "We're all celibate. None of us are parents. By U.S. standards we are aging and probably have little contact with youth culture. Few of us could name the major rock stars and major rock bands." Asked about the unexpected convergence between the Bishop Vaughan's stance and his own, Bishop Unterer replied, "God has a sense of humor." The guidelines were approved in a standing vote. No count was taken, though there were many dissenting votes, including those of Bishops Untener and Vaughan. Sex education programs exist in many Catholic schools, and agencies of the bishops' conference have encouraged them. But some parents take issue with them. Today's authorization and guidelines were meant to assist bishops in resolving such disputes and to provide guidance for educators and publishers. The document is not an instructional manual but a presentation of Catholic teaching for children as well as adults on the "gift and responsibility" of sexuality. There was no precise way to measure the bishops' reactions to Bishop Untener's remarks. Bishop James T. McHugh of Camden, N.J., took the floor to say the widespread disagreement with the ban on contraception might stem from the bishops' reticence in explaining the church's position. But Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, said, "I think he asked questions that have to be dealt with." Bishop Untener said a number of people "just walked up to me, looked me in the eye and said, 'Thank you.' " "Some were bishops," he went on. | Bishop Issues Warning on Birth Control |
400899_0 | An underground test of a British nuclear weapon was delayed today when four members of the environmental group Greenpeace were sighted near the detonation site minutes before the bomb was to go off. The protesters were arrested by security officers at the desert site, 105 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and the blast took place at 11:17 A.M., two hours behind schedule. They were taken to a base camp at Mercury and are to be turned over to the authorities in Nye County. At first the Energy Department disputed the environmental group's assertion that the four people had reached ground zero this morning. A department spokesman, Chris West, said no one was there except the scientists who armed the weapon. Another spokesman, Jim Boyer, said the countdown was delayed several times in the final 30 minutes because of technical difficulties unrelated to the protest. 6 Minutes to Go But the four, three British woman and an American man, were spotted by video cameras as the countdown was about to resume with six minutes remaining. The weapon was buried 1,900 feet deep in a shaft filled with concrete, and the Energy Department spokesmen differed on the risk of standing unprotected at ground zero. "They could damn near be on top of it and it would just shake them up a lot," Mr. Boyer said; Mr. West said the jolt could break a leg. The department would say only that the weapon was a British nuclear bomb with an explosive force of 20 to 150 kilotons of dynamite; the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had the force of 13 kilotons. Britain conducts all its nuclear tests in Nevada and has set off 17 such tests there since 1958. The protesters were identified as Juley Howard, 23 years old; Jane Gregory, 27, and Lorna Richardson, 25, all of London, and Michael Perry, 27, identified as an American with the Rocky Mountain Peace Center. Anti-nuclear protesters have hiked onto the test site several times in recent years. In most cases, they have been arrested by security forces, who patrol by helicopter, airplane and all-terrain vehicles. Energy Department officials say an infiltrator reached ground zero only once, two years ago, when a man appeared near a detonation site just minutes before a blast. The test was delayed an hour while the man was picked up by helicopter. | PROTESTERS DELAY TEST OF ATOM BOMB |
398530_0 | Under heavy pressure from the Catholic Church, including personal intervention by Pope John Paul II, the Polish legislature is moving toward banning abortion, a major means of birth control in this overwhelmingly Catholic country. The proposed ban is the focus of a fierce debate in Poland over the role of the Church, which has become an increasingly assertive force in public life since Communism lost its all-embracing grip. Public opinion surveys show that a majority of Poles oppose the legislation to ban abortion. Last month, for only the second time since World War II, the surveys showed a drop in approval ratings for the Church. Nonetheless, both leading presidential candidates -- Lech Walesa, the Solidarity chairman, and Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki -- have taken the position that as practicing Catholics, they cannot oppose the views of the Church on this issue. "It's connected with the position of the Catholic Church in our country," said Zofia Kuratowska, a physician in the Senate who voted against the bill. "We are in a very difficult moment in our political life." The number of abortions in this country of 39 million is estimated at 600,000 to one million a year. Along with abortion, the rhythm method and coitus interruptus are Poland's leading forms of birth control. Other methods like the pill, IUD's, condoms and diaphragms are in short supply and not readily available to most Poles. Embarrassment prevents many women from even asking about contraception. There is no sex education in the schools. The only textbook on the subject was withdrawn two years ago by the Communist Government under pressure from the Church. The legislation banning abortion provides jail terms of up to two years for doctors who perform abortions. The Senate approved the bill in September by a vote of 50 to 17, but the lower house has postponed action until after the Nov. 25 presidential election. The Church has been an active participant in the legislation from the beginning. When a Senate committee held its first closed hearings on the issue, a senior Church official appeared to lecture the legislators on their moral duty, according to a senator who was present. After the Senate approved the bill, the Pope issued a statement saying he was praying for the repeal of the existing abortion law, which he described as a vestige of totalitarianism. Fear of the Church Senator Kuratowska said most lawmakers do | Anti-Abortion Bill Prompts Poles To Debate the Church's Influence |
398480_0 | A two-and-a-half-year-old power-sharing arrangement between Protestant and Roman Catholic political leaders here has been held up as proof that the division between the two religious groups in Northern Ireland can be bridged. But recent events highlight the difficulties in building such bridges and then preventing them from being swept away in times like these, when terrorist violence is on the rise. Last month, Martin McCaughey, who had been a member of the local council, was shot and killed by British soldiers, and the Irish Republican Army then acknowledged that he was one of its own. Mr. McCaughey, who was 23 years old, lost his council seat in August because he had missed too many meetings. It turned out that he had been recovering from wounds received in an earlier confrontation with British forces. Mr. McCaughey was one of three council members who belonged to Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s legal political arm. Because they would not renounce violence, they have been snubbed by the rest of the council and barred from serving as chairman, a job that rotates between Catholics and Protestants every six months. I.R.A. Connection Disclosed The disclosure that Mr. McCaughey was an active I.R.A. member who could very well have been plotting some of its violent incidents sent a chill down the spines of Catholic and Protestant members of the council. "It was very much a shock," especially to the Protestants, said Michael McLoughlin, a Catholic elementary school teacher who is the current council chairman. In the last three years, the I.R.A. or other violent republican groups fighting to force the British out of the province made six or seven attempts on the life of Ken Maginnis, the area's leading Protestant politician. Besides sitting on the council, Mr. Maginnis is a member of the British House of Commons from the Ulster Unionists, Northern Ireland's largest Protestant party. Like other members of his party, and most of Northern Ireland's Protestants, he wants the province to remain part of the United Kingdom. Mr. Maginnis and others who have been working to improve relations between Catholics and Protestants are doing their best to play down the significance of a special election held on Thursday to fill Mr. McCaughey's seat. But it is hard to see the result as anything but a setback for the forces that oppose violence and support cooperation. Not only did the Sinn Fein candidate, Francie Molloy, win, | EFFORTS AT AMITY FALTER IN ULSTER |
