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1018084_0 | To the Editor: Your May 13 news article on jobs for teen-agers omitted perhaps the most important benefit. Those who have jobs learn responsibility and acquire a greater understanding of what will be expected of them in the working world. They learn the importance of punctuality, and they learn that they must follow the rules of the work environment, regardless of personal preference. These lessons may serve them better in their professional lives than much of the academics provided in school. There is no substitute for real-life experience. KENNETH J. DAVIS Scotch Plains, N.J., May 13, 1998 | In Long Run, Jobs Help Students; Real-World Experience |
1018083_0 | To the Editor: ''Experts Take a 2d Look at Virtue of Student Jobs'' (news article, May 13) fails to report strong evidence that students who work while in high school see positive effects on long-term earnings and employment. According to a University of North Carolina study, people who work during their senior year in high school have average earnings that are up to 26 percent higher 7 to 10 years later than those who did not work during high school. A Tulane University study also found an earnings premium for those who worked while in high school -- up to $1,600 a year 12 years later. It also reported that students living in two-parent households are more likely to work and that 78 percent of teen-agers with college-educated fathers work. The implication is that many of these families do not need the extra income but that they place a high value on the benefits of entry-level work experience. THOMAS K. DILWORTH Washington, May 13, 1998 The writer is a senior policy analyst, Employment Policies Institute. | In Long Run, Jobs Help Students |
1018082_0 | To the Editor: Dan A. Oren (letter, May 13) tells us that ''physics is hollow without mathematics.'' Shades of Descartes! There is a centuries-long experience of the effort to reduce human knowledge to a single mode of knowing. Dr. Edward O. Wilson's thinking resembles that of the Greek physicists Socrates criticized in Plato's ''Phaedo.'' They would have explained Socrates' presence on death row on the basis of his bones and sinews. Genes have much to do with how we act and react. Still, there is good reason to view our ability to understand goodness, and to use it as a principle of action, as requiring a source that transcends such corporeal causes. (Rev.) LAWRENCE DEWAN Ottawa, May 14, 1998 The writer teaches philosophy at the Dominican College of Philosophy and Theology. | Biology Theory Slights Other Fields |
1016405_3 | that the incidence of lung cancer is rising nine times faster in women than in men -- an increase of 4.6 percent for women compared with 0.5 percent for men each year between 1973 and 1991. Death rate figures are similar. Dr. Dresler predicted that within a decade the number of lung cancer cases in women and men will be roughly equal. Of course, lung cancer is not the only risk incurred by smoking, nor are women the only victims of their tobacco addiction. Smoking also increases a woman's risk of developing cancers of the cervix, larynx, esophagus, bladder, pancreas, kidney and stomach and it accounts for nearly 100,000 deaths a year from cardiovascular disease. A woman's risk of suffering a heart attack or dying of heart disease is increased even if she smokes only one to four cigarettes a day. Smoking also causes strokes, emphysema, premature wrinkling and early menopause and it increases a woman's risk of developing ulcers and osteoporosis. Then there are the hazards to their children. In addition to such pregnancy complications as miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery and impaired fetal growth, smoking by a baby's mother increases the risk of sudden infant death by two to four times and increases the baby's risk of developing respiratory and ear infections, asthma and pneumonia. A Greater Danger Perhaps the most frightening fact from Dr. Dresler is this: Lung cancer is up to three times more likely to develop in women who smoke than in men with comparable smoking habits. While the reasons for this susceptibility have not been fully identified, Dr. Dresler said that women seem to be genetically more vulnerable to the effects of tobacco. For one thing, she said, women who smoke experience a much greater decline in pulmonary function than men do. Hormones also seem to play a major role. For example, in a study by researchers at the American Health Foundation in Valhalla, N.Y., women who never smoked faced no increase in lung cancer risk if they took estrogen at menopause. But among smokers on estrogen replacement the lung cancer rate was more than 32 times greater than that among nonsmokers, whereas the risk to smokers not on hormone replacement was increased by 13 times. Dr. Dresler said that among the patients she has operated on for lung cancer, men got the disease after a smoking history averaging 77 pack-years, whereas it occurred in | A Fatal Shift in Cancer's Gender Gap |
1016499_3 | the tests during his year in office, said: ''It was always known that India had the capability to do this. The tests only confirm what was always known.'' But the outcry from outside India was almost universal, with dozens of governments expressing anger that India had broken an informal moratorium on nuclear testing that went into effect in 1996, when India and Pakistan stood aside as scores of other nations met at the United Nations to endorse the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all nuclear tests. The treaty is widely regarded as a key step toward halting the spread of nuclear weapons. The Indian tests drew immediate condemnation from the Clinton Administration, which said the United States was ''deeply disappointed'' and was reviewing trade and financial sanctions against India under American nonproliferation laws; from other Western nations, including Britain, which voiced its ''dismay'' and Germany, which called the tests ''a slap in the face'' for 149 countries that have signed the treaty, and from Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, who issued a statement expressing his ''deep regret.'' But perhaps the most significant reaction came from Pakistan, which raised fears that years of effort by the United States to prevent an unrestrained nuclear arms race on the subcontinent were on the verge of collapse. In the absence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was visiting Central Asia, Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan hinted that Pakistan, which has had a covert nuclear weapons program since the early 1970's, would consider conducting a nuclear test of its own, its first. ''Pakistan reserves the right to take all appropriate measures for its security,'' Mr. Ayub Khan said in a statement to the Senate in Islamabad, the capital, that came amid demands from right-wing politicians and hard-line Islamic groups for an immediate nuclear test. He laid the blame for the Indian tests on Western nations, mainly the United States, for not moving to head them off after Pakistan raised an alarm in Washington last month about the nuclear plans of the Vajpayee Government. When it took office in March after an election, the Government led pledged that it would review India's policy with a view to ''inducting'' nuclear weapons into its armed forces. ''We are surprised at the naivete of the Western world, and also of the United States, that they did not take the cautionary signals that we were flashing to | TESTS BRING A SHARP OUTCRY |
1016406_0 | FOR nearly four decades, levees lining 23 miles of the Snake River here have held high spring runoff from the Teton Mountains in check, allowing lavish homes to blossom amid cottonwood forests in the river's flood plain. But the 15-foot-high levees, serpentine piles of rock originally put together by the Army Corps of Engineers to protect farm fields and hay meadows, have created serious, unanticipated problems along one of the most scenic stretches of river in the world. The upper Snake's inability to flood its banks each spring, coupled with an increase in the velocity of the water that has come from confining the river to one or two channels instead of five or six, has dramatically altered the river's ecology, wiping out islands and leaving long stretches of riverbank nearly barren. While researchers are well aware of the ecological havoc dams can wreak, they have only recently begun to recognize the destructive nature of levees and their free-form cousin, riprap -- piles of rock and earth dumped along rivers by homeowners to guard against erosion. Now, along the Snake, the corps and local officials are looking for ways to undo some of the damage. Rik Gay, the restoration study project manager for Teton County, and Pamela Lichtman, a hydrologist for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, recently walked along the riverbank and pointed out that most of the riparian areas, the land along the river or nourished by the river, were long stretches of cobbles with virtually no vegetation. Upriver in Grand Teton National Park, where there are no levees, the islands are thick with willows and cottonwoods, of different ages and sizes. Ms. Lichtman pointed to a pile of fresh soil deposited by last year's flooding and a young cottonwood sprouting in it. ''Flooding is a disturbance regime, just like fire,'' she said. ''The cottonwoods need the flooding every year to keep reproducing.'' This fall, in a unique demonstration project, the corps and Teton County officials will try to reintroduce some of the natural dynamics into the Snake and its riparian areas. The centerpiece of the plan is to establish new islands in the river. Over the centuries, species adapt to the ebb and flow of a river, and the sudden absence or change of a ''flood pulse,'' the rhythm of flooding and receding, drastically changes an ecosystem. The Snake River used to flow steeply through five or six | Engineers Plan to Send a River Flowing Back to Nature |
1013815_0 | 'The Ugly' Directed by Scott Reynolds Not rated; 92 minutes Scott Reynolds's wildly pretentious slasher film ''The Ugly'' has more scenes of a straight razor being drawn across a woman's throat than any movie in recent memory. But because the film views the murders through the paranoid eyes of the serial killer who commits them, everything looks slightly distorted; instead of being red, the blood that gushes from his victims' throats resembles a sticky black tar. As the film's labored flashbacks reveal, the murderer, Simon Cartwright (Paolo Rotundo), has endured a lifetime of abuse and scorn. Every insult Simon has suffered, from vicious maternal beatings to savage humiliation at the hands of his schoolmates (for being dyslexic), is recalled. A facial wound suffered as a boy becomes a grotesque permanent disfigurement in his own mind. In the mental hospital where Simon is shackled, two thuggish orderlies (Paul Glover and Chris Graham) regularly beat him up, spit in his food and verbally abuse him while their supervisor's back is turned. Enter Dr. Karen Schumaker (Rebecca Hobbs), an expert on criminal insanity notorious for gaining clemency for convicted murderers. Simon has petitioned her for an evaluation that would prove he has been cured of his homicidal impulses. During her absurdly unprofessional interviews with the killer, the doctor baits him into a near-frenzy, and it is obvious that he is far from placid. The movie has several grisly fantasy sequences in which the unchained Simon attacks the feisty, attractive interviewer with the ferocity of a mad dog. The New Zealand film, which opens today at the Angelika Film Center (18 West Houston Street, at Mercer Street, Greenwich Village), plays a coy will-he-or-won't-he game as to whether Simon will succeed in acting out these fantasies. Of course, we know it's only a matter of time before he finds a way. ''The Ugly'' flaunts an acidic visual flair and has a creepily convincing central performance by Mr. Rotundo, who bears a disturbing resemblance to Charles Manson. But the movie's timing is way off, and its jolting little shocks are telegraphed ahead of time. It has no sense of when to hold back. STEPHEN HOLDEN | Film in Review |
1021150_2 | Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore had at least twice -- in some cases 60 times -- as much income per capita. Led by Thailand, several Southeast Asian nations have also cut birth rates substantially by making safe family-planning methods readily available to most ordinary people. James H. Nolt, assistant professor of political science at the New School and senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York, said educational investment has produced not only managers and competent public officials but also a large pool of skilled engineers and technicians. ''These gains will survive the economic crisis and allow these countries to be competitive producers again,'' he said. And with such educated managerial and middle classes, he said, ''the old forms of political rule are more subject to challenge than they might have been in a more traditional, agriculture-based society.'' Democracy Helps The evolution of politics toward multi-party democracy has been most striking in Thailand, traditionally a self-contained monarchy. John Bresnan, a senior research scholar at Columbia University's East Asian Institute, said Thailand ''has had enormous success in the last nine months,'' having headed off martial law, adopted a new constitution, changed governments, removed the head of the central bank and recovered some economic ground. Noeleen Heyzer, a Singaporean who is executive director of Unifem, the United Nations development program for women, says educational spending -- 20 percent or more of the budget in some countries -- did not bypass the grass roots, as it did in many other regions. She pointed to rural education in Malaysia, which lured American and other computer giants to provide the kinds of jobs that would bring social development. Visitors to the country's free trade zone on Penang Island a decade ago, for example, could see demure Muslim women in head scarves at work on circuit boards. ''You had women and men who were able to build up strong economic assets,'' Ms. Heyzer said. ''And in introducing the idea of computers to rural women, a mind-set was changed. So when you get information technology, it is not something dramatically new.'' Meanwhile, she said, Singapore was moving ''from a trading center to a labor-intensive industrial structure to a more high-tech economy and eventually to service-information technology.'' Confronting Corruption Singapore, under the socially visionary but politically intolerant Lee Kuan Yew, took another step not emulated by its Asian neighbors. It sought to eliminate corruption | The World: Weathering the Storm; The Southeast Asians Did Some Things Right |
1021200_3 | to state-of-the-art navigation systems that pinpoint a meeting place. The boats themselves are faster than ever, outfitted with three and four outboard engines for extra horsepower and customized to carry up to 2,200 pounds of cocaine for delivery to Bahamian Islands like Bimini and ultimately ports and marinas along Florida's east coast, from Palm Beach County down to the Florida Keys. Their operators wear night vision goggles. ''Before it was much more half-haphazard,'' said Louis E. Weiss Jr., a D.E.A. special agent who has worked in South Florida and the Bahamas for 13 years. ''They're much more organized.'' The traffickers have also altered their life style. In Florida, where drug planes once landed on expressways and shoot-outs were so common traffickers earned the moniker ''cocaine cowboys,'' flamboyance is out. Increasingly, Federal officials said, the drug trade operators aim to blend in. When Yolene and Savil Dessaint, a couple in their 40's, were arrested in December on cocaine trafficking charges, they lived in an affluent Fort Lauderdale suburb and their two children attended local schools. No flashy cars, no appearance of great wealth. They say they ran an import-export business, but prosecutors contend that their business really consisted of smuggling cocaine from Colombia through Haiti and into the Miami River and distributing about 440 pounds a month in three South Florida counties. ''They're not buying Rolex watches, but they invest in land and stocks and bonds,'' William J. Mitchell, the Drug Enforcement Administration's special agent in charge in Miami, said of the new breed of trafficker. But some things about the Bahamas-Florida route have never changed. Federal officials say the operations headquarters for Colombian traffickers remains well-entrenched in South Florida; when large loads of cocaine are received in Los Angeles, they said, directions on distribution come from Miami. And the balloon effect notwithstanding, drug smuggling through the Bahamas and Florida has been a constant, with an increase in trafficking in Colombian heroin in the last five years adding to cocaine smuggling. It is an indication of how little the flow of drugs has been disrupted over time that cocaine prices have remained stable and even dropped in the last 15 years. In the Miami area, a kilo of cocaine, or 2.2 pounds, that sold for up to $38,000 in 1984 sold for as little as $12,000 to $15,000 in 1988 and for $12,500 to $18,000 this year, D.E.A. figures show. D.E.A. | Upgraded Drug Traffic Flourishes on Old Route |
1021108_2 | bag, because they were made hot that morning,'' said Michael C. Yeager of Paradigm Capital Corporation, a private hedge fund in Fort Worth that invested in Authentic. As a group, Mexican-Americans also tend to prefer foods that emphasize spices like cilantro and coriander, and heat. The power of peppers is measured in Scoville Heat Units, named for a Parke-Davis pharmacologist, Wilbur Scoville, who devised the scale in 1912. A mass-market brand like Pace's salsa ranks in the 400 S.H.U. range; brands like La Victoria, Embasa and Hertez are on the order of 1,800 or more. ''Your shirt needs to be changed after you've eaten our product,'' joked J. Gary Shansby about Authentic Specialty Foods, which was assembled from five small companies by his Shansby Group, San Francisco investors who buy, build and sell specialty-food, pharmaceutical and other brand-product companies. The Shansby Group started with Calidad Foods in Grand Prairie. ''The plus of the business was that it was a very good business,'' said Mr. Shansby, general partner of the group. ''The minus was that it was a small business in north Texas, and was therefore not attractive to big food companies.'' Mr. Shansby and his partners renamed it Authentic, took it public (keeping what wound up as a 20 percent stake), and started acquiring other companies in a quest for critical mass. La Victoria, a popular Southern California brand of salsas and taco sauces founded in 1917, was first; three other small companies in Texas, which with California is home to most of the Mexican-American food market, followed in quick succession. The company cut costs by combining manufacturing plants, pumping more products to grocers through local distribution lines and computerizing delivery systems. Authentic's market capitalization grew to $133 million, and the company approached DESC about acquiring Embasa; instead, DESC made an attractive offer for Authentic. Jerry P. Wright, president of Embasa Foods, said roll-ups of mom-and-pop businesses are ''probably everybody's idea.'' DESC plans to take Authentic private, build it further, and then perhaps take it public again, he said. DANIEL D. VILLANUEVA, managing director of the Bastion Capital Corporation, a private equity fund in Los Angeles that invests in Hispanic businesses, predicted that a half-dozen private companies in the industry could go public during the next two years. Mercado Latino, a wholesaler and packager of Hispanic foods and other products with headquarters near Los Angeles and $100 million in sales, | The Salsa Is Hot, but What About the Stock? |
1020833_3 | example, some of the material used to demonstrate the emergence of a ''sophisticated system of management'' in the Elizabethan Navy. To begin with, during the 1590's the Lord Admiral of England, Charles Howard of Effingham, reinforced his control of the fleet by placing his relatives in many key positions: his brother-in-law Lord Henry Seymour, his cousin Lord Thomas Howard, his nephew Lord Sheffield and his son-in-law Sir Richard Leveson all received command of capital ships and soon became thoroughly familiar with them. The Lord Admiral himself set a fine example. He went ''aboard every ship that goeth out with me and in every place where any may creep'' looking for leaks, and he cared ''specially for the poor toiling and continual laboring mariner, himself daily making inquiry how they did, and calling to them by name to know in what case they stood, and what they did lack.'' Seymour once excused himself to a correspondent during the Armada campaign of 1588 for dictating a letter because ''I have strained my hand with hauling of a rope,'' while another Elizabethan captain of exalted social status, the Earl of Cumberland, when weighing anchor in a hurry, took his place at the capstan with his men. Such actions did not come naturally to noblemen; rather they reflected deliberate policy by officers who appreciated the value of such behavior in creating a united and willing ship's company. They also demonstrate that naval service had become respectable for men of high rank. Not all of the Queen's ''sea dogs'' came from the landed classes -- a few (most notably Francis Drake) grew up in poverty, while others were the sons of shipowners and small merchants in provincial ports -- yet a surprising number rose to the rank of knight or esquire as a result of their service. In the course of Elizabeth's reign these captains, from whichever background, became a professional officer corps. The mariners who served the Queen -- up to 350 aboard each large warship -- also became more professional as the reign advanced. Every ship had its master (in charge of navigation), master carpenter, master gunner, quartermasters (in charge of preparing the ship for action), coxswain and boatswain, each with mates and deputies; each also carried craftsmen and specialists, such as cooks, stewards, coopers, smiths and musicians (to play the trumpets, fifes and drums that communicated orders and animated the crews). Other | When Britain Really Ruled the Waves |
1021146_3 | it tested its first longer-range missile just last month, a test that India cited as provocation when it conducted its nuclear tests. Pakistan's missile is said to have a range of 900 miles, which would bring most of India's major cities within striking distance. Although built with North Korean help, Pakistan named it the Ghauri, after a Muslim warrior who defeated a 12th-century Hindu ruler of India named Prithvi. A Missile Gap While Pakistan lags behind India in conventional forces, many experts say it may have an edge in missiles. India's most effective missiles, the Prithvi series, have relatively short ranges. And while India has tested a longer-ranged missile, called the Agni, it has yet to complete its development. In the meantime, the United States and other countries are scrambling to stop South Asia's suddenly revived arms race before it escalates any further. On Friday, the United Nations Security Council called on India and Pakistan to sign the treaties against the spread and testing of nuclear weapons that, until now, had limited the world's declared nuclear powers to the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China. The hope is that India and Pakistan will call a halt to their nuclear programs where they now stand, although neither has so far shown much willingness to heed the world's pleas. The Pakistanis ''are ready to die for their respect,'' Mr. Sharif warned in a televised address to his nation, brushing aside the sanctions the United States imposed only hours later. For now, the best hope may lie with the fact that a fundamental taboo has existed against the use of nuclear weapons ever since the world learned what those weapons could do when the United States dropped them on Japan to end World War II. That and the prospect of ''mutually assured destruction,'' known widely by the grim acronym MAD, kept the United States and Soviet Union from firing them throughout the cold war. But India and Pakistan have suddenly made the specter of a nuclear exchange seem less remote. The United States and the Soviet Union, after all, never shared a border. Nor did they directly quarrel over a territory as volatile as Jammu and Kashmir, the predominantly Muslim enclave carved up after India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1947. ''Unresolved disagreements, deep animosity and distrust, and the continuing confrontation between their forces in disputed Kashmir make the subcontinent | The World; It's a Test, Not a Weapon. But That's Awfully Close. |
1020837_0 | ''IN truth,'' Stephen Minta protests, ''I've never wanted to follow in anyone's footsteps.'' As a boy, when he sang the carol about Good King Wenceslas, Minta focused on the role of the King's page, summoned outdoors at night to accompany his liege ''through the rude wind's wild lament'' -- ''In his master's steps he trod, / Where the snow lay dinted.'' As Minta reconstructs the story, the two gave Christmas dinner to a serf they saw gathering firewood in the storm and ''then, I suppose, returned home, the King to be a saint and the page to carry on being a page.'' But although this was a ''memorable journey,'' Minta recalls that ''it was hard to believe, at the age of 12, that life held nothing better than the promise of a great man's coattails.'' And yet that's precisely where five authors of this season's travel books -- Minta included -- have placed themselves. This genre within a genre has built-in advantages, giving both the reader and the lonely travel writer an interesting companion and immediately providing historical depth. But there are limitations as well: if the writer has no true passion for the traveler being pursued, the strategy may serve simply as an excuse to take a lame trip and write a mediocre book. That's not a concern for most of these writers. Perhaps the strongest -- and certainly the strangest -- of their books is William Dalrymple's FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East (Holt, $30). Dalrymple, the Scottish author of two previous award-winning travelogues, ''In Xanadu'' and ''City of Djinns,'' followed the path of the monk John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist, who trekked through the Byzantine Empire in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, when exotic forms of Christian practice were nurtured in fortified monasteries and remote hermitages. Among the monks' contemporaries were the stylites, ascetics who declaimed the wisdom of God from high atop the pillars where they lived. Another contemporary, coincidentally, was the prophet Mohammed. Soon after the monks' journey, Christianity would begin a thousand-year decline in the region, swamped by the great expansion of Islam that continues to this day. When visiting the Phanar, the oldest institution in Istanbul and ''the nearest thing the Greek Orthodox have to a Vatican,'' Dalrymple is shown a translation of a recent death threat to the Patriarch that | Travel |
