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993092_0 | Edmar Bacha, a Brazilian banker, has a new routine. Every afternoon he logs on to the Internet, reads the next day's issue of The Korea Herald and decides what he will tell the anxious executives from Merrill Lynch and Fidelity Investments who keep asking him where Brazil is headed. ''I get very worried on days when the Koreans don't seem as worried as I am,'' Mr. Bacha said. ''Let's face it, if Korea or Indonesia goes and Japan is hit, then who cares about fiscal adjustment in Brazil or anywhere else? Everyone's out of here and into United States Treasury bills.'' Since the Asian crisis deepened in October, Brazil has dug in for what senior Brazilian officials call ''the moral equivalent of war'' -- a war to prevent Brazil from becoming ''the next domino.'' The stakes are huge. Brazil dwarfs Argentina and Mexico, constituting through its size and influence the key to a stable, prosperous Latin America. This is the world's fifth-largest country, whose population at 163 million is bigger than Russia's and whose industrial output surpasses China's. Despite its frequent bridling at American domination of the post-cold-war world, Brazil has recently opened its economy to that world. Its transformation illustrates the free-market upheaval that brought 5 percent growth to Latin America in 1997 and a record $45 billion in direct foreign investment. But with this shift, vital to American interests, the country now seems poised on a knife edge. In stark terms, Brazil poses the question of whether global economic pressures exact too high a cost in stability in societies that are among the most unequal in the world. The measures Brazil has taken to save its currency -- steps that have thus far satisfied fast-moving global markets -- are hurting the poor and the lower middle class. The Asian crisis has meant high interest rates and lost jobs. Many Brazilians who were buying cars or stoves on credit can no longer do so because efforts to attract international capital have pushed interest rates close to 40 percent a year. Tens of thousands of state employees have been dismissed, thousands of auto workers idled. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is paying a political price: one newspaper survey showed his popularity dropping below 50 percent for the first time. ''People are suffering,'' said Pedro Malan, the Finance Minister, ''but they would suffer more if we did not do whatever it takes | Brazil Pays to Shield Currency, And the Poor See the True Cost |
995848_2 | than 80 percent of Catholics accept the idea. But will the I.R.A. accept a settlement that recognizes the present status of Northern Ireland? Its historic stance has been that the division of Ireland is illegitimate, that the North must be part of a united Ireland. And the I.R.A. has embraced violence as a proper means to that end. Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, says it is committed now to the path of politics. Last year it won 16 percent of the vote in Northern Ireland. But the Ulster Unionists on the other side of the negotiating table say that his profession of nonviolence is not sincere -- or that, if it is, he does not control the I.R.A. For the first five weeks of this year the I.R.A. exercised self-control under difficult circumstances. Protestant extremists killed six Catholic civilians; the I.R.A. did not respond. Then, last week, killers said by the police to be connected to the I.R.A. murdered a drug dealer and a Protestant extremist. Why would the I.R.A. break its cease-fire? No one can be sure. When gunmen associated with the fringe Unionist Party carried out several killings last month, the party was expelled from the negotiations -- but is about to be re-admitted. If Sinn Fein is treated the same way, that will present a crucial test of I.R.A. intentions. Will it turn against the talks? Or will it maintain a cease-fire in the weeks ahead in order to be re-admitted? As always in the North, the issue is not one-sided. Whether the Protestant parties will accept a final compromise agreement is very much in doubt. One of their leaders appeared on television tearing up the framework of an agreement proposed by the British and Irish Governments. But the I.R.A. is at the heart of the puzzle. Fintan O'Toole, writing in The New York Review of Books, said the question was ''whether, without the reward of power, an undefeated paramilitary army can be persuaded to trade the epic certainties of violence for the unglamorous ambiguities of peaceful politics.'' Despite the bloody history, despite all, I think there is reason for hope. Everyone knows now what a settlement will look like: more involvement by the Irish Republic in the North but the union with Britain untouched for now. Violence will not change that. The people yearn for peace. Will the hard men deny it to them? | At Home Abroad; Violence Or Politics? |
995857_2 | Mali and Senegal. ''Working women who become pregnant are faced with the threat of job loss, suspended earnings and increased health risks due to inadequate safeguards for their employment,'' said F. J. Dy-Hammar, the study's chief author. The study found that maternity benefits are contingent on a variety of conditions. In some countries, including Britain, benefits can be denied if the pregnancy is not reported by a specified stage. Other conditions include the number of children already in the family, how close they are in age, the length of time a woman has been in the job and whether she works full-time. For example, several countries -- Barbados, Egypt, Grenada, Jamaica and Zimbabwe -- allow a woman to take maternity leave no more than three times in her working life. Gambia and Zambia require two years on the job. And some countries require a minimum social security contribution, which can eliminate part-time and temporary workers. Women who are covered by collective bargaining agreements usually fare better, the study found. Spain's public school teachers in the Basque region, for example, who are unionized, receive more maternity leave than their private school counterparts, who are not, and more than required by Spanish law. The labor agency adopted its first global standard in 1919 to protect working women who become pregnant. In 1952, the standard was strengthened to call for a minimum 12-week leave with a woman being paid at a certain minimum rate and receiving full health insurance while she is on leave. But only 36 countries have signed the international accord. The United States, which has outlawed discrimination against pregnant women, is not one of them. Currently, 119 countries meet the standard of 12 weeks of leave. Of those, 62 allow for a leave of 14 weeks or more. The countries providing the most paid maternity leave by law are the Czech Republic, with 28 weeks; Italy and Canada, with 17 weeks each, and Spain and Romania, with 16 weeks each. Denmark, Norway and Sweden each provide for paid leave that may be taken by either parent, although a portion must be taken by the mother. In the United States, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act provides for 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Some states -- including New York, New Jersey, California, Hawaii and Rhode Island -- mandate paid maternity benefits, often treating them as a form of disability compensation. | U.N. Surveys Paid Leave For Mothers |
995862_4 | a role in the case. She said that she has been in therapy off and on for about 15 years but was not in therapy at the time of the trial. Mr. Livingston said that in the clemency petition he had tried ''to make a persuasive case that this woman is troubled.'' He said that the petition was accompanied by a videotape of her talking with an Illinois state psychiatrist. ''A stack of amazing letters from her was confiscated from Reggie's death-row cell,'' Mr. Livingston said. ''They varied in tone from that of a junior high school romance to the smutty and obscene things you might read in Penthouse or some other magazine.'' It was the discovery of those letters by prison authorities in 1988 that set off the chain of events surrounding Ms. Marxkors. ''Love and emotions can be so powerful,'' Ms. Marxkors said in her defense. ''Anyone can be blinded. The initial physical part was very emotional and driven by vulnerability and this shared thing. ''It certainly wasn't anything I ever planned.'' Ms. Marxkors was warned by the bar association that her conduct was ''inappropriate,'' but she was not formally admonished or disbarred. Now working with troubled children while studying for a master's degree in social work, Mrs. Marxkors said she realized that there was a great gap in the way she saw Mr. Powell and his crime and the way the jury and judge looked at him and the crime. She said she approached the case from the position that the two killings were not premeditated and that conviction would be for manslaughter, not first-degree murder. ''When I first interviewed him and noticed his retardation I thought that he couldn't even premeditate going to the bathroom,'' she said. She also said it was not Mr. Powell who brought the knife that night, but another youth who handed it to Mr. Powell at some point in the fight, further suggesting the absence of premeditation. Ms. Marxkors said she had not put him on the stand to testify in his own behalf and plead remorse for the killings because she had used his mental impairment as an important aspect of her defense and feared that while on the stand he might not seem as impaired as he was. ''Reggie would talk about wanting to testify,'' she added, ''but it wasn't the way I had planned to do it, so | Lawyer-Client Intimacy Prompts Death Row Plea |
995889_1 | that has been set up just a few dozen feet from the Mole. Mr. Blaize says he is a sandhog because his father was one. (Other men in the tunnel are third- and even fourth-generation sandhogs.) He describes the lure of the job as a mix of good money, danger and camaraderie. ''We're in a different world by ourselves down here,'' he said. ''The rule here is you have to get along. You have to look after each other.'' ''This is beautiful here,'' he continued, with a gesture that takes in a pile of grimy machinery and a wall of wet rock. ''It's exciting.'' The Third Water Tunnel is an epic project that seems to, and in many ways does, belong to another era, the era when New York was digging its subways and erecting its bridges. First conceived in the mid-1950's and first authorized in the mid-60's, the tunnel has been under construction for 28 years. It is often described as the biggest public works project in America, and certainly everything about it is out of scale, from the size of its shafts to the cost it has taken in human lives: 24 so far. But its purpose could hardly be more quotidian, providing backup support for Water Tunnels One and Two. No one has been inside either of those tunnels since they were put in operation, the first in 1917, the second in 1938. Currently, the city has plans to put the first phase of the third tunnel into operation this summer. But the full tunnel, which will stretch 60 miles under four boroughs, will not be finished for at least two decades. The most optimistic estimates put the completion date at 2020 and the total cost at $6 billion. THE men who work on the tunnel have, for the most part, been working on one aspect or another of it for their entire adult lives. They know very well that outside their subterranean fraternity, few would be drawn to the work, which, besides carrying a high risk of death or catastrophic injury, also can induce hearing loss and lung disease. And they like to tell stories about big, brawny guys who took one ride down the shaft and headed right back up. There are no women. ''Once you hit the shaft and go down the hole,'' said John Murphy a 20-year veteran, ''you are all brothers. You | Metro Matters; Far From Sky, Sandhogs Face Grit and Risk |
997663_4 | Dr. Gloria A. Bachmann, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, said testosterone therapy ''may be underutilized because many women don't know that they could feel better.'' She and others believe that the decision to try testosterone replacement should be based on a woman's symptoms and her desire to eliminate them. Most experts say there is little point in trying to measure a menopausal woman's blood level of testosterone, since at the very low levels a woman produces the measurements are not very accurate or meaningful. Dr. Susan Rako, a psychiatrist in Newtonville, Mass., and author of ''The Hormone of Desire'' (Harmony Books, 1996, $21), listed the following as the most obvious signs of testosterone deficiency: overall decreased sexual desire, diminished vital energy and sense of well-being, decreased sensitivity of the clitoris and nipples to sexual stimulation, overall decreased arousability, diminished capacity for orgasm and thinning and loss of pubic hair. ''The wipeout of sexual desire that results from a critical reduction in testosterone is different from the fluctuations we experience with the various ups and downs of life and relationships,'' she wrote. Dr. Barbara Sherwin, a professor of psychology and obstetrics and gynecology at McGill University in Montreal, says many doctors harbor mistaken notions about testosterone therapy for women. They think, incorrectly, that it will turn women into men, make them grow a beard or make them overly aggressive or sexually demanding. ''Of course,'' Dr. Sherwin said, ''it doesn't do any of that in the doses used postmenopausally. The goal is to reinstate what the woman had before menopause, to bring her back to what she was and how she felt.'' Many of the myths stem from high-dose testosterone treatments for other, unrelated medical conditions, which can cause virilization -- growth of facial hair, loss of scalp hair, deepening of the voice and weight gain. If even the hint of such changes occurs in a woman who is being treated with postmenopausal testosterone, the dose can be reduced and the symptoms reversed, except for voice changes. The one major medical concern is a testosterone-induced decline in a woman's blood levels of protective HDL cholesterol. But the therapy also lowers harmful LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. And, unlike estrogen, which merely slows postmenopausal bone loss, testosterone therapy increases bone mass and is therefore more effective than estrogen in preventing osteoporosis. | Personal Health; A Tad of Testosterone Adds Zest to Menopause |
997687_1 | British Army troops in full combat geer cordoned off the center of Portadown, which has been the scene of clashes between demonstrators and police officers during annual Protestant marches. The bomb destroyed two shops, severely damaged several other buildings, including three banks, and left streets for about half a mile around littered with broken glass. There were no injuries. It was widely believed that the attack was carried out by an I.R.A. splinter group like Continuity I.R.A., which was held responsible for an attack last Friday that injured 11 people in the town of Moira, which is also mostly Protestant. No group, however, has taken responsibility for either attack, and neither the British Government nor the Ulster police has accused the I.R.A. Irish national television reported tonight that the I.R.A. had stated that its cease-fire was still intact. The bombing increased widespread fears that the five-year-old peace effort in this predominantly Protestant British province is crumbling and that the formal peace talks, which resumed in Belfast this morning and were disrupted by the attack, would be rendered futile. Officials also said they feared that the attacks could provoke retaliation by the larger Protestant paramilitary groups here and in the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republic to the south. Earlier today, before the bombing in Portadown, a Protestant splinter group, the Loyalists Volunteer Force, claimed responsibility for a bomb placed in a car in the town of Newry. The police found the device and exploded it without harm. The main Protestant paramiltary groups, however, indicated that they were still observing the cease-fire they called in 1994. Sinn Fein was suspended from the peace talks after the British and Irish Governments, sponsors of the talks, agreed that the I.R.A. had been involved in the killing of two civilians in Belfast two weeks ago. The Governments said it could be reinstated only if the I.R.A. refrained from violence in the meantime. David Trimble, the Protestant leader of the Ulster Unionist party, who is the member of the British Parliament for Portadown, stood a few hundred yards from the scene of the blast, in his hometown, as firemen on a high crane-ladder shot water on smoldering buildings. The attacks, he said, were the Republican response to the expulsion of Sinn Fein. ''This is the I.R.A. venting its spleen,'' he said, adding that it was ''silliness'' to think that Sinn Fein would be reinstated in the talks. | No Injuries As Car Bomb Damages Ulster Town |
997715_2 | build concrete supports and re-stack them. Recently the Government signed a contract to paint about 10,000 cylinders in the next 5 years. But at that rate it would take more than 40 years to paint them all, and the new paint lasts only 10 to 12 years. The material is what is left after a gaseous diffusion plant removes as much as possible of the uranium that is easy to split in a reactor, U-235. That leftover is U-238. For a while nuclear engineers hoped to build breeder reactors, which could turn U-238 into a useful fuel, plutonium. But no one is building breeders. Another possible reason for saving the material was to scavenge the remaining U-235 in it by using a new processing method. But virgin uranium is so cheap, and the demand so much lower than once projected, that such use is doubtful, too. Some engineers still hope that the depleted uranium, which is 30 percent denser than lead, could be used in industry, perhaps as shielding for spent nuclear fuel. The material itself is slightly radioactive. But people outside the Energy Department doubt that a market will develop. With no attractive alternatives -- and with the Government explaining that no serious accidents have occurred and none are likely but that hydrogen fluoride can damage lungs or cause death -- reaction at the hearing was not friendly. ''We are faced with a critical health, environmental and economic crisis that could have been avoided,'' said Kristi Hanson, a resident of Brookport, Ill., across the Ohio River from Paducah. Eugene E. Hoffman, a metallurgist who retired from the Energy Department Oak Ridge operations office in 1996, has studied the cylinders. ''Their uses are fictitious,'' Mr. Hoffman said at the hearing. He urged converting the material before the area is struck by an earthquake. Even without an earthquake, Mr. Hoffman said, the cylinders are now so rusty that the walls of some are no longer thick enough to ship them legally over highways. Other hearings are set for Tuesday in Oak Ridge, Thursday in Piketon, Ohio, and March 10 in Washington. Even though some of the material is half a century old, it is considered a resource material rather than a waste, and so Federal law does not require a plan for disposing it. Engineers here say that while the rust may be ugly, only seven cylinders have leaked. The cylinders | U.S. Seeks Solution for Byproduct of Uranium |
997671_2 | few priorities and giving them steady support until they prove themselves or not.'' These are the six technological areas in which the panel said additional research and development could produce significant advances for space exploration between the years 2000 and 2020: *High data-rate, wideband communications covering planetary distances. Instead of conventional radio communications, new systems could use microwave or optical transmissions based on laser technologies. This would require research into pinpoint tracking and pointing methods as well as high-efficiency, low-power lasers. Such systems could transmit so much more data over greater distances than traditional approaches that robots on other planets could send live, high-resolution images to Earth as they explored. *Microelectromechanical systems for space. Microscopic sensors, gears, switches and other devices being developed for industries such as electronics and computers could be used to create small, low-cost, low-energy sensors and devices for spacecraft. Ultimately, this technology might create a new generation of miniature spacecraft that could hitchhike into space aboard larger craft or be fired into orbit by cannons or other gun launchers. *Radiation-resistant computer memories and electronics. Radiation in space can damage computer chips and sensitive electronics, a problem made more acute as such devices decrease in size. More research could lead to new types of low-mass shielding, radiation-resistant circuitry materials and better ways to recover data disrupted or damaged by atomic particles. *Nuclear power systems for space. To power deep space missions too far from the Sun to run on solar energy, or to produce high peak power for bases on the Moon or Mars, requires compact, durable and reliable nuclear reactors or thermoelectric generators. Research is needed on advanced nuclear systems that use less atomic fuel, are more efficient and have greater safety margins than current ones. Environmentalists and others opposed to sending nuclear material into space mounted protests in October when NASA sent the Cassini spacecraft on a roundabout journey to Saturn. *Precision-controlled large space structures. Large, lightweight structures, including expanding antennas, inflatable supports, extendable girders, and multiple, moving telescope mirrors, are difficult to control in weightless environments. Research is needed to make them less susceptible to temperature changes, vibration and other disrupting factors. In addition, work is needed on precisely controlling the orientation and movement of these structures so that they are stable platforms for scientific instruments that must be pointed with extreme accuracy. *Methods for extracting and using natural resources found in space. The | NASA Must Reignite Research, Panel Says |
997677_0 | To the Editor: John O'Sullivan's analysis of the Northern Ireland peace process (Op-Ed, Feb. 20) is spot-on that its major achievement has been to give strength and respectability to terrorists at the expense of constitutional politicians. However, I disagree with Mr. O'Sullivan's recommendation for the imprisonment of terrorists, ''if necessary without trial, ideally on both sides of the border.'' Like the writer Conor Cruise O'Brien, I favor internment by both the British and Irish Governments, but believe that for the British to go it alone would be a catastrophe that would radicalize Irish nationalism even more than the peace process has already succeeded in doing. RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS London, Feb. 23, 1998 | Ireland and Terrorism |
996657_1 | under the plan arms inspectors would have full access to ''presidential sites'' in Iraq but would be accompanied by diplomats from all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The United States has reserved the right to reject any compromise that sets limits on what the inspectors may visit and when. Mr. Annan arrived here from New York late this afternoon and spent about 45 minutes with Mr. Chirac and Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, emerging from the President's office in Elysee Palace this evening to express the hope that he could convince Mr. Hussein to accept the proposals. ''I hope we will have an agreement the Security Council will accept without any problem,'' he said in French. He will leave tomorrow morning for Baghdad. Seeing off Mr. Annan this evening, Mr. Chirac said, ''I hope that thanks to him, wisdom and reason will carry the day.'' Mr. Chirac had urged Mr. Hussein, in a message passed on to the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Mohammed Said al-Sahaf earlier this week, to accept the inspection plan. Both the conservative French President and his Socialist Government have insisted since the crisis began that a diplomatic solution was preferable to bombing. But, unlike China and Russia, France has not condemned bombing in advance, and French officials said tonight that if Mr. Annan's mission failed to sway President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, France would probably express regret that a military strike had become necessary, but would acquiesce in it. Allied diplomats here say that relations between France and the United States have come under considerable strain because of the French position on Iraq, with President Clinton and his advisers feeling that Mr. Chirac was playing to Arab and Russian opposition to the bombing, while ignoring security risks posed by Mr. Hussein's weapons programs. Some French officials are against an American-led bombing campaign no matter what Iraq does. Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, who was Defense Minister in 1991 and resigned then in protest against a decision to commit French troops to the Persian Gulf war, leads a political party that called today for demonstrations in Paris the minute the first bomb falls. Bombing Iraq, the French told their American allies, would not eliminate as many weapons as the United Nations inspectors had found and destroyed and it would unite the Arab world against the Western countries that carried it out. STANDOFF WITH IRAQ: THE DIPLOMACY | France Gives Strong Support To U.N. Chief |
996662_2 | enforce its decision in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland and the main venue for the talks. Politicians and lawyers find the proceedings full of contradiction. Sinn Fein, whose ultimate goal is the end of British sovereignty in Northern Ireland, has long questioned the legitimacy of the independent Irish government, which was formed after Sinn Fein radicals lost a civil war in 1923. Mr. Adams never refers to the official name of this country. He calls Ireland ''the 26-county state'' or ''the Dublin Government.'' Only in 1984 did Sinn Fein agree to accept seats in the Irish Parliament; it now has one such seat. But Sinn Fein, in going to an Irish Republic court to argue against an expulsion proposal by Ms. Mowlam, thus acknowledged that her statements had legal standing in the south, though Mr. Adams says British power should apply only in England. The Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, is nonplussed. As a sponsor of the talks with Britain, Dublin is committed to join London, probably in ordering the expulsion. But the Irish did not want the expulsion order to be issued while the talks were in Dublin Castle, the seat of British colonial power until independence in 1922. That would have meant that an Irish Government was helping expel an anti-British republican party in a building where the British held Irish prisoners before shooting them during the civil war. And Mr. Ahern has long supported Sinn Fein's role in the talks. So the Governments' decision was delayed until the talks adjourned on Wednesday and the delegates went back to Belfast. The Protestant Unionist leaders, by pressing the expulsion during the Dublin sessions, avoided the scheduled agenda: to discuss new cross-border institutions that would give the Irish Republic more influence in northern affairs, a step toward the Sinn Fein-I.R.A. goal of a united Ireland, free of British control and run from Dublin. The expulsion would also mean that Sinn Fein would not be present when the delegates discuss a new northern regional legislature, which is part of the generally envisioned new political structure for the British province. Sinn Fein, which would avoid responsibility for creating such a body in its period of exclusion, says it fears the legislature would be unfairly dominated by Protestants like John Taylor, the deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, the largest in the province. As he left Dublin Castle's high gray walls | Ulster Peace Talks: Waiting for a Court |