302672_0 | LEAD: Last week, Congress acknowledged what President Bush will not: that galloping population growth merits attention. It voted to contribute to the U.N. Fund for Population Activities. Last week, Congress acknowledged what President Bush will not: that galloping population growth merits attention. It voted to contribute to the U.N. Fund for Population Activities. The U.S. withdrew from the program three years ago after a conservative outcry over abortions in China. But under Senator Barbara Mikulski's amendment to the $14 billion foreign aid bill, none of the United States' $15 million contribution would go to China. The House added another requirement, sponsored by Representative Sidney Yates. All the money must be returned to the U.S. if the fund spends any of it on abortion or on China's program, which actually focuses on contraception and child health. Mr. Bush is still opposed. Congress, eager to pass an appropriations bill, won't try for an override of his expected veto. But at least Congress shows that it's no longer held hostage to a handful of noisy anti-abortion activists. | Topics of The Times; Congress Steps Ahead |
300234_2 | The American bishops authorized the news service not only to regularize some existing practices but also to provide for the future. Almost a third of the nation's dioceses have parishes already holding Sunday services without a priest, the bishops reported, and seven out of eight dioceses will have some parishes facing the same situation in 5 to 10 years. About 1,000 of the nation's 19,000 parishes are said to be currently without priests. Although the new service must be submitted to the Vatican for approval, it closely follows a Vatican directive for Sunday celebrations without a priest. Fears Regarding the Mass The Vatican document, issued in July 1988, intensified debate among church leaders and theologians who have expressed almost contradictory fears about these developments. Some worry that Catholics will equate those presiding over these new services with priests and the services with the Mass. Others fear that the non-sacramental form of these services, emphasizing Bible readings, prayers and hymns, sacrifices the distinctive character of Catholicism for a more Protestant form of worship. Catholics favoring ordination of women or of married men have also complained that provision for Sunday celebrations without priests is a way of sidestepping the ordination issue. All these concerns were reflected in the debate last week. ''Every pastoral instinct in me warns that approval of the document could be misunderstood, misinterpreted, in some situations misused,'' said Bishop William E. McManus, the retired Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend in Indiana. Bishop McManus warned against headlines proclaiming, ''Bishops Approve Priestless Sunday Masses.'' He also asked, ''By adopting this statement, will the U.S. bishops seem to make a value judgment that it is better to have a priestless prayer service on Sunday than to ordain married men or women to celebrate the Eucharist?'' The lengthening shadow of the shortage of priests could be seen in other developments at the bishops' meeting, which ran from Nov. 6-9. The conference, for example, cleared the way for dioceses to let lay people witness marriages in regions where distance or difficult travel conditions blocked the presence of a priest. A diocese in Alaska and one in Michigan plan to seek the necessary permissions from Rome. But throughout the debates on the shortage of priests, many bishops supported the church's opposition to ordaining women or married people. Continuing discussion of such ordination reduced the church's ability to recruit priests under the existing regulations, they said. | Bishops Endorse Rite for Parishes Without Priests |
300100_2 | wreaked havoc on roadways in the region, including Interstate 880 and the Oakland Bay Bridge, and devastated the Marina section of elegant homes. But only two hotels closed as a result - the Presidio Travelodge on Lombard Street and the San Franciscan Hotel on Market Street. Both are undergoing structural assessment; the Travelodge may be razed and the San Franciscan expects to reopen in January. With few exceptions, theaters, museums and other attractions are carrying on as usual, and department stores are preparing for the holiday shopping season. Plucky opera lovers are attending performances of ''Aida'' and ''Madama Butterfly,'' although there's a safety net strung across the ceiling to catch any falling plaster. The Moscone Convention Center has been returned to its usual function, having served temporarily as a mass shelter for the homeless. Among the casualties, some of the marble pillars at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, an art museum in Lincoln Park, were broken by the earthquake. The decorative columns were being removed and the museum was scheduled to reopen this month with an exhibit of works by Picasso, Dufy and Watteau from the private collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Jay Ide. While ''Les Miserables'' is playing at the Curran Theater on Geary Street between Mason and Taylor, the American Conservatory Theater's playhouse next door, the Geary Theater, is closed with extensive damage. Some of its productions are being relocated to the Orpheum Theater on Market Street, a few blocks away. Fishermen's Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, Telegraph Hill Park, Japan Center, Golden Gate Park and the other main tourist sites were not affected. Indeed, one of the most popular attractions these days is the Safe-Quake at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. The machine simulates earthquakes of different magnitudes, so visitors can get a sense of what San Franciscans endured on Oct. 17. A taped video including actual sounds of earthquakes gives the geologic explanation for these movements. A spokesman for the academy, David Shaw, warned, however, that it's not for everyone. ''Some kids are not ready to play with the idea of a seismic event,'' he said. One destination that is being stricken from visitors' itineraries is the Marina District, between Fishermen's Wharf and the Presidio. The neighborhood of pastel-colored Victorian houses and small apartment buildings overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay bore the brunt of the earthquake. Tour | And Now, the Aftershock |
296510_0 | LEAD: A Palestinian guerrilla blew up his booby-trapped fishing boat in a suicide attack on an Israeli patrol boat on Monday night, killing himself and wounding three Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military reported today. A Palestinian guerrilla blew up his booby-trapped fishing boat in a suicide attack on an Israeli patrol boat on Monday night, killing himself and wounding three Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military reported today. The Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine asserted reponsibility today for the attack. Two statements made public in Beirut by the Marxist organization said that one of its naval units clashed with the Israeli ship while en route to a mission off Naqura, in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel. The statement said one of the guerrillas, Mahmoud al-Azour, slammed his boat into the Israeli ship. It said the guerrilla and 16 Israeli soldiers were killed and both boats were destroyed, but the Israel radio, quoting the military, said only 3 soldiers were wounded in the incident. | Palestinian Suicide Bombing Wounds 3 on an Israeli Boat |