1021188_0 | INTERNATIONAL 3-10 Pakistan, Spurning Critics, Holds More Nuclear Tests Pakistan said it exploded another nuclear test device, spurning worldwide criticism and calls for restraint after its tests two days ago. But the Government also said that Pakistan was ready to ''talk peace'' with India and that ''it is not our purpose to enter into an arms race.'' 1 India's Cool Response India delayed a formal response to Pakistan's latest nuclear test, but a senior official said India did not regard nuclear testing as a ''competition'' requiring New Delhi to match each move by Pakistan. 8 Anger in Washington The U.S. reacted with anger and frustration to Pakistan's test, and Administration officials said they had few new ideas about how to stop an arms race in South Asia. 8 Indonesia Deadlines Eased Responding to the deepening economic and political uncertainties in Indonesia, a top I.M.F. official said deadlines for austerity measures would be eased. 1 Japanese Coalition Splits Japan's four-year-old governing coalition fractured as the weakened Social Democratic Party formally announced it would quit. 9 NATIONAL 12-22 Disabled Students Lose on Language Policy A Federal judge ruled that Boston University did not have to allow liberal arts undergraduates with learning disabilities to substitute other courses for a two-year foreign-language requirement. 12 New Action on Old Drug Route Drug enforcement officials say that the seizure of 4,000 pounds of cocaine from a pleasure boat in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was another indication that after concentrating on other routes in the 1980's and 1990's, Colombian drug traffickers are returning with renewed intensity to the familiar routes between the Bahamas and Florida. 12 Acceptance of Homosexuals Although American acceptance of gay men and lesbians has swelled dramatically in recent years, as has support for their civil rights, they remain one of the least liked groups in the country, according to a study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. 21 Boxer in Stride in California In California, a state that dependably provides its share of political surprises, one unexpected development this election season is that Senator Barbara Boxer is not slouching but striding toward the primary on Tuesday and the general election in November, an underdog transformed into a front-runner. 18 NEW YORK 25-31 A Polyglot Library The Flushing branch of the Queens Borough Public Library, the busiest branch in the nation's busiest library system, shows clearly that the immigrant's path to the American | NEWS SUMMARY |
1020859_2 | Tuscany. ''I know that Siena, San Gimignano are doing a brisk business,'' said Lucio Trapelli, direcor of the four-star Subasio Hotel, perched on Assisi's sloping hillside. ''There is a discreet flux of tourists on the streets, but they aren't staying here. They come in the morning and leave in the afternoon.'' But this town of 1,800 people -- about half of whom moved out of their houses after the quakes last fall to stay either with relatives or in government-provided campers in the valley -- is determined to win back its position as one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in Italy. Restoration efforts are continuing apace in the upper church of the basilica, with hopes that it will be reopened before 2000, declared a Holy Year by Pope John Paul II. The lower church, with works by Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti and others, and the crypt, where St. Francis is buried, is open. The Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli is open to tourists, though the left aisle and transept are still off limits. The Church of Santa Chiara, which suffered damage to its facade and some frescoes inside, reopened recently, though visitors can see only the nave and the Chapel of the Crucifix. The Cathedral of San Ruffino is closed indefinitely. After the upper church of the St. Francis Basilica, where huge chunks of 13th-century frescoes were smashed to bits, the worst damage occurred at Santa Maria Maggiore, where roof beams were dislodged from their places and the facade detached itself from the main structure. There, restoration, including repairs in the apse, is expected to take at least a year, Mr. Ferrini said. To compensate for the closed churches, Assisi is trying to promote its lesser-known monuments and organize special excursions through the entire region, tracing the life of St. Francis. The plans are to set up bus tours to nearby towns like Spello, Montefalco and Bevagna, all of which St. Francis is thought to have visited. In addition, a series of special events -- including an ethnic music festival in June and again in August -- are in the works for the summer. The best strategy, people here say, is to exude optimism. ''Our hope,'' said Mr. Trapelli, of the Subasio Hotel, ''is that the earthquakes will stop so that the media will stop writing about them, and people will forget, and start coming back.'' TRAVEL ADVISORY: | Assisi Restores Churches And, It Hopes, Popularity |
1014211_2 | indicator of the importance of its maritime tradition, which plays a central role in the history of Southeastern New England, says William N. Peterson, senior curator of the Mystic Seaport. From early Colonial times until the War of 1812, the most important maritime commerce was the West Indies trade. Agricultural products and livestock were traded for molasses, sugar, tropical fruit and salt. The ships used were built locally and the trade created the first great age of prosperity for Norwich, New London and surrounding communities. In Herman Melville's ''Moby-Dick,'' Ahab's ship is named Pequod, a reference Melville mistakenly identifies as ''the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians, now extinct as the ancient Medes.'' One of the Pequod's three harpooners, was ''Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooners. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrows of the sires.'' On whaling ships Indians could get a respect that was denied them on land, said Mr. Peterson. A man's station and status on the ship was fixed by his competence and character. The other great regional marine commerces of the 19th century were the transport of cotton from the South to textile mills in New England as well as steamboat services for passengers and freight. Then came the fording of the Thames and Connecticut Rivers by railroad bridges. These rivers were formidable barriers for the railroads and the bridge-building technology of that time, said Mr. Peterson. It is also possible that Commodore Vandervilt, one of the great robber barons of the 19th century. was able to delay the construction of coastal railroad lines since he was most invested in steamboat lines. Starting in 1840 with the completion of the rail link from Norwich to Worcester, Mass., the fastest way from New York City to Boston was to take a steamboat to Norwich and the train the rest of the way to Boston. The steamboats, built locally, were some of the fastest and most luxurious passenger boats of their time, says Mr. Peterson. People often were first | Building Boats, Building Waterway Travel |
1014181_5 | developmentally challenged kids the language skills they need to be mainstreamed into regular elementary schools. We find that, if we can get these kids before they start kindergarten and work with them, they can usually be integrated into the mainstream school system. We've done similar work with Down syndrome kids, and it's been very successful. Again, these may not be the largest groups, but they're groups for which technology education can make a phenomenal difference. Q. You're also interested in cultural efforts? A. Very much so. We do a lot of work with museums. We try to link them up via computer to the local schools so more students can be exposed to art and culture. Q. What are the most common mistakes groups make when applying? A. People don't have too tough a time with the application process because, once they know we're here, I can meet with them and help them with it. But, there are definitely misconceptions about what we do. A lot of applicants think we can give away free telephone service or link up computers for them, and we can't because of regulatory constraints. Some people think we manufacture products, like computers, and can give them away. We don't do that. And a lot of organizations looking for technology don't really know what they need to get started. They come to me, and that's not my area of expertise. I can only try and steer them in the right direction. And, you have to have a program-specific budget in mind and know exactly what you want us to fund; it can't be an open-ended proposal. Q. You don't fund political or religious organizations? A. No. We want our funding to help as broad a population as possible. We don't fund organizations which are discriminatory. Q. There are certain limits on the financing you give to nonprofit organizations. Can you explain? A. Yes. First, we don't want them to depend solely on us -- or any one organization -- for funding. If that funding weren't available next year, what would the group do? We'll also only fund a group for three years in a row and, just because you get funding one year, doesn't mean you'll automatically get it the next. After three years of funding, the organization has to take a hiatus from us, just so we can help out as many groups as possible. | Q&A: Jayne Mayer; Distributing Grants to Nonprofit Groups |
1014427_0 | At first glance, the agreement aimed at ending three decades of street warfare and other violence in Northern Ireland seems like a political winner here in the Republic of Ireland. In contrast to the North, where it is the subject of relentless and often vitriolic debate, in Ireland the accord has the support of every major political party. Who, after all, could object to peace? But while the agreement represents a momentous step in resolving one of this century's most persistent conflicts, Government and other political figures in Ireland say they face a surprisingly daunting challenge in persuading the more than two million eligible voters to turn out on May 22, when it will be put to referendums here and in Ulster. Politicians here who favor the treaty are commissioning daily polls to measure public sentiment. They are sending elected leaders to campaign around the country and arming them with ''talking points.'' They are enlisting celebrities in sports and entertainment to generate interest. And for those still hesitant, there are plans to provide free transportation from voters' homes to the polls. The agreement's backers are so worried about finding the most potent strategy for packaging peace -- and insuring that the accord wins overwhelming public support -- that they consulted marketing experts and convened focus groups of prospective voters around the country to come up with slogans. (The choice of the nation's largest party, Fianna Fail, is not flashy but tested extremely well, especially among women of all demographic groups: ''Vote Yes for Peace.'') Fears about the turnout seem well founded. This week the chatter in the misty green parks, on the swarming streets along the River Liffey and in the ubiquitous pubs was not about Northern Ireland but about an Irish Olympic swimmer who may have failed a drug test. Dozens of residents said in random interviews that while they wanted peace, they felt far removed from Northern Ireland, whose border is only about 50 miles to the north. Seeking to counter the indifference, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern on Friday opened the intensive three-week campaign of his party, Fianna Fail, with this plea, ''It is very important that there should be a high yes vote, not just amongst those who vote but amongst the electorate as a whole.'' He added, ''Let us show that we really care, that we do not want to see anyone else killed, any more | Selling Peace Proves Difficult For Already Peaceful Dublin |
1014185_2 | child psychiatrist and assistant chairman for Training and Clinical Services in the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at North Shore University Hospital. ''Of the almost one in five children under 18 who meet the criteria for a psychiatric disorder, disruptive behaviors -- attention deficit, opposition deficit and conduct disorders -- account for between 5 and 7 percent, anxiety disorders -- obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and separation anxiety -- account for about 7 percent and depression about 3 to 5 percent,'' Dr. Fornari said. ''We know that part of the reason there's been some anxiety about using psychotropic drugs with kids is that regardless of the very significant percentage of schoolchildren taking some form of this medication, society continues to have a stigma toward mental illness,'' he continued. ''But failure to recognize the presence of a disruptive behavior disorder poses tremendous risks to the child -- academic failure, low self esteem, as well as the development of more serious psychiatric disorders.'' He added: ''It may not be that the rates are truly higher, but just that there's a greater awareness than ever before.'' Linda McElroy, a resource-room teacher for 17 years at Searingtown School in the Herricks School District, said: ''I know there are people who see psychopharmocology in the schools as some kind of classroom management tool, but we've seen startlingly positive results both in an academic sense and in terms of socialization. This is how I would like to see the child so he can learn, but, of course, controlling symptoms is just part of dealing with the problem.'' ''Our kids are under enormous pressure today,'' said Sue Rubenstein, a school psychologist in the Hewlett School District. ''It's the kind of world we live in -- lack of parenting, television, the fast-paced environment. The information that kids are supposed to understand, process, know, handle and learn has increased dramatically. That expectations are higher puts more stress on the system. ''Fifteen years ago, no one in elementary school was taking anti-depressants. Today that's far from the case. Maybe it has something to do with a capacity to soothe, to care, to organize yourself, which seems to be less available to kids than it used to be.'' ''I don't always know who's taking psychotropic drugs in school,'' she continued. ''Parents are still more comfortable talking about medication for asthma amd diabetes than they are | More Pupils Taking Prescribed Drugs To Relieve Distress |
1014069_4 | belief in the world-historical importance of his own work. In the latter mood, he hoped that he himself would complete the stanza of Being's poem that Plato had begun -- that he would utter a word that would come, as Arendt said both Plato's and Heidegger's did, ''from the primordial.'' When Hitler came along, the prophetic mood took over. As Safranski tells us, Heidegger, who was born in Messkirch, in southern Germany, the son of a sexton, started out as a reactionary Roman Catholic, but after World War I he broke with the church. He then found a way to package Nietzsche and Tolstoy, Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky into an academically respectable philosophical system. He reshaped what had been thought of as merely literary matter into a doctrine of the nature of human life. His ''Being and Time'' changed the course of European philosophy by breaking down barriers between genres, barriers no one else had been able to surmount. That book, with its Nietzschean call to authenticity, resolution and decisiveness, was an instant success. This success encouraged the egomania that let Heidegger imagine that he and Hitler could work together to transform Germany. Heidegger was oblivious of the torment of his Jewish friends and colleagues, but after a year of hectic propagandizing and organizing, he did notice that the Nazi higher-ups were not paying much attention to him. This sufficed to show him that he had overestimated National Socialism. So he retreated to his mountain cabin and, as Safranski nicely says, traded decisiveness for imperturbability. After World War II, he explained, imaginatively albeit monomaniacally, that Americanization, modern technology, the trivialization of life and the utter forgetfulness of Being (four names, he thought, for the same phenomenon) were irreversible. His last works are lyrics of resignation -- often very beautiful lyrics, though soiled by the events that led Heidegger to write them. Safranski, appropriately, devotes three-quarters of his book to Heidegger's writings and only one-quarter to the events of his life. He entwines the two in a narrative that will engross those already familiar with Heidegger, but will be intelligible to those who are not. If you should decide that you ought, despite everything, to read Heidegger's books, this biography will give you a good running start. Richard Rorty has recently published two books, ''Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America'' and a collection of philosophical articles titled ''Truth and Progress.'' | A Master From Germany |
1014481_0 | High-tech reproductive medicine has brought thousands of babies into the world, but at costs and health risks unappreciated by many participants when they first sought help. An influential panel of the New York State Health Department urged sweeping regulatory changes aimed at improving the health of the babies by reducing the incidence of multiple births that make the infants much more prone to retardation, blindness and other severe problems. The panel also rejected calls for legislation requiring that health insurers cover such therapies. LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN | April 26-May 2; Reducing Multiple Births |
1014406_0 | Since 1954, when Ellis Island was closed, its south side has lain untouched and neglected. The buildings have fallen into disrepair, including a hospital and confinement wards for immigrants who were too sick to pass directly through the main entrance on the north side. Water percolates through roofs and along walls. Corridors are lined with broken glass and upstart weeds. To the ghostliness of the empty rooms -- filled, it almost seems, with the memory of the sick and dying who once lay there -- nature has added its own ghostliness, compounding neglect with invasion. It can be hard to remember that just a few years ago the north side of Ellis Island -- now fully restored and America's third most popular national park -- looked just as forlorn. No one is quite certain what to do with the south side of Ellis Island. But unless the buildings there are stabilized, their decay arrested, there will be no need to discuss their future at all. They will simply collapse. In fact, the World Monuments Fund has listed the south side of Ellis Island as ''one of the world's most threatened culturally significant historic sites.'' At nominal cost, the New York Landmarks Conservancy has performed a model stabilization on one building. They did just enough work -- patching gutters, pulling down vines, repairing roof tiles -- to halt further erosion and to create a 15-year window in which to plan for the building's future. Work of this kind is not nearly as glamorous as the renovation that was done on the north side, but it is vital nonetheless. According to a new National Park Service report, the estimated cost of stabilizing the major buildings on the south side of Ellis Island is about $6.5 million. If Congress provides the money, the future of Ellis Island's south side can be debated at a later time. If Congress does not act, the ultimate fate of this historic site will already have been decided. | Ellis Island's Other Side |
1014365_1 | -- at least for long. But so far in the 1990's, unemployment and inflation have not only been marching in the same direction -- south -- but they are now at their lowest levels in a generation. After seven years of economic expansion, unemployment dropped below 5 percent last fall for the first time since the early 70's. Instead of accelerating, inflation has slowed even more. In the quarter that ended in March, the Government's broadest measure of inflation rose at an annual rate of less than 1 percent, the slowest rate since 1964. What gives? Most economists agree with the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, who says the economy has a ''natural'' rate of unemployment, below which inflation accelerates, and above which inflation decelerates. Until recently, economists thought this natural rate was about 6.0 to 6.5 percent. It could be that the natural rate, which is affected by changes in demography, education and labor market institutions, has fallen sharply, perhaps to 5 percent, some economists say. One intriguing explanation is offered by the Princeton economist Robert Shimer, who says, ''The U.S. employment rate is so much lower because the population is so much older.'' Teen-agers have an unemployment rate roughly five times that of adult workers, the thinking goes, and the declining number of teen-age workers is enough to pull down the overall unemployment rate to its current low level. Robert Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University, points to possibly temporary factors -- including falling computer prices, the strong dollar, the shift to managed health care and more accurate measurements of consumer prices -- to account for the unexpectedly low inflation rate of the late 90's. Shrinking deficits = Slower growth Ever since President Herbert Hoover made the Depression worse by trying to balance the budget as the economy was failing, deficit reduction has been widely held to be a drag on economic growth. But growth has been stronger in the 1990's despite Washington's shift toward fiscal prudence. The Federal budget deficit, nearly $200 billion in 1992 and heading higher, is now effectively zero. Meanwhile, growth in the past eight quarters has averaged 3.8 percent. The Government's most recent economic report drove the point home even more dramatically: In the first quarter, as Federal spending fell at an annual rate of $8 billion, the economy sprinted ahead at a 4.2 percent annual rate. Today economists are more apt to | Ideas & Trends: Chaos Theory; Unlearning the Lessons of Econ 101 |
1015619_2 | companies. They alerted their customers, and the customers rejected the proposed rules.'' The rules were intended to carry out a 1990 law, the Organic Foods Production Act. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, a co-author of the law, said the Agriculture Department had ''fumbled badly'' on the first try in issuing the proposed rules. ''Consumers need to have confidence that the organic label means what they think it means,'' Mr. Leahy said today. The period for public comment ended on April 30. Andrew I. Solomon, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department, said Mr. Glickman moved swiftly to announce his decision on the ''big three'' issues because ''we wanted to send a signal to the public and to the organic community that we will end up with rigorous, credible standards.'' More than half of the public comments were form letters and cards, Mr. Solomon said. But many were heartfelt pleas. In a typical letter commenting on the proposed rules, Douglas White of Seattle, wrote: ''As a consumer of organic foods, I would like to register my distress as to the possible inclusion of bioengineered, irradiated and sludge-grown foods to be labeled as organic. These are the very types of foods I'm trying to avoid by buying organic.'' Another consumer, Wendy Matheisen of California, complained that the rules were not strict enough. ''I may no longer be able to discern whether my organic produce is truly what I have come to expect it to be -- free of genetic engineering, hormones, pesticides and irradiation,'' she wrote. William R. Knudsen, chairman of Smucker Quality Beverage, a unit of the J. M. Smucker Company of Orrville, Ohio, welcomed today's decision. But, he said, it is unfortunate that the Government took so long to realize that irradiation, genetic engineering and sludge are ''not properly part of organic agriculture.'' Smucker buys organic products -- grapes, apples, apricots, peaches -- from certified growers and turns them into fruit juices, jams and jellies. Organic products often sell for higher prices because they cost more to produce, Mr. Knudsen noted. In the proposed rules, the Agriculture Department noted that ''there has been an increase in the incidence of food-borne illness.'' Irradiation is used to kill potentially harmful bacteria and parasites and to increase the shelf life of food, but many consumers said it was not compatible with organic farming. ''Consumers expect organic to mean 'produced naturally,' '' said | TOUGHER LABELING FOR ORGANIC FOOD |
1020281_3 | organized its first looting. In addition, under Brazilian law, people are permitted to steal food if they find themselves ''in a state of necessity.'' Church officials, who publicly criticized the Government's neglect and supported the looters, warn that the misery here will only deepen. Many subsistence farmers are rationing their food stocks from last year's crop, but to get by will most likely be forced to kill the odd cow or goat they may have. ''We don't advise looting, but we understand the human dimension,'' said Antonio Soares Costa, 68, the Bishop of Caruaru. ''The Government will never say, 'Sorry, we got there too late.' But they always get there too late.'' Federal officials say they have earmarked $4 billion for 52 aqueducts, wells, irrigation and desalting projects throughout the northeast. Four years into Mr. Cardoso's term, they have spent only $682 million on the projects. The Government has also pledged $173 million for emergency food distribution. Asserting that the problem of the northeast is not water, but lack of education, a parallel food distribution system organized by Mr. Cardoso's wife, Ruth, is linking food aid to literacy courses in some regions. In Palmatoria, 25 miles east of Caruaru, there is no work, even for those who read. Survival depends entirely on the forces of nature and farming. Driving to Palmatoria, Rubems Rodrigues Jr., the social welfare secretary for the municipal government here, passed fields that usually feature neat rows of beans, corn and cotton. Scattered, scarce rainfall had left them a drab olive color. ''It's green, but it's a green that produces nothing,'' he said. Many here see the drought as an act of nature alone, enduring it as an expression of God's will. In his shack built of mud and sticks, Severino Jose da Silva, a 48-year-old farmhand, worried as the 22 pounds of rice, beans, cornmeal and noodles the Government handed out four days earlier dwindled. He has five daughters, including Luciana, 22, who lies curled into herself in the corner of a back room, laughing wildly and unpredictably, after an operation to remove a brain tumor two years ago went awry. Without food, his other children feel dizzy and complain of headaches. He said he had considered moving the family to the city, thinking he would somehow obtain a job there, but the mere subject brought a spirited dismissal from his wife, Iracy Gomes, who sat | Caruaru Journal; In Brazil, Despair Once Again Feeds on a Drought |