996217_0 | Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, said tonight that it would seek an order on Wednesday in an Irish Republic court to block any move to expel it from the Northern Ireland peace talks. Mitchell McLaughlin, the Sinn Fein national chariman, declined to give details on the court action, saying only that there was an issue of ''natural justice'' involved. Presumably, officials said, the Sinn Fein suit would attack the authority of the British and Irish Governments to expel the party on the grounds that the legislation establishing the peace talks was approved by the British Parliament, not the Irish, and was therefore not applicable in the Irish Republic, where the issue of expelling Sinn Fein has been under consideration for two days. The two Governments are sponsors of the formal peace talks on the political future of the British province, which has been wracked by sectarian violence since 1969. The talks moved to Dublin for the first time on Monday. The Governments say they want to suspend Sinn Fein because the I.R.A. was involved in the killings of two civilians last week. Sinn Fein gained entrance to the talks only after the I.R.A. called a cease-fire in July and after Sinn Fein's President, Gerry Adams, pledged that the party would support only peaceful methods for political ends. The Govenments say Sinn Fein and the I.R.A. are virtually the same organization. Mr. Adams says Sinn Fein does not represent the I.R.A. at the talks, an assertion virtually no one here, Catholic or Protestant, believes. Three weeks ago a small Protestant party, the Ulster Democrats, was suspsended from the talks because its paramilitary wing, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, admitted to having killed three Catholics in a spate of violence in December and January that left two Protestants and eight Catholics dead. The two killings last week were said by the Chief Constable of the northern police, Ronnie Flanagan, to have been the work of the I.R.A. The I.R.A. has not denied responsibility for the killings, but did state that it is holding to its cease-fire. Protestant unionist leaders have urged the expulsion of Sinn Fein and threatened to boycott the talks otherwise. If either Sinn Fein or the unionists were absent, officials say, fears would rise that sectarian violence in the north would resume and possibly spread to England and the Irish Republic. Today, Dublin and London | I.R.A. Ally Asks Irish Court to Block Ouster From Peace Talks |
996221_0 | El Nino Makes Itself Unwelcome in South America | |
994877_0 | The Irish Republic and British Governments said today that they would decide in a matter of days whether to expel Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, from the Northern Ireland peace talks. The Protestant-inspired campaign to expel the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Sinn Fein appeared to be gaining momentum, Irish and British officials said. Sinn Fein should be expelled, the Protestants say, because the I.R.A. has returned to the violence that Sinn Fein renounced in an agreement that gave it a place at the talks. In Dublin, the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, said he had received information indicating that the I.R.A. was behind the killing on Monday night of a civilian in Belfast. Should that prove correct, he said, the Irish and British Governments would consider excluding Sinn Fein. The British Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam, said in London that she would make a decision before the peace talks move from Belfast to Dublin on Monday. Two weeks ago Ms. Mowlam, in consultation with Mr. Ahern, expelled a Protestant party, the Ulster Democrats, which represented the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a paramilitary group, at the talks, after the Freedom Fighters admitted to having killed three Catholics. On Monday, a Catholic known as a drug dealer was killed in an attack in Belfast that the police attributed privately to an I.R.A. front group, Direct Action Against Drugs. On Tuesday, a prominent Protestant member of the outlawed Ulster Defense Association was shot dead. No group has taken responsibility. | World News Briefs; Britain and Ireland Weigh Sinn Fein Ouster |
994876_4 | judge, who is a magistrate sitting as a District Court judge for this case, heard the case immediately, and without taking testimony from witnesses, issued the preliminary injunction ordering the cart that day. Mr. Martin qualified for the Nike Tour, missing the PGA Tour by two strokes. The judge then extended his injunction to cover the first two Nike events. Mr. Martin won the first one, using a cart, in Lakeland, Fla., last month. His case opened here Feb 2. The implications for other sports, both professional and amateur, could well be immense if the case stands. The disabilities act says a public accommodation, which the Tour is now considered, must make reasonable modifications to accommodate the disabled unless those modifications ''fundamentally alter the nature'' of what is at stake, in this case competitive sports rules. But in his ruling, Judge Coffin relied on Ninth Circuit cases, none of which involve sporting competitions. These cases, the judge said, permitted ''individual consideration of each individual applicant,'' regardless of whether it fundamentally alters the nature of the organization's rules. ''The ultimate disposition of this case will have significant precedential impact, not just at the level of professional golf, but also at all levels of athletic competitions,'' Judge Coffin said. ''The question of whether and how the A.D.A. applies to athletic rules does not have different answers depending upon where the athletic competition takes place at. It's the same at high school, college, pros, the rules are the rules, and it doesn't matter which entity has those rules.'' At the same time, the judge noted that the act does not cover all illnesses or disorders. The act defines disability with respect to an individual as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities, for example, walking or seeing or learning or working, among others. Much of how one considers a disability under the A.D.A. depends on the nature and severity of the impairment and the duration of the impairment. The judge said that temporary non chronic impairments, ''with little or no long term or permanent impact -- are not disabilities.'' Those types of impairments that are not disabilities include things such as broken limbs, sprained joints, concussions, appendicitis and so forth, he said. Judge Coffin relied on Ms. Walters's legal analysis. In her final summation earlier in the day, she had asked the judge for | Judge Says Disabled Golfer May Use Cart on Pro Tour |
992231_5 | her farm, is just one part of the devastation Texaco left behind after extracting some 1.4 billion barrels of crude. In the oil-drilling region, open flames roar out of pipes jutting over murky pools, burning off gas to separate water from the crude oil. The soil is covered with a salty crust and is green and yellow in places. Its surface crumbles when poked with a stick, releasing the heavy odor of petroleum. Clouds of steam rise in this hellish, strangely lunar slice of the Amazon. The trees near the pools are leafless, their branches brittle. Under the cleanup agreement, these waters were to be routed into larger streams and rivers, where, the company contended, they would be treated and diluted to safe proportions. As a last resort, they would be reinjected deep into the soil -- common practice in the United States, even in the 1960's. But Mr. Bonifaz, the lawyer opposing Texaco, said, ''There's no treatment done anywhere.'' Residents depend on rainwater and rivers for drinking and bathing, and the Harvard researchers found all had been contaminated. Mr. Alban said the company had cleaned out 268 pools, but at least 400 more are not covered by the agreement. He said that when Texaco pulled out in 1990, the Government inherited a substandard operation, which continues to damage the rain forest. ''In what measure does a cleanup begin to address the magnitude of the problem Texaco caused?'' Mr. Alban said. Mr. Fonseca disputed Mr. Alban's account, and said that as the majority shareholder after 1977, Ecuador's Government was responsible for decisions about operations. ''They not only were fully aware of the practices and technology being used, but they inspected us and wherever there were accidental spills, they fined us,'' Mr. Fonseca said. Some of the practices criticized in the suit, he said, like dumping untreated waste into open pits, are permissible under certain conditions in parts of the United States, like Louisiana. Profits Never Reach Rain Forest Area In initially dismissing the case in November 1996, Judge Rakoff said Texaco could not be judged unless the state-owned oil company, the ''predominant partner,'' was as well. He also said that the suit should not be heard in the United States, because witnesses and evidence were in Ecuador, and that doing so could hamper American relations with the small Andean nation. When Ecuador reversed its stand to support the suit, the | Ecuadoreans Want Texaco to Clear Toxic Residue |
991976_0 | THIS WEEK | VICIOUS CYCLE |
992193_0 | To the Editor: The implications of ''Data Show Recent Burning of Amazon Is Worst Ever'' (news article, Jan. 27) are truly frightening. The Brazilian Government has failed miserably in its global responsibility, but consumers and governments around the world have a role to play as well. Consumers deserve to know where their wood products come from. If wood were labeled, most people would probably refuse to buy old-growth forest products -- especially with plenty of alternatives already on the market. Contrary to the commercial logging industry's contention, an old-growth forest is not a renewable resource. It takes 1,000 years to grow another 1,000-year-old forest. KELLY QUIRKE San Francisco, Jan. 28, 1998 The writer is executive director of the Rainforest Action Network. | Put Labels on Wood |
991939_3 | to clamp down, and others to consider doing so. Carnival and Royal Caribbean cracked down last year, essentially requiring unaccompanied passengers to be 21 or over, refusing or limiting bookings from student groups and requiring deposits in case of damage. Forewarned, Disney Cruise Line said it would not accept bookings for student groups and would require those younger than 21 to be accompanied by an adult. The popularity of cruises to Alaska shows no sign of abating; this season Holland America and Princess, bitter rivals, will offer 120 and 101 sailings respectively, while Celebrity's Mercury, delivered last fall, will join its sister ship, the Galaxy, in Alaska for a total of 38 Alaska sailings. But the most heavily traveled cruise lanes remain those of the Caribbean, which attracted more than half of the almost 4.7 million people who cruised last year. Nevertheless, Norwegian Cruise Line's decision to keep the Norway in the Caribbean only six months instead of 12 (it is being deployed to Europe and the Mediterranean, in pursuit of higher per diems) led to talk that the Caribbean was finally losing its appeal. That could happen, of course, but other cruise lines are betting against it -- to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, the $450 million, 2,600-passenger Grand Princess, scheduled for delivery in May, will become the second cruise ship (after the Carnival Destiny) deliberately built too wide -- 43 feet too wide -- to cross the Panama Canal, because it is destined for the Caribbean. And all three of Royal Caribbean's 3,100-passenger ''eagle class'' ships, due in 1999, 2000 and 2001, will be too wide for the Panama Canal. Meanwhile, Carnival is offering 579 Caribbean cruises on 11 ships -- including the 2,040-passenger Paradise, its second new ship set for this year, and the first cruise ship to ban smoking for passengers and crew. (Almost all cruise ships prohibit smoking in restaurants and theaters, and most permit cigar and pipe smoking only on deck. Most also allow smoking in cabins. But there are a number of variations. Windstar, for example, allows cigarettes in designated sections of restaurants and lounges, while Princess allows it in sections of its bars. Celebrity allows smoking on the port side of the deck only. Radisson's Paul Gauguin has a Connoisseur's Club where aficionados can buy and smoke cigars in a specially ventilated area. Carnival allows cigars and | It's a Long Way From Stem to Stern |
992141_0 | In 1994, CBS learned a valuable lesson in time: no matter who knew the fates of Nancy, Tonya & Friends in the figure-skating short program from Lillehammer, Norway, viewers would avidly watch a six-hour-old tape. With a 48.5 Nielsen rating, it was the third-most watched sports event ever. Four years later, CBS hopes a 14-hour time difference from Nagano to the Eastern United States will make no difference to viewers. Consider: Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski and the others will begin their short program from White Ring at 7 P.M. in Nagano, or 5 A.M. Eastern time. CBS won't start showing the taped package until 8 P.M. -- 15 hours later -- and the performances will be milked until 11. Tape it, wait, wait, wait. And they will come -- even more than half a day later. The two reasons: CBS's exclusive rights mean no video image can be seen until CBS shows it, and the extraordinarily high female viewership common to the Olympics television demographics values performance greatly over results. Another time-zone challenge for CBS is whether eight men's hockey games to be shown live in their entirety -- starting at 11:35 P.M., 12:35 A.M. or 1:05 A.M. Eastern time -- will yield decent viewership. Remember, this is the Dream Ice tournament, with National Hockey League stars skating for their native countries. Ideally, you would want them to play live in prime time, but that would be an uncongenial 10 in the morning in Japan. But with the N.H.L. seeking a promotional jolt, will there be enough people awake to care? ''I personally think late-night hockey will reach a broader audience than the N.H.L. has ever had,'' said Rick Gentile, CBS's Olympic executive producer. ''I think we'll have higher ratings than the Stanley Cup has been getting.'' That's not a Mount Fuji-sized achievement: CBS's late-night show from Lillehammer, for which Pat O'Brien was host, averaged a 5.0 rating. The only Stanley Cup finals game that Fox aired received a 4.0. Only one women's hockey games will be shown in full: the gold-medal game on Feb. 17 at 7 A.M. on a three-hour delay. The word ''live'' will be used sparingly. Besides men's hockey, the only other live events on CBS will be the opening ceremony on Friday, men's downhill skiing on Saturday and women's downhill on Feb. 13. You can't expect much of an Asian or European Olympic broadcast to | CBS Will Stretch Time With Videotape (and Will Admit It) |
992282_0 | For 16 years the memory of ''Bloody Sunday,'' when 14 unarmed civil rights marchers -- all Catholics -- were killed by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on Jan. 30, 1972, has been a barrier to trust in negotiations toward peace in the province. Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blairm took a step toward addressing Catholic anger over the killings Thursday by announcing that he was opening a new judicial inquiry to pick up where another left off just months after the killings in Londonderry. That speedy investigation exonerated the heavily armed paratroopers who had confronted the civilian protesters, and concluded that there was a ''strong suspicion'' the marchers were carrying bombs and weapons even though none were ever found or photographed at the time. | January 25-31; Painful Questions Again In Northern Ireland |
992196_1 | and see what the country has come to: Many parents must scramble to feed their children, some sick people die for lack of medicines, young women marry foreigners for a chance to leave the country, old people line up in the morning to buy newspapers they can resell, and children as young as 8 gravitate to tourist spots asking for handouts. Welcome to Latin America In many ways, Cuba today is not unlike any other underdeveloped Latin American country. True, children go to school and do not sleep in the streets. But there is class division (those who have dollars and those who do not). There is prostitution (young women throw themselves at tourist cars). People rummage through garbage for everything from spare parts to plastic containers. Some of the potholed city streets resemble rural roads. Large families of two or three generations squeeze into tiny, dilapidated apartments. And there are a lot of needy, unhappy, rundown, desperately sad people. In these conditions, it is tempting for Cubans to look for solace in comparisons with, say, Peruvians or Mexicans. At least here, the Government guarantees some basic needs (rice, beans, sugar and, occasionally, toothpaste) and free doctors' care for all. But the people who made the Cuban revolution, who for the most part genuinely believed they were building a better world, know the revolution was supposed to be much more than that. The country was not supposed to just survive, but to prosper. It was not supposed to alienate its best sons and daughters, but to convert ordinary citizens into social idealists. And finally, after all the years of scarcities and slogans, it was not supposed to depend, once again, on the Yankee dollar. This is perhaps the cruelest failure of the revolution for people like Serafin, who believed Mr. Castro could liberate them from dependence on their huge northern neighbor. That dependence was what Mr. Castro blamed for Cuba's troubles 39 years ago -- the regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, the reliance on American sugar markets that kept Cuban peasants poor, and the domination of Havana's tourism, gambling and prostitution by American mobsters. Yet today, despite the United States embargo, officials acknowledge that the economy's pillars are dollar-based: tourism and ''remesas,'' the dollars that Cubans abroad send home to relatives and friends. Half of Cuba's people -- most of them in Havana -- have access to dollars, either | The World; Four Decades of Revolution Bring Cuba Full Circle |
993407_0 | To the Editor: We take exception to your Feb. 1 news article on the environmental issues associated with Texaco Petroleum Company's past operations in Ecuador. Texaco was a minority owner with Petroecuador, the state oil company, in an exploration and production consortium. As operator, Texaco made it a priority to minimize the impact of these activities, which were limited to 6,400 acres, or 0.02 percent of Ecuadorean rain forest's 32 million acres. Texaco was in full compliance with environmental laws and regulations, and the state oil company and the Government approved all investments and operations. After concluding operations in 1990, Texaco undertook a remediation program with the approval of Petroecuador and the Government. While the original scope of the work has been completed, Texaco continues to provide support to the Government and the state oil company in the processing of recycled crude oil. Two independent environmental auditing firms concluded there was no lasting impact in the region as a result of these operations. Texaco also financed social, educational and health programs in the region of operations, like educational centers, medical dispensaries, and sewage and potable water systems. RICARDO R. VEIGA Vice Pres., Texaco Petroleum Co. Coral Gables, Fla., Feb. 4, 1998 | Search for Oil Imperils Amazon Rain Forest |
993406_0 | To the Editor: Your Feb. 1 news article on a lawsuit filed to recover damages from Texaco's operations in Ecuador does not mention that since the early 1980's local efforts to protect the Amazon -- public education campaigns, lobbying, community-led investigations and mass demonstrations -- have succeeded in slowing the pace of destruction. Local activists have played a key role in keeping the Texaco case alive. Divorced from this movement, the lawsuit against Texaco (which left the country six years ago) would have little impact on Ecuador's development practices. As foreign governments and international investors push for a second Amazon pipeline to double Ecuador's oil production, the cash-strapped Government has opened up national parks containing some of the world's most biologically diverse terrain to companies like China Petroleum and Elf Acquitaine. The most far-reaching decision in a Federal courthouse in New York will never touch these actors. The real hope for solving the Amazon's environmental and social problems lies in the active engagement of local communities and institutions. CHRIS JOCHNICK Legal Director, Center for Economic and Social Rights Quito, Ecuador, Feb. 3, 1998 | Search for Oil Imperils Amazon Rain Forest |
995703_0 | Joining a man and a woman before God is standard duty for members of the clergy. But for performing a union of a different sort, the Rev. Jimmy Creech, a United Methodist minister here, will soon be tried in a church court. At issue is Mr. Creech's officiation at a covenant ceremony last September uniting two women in his congregation, First United Methodist Church. The event resembled a Methodist wedding, with Scripture readings, an exchange of vows and a celebration of communion. But it came a month after Mr. Creech's bishop told him not to do it and a year after Methodist leaders added a statement to the denomination's rule book forbidding ceremonies uniting people of the same sex. Mr. Creech said in a recent interview that he could not, as their pastor, refuse the women's request and that he considered the church's opposition to unions of people of the same sex to be discriminatory. He could lose his ministerial credentials if convicted. The trial, which is scheduled to begin on March 11 in a Kearney, Neb., church, will highlight a divisive pattern emerging within Protestantism, where the consensus against homosexuality has been eroding, as it has elsewhere in society. Issues concerning homosexuality, especially the question of whether to ordain noncelibate gay men and lesbians as ministers, have touched off rancorous debates at church conventions, where opponents often cite biblical injunctions against homosexual acts. A few cases have ended up before ecclesiastical judges. No major Protestant denomination has voted to allow the ordination of homosexuals as ministers, nor has any developed official rituals to bless same-sex unions. But the stands that denominational leaders have taken vary considerably. In 1996, for example, the United Methodists firmly rejected a measure to allow homosexuals to be ordained. Last year, the regional bodies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) went a step further, amending the church constitution to bar anyone sexually active outside marriage from serving as a minister, elder or deacon. By contrast, the United Church of Christ leaves the matter up to its regional associations, a few of which have ordained openly gay men and lesbians as ministers. In 1997, priests and lay leaders at the Episcopal Church's General Convention narrowly rejected a proposal to develop liturgies for blessing same-sex unions. ''This is the polarizing issue,'' said Michael McClellan, an Omaha lawyer and a member of the First United Methodist Church who will | Pastor's Church Trial Attests To Divisiveness of Gay Issue |
995359_4 | fall easily into dangerous hands,'' the book often sounds as if it had been written in a hot tub. Consider the commission's insight that ''decent living standards are a universal human right,'' or that ''peace and equitable development will require not only effective institutions, but also greater understanding and respect for differences within and across national boundaries,'' or that the commission finds it ''disturbing that fanatical behavior has a way of recurring dangerously across time and locations.'' What were the authors trying to say in urging groups to develop ''positive reciprocity in their relationships,'' or by asserting that ''deep perplexity'' often leads to ''hesitation''? Do Americans really not know that ''the risks of deadly conflict would be reduced, if nuclear weapons were not actively deployed''? Or that ''a deadly combination of severe social stress and distinctively hateful, fanatical leadership can lead to mass killing, even genocide''? Is this what the commission's book has to tell us about the savage conflicts in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, Algeria and Chechnya? Absent is a detailed discussion of conflict prevention in the Middle East, where a handful of brave Israelis and Palestinians struggled under Norwegian sponsorship in 1993 to draft the Oslo accords, which until recently gave hope that one of the century's bloodiest and most protracted conflicts could gradually and peaceably be ended. Nor is the Middle East the only divisive issue the commission's report has fudged or run away from. In its discussion of religion, for instance, the book urges religious leaders to ''undertake a worldwide effort to foster respect for diversity,'' avoid conflicts and ''censure co-religionists who promote violence.'' But it has little to say about the fact that militant religious groups themselves are often a leading cause of the violence it hopes to prevent. Nor does it address in any detail the tough choices so many nations face: the trade-off, for instance, between government by an elected popular movement that does not believe in equality for, say, women or religious minorities and an autocratic government that protects minorities and promotes sexual equality. Perhaps the silence reflects disagreement among commission members (whose ranks, mystifyingly, fail to include a single East Asian). Sahabzada Yaqub-Khan, the chairman of the board of Aga Khan University and Hospital in Pakistan, for instance, dissented from the book's recommendation that Security Council permanent membership be expanded, noting that a larger council would make it harder for it to | Preaching to the Converted |
995643_3 | fungus that also stunts growth and causes the leaves to yellow from the bottom up. N denotes plants that are not troubled by the root knot nematodes. TMV denotes that the plant resists tobacco mosaic virus, one of the worst as it is spread by insects feeding on other infected plants and by gardeners who smoke near their plants. It behooves gardeners who are growing tomatoes to seek out these particular cultivars. The viral infections are not pleasing to discover, especially when the plants are growing well at the start. A better harvest can also be achieved by avoiding planting tomatoes in the same spot, year after year. Remember that these fungal infections are soil-borne and the spores may already be in place if the diseases have been problems in the past. There is only one solution if the tomato plants are infected: pull them up and destroy them. Never add them to the compost pile. For a vegetable that had its humble beginnings as wild plant in the Andes Mountains, the tomato has come a long way. Botanists believe that it was the pre-Mayans who first domesticated the tomato, while the Aztecs gave it the name tomatl or xtomatl. Cortez found the cherry-sized tomato in Aztec markets and exported the seed to Spain. The tomato was introduced to residents of Naples early in the 16th century. Thomas Jefferson raised the tomato as an ornamental plant and the fruit was not eaten by Americans without fear of being poisoned until the 1830's. Now, the tomato is considered the most popular homegrown vegetable. And now, too, a tomato contest has been announced. The Park Seed Company of Greenwood, S.C. (Zip code 29647-0001) will give $10,000 to the first person who submits a tomato that beats the earliness and quality of their Early Challenge Tomato cultivar. The company provides the following criteria: 1. The entry must bear fruit at least five days earlier than Park's Early Challenge. 2. The entry must meet or exceed Park's Early Challenge in flavor, fruit size and disease resistance. 3. The entry must be grown from seed and be commercially reproducable. The tomato entries will be grown side by side in the Park Seed company trials and will be judged by their experts. The winning submission becomes the property of the Park Seed Company. The number to call for more details is (800) 845-3369. IN THE GARDEN | Tomato, From Pretty Poison to Contestant |