296466_0 | LEAD: If this city is America's most livable metropolis, as two publications recently concluded, there is scant evidence in its first wide-open campaign for mayor in 12 years. If this city is America's most livable metropolis, as two publications recently concluded, there is scant evidence in its first wide-open campaign for mayor in 12 years. As in most American cities, the issues here are crack in the neighborhoods, gridlock on the freeways, racial tensions and a declining public school system. What may be different about Seattle is that none of the problems are considered insurmountable. Two City Hall veterans, Douglas N. Jewett, who is 42 years old, and Norman B. Rice, 46, are vying to succeed Mayor Charles Royer, retiring after three terms to head the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Each Would Break Ground If Mr. Rice, a City Council member since 1978, is elected, he would become the first black mayor of Seattle, a city with a black population of about 10 percent. Mr. Jewett, who has been the City Attorney for 11 years, is seeking to become the first Republican mayor in more than 20 years. The race is officially nonpartisan, and Mr. Jewett has downplayed his party affiliation in seeking to lead the Democratic city. An old villain in the Pacific Northwest, Los Angeles, has been raised by both candidates as an example of what Seattle could become if measures are not taken to preserve the quality of life. To curb suburban sprawl and limit growth caused in part by an increasing number of Californian moving to the area, Mr. Jewett has proposed changing the zoning of certain areas of the city so they can be filled with apartment houses. Both men favor mass transit, a combination of a new rail system with the existing buses, as a solution to clogged roadways, and say the city cannot expect any help from the Federal Government in putting together a system. Each Has a Ballot Measure Each candidate has championed a ballot measure to help his cause. Mr. Rice backs a proposal that would increase the city's business and occupation tax to pay for 102 more police officers, which he says should be enough to make most neighborhoods feel safe from drug dealers. The centerpiece of Mr. Jewett's campaign has been a pledge to end the busing of schoolchildren to achieve | In Seattle Mayoral Race, a Sense of the Possible |
298238_5 | -Christians, Communists, liberals, Jews, even such Greek philosophers as Plato and Aristotle whom Campbell charged with sapping the Greek spirit of preclassical heroic virtue. ''Joe tended to lump people together,'' Professor Finch said. ''So, for example, if he's criticizing Communists, he might be inclined to lump them together with Jews. He thought the left-wing, liberal, Jewish, Communist point of view was part of the degeneration that was going on in our society, and his comments were in that context.'' Much of the debate centers not on Campbell's prejudices but on a phrase he used frequently during the Moyers interviews, ''follow your bliss,'' a central point in his philosophy and, apparently, in his spiritual appeal to a wide public. Mr. Gill attacked this notion as a tenet of what he said was Campbell's rejection of the notion of fellow feeling or social responsibility. ''If it is only to do what makes one happy, then it sanctions selfishness on a colossal scale - a scale that has become deplorably familiar to us in the Reagan and post-Reagan years,'' Mr. Gill writes. Examining a Wide Following Campbell's defenders, by contrast, see in ''follow your bliss,'' not justification of greed, but merely an ethic of individualism, a determination to resist the impositions of convention and to do and be what makes one happy. ''Campbell wasn't asking us to return to some golden age,'' Mr. Moyers said. ''He was transforming the very idea of the hero. It was not superhuman gods who would save us. It was the hero within, the god within, the Christ within you. And bliss was discovering that you are your own hero and that you are going on your own journey irrespective of the price and the sacrifice.'' Underlying the feelings of Mr. Gill and other Campbell critics is the notion that a rather vague, imprecise and largely unexamined philosophy has, through the power of television, gained a wide following. ''If Bill Moyers, who is an intelligent person, just sits there awestruck and gives the impression that what we're listening to is of great spiritual significance when it is just mishmash,'' Professor Finch said, ''this is the most serious problem.'' Correction: December 8, 1989, Friday, Late Edition - Final A picture caption on Nov. 6 about accusations of anti-Semitism against the mythologist Joseph Campbell reversed two identities. He was at the center; the author Brendan Gill was at the right. | After Death, a Writer Is Accused of Anti-Semitism |
301138_1 | in New York. The yearlong rise in prices of free-market sugar also exerted upward pressure on the controlled domestic market. At the close of the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange in New York, the March 1990 world sugar delivery, the most actively traded contract, soared 37-hundredths of a cent a pound, to a contract high of 15.24 cents. The closing low for the contract, 8.40 cents, was set on Oct. 10, 1988. The previous closing high was 15.19 cents, set on Friday. Meanwhile, the thinly traded spot January domestic sugar contract rose a tenth of a cent a pound, to 23.20 cents. ''The cause of the rise in world sugar is simply that global output in 1989-90 is expected to fall short of consumption for the fifth year in a row,'' said Harri Schwartz, head of tropical commodities research at Cargill Investor Services. The F. O. Licht Organization, the leading statisticians of the industry, said global sugar consumption in the year ended Aug. 31 was roughly 107 million metric tons, while the output was 104.8 million tons. Licht, based in Hamburg, West Germany, projected consumption in the current year to exceed output by 109 million to 108.8 million tons. Out-of-Reach Luxury But rising output has failed to keep pace with consumption in recent years. One reason is that sugar is still an out-of-reach luxury in much of the world. In most developing countries, economists link sugar consumption to improvements or declines in living standards because it is considered an essential part of the diet. That is why retail sugar prices in much of the third world are often kept low by government subsidies. In the United States, sweeteners made from corn are increasingly taking a share of the market. Now, for example, 90 percent of domestic caloric soft drinks have high-fructose corn sweeteners. Most recently, sugar prices have been responding to increasing imports by the Soviet Union, the world's largest sugar producer. Soviet output comes almost entirely from sugar beets. The sucrose from beets is indistinguishable from that obtained from sugar cane. 'Caught in a Bind' In the latest statistical sugar crop year, which ended Aug. 31, the Soviet Union produced an estimated 9.4 million metric tons of sugar. Brazil and Cuba ranked second and third, as each produced about 8 million tons, while the United States output from sugar cane and beets was fourth with 6.6 million tons. FUTURES/OPTIONS | Sugar Prices Reach Highs On Lagging Global Output |
301205_0 | LEAD: Washington protested when it learned that Israel was helping South Africa develop missiles with a range of 900 miles. But Israel rebuffed the protest. President Bush would serve his nonproliferation policy well if he renewed and strengthened his objections today when he talks to visiting Prime Minister Yitzhak Washington protested when it learned that Israel was helping South Africa develop missiles with a range of 900 miles. But Israel rebuffed the protest. President Bush would serve his nonproliferation policy well if he renewed and strengthened his objections today when he talks to visiting Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. The spread of missile technology and nuclear know-how seems likely to pose a greater threat to future U.S. security than confrontation between the superpowers. Despite these proliferation concerns, Washington has shown understanding of Israel's desire to acquire nuclear weapons and missiles. Israel's borders seem secure for now against conventional attack. But Israelis worry about the use of chemical weapons and don't assume their air force could survive a future first strike by Arab missiles. Thus Israel has arguable grounds for having missiles and not denying itself a nuclear capability against a threat to its survival. But Israel's aid for South Africa's missile is clearly beyond the pale. Such aid flouts a U.S.-backed U.N. embargo on arms to South Africa. In any case, Pretoria could have no use for these weapons except to terrorize its neighbors. Why, then, would Israel help the South Africans develop missiles? Ostensibly, to defray its own development costs and use South Africa as a site for its own missile tests. But these considerations hardly offset the harm Israel does to its reputation by associating itself with an outlaw state. Israel won't comment officially on the technology transfer. Unofficially, it says it's fulfilling ''an old contract.'' The case is unconvincing, and Washington has the leverage to enforce its views. The Administration could hold up the sale of a supercomputer to Israel unless Israel swiftly quashes the South Africa deal. Supercomputers can bear directly on proliferation. Computer simulation of nuclear explosions and ballistic missile re-entry reduces the need for full-scale tests and aids the design of more advanced weapons. The spread of weapons technology is accelerating. If Mr. Bush does not act now, little may be left of his longstanding but fitful commitment to braking proliferation. | Israeli Missiles for Pretoria: No. |