1020338_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-14 Drastic Action in Russia To Stabilize Its Markets As its financial markets teetered on the brink of collapse, Russia attempted to preserve the value of its currency and stem the exodus of foreign investors. In order to address the economic crisis, Moscow tripled interest rates, announced that it would be willing to accept a far lower price for the selloff of its last big remaining oil company, and appealed for support from the International Monetary Fund. A1 Opposition to Testing in India Only two weeks after India detonated five underground nuclear tests to popular acclaim, the Hindu nationalists leading the Government, including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, ran into protests in Parliament that reflected growing disquiet among Indians about the risks and costs of nuclear weapons. A3 U.S. Irks Allies on Kosovo America's closest European allies, having been pressed hard by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to impose sanctions on Serbia over its crackdown in Kosovo, are upset that Washington has shifted yet again, quietly easing the pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic despite his intensified repression there. A12 Journalist's Return Permitted After months of refusing to allow a Zimbabwean journalist to return to fight a deportation order, the South African Government has reversed itself. The journalist, Newton Kanhema, had been living and working in South Africa but is in the United States on a journalism fellowship. Advocates of a free press say the South African Government is trying to chill freedom of the press by deporting a journalist who has angered Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. A6 Workers Strike in South Korea Tens of thousands of South Korean workers walked off the job and staged polite protests against layoffs and the increasing use of temporary workers. Workers expressed anger at conglomerate owners who seem to be escaping the hardships of average Koreans, and at the Government, which passed a law making it easier to lay off workers. A7 Gingrich Confers With Arafat Under sharp criticism from the White House for interfering with its efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace, the House Speaker Newt Gingrich took a conciliatory stance with the Palestinian leadership. Meeting with Yasir Arafat on the West Bank, Mr. Gingrich and other members of his Congressional delegation underscored their support for the negotiations. A3 Workers in Greece Protest Thousands of Greek workers, protesting Government privatization plans, launched a 24-hour nationwide strike today that disrupted transportation, | NEWS SUMMARY |
1018856_0 | The Defense Department decided yesterday to spend $50 million to create biological response units in the National Guards of 10 of the most populous states, including New York, as President Clinton prepares to unveil several actions to increase the nation's defenses against germ attacks, Government officials said. The steps are part of Mr. Clinton's determination to protect the nation against what he has called biological, computer and other ''21st century threats'' to American national security. The President will address these threats and his program to combat them in a speech today at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. The measures include a long-planned consolidation of the Government's system for responding to such emergencies, and the making and stockpiling of early warning equipment, drugs and vaccines. They also commit the Government to spending more money on research and development to strengthen the nation's public health system so it can respond to germ terrorism and other such emergencies. The White House has asked Government agencies to produce within two weeks estimates of how much the new steps will cost. But an advisory panel to the President has already urged Mr. Clinton to ask Congress to approve $2 billion over the next five years to ''fill in the gaps in the nation's emergency preparedness system,'' one official said. Officials emphasized yesterday that the President's program would enhance the Government's ability to deal not only with germ terrorism but also with the threat of infection from new germs, like H.I.V. ''With the revolution in genetic engineering, it is now possible to unravel how germs produce infections and to develop more effective medicines in blocking them,'' said Frank Young, the former director of the Department of Health and Human Services emergency preparedness office who headed the advisory panel that briefed Mr. Clinton last month at the White House. ''Particularly relevant is the application of bio-technology to detecting and identifying germs within three-to-four hours, rather than days.'' Dr. Young declined to discuss other recommendations in his panel's 16-page report, but other officials said that the document urged Mr. Clinton to stockpile enough vaccine and antibiotics against a bio-warfare attack in which up to six million Americans could be infected. Before the speech, Mr. Clinton is expected to sign two directives to implement his policy on terrorism. In his speech, aides said, the President will announce the creation of a ''national coordinator'' to initiate anti-terrorist | Defense Dept. to Spend Millions to Bolster Germ-Warfare Defense |
1018856_1 | equipment, drugs and vaccines. They also commit the Government to spending more money on research and development to strengthen the nation's public health system so it can respond to germ terrorism and other such emergencies. The White House has asked Government agencies to produce within two weeks estimates of how much the new steps will cost. But an advisory panel to the President has already urged Mr. Clinton to ask Congress to approve $2 billion over the next five years to ''fill in the gaps in the nation's emergency preparedness system,'' one official said. Officials emphasized yesterday that the President's program would enhance the Government's ability to deal not only with germ terrorism but also with the threat of infection from new germs, like H.I.V. ''With the revolution in genetic engineering, it is now possible to unravel how germs produce infections and to develop more effective medicines in blocking them,'' said Frank Young, the former director of the Department of Health and Human Services emergency preparedness office who headed the advisory panel that briefed Mr. Clinton last month at the White House. ''Particularly relevant is the application of bio-technology to detecting and identifying germs within three-to-four hours, rather than days.'' Dr. Young declined to discuss other recommendations in his panel's 16-page report, but other officials said that the document urged Mr. Clinton to stockpile enough vaccine and antibiotics against a bio-warfare attack in which up to six million Americans could be infected. Before the speech, Mr. Clinton is expected to sign two directives to implement his policy on terrorism. In his speech, aides said, the President will announce the creation of a ''national coordinator'' to initiate anti-terrorist action, secure aid and iron out Government disputes. The job will go to Richard A. Clarke, now Mr. Clinton's special assistant for global affairs. Senior officials told several reporters about the President's speech earlier this week on the condition that nothing be written before it was delivered. But other officials described the speech's content in greater detail yesterday after two newspapers broke the agreement. An Administration official said that the Defense Department's 10new National Guard biological response units would help police, fire and public health officials in towns and cities cope with a germ attack. In addition to New York, the designated states are emergency response centers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Missouri, Colorado, California and Washington. | Defense Dept. to Spend Millions to Bolster Germ-Warfare Defense |
1018844_0 | In a 1942 handbook for merchant seamen called ''How to Abandon Ship,'' there is a terse chapter on navigation. ''If your lifeboat is without a navigator,'' it begins, ''these directions are for you.'' Nautical history is full of stories about small boats guided across the oceans by experienced celestial navigators, often by amateurs, like the redoubtable Joshua Slocum, and sometimes by professionals who are driven to extremity, such as William Bligh or Ernest Shackleton. Celestial navigation -- the art of using a sextant and the heavenly bodies to determine one's position -- is, in fact, a central element of nautical tradition. So it comes as a melancholy surprise to learn that at Annapolis the course on celestial navigation will no longer be taught because, the Naval Academy says, it has been antiquated by modern satellite-linked computer systems. The timing of the announcement was ironic, coming as it did the day after a communications satellite failed, disrupting beeper service all over the nation. The satellites on which the Navy relies are unlikely all to fail at once, yet it is hard to ignore the feeling that perhaps the Navy has put a little too much faith in the redundancy of its electronics and too little faith in the valuable human redundancy of teaching midshipmen a self-reliant and time-tested means of finding their way across open water. A modern Navy crew, forced to the lifeboats by calamity, would probably never be called upon to seek some distant landfall, as Bligh and Shackleton did. Search and rescue is a pinpoint business these days, although that also often depends on satellite navigation. Still, almost anyone would prefer to find himself in the lifeboat with a celestial navigator and a sextant aboard rather than the one carrying a navigator -- minus computer -- who had been instructed only in satellite navigation. Morale, the authors of ''How to Abandon Ship'' remind us, ''is frequently the total of little things.'' | Setting the Sextant Aside |
1018883_1 | from it. All of the women in the study received standard chemotherapy, but some received Taxol as well, and the rest, the control group, did not. Of the women who received Taxol, 97 percent were alive after 18 months and 90 percent of them were free of disease. By contrast, 95 percent of the group that had received only standard chemotherapy were alive, and 86 percent had not had a recurrence of the disease. While these differences might seem small, some experts said they are striking at such an early stage in the study and could mean that wider use of Taxol might save thousands of lives, given that breast cancer will strike an estimated 180,000 women in the United States each year and cause 43,500 deaths. ''It's really unprecedented to see something like this show up so early,'' said Dr. George Demetri of Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who was an author of the report. ''It's a major incremental benefit that is going to save lives.'' Dr. Craig Henderson, who presented the results at the cancer conference, said that looked at another way, the use of Taxol cut the cancer recurrence rate by 22 percent and the death rate by 26 percent, an effect similar to the difference between use of chemotherapy and no chemotherapy. Dr. Henderson is an adjunct professor at the University of California at San Francisco and president of Sequus Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company not involved in this research. But some others were a bit more cautious. ''They are preliminary results that I think need to be followed,'' said Dr. Lori J. Goldstein of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, another author of the report. One factor Dr. Goldstein noted was that patients with so-called estrogen receptor positive types of breast cancer did not show any benefit from Taxol. As part of the standard chemotherapy, these patients were treated with tamoxifen, another drug that has shown effectiveness for that variant of the disease. Roughly half of breast cancers are estrogen receptor positive, though the percentage is different for pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women. Taxol, generically known as paclitaxel, is made by Bristol-Myers Squibb from the yew tree. Because it is already approved for use in advanced breast cancer and ovarian cancer, doctors can legally use it for early-stage disease as well. Side effects include lower white blood-cell count and a numbness in the limbs. | Drug for Advanced Breast Cancer Is Also Found Effective in Early Treatment |
1018868_5 | it to her advantage, shaming the tabloid editors and winning converts with her folksy response. Shortly afterward she brought an appreciative gasp from a group of London-based American correspondents when during a briefing about a coming trip to Washington she complained that the wig was hot and itchy and simply took it off, revealing her bald head. Well attuned to the effectiveness of the spontaneous gesture, she was to repeat the act often with other groups. She was given the medical all-clear 10 months ago and her hair is growing back, brown and curly now, wrapped in a bandanna that trails insouciantly over the shoulder of the pastel-colored caftans she favors. Her personal life was, by her own description, ''spectacularly untidy,'' but she surprised skeptics in 1994 by marrying her live-in lover, Jon Norton, a divorced pro-Labor banker five years younger than she. If she has religious convictions, she does not discuss them. ''Just say she's a very secular person,'' an assistant said. In arguably the most dramatic act of the 26 months of talks that led to the peace settlement now up for a vote, she entered Northern Ireland's most fearsome penitentiary early this year to challenge an order that Protestant prisoners had delivered to the party representing them to quit the negotiations. She was roundly criticized for the decision, one that typified her style -- independent, defiant and trusting in the direct approach and her own personal appeal to tease resolution out of stubborn polarities. She was photographed sitting across from shaven-headed killers and bombers with lurid tattoos on their pumped-up arms. A prison official, Alan Shannon, said, ''Those are some of the hardest men in any prison in the world, and she put them at their ease in no time.'' After she left, they reversed a 2-to-1 vote of the week before and authorized their political representatives to return to the talks. -------------------- Clinton Urges a Yes Vote WASHINGTON, May 21 (By The New York Times) -- At a White House Rose Garden ceremony this afternoon, President Clinton made what he called ''one last plug for the vote in Ireland and Northern Ireland.'' ''I hope that those fine people will lift the burden of the last 30 years from their shoulders and embrace a common future in peace,'' the President said in a ceremony in which he signed the instruments of ratification for the expansion of NATO. | For Mo Mowlam, at Least, Yes for a Job Well Done |
1016080_0 | To Sunday Styles: Gloria Steinem suggests (''Bosom Foes Together Again,'' May 3) that hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women denies them the relief of no longer being obsessed with sex or burdened with other miseries like falling in love. I am a feminist, and I am also a medical student who is concerned about women's health. Hormone replacement therapy was not dreamed up by misogynists eager to keep women unnaturally sexy and youthful beyond their reproductive years. Instead, it can significantly improve the length and quality of women's lives by protecting them from some of the most common and debilitating diseases facing the elderly. Estrogen deficiency following menopause contributes to osteoporosis, which results in vertebral crush fractures (which afflict women nine times as often as men) and hip fractures (which afflict women twice as often as men). As many as 25 percent of people who sustain hip fractures die within a year; 50 percent never fully recover their independence. Vertebral crush fractures can be painful, disfiguring and disabling. Hormone replacement therapy is highly effective in reducing bone loss following menopause and substantially reduces the risk of pathologic fracture. Furthermore, numerous studies demonstrate at least a 50 percent reduction in risk for cardiovascular disease. KRISTIN M. FOLEY St. Louis The writer is a student at Washington University School of Medicine. | Hormone Replacement Therapy |
1015868_0 | A COLLABORATION between the White Plains School District and the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center's Westchester division has resulted in a new program for secondary school students 12 through 21, who are having difficulty in school because of emotional or psychiatric problems. The program, which can serve up to 20 students, is not limited to those from White Plains and represents a collaboration among several school districts, including Mount Vernon, New Rochelle and the Tarrytowns. Because two other White Plains school programs, Bard House for children 5 through 12 who are in a day program, and Nichols Cottage, aimed at students who are in-patients at the hospital, were already in operation, extending the program for older students was the next step, said Dr. Brian Bassuk, director of school programs for White Plains public schools at New York Hospital. Dr. Bassuk said the number of children with behavioral and psychiatric problems has grown. ''There aren't very many referral sources for youngsters like this,'' he said. ''These kids are so in need of services, but these are not behaviors that would put them in the hospital. The Boces programs that could serve them are either full or time limited. Kids can stay here as long as they need to.'' For example, a student may be reluctant to go to school or may be depressed, but not suicidal, while another student may have uncontrollable outbursts and behavior that stops just short of violence. ''Their goals are along the lines of 'I want to have more friends,' or 'I want to not yell,' '' Dr. Susan Steneck, director of clinical support services, said. The students enrolled in the Students Targeting Achievement and Reintegration program follow a regular school day, which is supplemented by group and individual counseling sessions. ''We're successful because we offer a small therapeutic setting where kids can feel comfortable,'' Dr. Bassuk said. ''We're somewhat removed from a large high school, and the kids can't get away from us. It's a protective, supportive environment where we reinforce the right things.'' For more information about the program, the number to call for Dr. Bassuk is 997-5848 or for Dr. Steneck, 997-5832. MERRI ROSENBERG | Counseling Sessions At High School Level |
1016042_4 | of gene-splicing. ''There is an engine now, which is genomics,'' said Mr. Casdin, the New York fund manager. Moreover, the big pharmaceutical companies are now treating the smaller biotechnology companies as their research partners and investing in them. And the success rate may be increasing. Kurt von Emster, manager of the Franklin Biotechnology Discovery fund, said there were now 400 biotechnology drugs in clinical trials, up from about 80 in 1989. Vector Securities says 30 biotechnology products could receive approval this year. ''More people will consider this less of a science-fiction business,'' Mr. von Emster said. But it is difficult for investors to research these companies thoroughly, given the paucity of analyst coverage. Scientists and physicians who test and evaluate the drugs often have financial relationships with the manufacturers and can be less than objective. Even impartial scientific experts have trouble judging which lines of research will succeed. Dr. Lee Rosen, a cancer expert at the University of California at Los Angeles who does not buy biotechnology stocks, recalled that in the 1980's, scientists were agog about harnessing the body's own immune system proteins to fight cancer. ''The theory was great, the technology was great, the philosophy was great,'' Dr. Rosen said. But the approach did not work well in practice. Instead of trying to spot eventual winners in their formative stages, some analysts say, investors are better off spreading their risk over many companies or investing in a mutual fund. Some recommend concentrating on companies whose drugs are at most a year or two away from approval. For example, Immunex, which applied on Thursday for Food and Drug Administration approval to market a drug for rheumatoid arthritis, has seen its stock price triple in the last year. ''Buy good quality second-tier companies and hold them for five years,'' advised Mr. McCamant, the newsletter editor. The Icos Corporation, which has four drugs for inflammatory diseases in clinical trials, is trading for less now than when the company was still in the laboratory stage, indicating that investors did not value its progress, he said. Mr. Simon of Robertson Stephens says it often pays to wait even longer, for the results of Phase 3, or final-stage, clinical trials. If the news is good, there could still be time to buy the stock and see some appreciation. Medimmune stock has more than doubled since last July on favorable data for its next drug | Feeling a Bit Like a Laboratory Mouse? |
1016114_0 | The changing national weather patterns caused by El Nino are having an unexpected effect along the Atlantic Coast, warming the ocean just enough to bring an early start to the swimming season and attracting fish closer to shore so that fishermen should improve their luck. But scientists are also warning that the early rise in water temperature may create conditions late in the summer that could cause fish to die off in large numbers. Surface temperature readings done by satellite for the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University have found water temperatures running as high as 56 degrees, or five degrees above normal for early May, in a 25-square mile section of ocean off Great Bay, just north of Atlantic City. Michael F. Crowley, director of the institute's Marine Remote Sensing Laboratory, said that although his data focused on New Jersey, similar conditions were likely to exist from the tip of Long Island to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. ''It is only a difference of a few degrees,'' Mr. Crowley said, ''but there's a lot of water out there and those few degrees translate into a lot of energy that has been transferred into the water. So we're about three weeks ahead of schedule, and instead of hitting the beaches in June we're looking at people going to the beach in May.'' And catching fluke in April, of all things, said Capt. Mark Rosen of Story Teller, a charter boat. ''We've been catching bluefish in the inlet for two weeks already, and it's usually another week or two from now that we see them,'' Captain Rosen, who runs charters out of Waretown, on Barnegat Bay, said on Friday. ''We had fluke the first week of April, and I never remember having fluke until the middle of May. And a friend called to say they were catching yellow fin tuna offshore, and that's months early.'' The warm surface water can also cut off oxygen to deep water, threatening marine life. Each summer, a layer of warm water forms a cap over the colder water below, cutting off the usual churning of surface and deep water that brings fresh oxygen to deeper layers of the ocean. This capping off generally occurs each year in July or August, and it is broken up by the fall storm season and strong northeast winds. If the cap forms a month or longer | Along the Atlantic Coast, A New Schedule for Summer |
1015738_0 | GHOSTS FROM THE NURSERY Tracing the Roots of Violence. By Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley. 364 pp. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press. $25. In the past decade, two notable changes have taken place in two distinct sectors of American society. One has occurred in the laboratories of scientists who study the development of the human brain. New imaging techniques have shown that babies' brains are not, as once thought, hard-wired, but extraordinarily malleable, and that their neural circuitry undergoes tremendous elaboration and refinement during the first three years of life. The other change is evident in the schools and on the streets of towns like Jonesboro, Ark., West Paducah, Ky., and Pearl, Miss. According to the F.B.I., the number of juveniles arrested for weapons offenses more than doubled in the last 10 years, and aggravated assault by teen-agers jumped 70 percent. The arrest of juveniles for murder has increased by half. It is the unhappy theme of ''Ghosts From the Nursery'' to bring together the new understanding of brain development and the growing threat of violence perpetrated by children. Through abuse, neglect and other childhood insults, the authors argue, most youthful offenders have sustained lasting neurological damage that interferes with their ability to reason, to feel and to regulate their emotions and behavior. And in most criminal children, they assert, signs of imminent felony are present by the age of 4. More important, the factors that put children at risk of developing violent personalities are operating even earlier -- in some cases, before birth. Chapter by chapter, Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley describe how prenatal development, temperament, parents' addictions and physical and psychological trauma relate to behavioral disorders and impulsive violence. It turns out that babies require sensitive and consistent care not just for their happiness, but for the healthy development of the most basic brain chemistry. Damage to this development -- and to the stress response in particular -- can rob a child of the resources to concentrate, to organize and articulate feelings, to control impulses, to appreciate other perspectives and to recognize the consequences of behavior. The conclusions of ''Ghosts'' are familiar: alone or in combination, neglect, abandonment, abuse, drug use and malnutrition wreak havoc on a child. The authors do a good job of explaining how these miseries can translate into neurological injury, and how injury could be linked to eventual violence. What's missing | Thugs in Bassinets |
1017579_4 | million people have died as a result. UNESCO says that every month 4,500 children die of malnutrition. There's no potable water outside of Baghdad. Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit went over to Baghdad with a group and they talked to Church leaders. There is a sizable Catholic community there too, the Caldeans. They're very upset about the lack of food and medicine. Some of us undertook a fast. Several times I woke up very hungry at night. I could have eaten if I had wished to, but the Iraqi children can't. Since that time, there was the whole question of military intervention. My position is to make sure that all diplomatic means have been exhausted, because the people have already suffered too much. Q. What is your position on women in the priesthood? A. If you want to talk about women in ministry, as a bishop of the church I have to be obedient to the Pope. But separate from the ordination question is the number of women in ministerial roles in the Catholic Church that we never saw 35 years ago -- in hospitals, in prisons, and as campus ministers. There are women who work full time in many parishes. And some of the priestless parishes now have women administrators. So the people are getting used to this. The involvement of women raises consciousness about the importance of women as they use their many beautiful talents in ministry. Q. You have been active in promoting cooperation among the different religions. Why is that important? A. If we worship God, we should work together for the common good. I like to avoid the concept that all religions are the same. But there's a lot of good in each. We're children of the same God. The other reason is to face down secularism, which is a very prevalent philosophy -- you know, there shouldn't be any kind of rules anywhere. This might be a time of revival -- even that million man Promise Keepers event was very powerful. Most wives would be very happy if their husbands promised to be faithful to them and to spend more time with them and the kids. Maybe there is a fundamentalistic thrust here, but so what? Maybe we're heading for a time of revival now in the face of blatant secularism. Q. There are people who believe they are living spiritual, moral lives outside | Q&A/Bishop Peter Rosazza; A Mission in the Archdiocese of Hartford |