995644_3 | fungus that also stunts growth and causes the leaves to yellow from the bottom up. N denotes plants that are not troubled by the root knot nematodes. TMV denotes that the plant resists tobacco mosaic virus, one of the worst as it is spread by insects feeding on other infected plants and by gardeners who smoke near their plants. It behooves gardeners who are growing tomatoes to seek out these particular cultivars. The viral infections are not pleasing to discover, especially when the plants are growing well at the start. A better harvest can also be achieved by avoiding planting tomatoes in the same spot, year after year. Remember that these fungal infections are soil-borne and the spores may already be in place if the diseases have been problems in the past. There is only one solution if the tomato plants are infected: pull them up and destroy them. Never add them to the compost pile. For a vegetable that had its humble beginnings as wild plant in the Andes Mountains, the tomato has come a long way. Botanists believe that it was the pre-Mayans who first domesticated the tomato, while the Aztecs gave it the name tomatl or xtomatl. Cortez found the cherry-sized tomato in Aztec markets and exported the seed to Spain. The tomato was introduced to residents of Naples early in the 16th century. Thomas Jefferson raised the tomato as an ornamental plant and the fruit was not eaten by Americans without fear of being poisoned until the 1830's. Now, the tomato is considered the most popular homegrown vegetable. And now, too, a tomato contest has been announced. The Park Seed Company of Greenwood, S.C. (Zip code 29647-0001) will give $10,000 to the first person who submits a tomato that beats the earliness and quality of their Early Challenge Tomato cultivar. The company provides the following criteria: 1. The entry must bear fruit at least five days earlier than Park's Early Challenge. 2. The entry must meet or exceed Park's Early Challenge in flavor, fruit size and disease resistance. 3. The entry must be grown from seed and be commercially reproducable. The tomato entries will be grown side by side in the Park Seed company trials and will be judged by their experts. The winning submission becomes the property of the Park Seed Company. The number to call for more details is (800) 845-3369. IN THE GARDEN | Tomato, From Pretty Poison to Contestant |
995642_3 | fungus that also stunts growth and causes the leaves to yellow from the bottom up. N denotes plants that are not troubled by the root knot nematodes. TMV denotes that the plant resists tobacco mosaic virus, one of the worst as it is spread by insects feeding on other infected plants and by gardeners who smoke near their plants. It behooves gardeners who are growing tomatoes to seek out these particular cultivars. The viral infections are not pleasing to discover, especially when the plants are growing well at the start. A better harvest can also be achieved by avoiding planting tomatoes in the same spot, year after year. Remember that these fungal infections are soil-borne and the spores may already be in place if the diseases have been problems in the past. There is only one solution if the tomato plants are infected: pull them up and destroy them. Never add them to the compost pile. For a vegetable that had its humble beginnings as wild plant in the Andes Mountains, the tomato has come a long way. Botanists believe that it was the pre-Mayans who first domesticated the tomato, while the Aztecs gave it the name tomatl or xtomatl. Cortez found the cherry-sized tomato in Aztec markets and exported the seed to Spain. The tomato was introduced to residents of Naples early in the 16th century. Thomas Jefferson raised the tomato as an ornamental plant and the fruit was not eaten by Americans without fear of being poisoned until the 1830's. Now, the tomato is considered the most popular homegrown vegetable. And now, too, a tomato contest has been announced. The Park Seed Company of Greenwood, S.C. (Zip code 29647-0001) will give $10,000 to the first person who submits a tomato that beats the earliness and quality of their Early Challenge Tomato cultivar. The company provides the following criteria: 1. The entry must bear fruit at least five days earlier than Park's Early Challenge. 2. The entry must meet or exceed Park's Early Challenge in flavor, fruit size and disease resistance. 3. The entry must be grown from seed and be commercially reproducable. The tomato entries will be grown side by side in the Park Seed company trials and will be judged by their experts. The winning submission becomes the property of the Park Seed Company. The number to call for more details is (800) 845-3369. IN THE GARDEN | Tomato, From Pretty Poison to Contestant |
995480_0 | THE Pelham-based insurance agency Eifert, French & Ketchum, whose clients include junkyards, recently helped the Friends of Art and Design at Purchase College mount ''Recycling the Wheel,'' sculptures of used parts seen in the Visual Arts Gallery through March 4. Students in the School of Art and Design considered the qualities of battered car doors, rusted fenders, translucent headlamps and twisted wires. Roughening what was smooth, filing what was sharp, denting what was shiny and bending what was straight, they reveled in the intricacies of found objects. ''I wanted to show power and strength,'' Jennifer Shin said, as she twisted wires attached to chrome. ''The parts are really powerful.'' Zachary Zaus made a four-foot sculpture from gears and a spring. ''I gave it a stable base so people could move it,'' he said. Rhett White split two car hoods to construct a metal tower, and Kathleen Krish leaned toward Cubism. | Out of the Junkyard And Onto a Pedestal |
995463_5 | money from a passenger ticket tax to build a light-rail link from the L.I.R.R. at Jamaica Station to Kennedy International Airport. The $1.5 billion project would be partly financed by the $3 Passenger Facility Charge that is added to tickets for flights at Kennedy. The Nassau study does not have proposals for taxes or fees to finance the transit systems. It estimates costs that range up to hundreds of million dollars for plans like full and partial loops through the hub. The death this month of State Senator Norman J. Levy of Merrick, the influential chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, means the loss of a forceful promoter of suburban mass transportation in Albany. In addition to light-rail, the study also outlines options that would accommodate greater sprawl and address the deep-seated reluctance of drivers to abandon their cars. ''Our assumption is that people are not going to mend their ways,'' said Paul Koch, co-director of the Laboratory for Urban and Suburban Studies at the New York Institute of Technology. ''Developers are going to keep on developing in the way they are used to.'' To overcome resistance to mass transit and the problem delivering passengers to widely separated hub locations, Mr. Koch said, a people mover that is in use in one of the suburbs of Chicago held promise. ''A people mover can get into tight areas, it can go all around the place,'' Mr. Koch said. ''Our concept is that you have a very small unobtrusive system that can duplicate a lot of the perceived advantages of the automobile.'' Such people movers have automated electric cars that seat four passengers. They run on rubber tires along elevated pathways. A central computer route cars to selected destinations. Cars would run separately, not in trains. The system, called Personal Rapid Transit, or PRT, tries to duplicate automobile travel. Passengers would never have to ride with strangers. They would control their destinations, and there are no schedules. ''There are a lot of cars waiting at the station,'' Mr. Koch said. ''One is waiting for you, and when you get in it knows your destination.'' The third option, the elevated trolleylike car on rubber tires, would be propelled by a set of wheels in the runway that would contact a fin extending from the car. Mr. Koch said rubber tires were a preferred over rails because they were quieter. Some people have suggested | For a Growing Region, a 'Nassau Hub' |
995625_0 | JUST a quarter century ago, a car that stayed presentable for 100,000 miles was a marvel. By the time the zeros rolled around again on the odometer, the bodies of most cars were scarred by rust and their engines rattled ominously. And each year, it seemed, Detroit ordered up cosmetic changes that made the previous year's model look ancient. This, in the view of auto industry critics, was ''planned obsolescence,'' a deliberate strategy to build cars that would quickly fall apart or look old-fashioned, forcing customers to buy new models. Auto executives contend that no such strategy ever existed. But the fact remains that for more than a decade, American automobile makers have been producing much more durable cars. They were forced to do so because Americans were turning by the millions to higher-quality Japanese imports, and because of tougher Federal regulations. Planned obsolescence, if it ever existed, was no longer practical. A car that once might have been headed for the junk heap at 60,000 miles is now just getting its second wind. Polls show growing public acceptance of used cars as alternatives to new cars. All of which is good news for consumers, but not necessarily for the auto industry. More cars these days are performing like Paul A. Balinski's white 1989 Ford Mustang GT. Mr. Balinski, a 32-year-old machinery leasing agent in Bridgewater, N.J., has put 230,000 miles on the car and had only one major repair, a new transmission. ''The only reason the transmission went is that I bought that car when I was 22 years old and I was a speed freak,'' he said. ''All my friends say that given the way I drive, I'm lucky.'' But there may be more than luck involved. Car engines are increasingly designed to last for 150,000 miles, and bodies are now made of highly corrosion-resistant steel. Even the seats have more durable fabrics and leathers that do not show wear as quickly. The average age of cars on the nation's roads is soaring as a result, increasing by two months each year. According to the Polk Company, which tracks registration data in all 50 states for the nation's 201 million vehicles, the median age of registered cars reached 8.1 years in 1997, a record high. What is truly remarkable is that the average age of cars is rising during a time of economic growth. Americans used to hold | Ideas & Trends; Today's Cars and Drivers Can Grow Old Together |
995688_4 | in 1995. Last year they also performed 10,000 free vasectomies on men, a slight increase over 1996. However, women remain the main focus of the Government's program because men are less likely to agree to sterilization, on the mistaken ground that the procedure could impair their virility. Health Ministry officials estimate that the 1997 sterilizations will result in 26,000 fewer births in 1998. This is good news, they say, in a country where the fertility rate -- the average number of children born per woman -- is 3.5, compared with 3.1 for Latin America in general and 2 for the United States. The rate is 6.2 children for Peruvian women who have little or no education and 7 children for those who live in rural areas. That compares with a rate of 1.7 children for women who have at least some college education and 2.8 for urban residents of all educational levels. Concern over reports of forced sterilization has led to an investigation by the United States Congressional Subcommittee on International and Human Rights Operations, which is seeking to determine if money from the United States Agency for International Development was used in the Peruvian Government's campaign. Officials in Washington said in a telephone interview that the agency had no role in the Peruvian Government's family planning program. They said that money and training for family planning services went directly to nongovernmental agencies in Peru that have no connection with the Government's program. The officials said that they had deliberately taken steps to disassociate the agency from the Peruvian Government's family planning program after it became clear that, while well intentioned, it was too hurried and ambitious to avoid the pitfalls that it has now encountered. Joseph Rees, the subcommittee's chief council, said that after a recent fact-finding mission to Peru he was convinced that no United States money was directly used to finance the Peruvian Government's campaign. But he expressed concern that some money may have trickled through in the form of infrastructure, management or training support. Because some United States-sponsored food programs are operated from the same Peruvian Government medical posts that administer family planning in rural areas, Mr. Rees said that it was possible that some of this food could have been used to bribe women to undergo sterilizations. ''The bottom line here is whether the Peruvian Government is more interested in doing family planning or population | Using Gifts as Bait, Peru Sterilizes Poor Women |
995425_5 | an individual, and even the heads of departments took an interest in me and encouraged me to succeed. The second semester I was in a group of seven students all of them younger, and we worked and studied together. There was a real esprit de corps. In June 1997, we all graduated together, and my daughter graduated from Iona at the same time.'' Mr. Arena, who received credit for the year of college he completed years before at Rockland Community College, graduated from Monroe with an associate degree in accounting. ''It changed my life,'' he said. ''What really pleases me is that I went out on two interviews and received offers for jobs in the accounting departments of both firms.'' The job Mr. Arena eventually accepted, however, was in the accounting department of the bursar's office at Monroe. ''I've never been happier,'' he said. Ms. O'Brien is equally enthusiastic. ''This has been a unique opportunity for me, one that I value,'' she said. ''I expect to get a bachelor's degree in business, and I know when I finish I will be marketable, with the skills employers are looking for today.'' The dropout rate, among older students, Mr. Jerome said, is close to zero while the success rate, meaning jobs, is extremely high. Tuition is paid almost entirely from Federal funds. ''We pick up any difference, so our students in the program have 100 percent of their tuition paid,'' Mr. Jerome said. Training or retraining programs are based on the demands of the labor market. The courses Monroe offers in accounting, business management, computer science, hospitality management and office administration qualify. Companies that are downsizing can approach the Office of Employment and Training for assistance in retraining employees who will be displaced. ''We still have an annex in Tarrytown, opened in July 1996, for General Motors workers who were displaced,'' Mr. Coupland said, adding that the work of his office does not end with training but with job placement. ''We're a hands-on group, contacting prospective employers, helping with resumes. We've been successful at finding new job opportunities for a wide range of people, from receptionists to high-end data management jobs -- in one instance with a salary of $100,000 a year. We encourage people of any age looking for full- time employment to contact us.'' More information can be obtained by calling the County Office of Employment and Training at 285-3910. | Where the Displaced Find Training for Jobs |
998311_0 | President Jacques Chirac, his popularity soaring in public opinion polls because of the credit given to French diplomacy in avoiding an attack on Iraq, said in an interview published today that France would not support calls for an automatic military response if Iraq failed to live up to its latest agreement on weapons inspections. ''Iraq should be aware that in that case, it would risk the most serious consequences,'' he told the daily Le Monde. ''But we consider that automatic action is not acceptable. We believe that a military strike is a very serious step and that, because it would be done in the name of the international community, that the Security Council should debate it.'' Mr. Chirac said that the Clinton Administration's readiness to begin a bombing campaign against Iraq was indispensable to the diplomatic success of Secretary General Kofi Annan, who arranged the agreement with Iraq on a trip to Baghdad last week. But Mr. Chirac made clear that France would continue to prefer diplomacy with Iraq over threats of force. And if Iraq complies unequivocally with United Nations resolutions, he said, then the economic sanctions against it should be lifted. ''In reality, it was the mobilization of both the American military apparatus and the diplomatic apparatus, particularly French, that together permitted a solution avoiding a strike that would have had heavy consequences,'' Mr. Chirac said. Iraq's response to an American bombing campaign, he said, would have been to bar all inspections by the United Nations special commission charged with destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. ''That would have meant, consequently, an open door for Iraq to develop weapons of mass destruction all over again,'' he said. After Mr. Hussein barred United Nations inspectors from some sites early this year, France pushed hard for a diplomatic solution and refused to join the United States and Britain in planning for air strikes against Iraq to force it to back down. Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a Socialist who defeated Mr. Chirac's conservatives in elections last June, backed Mr. Chirac's stance, and public opinion polls showed that 60 percent of French voters approved it. After Mr. Annan's successful mission to Baghdad, in a French Government executive jet provided by Mr. Chirac, two separate polls have shown Mr. Chirac's popularity rating soaring above 50 percent for the first time in two years. In his interview with Le Monde, and in conversations with | Chirac Wary of Quick Attack If Iraq Breaks Inspection Deal |
998349_4 | farmers applauded the effort today, though runoff from their farms has been blamed for fouling salmon streams. Commercial fishermen, some of whom will be bought out under the proposal, backed the idea. Some Republicans, who have decried past environmental efforts as an infringement on private property, also expressed support. State and Federal money would be used to buy out property that is critical for salmon, Republican officials said. ''I don't think anybody wants to be like the generation, similar to a century ago, that saw the near extinction of the buffalo,'' said Jim Buck, a Republican Washington State representative. Sports fishing of certain stocks of salmon that are not endangered would continue on the West Coast. But commercial fishing, once a thriving industry, has all but disappeared and will not return in a big way until the fish runs are restored. The proposed listing by the National Marine Fisheries Service came after nearly 10 years of studying the signature fish of the Pacific Northwest. In the past, a few small runs on the Columbia and Sacramento rivers have been given Federal protection, but nothing of this magnitude has been considered. In a show of political and corporate power, Pacific Northwest leaders staged a news conference to underline the iconic status of wild salmon in the region. ''This is like being told that Mount Rainier will disappear from our skyline,'' said Gov. Gary Locke, Democrat of Washington. ''Life without salmon is unthinkable, but today, the unthinkable is in danger of coming true.'' Federal officials have refused to put a price tag on salmon restoration. Nor are they willing to say what specific projects or activities might be slowed. But, in Washington, the state most affected by the proposed listings, Mr. Locke estimated it would cost the Federal and State Governments more than $170 million to restore the rivers for salmon. That does not address what private land owners would pay. The Puget Sound basin, all of which would be under the Endangered Species protection under the plan, has more than 3 million people, and 63 percent of the land is in private hands. ''It is a daunting challenge because we have one of the hottest economies in the United States and this listing of species could threaten that,'' said Ron Sims, the Executive for King County, which includes Seattle. ''But we feel this is something that future generations are entitled to.'' | Bid to Save Fish Puts West on Notice |
998310_1 | modest homes and hotels from Beach 32d to Beach 73d Streets in 1965 as part of city urban renewal plans that never materialized. But in the last three years, as the economy revived, planning resumed. Jonathan L. Gaska, district manager for Community Board 14, which helps guide growth in the area, said that in that time about 70 residences, mostly two-family homes, have been or are being built in the area. More development is planned. At an old urban renewal site along Jamaica Bay between Beach 35th and Beach 51st Streets in the Edgemere section, there are plans for 800 housing units, primarily two-family homes, to be built under New York City's New Homes Program. Under it, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development will work with the nonprofit New York City Housing Partnership to choose a developer to build, with city and state subsidies, homes affordable to buyers with incomes between $32,000 and $70,000 a year. The Edgemere project, to be developed in four phases, will also include up to 100,000 square feet of retail space, a new elementary school and 13 acres of parks. Construction of the first phase, 132 residences, is expected to begin in 2000, following site acquisition, which is to start in the fall. Construction of new streets and sewers is to begin in the summer of 1999, city officials said. Plans were also announced in June for another urban renewal area, along the Atlantic Ocean from Beach 25th to Beach 73d in the Arverne section. A Canadian company, the Heathmount Arts and Entertainment Corporation, wants to build a 2.7 million-square-foot entertainment, sports and hotel complex, to be called the Technodome. Issues like the cost and extent of road and sewer improvements the area would need to accommodate the project are still being discussed. Meanwhile, work continues on Dix-McBride's Dix Avenue project, begun in December. Mr. Fakiris bought the three-acre site for $1.1 million three years ago with the intention of building rentals for low-income tenants. That plan was abandoned when he was unable to get public subsidies to help finance the project. He said he pursued the current project because of the new development planned in the area and what he sensed was ''a big demand for apartments for middle-income tenants, which no one is building.'' In addition, under the city's 421a abatement program, which provides partial tax exemptions to developers who build | Residential Real Estate; Middle-Income Complex Planned for Rockaway |
996007_0 | She is a 30-something single Londoner with a messy life who dates losers, can't quit smoking and drinks too much but still managed to lose 72 pounds last year. The same year she gained 74. Her diary has made her the best friend of hundreds of thousands of British women who recognize her closet drawers crammed with a fury of black opaque pantyhose twisted into ropelike tangles with speckles of tissue as their own, or at least their next-door neighbor's. Her name, Bridget Jones, has become shorthand for the compulsive conduct of young women braving continually collapsing bridges to self-improvement yet trying to maintain an amused perspective on that fraught space between bounding hope and tumbling defeat. ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' has been the best-selling novel in Britain for six months and has just won the British Book Award, the publishing industry's Oscar, for Book of the Year. It has brought success unheard of in Bridget's own beset life to her creator, Helen Fielding, a 39-year-old writer who first turned her anti-heroine loose in a newspaper column two years ago and will now send the tales of her gloriously sloppy life to America. The book, published here by Picador and already in 20 foreign editions, will be published in the United States in July by Viking Penguin. Since marriage has proved no more lasting nor men any more disposed to commitment in Britain than in the United States, there are more than a million single or divorced women in their 30's here. Virtually all of them may have read the book, since sales of the diary, dominantly to women, have topped 700,000. Discussing the phenomenon over coffee in her Spartan West London walk-up, Ms. Fielding said, ''I was really, really surprised at all the women who wrote in saying they identified with Bridget because a lot of her thoughts are very paranoid, and when you realize that so many women have the same thoughts, it's massively reassuring but at the same time alarming.'' She widened her eyes and cocked her head. ''We're all mad,'' she hissed. In recent decades, popular women's literature in Britain has moved from soft-focus adventures and ''clogs and shawls'' village green romances to bodice rippers and sex and shopping books by authors whose heavily made-up faces often double as cover art. ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' seems to have ushered in a new phase. ''What we're seeing now,'' said | Bridget Jones? She's Any (Single) Woman, Anywhere |
996006_3 | it does now,'' said John M. Logsdon, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. So the way ahead appears clear for the launching of AM-1, now scheduled for June 30. And despite the nervousness of Mr. Goldin and others, an air of excitement is building at the Lockheed Martin Astro Space company's spacecraft construction and test site here. Putting AM-1 to the vacuum-chamber test is ''the proof of the pudding,'' said Eugene D. Keeling, who oversees the assembly and testing of the satellite. ''When you hit that, you know everything is coming together,'' he said. His boss, Michael Kavka, the director of the AM-1 program, who has been involved in building and launching satellites since the 1960's, bestowed a unique compliment, saying, ''This is without a doubt the nicest-looking spacecraft I've ever seen.'' Actually, it has lots of angles and protuberances, as a visitor learned firsthand by standing on a ladder at the bottom of the vacuum chamber before it was drained of air and peering upward at AM-1, where technicians in white coveralls were dusting everything to keep it spotless. The angles and protuberances are the satellite's business end: five different remote-sensing instruments that will scan the earth continuously once AM-1 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California into a pole-to-pole orbit. The instruments go by their acronymic nicknames, and their functions indicate the scientific breadth of the research program that is about to begin. They include: *Modis (for Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer). This is the flagship instrument aboard the flagship satellite. It is designed to provide accurate surface temperature measurements of the entire globe; ground-based thermometers leave gaps and are subject to error. Modis will also measure biological changes in the ocean, changes in land vegetation, and changes in the properties of clouds and atmospheric aerosols. The latter are tiny droplets of sulfur that reflect sunlight and minute particles that serve as the nuclei for cloud-forming water droplets. *Ceres (Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System) will measure incoming solar radiation, which drives the climate system, as well as radiation re-emitted by the earth, which, when trapped by greenhouse gases, warms the planet. The instrument will also measure cloud properties. *Aster (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) will make ''zoom'' images of terrestrial surface features and take finer readings of surface temperature and cloud cover. *Misr (Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer) is designed | NASA Readies a 'Mission to Planet Earth' |