301227_0 | LEAD: In the quest for clean air, the utility industry today introduced a high-technology entry to curb pollution from autos: an electric van that speeds along at up to 72 miles an hour, and can run for more than 100 miles without having to be recharged. In the quest for clean air, the utility industry today introduced a high-technology entry to curb pollution from autos: an electric van that speeds along at up to 72 miles an hour, and can run for more than 100 miles without having to be recharged. The shiny maroon vehicle, housed in the body of a Chrysler van, is a prototype that the producers hope will be in production in about three years. But at a national conference here, begun today, the Electric Power Research Institute also showed off less advanced models based on the body of a General Motors van, which customers can order today for delivery next year. ''Go out and kick the tires -they're real,'' said Richard E. Balzhiser, president of the power research institute, which is sponsoring the two-day conference. Long a Dream Replacing gasoline with electricity in vehicles has been talked about and tinkered with since the early days of the automobile, and particularly since the 1973 oil embargo. But the cars have never had the range or durability to be very useful. Today, however, improved technology and the prospects of tougher environmental enforcement are beginning to make electric vehicles look more practical. Moreover, even advocates concede that electric vehicles will be a modest niche market for the foreseeable future, mainly used as delivery trucks, service vans and the like that travel short distances each day. Optimists predict that the potential market is more 100,000 electric vehicles a year, compared with a total American market of 15 million cars and light trucks. Still, the first factory production of an electric vehicle in North America in recent years, with the General Motors van body, is scheduled to begin in May. The power research group, a nonprofit utility consortium based in Palo Alto, Calif., hopes to sell 500 next year. ''We are looking for a foot in the door that will convince the population,'' Mr. Balzhiser said. According to C. Dennis Bausch, a vice president of Vehma International Inc., a developer of the General Motors-based van, North American production of the G.M. Vandura, the Ford Econoline and the Chrysler Ram models comes | At Last, a Practical Electric Vehicle? |
301123_1 | with better trained workers. ''Colleges and universities now have a virtual monopoly on awarding credentials,'' said Jerry W. Miller, director of the Washington office of American College Testing, which administers college admission tests. ''It's time to develop a system to serve the other half of the population - those who don't go to college.'' Impetus for such a system comes largely from John H. Bishop, a Cornell University economist who advanced the idea in the January issue of Educational Researcher, a professional journal. He noted that most other industrialized countries have established close links between schools and employers. ''Parents in these countries know that a child's future depends critically on how much is learned in secondary school,'' he wrote. Mr. Bishop cited research showing that while students who do well in high school courses that require reading, calculating and other basic skills become more productive workers, such students in this country get the same wages and job opportunities as low-achieving classmates. ''Like their peers in Europe, Canada and Japan,'' he said, high-achieving students ''should be allowed to compete for really attractive jobs on the basis of the knowledge and skills they have gained in high school.'' One person struck by Mr. Bishop's ideas was George Elford, director of the Washington office of the Educational Testing Service, which administers the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Along with two business associations, the American Business Conference and the National Alliance of Business, the testing service is developing a system called Worklink, which is to be in by 1991. Worklink will be administered by a national board of educators and business leaders and will include a battery of tests. Students will be able to take an Employment Aptitude Test of general skills as well as other pencil and paper tests in particular vocational areas. It will also have an electronic resume with results from the Employment Aptitude Test and other examinations stored electronically along with other materials the student chooses to include. That information might show that John sold clothing and waited on tables in a restaurant and did volunteer work at a local hospital. He might also include letters from employers regarding his dependability and from clergymen about his leadership ability as well as a note from the school office about his punctuality. And Worklink will have a commitment from schools to develop the new credentials and agreement from businesses to use the materials when | EDUCATION: Lessons; Trying to develop a way to reward good students who don't go to college |
301140_0 | LEAD: Frustrated by the slow pace of nuclear disarmament, a group of nonaligned countries at this year's United Nations General Assembly is seeking to push the United States and Britain toward the Soviet position in favor of a total ban on nuclear testing. Frustrated by the slow pace of nuclear disarmament, a group of nonaligned countries at this year's United Nations General Assembly is seeking to push the United States and Britain toward the Soviet position in favor of a total ban on nuclear testing. The nonaligned group has already forced the United States and Britain to call a conference, scheduled in 1991, to discuss converting the 1963 partial test ban treaty into a conprehensive ban that includes underground testing. The agreement now prohibits nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in space or under the oceans. But United States and Britain officials say they will try to block any attempt to enact a total ban. A Move Toward Disarmament A conference to amend the partial test ban treaty was called for in 1988 by six countries that have signed the pact, Mexico, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Venezuela and Peru. By this year they had the necessary one-third support to convene the conference. In seeking a comprehensive ban, the countries argue that it would slow nuclear arms development and encourage disarmament. They also point out that many ''near-nuclear states,'' like Israel, South Africa and Pakistan, which could make nuclear weapons or have already done so, have already signed the partial test ban treaty. Thus, converting the treaty would make it difficult for such nations to further develop weapons. At a meeting earlier this year in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the leaders of nonaligned countries endorsed the idea of converting the partial test ban into a comprehensive one. They called for a preparatory meeting in January followed by an amending conference ''as soon as possible.'' Nonaligned supporters of a total ban say they want the amending conference to meet before the next review of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty of 1973, in September next year. Non-aligned diplomats calculate that the United States and Britain would be reluctant to veto a comprehensive test ban treaty on the eve of this review conference. While American and British officials agree they cannot block an amending conference, they are adamant that they will veto any attempt to change the treaty. ''Our position is that a test ban flows from the | Nonaligned Nations Seek Total Nuclear Test Ban |