1017755_2 | '' A 42-year-old nurse in New Jersey, who like most women in this article refused to be quoted except on condition of anonymity, said she tried Viagra for the first time last weekend. She wanted to be able to discuss the drug's effects with patients; she also thought it might help with the fact that she is reluctant to have sex at certain times in her menstrual cycle. ''I only see my boyfriend every two weeks because we live in different states,'' she explained. ''And if I'm not in the mood on one of those weekends, well, then there goes the month. I've been with him for about two and a half years, and it's just not as exciting as it used to be.'' Last Saturday night, she swallowed a blue, diamond-shaped Viagra pill, which she sneaked from a cache in the office where she works. The dosage was 50 milligrams, the standard for male sexual dysfunction. She chose not to tell her partner. ''We were watching television, just a regular movie,'' she said, noting that after an hour she began to feel ''a fullness. I can't say it was a tingling, but it was some effect of the increased blood flow to the area.'' The couple retreated to the bedroom, and the pill began to work its alleged magic. ''I have to say it was great,'' the woman said. ''It was animalistic. I can definitely say it was not a placebo effect. I'm a nurse, and I'm trained to recognize those things.'' Of the side effects reported by male users of Viagra -- a drop in blood pressure, a mild headache, a blue tint to the vision, a flushed face -- she reported only one: exceedingly rosy cheeks, which she explained to her boyfriend as springtime allergies. She has no hesitancy about trying the drug again, despite doctors' warnings that women of childbearing age should not take the drug. ''I've had children, and I was using birth control,'' she explained. Dr. Jennifer Berman, a urologist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, is conducting a study of the effects of Viagra on women who have some level of sexual dysfunction and is giving the drug only to those who have had hysterectomies or are postmenopausal. ''We're not giving it to women of childbearing potential because we're just not sure of the effects on women of childbearing age,'' she said. | Curious Women Are Seeing if Viagra Works Wonders for Them |
1017846_0 | India and Pakistan have been working to build a bomb for decades. Until this week, their nuclear programs were powerful symbols of modernity for two poor nations. They are not mere symbols anymore. Today, with India having tested its bomb and Pakistan openly threatening to conduct nuclear tests, there are real weapons that could be used in a nuclear war. Pentagon strategists, political scientists and nuclear physicists agree: India's tests made two nations with a billion people between them one of the world's more dangerous regions. Testing weapons is not the same as using them; there are enormous taboos against that, and India has always said it would not be the first to use them. But Pakistan, which lost three wars to India, in 1947, 1965 and 1971, has no such doctrine. India has declared itself ''a nuclear weapons state'' with ''the capacity to build a big bomb,'' and Pakistani leaders are under immense political pressure to reply in kind. The two adversaries built their bombs by dint of science, international assistance and, in Pakistan's case, a worldwide network of theft, according to American officials. Their weapons programs are exemplars of national pride and nuclear proliferation. India's program began in earnest after China, its most powerful rival, tested a nuclear bomb in 1964. It started with a research reactor supplied by Canada in 1960, run with heavy water from the United States. That reactor, delivered on a guarantee of peaceful use but without international inspections, is still in service. American technicians trained Indian scientists to reprocess spent fuel for plutonium. The Indian scientists took the plutonium, made a bomb similar to the one that leveled Nagasaki and tested it in 1974. The New Delhi Government called it ''a peaceful nuclear explosion,'' a term coined under the now-absurd notion that the bombs could be used to build canals and tunnels. The Indian weapons complex -- including reactors run with heavy water smuggled from China and Russia -- also uses technology from France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain. It is run by scientists who respond to political orders, not generals. By contrast, the Pakistani program is a military operation run by Abdul Qadeer Khan. That bomb might never have been built had he not returned home from a job as a metallurgist in the Netherlands in 1976 with the stolen blueprints of a uranium-enrichment plant, American intelligence officials say. ''The great claim | Nuclear Programs Built on Deceit and Fear |
1017810_1 | excise the intolerance and division that have too long characterized Northern Ireland's politics. The plan carves out common ground acceptable to pro-British Unionists, who are mainly Protestants, and the mainly Catholic nationalists who want to unite the region with Ireland. It would keep Northern Ireland in Britain and give it its own elected assembly. But it would also create links with Ireland, through a political body consisting of leaders from both parts of the island. The parties that produced the agreement are all campaigning for a ''yes'' vote. They include the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, Sinn Fein, and the Ulster Unionists, the main Protestant party. Polls show that the plan is likely to win approval. It enjoys wide support in the Irish Republic and among Northern Ireland's Catholics. But it is far less popular with Protestants, who worry that after making the compromises in the agreement they will still face I.R.A. violence. Some of their concerns are artificial, drummed up by demagogic politicians like the Rev. Ian Paisley, the leader of a hard-line Protestant party that attacked the peace talks. Britain is not going to put the job of policing Northern Ireland in the hands of paramilitary groups, as Mr. Paisley claims. Nor will people associated with such a group, Protestant or Catholic, be able to hold office while their paramilitary associates still use violence. Many Protestants are also concerned about the provision to give early release to people on both sides who were convicted of terrorism. Their fear is unwarranted. Many former prisoners now reject violence. At the peace talks, former prisoners were among the most serious negotiators. The most powerful argument against the plan is the continued refusal of paramilitary groups on both sides to turn over their weapons. The I.R.A. recently said it will not disarm. It and the Protestant groups must announce that their war is over and begin disarmament now. But that is not sufficient reason to oppose the plan, which was never billed as an immediate solution to Northern Ireland's problems. The accord creates institutions that can work out differences peacefully, which should gradually isolate those who cling to violence. Northern Ireland has no history of compromise. The peace plan turns the region away from sectarian strife and toward a politics in which leaders can learn to work with old adversaries. It deserves the enthusiastic approval of Protestants and Catholics alike. | Voting on Peace in Northern Ireland |
1017586_0 | SAILORS are a breed apart. They are able, it seems, to deal with whatever comes up -- a sudden gust, a tangled rudder, a twisted halyard, even an improperly welded thingamabob that breaks in a gale, sending the sail down the mast. All of them are Mr. Fixits. I even know a 10-year-old sailor who can do almost anything. That alone should have told me that I was not a person cut out for sailing. But there were other warning signals. For example, my husband and I once had a canoe. We capsized twice and were forced to pull ourselves up from the murky bottom, muddy and dripping like some prehistoric creatures from the deep. That certainly drove the point home that marine travel of any kind short of the QEII was not for me. But we had lived on the bay for more than a decade, and after we got rid of the canoe -- for reasons which have become obvious -- we hadn't been able to do anything but look at the water in front of our house. It seemed a shame. Therefore I was pretty vulnerable the day I laid eyes on a Barnstable Cat, a swell little boat with a single sail and, to me, beautiful lines. On the strength of a single outing, I was smitten. So last summer, for my birthday, my husband presented me with the 12-foot vessel -- a tan and white and green craft of perfect proportion. When I sent a picture of it to my nephew, the Ph.D. in California, he pronounced it ''yar,'' the same adjective, you may remember, that Katharine Hepburn used for her yacht, The True Love, in ''The Philadelphia Story.'' Up till then I had always believed that it was better to know someone who owned a boat than to own one yourself. I had crewed on a number of sailboats: an Atlantic that was out on the sound the day 300 boats capsized in a sudden squall, and we lost our jib; an International One racing off Cape Cod, whose captain required that all our sandwiches be made on pita, so they wouldn't leak from the bottom; a Snipe on Lake Ontario. But now I would no longer have a captain to order me to duck my head to avoid being beaned by the boom, to tell me when to come about, when to provide | Taking the Helm Is Not All Plain Sailing |
1017506_3 | hazards, and in a couple of cases, I have been glad that I had traveler's checks as backup. Ms. Handwerk said a recent American Express survey of 1,950 travelers -- 150 in 13 countries -- found that 1 in 9 had trouble using an A.T.M. Performance is certainly affected by how much traffic a machine gets: Those in isolated places may suffer problems and not be repaired for some time, and may not even flash an ''Out of Order'' signal. A student traveling in Sicily in March lost her card on a Saturday in a tetchy machine. She had to ask for loans from fellow travelers until she returned Monday to get the card back from the bank. The loss would have been even more inconvenient if she had been going to another destination. If you are new in using an A.T.M. card abroad, check with your bank first to be sure your identification number will work. In theory, the network people say, personal identification numbers of four, five or six digits should work equally well, but some travelers have reported problems using longer numbers abroad. A four-digit number is safer. The identification should be all numerical, not an alphabetical mnemonic, because phones and other key pads in Europe do not usually have letters. Finding a Machine The two major networks, Cirrus, linked to Mastercard, and Plus, linked to Visa, publish leaflets listing foreign banks that tie into their networks. Member banks should be able to provide a copy, but do not wait to the last minute because they frequently have trouble finding them. Either network list may work because there is a heavy overlap. If two people are traveling together, it is smart to divide up the A.T.M. and credit cards. Two types of credit cards should be carried in case a freeze is put on one by a car-rental company, or some unauthorized use causes the bank to stop payments. Again, if you are a first-timer, tell your bank you are going abroad. Although banks and American Express will not say what clues raise suspicions that a card has been stolen or its numbers have been copied, any patterns that are unusual may trigger a shutoff. For example, big withdrawals from a machine in Monte Carlo may set off alarms if you have never before traveled abroad. Overseas A.T.M.'s do not add a fee for use of the | Plastic Gaining on Traveler's Checks |
1019751_3 | conventional wisdom went, it would not provoke a crisis by testing a nuclear weapon. And in classified reports this year, analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency even discounted the new Indian Government's vow to go nuclear. So the White House did not order a new broad intelligence review of India's nuclear program. The C.I.A. had failed to recruit any Indian spies with information on the country's nuclear intentions, officials said. Moreover, the deputy station chief in New Delhi had recently been expelled for a botched attempt to recruit the chief of India's counterintelligence operations, further weakening the agency's abilities. The National Security Agency, which intercepts and decodes communications of foreign governments, was also stymied in its attempts to eavesdrop on Indian leaders. That left spy satellites as the primary source of information. And in the biggest miscalculation, those satellites looked only infrequently at the nuclear test site. Then, on April 6, Pakistan conducted a provocative test of a new ballistic missile capable of reaching major Indian cities. The overarching question was: How would India respond? ''The consensus was that the response was more likely to be a missile test,'' an official said. ''The entire intelligence community thought we were not facing an imminent nuclear test.'' The Indians played to those expectations. Mr. Vajpayee appointed a senior aide to discuss proliferation issues with the Administration, American officials said, and that left them with the impression that they were getting inside information. Mr. Vajpayee's aide met with Mr. Richardson's delegation in mid-April at the New Delhi residence of Ambassador Richard Celeste, and agreed to further talks in Washington in May. Mr. Richardson left convinced that the Indians would not test. By this time the Imagery Requirements Subcommittee, an interagency intelligence group that controls the movements of American spy satellites, had decided to focus its efforts on India's missile sites, taking photos of the nuclear site only about once every three days, and the Administration's fears receded. In a mid-April meeting with Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, Mr. Richardson discounted the new Indian Government's avowed nuclear intentions as ''election rhetoric,'' according to a Pakistani official who attended. On May 1 Mr. Berger, meeting with the Indian Foreign Minister, K. Raghunath, did not raise the issue of nuclear tests explicitly and ''praised India's restraint in not responding to Pakistan's testing of the missile,'' a White House official said. | U.S. May Have Helped India Hide Its Nuclear Activity |
1019752_1 | in New York and New Jersey in recent years, the National Transportation Safety Board has undertaken a study of the hazards. Preliminary findings released last week showed that more than 2,500 known accidents involving PWC's occurred in 1997, causing 84 deaths, up from only 26 in 1994. Most of the victims are the drivers themselves, and most die from head and neck injuries. There are now a million PWC's out there, with nearly 200,000 new ones sold each year, stimulated by TV ads showing macho guys skipping effortlessly over the waves at high speeds. But the real problem lies not with the manufacturers but with state regulators, who allow novice drivers to take the controls with no idea of how to operate the craft or what to do in an emergency. Most states require drivers to be 16 years old, but 24 states do not require any formal training. California, possibly the worst offender, requires no instruction and allows 12-year-olds to pilot a craft that weights 500 pounds, hits 60 miles per hour at full throttle and is virtually impossible to control at very low speeds. New York, with 32,000 registered PWC's, is not much better. The minimum operating age is 18, but no instruction is required. PWC's account for more than 30 percent of all boating accidents in New York, even though they account for only 7 percent of vessels. A bill mandating an eight-hour certification course for operator-owners has aroused little interest in Albany, which is shameful considering what New York's neighbors have done. Connecticut's boating laws are the nation's strictest, requiring a 10-hour course for PWC operators. New Jersey operators must take an eight-hour safety course or pass a test administered by the state police. Manufacturers, which have developed a model training code to guide state legislatures, can help with design changes, including enhanced braking power and improved off-power steering. Yet the real menace here is the driver. One industry spokesman noted the other day that the ''average consumer'' is ''a 41-year-old man with 1.3 kids.'' Fine, but a 41-year-old man with .00 hours of training can be as dangerous as a 12-year-old. Short of banning these machines, the states can at least put them in skilled hands. That would make for a less nerve-racking (though no less noisy) summer for people who plan to spend it on the water, and a safer summer for the operators. | Memorial Day Menace |
1019755_4 | the issue of disarmament of the I.R.A. and Protestant paramilitary groups. For years, it was put forward as a condition for starting talks, and for that reason parties like Sinn Fein could not gain entry to negotiations. Under Prime Minister Tony Blair, disarmament, or ''decommissioning'' as it is called, was assigned to a parallel panel, and the talks went forward with participation of political parties with links to paramilitary groups that still held their arms. In recent weeks, Mr. Blair has made three trips to Northern Ireland to shore up the flagging ''yes'' campaign. In response to the worry over the vast underground arsenals belonging to the armed groups, he promised to see to it that groups wanting representation in the new Assembly had to persuade their military allies to begin disarmament before taking their seats. He pointedly said he believed Sinn Fein and the I.R.A. to be ''inextricably linked.'' The power-sharing formula to be used in the election for the Assembly guarantees to Sinn Fein at least one position and probably two in the body's 10-member leadership. The Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams, was pressed today in television interviews to say when the I.R.A. would start turning in its arms. ''When will it happen?'' he said. ''I don't know. But I can tell you this, and I can tell those Unionists who voted yes that we intend to keep our commitments and we intend to do our best to create a new democracy on this island -- with all the guns, all of the conflict, all of the atrocity, all of the semblance of violence removed and a normal society functioning on this island.'' There were two new reminders of the lurking threat of the violence that has caused the loss of more than 3,200 lives in the last three decades. As the votes were being counted in King's Hall in Belfast on Saturday afternoon, the Irish police intercepted two cars south of the border near Dundalk with almost 1,000 pounds of explosives aboard. They took two men into custody under the republic's anti-terrorism laws. Hours later a small bomb under a railway bridge in West Belfast detonated when a remote-controlled police robot was trying to disarm it. Two men are being held in that case. History lingers here longer than in many other places, and forgetfulness comes hard where so many lives have been lost. As the referendum | Wary Mood in Ulster After Vote: Trials Still Ahead |
1014622_2 | Mr. Arafat: ''You've got to make an effort.'' Mr. Gore has been in the Middle East on a journey timed to coincide with Israel's 50th birthday. He was flying back to Washington tonight, and his aides have been careful to say that he was not trying to insert himself into the tense and complicated relationship between Israel and the Palestinians. Aides to the Vice President said he had been consulting by telephone with Ms. Albright, who has been on an Asian trip. But Mr. Gore's talks with Mr. Arafat, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, and with Mr. Netanyahu, at the airport in Tel Aviv, nevertheless added up to a fresh high-level exercise in American intercession, and it seemed to underscore the priority the Clinton Administration is now attaching to the discussions. Mr. Gore had been expected to meet on Saturday night only with Mr. Arafat, and that meeting itself stretched into the early hours of this morning. The unscheduled meeting with Mr. Netanyahu that followed lasted another two hours, and Mr. Gore did not arrive in Cairo until dawn, five hours behind schedule and with almost no time to sleep before a busy day of meetings. At the news conference here, Mr. Gore said that he wanted to accentuate the positive, even suggesting that progress in the London talks toward resolving differences between Israel and the Palestinians over further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank could serve as a ''springboard'' for broader reconciliation. But Mr. Gore could not disguise altogether the gloom expressed in recent days by other American officials, who have said they see little chance that the session will result in an enduring agreement. He said that his meetings in Israel, the West Bank, Egypt and Saudi Arabia about Middle East peace had left him with ''a renewed appreciation for how difficult and how complex these issues really are.'' A similar sense of hope and apprehension was voiced today by senior Egyptian officials, including President Hosni Mubarak, who warned that a failure in the London meetings ''would much more complicate things in the future.'' ''Quite frankly, I hope they can secure something for the sake of peace and stability,'' Mr. Mubarak said of Ms. Albright and other United States officials who have spearheaded the American-led effort. But he said that he and his Government ''fear what may follow'' if Monday's talks do not result in success. | Gore, in Mideast, Prods Sides Before Talks |
1014667_0 | To the Editor: Your April 29 front-page article reports that the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law has expressed concern about the physical well-being of children born through new fertility technologies. But the panel does not take into account the psychological needs of these children. While the panel grants children born through the new techniques the right to information about the medical and genetic past of the donors of the semen and eggs from which they were conceived, it denies them the right to know who those donors are. Some members of the panel feared that keeping the donors anonymous might cause ''inadvertent future matings between siblings and other close blood relatives.'' But society should be just as concerned about the identity problems these children might experience. Studies show that adopted children have a hard time building a healthy sense of self when they are raised with secrecy about their origins. BETTY JEAN LIFTON New York, April 30, 1998 The writer is an adoption counselor. | Infertility Panel Missed on Insurance |
1014637_0 | An unusual alliance of manufacturers and environmental groups has formed to try to prevent what for many people around the world would be a disaster of gigantic proportions: a shortage of chocolate. For while the world's appetite for chocolate grows more voracious each year, cocoa farms around the globe are failing, under siege from fungal and viral diseases and insects. For decades, cocoa farming has escaped such problems by moving to new areas in the tropics, even new countries or continents, where growers find more of the rain forest in which the crop thrives. But the number of new forests to turn to is dwindling. Researchers predict a shortfall in beans from the cacao tree, the raw material from which chocolate is made, in as little as 5 to 10 years. ''We're running out of places in the world'' to plant cocoa, said Dr. Carol Knight, vice president of scientific affairs at the American Cocoa Research Institute, a nonprofit group that tracks supply. ''We have to figure out how to grow it sustainably. Nobody wants to lose chocolate.'' To that end, representatives from the Mars, Cadbury, Nestle and Hershey chocolate companies met with conservation groups last month at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama to talk about strategies for sustainable farming. The Mars company paid. Sustainability is a broad notion that includes keeping farms partly forested for biodiversity, farming without large doses of pesticides, fungicides or fertilizers, and replanting rather than abandoning farms. For cocoa, researchers say sustainability will require a shift away from the large plantations carved out of the rain forest to the smaller farms where cacao trees are grown in the shade of larger trees. Plantation trees, exposed to the sun, require more fertilizer, fungicide and pesticide, and are at greater risk of the spread of pests and disease. Plantations fail when the cost of maintaining them becomes prohibitive. A shift away from plantations could prove a boon to small farmers and help preserve rain forests and the many plant and animal species that appear to flourish in the natural environment of a cocoa grove. But the task of designing the small-scale cocoa farm of the future is daunting because little is known about how best to grow the trees. The cacao tree evolved in the New World tropics under the shade of taller rain forest trees. After six years or so, the slow-growing tree produces | Chocoholics Take Note: Beloved Bean in Peril |
1018628_4 | Beach, Ore., for ownership of the Mary D. Hume, a century-old Arctic whaler that he claims had been given to him by the society. Nearly bankrupted by the cost of litigation, the organization finally gave Mr. Dluhos the boat. A decade later, however, the Mary D. Hume remains partly submerged a few yards off the town's port. ''This man killed the Mary D. Hume, and everyone in the preservation community knows it,'' said Peter Stanford, president of the National Maritime Historical Society and a trustee of the Friends group. ''He's selfish, shortsighted and wildly litigious.'' Mr. Dluhos insists that he will rescue the Mary D. Hume. But first, he says, he wants to reclaim the Catawissa. ''No one steals from Emre Dluhos and gets away with it,'' he said, standing in his living room and waving a wooden oar. Asked whether two derelict vessels might be a bit much to handle, Mr. Dluhos pulled up his sagging trousers and struck the pose of a fearless sea captain. ''I can handle them all,'' he bellowed. Although they once directed most of their ire at Mr. Dluhos, Mr. Anderson and Friends of the Catawissa have a new nemesis. Steven C. Trueman, a boat salvager from Kingston, N.Y., took possession of the Catawissa earlier this month with help from the Canal Corporation, the state agency that maintains the region's network of locks and canals. According to the agency, Mr. Trueman was the only person willing to remove the boat from the Erie Canal by May 1, the date that water was released back into the waterway after winter. Cynthia Munk, a spokeswoman for the agency, said the ship was not only in danger of capsizing but was becoming a navigational hazard to canal traffic. And moreover, she said, the agency was under growing pressure from town officials in nearby Waterford who were tired of chasing teen-agers off what had become a popular gathering place for beer-drinking youths. ''The Friends had good intentions, but they just weren't able to get it together in time,'' she said. ''Mr. Trueman was the only one who could make it seaworthy. It's a wonderful vessel, but our goal was to get it out of the canal intact.'' Three weeks ago, the Friends group sued the agency in Federal District Court in Albany, claiming that it illegally turned over the ship to Mr. Trueman, effectively nullifying the group's grant | Drama Off the High Seas; Lawsuit Rages Over a Decaying, and Historic, Tugboat |