996038_1 | do it at the historic Castle, would be a discomfort, if not an embarrassment, to the Irish Government of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who has long been a strong supporter of Sinn Fein's participation in the talks. Mo Mowlam, the British Northern Ireland Secretary, addressed the meeting today and surprised many delegates by not calling directly for the exclusion of Sinn Fein. Instead, she read a brief statement that there was evidence that the I.R.A. had been involved in the killings and that this could be grounds for exclusion. The statement set in motion a procedure that could end up with Sinn Fein's suspension. The chairman of the talks, George J. Mitchell, the former United States Senator, held separate meetings with the parties and agreed to their wish to have another session on Tuesday. The decision will not be made by the parties, but by the British and Irish Governments. But the sensitivity of the issue clearly led to an extra day of talking about it. Exclusion of Sinn Fein would disrupt the peace talks, but not necessarily scuttle them. As Sinn Fein's participation is considered necessary for a sustainable peace settlement, officials sponsoring the talks are considering a plan that would end the suspension by March 10. But any suspension raises fears that the I.R.A. would end the cease-fire it has maintained since July 20 and return to its violent campaign against British sovereignty in the northern province. This in turn could lead to retaliatory attacks by Protestant guerrillas in Northern Ireland and here in the Irish Republic. The Ulster Unionists, the largest in the province, have been pressing for a permanent expulsion of Sinn Fein. This evening, the party's Deputy Leader, John Taylor, said that if Sinn Fein was temporarily suspended, his party might boycott the talks, but he also left open the possibility of continuing to take part. ''I know what Sinn Fein and the I.R.A. are up to,'' Mr. Taylor said, ''They've already decided to return to violence.'' Martin McGuinness, the No. 2 Sinn Fein official, denied this, adding: ''This is an attempt by the Ulster Unionist Party, led by the British Government, to remove Sinn Fein from the talks. It is unfair, it is unjust, it is undemocratic.'' Sinn Fein wants more influence for the Irish Republic in northern affairs. This is opposed by Unionist leaders, who want the province to remain part of Britain. | Britain Takes Step Toward Ousting I.R.A. Ally at Ulster Talks |
997910_5 | are really to be found in patients' genes. ''I don't think you can avoid doing it, if you can,'' said Paul L. Herrling, head of research at Novartis A.G. of Switzerland, referring to pharmacogenomic analysis. ''But it's not clear that the information on responders and nonresponders is visible in the genotype. It may be the effect of where someone lives, what they eat, what they drink.'' Dr. Cohen said that the correlation between drug response and genetic makeup was high -- in fact, he said, it is higher than the genetic basis for most diseases. But he added that the link was readily apparent only with the kind of high-resolution genome map that his group was completing. No one else has such a detailed map, and there is little chromosomal DNA, which is essential to creating such a map, in the public domain. ''We have 200 people working on the map,'' Dr. Cohen said, estimating its eventual cost at close to $40 million. ''You cannot improvise on this scale. Nobody else claims they will do mapping.'' With financial support from the French Government, Dr. Cohen compiled the first map at his Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain in Paris. After the Government money dried up, he brought the program to Genset in 1996, giving the once-obscure company an instant lead in this category of genomics. But lack of a map has not stopped competitors from leaping into the fray. In September, Incyte and SmithKline Beecham P.L.C., the British drug giant, formed a joint venture company, Diadexus, to develop and produce gene-based diagnostic products. And in January, Incyte acquired Synteni, a company that puts DNA on silicon chips, and plans to use its technology to market pharmacogenomics services. Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., the company that pioneered gene chips, has said it will apply the technology to pharmacogenomics. And Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., recently created a subsidiary, Millennium Predictive Medicine Inc., to offer pharmacogenomics products and services to diagnose, treat, predict and prevent disease. A map ''is useful, but it's not the only tool,'' said Kenneth J. Conway, president of Millennium Predictive. ''People are beginning to see that no one technology play is going to win this game,'' he said. Some critics say that the game is risky no matter how it is played. Among other things, they say that the connection between the genotype, the sum of genetic | INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS: Smoother Road From Lab to Sales; DNA Technique Aims to Predict Whom a Drug Will Benefit |
992797_0 | To the Editor: Senator Jesse Helms's announcement that he endorses a plan to permit more humanitarian aid to the Cuban people, including United States Government assistance, should not be mistaken as a shift in his hard-line position on the Cuban embargo (news article, Jan. 30). The level of aid allowed by the United States to trickle to Cuba from private groups in the United States pales in comparison to that country's import needs. According to Treasury Department figures, the value of private American aid licensed for export to Cuba between 1992 and 1995 was $63 million. Yet in 1990 alone, before a 1992 law banned foreign subsidiaries of United States companies from trading with Cuba, Cuba imported $400 million in food and medicines from these companies. This figure represents 90 percent of the banned trade. The health of Cubans cannot be sustained by private charity. Legislation that is pending in Congress would allow commercial trade in food and medicine. This is the only humane response to the distress our embargo has caused the Cuban people. MICHAEL O'HEANEY San Francisco, Jan. 30, 1998 Cuban Program Director Global Exchange | Cuba Humanitarian Aid |
992609_0 | She was walking by the East River on an early summer evening when an arm curled around her neck and pulled her back into the dark. She fought and kicked and tried to scream, but the arm cut off her breath. Losing consciousness, she thought she was going to die. ''I was terrified, I was so terrified,'' Shelby Evans Schrader said yesterday morning as she testified in State Supreme Court in Manhattan about her encounter with a man prosecutors say is John J. Royster, who is charged with murder. She stopped and glanced down at her hands. ''Excuse me,'' she said. ''It comes back. This makes all of it come back.'' As Ms. Evans Schrader continued her account, Mr. Royster, who is accused of savagely beating three women and killing a fourth, did not look up but steadily wrote on a legal pad. Prosecutors say Ms. Evans Schrader was Mr. Royster's second victim. They say that in the week beginning June 4, 1996, Mr. Royster attacked one woman after another, grabbing them from behind, pulling them down and smashing their heads repeatedly against the pavement. The victims, like Ms. Evans Schrader, all suffered horrible injuries in the attacks. The woman who died, Evelyn Alvarez, was so badly beaten that the police initially thought that she had fallen from a building. When the police found Ms. Evans Schrader lying unconscious by the East River heliport in June 1996, they counted her attack as an isolated, vicious mugging. No one connected the beating to a similar assault the day before in Central Park. It was not until a week later that a fingerprint linked a suspect named John Royster to the Central Park attack. The police then obtained statements from Mr. Royster that they say connected him to the other crimes. Mr. Royster, now 23, has been charged with 18 counts, including first degree murder. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mr. Royster's lawyers have said that he is mentally ill and that the case is ''about what Mr. Royster is legally responsible for in the eyes of the laws of New York State.'' In recounting the June 5, 1996, attack, Ms. Evans Schrader, a writer, said that the night before, she had just finished a novel. The next day was her birthday, and she started a brisk walk in the early evening. Before she left, she tucked | Beating Victim Testifies in Murder Case |
992547_3 | closely monitored for ill effects. The researchers also caution against doses higher than 50 milligrams a day. For, despite its over-the-counter availability, the hormone may indeed have risks. As indicated by studies in animals and people, the possible hazards include stimulating the growth of prostate and breast cancer, damaging the liver, masculinizing women and increasing women's cardiac risk. Rather than administering the hormone as a pill that must pass through the digestive tract and be processed by the liver, some investigators believe that a safer route might be through the skin or under the tongue. Promises Yet Unfulfilled That said, once researchers have sorted things out, DHEA or a metabolite (a breakdown product) may indeed have a bright future as a hormone supplement in mid-life to late-life. At the University of California at San Francisco, Dr. Owen M. Wolkowitz and Dr. Louann Brizendine are evaluating the hormone's ability to improve memory and quality of life in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease, based on animal studies in which aged mice given DHEA performed as well on memory tests as young mice and on the finding that elderly people with lower blood levels of the hormone did not function as well as those with higher levels. In another study of men and women with major depression, Dr. Wolkowitz said, the hormone produced significant improvement when compared with a placebo, or dummy pill. The hormone's ability to enhance normal immune responses has been suggested in studies of older men and women, who produced higher levels of infection-fighting natural killer cells and less of a damaging immune substance, interleukin-6, while on the substance. Elderly patients on the hormone showed an improved response to influenza vaccine. And in patients with the autoimmune disease lupus, DHEA reduced the severity of symptoms and the amount of medication they required. As for other claims, however, at best a modest decrease in cardiac risk for men and none for women was linked to higher blood levels of the hormone in a 10-year study of nearly 2,000 people in Rancho Bernardo, Calif., conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Barrett-Connor of the University of California at San Diego. Nor did she find an association between DHEA levels and bone density. Initial claims that the hormone might lower breast cancer risk have not been borne out by three studies. And two studies found higher levels of the hormone in women who developed cancers of | Behind the Hoopla Over a Hormone |
992613_1 | has taken responsibility for four of the recent killings, and is suspected in a fifth. Last week, the group said it had suspended its attacks on ordinary Catholics, but retained the right to kill active Republican agents. Today, in a message to Belfast newspapers establishing its authenticity with a recognized codeword, the group said that Mr. Wright's wife, his ex-wife and his children were under threat from Catholic Republican groups. The statement did not identify the Catholic groups. While the Irish National Liberation Army opposes the peace talks and wants to use violence to bring them down, the main Catholic force, the Irish Republican Army, called a cease-fire last July and is represented at the talks by its political wing, Sinn Fein. Today, the Loyalist Volunteer Force said it was responding to new threats against Mr. Wright's family, but did not specify the source of the threats. ''If Republicans do not come out and deny these claims within 12 hours,'' the statement said, ''and say that they are untrue,'' the group said it would ''unleash an unholy war against the nationalist community.'' The Royal Ulster Constabulary said tonight that it did not comment on individual threats, but that if it became aware of any, the potential victims would be privately advised. The statement was apparently not directly related to another reported death threat in Londonderry, in the west of the province. There, a Protestant city councilman, Andrew Davidson, said he had been told by police officials from the Royal Ulster Constabulary that his name was on a ''death list'' of Protestants targeted for attack by Catholic paramilitaries. Mr. Davidson, a member of the Ulster Unionist Party, the largest Protestant political organization in the province, said he was considering going into hiding. Participants at the peace talks reported some progress this afternoon, but did not elaborate. The most immediate hurdle in the talks is the refusal of David Trimble, the head of the Ulster Unionists, to meet face-to-face with Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein. The two have been sitting around the same negotiating table for several months, but not talking directly to each other. Other participants consider it essential for the two men to start to talk if the negotiations are to make progress on substantial issues that could lead to a peace agreement by May, the goal of Britain and the Irish Republic, the sponsors of the talks. | Ulster Faction Issues Threat Of Attacks On Catholics |
992595_0 | France Closes Nuclear Reactor | |
994107_1 | Me's creator, Philip Greenspun, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ''But you'd lose all of your reminders if you didn't back up your hard drive or if you dropped your laptop. ''More importantly,'' he added, ''if they're traveling, the one thing my friends do is check their E-mail. So that ought to be the fundamental means of alerting them.'' Mr. Greenspun also put together Tow Zone, which warns drivers when their city is cleaning its streets. Tow Zone and Remind Me are at http://photo.net/philg/services.html. No one is dying to have more E-mail. These alert services, however, are unlike traditional mailing lists intended to tie together communities by professional interest or hobby -- which often end up allowing a few people to bombard many with spurious E-mails. The alert services are one-to-many communications: Subscribe and you receive messages only from the proprietor -- one a day, one a week, or one when something ''significant'' happens. Computer users do not have to search Web sites or keep checking back for new information. From the provider's point of view, the alerts help build communities and customers at little expense. ''We get inundated with an avalanche of information every day,'' said Thomas P. Vartanian, managing partner of the Washington office of the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, which began E-mail alerts in 1995. ''The most valuable information we send out to our clients.'' Others are created only to help companies compile mailing lists. But the useful alerts are infiltrating themselves into the day-to-day routine of computer users. David E. Y. Sarna, the chairman of the Objectsoft Corporation, a Hackensack, N.J., computer company, depends on E-mail alerts to find bargain air fares to Seattle, where he does business with the Microsoft Corporation. ''Sometimes the fare is $300; at other times, it's $1,200,'' Mr. Sarna said. ''We warehouse the tickets when they're cheap, and pay the $50 change fee. These sorts of services are going to become ubiquitous.'' Still, Mr. Sarna said, not all the services are worthwhile. Some are not specific enough to suit his needs, while others are not discriminating enough. One service that Mr. Sarna finds useful sends him an E-mail whenever his company or any of those he invests in file documents with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. By contrast, he was overwhelmed by too much mail from another service, which offered to | E-Mail Alerts Show Growing Potential |
994155_2 | cooperation between his Government and the British was now ''excellent,'' a sign that the peace issues that have often divided London and Dublin had been resolved in discussions with Mo Mowlam, the British Northern Ireland Secretary. She stood by his side in Dublin, smiling in approval. [On Saturday, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said after a three-day visit to the United States that President Clinton said he would visit Belfast in May ''if the peace process goes according to plan.'' Experts took this as another sign of official optimism that a pact would be reached by May, the target set by Britain and the Irish Republic.] Mr. Mitchell and British and Irish officials say the peace effort could still be brought down by renewed sectarian terrorism. But that now seems less likely than it did even during the most recent outburst of attacks, which killed eight Catholics and two Protestants during the last two months. ''There is still a very long way to go,'' Mr. Mitchell said. ''There are tragically some people in Northern Ireland who will do all they can to prevent an agreement from being reached.'' He said he was confident, though, that the May deadline would be met. He said he would be giving White House officials his assessment in the coming week. Now, many officials, including Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Blair, say sporadic violence by Catholic and Protestant paramilitary splinter groups is to be expected as negotiators move closer to agreement. Other officials and experts say this is whistling in the dark, a tactic to brace the public for more violence. Others say that only the assassination of a prominent political figure could halt the momentum that the talks have gained in the last three weeks. They agree that prospects are now better than at any time since Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, and John Hume, the most prominent mainstream Catholic leader, started secret meetings in the spring of 1993. The two men have muted their rivalry to advance the peace effort. The delegates to the peace talks say it is unlikely that Mr. Adams will achieve the traditional Republican goal of a united Ireland, or that the Protestant leader David Trimble, head of the Ulster Unionist Party, the largest in the province, will be able to guarantee Protestants that they will never live in the | New Political Structure for Northern Ireland Emerging at Talks |
994153_0 | A high-profile delegation of American religious figures began arriving in Beijing today for a three-week tour of China to examine the state of religious freedom here, one of the most volatile human rights issues in American diplomacy. While it is being described as private, President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin of China agreed to the mission during their summit meeting in October, and the White House picked the three-man delegation: a prominent rabbi, an evangelical Protestant minister and a Roman Catholic archbishop. The group will meet with officials and religious leaders in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu and Hong Kong. It has also been granted rare approval for a visit to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, the remote mountain region where the Chinese are accused of repressing Buddhist religion and culture. The Chinese and American Governments say they hope that the unusual dialogue will help defuse what has rapidly emerged as a popular human rights crusade, threatening their efforts to build friendlier political and economic ties. In the United States, a vocal coalition drawing together evangelical Christians and other religious groups, human rights advocates and supporters of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, wants stronger measures to combat what it describes as widespread persecution of Christians and Tibetan Buddhists in China. It charges that China is engaged in a campaign of arrests and harassment intended to stamp out unapproved religious activity by millions of people including Catholics who give allegiance to the Vatican, certain Protestant groups and Buddhists who follow the Dalai Lama. Legislation pending in Congress that would apply sanctions against countries deemed to engage in religious persecution has received the support of the Republican leadership but is opposed by the Clinton Administration. The Chinese Government angrily rejects the charges of persecution. It says that some 14 million Protestants and Catholics worship in the state-approved churches and describes leaders of the so-called underground churches as criminal elements out to disrupt the social order. In Tibet, China says, it acts against those trying to split apart the country. The first American delegation member to arrive in Beijing today sought to hold down expectations, but he sees the trip as a vital chance to start a dialogue. ''This will be a very modest step, but it's a beginning,'' said Rabbi Arthur Schneier of Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, a New York-based group that | A Look at Religion in China by 3 U.S. Clerics |
998543_0 | The subject of manners once seemed worthy of serious attention. The authors of the Talmud took up such topics as burping, yawning and bad breath. Erasmus wrote the 16th-century equivalent of a best seller on civility and Edmund Burke considered manners more important than laws. But somewhere between the Renaissance and the late 20th century, the topic got a bad name. Manners came to be viewed as trivial, hypocritical and superficial. Heavy thinkers abandoned manners to the authors of etiquette books, with their fussing about finger bowls and the evils of blowing on soup. Now an interest in the subject, which once preoccupied the middle classes, is back in vogue, and not just among politicians like Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who earlier this week went so far as to invoke Plato in his continuing quest to make New York City a more orderly, civil and, well, mannerly place. Judith Rodin, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, has convened a 48-member national commission, made up heavily of academics, that is in the midst of a three-to-five-year study of what some believe is an explosion of incivility degrading the quality of public life. At Johns Hopkins University, P. M. Forni, a professor of Italian literature and culture, has organized a wide-ranging project that includes a course on civility, manners and politeness. It also includes research on civility in schools and in health care, and efforts to encourage scholarly work in the field. Last fall, the university offered the course not only to its own undergraduates but also to inmates of a maximum-security prison in Jessup, Md. Having spent the semester studying texts like Erving Goffman's ''Interaction Ritual,'' both groups came together at the end to discuss what they had learned. And next month, Johns Hopkins plans to hold a three-day, international symposium titled ''Reassessing Civility: Forms and Values at the End of the Century,'' with speakers ranging from historians who have written on manners to Judith Martin, the author of the Miss Manners columns and books. ''Manners were expelled from respectable scholarly thinking: 'Who would be interested in a stupid thing like that?' '' Ms. Martin said in a recent interview. ''Never mind that the answers are Burke, Mill, Emerson, Aristotle, Cicero, Castiglione, Erasmus, Locke.'' There is indeed a long tradition of serious writing on manners, not the least of which were three centures of ''courtesy books'' originally written to instruct | New Respectability For Manners; Scholars Tackle a Topic Long Thought Too Trivial for All but Fussbudgets |
997328_0 | The police chief of Northern Ireland said today that the bomb that ripped the center of a predominantly Protestant village west of here late on Friday night had been planted by ''Republican extremists.'' But the chief, Ronnie Flanagan, who was instrumental in the expulsion of the political wing of the Irish Republican Army from the Northern Ireland peace talks on Friday, stopped short of blaming the I.R.A. for the new bombing. The attack, which wounded 11 people, has brought new fears that the sectarian conflict between this British province's Protestant majority and its Roman Catholic minority is about to resume and that there will be Protestant retaliation for the bombing. Since 1969, the violence has killed more than 3,200 people. The British and Irish Governments, sponsors of the peace talks, declared on Friday that the political wing of the I.R.A., Sinn Fein, might be reinstated after March 9, but only if the I.R.A. did not commit violence in the meantime. The bombing is certain to be scrutinized by British security and intelligence officials to determine whether there was any I.R.A. involvement, which might jeopardize Sinn Fein's reinstatement next month. Mr. Flanagan, the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, had told the British Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam, that the I.R.A. had been involved in the killing of two civilians in Belfast last week. On that assessment, Ms. Mowlam decided that Sinn Fein had broken the pledge made by all parties to the talks as a condition of their participation: to oppose violence and to support only peaceful means toward political ends. Paul Murphy, the Northern Ireland security minister, visited Moira, the small village where the bombing took place, this morning. The attack, he said, was a ''cynical attempt to undermine the peace process.'' He said the peace talks, which moved to Dublin for three days this week, would resume in Belfast on Monday. Protestant leaders were quick to accuse the I.R.A. or I.R.A. front groups like the Continuity I.R.A., which has exploded two bombs in the province in the last 19 months, neither of which caused serious injuries. No group has claimed responsibility for the latest attack. ''If it wasn't the I.R.A., it was sanctioned by the I.R.A.'' said Jeffrey Donaldson, a leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and a member of the British Parliament. ''It wasn't the work of loyalists,'' he said, referring to Protestant paramilitaries. ''Loyalists don't | I.R.A. Is Eyed As Bombing In Ulster Casts Pall on Talks |
997280_4 | Under certain conditions, the new tax law also permits penalty-free withdrawals from I.R.A.'s to pay for higher education. In this respect, as in some others, children's I.R.A.'s are treated no differently than their parents'. And given that the growth in education costs continues to outstrip inflation, such tax-advantaged accounts may become a major source of school financing. Investors should be aware that the new rules on education withdrawals hide one potential disadvantage: They could lead to diminished financial aid. True, the Federal Government does not include I.R.A. savings in calculating aid under its education programs, like Pell grants. Nor do most private schools factor in I.R.A. assets, according to Kathleen Payea, manager of need analysis requirements for the College Board, which provides schools with financial aid guidelines. And some administrators say the new tax law is unlikely to prompt them to change this policy. ''It would be myopic for us to look at this as an opportunity, because in the long term we'd lose,'' said Don Saleh, dean of admissions and financial aid at Cornell University. If I.R.A.'s were factored into financial-aid rules, Mr. Saleh said, the school would suffer the loss of many middle-class students. Nevertheless, some schools do at least ask the families of applicants for I.R.A. information, Ms. Payea said. And the College Board has already begun polling schools about how to handle the new education-withdrawal rules. If schools do factor I.R.A.'s into their aid formulas, children's I.R.A.'s may be particularly hard-hit. Currently, schools expect students to contribute 35 percent of their assets to their yearly educational costs, while for parents the annual expected contribution is 5 percent of assets. But even if school policies change, said David Charlow, an official at Columbia University, they would probably exempt I.R.A. accumulations below a certain sum. And beyond the advantage conferred by their long time horizons, early-bird accounts can be a good teaching opportunity. That can be important when the child grows up and assumes control of the account. Dr. Bier recently bought Justin two books on investing, and has arranged for the boy to spend a day looking around on Wall Street. Using the Internet, Justin has already started following stocks that interest him. ''I want my child to understand about working hard and saving,'' Dr. Bier said. ''In my practice, I see lots of senior citizens, and many are having a hard time getting by.'' INVESTING IT | Retirement Foresight From the Younger Set |