304686_0 | LEAD: East Germany is about to publish its first road map of West Germany since the 1950's. East Germany is about to publish its first road map of West Germany since the 1950's. The Communist Party daily Neues Deutschland said on Saturday that demand for West German road maps since East Germany lifted travel curbs on Nov. 9 pushed the state cartographer, Haack-Verlag Gotha, into action. A joint map of the two Germanys will go on sale this month. ''We have never put out a map as fast as this one,'' the map's publisher, Matthias Hoffmann, said. Cartographers ignored West Germany while travel there was largely banned. West Berlin, 110 miles inside East Germany, was a virtual blank spot on maps for years, but that is likely to change after the East German state travel agency started bus tours there on Friday. Mr. Hoffmann said that only 100,000 copies of the new map would be printed because of paper shortages, but that another 100,000 should come out at the start of 1990. CLAMOR IN THE EAST | East Berlin Fills Void: Road Map of the West |
305121_3 | a multi-cultural contemporary institution serving the surrounding population. The most direct way of helping those students was to help them find work in New Jersey's new economy, which may need as many as 100,000 more workers by 1995. A Lot of Hiring The tight labor market has been building. According to recent Federal statistics, the number of New Jersey residents in the labor force rose by 437,000 between 1979 and the first nine months of 1989, far less than the 750,000 new jobs that were created. Immigrants from other states and nations filled the remaining jobs. The shortage led businesses to hire minority-group members at a rate greater than ever before. Black and Hispanic workers constituted 44 percent of the 437,000 people who joined the labor force. As a result, the unemployment rate for black and Hispanic workers was halved during the 1980's, dropping to the current rate of 6.9 percent. But that rate remains twice as high as the 3.5 percent rate for white workers. In 1979, it was roughly the same - the unemployment rate for minorities was double that of whites. The jobs these minority-group members took were not limited to low-paying positions at McDonald's, Mr. Ehrenhalt said. But Federal statistics show that 34 percent of white workers in New Jersey are employed in managerial, professional or technical jobs, compared with 19 percent of black workers and 19 percent of Hispanic workers. Last year, Bloomfield College received a $1.8 million challenge grant from the state to establish an extensive program to attract black and Hispanic students who might otherwise not have even considered going to college. Studying Leadership The program establishes an executive-in-residence, who this year is Cyrus R. Holley, chief operating officer of Englehard Industries. It also includes a four-year leadership development program, in which select students, including Mr. Rivera, receive help as they study leadership styles and skills they will need in business. Along with courses in his major, computer information systems, Mr. Rivera attends special leadership seminars. In his second year he will be assigned a mentor, an off-campus volunteer already working in the computer field. The third year he will spend up to 20 hours a week working as an intern in a business. He will also attend leadership seminars with Dr. Noonan. In his senior year he will become a mentor for a freshman. Sometimes it takes more than financial aid and | Small College Shifts Focus To Minorities and the 90's |
305109_3 | Company's Lincoln-Mercury division. These tentative pokes at the past have lately become a flood. ''I thought nostalgia was a fad at first, but I'm convinced it's a phenomenon,'' said Michael D. Drexler, an executive vice president at the Bozell advertising agency. ''The size of the market is big enough now to capitalize on it as a business.'' This last year, the Campbell Soup Company reintroduced ''M'm! M'm! Good!'' and the Timex Group again used the voice of John Cameron Swayze to assert ''it takes a licking but keeps on ticking.'' Ad agencies say that old slogans retain so much good will with the public that to ignore them would be foolish. Last fall, for example, Ketchum Advertising resurrected the 30-year-old slogan ''I want my Maypo'' after research by American Home Foods, which had just acquired the hot cereal, showed that the line was still recalled by 21 percent of the adult American population, said Hank Seiden, the chairman of Ketchum's New York office. Consumer-products manufacturers, too, have been testing the appeal of old products and packaging. General Foods U.S.A., for example, is test-marketing Maxwell House 1892 Slow Roasted Coffee, packaged in the brand's 19th-century can. In March, the Planters Life Savers Company brought back as part of a special promotion Pepsin, Lic-O-Rice and Choc-O-Late - three discontinued Life Savers candies from the 1920's and 1930's that the company called ''nostalgia flavors.'' ''We were simply saying to consumers, here are some of the fun flavors from the past, and for a few weeks you can go and relive your memories,'' said Janis L. Fulton, a spokeswoman for Planters. Sociologists and marketing experts who have studied the current passion for the past generally agree that peoples' desire to relive earlier times, even times before they were born, is in large measure a response to the rapid pace of social and technological change. Robert Goldman, an associate professor of sociology at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., who studies advertising themes, said he had noticed two predominant motifs in contemporary advertising: love of the past, and images of fear and death. Both, he said, attract ''a population that is unsure how to deal with the present.'' Professor Davis of the University of California said nostalgic feelings were a result of ''identity discontinuity,'' the sense that the experiences that anchor peoples' lives are in constant flux. ''We turn to the past,'' he said, | THE MEDIA BUSINESS: Advertising; The Past Is Now the Latest Craze |
304981_1 | they may not be able to benefit from such services. The Supreme Court has refused to let public schools cut off educational help to severely handicapped children even though they may not be able to benefit from such services. The Court, without comment, on Monday rejected an appeal by the Rochester, N.H., school district, which was ordered to help a profoundly retarded 13-year-old boy. The appeal of the school district was supported by educators and state and local government officials throughtout the nation. The boy, identified as Timothy W., has been severely handicapped from his birth two months prematurely on Dec. 8, 1975. Rochester school officials said Timothy is incapable of learning even rudimentary skills. ''Timothy has consistently exhibited profound mental and developmental retardation, deafness and blindness, a persistent convulsive disorder and severe cerebral palsy,'' they said. ''He is virtually immobile, suffers from spasticity and has contracted joints.'' Boy Is Said to Respond The boy's mother and some therapists painted a somewhat different picture. They said he sees bright light, smiles when happy, cries when sad, listens to television and music and responds to touching and talking. At issue is the duty of states and local school officials under the Federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which provides Federal aid and in turn requires programs to help handicapped children. The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled in May that under the law ''it is the state's responsibility to experiment, refine and improve upon the educational services it provides to handicapped children and not to exclude handicapped children if there is no proof that they can benefit from the existing program that a state might offer at a particular time.'' A chief aim of the law is to help the most severely handicapped, the appeals court said as it reinstated a lawsuit by Timothy's mother seeking educational services and $175,000 in damages. Rochester school officials said the appeals court ruling means states and cities will be forced to divert scarce resources from those who can benefit to children who cannot be helped. They said the Federal Government contributes less than $300 to the $15,000 a year it will take to provide educational services to Timothy. Among those supporting the school officials' appeal were the National School Boards Association, the American Association of School Administrators, the National League of Cities and the National Conference of State Legislatures. | Severely Disabled Gain School Aid |