1018627_1 | Ireland were obsessing about marauding prisoners taking over Northern Ireland and terrorists in black masks holding high Government positions. Mr. Adams's unionist partners were livid -- some publicly attacked him -- and the accord's opponents gleefully mocked the cocky tableau. They also used it to stoke fears over the agreement's provision for the accelerated release of political prisoners. One anti-referendum advertisement in newspapers this week painted this picture if the accord is approved: ''We got murderers on the street, godfathers in government and gangsters acting as police.'' Just two days before the voting, supporters of the agreement are still struggling to overcome the political damage, hoping that a concert by the wildly popular rock group U2 will have erased the stench. The gaffe had such serious reverberations because it underscored the tensions in one of the most fragile coalitions in history, consisting of partners who may not even shake hands, may even loathe each other, may not even speak outside the negotiating table, but who are manacled together by the agreement. They are forced to put aside centuries of resentment and campaign for the same side. David Trimble, head of the largest unionist party, who backs the agreement, branded the assemblage ''a disgusting display.'' Officials involved with the campaign for the accord said that was a major reason why U2 scheduled its special appearance on the referendum's behalf here this week. And it explains why the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, flew to the town of Coleraine north of here today and pledged that prisoners would be kept in jail unless they gave up their criminal activity for good. In a television interview late tonight, Mr. Blair declared, ''Who could feel anything but revulsion with prisoners parading themselves about?'' In a rare admission of failure, Mr. Adams, in an interview here today, referred to the event as ''my mistake.'' But British and Irish officials now concede privately that it was a huge miscalculation for them to allow the temporary release of seven prominent I.R.A. prisoners so they could appear at the Sinn Fein convention in Dublin on May 10. The spectacle of defiant guerrillas who had served sentences for bombings and shootings drawing thunderous applause as they appeared on stage with Mr. Adams infuriated many voters. While Catholics are widely behind the agreement, Protestants are divided and polls show that the event in Dublin -- which has been repeated again | Memo From Belfast; Gerry Adams Blunders, and Peace Drive Stumbles |
1016640_2 | to 1997 accounted for an additional $700 million in taxes. In Yankee-mania money, that's enough for a stadium and a few overpriced hot dogs. The report also said that graduates who would not have qualified for college before open admissions earned $67 million more in one year during the 1980's than they would have without a degree. Jane Bowers, who taught Mr. Sylver college English, said that while he was a remarkable young man, there were many others she taught who had also accomplished much. They validated her faith in the system, she said, adding that their successes seemed to be lost on the critics of public colleges. ''What do they know about what education can do to a person and transform a life?'' she said. ''It's frustrating. They pull away resources because they have these mistaken notions and our ability to run a good ship is compromised. Then their prophecies become self-fulfilling.'' ONE of Mr. Sylver's early jobs was delivering boxes of computer paper to offices. The only papers he hauls now are in his briefcase. In buildings where he once used the service entrance, he now shares the elevators with executives on his way to boardrooms. ''A school like CUNY where you can walk in the door, start classes and have low tuition, that's an amazing thing,'' Mr. Sylver said. ''It says a lot about our country that you can do that.'' His father, who had to drop out of Queens College decades ago to raise a family, now visits him for lunch. On the weekends, his children sometimes come over to romp in his office. ''My daughter says that when she goes to college she wants to be a doctor or a lawyer,'' he said. ''My son says things like he wants to be a cabdriver. That bothers the hell out of me, but he likes cars.'' Give him time, it's just a phase. It took him a while to jump income brackets, too. Still, he sometimes has that nagging thought familiar to anyone who crossed the line from working stiff to professional. He only has to look out his window and see the post office where his father works on trucks. It's quite a view. ''I wonder if someone is going to come back and take it all away,'' he said. ''How am I here? It really does make you catch your breath, you're so overwhelmed.'' | About New York; CUNY Cure That Lacks A Disease |
1016691_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-15 U.S. to Impose Sanctions On India for Nuclear Tests President Clinton decided to impose economic sanctions on India's Government for detonating three underground nuclear explosions, senior Administration officials said. A1 The United States' inability to foresee India's nuclear tests was a failure of both the C.I.A. and American foreign policymakers, Government officials said. A1 The Indian Government won overwhelming support at home for the nuclear tests, but senior officials hinted that they might try to soften the international outcry. A14 China condemned India's tests with notable brevity and restraint. A15 North Korea Suspends Accord North Korean officials said they would suspend their compliance with the 1994 nuclear freeze agreement that was intended to dismantle that country's nuclear program. A10 6 Deaths in Indonesia Riots At least 6 students in Jakarta were killed and more than 20 others were wounded when security forces opened fire on a demonstration that had spilled out from a college campus and onto a major highway. A1 Albright Defends Israel Policy Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright offered a broad defense of American policy in the Middle East and urged Israel to move quickly to grab a chance for lasting peace, asserting the United States was not trying to impose a settlement on it. A8 Ariel Sharon, an Israeli Cabinet minister considered crucial to Government approval of a peace deal, said he would not join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his meeting with Secretary Albright to protest he called unauthorized ''promises'' by the Prime Minister. A8 Mass Grave Found in Bosnia War crimes investigators in Bosnia found a tangle of buried bodies that they said were some of the 8,000 Muslim men who were missing after the Bosnian Serbs overran the town of Srebrenica in 1995. A3 The United States envoy Richard Holbrooke admitted he was making little headway in efforts to start Kosovo peace talks. (Reuters) Britain Announces Ulster Aid The British Government announced a $520 million aid package for Northern Ireland, stepping up its effort to obtain voter approval of the Northern Ireland peace settlement. A4 Clinton Knew of Mercenaries A British mercenary force that helped carry out military operations in Sierra Leone this year kept the Clinton Administration informed of its activities and had its tacit support, the military group and a senior Administration official said. A3 Mexico Governor Resigns Jorge Carrillo Olea, the Governor of Morelos State, Mexico, said he | NEWS SUMMARY |
1016691_2 | would step down. Public protests have been growing over the activities of kidnapping gangs and drug traffickers. A10 NATIONAL A16-21 Senate Restores Food Aid To Legal Immigrants The Senate voted to restore food stamps to a quarter of a million legal immigrants and refugees, retreating from some of the provisions of the 1996 welfare overhaul law. The measure is expected to pass the House. A1 Vote Against Phone Switching The Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure that authorizes stiff fines and penalties against telephone companies that switch the long-distance phone service of customers without their permission. A18 Discrimination and Mortgages The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is responsible for fighting racial discrimination in housing, is also contributing to it through its major mortgage program, according to an in-depth study of the Chicago area. A16 No Leniency for Bombing Figure A Federal judge in Oklahoma City rejected a plea for leniency for Michael Fortier, the man who never warned the authorities about the Oklahoma City bombing three years ago but who later became a leading Government witness against the two men who were convicted. The judge indicated that he might impose a harsher sentence on Mr. Fortier than the 11 to 14 years suggested by prosecutors. Mr. Fortier has pleaded guilty to failing to warn officials of the plot, to lying to the F.B.I. and to two charges involving the transportation of stolen firearms. A16 Anti-Missile Test Fails A Pentagon missile defense system, the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, failed a fifth consecutive flight test when a booster rocket misfired. A19 Newspaper Rebuffs Judge Reporters and editors at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will not identify the newspaper's anonymous sources for articles that named Richard A. Jewell as a suspect in the bombing of Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Games, the newspaper's lawyer told a judge. A18 Estrogen Alternative An alternative to estrogen may offer older women many of the hormone's healthful effects on hearts and bones without one of its most worrisome side effects, an increased risk of breast cancer. But experts warned that it was too soon for a definitive verdict on the custom-designed synthetic estrogen, raloxifene. A21 Clintons' Financial Picture The holdings of President and Mrs. Clinton, fueled by a rising stock market, grew last year, according to a financial disclosure form. But their legal bills from the Paula Corbin Jones lawsuit and the Whitewater | NEWS SUMMARY |
1016671_3 | site, although not the country. Two hundred of the reactor's 8,000 rods have not yet been prepared, he said. ''We are keeping up our progress in implementing the nuclear freeze agreement, but the U.S. is behind,'' Mr. Kim told Mr. Harrison, who spoke with reporters in Beijing en route back to the United States. ''So we have now decided to slow down and suspend certain aspects of the agreement.'' He said that once the United States had a chance to ''catch up,'' North Korea would resume cooperation. The North Koreans contend that the United States is behind schedule in heavy fuel shipments and in its preparations to build the new reactors, to be completed by 2003. On Saturday, the State Department said the United States had lived up to its obligations, noting that even though oil shipments have been slow for the first part of the year, the stipulated quota would be met by year's end. ''Anything that would happen to undermine the integrity of that agreement from the North Korean side or from the outside would be, in our view, extremely lamentable and regrettable,'' Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering said. A State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said he had no information about the unsealing of the plant. He said that whether the act violates the agreement depends on what those ''maintenance activities are.'' Although North Korea has generally honored its commitments under the 1994 agreement, the United States has been unhappy with what it sees as North Korea's tepid attempts to improve relations with South Korea. North Korea, in turn, had been angered by what it regarded as the United States' halfhearted efforts to remove trade barriers -- efforts that have so far been mostly limited to allowing phone and fax lines. Plans for the two reactors promised under the agreement have also been slowed by the financial crisis in Japan and South Korea. The two countries have delayed payments of billions of dollars in cash they had pledged. Despite the announcement, Mr. Harrison said North Korean leaders had made some conciliatory statements during his talks. He said they signaled that they might be willing to negotiate with both the United States and South Korea to create a three-way peacekeeping force and structure for the tense Korean demilitarized zone. North Korea has previously refused to deal with Seoul as an equal partner on the issue. | North Korea Says It Will Unseal Reactor |
1016695_2 | reconsider. India might still clear the way for a useful visit if it stopped testing and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It could justify such a step by citing China and France, which tested nuclear weapons a few years ago, provoking an international outcry, and then declared they would sign the treaty. It was India's founding Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who first proposed such a treaty a generation ago, and it is not too late for India to redeem his vision. Pakistan has said it would sign if India goes along. India has much to be proud of as the world's most populous democracy. But its bitter colonial legacy has made Indian leaders distrustful of outside powers, especially those with nuclear weapons that lecture others about nuclear restraint. India justifies its latest tests by citing the military threat from its neighbors to the north and west. But beyond minor border disputes, China has no hostile designs on India. It is deplorable that China has aided Pakistan with its military program, but Pakistan, with or without nuclear weapons, is more than matched by India's conventional and nuclear capacity. By testing a weapon now, India is likely to provoke Pakistan and plunge both sides into more arms programs that neither can afford. Less than a decade after the end of the cold war, the gravest threat of nuclear war is now shaping up in South Asia. As if to show sensitivity to global opinion, Prime Minister Vajpayee indicated that India had not yet moved to convert its capability into actual weapons. Mr. Clinton should seek India's pledge to exercise restraint in developing nuclear warheads and in testing missiles capable of delivering them. He can also press China to stop the flow of technology to Pakistan and thus reassure India about its security concerns. It is fashionable in some circles to say that India and Pakistan are capable of managing their nuclear relationship, just as the United States and the Soviet Union did throughout the cold war. But the superpowers were lucky to avoid a war in 1962, and they built up an elaborate regimen of safeguards to preserve the peace, which India and Pakistan lack. In the end, the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its efforts to keep up militarily. For India to avoid that fate, it must seek safety in arms control and restraint, not a nuclear buildup. | A Nuclear Threat From India |
1016736_1 | to eliminate nuclear weapons and to ban computer-simulated tests -- conditions already rejected by the United States and other established nuclear powers. Endorsement of the tests came from most of India's most influential newspapers, from leading opposition politicians, from student groups, and even from Tushar Gandhi, a great-grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi, India's apostle of nonviolence, who told the Associated Press that he was ''proud it was done in India and by Indians.'' A leading Hindu nationalist who is the most powerful politician in Bombay, Balasaheb K. Thackeray, was thrilled. ''We have to prove that we are not eunuchs,'' he said. More cautious Indian commentators saw such reactions as premature, especially since the tests' full consequences could not be reckoned without knowing the reaction of India's arch-rival, Pakistan. Despite hawkish statements by some top Pakistani officials pledging ''a matching response,'' reports from Islamabad indicated that the Government was weighing carefully what many there saw as one of the most critical decisions in the nation's history. Islamabad's choice appeared to lie between responding with a nuclear test of its own, thereby risking the same economic sanctions that threaten India, or showing restraint, which would earn Western goodwill but risk the wrath of hardline Muslim groups, the armed forces and other powerful factions. Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former Prime Minister, has said the country has been ready to test for at least two years. A measure of the pressures on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who returned to Islamabad today from Central Asia, came from Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. ''We are like a cook waiting for the orders,'' Mr. Khan said in a Pakistani newspaper. Another pointer came from the politically powerful army chief, Gen. Jehangir Karamat. ''So far we have not disappointed our nation in respect of our security capability and we will never disappoint our people now,'' he told reporters. Prime Minister Sharif said Pakistan would not bow to Western pressures in determining whether to stage a nuclear test. ''I will not accept dictation from outside in safeguarding the security of the country,'' the 48-year-old Mr. Sharif said. Since a landslide election victory in February 1997, he has been widely criticized in Pakistan for heavy-handed pursuit of enhanced political power, which commentators have said might incline him to reach for the popular acclaim a nuclear test might bring. But pressures on Mr. Sharif appeared to be finely balanced. As | India Glows With Pride As Outrage Rises Abroad |
1016728_2 | Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, did not address the proposals but simply offered an unrepentant justification for the tests. Although Pakistan has long been India's chief rival, Mr. Vajpayee cited its fears of China, stemming from border disputes, as well as China's support to Pakistan. ''Although our relations with that country have improved in the last decade or so, an atmosphere of distrust persists mainly due to the unresolved border problem,'' he wrote, referring to China. ''To add to that distrust, that country has materially helped another neighbor of ours to become a covert nuclear weapons state.'' The Administration's warnings were delivered to Mr. Vajpayee's Government this afternoon by Thomas R. Pickering, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Senior State Department officials said Mr. Pickering had not explicitly offered the Indians anything, but simply outlined the sanctions India faced and sought to clarify its statement on Monday signaling a willingness to adhere to some terms of a ban on nuclear testing. The other officials, however, said the National Security Council had resisted the State Department's recommendation to impose sanctions immediately today to allow the Indians time to respond to the appeals. The Administration's efforts underscored the scramble to find an effective way to respond to the tests, which re-ignited fears of an arms race in South Asia. Senator John Glenn, the Democrat from Ohio who sponsored the sanctions law, said today that it was meant to impose punishment, swiftly and harshly. He said India's tests, in defiance of the international ban on testing, were an enormous setback to efforts to reduce nuclear weapons after the end of the cold war. American aid and trade with India is relatively small, with about $7.7 billion in American exports and $7.3 billion in Indian imports. And compared with more freewheeling neighbors like Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea, India has relied less on borrowing from international commercial banks. Still, the sanctions could have enormous political effect that could ripple through India's economy. ''I don't see a huge direct impact on American companies,'' said Marshall Bouton, executive vice president of the Asia Society, a nonprofit public education organization in New York. ''But it's obviously deeply unsettling to U.S.-Indo relations, and there would be a chilling effect on trade in the short and mid terms.'' The United States gave $142.5 million in direct aid in the last fiscal year, including developmental and food | CLINTON TO IMPOSE PENALTIES ON INDIA OVER ATOMIC TESTS |
1018214_2 | it are encouraged so far. ''I have treated people for 25 years and have never seen anything quite like this before,'' said Dr. James Arseneau, a medical oncologist at the Albany Medical Center Hospital in Albany. Dr. Arseneau began using Onyx-015, as the genetically engineered virus is called, in January in treatment protocols designed by the company. So far he has treated six patients, all of whom have responded in varying degrees. He said: ''I'm having fun again. It gives you the heart and courage to go forward, though we're in a very preliminary phase here.'' Dr. Fadlo Khuri, an oncologist at the M. D. Anderson Center in Houston, said that ''if this degree of response holds up, it will be astonishing,'' but he noted that higher response rates are often seen in Phase 2 tests than in the more objective Phase 3 trials that follow. He said all of his three patients had responded to the new treatment. Dr. Kirn, Onyx's medical director, said the virus was being tested in academic centers by independent experts like Dr. Khuri and Dr. Arseneau. Onyx covered the patients' costs but made no payment to the investigators, Dr. Kirn said. These investigators, he said, are saying that ''it's not just that everyone is responding, but the magnitude and rapidity of the response is very unusual.'' Many drugs that look promising in early trials often falter at later stages of clinical testing, and physicians have learned to regard even spectacular individual cases with circumspection. Nevertheless, the Onyx virus has seemed sufficiently promising to its sponsor that the company is now testing it against several other kinds of cancers, including those of the pancreas, ovary and stomach. The virus works only against tumors that have an inactivated version of a gene that normally thwarts development of tumors. The P53 gene is inactivated in 50 percent of human cancers and in 70 percent of head and neck cancers. The Onyx virus was conceived in 1992 by Frank McCormick, then the company's chief scientific officer and now director of the University of California's San Francisco cancer center. He saw how the adenovirus could be engineered in a way that made it harmless to normal cells but lethal to tumor cells with inactive p53 genes. Onyx Pharmaceuticals is in Richmond, Calif. Experimental trials of Onyx-015 are being conducted at 10 centers in the United States, Britain and Canada. | Genetically Altered Virus Kills Some Cancer Cells in Tests |
1018287_0 | PEOPLE with severe snoring problems sleep better and feel more rested after radio wave energy is used to shrink their soft palate tissue, a doctor has reported. In the treatments, a doctor inserts a probe into the back of the roof of the mouth and aims energy into the palate. That generates molecular action -- as in a microwave -- that causes heat and shrinks the tissues obstructing the air passage. Such blockage is one cause of snoring. Dr. Nelson Powell, co-director of the Sleep Disorders Research Center at Stanford University Medical Center, said the technique might one day offer hope for those who suffer from sleep apnea. For the past year, the technique has also been tested at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center's Sleep Disorders Center in Manhattan. The tissue-shrinking, Dr. Powell said, allowed most of the 22 patients in his study to sleep more quietly by decreasing air-passage obstructions that cause snoring. The patients' soft palates were reduced by an average of one-fifth of an inch. Their snoring dropped sharply, he said, from an average of 8.3 on a scale of 10 -- a level too loud for anyone to sleep in the same room -- to a hushed 1.9, or just a soft occasional snore. His findings are in the May issue of the journal Chest. The radio-wave technique offers a painless out-patient alternative to surgery or wearing a mouthpiece or a sleeping mask. Medicine has made use of radio waves for decades to treat heart, liver and other problems, but lately the energy-generating unit has become safer and more precise, almost like a surgical strike, Dr. Powell said. ''Now, the little car drives itself.'' He said he looked for years for the ideal alternative to surgery, masks and other treatments for heavy snoring sufferers before trying the radio wave generator. ''This may be it,'' he said. For 24 percent of men aged 30 to 60 and 9 percent of women, snoring is a symptom of sleep apnea in which breathing stops up to hundreds of times each night. According to the American Sleep Disorders Association, snoring affects 20 percent of the adult population, and 60 percent of the men over 40. Experts estimate that 38,000 people die from cardiovascular stoppages stemming from sleep apnea every year. FORD BURKHART HEALTH WATCH | Silent Night Therapy |
1018216_1 | destruction and continues to sponsor terrorist acts.'' Marc Thiessen, a spokesman for Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, said: ''The Europeans offered the Administration absolutely nothing in exchange for this waiver. This sends a signal to Iran that the United States is not serious about isolating their terrorist regime.'' Although Mr. Thiessen said changing the Helms-Burton law would be difficult, a senior Administration official said that much time had been spent with Mr. Helms in the negotiations and that ''there is a lot of understanding on the Hill for what we're trying to do.'' President Clinton said because the Europeans had agreed to restrict the exports of weapons technology further, the waivers were ''part of our overall strategy to deter Iran from acquiring weapons of mass destruction and promoting terrorism.'' Similarly, he argued that the accord on Cuba would protect American interests ''far more effectively than the United States could have done alone.'' Mr. Clinton made his comments at a joint news conference in London with Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, and Jacques Santer, President of the European Commission. The Iran-Libya act of 1996 mandates sanctions but permits the Secretary of State to waive them in the national interest. Senior European diplomats in Washington said the Administration had agreed that companies in all European Union nations would receive similar waivers. But senior American officials said there would be no automatic waivers for countries that invested in pipelines that ran through Iran from Caspian Sea countries. Russia received no blanket assurances, because the Administration remains concerned about the reliability of its export controls. In the case of the Cuba sanctions, the Administration will need the cooperation of a reluctant Congress. Those sanctions apply to companies that profit from property that Cuba's Communist Government expropriated from Americans. Administration officials said legislators whom they had contacted in recent days were impressed with the outlines of the evolving agreement. After having announced the agreements in London, Mr. Clinton flew here to address a meeting of the World Trade Organization, where he called for ''an ever more open global trading system.'' ''Globalization and the technology revolution are not policy choices,'' he said. ''They are facts.'' He urged the organization to speed negotiations and to begin examining next year how to reduce tariffs and subsidies in agriculture. He also proposed that the agency open to the public its hearings over trade disputes. The sessions | To Clear Air With Europe, U.S. Waives Some Sanctions |
1016871_1 | at a time when many countries have condemned the three nuclear tests conducted on Monday. He said he would call upon the Group of Seven leading industrial nations meeting in England this weekend to condemn India for the tests. The Japanese Government said it would consider halting part of its lending program, but that is a delicate issue because Japanese businesses are often involved in these lending projects, and freezing loans could have serious effects on the Indian economy. Among other nations that give aid to India, Germany called off talks scheduled for next week in Bonn, said the German Minister for Economic Cooperation, Carl-Dieter Spranger. A portion of new development aid for India worth $168 million was put on hold, and no talks will take place anytime soon. France criticized American sanctions against India. A Government spokesman, Daniel Vaillant, said, ''the French Government does not encourage the Americans to pursue sanctions,'' asserting that ''this is not the way'' to discourage India. When asked if Britain would suspend aid, which averages about $200 million a year, Derek Fatchett, Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, said no. ''It would be wrong to do that,'' he told the BBC, because it would be ''punishing the poorest and the ordinary people of India for a decision taken by their Government.'' The European Union also stopped short of threatening penalties. India has access to easy loans and other assistance from the European Union of about $100 million a year, according to the European Commission, but individual members, such as Britain, have additional forms of aid negotiated separately. Sweden cut short a three-year aid agreement with India worth $118 million that began in 1997, but said it would renegotiate a new agreement after six months. Denmark froze its $28 million in aid to India. Japan currently provides more than $1 billion in assistance to India. In 1996, Japan imposed sanctions on China for testing nuclear weapons, but such measures were focused only on freezing grants. A spokesman for the presidency of the European Union, currently held by Britain, said today in a telephone interview that unlike the United States the union has no provisions for automatic sanctions in case of nuclear testing. The spokesman said it was ''improbable'' that the European Union would take such measures, even after Foreign Ministers discuss the matter at a meeting on May 25. NUCLEAR ANXIETY: THE ALLIES | Japan Freezes Some Grants; Other Nations Seem Doubtful |