997036_4 | Empire, which fell when Mehmet the Conqueror captured this city for Islam in 1453. The Haghia Sophia was a mosque for nearly 500 years, until the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a militant secularist, decreed that it would become a museum. Some Muslims have never accepted that decision, and they demand that it be made a mosque again. Their campaign seemed close to success when the Islamic party led by Necmettin Erbakan was in power, but it has faltered in the months since Mr. Erbakan's fall last year. Still, any Turkish leader would probably guess that there are few votes to be won by spending money on the Haghia Sophia. Politically, it is probably wiser to ignore the monument's needs than to risk stirring up Islamic wrath by seeming to reinforce its position as a secular museum. The Government, in short, is unwilling or unable to pay what is needed for routine maintenance -- experts say $5 million to $10 million would cover most needs -- and is also reluctant to accept outside help, especially from anyone who might seem to be making a political or religious point. It did, however, recently accept a $100,000 donation from American Express, and promised to put it to good use. ''This building is probably the best-built building ever,'' said Ahmet Cakmak, a professor of civil engineering at Princeton University who is an expert on the Haghia Sophia. ''It has sustained about 10 major earthquakes with only minor damage. The major difficulty is that the culture ministry doesn't want to spend money on it because it doesn't score points for them.'' ''I've been urging that the building be turned into an independent museum,'' Mr. Cakmak went on. ''It takes in millions of dollars in admission fees every year. If that money were used for maintenance instead of being sent to the Government, there would be plenty to take care of all the problems being caused by humidity and other factors.'' TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT Correction: March 22, 1998, Sunday The Correspondent's Report article on Feb. 22, about the Haghia Sophia in Istanbul, misstated the names of the organization and program that placed it on an endangered sites list, and of their spokeswoman. The group is the World Monuments Fund, which runs the World Monuments Watch (not the World Monument Fund and World Monument Watch). The spokeswoman is Anne Edgar, not Anne Edwards. | Turkey Skimps on Its Great Monument |
997010_1 | in life. For Freud, Phillips writes, ''psychoanalysis was essentially about the fate of interest,'' a fate that Freud found inescapably tragic: ''It is the function of culture,'' as Phillips sums up Freud's pessimistic analysis, ''to kill curiosity.'' This recognition that ''the viable self is a diminished self'' is Freud's melancholy equivalent of the ''Immortality'' ode: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy. But for Freud, as for Wordsworth, there are at least flickering recoveries or partial compensations: Wordsworth calls them ''shadowy recollections''; Freud calls them ''sublimations.'' The child's passionate curiosity is diverted, distracted and transformed into the adult's interests -- absorption in football or music or even literary theory -- and the primordial, polymorphous intensity makes itself manifest in jokes, dreams and the delirium of love. It is when sublimations fail, when laughter is stilled, dreams have become recurrent nightmares or the capacity for love has evaporated, that psychotherapy holds out some hope. Though nothing can bring back the splendor in the grass, the therapist can hint that exuberance might not be lost forever. To look again at the world with the child's wide eyes, to recover curiosity in its full intensity, is, in Phillips's account, the consummation devoutly to be wished. Lest this goal seem too cozily familiar, it is worth recalling that it is relatively recent. For centuries Stoic philosophers and Christian theologians struggled to subdue curiosity as one of the most disruptive, intractable and potentially vicious human traits. According to the 12th-century saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the evil angel fell as a result of curiosity. ''He had peered curiously into what was to come and wanted what he was not allowed to have and hoped presumptuous hopes,'' Bernard writes, concluding that ''rightly is curiosity considered the first step of pride; it was the beginning of all sin.'' Two centuries later, when Petrarch climbed a mountain in Provence and began to enjoy the view from the summit, he nervously opened his copy of Augustine's ''Confessions'' and was stunned by words that seemed to him a direct rebuke: ''And men go to admire the high mountains, the vast floods of the sea, the huge streams of the rivers, the circumference of the ocean and the revolutions of the stars -- and desert themselves.'' Yet the great work that checked Petrarch's curious gaze paradoxically contains the seeds that would | Curiosity Is Destiny |
997108_2 | multi-media program, the doors open into a water column where artifacts from wrecks will be exhibited. ''This is not a ride, a ride is a made-up thing. You're going to experience reality,'' Dr. Ballard said. ''We want people to walk out of that experience and completely change the way they think about the ocean. There's more history beneath the sea than in all the museums of the world.'' With ever-deeper exploration tools, it's a trove becoming more accessible, as the recent discovery of an ancient Roman ship and thousands of artifacts in the Mediterranean proved. The United States Navy submarine NR-1 and Jason, an unmanned submersible robot, enabled the team to descend to 2,500 feet below the ocean and collect artifacts for study. Previously, underwater archeology was confined to depths of only 200 feet, the range for scuba divers. ''Deep-sea exploration is far more difficult than going to the moon,'' Dr. Ballard said. ''We have better maps of Mars and Venus than we do of our own ocean.'' Next month, Dr. Ballard plans to study sea otters at a kelp forest in Monterey, Calif., and broadcast reports on the trip to middle school students across Connecticut. This summer and again next year, he will travel to the Black Sea in search of archeological artifacts on the ocean floor. Again, he'll use acoustic and visual search systems and unmanned vehicles. Dr. Ballard hopes to share his explorations with visitors to the aquarium through what he calls telepresence, using a robot to view the exotic life forms and buried treasure of the deep sea. After conducting explorations for 30 years under the auspices of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, in Woods Hole, Mass., Dr. Ballard's voyages are now done for the Institute for Exploration at Mystic. He lives in Old Lyme, with his wife, Barbara, and two young children. Hugh Connell of the aquarium points out that, until now, most aquariums focused on fish from the sunlit waters. ''Bob Ballard has brought to us the deep ocean,'' Mr. Connell said. ''Mystic Aquarium will be the only place in the world to exhibit life forms from the sunlit to the deep oceans.'' Throughout the new aquarium, there will be interactive exhibits, computers where visitors can go to learn more about the fish and mammals they're seeing. When the renovation is complete, visitors will enter through the round glass and steel atrium and from there | The View From/Mystic; Deep Sea, High Tech And a Beluga's Smile |
994345_1 | relations specialists, financial officers, analysts, buyers, personnel managers and data processors who occupy America's ubiquitous office towers. Their annual pay averaged a healthy $46,000 in the mid-1990's. ''The decision structure in a global economy demands these people,'' said Steven Rose, senior economist at the Educational Testing Service, and a co-author of the study. ''It takes less and less to produce a product or service, but more and more to promote it, manage the process, customize it, make it consumer friendly, deal with style and convenience. No firm feels it can cut back without losing market share.'' The Educational Testing Service prepares and administers the SAT and other college entrance exams, and draws its revenue from the fees paid by students who take these tests. The new study's message, not surprisingly, is that college graduates populate the new professional and managerial class and, thus, get the highest-paying jobs, without high-technology knowledge. Indeed, these jobs place a premium on tasks that a generation ago often did not require a college education, Mr. Rose and his co-author acknowledge. ''Our study raises basic questions about what these people need to know to do their jobs,'' said Anthony P. Carnevale, the co-author and a vice president at Educational Testing Service. ''A case can be made for a liberal arts education, with its emphasis on analysis and problem solving, although companies seem to prefer people who have taken business courses. The curriculum issue is naturally of great concern to us, and we don't have answers.'' This study, as do most that try to explain labor force dynamics, relies on Labor Department data. What sets it apart is the decision to rearrange workers into the authors' own set of occupations and functions. The goal was to more accurately reflect reality, but some labor economists said the study's classifications were arbitrary and subjective. ''The tremendously positive spin on this office-economy stuff is unwarranted and inappropriate,'' said Lawrence Mishel, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Front-office managers at a steel mill, or a computer manufacturer, or a restaurant chain, for example, are included in the new category of business professionals and managers. But supervisors on the factory floor -- probably earning less -- are excluded, as are managers of McDonald's restaurants. Such distinctions are not made by the Labor Department, although in Mr. Rose's view they reflect valid divisions. Similarly, the study distinguishes between a sales representative who | Study Questions The Usual View Of Downsizing |
995206_0 | In a statement that pushed the Northern Ireland peace effort further toward crisis, the chief of police there has asserted that the Irish Republican Army was involved in two killings of civilians this week in Belfast. The British and Irish Governments, who reported the finding today, immediately said they would now have to decide whether it was grounds for expelling the I.R.A.'s. political wing, Sinn Fein, from the negotiations. A decision is expected by Monday, when the talks are to move to Dublin for three days. Protestant groups have been pressing for the expulsion of Sinn Fein since the killings, insisting that the I.R.A. was behind the attacks. But such a decision would be a serious setback to the talks; officials here are virtually unanimous in saying that without Sinn Fein, the negotiations are unlikely to reach a meaningful settlement. ''It's a very serious matter,'' the Prime Minister of Ireland, Bertie Ahern, said this afternoon. He said he had learned of the police findings, by the Chief of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Ronnie Flanagan, in a telephone conversation last night with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Mr. Ahern said he had also discussed the situation with President Clinton. John Hume, the prominent mainstream Roman Catholic leader in the north, said Chief Constable Flanagan's report was ''a serious setback'' for the peace effort. The police report was made public, in part, by Mo Mowlam, the British Secretary for Northern Ireland, who quoted the Chief Constable as saying, ''The I.R.A. were involved in these murders.'' Officials fear that if Sinn Fein is expelled, the I.R.A. will resume its campaign of violence in the province. That could provoke Protestant paramilitaries to retaliate with attacks in the North and in the Irish Republic. But if the Governments decide against expelling Sinn Fein, that could provoke a walkout by Protestant negotiators at the talks, which had recently begun to deal seriously with proposals for a new political structure for Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein, for its part, continued to insist that it was not representing the I.R.A. at the talks, an assertion that virtually no one believes. After years of bitter dispute, Sinn Fein was finally admitted to the talks last September after the I.R.A. declared a cease-fire and Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, renounced violence. All sides in the talks have made the same pledge as a condition of participation. Thursday night, in | Ulster Police Link 2 Deaths to I.R.A., Casting Pall Over Talks |
998075_1 | considerably since the first cellular networks were switched on in the 1980's. In 1988, the average monthly cellular-phone bill was $95; last year, it was $44, according to the Cellular Telephone Industry Association, a trade group in Washington. Those lower prices, of course, are a result of clamorous competition. Conventional cellular companies are getting a run for their money from new digital networks that companies like Sprint, Omnipoint and others are touting as vastly superior to the older cellular networks. Most wireless customers rely on the cellular networks that began in the early 1980's. They generally transmit calls via analog transmissions -- the calls travel through the air as radio waves in patterns analogous to the original sound waves. The newer networks use digital technology, in which information is transmitted via radio signals that correspond to the 1's and 0's of computer code. Digital transmissions allow a network to carry more conversations simultaneously. And the computer precision of digital transmissions can produce a crisper sound -- in theory, at least. In the real world, depending on terrain, signal strength and network coverage pattern, a digital wireless phone may work no better -- and may even work worse -- than an analog cellular phone. Whenever possible, it pays to compare notes with friends, neighbors or colleagues. While the nation's cellular carriers are converting their networks to digital formats as fast as they can, the sellers of a new all-digital technology called PCS, for personal communications services, are trying to get a jump on the market by offering lower monthly rates than their analog competitors. PCS, like digital cellular, also offers features not always available with conventional cellular phones, like voice mail, Caller ID, call waiting and call forwarding. So far, roughly a third of the population lives where there is no digital wireless service at all, the Yankee Group said, while 90 percent of people in the United States have access to analog cellular service. But all wireless networks will eventually be digital. So if you buy an analog phone, you will most likely need to replace it in a few years. Mr. Lowenstein, of the Yankee Group, offers this rule of thumb: ''Generally, if you're in a rural area, you should buy analog cellular.'' But if you live in or near a major city, he said, ''if you're really interested in features, you'll want to go digital.'' But even metropolitan | A Welter of Wireless Choices |
993503_4 | if United Nations inspectors cannot do their job, as is the case now. ''I think the precise question should be -- that I should have to ask and answer, is -- could any military action, if all else fails, substantially reduce or delay Saddam Hussein's capacities to develop weapons of mass destruction and to deliver them on his neighbors?'' Mr. Clinton said, and then responded: ''The answer to that, I am convinced, is yes.'' Washington and London are willing to let diplomacy run its course for another two weeks or so, so that friendly Arab countries can feel that all peaceful options have been explored. But there is a parallel wariness about being sucked into a diplomatic solution that is fake or fragile, and repeats the experience of last November, when Moscow extracted a promise from Mr. Hussein -- which was quickly broken -- to allow unrestricted inspections. Force may prove to be inevitable, given the fact that the inspectors, after six years of work, are approaching the heart of Mr. Hussein's secret weapons programs. The standard of ''unconditional and unfettered access'' may be something Mr. Hussein would be unwilling to meet, the officials acknowledge. In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Minister, Yevgeny M. Primakov, who has worked hardest to find a diplomatic solution, said his emissary in Baghdad was not having an easy time concluding a deal that Washington has already criticized. ''It is proving very difficult to push it through,'' Mr. Primakov said. Diplomats from France, Turkey and the Arab League left Baghdad today after trying to persuade Mr. Hussein to comply with inspections. Senior British and American officials said Britain's effort to draft a new Security Council resolution that would find Iraq ''in material breach'' of the cease-fire that ended the Gulf war is running into trouble. The French do not want to have to vote on a resolution that would damage the prospects that their diplomacy will bear fruit in Iraq, while Washington, arguing that it already has the authority to strike Iraq, does not want to back a resolution that fails or is watered down by China or Russia. Today's news conference was notable for the lack of questions on Northern Ireland. In his opening statement, Mr. Clinton condemned recent violence there and urged the factions to focus on peace talks , saying: ''Nothing worth having can be accomplished through violence.'' STANDOFF WITH IRAQ: THE OVERVIEW | Clinton and Blair Warn Iraq It Must Obey U.N. on Arms |
993499_1 | technology, in the development of American radar, astrophysics and radio astronomy, the study of underwater sound, the invention of sonar, the investigation of matter under enormous pressures like those found within giant planets, and the chemistry of carbon cage molecules, among other fields. Among the lost documents were many of the records covering the laboratory's role in launching Vanguard, one of the United States' earliest space satellites. Vanguard made it into orbit in March 1958, just months behind the Soviet satellite Sputnik and the United States' first satellite, Explorer. Although many records of the Vanguard program were lost, Dr. van Keuren said, some private records kept by relatives of scientists who worked on the project have been recovered. There are hopes, he said, that other private sources may be able to fill in a few of the gaps. Dr. van Keuren discovered the shredding last August, when he asked the laboratory's archivist to retrieve some documents about materials science from the Federal Records Center and was told that they had been destroyed. ''As you can imagine,'' he said, ''we're very unhappy.'' The National Archives and Records Administration, which runs the records center, does not question the value of the destroyed papers, said Dr. Susan Cooper, spokeswoman for the agency. Dr. Cooper said a ''fail-safe'' system for protecting valuable Federal documents had evidently failed. Under that system, she said, before documents from Federal agencies are placed into storage, they are provisionally assessed as either permanent or temporary, depending on the records center's perception of their importance. ''The archives of a Cabinet secretary are always designated as permanent, for example,'' Dr. Cooper said, ''while my correspondence would, in general, be temporary.'' Then, when temporary files have been stored for a long period and are about to be consigned to the shredder, the records center must give the Federal agency from which they came 90 days' notice, in case the agency wants to preserve them. The Naval Research Laboratory contends that it never received such warning last year before its temporary records were destroyed. But Dr. Cooper replied, ''We have the evidence that the laboratory received notification but did not act.'' She said that although ''the Navy responded to other notices that came with this one, it raised no objection to carrying out the scheduled disposal of the laboratory material.'' Dr. John Carlin, who as Archivist of the United States heads the National | Mix-Up Leads to Shredding of Valuable Records From Naval Lab |
996901_0 | Expulsion From Irish Talks The Irish and British Governments temporarily expelled the I.R.A. political wing from peace talks. Page A3. Indonesia Blinks on Currency Indonesia has retreated from a sharply criticized plan to strengthen its ravaged currency. Page D1. New York Court Shift A liberal judge on New York's highest court is leaving. A conservative majority is now possible. Page B1. | INSIDE |
996886_0 | The Irish and British Governments today expelled Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, from the Northern Ireland peace talks at least until March 9. The two Governments, in an obvious move to stave off violent reactions from Roman Catholics in the British province, said the suspension would be limited to 17 days if the Irish Republican Army did not engage in violence in the meantime. As sponsors of the talks, the Governments took the step because they said that the I.R.A. had been involved in the killing of two civilians in Belfast last week and that meant that Sinn Fein had effectively reneged on its pledge to shun violence, a condition for sitting at the negotiating table. Sinn Fein, in an appeal to the Irish Republic High Court for an order to block the expulsion, argued that this was untrue, unjust and unfair. The party did not say explicitly today that it would return to the talks, but it was widely assumed that it would. New violence erupted about eight hours after the decision was announced. Police officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary said what appeared to be a large bomb in a car was detonated outside a police station in the predominantly Protestant village of Moira, about 20 miles southwest of Belfast. Several people were hospitalized with injuries, but no fatalities were reported. A house next to the police station was flattened, the police said. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Republican paramilitaries were suspected: the I.R.A. or the Irish National Liberation Army, a splinter group that is opposed to the peace talks and has never declared a cease-fire. It was considered possible, but unlikely, that the attack was by a Protestant group, seeking to give the impression that Catholic Republicans were responsible in an effort to jeopardize Sinn Fein's chances of being reinstated at the peace talks. Announcing the expulsion decision in Belfast this afternoon, Mo Mowlam, the British Northern Ireland Secretary, said that no more temporary expulsions would be granted to parties linked to terrorist groups. A small Protestant party remains suspended since the paramilitary force it represents admitted killing three Catholics in December and January. She added that she believed a peace settlement was still possible by the May 1 deadline for the talks set by London and Dublin. After three days in Dublin this week, the talks are to return to Belfast on | British and Irish Governments Suspend Sinn Fein From Northern Ireland Talks |
996409_0 | Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, argued in the Irish Republic's High Court here today for an order to forbid the Irish and British Governments to expel the party from the Northern Ireland peace talks, but the hearing was adjourned until Thursday with no decision. The Government of Britain and the Irish Republic, sponsors of the talks, indicated that they would decide in the coming days whether to exclude Sinn Fein, probably for several weeks, and possibly without regard for any decision made by the Irish court. Irish legal experts said the court, the second-highest in the land, would hesitate to issue an order that was unenforceable, as the regular location for the peace talks is in the British province of Northern Ireland. The talks moved from Belfast to Dublin this week for a three-day session, and by nightfall, delegates were already leaving Dublin. Lawyers for the British, and for George J. Mitchell, the former American Senator who is chairman of the talks, argued that the Irish court had no jurisdiction over the procedures in the peace talks. The talks were established under legislation approved by the British Parliament. Mr. Mitchell, in an interview after the adjournment, said: ''This is not a matter for the courts. This is a matter for the negotiations.'' He repeated a warning that splinter paramilitary groups could be expected to persist in terrorist acts in attempts to break down the talks. Tonight, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, sounding as if he anticipated expulsion, called on his supporters to exercise self-discipline when the decision is announced. The move to exclude Sinn Fein was made after Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam, said the Police Chief in Northern Ireland reported that the I.R.A. was involved in the killing of two civilians in Belfast last week. She said this meant that Sinn Fein had in effect broken its pledge to support only peaceful means to political change, and could be expelled. Sinn Fein's lawyer, Adrian Hardiman, told the court: ''In any other context, this procedure would be flawed. The fact that it is taking place in the context of high politics makes no difference.'' | Sinn Fein Argues for Ban on Ouster From Talks |
1017282_3 | Mr. Black the seller was a reputable Hong Kong dealer and that the item came with all the proper papers. No one has suggested that Mr. Black did anything illegal or improper in buying the object in New York. Mr. Black came into public view in the 1980's as co-head of corporate finance at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the defunct Wall Street firm that was dominated by Michael R. Milken, the junk-bond king. Now, besides his investment activities, Mr. Black is a well-known collector of Chinese bronzes and works by such 19th- and 20th-century European masters as Picasso, Cezanne, Degas and Bonnard. He also sits on the board of the Jewish Museum and the Mount Sinai Hospital, and recently endowed a Shakespeare Studies chair at Dartmouth College, his alma mater. His firm is said to be considering bids for Polygram, the record company, and Simon & Schuster. The narrow canyons above the Three Gorges Dam are sprinkled with subsurface and standing tombs, temples and other historical sites. Chinese historians have openly lamented the shortage of money and time to assess what will be lost when the dam is closed and waters start rising five years from now. They warn that a crucial, little-studied aspect of early Chinese history as well as the entire record of at least one ancient culture will be lost forever. Another problem has emerged just above the future water line, where bulldozers are erecting new towns for the displaced populations and have little time for ''salvage archeology.'' What the machines do not destroy is taken by local people for sale to antique dealers. Since the dam construction began in 1992, according to an article last January in the Three Gorges Public Security Newspaper, ''antique traders converged on Wushan from different parts of the country and from Southeast Asia,'' and local looters shifted from trailing bulldozers to actively prospecting for artifacts. In May 1997 the police in Wushan County formed a special task force to deal with looting and smuggling, some by organized gangs. Reached by telephone today, Luo Zhihong, Director of Cultural Relics for Wushan County, said that because of the lack of resources, ''a lot of relics have been sold to private dealers.'' He said his entire 1997 budget for protection was only about $3,600, while he had to offer that amount to entice local farmers to turn in even a single valuable relic they found. | Sold China 'Spirit Tree' May Have Been Stolen |