303565_1 | not face the death penalty. The Australian Government has not decided if it will seek a role in the penalty phase of the trial, said the Australian consul, Ira Lindeman, who attended the week-long trial. Mr. Savage was adopted in Australia when he was 4 months old. His biological mother, Beverley Moore Whyman, who learned of his whereabouts because of the case, contended he was wrongly taken from her under a government program to turn aboriginal children over to white adoptive parents. The program has since been discontinued. 'They Just Killed Me Tonight' ''They took my son away from me 26 years ago, and they just killed me tonight,'' Ms. Whyman said tearfully after the verdict. ''My son is paying for his own mistakes and for the Australian Government's mistakes.'' Mr. Savage's adoptive mother, Nesta Savage, sitting two rows behind Ms. Whyman, wiped tears from her eyes and clung to her husband, Graeme, as the verdict was read. The couple, who returned from missionary work in Australia to attend the trial, refused to comment. Mr. Savage, who has a long criminal record in this country, was accused of sexually assaulting and strangling Barbara Ann Barber in an alley behind her interior design showroom on Nov. 23, 1988. The defense lawyer, George Turner, acknowledged that Mr. Savage killed Ms. Barber but denied that he had raped her. Mr. Savage's heavy use of crack reduced his culpability, Mr. Turner argued. The lawyer said the charge should be reduced to second-degree murder, carrying a maximum term of life imprisonment. But Assistant State Attorney Russ Bausch said drugs could not be blamed for the murder. ''I don't care if you are black, white, an American, an Australian or an aborigine,'' Mr. Bausch said. ''No one has the right to perform or commit the criminal actions James Savage committed on Barbara Ann Barber last year.'' Before the trial, Judge Lawrence Johnston allowed a defense motion that Mr. Savage be referred to as Russell Thomas Moore, his birth name. Mr. Turner contended his adoptive name, Savage, might cause the jury to think of ''an uncivilized primitive.'' Mr. Savage has served four prison terms for automobile theft, burglary and violent behavior in prison, including trying to kill a fellow inmate and a guard. Ms. Barber's son, Bill, said the family was pleased by the verdict. ''Yes, I want him to get the electric chair,'' Mr. Barber said. | Man is Guilty of Murdering Florida Decorator |
299885_0 | LEAD: Crop Genetics International, an agricultural biotechnology company in Hanover, Md., said plants inoculated with its genetically engineered corn vaccine had reduced corn borer damage by more than 80 percent in greenhouse tests. The company said it was the first time that a plant had been able to grow its own pesticide in its vascular system. Crop Genetics International, an agricultural biotechnology company in Hanover, Md., said plants inoculated with its genetically engineered corn vaccine had reduced corn borer damage by more than 80 percent in greenhouse tests. The company said it was the first time that a plant had been able to grow its own pesticide in its vascular system. ''Our Incide vaccine is environmentally more attractive than synthetic chemical pesticides,'' John B. Henry, chairman and chief executive of Crop Genetics, said in a news release. The new vaccine it scheduled for field trials in Maryland next summer. COMPANY NEWS | Crop Genetics |
299892_3 | attention to their children's behavior; the polarization produced by the mayoral election, and such subtle factors as the violence in rap and other popular music. The growth of crack, weapons and gangs have rendered that mixture explosive, he said. A Racial Perspective There is a ''racial component'' to the violence, he said, but it is not exclusive to any one race. Black youths were involved in needle attacks on the West Side; young whites were involved in the killing of a black teen-ager in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn last summer. ''I struggle to keep it in a racial perspective,'' he said. ''I don't want to feed into the hands of those who see it as a minority problem. It is. Minorities hurt each other more than anyone else. But it is everywhere.'' Mr. Herbert conceded that part of the reasons for an apparent rise in violent incidents outside school is that increased numbers of security guards and weapons detectors inside school may have denied youngsters an opportunity to ''let off steam'' there. ''You let 2,000 kids out after school, they need to ventilate,'' he said. But, what is significantly different, he said is that the violence is often purposeless - the victims are often unknown to them - and the stakes have risen sharply. Youths are more willing to do things to others and to themselves that they once would have winced at, he said. He recalled a scene in the James Dean film ''Rebel Without a Cause'' where angry adolescents play a game of ''chicken'' while driving cars. ''James Dean jumped out of the car,'' he said, suggesting wryly that today's youths might not treasure their own safety as much. Poverty, he said, is not the only cause, because there have always been poor neighborhoods and they have not yielded the kind of violence of recent weeks. What is different, he said, is that the poverty today is set against the backsdrop of an unprecedented level of materialism, where youngsters who do not wear the right brand of sneakers, the right labels on their jacket and the right haircuts feel like outcasts. Young people, he said, ''can't help but notice that friends who are doing illegal drugs dress better and have access to cars and dates that they do not have,'' he said. Schools, he said, ''may be the only place in society where we are concentrating on | Ferocity of Youth Violence Is Up, a School Official Says |
299901_2 | a 40-year-old woman had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of getting married. By the time the Newsweek cover and other press reports had permeated the public consciousness, the Bennett-Bloom-Craig study had, in effect, become two studies. One, known to sociologists and demographers, was an academic analysis examining the question of why black women's marriage rates were declining far more steeply than those of white women. The second, known to the American public through increasingly shorthanded press interpretations, was an unsettling report on educated women's marriage probabilities. This ''study'' - in fact only a few paragraphs in a 5,000-word paper - was also greeted with skepticism among sociologists and demographers. A Category Is Eliminated Now, because the authors, in response to colleagues' suggestions, have eliminated the category of ''college-educated white women'' from their calculations, and because they are using more recent demographic data than they had in 1986, it is virtually impossible for laymen or professionals to recalculate the marriage-probability statistics using the revised model. Only one figure in the revised paper is remotely relevant to the figures that gained worldwide attention. In the 1986 draft, Drs. Bennett and Bloom and Ms. Craig estimated that 22 percent of white female college graduates born in 1953 to 1957 would never marry. In the study now being published, they estimate that 11.5 percent of white women with more than a high school education who were born in the early 1950's would never marry. But Dr. Bennett cautioned against such a comparison because the two studies dealt with women of slightly differing ages and the educational categories had been changed. The 1986 draft paper, Dr. Bloom said, ''was used to clobber many women over the head and the furthest thing from our minds was that. ''I felt we were being used,'' he said. ''We're not saying anything about those figures now because it's highly unrelated to the message of our paper and we are first and foremost academics.'' Obligation to Address Figures? The question for many, who remember how a generation of unmarried women took the statistics personally, is whether the study's authors have any obligation to refute or reaffirm the missing figures, since they cooperated in, although could not control, the wide publicity that helped their statistics permeate the public consciousness. In their brief tenure as academic celebrities in 1986, they discussed the marriage-probability figures on talk shows | Marriage Study That Caused Furor Is Revised to Omit Impact of Career |