1016882_0 | Pakistani leaders demanded today that the United States and other world powers act decisively to isolate India after its five nuclear tests this week. They strongly hinted that the strength of the world's response would shape their decision on whether to detonate nuclear bombs of their own. ''The invoking of mandatory sanctions under U.S. laws against India hardly constitutes an effective response,'' Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan said, alluding to actions taken by President Clinton. ''Indian actions, which pose an immediate and grave threat to Pakistan's security, will not go unanswered.'' Cabinet ministers and senior opposition figures joined in asserting that the tests pose a crucial challenge to the rest of the world, which they believe has long favored India in its decades-old rivalry with Pakistan. They want to see India turned into a pariah state like Iraq, effectively expelled from the community of law-abiding nations. If foreign powers do not react strongly enough, officials suggested in interviews and speeches, Pakistan may follow India's example and become a declared and active nuclear power. That could further destabilize what has suddenly become the world's newest zone of atomic confrontation. ''It depends on how effectively the United States, Japan and other actors deal with this whole scenario,'' Mr. Khan said in an interview. ''This has upset the whole geopolitical and strategic structure of the Indian subcontinent and all of South Asia. Just a rebuke and a couple of weeks of posturing is not going to be enough.'' Mr. Khan said the first test of the how seriously the world will react would come this weekend at the Group of 7 meeting in Birmingham, England, at which leaders of the most powerful industrial democracies will discuss what measures to take against India. Just how Pakistan will respond is now the topic of debate here and in many capitals. The United States and other countries are doing all they can to persuade Pakistan not to reply in kind. Pakistan's Cabinet scheduled a meeting for Thursday morning to consider its options. Like India, Pakistan has for years possessed the technology necessary to build nuclear weapons. Until the Indian detonations this week, however, it had not felt obligated to build and test them. Pakistan's senior nuclear scientist, Quadeer Khan, said after the first detonations on Monday that he could build a bomb within days of being ordered to do so. Public and political pressure on the | Next-Door Neighbor Demands That World Powers Shun India |
1016817_2 | connected directly to the Internet. Because of these technical barriers, the ownership of mailing lists has largely been limited to big corporations and academic institutions. For someone running a Windows-based PC or a Macintosh connected by a modem to the Net, running a list has been a difficult task. Shareware versions of the mailing-list software programs are inferior substitutes. Of course, hobbyists could always cobble together a seat-of-the-pants mailing list by using an E-mail program to sort subscribers' messages, then culling the posts by hand and forwarding them to all other subscribers. If a list had, say, 30 subscribers, and they each sent one post a day to the list, a list owner using a PC would have to manually send out 6,300 E-mail postings a week. But mailing lists are now within reach of the masses, courtesy of a small cadre of companies that charge monthly fees to act as hosts for mailing lists on their servers. To set up my family's list, I got in touch with L-Soft, a Maryland company that acts as a host for mailing lists. After registering on line, I chose a name for the list -- Slatalla-family (All Slatallas, All the Time) -- wrote a description of its purpose and gave access to every relative with an E-mail address. Within minutes, L-Soft's server automatically sent a message to each of my list's new subscribers, welcoming them to the mailing list. Many on-line service providers will handle mailing lists for customers for a monthly fee. And, echoing the ''free home page'' craze, a few Web sites have sprung up to handle mailing lists free -- in exchange for embedding a short advertisement at the bottom of every E-mail message sent. Be careful, though: the free sites tend to come and go, so you run the risk of having your mailing list left homeless. Most hosts allow you to change the list's configuration with the aid of pull-down menus on a Web page. You do not need to know any messy programming commands; you fill in the blanks in an on-line template to update the list in seconds. The host takes care of all the drudge work, like keeping the server running, maintaining a secure environment and storing the list's archives. Even when your list has a host elsewhere, you still own it. For instance, I get to make all the fun decisions about Slatalla-family, | A Family Links Up, But United We Fall |
1016934_2 | the Indian tests ''clearly create a dangerous new instability in their region.'' He said that in a telephone conversation this morning he had urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan not to respond to India with tests of its own. But although the Administration continues to press Pakistan not to act, officials said privately that they expected the pleas to go unheeded. The President did not sound optimistic, saying of Mr. Sharif, ''The pressures on him at home are probably enormous.'' Even so, Mr. Clinton did not go as far as Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who heads the Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Helms said at a hearing today, ''India's actions clearly constitute an emerging nuclear threat to the territory of the United States.'' On Capitol Hill, there was widespread criticism of India and, despite Mr. Gingrich, general support for the President's action. But that was combined with widespread criticism of the failure to anticipate the tests. ''Why didn't anyone in the Administration or in this Congress notice that the Hindu national party had campaigned on a promise to make India a nuclear power?'' asked Senator Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat who is on the Intelligence Committee. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Kohl made statements and responded to six questions today on the terrace of the yellow San Souci Palace in Potsdam in what was once East Germany. It was while at the Potsdam conference after the defeat of Nazi Germany that Harry S. Truman, the last American President to visit there, learned of the first successful nuclear test in history, by the United States at Trinity site in New Mexico. Mr. Kohl did not join Mr. Clinton in immediately announcing sanctions. But he said that Germany would ''make it very clear that this was the wrong decision for them to take.'' Later in the day Germany called off talks set for next week in Bonn. Mr. Clinton is planning to attend the annual international economic summit known as the group of seven beginning on Friday in England. The national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, said he hoped that the participants would ''issue a very strong and clear statement condemning the action of India.'' Mr. Berger called the sanctions ''fairly substantial and powerful'' and said that the Administration would wait to gauge their effects before taking further steps against India over its tests today. The sanctions shut off not | Clinton Calls Tests a 'Terrible Mistake' And Announces Sanctions Against India |
1016856_2 | two were widely credited with bringing a much-needed dose of practical consensus-building to the fractious talks, which ended with a peace agreement on Good Friday. On May 22, people in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic will vote on whether to accept the agreement, and the Women's Coalition is campaigning hard for a yes vote. Ms. Sagar, a 39-year-old social worker, and Ms. McWilliams, a 44-year-old professor of social policy at the University of Ulster, were ridiculed early and often in the Forum, the all-Protestant elected body whose negotiations set the stage for the final peace talks. Many of their male colleagues, it seemed, could barely utter the word ''woman.'' ''They thought it was a derogatory term,'' Ms. McWilliams said. ''They called us the Ladies' Coalition.'' They also called Ms. McWilliams and Ms. Sagar ''silly women,'' ''whinging women,'' a ''Greek chorus of women,'' ''dogs,'' ''scum'' -- so many epithets that the two posted an ''insult of the week'' notice board in the hall outside the negotiations. The men also mooed like cows when the women took their seats. They told them to go home and make tea. Once, they told them to go home and ''breed for Ulster.'' ''It's such a hard, patriarchal, sexist political culture,'' said Annie Campbell, the director of the Belfast group of the Citizens' Advice Bureau, a community-help group. ''But when people saw them on television -- when they saw members of the Democratic Unionist Party shouting 'silly cows!' at the Women's Coalition -- people said, 'My God, are those the type of politicians we have?' '' During the actual peace talks, the two women did something that, in the black-and-white world of Northern Ireland politics, seemed almost revolutionary. They pressed for consensus and conciliation, for finding common ground instead of digging more firmly in to opposing positions. ''In a country where you have a lot of conflict, there is a sense that being strong means being obdurate, holding your ground, not giving anything away,'' said Carmel Roulston, a lecturer in politics at the University of Ulster. ''And women have been perceived as not being strong enough to resist compromise.'' But Ms. McWilliams and Ms. Sagar tried to turn that perception on its head. ''We were very pragmatic,'' Ms. McWilliams said. The women made a point of always speaking to all the parties, even those that had been temporarily ejected from the talks, and tried hard | Belfast Journal; 'Silly Cows' of Ulster Take the Bull by the Horns |
1016858_0 | Russia today reaffirmed its refusal to join other countries in punishing India for resuming nuclear tests, and has so far failed to register an especially strong diplomatic protest. President Boris N. Yeltsin still plans to visit India later this year. And some top officials at Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy want to go ahead with plans to sell India two nuclear power plants. ''Sanctions are an extreme measure, which is not always productive,'' Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov said. ''Therefore, I don't think we shall support any sanctions against India.'' None of this means that Moscow is eager to see a nuclear arms race in Southern Asia. Russian diplomats have publicly deplored the blasts and say they hope Pakistan will not respond in kind. Having decided to stop nuclear testing, the Russian military is not happy to see other nations flout the call for a worldwide ban on nuclear explosions. ''We deeply regret this action,'' Vladimir Rakhmanin, the chief spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said. ''We believe we may influence India through political and diplomatic means.'' But Russia's complaints have been muted and reflect its close commercial ties with India. Rosvooruzheniye, Russia's Government-owned arms export company, said last week that India was one of its largest buyers, no small consideration for military factories that have fallen on hard times. The muffled criticism is also a matter of foreign policy. India's rivalry with China makes it a potential counterweight to Beijing in the Russian strategic calculus -- just as it was in Soviet times. India's strained relations with Washington also make New Delhi a sympathetic partner for the Russian Foreign Ministry, whose influence has shrunk since the collapse of the Soviet Union. ''In Russia's corridors of power they don't allow for the possibility of economic sanctions or the recalling of ambassadors,'' the newspaper Izvestia observed today. ''Moscow seems ready to close its eyes to the violations of international norms.'' Moscow's modulated reaction has undercut Washington's effort to teach the Indians a lesson. The United States' sharp riposte after the blasts almost certainly came as little surprise to India. A tough response by India's friends, however, might have persuaded the Indian Government that its nuclear ambitions meant diplomatic isolation. President Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin discussed India's tests and other security issues in a long telephone conversation on Tuesday, according to Sergei Prikhodko, an adviser to Mr. Yeltsin. But there has been | Kremlin Soft-Pedals Its Rebuke to India, and Opposes Sanctions |
1016898_0 | Pakistan is preparing for an underground nuclear test that could take place as early as Sunday, American officials said today, citing clear signs from spy satellites, foreign agents and Pakistan's political leaders. Diplomatic, military and intelligence officials said Pakistan could test a nuclear warhead sometime next week in response to five tests that its regional rival, India, has conducted since Monday. It would be Pakistan's first test of a nuclear device and would add one more country to the list of nations that openly possess a nuclear weapons ability. Despite the certain and severe economic and political consequences for Pakistan, and the effect such a step is bound to have on the already soaring tensions in the region, ''no one expects them to not have a test,'' an Administration official said. President Clinton hastily sent a high-level diplomatic team to Pakistan today after a discouraging telephone conversation this morning with Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. The President said he asked the Prime Minister ''to resist the temptation to respond to an irresponsible act.'' But ''Sharif was not able to give that reassurance,'' said Karl F. Inderfurth, the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs. ''He told the President that he was under tremendous pressure to respond.'' At that point, Mr. Inderfurth said, President Clinton offered to send his envoys to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. The President then assembled a delegation led by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Gen. Anthony Zinni of the Marines, who commands United States forces in the Middle East and southwest Asia. The group left Washington tonight. The delegation intends to paint a grim picture of the consequences of a test, especially the severe economic penalties for Pakistan, Administration officials said, and to use political persuasion, diplomatic tact and economic pressure to try and stop a test. Pakistan would suffer the same financial sanctions as India did today -- a prohibition on private American bank loans, as well as the threat of the loss of World Bank and International Monetary Fund assistance. The World Bank has $4.4 billion worth of programs under way in Pakistan, and the I.M.F. has offered Pakistan a new $1.56 billion, three-year loan program, only about $208 million of which has been disbursed. The money not already in the pipeline would be barred. India also lost American military and economic aid, which totaled $145 million this year. The United States | Pakistan Looks Ready to Test Its Own Bomb |
1016923_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-15 India Conducts More Tests Despite Sanctions Threat The Indian Government carried out two more underground nuclear tests to add to the three blasts it conducted on Monday. The Government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee approved the new tests knowing that the United States, Japan and other countries were preparing to impose economic sanctions for the first series of explosions. A1 Pakistan is preparing for an underground nuclear test, American officials said, citing clear signs from spy satellites and foreign agents. A1 Pakistani leaders demanded that the United States and other world powers act decisively to isolate India after its five nuclear tests. A12 The Japanese Government froze new grants to India as punishment for the tests. Germany also suspended some aid, but other major trading partners ruled out sanctions. A13 Russia refused to join other countries in punishing India for resuming nuclear tests and has failed to register a strong diplomatic protest. A13 President Clinton called the Indian Government's testing a ''terrible mistake'' as he announced economic sanctions in reprisal. A13 India's tests of a thermonuclear device suggest that the country is trying to develop a variety of nuclear warheads, including hydrogen bombs, for weapons systems. A12 Agreement on Inspections The United States and Russia have reached a broad agreement on how to proceed with future nuclear-arms inspections of Iraq, now that the International Atomic Energy Agency has declared itself ready to move out of an active disarmament phase and into long-term monitoring. A7 Students Riot Over Shootings Riots exploded in pockets of Jakarta as Indonesians outraged over the police shootings of students tore down lampposts and looted stores. A6 The Clinton Administration, having given up on the Indonesian Government, has decided to appeal to the military, and it is dispatching a high-level Pentagon delegation to demand that the Indonesian security forces end their attacks on civilian demonstrators. A6 U.S. and Israel in Talks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright agreed after a 90-minute meeting to continue their talks in an effort to restart the stagnant Middle East peace negotiations. A14 Vengeful Killing in Jerusalem A Palestinian laborer was stabbed to death in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem in what the police said was apparently an act of revenge for the fatal stabbing of a yeshiva student last week. A15 Peace Talks for Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia | NEWS SUMMARY |
1019956_0 | In repeated germ attacks in the early 1990's, an obscure Japanese cult tried to kill millions of people throughout Tokyo and, a cultist has now testified, at nearby American bases where thousands of service people and their families live. The biological strikes were not detected at the time, and their significance has only recently become clear to Japanese officials still investigating the cult's activities. As far as is known, there were no deaths. But a New York Times examination of court testimony and confessions of the cult's members, as well as interviews with Japanese and American officials, show that its germ attacks were far more numerous than previously known. Hoping to ignite an apocalyptic war, the group sprayed pestilential microbes and germ toxins from rooftops and convoys of trucks. Its members have said that the targets included the Diet, or legislature; the Imperial Palace; the surrounding city, and the American base at Yokosuka, which is headquarters of the Navy's Seventh Fleet. That little-noticed testimony marks the first time a germ terrorist has ever told of assaulting any part of the United States Government. For Washington officials trying to build up the nation's defenses against germ terrorism, the drama has encouraging aspects. It suggests that such attacks can be harder to carry out than often portrayed and that governments can find ways to increase the difficulties even more. Most fundamentally, the officials say, the cult's five-year effort to sow terror and death with lethal microbes shows that germ warfare, no longer the sole province of rogue states, is within reach of extremists with a scientific bent. Acknowledging such threats, President Clinton announced a series of measures Friday to enhance the nation's germ defenses, including the stockpiling of antibiotics and vaccines. Aum Shinrikyo burst into the headlines in 1995 when it released nerve gas into Tokyo's subways, killing a dozen people. Its biological work, meant to be thousands of times more devastating, was mentioned only in passing, in scattered reports. The Times inquiry shows that the cult carried out at least nine biological attacks and that the strikes failed largely because Aum never got its hands on germs of sufficient virulence, despite great effort. It sought lethal bacteria from local sources and traveled on microbe-hunting trips to a northern Japanese isle as well as to Africa, apparently eager to obtain the dreaded Ebola virus. The full extent of the cult's activities may | SOWING DEATH: A special report.; How Japan Germ Terror Alerted World |
1019872_0 | THERE was not much of a crime scene left by the time the game warden arrived -- just some blood and hair in the dirt of a windswept patch of Wyoming range. But through the use of DNA tests, the evidence may be enough to link an accused poacher to the site. Wildlife officials are increasingly turning to the tools of human forensics and using DNA testing to help them convict poachers by taking evidence from the crime scenes and matching them up to the trophy items the hunters take home to the freezer or a taxidermist. In this case, the trail led to Victor Goni, 53, a rancher who will be tried on Thursday on charges of illegally killing an elk on private property. ''We are actually running the equivalent of a homicide investigation,'' said Kenneth W. Goddard, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service's National Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Ore. ''We're almost drawing a chalk line around where the deer was found.'' Until recently, Mr. Goddard's lab was the only one in the country using DNA testing as part of forensics analysis in wildlife crimes -- including species identification for international trade of bear gall bladders, elephant and rhinoceros horns and tusks found in jewelry as well as identification of poachers of wildlife like deer and wolves. Now, with poaching on the rise in many states, the Game and Fish Departments of Wyoming and California are using ''DNA fingerprinting'' against poachers, and, less often, to determine if an animal is responsible for an attack on a human. In California, prosecutors are ready to go to court this month for the first time with DNA tests in a deer-poaching case. In Wyoming, a hunter is awaiting sentencing in a case in which DNA tests tied him to six instances of antelope poaching. In Colorado, a poacher was convicted in numerous cases of illegally killing elk as a result of DNA tests. ''The O. J. Simpson case was a watermark of sorts for focusing the public's attention on DNA testing,'' said Mr. Goddard. In the Wyoming antelope case last month, a jury convicted Kenneth R. Nelson of Casper on six charges of wanton destruction. It was the first time the DNA technique was used on antelope in North America. ''The information on the DNA tests was pretty pivotal because it was the only substantial scientific link we had,'' said Stephanie | Genetic Pawprints Are Leading Game Wardens to the Poachers |
1019944_0 | California's decision to outlaw the use of race in public college admissions has barred most black and Latino students from the elite campuses and raised the specter of a whitening professional class in a steadily browning state. Politicians elsewhere have recognized the potential for harm and have backed away from proposals that would limit minority access to higher education. But a different and more destructive plan has emerged in New York City, where Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is pushing a proposal that would scuttle open admissions at the City University of New York. This would depress graduation rates, not just for blacks and Latinos but for every ethnic group. Such a result would be terrible for the city's work force and economy. Open admissions at the City University began in 1970, when the trustees allowed high school graduates who finished in the top half of their classes into the four-year colleges and anyone who graduated at all to attend the two-year junior colleges. CUNY's freshman class nearly doubled in a single year, with the largest increases occurring among ethnic whites who, like blacks and Latinos, had traditionally gone to worse public schools and done poorly on entrance exams. Critics saw the new plan as radical. In truth, it was already common practice around the country -- most notably in California, which had historically offered broad access while maintaining the best public university system in the nation. CUNY's version of open admissions has been called the most studied program in higher education history. The history of that research is summarized in the recently published book ''Changing the Odds: Open Admissions and the Life Chances of the Disadvantaged,'' by the sociologists David Lavin and David Hyllegard. Nearly a quarter of a million New Yorkers who would otherwise have been shut out of college have gone on to receive degrees from CUNY. ''Changing the Odds'' documents significant income differences between students who took advantage of open admissions and their peers who did not. Despite its obvious success, Mayor Giuliani has termed open admissions ''a mistake.'' One alternative to that policy would forbid the senior colleges to offer the remedial courses that make open admissions work. Mr. Lavin calculates that the new policy would bar 38 percent of whites, 67 percent of African-Americans, 70 percent of Latinos and 71 percent of Asians from the four-year schools. Half of these students are immigrants, many of them | Editorial Observer; Blocking Promising Students From City University |
1019931_5 | and they have filed or announced plans to file multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the city. Those warrants were based largely, or solely, on the word of confidential informers. A1 Fiscal Warning for New York Wall Street's boom continues to feed the budget surplus in New York City but experts say City Hall remains dangerously tied to the fortunes of the securities industry and question whether it is well-prepared for any downturn in the markets. A1 SCIENCE TIMES F1-6 A Clue to AIDS Immunity There is one eerie similarity between the bacteria that caused the Black Death and H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS: Both attack macrophages, which are the scavenger white blood cells of the immune system. Now scientists at the National Cancer Institute have reported that they have found that a genetic mutation that protects against the AIDS virus emerged in Europe around the time of the Black Death, or bubonic plague. And the resistance gene is astonishingly common in people whose ancestors lived in areas of Europe ravaged by the plague. F1 Using DNA to Track Poachers Wildlife officials are increasingly turning to the tools of human forensics and using DNA testing to help them convict poachers by taking evidence from the crime scenes and matching them up to the trophy items the hunters take home. F4 SPORTS C1-8 Pacers Tie Series With Bulls Reggie Miller hit a jump shot with 0.7 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter to lift the Indiana Pacers to a 96-94 victory over the Chicago Bulls and tie the Eastern Conference finals with the Bulls, 2-2. C1 HEALTH F7 FASHION B9 BUSINESS DAY D1-10 Strong Sales of Textbooks If public passion for the printed word has died, as some say, then a textbook case of resurrection is taking place. Buoyed by increased spending and growing student enrollment, publishers of textbooks and instructional materials registered the strongest gains in sales last year in any category of the $21 billion United States book market, with purchases of elementary school books increasing by 13 percent, to $3 billion, and college texts rising by 7.4 percent, to $2.7 billion. D1 Consulting Firms Go Public At least six consulting firms have gone public or soon will, including the Answer Think Consulting Group, a firm in Miami that advises companies on technology issues and plans to sell its first shares this week. D1 Drop in Gasoline Prices Some gasoline prices | NEWS SUMMARY |