1017268_2 | saw this as calculated indifference. Anger increased when one crew member, Kuboyama Aikichi, died on Sept. 23. Large demonstrations in Tokyo called for an end to American nuclear tests in the Pacific. Against this backdrop, ''Godzilla: King of the Monsters'' was released in late 1954, the first of more than 20 Godzilla features from Japan. The horror genre gave the filmmakers the cover they needed to skirt the Government's policy of silence. Appearing only a few months after the Lucky Dragon incident, ''Godzilla'' opens with an ominous explosion and series of flashes that sink Japanese fishing boats. Moving along an island-hopping route like that of both America's wartime aerial attacks and the Lucky Dragon, Godzilla inflicts burns and carnage that are described in the same terms used by the Japanese press for the war's bombing victims. A generation of Americans screamed in wonder as Godzilla incinerated Tokyo, but Japanese audiences saw the film differently. The Lucky Dragon incident and the film kindled anti-nuclear activism among the previously pliant Japanese. These protests merged with others against American bases in Japan. In June 1960, mass demonstrations almost toppled the Japanese Government. In later movies, Godzilla evolved in step with Japan's global interests. In 1963, as trade with the United States flourished and the Soviets seemed more ominous to Japan, the Toho Studio released ''King Kong vs. Godzilla.'' This time, Godzilla sprang from the Arctic Ocean and attacked the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido -- just as the Soviets might. King Kong, a South Pacific monster integrally linked to the United States, helped the Japanese repulse the attack. The growing trade imbalance starting in the 1970's altered America's benign view of its chief Asian ally. The new ''Godzilla,'' produced by Americans for the Japanese-owned Sony Studio, is set to devastate New York. When the story was conceived in the early 1990's, the idea of a rampaging Japan as No. 1 and a victimized America in decline had some logic. Now, however, Japan is in a prolonged period of economic weakness and the American economy is surging. Meanwhile, a new nuclear threat looms in India. It will be interesting to see how the identities of the villain and victim play out in this latest, but surely not last, Godzilla film. Michael Schaller, a professor of history at the University of Arizona, is the author of ''Altered States: The U.S. and Japan Since the Occupation.'' | Godzilla, Present And Past |
1017324_2 | said he was allowed to board the plane only after one Congressman said he would not board until Mr. Zogby was allowed to. The audit of the machines described at the hearing found that while they were designed to process up to 225 suitcases an hour, most did not see that many in a day. After the explosion of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 in July 1996, which Government officials had suspected was caused by a bomb, the aviation agency bought 22 of the bag scanners, made by Invision Technologies. Although investigators now say a bomb was probably not the cause, the Government still plans to buy a total of 54 machines, along with other kinds of detection devices from other companies. Cathal L. Flynn, the Associate Administrator for Civil Aviation Security, said the airlines would make more use of the machines as other changes were made. The planned changes, Mr. Flynn said, include moving to a computerized ''profiling system'' to decide which passengers' bags require close scrutiny. That would put more bags into the stream of luggage to be inspected. Another change, Mr. Flynn said, is a gradual shift away from a security system called bag matching, under which certain bags are not allowed on a plane unless the airline is sure that the person who checked them is also on board. The idea is to prevent a terrorist from checking a suitcase with a bomb and then not catching the flight, a method that was used to destroy an Air India plane off the Irish coast in 1985. Mr. Flynn said the airlines would gradually move to bag screening. The reason, he said, is that if bags are matched, the process must be done every time a passenger changes planes, but a suitcase that has been checked and screened is known to be bomb-free on every leg of a trip. Ms. Stefani, the deputy assistant inspector general, testified that of 11 machines her office studied from December to March, 10 screened fewer than 200 bags a day. Mr. Flynn said that the rate of use had increased since then and that some machines had run at their peak rate, 225 bags an hour, for ''minutes at a time.'' But the inspector general's office said current data showed that the machines average fewer than 100 bags per day and that the ones in highest use scanned 400 to 500. | Bomb Scanner For Airports Is Underused, Audit Finds |
1017299_0 | The leaders of the seven largest industrial democracies and Russia called on Indonesia's leader today to show restraint in responding to the country's growing unrest, and said a solution would have to involve political as well as economic changes. President Clinton said President Suharto should ''open a dialogue with all elements of the society'' in an attempt to create ''a genuine sense of political reform and reconciliation'' while continuing to overhaul Indonesia's economy. Mr. Clinton also scrambled tonight to assemble a united front to protest India's nuclear tests. Finding scant support for economic sanctions of the type the United States is imposing, Mr. Clinton won agreement on a toughly worded statement but received only vague promises of concrete action to punish India for escalating its arms race with Pakistan. At the annual summit meeting of the eight nations, Mr. Clinton also said he was looking for a diplomatic formula that would convince Pakistan not to to move ahead with nuclear tests of its own. Mr. Clinton suggested that one element of that formula might be the resolution of a long-running dispute in which the United States has blocked delivery to Pakistan of 28 F-16 jet fighters and refused to return the $650 million Pakistan paid for the planes. Mr. Clinton and the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia -- meeting tonight over dinner with only their interpreters present -- spent considerable time discussing Indonesia. Earlier, Mr. Clinton had called on President Suharto and his military ''to avoid violence and exercise maximum restraint,'' and suggested that the Indonesian leader's best option was to respond to the unrest by moving toward democracy. Mr. Clinton said Mr. Suharto should ''open a dialogue with all elements of the society'' in an attempt to create ''a genuine sense of political reform and reconciliation'' while continuing to overhaul Indonesia's economy. ''Giving the people of Indonesia a real voice in the country's political affairs can make a real contribution to restoring political order and stability based on human rights and the rule of law,'' Mr. Clinton said. Although the summit's formal agenda is packed with items ranging from combatting international crime to reducing unemployment, it was clear today that the crises in Asia would dominate the proceedings. Administration officials said Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott had finished meeting in Islamabad with Pakistani officials including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and was heading to | 8 World Leaders Urge Suharto to Show Restraint in Handling Indonesian Turmoil |
1019211_7 | which now proved strong enough to support my weight if I leaned into it at a 45-degree angle. Farther on, the trail divided and I lost the markings and backtracked, did the same thing again, then decided to wait for the others, one of whom had trekked to the gorge before. When I greeted them with the topographical map, they ignored it and plunged down the west side of the summit, which was nothing but scree. After a long, tough descent, we reached a bouldered ravine and stumbled across a spring, another shepherd's hut and a dirt road. Two hundred yards later, a clearly marked trail veered off the road, and I followed it , trekking on ahead of the group. It led steeply downward, and in an hour I met the first waters of the gorge's Dhimosari River, and crossed a bridge, after which the footpath became a kalderimi. Stubbled every three yards or so with catching stones laid lengthwise so that pack animals would not slip, this kalderimi was once the lifeline of the gorge. Now it connects only abandoned villages. Chestnut trees grow in abundance, as do giant ferns, which serve to shade the path with their 10-foot fronds. Keeping the river to my left and avoiding all trails leading upward from the main path, I followed the great paving blocks that line the kalderimi. From the bridge to Leonisei, the first inhabited village in the gorge, there was not a soul to be seen. So shaded and verdant was the gorge that it was hard to believe that sometime in early morning we had stood on a cold, bare, windy summit peak under a blazing sun. Just above Leonisei -- a collection of white houses and a church -- the kalderimi is paved with white marble. I rested a few moments in the church courtyard, noting the windlessness and heat, then continued on the dirt road that provided welcome relief from the kalderimi's footing. In less than an hour I stumbled into Kallianos, less a village than a random assembly of houses perched on the hillside above the sinking river. By the time I saw the sign for the Taverna Klimataria, it was almost 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I was not so much trekking as plodding. The Taverna Klimataria is a family house with a large balcony restaurant; above it a grape arbor shields | Echoes Of Ancient Lives |
1019531_2 | than 3,200 people have been killed in 30 years of sectarian warfare. ''It's a great day for Ireland,'' people repeated. The first public official to say it, on an early morning radio program, was Mary O'Rourke, a legislator representing Longford, County Westmeath, whose family has had members in Parliament for decades. ''It's also a great day for democracy,'' she added. She noted that voters had agreed to abolish the constitutional claim to sovereignty in the North, which remained British when southern Ireland gained independence, after a bloody rebellion, in 1922. The abolition of the claim was the Irish Republic's greatest concession in the current settlement. Ms. O'Rourke's party, Fianna Fail, only approved it after Prime Minister Bertie Ahern persuaded dissidents to agree. Every major party in Ireland also advocated a ''yes'' vote. But she acknowledged, with other Irish officials and experts, that the vote was only a first step toward lasting peace, and that many obstacles remained. Attention is now focused on the June 25 election for a new Northern Ireland assembly. The group will have no authority to deal with three of the major problems: the release of paramilitary prisoners; the disarmament of the I.R.A. and Protestant paramilitaries, and the reform of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the predominantly Protestant police force in the North. Work on these issues will be done by Mr. Ahern's Government and Britain, which sponsored the talks that led to the new peace agreement. Fergus Finlay, a former senior official in the Irish Foreign Affairs Department who spent four years negotiating with the British Government on the North, said of the vote: ''It's beyond people's wildest expectations. There's a new way of doing things. They've built a new platform.'' But, he added, the first dangerous test will come at the end of June, the season for Protestant parades in the North. These marches have sparked violence in recent years. Irish Republic voters also approved, by a smaller majority, a European Union document dealing mostly with administrative procedures. A strong campaign was waged against the document, the Amsterdam Treaty, by people who said it would lead to the end of Irish military neutrality. But there was little popular interest in that treaty today. And many people seemed to share the shadow of doubt expressed by Mr. Simonds, the bookstore owner, who said of the peace agreement, ''I hope it works.'' THE IRISH VOTE: IN THE SOUTH | Eloquent And Elated: 'Great Day For Ireland' |
1019536_3 | arranged for her to continue her studies at Ohio State. But when her husband was transferred to Washington a couple of years later, her unofficial formal education came to an end because Georgetown University would not admit women. In the decade after her machete experience, Mrs. Maxwell made dozens of expeditions to the remotest regions of the upper Amazon, befriending the local Indians and slowly learning the secrets of their vast medical lore. To Indians whose experience with outsiders had been as victims of armed rubber merchants, an unarmed woman posed no threat. In 1958, after obtaining a small grant from a drug company, Mrs. Maxwell made a special expedition, obtaining samples of many of the plants whose medicinal properties she had been carefully cataloguing. When she returned and shipped her plants, including what she said was a variety of highly effective contraceptives, to the drug company, she was dismayed to discover that the company had regarded her trek as a publicity stunt and had no scientific interest in her findings. Hoping to salvage something from her work, she wrote ''Witch Doctor's Apprentice.'' More adventure story than medical manual, the book, revised in 1975 and in 1990 (Citadel Press), nevertheless described a host of plants she said the Indians used to prevent tooth decay, painlessly extract teeth, dissolve kidney stones, heal burns and cure or prevent scores of other maladies. Mrs. Maxwell returned to South America and continued her research until 1986, eventually collecting more than 350 plants used to treat more than 100 common ailments. While her work was shunned by drug companies, Mrs. Maxwell, who made her home in Iquitos, Peru, became a heroine to a coterie of enthusiasts who would make pilgrimages to the compound where she held court to pay tribute, sometimes with unsettling results. Once when an avid photographer of exotic birds gushingly exclaimed that she must be very familiar with the birds of South America, Mrs. Maxwell acknowledged that she was, ''mainly by taste.'' Her dream that the plants of the upper Amazon would become a multibillion-dollar cash crop and halt the destruction of the rain forest eluded her. But Mrs. Maxwell, who had been working with a Mississippi State scientist to produce a technical manual on Amazon remedies, remained confident that her work would be eventually be recognized by mainstream science. ''As soon as I'm gone,'' she told a friend, ''they'll come running.'' | Nicole Maxwell, a Bold Seeker Of Medical Herbs, Dies at 92 |
1019646_6 | plunged, against the advice of the prematurely sobered, including Daniel Patrick Moynihan, into saving Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant section. It was to be done by -- how anachronistic the phrase now seems -- ''urban renewal.'' But it was to be renewal from the bottom up, renewal by ''participation'' that would produce a true ''community,'' which in turn would heal the souls of ghetto residents. Kennedy did solicit capital and expertise from the traditional patrician sources. The key to his respectful liberalism was to be reliance on the untapped skills and spirit of the community. The problem was that if tapping this supposed local reservoir of virtues -- this social capital of talents -- were all that renewal required, the ghetto would have been basically healthy and would not have needed much renewing. STILL, this was a time when Lewis Mumford was testifying to Congress that ''democracy, in any active sense, begins and ends in communities small enough for their members to meet face to face.'' The historians J. G. A. Pocock, Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood were emphasizing the extent to which classical understandings of citizenship influenced the American Founders. Furthermore, Beran argues that by passing through the furnace of family tragedy, Kennedy had become both Greek and Emersonian. After his brother was murdered, Jacqueline Kennedy gave him a copy of ''The Greek Way,'' by Edith Hamilton, and that deepened his thinking about the meaning of civic life. Also, reading Emerson fueled his interest in what Beran calls ''the problem of the underconfident soul'' -- the conditions that cripple the growth of confidence, a prerequisite for success in an urban setting, and in a world increasingly ruled either by impersonal market forces or by faceless bureaucracies. If Beran reads Kennedy's career correctly, what was at least latent in his thinking was indeed a harbinger of today's problematic emphasis on therapeutic government's supposed duty to deliver ''values'' as well as the mail. That this ambitious agenda for government is central to today's conservatism (liberalism's version stresses ''self-esteem'' as a progressive aim of public policy) is among the paradoxes of contemporary politics. Twenty-eight years were to pass between Kennedy's death and substantial reform of the welfare state. When reform came, it involved repeal of a 61-year-old entitlement (Aid to Families With Dependent Children) and the largest devolution of power from the Federal Government to the states since the end of Reconstruction. The aims of | Kennedy Family Values |
1019547_0 | An elated President Clinton today offered a warm message of congratulations to the voters in both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland after their approval of a wide-ranging peace accord. ''It is the culmination of a springtime of peace and it must be the beginning of a long season of happiness and prosperity,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''We are rejoicing at the news from across the Atlantic.'' Mr. Clinton, who claims a bit of Irish heritage, said, ''All over America, the eyes of Irish-Americans, and indeed, all our peace-loving citizens are smiling. We are very proud of you.'' Mr. Clinton strongly backed the accord and it was his envoy, former Senator George Mitchell, who brokered the deal. George P. Mitchell, the former Senate leader from Maine who played a major role in negotiating the settlement, said in a telephone interview from New York, ''There still will be many difficult decisions ahead, but this vote gives great momentum to the process and makes clear the people of Ireland, North and South, want this process to go forward. ''They have said they prefer mutual respect and tolerance and will not succumb to appeals to bigotry and hatred, which have been so effective in the past.'' Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican and co-chairman of an ad hoc Congressional committee for Irish affairs in the House, called the results ''the most historical moment for Ireland in this century,'' which ''ends horrific violence, creates real democratic institutions and provides a road map for what will be a united Ireland one day.'' But Mr. King also said he expects continued resistance to the peace plan from Protestant Unionists in the north. THE IRISH VOTE: IN THE UNITED STATES | Clinton Leads Americans' Cheers on Irish Vote |
1019570_0 | With the economy booming, college graduates are facing the best job market in years. And for students in engineering and computer science -- a small group who chose their majors when companies were downsizing and engineers were being tossed aside like used Kleenex -- the market is sizzling. Most have multiple job offers, signing bonuses are common, and some are even being offered stock options, a benefit normally reserved for top executives. On many campuses in the New York metropolitan region, engineering and computer science graduates are receiving salary offers of $45,000 to $50,000 a year as employers compete for one of the smallest graduating classes of engineers in a decade. Those offers are up as much as 20 percent over last year's, and well above offers to graduates in fields like economics and psychology. Career counselors at Ivy League colleges and commuter schools are shaking their heads in amazement. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., for example, the average annual starting salary is $45,621, and one computer science undergraduate has accepted a job for $70,000. ''Student salaries are out of sight,'' said Thomas Tarantelli, director of the R.P.I. career center, who said they surpassed salaries in his office long ago. ''We often sit around and joke about the fact that the students are coming to us for advice.'' Paul J. Kostek, a consulting engineer in Seattle and president-elect of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-U.S.A., said: ''I call the class of '98 the class of optimists. These students took a chance, and that chance has paid off.'' Allison Cooke, a 25-year-old student at the City College of New York, recalls the job market when she chose chemical engineering as her major. ''It was kind of grim,'' she said. ''Dow Chemical was being sued for its silicone implants. Companies were laying off workers.'' As she struggled through fluid mechanics and kinetics and passed up invitations to parties so she could spend nights in the laboratory, she questioned her choice of major again and again. But as she prepares to graduate, she has received two job offers, one for more than $45,000 a year and the other for more than $50,000. ''Now I feel I can exhale,'' she said. ''I'm really making it. The job market for chemical engineers right now is fantastic. We are so in demand.'' With computers on nearly every desk and factory floor in America, | Fast Times for Engineering Graduates, as a Slump Ends |
1019325_0 | WIDELY known as a favorite hideaway of the rich and famous, Westport has a celebrity-driven cachet. And young families are attracted by the town's exceptional school system, a wide range of recreational opportunities and a strong sense of community. Westport's popularity and its location just an hour from Manhattan combine to keep prices high -- it's difficult to find many single-family homes priced below $300,000. And about 70 houses, or about a quarter of the homes now on the market in Westport, are priced above $1 million. But growth pressures threaten to undermine many of the small-town qualities that have made Westport so desirable. Now that the town is more than 90 percent developed, land is scarce: A recent planning department survey found just 350 vacant acres, less than 3 percent of the town, left for development. Lots are so valuable that developers are buying houses in established neighborhoods only to tear them down to make way for much bigger houses. These modern homes, referred to by disapproving locals as ''houses on steroids,'' are beginning to alter the character of older neighborhoods, said Katherine Barnard, Westport's director of planning and zoning. Applications for Conservation Commission approval of development on environmentally sensitive lots are rising as green space dwindles. And the student population is swelling so quickly that school administrators expect they will have to bus kindergarteners out of one district to a less crowded school for at least two years until more elementary schools are opened. Nevertheless, First Selectwoman Diane Goss Farrell is optimistic. A committee is forming to identify land parcels worthy of preservation, she said, and the town has signed a contract to buy 22.8 acres near downtown for future municipal needs. A native Westporter who once tried out California only to return, Mrs. Farrell said the high demand for land ''suggests the town enjoys tremendous vitality.'' Westport has cultivated an image as a center of creative energy ever since the early 1900's, when artists, actors, musicians and writers flocked to its shores to work and play. Previously it was the quiet home of farmers and mill owners who shipped their fresh onions and dried corn on the Saugatuck River, which cuts a broad path through town to Long Island Sound. Wealthy businessmen also maintained a grand presence -- Richard H. Winslow, the banker and legislator, thrilled residents every Fourth of July with an extravagant fireworks display at | If You're Thinking of Living In/Westport, Conn.; Close to Manhattan, Rich in Resources |
1019519_0 | With Friday's historic referendum on the peace accords, voters strongly endorsed a new politics for Northern Ireland, one in which differences are settled by political institutions instead of guns. It will take years to construct a permanent peace, but the vote was a vital down payment. Even though exit polls showed that Protestants were considerably less enthusiastic than Catholics, more than 70 percent of voters in Northern Ireland embraced a turn toward tranquillity. That achievement and the prospect of further progress are not diminished because some voted no. But in this hour of celebration, the difficulties ahead should not be forgotten. Because the change now begun in Northern Ireland is so pronounced, each new step will test the commitment of the people and their political leaders. Next month voters will elect delegates to an Assembly that gives Northern Ireland self-rule for the first time in 24 years. Later in the year, those delegates will join with leaders from the Irish Republic in a North-South body to work on matters like agriculture and transportation. Some of the Protestant opponents of the peace agreement hope to win election to the Assembly to scuttle the North-South body. These saboteurs would be betraying the cause they hold most dear, majority rule. The most important principle of the peace agreement for Protestants, who outnumber Catholics, is that the North will not become part of Ireland without majority consent. They must now accept the fact that the majority wants working political institutions. Another milestone comes with the marching season that begins in early July. Marches commemorating Protestant victories often go through neighborhoods that are largely Catholic. They have often turned into violent confrontations. To reduce tensions, the British Government set up a commission, with Catholics and Protestants, to choose parade routes this year. All groups should pledge to abide peacefully by the plans when they are unveiled. The police, as well, must show restraint. Long-term issues also pose dangers. Many Protestants opposed the agreement out of fear that the Irish Republican Army might resume terror attacks even as its political arm, Sinn Fein, joined the Assembly. The peace agreement is designed to prevent this. Only politicians affiliated with groups that have renounced violence can be elected. The same holds for prisoner releases. Only those affiliated with peaceful groups will be freed during the next two years. Protestants should demand more specific guarantees to insure that, for | Peace Advances in Northern Ireland |
1019550_5 | killings of Catholic marchers in Londonderry by British paratroopers and a one-day series of car bombings in Belfast by guerrillas of the Irish Republican Army, which killed 11 people. In a protest that drew world attention in 1981, 10 I.R.A. prisoners starved themselves to death in an effort to obtain the status of prisoners of war for fellow guerrilla inmates. The talks that produced the peace settlement began in June 1996, sponsored by the British and Irish Governments and led by a former United States Senate majority leader, George J. Mitchell. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A., was excluded because the I.R.A. had abandoned a 17-month cease-fire in February by exploding a bomb in London, killing 2 people and injuring 100. The talks proceeded only haltingly, with no notable progress through the last months of John Major's term as British Prime Minister. When Mr. Blair came to power last May 1, he declared his intention to get movement back into the talks. His first trip outside of London as Prime Minister was to Belfast. He called upon the I.R.A. to resume its cease-fire as a condition for considering the entry of Sinn Fein into the negotiations. In July, the group declared an ''unequivocal'' truce, and six weeks later Sinn Fein was permitted to join the talks. Reopening the talks in September, Mr. Blair set an ambitious May deadline for producing a settlement. By then 8 of the 10 Northern Ireland parties were participants, with the only hold-outs two hard-line Protestant parties, Mr. Paisley's Ulster Democrats and the U.K. Unionists of Robert McCartney. Over the following months Mr. Blair approved a series of ''confidence-building measures'' to shore up the fragile talks, reducing the number of British troops in Northern Ireland, moving prisoners from British jails to Irish ones and visiting the talks in Belfast and inviting negotiators to 10 Downing Street. The cease-fire by the Protestant paramilitary group that began in 1994 and the I.R.A. truce that began in July 1997 held firm while their political representatives stayed at the bargaining table, but splinter groups opposed to the talks committed random killings and bombings in an effort to disrupt them. In late December, Billy Wright, the leader of one of the violent splinter groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force, was shot dead in the Maze prison by three members of a Catholic fringe group. A spate of retaliatory killings broke | IRISH VOTERS, NORTH AND SOUTH, GIVE RESOUNDING 'YES' TO PEACE |