305369_0 | LEAD: A new study has found a statistically significant link between cancer and human exposure to electromagnetic fields from the network of electrical wires that crisscross the nation. A new study has found a statistically significant link between cancer and human exposure to electromagnetic fields from the network of electrical wires that crisscross the nation. The unpublished findings by Genevieve Matanoski of Johns Hopkins University add to a growing sense of concern in the American scientific community about health risks from power lines. Ms. Matanoski, a professor of epidemiology, said in a telephone interview today that her findings were preliminary and required further testing, but that the study results had changed her view of the theory about a cancer link to power lines. ''I thought before that the theory was wrong,'' she said. ''I'm not so sure any more. I'm swayed to think it's more likely than before.'' Study of Phone Workers The major conclusions from her study of 50,000 New York State telephone workers are that there may be an increased risk of leukemia among active workers and that incidence rates for almost all types of cancer are highest among people who work on the lines. Their exposure to electromagnetic fields is the highest among telephone workers. Ms. Matanoski also found exceptionally high rates of breast cancer among male technicians who work on telephone switching equipment in the central offices. Her study found two cases of breast cancer among 9,500 central office technicians; ordinarily the incidence rate for males would be about one in one million, she said. Ms. Matanoski reported on her study at a technical meeting sponsored jointly by the Energy Department and the Electric Power Research Institute in Portland, Ore., on Nov. 15. She said she expected to publish the findings early next year. She said she needed to study a larger number of workers in further research, adding that there were too few cases of cancer to feel strongly about a possible link. Her study found three cases of leukemia among 4,500 line workers, an incidence rate seven times higher than among other telephone workers. The overall rate of cancers of all types among line workers was nearly twice as high as among other telephone workers. HEALTH | Study Finds Possible Link Of Cancer and Power Lines |
296804_3 | these children share a determination to make the most of their lives. For example, 14-year-old Ryan Martin, was paralyzed when a bullet shattered his spinal cord. He now plays competitive tennis in a lightweight wheelchair. Rachel Demaster, 10, who has insulin-dependent diabetes, has won trophies for swimming and soccer. The children, of course, would rather not be ill. ''When I blow out a candle, break a wishbone, or see a shooting star, I always wish I didn't have asthma,'' said Anton Broekman, who is 10. But they are also realistic. ''I would rather not have leukemia, but that's the way the cookie crumbles,'' said Adam Rojo, 7. Teen-Age Troubles Sick children often worry about their effect on family finances and the time and energy their parents must devote to them at the expense of healthy siblings. But while they appreciate the parental support and assistance on which their life often depends, when they reach adolescence they also begin to resent their inability to take full care of themselves. ''I'm at an age now where most of my friends are gaining more and more independence,'' said Jimmy O'Neill, a 15-year-old with cystic fibrosis, which requires twice-daily back-thumping sessions to help clear his lungs of accumulating mucus. ''I have to realize that no matter what, I'll never be totally independent.'' In an interview, Dr. David M. Siegel, a pediatrician at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, said adolescence is a particularly difficult time for chronically ill children. He noted that they may have visible disabilities or experience delays in maturation or growth that can exacerbate normal teen-age doubts about the adequacy of one's body. Typical teen-age feelings of invulnerability can also become troublesome, even life-threatening, Dr. Siegel said. It is not uncommon for teen-agers who are dependent on medication or special diets to suddenly stray from the prescribed regimen or for those who must limit their activities to attempt potentially dangerous actions. ''Health-care providers and family members must both educate chronically ill teens as to risks of experimentation, as well as anticipate and be somewhat tolerant of less-than-ideal behaviors,'' he said. At the same time, many children who must struggle for every life-giving breath resent others who voluntarily abuse their health. ''I've never been jealous of people who aren't sick,'' said Jimmy O'Neill. ''But I do feel angry when I see healthy people smoking. It makes me mad because | PERSONAL HEALTH |
296839_0 | LEAD: Sugar futures prices exploded to 15-month highs yesterday on the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange in New York on news that Brazil, the world's fourth-largest producer, is considering suspending sugar exports. Sugar futures prices exploded to 15-month highs yesterday on the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange in New York on news that Brazil, the world's fourth-largest producer, is considering suspending sugar exports. World sugar futures settled 0.45 cent to 0.56 cent higher in New York, with the contract for delivery in March at 14.53 cents a pound, the highest settlement of a near-month sugar contract since July 19, 1988. Brazilian officials said they are studying the possibility of suspending sugar exports from the country's 1989-90 sugar cane crop. Analysts said Brazil might halt exports to divert more sugar cane into production of alcohol for automobile fuel. Most of Brazil's passenger cars burn alcohol. Earlier this year, the Brazilian Sugar and Alcohol Institute projected production of 6.9 million metric tons of raw sugar for the 1989-90 crop year, which began in September, with 645,000 metric tons designated for export. Last year, Brazil produced eight million metric tons of sugar and exported about 1.5 million. ''This situation is pretty severe,'' said Judith Ganes, an analyst with Shearson Lehman Hutton Inc. ''It remains to be seen whether they are going to be able to meet their sugar export commitments.'' Coffee futures sank in New York amid fading prospects for a return to export quotas, which were lifted in July, precipitating a sharp drop in coffee prices. Green unroasted coffee settled 1.6 cents to 2.31 cents lower, with December at 72.45 cents a pound. Pork belly futures soared the permitted limit of 2 cents a pound for the second consecutive day on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange amid expectations for greater export demand. Hog futures rose sharply in line with the bellies while cattle futures were mostly lower. Near-month copper futures rose sharply on New York's Commodity Exchange after news of an unexpectedly large 426-ton decline Tuesday in the exchange's warehouse inventories. Copper settled 0.9 cent lower to 2.5 cents higher, with December at $1.165 a pound. Gold and silver futures slid lower on the Comex. Gold settled 70 cents to 90 cents lower with December at $376.90 an ounce; silver was 3 cent lower across the board with December at $5.188 an ounce. The surging heating oil market pulled energy futures higher for | Sugar at 15-Month Highs; Brazil Weighs Export Halt |
298897_3 | for the privilege. That money goes to help Mr. Toniolo administer not only the tower but also the Romanesque cathedral, the circular baptistry and other buildings in the square. Sometimes, though, Pisa's 100,000 residents feel ill at ease in the tower's long shadow. They want to be more than just a tour-guide oddity. Theirs is, after all, a pleasant university city of museums and winding streets, where the Arno River lazes past steeples and pastel walls. Visitors Don't Linger Besides, the tower is not the money-generator some like to think. The typical visitor stays only two or three hours, take the predictable shots of companions leaning this way or that and then goes to Florence or Rome without so much as looking at a local hotel. Still, the tower beckons. Perhaps there are some travelers who arrive insisting loftily that they could not care less about the tower and want to see only the Roman sarcophagi in the Camposanto, an enclosed cemetery. They are probably as common as 50-year-old Americans who can honestly say that when they hear the ''William Tell Overture'' they do not think once of the Lone Ranger. If the monument must be closed, Mayor Granchi says, it should not be the result of unspecified disquiet but rather a response to a clearly defined project to keep the tilt from worsening. (Straightening the tower is out of the question. The word ''perpendicular'' is all but banned here.) There have been countless suggestions sent to Mr. Toniolo over the years: Build a statue that would prop up the tower, freeze the ground to stop its sinking, put a wind machine on the leaning side and have it blow like mad. No one is in a hurry to act, though. The last time the Government did something, in the early 1930's, when it pumped in tons of concrete to shore up the ground below the tower, it only increased the rate of inclination. Two years ago, Rome approved a plan to build an underground concrete wheel that would connect to the tower's foundation and rest on long poles reaching down to firmer layers of sand. The cost was estimated then at about $30 million. But the Italian gift for government delay has kept the project from going anywhere. In Pisa, even worried merchants like Mrs. Ghiara say they are counting on tangle-footed bureaucracy to save them this time, too. | Pisa Journal; Rome Leans on the Tower; the Tower Just Leans |