1019879_4 | a news release issued at the meeting, involved work by scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles. The university said that its scientists had helped to develop an experimental drug, Herceptin, for a particular type of cancer that involves 30 percent of breast cancers. The F.D.A. has not approved Herceptin for marketing. For now, Herceptin is available only to those in clinical trials and by lottery to a few hundred others. But other reports described new, non-F.D.A.-approved uses of marketed drugs. Doctors are legally free to prescribe a marketed drug for another unapproved condition if they believe it will benefit a patient. The process is known as off-label use. Oncologists were also excited about a new use for Taxol, which has been in use for advanced forms of breast cancer. In a study of a new use -- early breast cancer -- Taxol reduced the death rate when combined with standard anti-cancer drugs. Taxol was hailed as the first new drug in 15 years for adjuvant breast cancer therapy. Adjuvant therapy aims to prevent recurrences of cancer, and leaders said the findings will begin to change breast cancer care as soon as this week. Manufacturers are often eager to exploit such opportunities for new sales. And scientists, proud of their research that showed a new therapy worked, often encourage off-label use to enhance their reputations. But it is often difficult for doctors to reach a consensus on when such a drug should come into wider use. The news about tamoxifen and raloxifene has led experts to debate when and whom to treat with each drug. Because the studies of the drugs were conducted in different ways, the National Cancer Institute wants to conduct a new study comparing them head-to-head. Critics say that it would be difficult to recruit women for such a clinical trial, and many oncologists say that raloxifene should be prescribed on the basis of existing information. Dr. Craig Henderson of the University of California at San Francisco said about 25 newer kinds of biological products might be developed to treat cancer, but that it will take years and tremendous effort to organize and conduct the clinical trials to prove their effectiveness. ''It is not as if suddenly the skies are going to open,'' dropping important new drugs, Dr. Henderson said. Oncologists lobbied journalists at the meeting to publicize a need for more Government money for | Good News From the Front in the War Against Cancer |
1015185_1 | Catholics as an enemy oppressor. The force requires profound change if it is to win the trust of all Northern Ireland's citizens. Most Catholics will not join the R.U.C., often because of pressure from their own community. As a result, the force is 93 percent Protestant, which reinforces its insensitivity to the Catholic community. In addition, annual clashes between Catholic nationalist protesters and police during the summer marching season create considerable tension. If peace takes hold the climate for change will improve, but much delicate work lies ahead. One example is the dispute about the R.U.C.'s symbols, starting with the ''Royal'' in its name, which many Catholics resent but many Protestants will not countenance changing. Another problem is that huge layoffs are inevitable, since the current 13,000-member force is twice what a region of 1.6 million needs in peacetime. It does not build good will to lay off Protestants while hiring Catholics. Recruiting Catholics is necessary, however, and that in turn requires a genuine change in police culture. There have been many allegations of police abuse of Catholics, including the excessive use of plastic bullets against Catholic protesters and beatings in custody. An investigation released in March by a United Nations special rapporteur accused the R.U.C. of intimidating lawyers defending alleged terrorists. It also recommended an investigation into the 1989 murder of a lawyer who had defended alleged Irish Republican Army terrorists and received death threats from the police. The police's bunker mentality must also change. Training, which should include civilian teachers, ought to emphasize defusing conflict without force. Civilians should also be put in charge of investigating police abuse. Today, victims often do not file complaints because the police quash them. Last year Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced a police bill for Northern Ireland that established an independent ombudsman to handle complaints, a crucial step. But the bill, which has not yet passed, would also dilute the little authority civilian groups now have over the police. Mr. Patten's commission should look for ways to strengthen it instead. Broader changes will also be necessary. The I.R.A.'s recent statements that it will not give up its hidden weapons are damaging, as all armed groups need to do so. Draconian security laws, such as those allowing detainees to be interrogated for a week without seeing a lawyer, must change. Reforming the police in Northern Ireland is inseparable from overall progress toward peace. | Peacetime Police for Ulster |
1015157_3 | says. ''Warren Beatty is onto something.'' His wife loved it, too, which convinces him that it is a great film, because they often disagree about movies. ''She can find a reason to enjoy a movie that amuses her or entertains her,'' he says. ''She doesn't get all in high dudgeon if people are not engaging their full esthetic potential, like I do.'' He drifts back to the subject that most occupies him these days. ''Religion to me is now the last frontier,'' he says. ''Christianity was being abused and exploited during the cold war. But now I think Christianity might be the last bulwark against a global capitalism that leeches out all of our humanity. You know, Christ and Marx touch fingers at some point.'' His new ideal for the future is some kind of ''Judeo-Christian socialism,'' he says. The only danger is that Judeo-Christian religious values will be abused by big money interests, he says. ''What was it Mencken said? That politics is the last refuge of a scoundrel?'' he says. ''Well, now I think Christianity is becoming the last refuge of a scoundrel. There. Let me be the hat on Mencken's head.'' He says he was startled by a recent question after a speaking engagement in which he argued that there are no philosophical questions left. What about abortion, he was asked? It set him back. He thought about it for a long time and then finally came up with an answer that satisfied him. ''At present, I believe, it's not a philosophical debate because no debate is possible,'' he says. ''There is a huge gap between entrenched groups. There is a terroristic camp and a police force, if you will, people who are willing to go to extremes for their point of view and those who want to use the power of the state for theirs. No debate is possible.'' Which is not to say that the question does not need to be addressed, that it is not potentially capable of debate. ''My God is an existential God,'' Mr. Mailer says. ''A God who is doing the best that He or She can do. And the question of abortion is of very lively interest to this God. Certain abortions are wise, certain abortions are wrong. But God does not necessarily have direct control over how people behave.'' Fifty years after ''The Naked and the Dead,'' Mr. Mailer | After Half a Century, Still Writing, Still Questing |
1015190_0 | While Northern Ireland's politicians have been taking forced first steps to bring the two parts of the Irish island closer together, the province's business people have been virtually razing the long-disputed border. Members of the predominantly Protestant commercial establishment have set aside the sectarian tensions that have arrested Ulster's development in other areas and boldly struck deals with their counterparts in the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland. Once the jewel of the Emerald Isle, Northern Ireland has seen its own fortunes lag and its land plunged into decades of conflict and bloodshed, while the once-derided South has grown into a self-confident European nation. With an economic growth rate of 8.2 percent last year, Ireland has the continent's best-performing economy. Its gross national product per head is $19,186, versus $14,355 in the North. ''There is quite a considerable chunk of the global economy sitting right down the road,'' said Sir George Quigley, chairman of Ulster Bank Ltd., ''and it will benefit this part of the island to capitalize on the success of the other.'' ''Business can do things that politics can't,'' said Claire Faulkner, 44, the managing director of Project Planning, a conference-organizing company that keeps its headquarters in this village of stone walls and leafy lanes south of Belfast, and a branch office in Dublin. Ms. Faulkner is the daughter of Brian Faulkner, a Protestant leader who a quarter-century ago served as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. She and other figures in business and finance in the North are among the most committed backers of the landmark settlement reached on Good Friday that is to be put to votes north and south of the border on May 22. ''The peace that hopefully we're getting will bring a great flourishing of our industry,'' Ms. Faulkner said. ''Peace and prosperity are inextricably linked, and business has been singing that song since the early days of the talks,'' said Adam Ingram, Britain's minister here for security and the economy. Like almost everyone in Northern Ireland, the men and women who are crossing the old battle lines in the name of commerce have been personally touched by the confrontation between Catholics and Protestants. Bill Tosh, the chief executive of Unidare Plastics Ltd., in Portadown, lost two neighbors in a guerrilla bombing. The town, where the hard-line Protestant Orange Order was founded, is one of the violent flashpoints of the province. Christopher D. Gibson, a | Irish Island Unites, in Commerce, Even Before an Accord |
1015147_1 | make a daily delivery of about a half-million E-mail promotions. ''I'll never work for a big company again. The Internet is an opportunity for people like us. That's why the big companies are nervous.'' Joe Melle, 31, who runs his part of the operation from Norristown, Pa., said, ''We're just trying to put food on the table.'' The brothers Melle are on the front lines of the spam wars, cyberspace's first all-out internecine conflict. Depending on which side you talk to, the stakes are, roughly, the future of capitalism, free expression and the American Way or the future of the Internet, individual privacy and the American Way. ''One of us has got to go off this Net, and it ain't going to be me,'' said Ron Guilmette, a software engineer in Sacramento, Calif., who is developing a program to block spam. Like many aspiring electronic entrepreneurs, the Melles started a few years back by culling addresses by hand from the Web and E-mail discussion groups. Now computer programs with unrepentant names like Cyber Bomber and Stealth Mass Mailer help thousands of spammers keep their self-appointed rounds, with relative anonymity to boot. As a result, it has become essentially impossible to overstate just how much various Internet factions abhor those who send junk E-mail (although many are happy to try). Internet access providers whose systems are clogged with commercial mail blame the spammers for slowing down the whole system. Subscribers revile them for sullying their mailboxes, and those of their Net-loving children, with offers of free hot sex, XXX photos, discount dental plans and tips on how they, too, might partake of the bulk-mail bounty from outfits like Money4you @dreamscometrue.com. The war even has its own language. Spammers spoof headers (to hide their real E-mail addresses), relay-rape overseas mail servers (routing their mail through an unsuspecting computer to avoid making their service providers suspicious) and shield their computers' whereabouts with cloaking programs. Anti-spammers retaliate with mail bombs (barraging their antagonists with a taste of their own medicine), computer code patches for security holes and the formidable Real-Time Black Hole List, part of a boycott campaign of providers who service known spammers. On the Spam-L list-serve, an on-line bastion of the spam-haters, members know their quarry by name: ''Alex Chiu is back,'' one wrote. ''Nuke him.'' (In an interview, the beleaguered Mr. Chiu, 27, said he had quit his job at a | The American Way of Spam |
1057319_5 | were considered especially sensitive to the pitch of the ATOC sound, which has a rumbling frequency of 75 hertz (cycles per second). Humpback whales communicate using sounds that low, but dolphins and many other animals can hear only higher-pitch sounds. Dr. Frankel and his colleagues reported the results of their investigation in a recent issue of the Canadian Journal of Zoology. From a hill on the island off San Francisco the biologists observed the surface behavior of the whales in 84 trials. In most of them, the whales were exposed to sound from the ATOC loudspeaker or engine noise from passing ships, while in others, for comparison, the whales were exposed to no man-made noises. ''We looked for changes in swimming speeds and directions, and other behavioral changes, including respiration,'' Dr. Frankel said. Respiration rate can be measured by the intervals between blowing. ''We saw no breaching or swimming in unison -- both indicators of distress in whales,'' he said. But some changes in diving were observed, he said, particularly when the noise was coming from a ship's engines. Exposure to sound seemed to be associated with dives that were longer in duration and distance. ''Overall,'' Dr. Frankel said, ''I wouldn't call the ATOC sound benign, but its effects seem to be small -- perhaps an annoyance to the animals rather than a hazard.'' Dr. Rod Fujita, a marine biologist and spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the organizations that opposed the acoustic thermometry program, said he was not convinced by the results that Dr. Frankel reported. ''I wouldn't change my mind on the basis of a single publication, and we have yet to hear from the advisory panel on biology convened by ATOC,'' he said. ''The impacts of sound on wildlife are subtle, and gauging them is somewhat subjective. While ATOC would be helpful in calibrating models of climate change, it's not the be-all and end-all of climate measurement. The important thing is to take immediate steps to curb global warming.'' If the program is to be ended anyway, does it matter that many biologists now regard its sound pulses as harmless to wildlife? ''The question is not moot,'' Dr. Frankel said. ''ATOC may be dead, but the technique it developed and tested is very much alive. The world still needs to know whether greenhouse warming and climate change are occurring, and this is a useful indicator.'' | Global Thermometer Imperiled by Dispute |
1054190_0 | In a General Assembly vote a record 157 countries today favored an end to the United States economic embargo of Cuba. Only the United States and Israel objected. Twelve countries abstained. Although the resolution is not binding, it reflected what experts described as ''astonishing unanimity'' by many of America's allies and friends against the use of sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy. The vote also illustrates the erosion of support for the United States policy toward Cuba, the experts said. ''As a general principle when a country finds itself totally isolated and has virtually no allies, it should be an occasion for reflection on its policy line,'' said Jeffrey Laurenti, executive director of Policy Studies at the United Nations Association of the United States, a grass-roots organization in Washington. Mr. Laurenti echoed the views of other experts when he said support for sanctions diminished dramatically after Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, extending sanctions to countries and foreign companies that do business with Cuba, Iran and other nations with which the United States has disputes. ''The United States has a perfect right to prohibit trade by its own nationals or companies with a country it deems a threat to its own security,'' Mr. Laurenti said in a telephone interview today. ''But the extraterritorial nature of such laws has turned a great deal of friends like Canada and the European Union against us.'' Last year 143 nations supported the resolution, and the United States, Israel and Uzbekistan opposed it. This year a diplomat from a country friendly to the United States said, ''The Cubans did not even have to lead the fight.'' The number of those opposing the American position has steadily increased in annual votes for seven years. The resolution cited the Helms-Burton Act, which many here saw as an attempt to impose American laws on other countries. But the United States representative, Ambassador A. Peter Burleigh, said that ''the Cuban Government's systematic denial of universally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms to the people of Cuba'' was reason enough to maintain the embargo. ''The United States,'' Mr. Burleigh added, ''believes that economic sanctions are an important foreign policy tool to be used in certain compelling cases.'' The Helms-Burton law has stretched the limits of the 35-year-old embargo by allowing United States citizens who were Cuban citizens before Fidel Castro took power in 1959 to sue foreign companies | U.N. Votes, 157-2, in Referendum to End U.S. Embargo of Cuba |
1054179_1 | on the Vatican, the Rev. Thomas Reese, who is editor of the Jesuit magazine America, said that in the past some Catholics, either as individuals or in small groups, tried to influence the cardinals during papal elections. But for the most part, these tended to be modest efforts, like letters or petitions signed by a few theologians and priests, Mr. Reese said. ''With the advance in communications technology, we're seeing the ability of groups with similar interests to coalesce and make their voices heard,'' he said. ''Undoubtedly, we'll see the conservative groups start to link up.'' How influential the We Are Church coalition is among Catholics is not easily determined, because the groups that signed the statement vary considerably in size, from thousands of members to a handful. The largest number of groups is in Europe, but many others are in the United States. Ms. Harth said the idea for the statement followed efforts by Catholics in Austria, who gathered several hundred thousand signatures on a petition in 1995 challenging church stands on issues like birth control and the requirement that priests be celibate and male. The movement spread to Germany, where a similar petition drew about 1.8 million signatures, she said. Efforts fared far less well in other nations, including the United States. One of the coalition's leading members, Sister Maureen Fiedler, co-director of the Quixote Center, a social action group in Hyattsville, Md., said the groups who signed the statement, some of which do not have formal membership, claimed to reach about 161,000 people. The statement calls for a Pope who is sensitive to ''the awakening of women's consciousness'' in the church, who encourages academic freedom, who attempts a dialogue with church dissenters and who would be open to welcoming into the priesthood ''all those qualified whatever their gender, marital status or sexual orientation.'' It also asks that the next Pope retire at 75, the age at which bishops are required to submit letters of resignation. Sister Fiedler said the groups did not want to endorse anyone as a candidate for Pope and added, ''Our object is to begin a worldwide discussion among the whole people of the church about the kind of leadership we would like to see and the kind of church we want.'' Ms. Harth said that of the 120 cardinals to whom the statement had been sent three weeks ago, only one had yet | Group's Letter To Cardinals Offers Advice On Next Pope |
1051907_0 | The students' pens in the classroom at the University of Maryland School of Law were poised the way law students' pens often are. The topic of the lecturer, Alan I. Baron, seemed dry enough to be the usual law school fare: compliance with subpoenas seeking documents. But the point of the lesson was not from the usual stale old cases; it was from the headlines. ''You've got to assume if you're turning over documents to Congress that they're going to be made public,'' Mr. Baron advised the would-be lawyers. ''And if they're really, really hot documents, they're going to be above the fold in The Washington Post within three days.'' The era of the permanent investigation of the President has produced all sorts of legal curiosities. The latest is a crop of courses at law schools across the country on the subject. In these classes, leaks, politics and the President's videotaped testimony are as important as the established precedents law students have been poring over for generations. The course here, ''Legislative Investigations,'' drew students for all sorts of reasons. Scott Conwell, 34, said after class that in the course, as perhaps in the country, ''the politics and the legal are intertwined'' in a way that ''keeps us awake.'' David Coughlin said he had signed up to find out how investigations of important officials were conducted and how they ''could be thwarted, which was obviously happening.'' Catherine Allen, 24, seemed to have thought more than most about the practical applicability of such a course. She said she had watched the legal experts on television, the legion of ''talking heads,'' discuss the same legal questions that have been covered in class. Presto. She had found a potential legal job she knew she could handle. ''They just completely did not understand the basic legal principles,'' she said. ''I said, 'O.K., I want that job.' '' There is no evidence that law schools are incorporating the President's difficulties into their offerings to increase their graduates' opportunities in the talking-head market. But courses dealing with various aspects of the endless legal tangle in Washington are proliferating. At the University of Florida College of Law in Gainesville, Prof. Charles W. Collier planned a class for next semester that could cover legal issues just when they are preoccupying Congress: ''Constitutional Theory: Presidential Impeachment.'' At Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Del., the New England School of | Legal Journal; Scandal Is Grist for Law School Grind |
1051887_6 | months in an extended mission when extra energy is not needed as the spacecraft shapes its orbit around the Sun. To provide the electrical power to run the engine, Deep Space 1 will use a new type of solar power array never before flown in space that concentrates and focuses sunlight onto 3,600 electricity-producing solar cells. The craft will have a pair of solar wings that expand to 38.6 feet across when fully extended and these arrays will produce 15 to 20 percent more power than similar devices the same size. Atop the solar cells sit 720 cylindrical lenses made of silicone. The lenses, which look like glass cylinders cut down the middle, gather incoming sunlight on the rounded outer surfaces and focus it down to the solar cells below the flat sides of the half-cylinders. Development of the arrays is co-sponsored by the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Previous unmanned space missions have required ground controllers to constantly monitor conditions on the spacecraft and provide navigational information to keep them on course. Dr. Rayman said Deep Space 1 would require fewer than a dozen controllers on Earth, instead of the hundreds needed for some previous missions, because it would keep track of itself. About once a week, the spacecraft will take pictures of stars with asteroids in the background and use this information to navigate itself, including having the ability to adjust its course and decide how close it will come to the asteroid and comets it targets. ''Using stars and asteroids as reference points, the spacecraft takes pictures of the sky and infers where it is and where it wants to go,'' Dr. Rayman said. Instead of constantly sending information on its condition to Earth, the craft will occasionally send special signal tones that signify different states of well-being. The tones range from ''everything is operating acceptably'' to ''there is a problem that may require help if it worsens'' to ''need urgent assistance from the ground.'' All the technologies of Deep Space 1 combine to point to an entirely new way of designing and operating robotic scientific missions away from Earth, Dr. Rayman said. ''It's like having one's car find its own way from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., and park itself within one foot of its destination, all the while getting 300 miles to the gallon of fuel,'' he said, ''This has the potential to change everything.'' | Ion Propulsion of Science Fiction Comes to Life on New Spacecraft |
1050580_0 | The White House said today that President Clinton had put off a visit to India and Pakistan, whose tests of nuclear devices in May set off alarm around the world. ''The President has decided to postpone his visit to India and Pakistan, which had been under review, which also means he will not be making a separate visit to Bangladesh,'' Michael D. McCurry, the President's spokesman, said at today's White House briefing. He said the President would go ahead with plans to attend a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Conference in Malaysia in mid-November. While he did not say what new countries might be put on the itinerary now that India and Pakistan are off it, other officials said South Korea and Japan might be added. A year ago, Mr. Clinton said he wanted to visit India and Pakistan this fall ''if all goes well.'' But in May, India exploded five nuclear devices. The United States imposed sanctions on India and warned Pakistan, India's longtime enemy, not to set off nuclear devices of its own. But Pakistan did, incurring sanctions. The most severe sanctions against both countries have been lifted, and last week India and Pakistan pledged at the United Nations to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would prohibit nuclear testing. But details of their participation in the treaty remain to be worked out. Mr. McCurry said today that the atmosphere was still not conducive to a Presidential visit, although he expressed pleasure that India and Pakistan had announced resumption of diplomatic talks. ''At the same time, the issues that we have been discussing with both Governments are complex and we believe will require more time to be addressed to our mutual satisfaction,'' Mr. McCurry said. He said Mr. Clinton ''is still eager to make the visit when we have had further significant progress with our respective security concerns.'' | Clinton Putting Off Visits to India and Pakistan |