1019530_3 | within India was slow in developing, but it has already shown signs of building. At first, even some veteran Gandhians endorsed the blasts, hunting through their own recollections for examples where Gandhi approved the use of force, as when ''freedom fighters'' from Pakistan rushed into Kashmir in the fall of 1947 in a vain attempt to seize the disputed territory, only to be halted by Indian troops. But criticism has not been limited to the Mahatma's followers. A group of 100 Indian scientists signed a protest from institutes and universities here and abroad. The signers included at least one scientist in the United States, Dr. A. P. Balachandran of Syracuse University. ''We wish to recall here, emphatically, the horror that is nuclear war,'' the scientists wrote. ''We stand firmly with the long tradition of eminent scientists who have consistently argued against the induction of nuclear weapons. The horrors of nuclear war can never be forgotten, whatever pride we feel in India's scientific and technological achievements.'' Other scientists were harassed by Hindu nationalist extremists as they gathered for a protest meeting in Bangalore this week. Nationalists jostled them, shouting: ''You are all anti-national. There is no difference between you, the Pakistanis and the Chinese'' -- a reference to Prime Minister Vajpayee's justification of the tests as a counter to threats from Pakistan and China. The scientists invited the nationalists to join their discussions; they refused, but eventually dispersed when the police were called. In the first days after the tests, most major opposition political leaders lined up behind the Government's move. But later, several revised their position, perhaps sensing that public euphoria was receding. One possible sign of the shifting mood came, awkwardly for Mr. Vajpayee, when he visited the craters at the Pokharan testing range on Wednesday. Among the villagers who had lined up to see the Prime Minister was one group lofting a banner in English reading, ''We want a permanent hospital in Khetolai,'' the village nearest to the test site. One leader who criticized the tests this week, after first endorsing them, was Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born leader of the Congress Party and daughter-in-law of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. (The late Mrs. Gandhi, who was not related to Mohandas K. Gandhi, approved India's only previous nuclear test, in May 1974). Sonia Gandhi, who at first said the tests were a ''national matter,'' said Thursday that the tests were | Gandhi's Voice Summoned to Condemn India's A-Tests |
1019102_2 | of 70 to 75 percent'' of the 1.18 million eligible voters. ''Things will never be the same here again,'' Michael O'Neill, 30, an unemployed Catholic, said after he voted for the agreement in strife-ridden West Belfast at a primary school where the facade is pocked with bullet holes. ''It's about the future.'' John McCaffrey, 64, a Protestant, said after voting at a community center in Holywood, a mostly Protestant town east of Belfast: ''We've put up with the Troubles, with friends shot up and left dead. We've been looking forward for this for years.'' His wife, Mary, who is 60, added, ''We've been praying for years.'' If the mood was subdued, it was not because of apathy, but because of an ambivalence born of reality, knowing through grim experience that the old wounds could still fester and wreck the new power-sharing arrangement. From this medieval seaside town on the Belfast Lough to the epicenter of violence in the Catholic area of Falls Road in West Belfast to middle-class Holywood, most voters interviewed at their polling stations were united on one point: The agreement is not a panacea. Indeed, dozens of people on both sides answered with an emphatic no when asked if the violence that has tormented them for years would ever end. Here in Carrickfergus, Timothy Bennett, 18, said he was conflicted as late as Thursday night over how he would vote in his first election. He, like many Protestants, said he was frightened about the treaty's provision for the accelerated release of political prisoners, including guerrillas from the Irish Republican Army. ''I thought, 'There's two ways: You can go forward or back,' '' he said. ''I decided we have to move forward and give it a chance.'' But another first-time voter here, David Patrick, 18, said he was too unnerved by the prospect of I.R.A. prisoners back on the street ever to think of supporting the accord. Asked when he thought peace might come, the fresh-faced student replied, ''I could see peace in, maybe, 50 years or so.'' Ruth Burtun, 50, a social worker here who also opposed the agreement, was even less hopeful. ''I'm reading a book now about the poverty in Ireland two and three hundred years ago and the burning of Catholic homes and the burning of Protestant homes,'' she said. ''It went on then, and it will never change. Never.'' Even among people who | Irish Turn Out in Large Numbers; Exit Polls Show a Vote for Accord |
1019032_0 | In the last days before the referendum on the new Northern Ireland peace agreement, John Hume was still trudging through the towns and villages, continuing his life's work: trying to persuade Catholics and Protestants that a negotiated peace is better than endless sectarian warfare that leaves their loved ones dead in the streets. For the last 30 years, Mr. Hume has been the principal champion of a peace settlement between the province's Protestant majority and its Catholic minority. Without his indefatigable campaigning here -- and in London, Dublin and Washington -- there probably would not be a new peace agreement, according to leaders like President Clinton, Prime Ministers Bertie Ahern of Ireland and Tony Blair of Britain and former Senator George J. Mitchell, who presided over the talks that produced the agreement last month. The new pact, which is widely expected to be approved, would give Catholics in the North more political power, and the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republic more influence in Northern affairs. But Mr. Hume, the most influential mainstream Catholic leader in the North, who is now 61 and says he is under medical treatment for serious stress, was taking nothing for granted. He had his jacket pockets filled with ''Vote Yes'' cards as he traveled across the province, covering 300 miles in campaign stops in Londonderry, Belfast and the towns of Downpatrick, Newcastle and Warrenpoint on the Irish Sea. As usual, Mr. Hume spoke to people in the street in a soft but firm voice, cajoling, arguing, not quite begging, shaking hundreds of hands, hugging scores of people, to sell to both Catholics and Protestants his well-known but often-rejected hope for a peaceful settlement of the sectarian violence that has killed more than 3,200 people in the province since 1969. ''We have to start spilling our sweat, not our blood,'' he said repeatedly, in Downpatrick and Newcastle, as he has hundreds of times in recent years all over the province. ''Europeans were slaughtering each other for centuries. World War II, 35 million killed. Now, in the European Union, they are together, respecting each other's differences. And the French are still French, and the Germans are still German. Why can't we do that here?'' Most people nodded, shook his hand. Several hugged him, accepted ''Vote Yes'' cards with Mr. Hume's photograph on them. Several young women asked him to autograph the cards. Mothers pushed their small boys and | At the End of a Long Trek, Ulster's Apostle of Peace Is Still Trekking |
1020551_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-11 Pakistan, Answering India, Conducts Nuclear Tests Pakistan responded to India's nuclear tests with underground nuclear tests of its own. Within hours, Pakistan's Prime Minister declared his country a ''nuclear power,'' fulfilling a secret plan made by a predecessor nearly 30 years ago that it would build an ''Islamic bomb.'' A1 U.S. Penalizes Pakistan President Clinton denounced Pakistan's nuclear tests as dangerously destabilizing and imposed penalties that could cost the Islamic nation billions of dollars. A1 Pakistan has long depended on the World Bank, and more recently the International Monetary Fund, to prop up a failing banking system and a debt-ridden economy. A9 Japan, Germany, Canada and Australia joined the United States in taking action against Pakistan. France, Russia and Britain condemned the testing but did not back sanctions. A10 China expressed ''deep regret'' over Pakistan's decision to conduct nuclear tests, but denounced India for provoking the crisis. A10 The global network of seismometers that track earthquakes and underground atomic tests detected a lone nuclear signal from Pakistan. The signal could have been from several simultaneous blasts, scientists said, or from a single detonation. A10 Russia Asks for Fiscal Support President Boris N. Yeltsin said he would appeal to Western leaders for a support package to help stabilize Russia's shaky economy. A3 Germany Approves Pardon The German Parliament approved a mass pardon for hundreds of thousands of people punished unjustly by Nazi courts, military tribunals and medical panels. The new law is intended to provide moral rehabilitation for those Germans who fell afoul of the Nazis as resistance fighters, homosexuals or deserters. A3 Sentence for Internet Smut The former head of Compuserve Deutschland was sentenced to two years in jail, with a suspended sentence, on charges of spreading pornography. The judgment was the first time in Germany that an Internet provider had been held legally responsible for images reached through its service. A3 Protests Resume in Indonesia Students demonstrated in Jakarta to demand immediate elections. Their demand was repeated by the Muslim leader Amien Rais, who used the student demonstrations in recent weeks as a platform to consolidate his position as the country's most influential opposition figure. A11 Panamanians Oppose 2d Term The President of Panama is facing widespread opposition to his effort to amend the country's Constitution so he can seek a second five-year term. Whoever wins the election, scheduled for next May, will administer the Panama Canal | NEWS SUMMARY |
1020501_2 | $45 million. Otto Hauser, the Government spokesman, said Bonn ''sharply condemns this action,'' which he described as unacceptable. Klaus Kinkel, the German Foreign Minister, joined a number of officials around the world in saying it was ''unfortunate'' that Pakistan had disregarded the international calls for restraint and responded to the Indian tests ''with the same coin.'' In Ottawa, Prime Minister Jean Chretien said that relations with Pakistan would ''now be placed on hold'' and that further measures would be announced. Canada recalled its Ambassador to India earlier this month and canceled some joint talks as well as military exports to New Delhi. ''Canada is deeply disappointed the Pakistani Government did not heed the international call for restraint but chose to act in a manner contrary to international norms,'' Mr. Chretien said. Australia, which suspended military links with New Delhi and all assistance except relief aid after the Indian tests, condemned the Pakistani actions and said it was withdrawing an offer made Wednesday to double its existing $1.5 million annual aid to Islamabad. Britain, which believes that cuts in aid unfairly hurt the poor, does not plan any reductions in its $41 million assistance to Pakistan, just as it did not trim its $165 million to India. Saying he was ''dismayed,'' the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said, ''We condemn this action, which runs counter to the will expressed by 149 signatories to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to cease nuclear testing and to efforts to strengthen the global nonproliferation regime.'' In Paris, a Foreign Ministry statement said that France ''deplores and condemns these tests which run counter to world efforts to prevent proliferation and testing.'' The Russian Foreign Ministry said ''it was regrettable that the Pakistani leadership failed to overcome its emotions and show prudence and good sense at an extremely responsible time.'' Javier Solana, the Secretary General of NATO, said he condemned Pakistan's action, and the European Union said it would hold urgent meetings to consider taking the same action against Pakistan that it took Monday in the case of India. The European Union barred payments by international and financial institutions to India and called into question trade preferences. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright called on the allies to join in slapping sanctions on countries that test nuclear weapons. ''Only by acting together can we deter others from pursuing the nuclear option,'' she said. NUCLEAR ANXIETY: THE REACTION | Wealthy Nations Cut Aid to Pakistan Over Nuclear Tests |
1020442_0 | No matter how hot and humid New York City gets, you don't expect to encounter a tropical rain forest on the Upper West Side. This year, however, you can be enveloped by one, right on Central Park West. The experience comes courtesy of ''Amazon,'' a new Imax film examining the mighty river. Shown on the four-story-high Imax screen at the American Museum of Natural History, the film emphasizes that much of the river basin is as untouched as the outer reaches of the solar system. The rain forest's upper tier, 50 feet thick, has barely been visited. In the film, Julio Mamani, a tribal shaman, and Mark J. Plotkin, an American ethnobotanist, take separate trips through this forbidding but beautiful landscape. The men share a common purpose: to discover plants that promote healing. In the Amazon, such a quest is seldom quixotic. Mr. Plotkin, for instance, visits the Zoe, a tribe that hunts with arrows dipped in curare, a plant-derived poison. Lethal to the Indians' prey, curare is used beneficially in the West as a muscle relaxant and in heart medication. Although this scientific lore is fascinating, children will be most thrilled by the animals: a sloth vigorously swimming (and you thought they were all lazybones), a jaguar crouched in tree limbs, a tropical bird giving a baby monkey a peck. Written and directed by Kieth Merrill, with cinematography by Michael Hoover and narration by Linda Hunt, ''Amazon'' immerses you in this wild landscape for a mere 40 minutes. Yet there is a way to take it home: ''The Shaman's Apprentice: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest,'' by Mr. Plotkin and Lynne Cherry (Gulliver Green/Harcourt Brace, $16), is a picture book for ages 9 to 12. Although fictional, it is based on Mr. Plotkin's own jungle journeys. ''Amazon'' at the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, (212) 769-5034. Daily, 10:30 A.M. and 1:30, 2:30 and 4:30 P.M., with additional shows Fridays and Saturdays at 6 (a double feature with ''Cosmic Voyage'') and 7:30 P.M. Tickets to one film (includes museum admission): adults, $12; students and the elderly, $8.50; ages 2 to 12, $6.50; under 2, free. To buy tickets: (212) 769-5200. Entering Wonderland If you don't visit the Pierpont Morgan Library tomorrow, you will be late for a very important date. It is Family Day, which the White Rabbit himself will attend (on time, | Immersion In the Amazon |
1020555_1 | to be something of a disappointment to China, whose officials had privately urged Pakistan to restrain itself to preserve regional stability, even though many people suspected that a test was probably inevitable. ''We knew there was a great possibility that Pakistan would follow because of the internal pressure its leaders face,'' said a Chinese expert on South Asia who is affiliated with a government and who insisted on anonymity. ''But this is a rather difficult situation for China. We have a friendship with Pakistan, but we still have a strong stance against nuclear proliferation.'' The Pakistani Foreign Minister, Shamshad Ahmed, quietly traveled to Beijing 10 days ago, seeking a public guarantee of nuclear protection from China in exchange for forgoing nuclear tests, Western diplomats said. But Chinese leaders made no such promises. Mr. Ahmed returned to Islamabad with what he called a ''guarantee'' that China would not impose economic sanctions if Pakistan carried out its own test. But that was a rather tepid show of support, because China, as a matter of policy, does not impose sanctions on other nations and did not with India. In recent years China has worked hard to improve its ties with India, as well as to preserve its longstanding friendship with Pakistan. It has also taken a more active role in trying to preserve regional stability, repeatedly trying to organize talks between the two hostile nations on its western border. ''China still hopes for stable and normal relations with India,'' said a senior researcher at a Government research center. Although Chinese officials expressed outrage at the Indian nuclear tests and generally sympathized with Pakistan's plight, they counseled peace rather than reciprocal testing. China ''denounced'' the Indian tests, it expressed only ''regret'' over Pakistan's actions. ''Pakistan strongly says that they have the right to have a test, and I think that's understandable,'' said Shang Huipeng, a professor at Beijing University who has studied securities issues in South Asia. ''But a Pakistani test is a threat to nuclear stability in the region.'' Some regional specialists noted that India and Pakistan had long had the ability to test nuclear weapons and that the testing by both did not substantially alter the balance of power. The tests, the specialists added, might ultimately strengthen China's position in the region. With careful political maneuvering, China has managed to placate all sides, at least to some degree. NUCLEAR ANXIETY: IN CHINA | China Voices 'Regret,' but Still Faults India |
1020443_5 | discovered by the expedition and will soon be given a formal scientific name and description. Working with leaf casts, designers fabricated some 500,000 leaves of different sizes and shapes. Water flows through the vegetation; model creatures scamper up tree trunks; the air smells of jungle, and deep in the background, elephants and other large creatures appear in lifelike motion. The diorama depicts the rain forest not only at different times of day but also in three different states: pristine, altered by natural forces and degraded by human intervention, like farming, mining and logging. Dr. Eldredge said this represented a fundamental departure from traditional exhibitions at the museum. ''Rather than depicting nature solely in its pristine state,'' he said, ''this exhibition tells the story of humanity's transformation of the globe and the consequences of that transformation.'' Which brings one to the last section of the Hall of Biodiversity, where a sign declares, ''The future of life is in our hands.'' Along the wall are texts, graphics and videos explaining how life is being affected by agriculture and urbanization, overexploitation of resources and global environmental change. In other alcoves, solutions are proposed through protection and restoration of habitats, scientific research, improved management of resources and new laws and regulations. At one display, there is a reminder of unfinished business, as well as the difficulty of getting people to agree on courses of action to halt the loss of diversity. A panel refers to the signing of a convention to conserve biodiversity at the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992, and points out that as of early 1998, 23 countries, including the United States, had not ratified the agreement. ''I don't think there's a more passionate, powerful statement anywhere else about the value of biodiversity and the threats to it,'' said Dr. Michael J. Novacek, the museum's senior vice president and provost. The Hall of Biodiversity is also seen as a harbinger of exhibitions to come. More are expected to reflect new research by museum scientists. Since 1993, for example, the museum's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, headed by Dr. Francesca Grifo, has concentrated on scientific research aimed at identifying and understanding species losses as a basis for making complex political and economic decisions. The focus will also be on exhibitions reflecting, as Ms. Futter said, ''our sense of responsibility to bring major topics of our time to the public'' and to demystify | Showing Why a Rain Forest Matters |
1016266_0 | Derek Jeter does not have a naturally beautiful swing or approach, like Will Clark of the Texas Rangers or Ben Grieve of the Oakland Athletics. Jeter looms over the plate, tilting forward, sometimes even as he swings the bat. Imagine the Leaning Tower of Pisa with a bat. But Jeter swings hard and, when he makes contact, he hits the ball hard and good things happen. Jeter had three hits, including a triple, in the Yankees' 7-0 whipping of Minnesota today. Jeter also struck out twice and has 32 strikeouts in the Yankees' 31 games. But he is hitting .314, with 5 doubles, 2 triples, 5 homers, 29 runs scored and 19 runs batted in. At this rate, he would finish the season with 167 strikeouts, 63 extra-base hits (including 26 homers), 152 runs and 99 r.b.i. With that sort of season, Jeter would meet his personal goal of increasing his extra-base hits, after having 48 last year. ''I'm pretty hard on myself,'' Jeter said, ''but as of late I've been having better at-bats. I don't mind striking out if I have a good at-bat and someone makes a good pitch to get you, but it bothers you when you swing at bad pitches because you're overanxious.'' Joe Torre, the Yankees' manager, is pleased with Jeter's progress as an offensive player. ''I'd still like to have him strike out less,'' Torre said, ''but if that's going to affect the rest of the package, it ain't going to bother me. He swings hard, and he leaves nothing in the bag.'' Jeter's first at-bat today followed Chuck Knoblauch's leadoff double in the first inning. Jeter fell behind, no balls and two strikes, against the left-hander Eric Milton, but he battled his way back into the at-bat, twice ignoring inside fastballs -- the pitch that he could not help but swing at in April -- and the count went to 3-2. Then Jeter pulled a single through the hole at shortstop, with Knoblauch stopping at third. Each would score. Jeter drew a walk in the second inning, smashed a triple off the top of the wall in center field in the fourth and singled in the sixth. BASEBALL | For Jeter, A Potent Pace at Bat |
1016268_3 | jail since 1980 for a bombing in England, said the approval would ''enhance our struggle, provide fresh possibilities for the demands of the people.'' As the prisoners walked about the convention hall chatting with other Sinn Fein members who have served sentences for bombings and shootings, Sinn Fein security monitors thoroughly searched the bags of reporters and other visitors. One of the 10 delegates who spoke against the leadership, Don O'Leary, said under the agreement the Protestant majority in the North would control the new Assembly. ''To say no is not a step backward,'' Mr. O'Leary said. ''We can go back and negotiate.'' Most speakers ended their short speeches with the Republican motto, the Gaelic for ''Our day will come,'' invariably eliciting cheers. Under the agreement the British and Irish Governments promise that if a majority of people in the North eventually vote to unite with Dublin, the Governments would make that possible with legislation. But the Northern majority is likely to remain Protestant until well into the new century, and most Protestants want to remain a part of Britain. The agreement is ultimately intended to end 800 years of strife, including 300 years of sectarian violence, over the British presence on this island of five million people. Sinn Fein members cheered themselves for about a minute today after they had approved the agreement. Britain has ruled the North as a province since the South became independent in 1922. In the last 30 years, more than 3,200 people have been killed in guerrilla warfare that pitted the I.R.A. against Protestant paramilitaries and British security forces. About half the killings are attributed to the I.R.A. With Sinn Fein support, politicians expect the agreement to be approved in both referendums. The approval indicates that the I.R.A. is willing to give the peace effort a chance. It is also a personal victory for Mr. Adams, who won several important concessions from the British and Irish Governments before agreeing to the talks that produced the pact. Had Sinn Fein denounced the agreement and told its supporters to vote against it, the peace effort would have been seriously threatened. Even if the agreement is approved in both referendums, without Sinn Fein support its main objective would almost certainly be thwarted. That objective is to persuade the I.R.A. to end its ''armed struggle'' forever and to seek its objectives through its political leaders in Sinn Fein. | Sinn Fein, Almost Unanimously, Approves Peace Pact |
1016331_10 | advertisement in the Spanish-language edition of The Miami Herald, offering to sell the company for $1.6 million, and waited for a response. Dominican officials say they believe that the advertisement caught the eye of powerful Colombian traffickers who made Mr. Knipping an offer: Join the drug trade and save your business. Mr. Knipping has denied that he was approached by Colombians. But he has told Dominican investigators that his partner was contacted by a Dominican living in New York who offered to buy the factory for about $1 million, on one condition. The prospective buyer asked Mr. Knipping's partner to ship several hundred pounds of jellies, sweets and juices to warehouses in upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Soon after the request was made, the Colombians shipped cocaine by high-speed motorboats to the Dominican Republic, where it was repackaged at Mr. Knipping's factory into cans of guava pulp, Dominican investigators say. Mr. Knipping has denied any knowledge of this operation. Then, in March 1997, United States Customs Service agents working in the Port of Newark inspected a shipment of 950 cans of guava pulp. Twenty-six of the cans were suspiciously separated from the others by string and bore serial numbers that ended in 2222. When the agents opened the cans, they found 253 pounds of cocaine worth more than $2 million, according to a complaint filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan. They replaced the cocaine-filled cans with others bearing identical markings, and New York City police detectives followed the shipment when it left the dock. They watched with hidden cameras as the cans were unloaded at a Dominican-owned food distribution warehouse on West 220th Street. Four Dominicans -- three city residents and one businessman from the island who had learned his English as an exchange university sociologist years ago -- picked up the cans and were arrested as they drove with the illegal shipment down Broadway in a black Ford van. All have been convicted on drug charges and are awaiting sentencing. Mr. Knipping, who was in New York at the time of the shipment, fled the United States but was arrested in Santo Domingo. He has pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges and is awaiting trial there. The criminal complaint against him alleges that the cocaine shipment was arranged by Orsi Tineo, the prospective purchaser of the factory. Mr. Tineo, one of those arrested in New York transporting the | Dominican Drug Traffickers Tighten Grip on the Northeast |