298872_1 | because it would appeal to everyone from the busy professional who does not like clipping a beeper on a belt to working parents who want to reach their children at all times. But other industry analysts and paging-company executives wonder whether the devices will really be used far more widely than existing paging systems. The new wristwatch pagers, along with pocket-size cellular telephones that reached the market earlier this year, are expected to open an era of wireless, mobile communications. Fantasy devices like Dick Tracy's watch telephone and Maxwell Smart's shoe telephone could soon become a reality. The majority of the paging industry's seven million subscribers are doctors, lawyers, sales representatives, small-business customers and other professionals. But the industry is looking to expand into the non-business consumer market, and some industry executives and analysts think that the greater convenience and lower overall cost of the new watch pagers provide the avenue for such expansion. For more than a decade, engineers have been racing to develop a beeper small enough to fit inside an ordinary wristwatch. Now, American Telephone and Electronics and Hattori Seiko plan to offer early next year a wristwatch pager that is expected to provide strong competition for manufacturers of existing paging equipment and providers of paging service. A.T.&E. has built a paging network that transmits messages to wristwatch pagers anywhere in the world. The messages are carried on FM radio subchannels at speeds substantially faster than those of current paging systems, which use standard radio waves and are mostly limited to local service areas. The A.T.&E.-Seiko watch pager, which will cost about $200, has a battery life of one year. Service rates are $8 a month for national paging and $35 a month for international paging. A caller seeking to page someone on the A.T.&E. system will dial a phone number or special code assigned to the subscriber. The call is carried over the public telephone system to a paging-control center, which sends a message to FM radio stations. Those stations broadcast the message over their FM subchannels to the subscriber's wristwatch, which homes in on the clearest of the signals. The watch displays a telephone number indicated by the caller or one of several messages, like ''call home'' or ''call office.'' The watches can store longer messages and, eventually, such messages will be sent by using operators or typing them on a telephone keypad. Separately, Motorola | Checking Your Watch For Messages, Too |
298868_0 | LEAD: Bryan Mayhann, a 16-year-old senior at Wewahitchka High School, had always imagined that a college education was beyond his reach. ''My father works in the paper mill, and it seemed like there was no way to pay for it,'' he said. Bryan Mayhann, a 16-year-old senior at Wewahitchka High School, had always imagined that a college education was beyond his reach. ''My father works in the paper mill, and it seemed like there was no way to pay for it,'' he said. For another senior, Jackie Hill, the problem was self-confidence. ''Academically, I didn't think I was college potential,'' she said. Last year the two students were in a program aimed at increasing the college attendance of students in schools like Wewahitchka - small, rural and serving students from low- to moderate-income families, many of them the first in their families to aspire to go to college. As a result, both students expect to be freshmen next fall. ''I realized college was not as big a step as I had thought it was,'' Miss Hill said. The program, the National College Counseling Project, was born when the admissions director at Rollins College in Winter Park, David Erdman, saw that there was a shortage of effective college counseling in high schools nationwide. ''Sometimes I'd walk into a high school guidance office and find no one there,'' he said. An explanation is not hard to find. Most of the 24,000 public high schools graduate fewer than 125 seniors a year; their budgets leave no room for nonclassroom extras like guidance counselors. As Mr. Erdman sees it, thousands of young people are being deprived of a college education at a time when colleges are eager to increase enrollments and when some colleges have more financial aid available than applicants to claim it. According to the American Council on Education, the percentage of black graduates going to college was 28.6 percent in 1986, down from a high of 33.4 percent in 1976. Inadequate counseling is considered a factor. With the associate dean of admissions at Middlebury College, Herbert Dalton, Mr. Erdman surveyed counseling in 1,140 high schools, located 13 effective programs, analyzed what they had in common, and developed a low-cost model. The model met its test in Gulf County, a rural district - population 11,000 - on the Panhandle 60 miles southwest of Tallahassee. The high schools, Wewahitchka and Port St. Joe, | Education: Lessons |
297824_1 | less expensive school, in 1996, when both boys are in college, the cost could easily exceed $40,000. With the breadwinner in a new job, it's sensible to keep a conservative, liquid investment like a money-market fund, the experts said. But the family should move from the O.T.C. stock fund into a more conservative investment now that Eric is so close to college. ''The O.T.C. fund is too risky,'' Mr. Schnepper said. ''A 15 percent return is very good, but with a 16-year-old, protecting principal is more important.'' Among the alternatives suggested were a blue-chip stock fund, zero-coupon bonds, or the new U.S. Savings Bonds Series EE to be issued in January. For married couples with adjusted gross income below $60,000 who spend the money on a child's college education, interest earned on the bonds will be free of Federal as well as state and local taxes, said Joel Isaacson at Weber Lipshie & Company in New York City. Rhoda Israelov, a financial planner with Shearson Lehman Hutton in Indianapolis, suggested an equity-income fund of larger companies - safer than the O.T.C. fund, but less conservative than other options. The family still has seven years until it must pay simultaneously for Eric's last year and Brian's first year of college, she said, and an appreciating investment is likeliest to help meet that expense. She also advised accelerating the payments on the 8 percent mortgage to increase the Fitzsimonses' $50,000 equity in their house - an education reserve they can tap with a home-equity line of credit. The children's custodial accounts could be shifted from money-market funds into investments that lock in an interest rate. For $5,200, for example, Brian could buy a Treasury zero-coupon bond maturing for $10,000 in his freshman year, Ms. Longden said. Mr. Isaacson said a better alternative might be five $1,000 C.D.'s in staggered maturities, which would give reinvestment flexibility. ''The commission on zeroes reduces their yield,'' he said, so C.D.'s, which carry no commission, might yield more. Eric should be encouraged to get a job, Ms. Israelov said. ''College is a family goal. He should be part of it.'' Mr. Schnepper agreed and recommended an employer: Mr. Fitzsimons. A self-employed, unincorporated parent like Mr. Fitzsimons can reduce his own taxable income and simultaneously help build his children's college savings by hiring them, he explained. The child's first $3,000 of earned income and $500 of unearned income | Making College Ends Meet: Gayle and Sally Fitzsimons |
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