1016243_0 | WORMHOLES Essays and Occasional Writings By John Fowles Edited and introduced by Jan Relf. 404 pages. Henry Holt & Company. $25. The title ''Wormholes'' may not seem the most appealing or appropriate label for this often lively collection of John Fowles's essays and occasional writings, suggestive as the word wormholes is of obscurity, decay, disintegration and death. But Mr. Fowles, the well-known novelist (''The Collector,'' ''The Magus,'' ''The French Lieutenant's Woman,'' ''Daniel Martin''), means ''wormholes'' in a different sense, as he explains in his preface: ''in the sense of the new physics, as defined in the O.E.D.: 'A hypothetical interconnection between widely separated regions of space-time.' '' He continues, ''That seemed at least metaphorically appropriate, since the complex space-time I live in is, though perhaps remote from that of any modern physicist, that of my own imagination.'' He adds, ''All serious writers are endlessly seeking for the wormholes that will connect them to other planes and worlds.'' Looking at the contents of ''Wormholes,'' you can see what he means by ''widely separated regions of space-time.'' The five parts of the collection are closely enough aligned, titled as they are ''Autobiographical: Writing and the Self,'' ''Culture and Society,'' ''Literature and Literary Criticism,'' ''Nature and the Nature of Nature'' and ''An Interview.'' But the 30 essays they comprise range from travel writing about France and Greece to an essay on young actresses at the Cannes International Film Festival (''Gather Ye Starlets''); from literary appreciations of writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence and William Golding, among others, to pieces called ''Weeds, Bugs, Americans,'' ''Shipwreck,'' ''The Falkland Islands and a Death Foretold'' and ''The Blinded Eye.'' And the sense of their disparity is borne out in reading them. Grounding what he writes about in his quirky opinions, Mr. Fowles shows repeatedly that the world of his imagination is at odds with convention. He distrusts names, for example, because the existence of the word conservation permits people to embrace the cause of the environment without having to take steps to protect it. He dislikes photography, as he somewhat perversely explains in an essay introducing a book of landscapes, because ''its glimpses make us greedy for more, and simultaneously forbid any more, like a lid smashed down on stealing fingers.'' But perhaps most strongly of all, he shuns the conventional image of the serious modern novelist, and out of this resistance come | The Passions and Obsessions of a Magus, of Sorts |
1020675_0 | The Security Council strongly deplored Pakistan's nuclear tests today, but also repeated its criticism of India and urged both nations to stop testing and take steps to reduce the tensions between them. The action by the Council was stalled for 24 hours by China, which two weeks ago sought a much tougher condemnation of the Indian tests that led Pakistan to follow suit. Russia, traditionally an ally of India, and France had objected to strong language then. The statement today accused both countries of being in violation of a de facto moratorium on nuclear testing that has been observed the world over for more than two years, when a majority of nations agreed to a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India tried unsuccessfully to block the treaty, and vowed never to sign it as long as the declared nuclear powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- did not eliminate their nuclear arms. Now that India is also a nuclear weapon state, it has given vague assurances against future testing but has not said unequivocally that it will sign the pact. Pakistan says it will not do so until India signs. The United States signed the treaty, but the Clinton Administration has not fought for its approval in the Senate, where leading Republicans oppose it. The United Nations has limited room for maneuver in trying to stop an arms race between India and Pakistan. Only the 15-member Security Council has enforcement powers on any issue, and it is divided on the India-Pakistan question. Secretary General Kofi Annan has offered his services if needed in improving relations between the two countries, but today his spokesman said he had no plans to travel to the area. Mr. Annan's predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, had offered to serve as an intermediary on the issue of Kashmir, the largely Muslim disputed territory between the two nations, but India rejected his overtures. Kashmir is widely seen as a flash point for war between India and Pakistan. An insurrection against India in the part it holds has been fueled by Pakistan, and India's new Hindu nationalist-led Government has threatened to make this the pretext for seizing the Pakistani-controlled section. Technically, Kashmir remains on the United Nations agenda, in the same category as East Timor, a disputed territory seized by Indonesia after the colonial Portuguese administration left. The future of Kashmir was left unsettled when India and | Council Chides Pakistanis and Indians, Too |
1020668_1 | technically capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to targets 900 miles away, or a shorter-range missile of lesser prowess. While Pakistan proposed today that both nations sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and India suggested that both pledge never to be the first to use nuclear weapons, Administration officials say they do not believe that those words reflect the reality of tensions that could erupt into war. The Clinton Administration is especially wary of taking political statements about nuclear intentions at face value, since Indian diplomats repeatedly assured their American counterparts this spring that no nuclear tests were imminent. Pakistan tested the Ghauri missile for the first time on April 6, angering India's new Hindu nationalist leaders. The missile, developed with North Korean technology, is named for a 12th-century Muslim warrior who defeated a Hindu leader named Prithvi -- which is the name of India's newest missile. Another nuclear test or missile launch by Pakistan would further inflame the arms race in the region, which escalated dramatically when India tested nuclear weapons on May 11 and 13. Pakistan responded with nuclear testing on Thursday. To try to return diplomatic relations in the region to a calmer footing, the Clinton Administration will not recall the United States Ambassador to Pakistan, Thomas Simons, and it plans to send back to Delhi soon its Ambassador to India, Richard Celeste, who was recalled after India's May 11 tests. The United States wants India and Pakistan to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would prevent any future nuclear tests. It is seeking signs that the two nations will stop producing fissile material for nuclear weapons and refrain from placing their nuclear weapons on missiles. But senior American officials recognize that concerted international pressure is necessary. ''Everyone's influence is limited, as we have seen clearly,'' one official said today. To that end, the Secretary of State, Madeleine K. Albright, plans to meet next week with foreign ministers of the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- Britain, China, France and Russia -- to discuss how to reduce the threat of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. An Administration official said the meeting ''would also explore ways in which the Chinese could influence the Pakistanis and the Russians could influence the Indians to reduce the level of tension.'' He said it would also seek ''ways in which to lean on the rest of | U.S. Fears That Calm Talk Is Masking Harsher Reality |
1013866_6 | or discredit a debate as not philosophical. It is the opposite of what we were trying to do: getting people to enjoy thinking together and listen to each other. I believe we can question anything.'' The cafes themselves, inevitably, have become a subject of debate and analysis. Some commentators have said philosophy now fills the void that arose at the end of the cold war when the old left-right debate fizzled out. Others reckon that interest in philosophy is reviving as other systems like religion and psychoanalysis fade, or as people lose trust in science. ''It makes me nauseous, this idea that philosophy is back as the new refuge,'' Mr. Hardy said. ''It is the opposite of a refuge. It is about doubt, about questioning.'' Cafe-philo organizers adamantly reject comparisons with the 1950's and 60's, when Jean-Paul Sartre and other French intellectuals held forth on the Left Bank at places like the Flore and the Deux Magots. The Sartre crowd was exclusive and talked only among themselves, they say, whereas the philo-cafe is an organized event with the floor open to anyone. For those who consider such fare a little heavy for Sunday breakfast, there are other cafe gatherings around town on most weeknights. If there are any heroes in the philo-cafes, it is Socrates, because his dialectical method serves as the model for the discussions, and Seneca, for his pursuit of the well-being of the soul. There is in the dialogues the recurrent, uneasy thread that Western civilization is about to go through dramatic change and a sense that more solid grounding is needed to confront it. Many apparently go to the sessions to seek reassurance in these uneasy times or simply good company. ''I come here to find an antidote to massive indigestion, the indigestion from the flood of information, the flood of products, the flood of sound bites,'' said Bernard Alves, an office manager. He said he had understood that philosophy was about the search for a better life, and that he had recently taken a new interest in the Stoics. Anne Marie Leblanc, a real estate agent, said she had not done any ''philo'' since high school, but she is a regular at the philo-cafe. ''It helps me to pause, and I find the promise of wisdom very exciting,'' she said. ''Most of all it's the pleasure of being together and, while being together, question ourselves.'' | Thought For Food: Cafes Offer Philosophy In France |
1013873_5 | biotechnology, the current ace in the hole in Monsanto's life sciences strategy is Roundup, the world's best-selling herbicide. It is widely used even by farmers who are not growing soybeans, cotton or corn that has been altered to tolerate spraying with it. And Monsanto's drug subsidiary, G. D. Searle, has a strong portfolio of products developed through conventional methods, including a potential blockbuster in a new arthritis treatment. Still, Monsanto says all its operations -- from Searle to its food ingredient business (best known for Nutrasweet) to its herbicide and seed divisions -- will increasingly be linked to biotechnology. ''Life begins at 97,'' say the signs posted here, referring to both the Solutia spinoff and the company's founding in 1901. Wall Street is impressed. Monsanto's stock, adjusted for splits, soared from $13.75 in 1995 to a peak of $56.1875 on April 9, and that is not counting the value of the spunoff Solutia shares. [Monsanto closed at $54.375 Friday, up $1.50, and Solutia at $28.50, up 12.5 cents.] It helps that Mr. Shapiro and other senior managers have compensation packages heavily tied to the stock's performance, including requirements that they invest in options that will be worthless unless the stock increases 60 percent in the next five years. But the most telling endorsement of Monsanto's strategy is that analysts have been pestering broader-based companies with strong life sciences businesses, like DuPont and Hoechst, to divest themselves of their other operations. DuPont, for one, does not see the need. It contends that biotechnology will eventually contribute to its industrial business -- plants could be altered to produce nylon and other oil-based products, for example. DuPont also says it is ahead of Monsanto in achieving breakthroughs in the genetics of food and animal feed. Monsanto's high-profile success, it contends, has been largely confined to inserting traits in crops that affect how much insecticide or herbicide farmers use, instead of actually changing what is grown. Bragging rights are valuable, but each also has a lot to gain from the other's successes. The industry needs hit products to knock down the barriers to faster commercialization of biotechnology. But the specter that is haunting biotechnology, particularly in Europe, is the specter of what British tabloids like to call ''Frankenstein food.'' Polls show that Europeans are more worried than Americans about genetically modified products. Agrevo, the joint venture of Hoechst and Schering A.G., recently postponed the | Getting Biotechnology Set to Hatch; As Science Gathers Speed, Monsanto Leads Pack |
1013919_0 | Dan Pollard, an American missionary who was evicted from Russia in March under a new law that restricts minority religious groups, has been granted a visa for three months to return to his church in Vanino, a remote port town in the Far East. He received the visa on Thursday from the Russian Consulate in Seattle, and plans to leave for Russia today. The religion law passed last year in Russia requires that every religious group or faith that has not been active in Russia for 15 years must be certified by the Government in order to practice freely. Mr. Pollard is an independent Baptist missionary whose church may have been vulnerable because it is not affiliated with any pre-existing Christian alliance. In March, he was refused accreditation as a pastor by a regional official for religious affairs in Khabarovsk in eastern Siberia. Mr. Pollard says that now, in order to extend his stay beyond three months, he must reapply to that same official for accreditation. Mr. Pollard's case had been pressed by the State Department and several members of Congress. But Mr. Pollard says he was granted a visa only because his attorney in Russia secured an invitation for him from a Russian religious group, which he declined to identify. He hopes to preach again in his church in Vanino next Sunday. | Baptist Gets Visa to Return to Russia |
1017132_0 | The House overwhelmingly approved a bill today to punish foreign countries that persecute people for their religious beliefs. The lopsided vote, 375 to 41, masked many lawmakers' ambivalence toward a popular bill that aims to champion religious liberties worldwide, but which critics say will imperil religious minorities, create a hierarchy of human rights violations and hurt United States foreign policy. ''This was an awfully awkward vote, and I know I'll hear from the folks back home,'' said Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina, one of 14 Republicans who opposed the bill. ''But the devil was in the details.'' Under the bill approved today, countries that permit or endorse a pattern of violent attacks or other persecution against religious believers would automatically face a cut-off of United States aid, other than food and medical supplies, restrictions on exports and American opposition to loans by international financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund. Among the countries criticized today in the debate were China, Pakistan, Indonesia and Sudan. This bill is unlikely to be adopted by the Senate, which is expected to pass a measure giving the President more flexibility in dealing with countries accused of religious persecution. House and Senate conferees would seek a compromise between the two versions. But if the compromise ends up close to the House bill, President Clinton would probably veto it. And despite the huge margin today, it is unclear whether two-thirds votes could be achieved in the House and the Senate to override a veto. Last month, Mr. Clinton asked a group of 60 evangelical Christian leaders at the White House to withdraw their support for the House bill. None of this seemed to matter on the House floor today, where Republican leaders whisked the bill through the legislative motions with only a handful of token amendments. ''Today we stand before the world to show we cannot condone and will not tolerate countries that persecute people on the basis of religious faith,'' said Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader. The vote marks a major victory for the Christian Coalition, which had lobbied heavily for the bill, and the House Republican leadership, which is catering to a conservative base that has complained that Speaker Newt Gingrich and Mr. Armey had failed to deliver on its legislative promises. In debate today on the House floor, no one disagreed that the United States should do more | House Votes to Bar Religious Abuses Abroad |
1017151_5 | the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in England, Professor Peto said. Zeneca Pharmaceuticals of Wilmington, Del., which sells tamoxifen as Nolvadex, paid for satellite transmission for the simultaneous news conference. The analysis confirmed earlier findings that tamoxifen was most effective against a type of breast cancer known both as hormonal sensitive or estrogen receptor positive. In this type, cancerous cells are sensitive to female hormones. Growth of such cells can be stimulated by estrogen and other hormones. About one-half of pre-menopausal women and three-fourths of postmenopausal women have hormonal sensitive tumors. Tamoxifen's principal risks are cancer of the uterus and blood clots that lodge in the lungs. Three of 1,000 participants died of cancer of the uterus or a blood clot in the lung. In women with hormone sensitive cancer, a five-year course of tamoxifen prevented about 30 times as many deaths as it caused, the Oxford team said. There was no increased risk of liver or bowel cancer. ''What we have got in this study is an overwhelming advantage in terms of life and death of benefits over risks in women with hormonal sensitive breast cancer,'' Professor Peto said. Research on tamoxifen began in the 1960's and it has been prescribed since 1973. The pill is generally taken once a day, and its cost varies widely among countries. Dr. Eyre said that in the United States, a five-year course costs from $6,000 to $8,000, compared to from $300 to $450 in England. The difference owes largely to the expiration of the patent on tamoxifen in England several years ago. Zeneca's patent for tamoxifen holds until mid-2002 in the United States. A survey conducted among doctors in several countries by the Oxford team showed that there was uncertainty about whether age, extent of spread and other factors determined whether women benefited more or less from the drug. The survey did not include the United States. Zeneca released information about tamoxifen use in an unnamed managed care company. Among 1,861 breast cancer patients, 42 percent of women 41 to 49 years of age did not receive tamoxifen, compared to 11 percent of women 60 to 65 and 9 percent of women 66 to 70 years of age. The Oxford team said another 10 years of observation is needed to determine whether tamoxifen prevents recurrence or merely delays it, and whether adverse effects increase in incidence. The study will continue for 30 years. | Drug Is Found to Fight Return of Breast Cancer |
1017154_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-12 Indonesia's Capital Shaken By Third Day of Unrest The death toll rose to more than two dozen as rioting and looting broke out in virtually every quarter of Jakarta. President Suharto cut short a visit to Egypt when anti-Government student protests erupted into a mass uprising after the police killed six demonstrators on Tuesday. A1 U.S. Delays Indonesia Aid The Clinton Administration, citing the worst political violence in Indonesia in decades, ordered the evacuation of all nonessential United States Embassy employees there, joined European nations in delaying an emergency aid payment to the country, and called off a mission by an American military delegation. A9 Palestinians' Violent Protest Palestinians marked the 50th anniversary of the creation of Israel, an event they call the ''catastrophe,'' with two minutes of silence and several hours of violence in which Israeli forces fired on crowds and nine Palestinians were left dead. A1 Palestinians marching in Jerusalem clashed with the Israeli police. A11 No Progress in Mideast Talks Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel ended a second round of talks without a breakthrough on reviving stalled Middle East peace negotiations. A11 Bill to Prevent Persecution The House approved a bill to punish foreign countries that persecute people for their religious beliefs. Critics say the measure will imperil religious minorities, create a hierarchy of human rights violations and hurt United States foreign policy. A1 Call to Halt Violence in Russia Jewish leaders in Moscow, reacting to the bombing of a synagogue there, urged the Russian authorities to act to halt the threat of violence against ethnic and religious minorities. A12 Pakistan Pressured Not to Test Pakistan came under increasing foreign pressure to refrain from answering India's recent nuclear tests with it own tests. A10 Incentive Offered to Pakistan Two Senators proposed repealing a law that has prohibited American military assistance to Pakistan since 1990 as an incentive to Pakistan's Government not to conduct an underground nuclear test. A10 Clinton's Foreign Policy Goal President Clinton, speaking to auto workers in Germany, said his most urgent foreign policy goal before leaving office was to secure ''a peace agreement in the Middle East that will last for a long time.'' A4 Helms Offers Aid for Cuba Jesse Helms, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed a $100 million aid package that he said would improve the lives of the | NEWS SUMMARY |
1017077_1 | to try to match India ''tit for tat.'' [Jim Steinberg, the United States' deputy national security adviser, said in a briefing in the eastern German town of Eisenach during Mr. Clinton's visit there that a nuclear test would destabilize South Asia. He signaled a willingness to address issues that Pakistan may bring up, but indicated that legislative restrictions might limit what the United States can offer.] There was no indication, however, that these appeals were changing the position of Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India since 1947 and fears another one. ''India's actions, which pose an immediate and grave threat to Pakistan's security, will not go unanswered,'' a senior Pakistani diplomat, Munir Akram, said today at a United Nations disarmament conference in Geneva. Domestic pressure on the Government to begin nuclear testing increased as it became clear that India's two detonations on Wednesday were to test weapons that could be used on the battlefield against tank formations or infantry units. Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan called these weapons ''Pakistan specific.'' The Pakistani Cabinet met today but made no decision on how to proceed. Foreign diplomats in Islamabad said the decision would probably be made by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his army commander, Gen. Jehangir Karamat. India and Pakistan have been bitter political, religious and territorial rivals since both states came into being half a century ago. India considers itself a great power and is frustrated by what it perceives as the world's failure to treat it as such. Since countries with nuclear weapons have automatically been treated as great powers, India sees a nuclear arsenal as a psychological and political weapon as well as a military one. India and Pakistan have long had competitive nuclear programs, but both had refrained from tests that were openly for military purposes. For Pakistan to avoid responding now would be a retreat from its longstanding policy of seeking to match India in every way. In making their case that Pakistan should not begin nuclear testing, foreign leaders have sought to persuade their Pakistani counterparts that Pakistan's long-term security would be better served if it refrains from becoming a nuclear power. ''The Pakistanis have an opportunity to de-link themselves from India in this area and use the distaste generated by the tests to Pakistan's advantage,'' said a diplomat in Islamabad who is closely monitoring the debate here. To many nations -- including | Pakistan Is Under Growing Pressure Not to Respond to India With Atom Test |
1020074_2 | world. . . . The world may seem to be shrinking, but that's just an illusion. Every image we see excludes the thousands of others that have been edited out.'' TRINITY COLLEGE JIMMY CARTER Former President ''We're inclined to live in an encapsulated world of our own creation. We like to be with people who are just like us, with the same color, the same kind of clothes, the same kind of automobile, the same kind of houses, who go to the same place to worship. But there's a vast world out there -- not just in our own country but in other nations as well.'' STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ANNA QUINDLEN Author ''You walk off this campus this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. . . . People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good. . . . Realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted.'' HOWARD UNIVERSITY HILLARY CLINTON First Lady ''Don't confuse having a career with having a life. They are not the same.'' DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY MAE C. JEMISON Astronaut ''Make sure you formulate the right questions. You're always going to hear people say a fool and their money are soon parted. But the real question that you want to ask yourself is, 'How does a fool and money get together in the first place?' '' COLLEGE OF WOOSTER THOMAS D. POLLARD President, Salk Institute for Biomedical Research ''Certainly in the world of science, the questions are more important than the answers in many cases. But I believe that is also true of life in general. . . . Would the women in the audience actually like to know whether or not they are at risk for breast cancer? The community is divided on whether this kind of information is desirable, whether people could live with | Words of Wisdom for the Nation's Graduates |
1018318_1 | 338-3232. Three Varieties of Sauce It looks like a designer barbecue sauce and it is nicely complex, but Lize Jamaican-Style Barbecue Sauce comes without a designer price tag: it is around $1.79 for 10 ounces. Lize (pronounced Liz-EE) was created by Hyacinth Wright-Thomas, who is from the island of Jamaica, and it is sold by her company, Brateka Enterprise of St. Albans, Queens. The regular variety is a straightforward, tomato-based, slightly tangy mixture. The hot flavor has more zip and is the more intense. A third kind, flavored with coffee, is the newest product in the line. The sauces are sold at Zabar's, 2245 Broadway (80th Street), and at some Associated and Met Food stores in Brooklyn and Queens. Get 'em While They're Hot It is hard to find a better grilling food than sausages, which can be so savory and delicious when they come sputtering off the hot coals. Sliced into nuggets and speared with toothpicks, they make great cocktail nibbles. A platter of mixed sausages served with grilled vegetables and grilled country bread rubbed with garlic can easily become a dinner. Some of the best-tasting sausage classics available in the metropolitan region are the Spanish and Portuguese varieties made by Corte & Company, 414 Hoboken Avenue in Jersey City. Some of its specialties are chorizos in several sizes and degrees of spiciness ($3.40 to $4.25 a pound), hot or mild linguica ($3.65 and $4.25 a pound) and morcilla blood sausages ($3.60 a pound). The company also sells by mail; shipping charges are extra. For information: (201) 653-7246. Some of Corte's sausages are also sold at Balducci's, 424 Avenue of the Americas (Ninth Street); Agata & Valentina, 1505 First Avenue (79th Street); Dean & DeLuca, 560 Broadway (Prince Street), and Citarella, 2135 Broadway (75th Street) and 1313 Third Avenue (75th Street). Gravlax for Grilling Durham's Tracklements, a smoked fish company in Ann Arbor, Mich., has introduced gravlax for the grill. A thick, one-pound slab of marinated salmon should be seared over very hot coals, skin side first. For medium-rare it takes about one and a half to two minutes a side. After three minutes a side it will be cooked through but will still be moist. Allow the fish to cool briefly before slicing and serving. A quick, easy sauce is made by combining equal parts Dijon mustard, honey and plain yogurt. The gravlax is $18 a pound plus | Food Stuff; It's All Systems Go for Cookout Season |
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