1050700_0 | Students entering the electrical engineering master's degree program at Stanford University last week may hold some future class reunion in an Internet chat room. That would seem about right, given that some of the students will take all their classes, turn in all their homework and hold all class discussions on line. Taking courses via the Net has become increasingly common, and Stanford is now permitting some students to graduate with a prestigious master of science degree without ever leaving the comfort of their desktops. The program extends into cyberspace a 30-year tradition of distance learning at Stanford, which has typically been accomplished by sending videotapes of classes to students elsewhere. In the case of the Net, the university will stream the video onto the Web for student access. There are a couple of caveats. To be eligible, students must work at one of roughly 300 high-tech companies affiliated with the electrical engineering program. Also, students who participate on line will pay more than their on-campus classmates. An academic unit taken via the Internet costs $844, 40 percent more than the cost of attending classes in the flesh, said Andy DiPaolo, executive director of the Stanford Center for Professional Development. Meanwhile, this new generation of on-line study would seem to demand a commensurate advance in student excuses for late work. Possibilities: ''Professor, the dog ate my modem,'' or, ''My computer contracted a virus; I'm E-mailing a note from tech support.'' NEWS WATCH | Some Stanford Students Go Deeper Into Cyberspace |
1050685_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-19 Security Council to Meet On Massacres in Kosovo The United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for today to consider how to respond to massacres of ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces in Kosovo. Diplomats condemned the attacks, as NATO completed planning for possible air strikes. A1 Investigators were trying to get a wounded survivor of a mass killing out of Serbia to testify at a war crimes tribunal. A1 Iraq Further Defies U.N. Iraq hardened its defiance of Security Council demands that it allow spot arms inspections to resume. But it also publicly staked its hopes of ending sanctions by calling on Secretary General Kofi Annan to take over a major review of Baghdad's relations with the United Nations. A3 24 Injured in Hebron Blast The army said 13 Israeli soldiers and 11 Palestinian passers-by were wounded when a Palestinian hurled grenades at an Israeli patrol post in the divided city of Hebron. A3 Pessimism From the I.M.F. The International Monetary Fund said it expected the Russian economy to contract by 6 percent this year and next, and Japan to sink into its deepest recession since World War II. The report also drastically scaled back estimates of how fast other economies would grow. A18 Clinton Puts Off Trip President Clinton will put off a visit to India and Pakistan, which each set off nuclear devices in May. Last week, both countries pledged to sign a treaty barring further testing, but the White House said the political climate was still not suited for a Presidential visit. A12 New Charge in Terror Case Federal prosecutors charged an associate of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile suspected in the embassy bombings in Africa, with taking part in a conspiracy to attack American military installations abroad. A11 Denials of Abuse in Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad suggested that his jailed former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, might have punched himself in order to accuse the police of beating him. A8 Schroder Reassures French Gerhard Schroder, right, who is to become Chancellor of Germany, reassured President Jacques Chirac, left, and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin during a visit to Paris that he wanted to strengthen relations with France as much as with Britain. A17 Violent Protest in Peru Hundreds of protesters broke through the gates of the presidential palace in Lima, storming the grounds and shattering windows before they were forced out by the police | NEWS SUMMARY |
1055042_2 | the grand fashion gesture in, for instance, the kimono coat. And Mme. Gres perfected the drapes and cascades of Greek-like gowns. Mr. Lagerfeld, for his part, is an unapologetic champion of Coco Chanel, who ushered in to dressing an ease and sports influence. But Mr. Lagerfeld is much more a forward thinker than Mr. Galliano. It was Chanel's sports legacy on which he chose to build the collection this time, but in a totally surprising way. He brought a streetwise sophistication to the line that might appeal equally to traditional Chanel clients and to Monica, the 18-year-old singer from Atlanta whose two recent singles (one a duet with Brandy) have catapulted to the top of the charts. This approach was not in the obvious spirit of the hip-hop or scuba inspirations that Mr. Lagerfeld has done in the past to keep Chanel current, but a more subtle take on the streety, sporty influence, with tiny double C's almost indiscernible on the hems of tops and shirts. Sports-influenced materials were evident in a youthful, Lycra suit comprising briefs, a crop top and a cardigan jacket with ridged seams. The same fabrics showed up in a black and ecru jacket over a white paneled skirt and an orange leather jacket that fit snug and sexy over relaxed silver trousers. Several of the fresh, sportier looks were from Chanel's new Beige label, which fulfills Mr. Lagerfeld's wish to work with more modern and sports-inspired materials. Much of the season for designers here has been about legacies, their own or someone else's. Having broken fashion molds left and right, Ann Demeulemeester is having trouble picking up the pieces. Some fashion wags attributed Ms. Demeulemeester's inspiration for her latest collection to Mother Teresa -- which may or may not be the case. The designer's white cotton dresses and tops were melodious examples of imagination and workmanship that are sure to be commercialized and copied. Crushed white jackets paired with loose pants and messenger bags with trouser loops looked smart and funny. But too much in this collection, like her developing, twisted T-shirts and drowning necklines, looked difficult and tortured. At her best, Ms. Demeulemeester makes her most challenging design ideas seem as easy as asking, ''Why didn't I think of that?'' Which is exactly what comes to mind when viewing the avant-garde designs of Martin Margiela. The show was an encore of his previous designs | A Passport to Dreams |
1054858_1 | Articles of War,'' which recommended flogging or death for the slightest infringement of discipline. In 1998, the rules were far less terrifying. We must not sit down, block the gangways, or get under the feet of the regular crew. We must obey orders, haul on ropes and let go when told. We must not fall overboard and must cry out in a loud voice whenever other crew members did so. The cat o' nine tails was never even mentioned. Actually, I was not expecting to go anywhere. A scientific test of the wind with a wet finger revealed that it was blowing straight on to the land, and even I knew that a sailing ship can't go dead against the wind. In the old days, ships could be trapped in harbor by adverse winds for weeks or months, while the crew wasted their money and ruined their health drinking and partying on shore. I began to gaze hopefully at the restaurants of Port Jefferson. But the captain of the Rose had a trick up his sleeve. Deep down in the bilges, a diesel engine rumbled to life, and off we went against the wind, defying nature and historical authenticity in one stroke. Authenticity suffered further as the first video camera was produced, and the first cellular phone was activated about two minutes after we left the dock. This unseamanlike behavior continued until we got well out into the Sound and sails had to be hoisted. These are big sails, and getting them up is serious business. The landlubbers were expected to learn the ropes in a hurry, and there were a lot of ropes. We stumbled about in a bewildering mass of halyards and braces, getting in each other's way and confusing port and starboard. The result was very far from the machine-like precision one would associate with the Royal Navy. But we were spared from our well-deserved flogging by the boatswain, a friendly man and an ex-computer programmer. The deck of an 18th-century man o' war was a rough place, where ''please'' and ''thank you'' were seldom heard when officers were addressing the crew. This was altogether more civilized. While the professional crew went aloft, I quickly figured out that there were two basic tasks for us deckhands: hauling up the sails, which was very hard work indeed, and casting off stray pieces of rope, which was easy. I | Landlubber Sets Sail On Sound |
1055197_0 | To the Editor: Re your Oct. 15 Topics item ''Nobel Oblige'' commending the Nobel economics committee for its selection of Amartya Sen as the recipient of this year's prize: It is said that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Professor Sen's economics is rooted in ethics and true values. One important area of his achievement was his work in population studies. Before the United Nations population conference in Cairo in 1994, Professor Sen wrote ''Population: Delusion and Reality.'' The thrust of the essay, which was influential in Cairo, was that there was still time to deal with the rapid rise in world population, but that we should not be complacent. For some time Professor Sen has been associated with the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. The center trains many of the future health and population leaders in developing countries, where 90 percent of the world's population growth is occurring. GORDON DOUGLAS Pawling, N.Y., Oct. 15, 1998 | Nobelist Put Focus On Population, Too |
1054890_0 | THE 410-mile Connecticut River was recently designated an American Heritage River under a Clinton Administration initiative. The designation should give a boost to as many as 29 projects in natural resource and environmental protection as well as in economic revitalization, historic and cultural preservation. The river, the longest in New England, begins in a tiny pond at the northern tip of New Hampshire and flows southward to serve as the Vermont-New Hampshire border. It traverses western Massachusetts then enters Connecticut. Bisecting the state, it flows past Windsor Locks, Hartford, East Hartford, Middletown, East Haddam and Essex, among others. Then it joins Long Island Sound at Old Saybrook and Old Lyme, providing an estimated 70 percent of the Sound's fresh water. The American Heritage Rivers Initiative was created to help communities use Federal programs better. ''It's really the people who live and work in a particular place who understand what they need,'' said Whitty Sanford, of the Connecticut River Watershed Council. ''We're the ones that are making the decisions and directing this.'' Each sponsor of the river's successful nomination will be involved in some aspect of the action plan submitted with the nomination. Ms. Sanford said that ''some projects are quite new and others have been in the works for quite some time but need to have specific assistance from Federal agencies.'' The No. 1 issue facing the river in the state is urban sprawl, said Tom Maloney, of the watershed council. One project in the plan aims to protect prime agricultural soil, groundwater, floodplain habitats and the rural character of the river valley north of Hartford, said Mr. Maloney. The worry is, he said, that ''malls, the strip developments are taking over. It's basically a planning issue; we're going to work to craft some planning strategies for the communities, hopefully, to implement on their own.'' Riverfront revitalization projects in Hartford, East Hartford and Middletown should also help contain urban sprawl, Mr. Maloney said. ''There are terrific opportunities to focus attention on the livability of our cities and their connection to the river,'' he said. Restoring pedestrian access to the river in Hartford and East Hartford as well as creating parks and recreational centers has been the work of an organization called Riverfront Recapture for 17 years, said Joe Marfuggi, the group's president. Though much of the work is finished, slated for completion by next summer are a landscaped plaza over | A Grand River Widens Its Circle of Friends |
1055125_0 | One day after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, David Trimble, the most powerful Protestant leader in Northern Ireland, said today that he was distinctly optimistic about prospects for advancing the peace effort in this predominantly Protestant British province. Mr. Trimble, who is First Minister of the new Northern Ireland Assembly, returned home this morning from the United States, which he was visiting when the Nobel Committee announced that he and the mainstream Roman Catholic leader John Hume had received the award. Mr. Trimble immediately said he thought there would be a solution of the main problem delaying the peace agreement: the refusal of the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republican Army to disarm before the entire accord is put into effect, a process expected to take two years. Mr. Trimble has insisted that until disarmament begins, the I.R.A.'s political wing, Sinn Fein, may not participate fully in the new provisional government set up by the agreement. Today, speaking at the Stormont Government complex in Belfast, he said, ''I am still confident that this is going to work and although you may not share this confidence, that the Republican movement will move, because there is no alternative to making progress.'' The prizes awarded on Friday to the two Northern Ireland leaders improved the atmosphere for efforts to overcome the serious obstacles remaining before the new peace agreement can take effect, according to British and Irish officials and experts. ''The prize probably strengthened the peace process,'' said David McKittrick, the author of several standard reference works on Northern Ireland. ''It makes it even more unlikely that David Trimble or any of the other players will walk away from the process.'' Paul Arthur, a political science professor at Ulster University, said the prize ''put an onus on David Trimble to produce a government and to remove any preconditions, such as disarmament.'' Particularly encouraging, officials said privately, was the fact that although there was no prize for Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the response of Sinn Fein to his exclusion was magnanimous. Mr. Adams and other Sinn Fein officials praised the Nobel awards. Virtually everyone involved in the peace effort says that without Mr. Adams, who arranged the I.R.A. cease-fire that enabled negotiations to advance, there would be no peace agreement. But Mr. Adams realizes, officials said, that if he had been included in the Nobel award, serious political problems would have ensued | Peace Laurels Refresh Ulster Protestant's Optimism on Progress |
1055072_1 | together they were justly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. But peace is by no means assured, and Mr. Trimble is right to hope the prize is not premature. The Nobel committee pointedly and wrongly omitted Gerry Adams, perhaps because of his tolerance for terrorism over the years. But he had the courage and vision to turn Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army away from violence, making the peace deal possible. A host of others contributed to the accords, including Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain; the British Government's Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam; Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland; President Clinton, and former Senator George Mitchell, who led the negotiations. The reason for Mr. Trimble's caution was evident the other day when he and his deputy, Seamus Mallon, who is a Catholic and a member of Mr. Hume's party, visited this newspaper. When the talk turned to politics, the atmosphere suddenly turned chilly as Mr. Trimble and Mr. Mallon skirmished over issues that are crucial to the functioning of the region's new institutions. The most important dispute is over how to deal with the I.R.A.'s refusal to give up its weapons. Mr. Trimble has said he wants to delay naming his cabinet -- which would likely include Mr. Adams -- until the I.R.A. begins to destroy the weapons or to turn them over to authorities. The peace agreement commits all the parties to total disarmament, and to using all their influence to achieve it. But it does not state that this must begin before anything else. The I.R.A., however, has the obligation to begin. All other parties should encourage it, by turning over their own weapons and implementing measures that end Northern Ireland's traditional discrimination against Catholics. There is reason for hope. Sinn Fein appointed Martin McGuinness, its chief negotiator at the peace table, to new talks about disarmament, a sign of seriousness. Mr. Trimble, who would not speak directly to Mr. Adams during the negotiations, has now met with him three times, alone. It takes nothing from the achievements of Northern Ireland's leaders to note that they will continue to disagree as they tackle the unglamorous tasks of making the Assembly work, setting up cross-border political bodies and reforming the police and bureaucracy. ''There's so much work to be done and it's so mundane,'' Mr. Adams warned last week. But that is how peace is built. | A Nobel for Peace-in-Progress |
1055472_2 | out of control because of ground control errors and the failure to adequately monitor the spacecraft. The Spartan, being carried by Discovery, is a 3,000-pound, battery-powered satellite that has been flown on four previous shuttle missions. The satellite, which is deployed from the shuttle's cargo bay by an astronaut using the orbiter's 50-foot robot arm, flies free of the shuttle at a distance of 70 to 100 miles to conduct its operations. At the end of two days, the shuttle retrieves the satellite using the arm and returns it to Earth so that scientists can retrieve its data from tape recorders. The Discovery crew is to release Spartan on the second day of their nine-day mission, leaving the satellite to turn itself on, point its telescopes toward the Sun and conduct a programmed series of observations, some in conjunction with SOHO and other spacecraft. ''I'm very optimistic that we will have a joint operation with SOHO,'' said Dr. Richard R. Fisher of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, a Spartan project scientist. Dr. Fisher said observations of the same solar areas by different spacecraft can come hours or days apart, since many of the Sun's features do not change very rapidly. Joint observations are important because instruments differ in their sensitivity, field of view and what part of the electromagnetic spectrum they measure. SOHO, for example, views more of the Sun's outer layer than Spartan, but instruments on Spartan are more effective in studying the lower part of this layer. Dr. Fisher said the instruments also help verify each others' measurements. For example, the Spartan instruments, just tested on the ground, will help engineers recalibrate the SOHO instruments, he said. The multiple observations will concentrate on the Sun's corona, and the high-speed solar wind of charged particles it generates that bathe the solar system. The corona is the thin, upper layer of the solar atmosphere that reaches temperatures exceeding 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, compared with surface temperatures of about 10,000 degrees. To observe this region, the spacecraft use special telescopes called coronagraphs, which let in only the extremely faint illumination from the corona region. Spartan carries two complementary telescopes: a white light coronagraph to measure the density of electrons in the relatively dim coronal luminance and an ultraviolet coronal spectrometer to measure the velocities, temperatures and densities of plasmas -- streams of charged particles -- from the corona. SOHO, a European-built | Two Satellites to Study Sun During Discovery Mission |
1055448_3 | from the symptoms that may accompany a rocky transition to menopause. Because the early versions of the pill were most dangerous in older women, they were generally never used after age 35. In women who do not smoke, however, the new versions are often prescribed through age 50 and even beyond. ''There are several encouraging therapeutic uses of the pill in older women,'' said Dr. Maida Taylor, a gynecologist at the University of California at San Francisco. One is to treat a condition she calls ''perimenopausal chaos'' in which women who are nearing menopause become the victims of wildly erratic hormone bursts, swinging between high levels of estrogen one month and low levels the next with sweats, hot flashes, mood swings and general misery. These women still need contraception, which the pill can provide, while it also smoothes out the fluctuating hormone levels and lets them function normally. Then, when menopause occurs, hormone doses can be tapered from those that provide contraception down to the lower doses that are used for hormone replacement in postmenopausal women. The pill may also help older women avoid osteoporosis, Dr. Taylor said. Women lose roughly 10 percent of their bone mass between ages 35 and 50 even though they are not overtly estrogen-deficient during that time, she said. ''Women who take oral contraceptives from age 35 to 50 arrive at menopause with that much more bone mass, and that translates into a significant reduction in bone fractures later in life,'' Dr. Taylor said. ''It's like arriving at retirement with 10 percent more money in your Keogh.'' Other noncontraceptive benefits that recent studies have associated with long-term use of the pill include reduced rates of ovarian cancer and malignant cancers of the lining of the uterus, and possibly also decreased rates of benign tumors of the breasts and the uterus. But, the benefits still exact a price. The new pill is still accompanied by some old health risks, including a danger of blood clots forming in the veins of the legs (which, if they move to the lungs, may cause serious complications or death), and an overall increased risk of heart attacks and stroke. Heart attacks and strokes, however, now seem to be provoked exclusively in women already at risk, especially those with high blood pressure or who smoke, said Dr. Leon Speroff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health Sciences University in | The Pill at 40: Renewed, Improved and in Its Prime |
1055618_3 | from the symptoms that may accompany a rocky transition to menopause. Because the early versions of the pill were most dangerous in older women, they were generally never used after age 35. In women who do not smoke, however, the new versions are often prescribed through age 50 and even beyond. ''There are several encouraging therapeutic uses of the pill in older women,'' said Dr. Maida Taylor, a gynecologist at the University of California at San Francisco. One is to treat a condition she calls ''perimenopausal chaos'' in which women who are nearing menopause become the victims of wildly erratic hormone bursts, swinging between high levels of estrogen one month and low levels the next with sweats, hot flashes, mood swings and general misery. These women still need contraception, which the pill can provide, while it also smoothes out the fluctuating hormone levels and lets them function normally. Then, when menopause occurs, hormone doses can be tapered from those that provide contraception down to the lower doses that are used for hormone replacement in postmenopausal women. The pill may also help older women avoid osteoporosis, Dr. Taylor said. Women lose roughly 10 percent of their bone mass between ages 35 and 50 even though they are not overtly estrogen-deficient during that time, she said. ''Women who take oral contraceptives from age 35 to 50 arrive at menopause with that much more bone mass, and that translates into a significant reduction in bone fractures later in life,'' Dr. Taylor said. ''It's like arriving at retirement with 10 percent more money in your Keogh.'' Other noncontraceptive benefits that recent studies have associated with long-term use of the pill include reduced rates of ovarian cancer and malignant cancers of the lining of the uterus, and possibly also decreased rates of benign tumors of the breasts and the uterus. But, the benefits still exact a price. The new pill is still accompanied by some old health risks, including a danger of blood clots forming in the veins of the legs (which, if they move to the lungs, may cause serious complications or death), and an overall increased risk of heart attacks and stroke. Heart attacks and strokes, however, now seem to be provoked exclusively in women already at risk, especially those with high blood pressure or who smoke, said Dr. Leon Speroff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health Sciences University in | The Pill at 40: Renewed, Improved and in Its Prime |
1056471_1 | Minister, Bertie Ahern, will take time out of a European summit meeting in Austria this weekend to discuss ways to keep Northern Ireland's peace deal on track. The accord in April set a two-year deadline for completing the disarmament of paramilitary groups. (Reuters) GERMANY: SUSPECTED TERRORIST -- The United States has asked Germany to extradite a Sudanese man linked to the alleged mastermind of the bombing of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Bavarian justice ministry said. Mamdouh Mahmud Salim is suspected of working with Osama bin Laden, who is accused of having ordered the bombings that killed 224 people in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. (Agence France-Presse) ASIA AFGHANISTAN: U.N. ACCORD -- The United Nations signed an agreement with the ruling Taliban movement that would allow the return of its international staff to Afghanistan. More than 60 United Nations employees were pulled out because of security concerns after the United States fired missiles at suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan on Aug. 20. (Reuters) CHINA: TWO VIEWS OF JUSTICE -- European Union diplomats who held human rights discussions this week in Beijing said that China was making genuine efforts to end abuses in its criminal justice system. But a Hong Kong-based human rights group reported that a veteran dissident, Chen Zengxiang, had been jailed for seven years for ''leaking state secrets.'' (Reuters) NORTH KOREA: FIGHTING DEADLOCK -- Negotiators from North and South Korea struggled to hammer out an accord that could open talks on ending conflict on the divided peninsula. The talks are deadlocked over North Korea's demand for the withdrawal of 37,000 American troops from South Korea and a separate peace agreement with the United States. Washington says both issues are nonnegotiable. (Reuters) INDIA: BORDER REINFORCEMENTS -- China has increased troop deployments on its border with India since the latter's nuclear tests in May, an Indian police chief said. Gautam Kaul of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police said China had reinforced its frontier troops three times in the last five months. (Agence France-Presse) MIDDLE EAST IRAQ: U.N. TALKS DELAYED -- The Security Council postponed until next week its discussion of questions that Iraq wants clarified before it lifts the ban that it imposed on weapons inspections on Aug. 5. The Council is awaiting the return of Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is in South Korea, and a review on whether Iraq loaded nerve gas on its missiles. Youssef | World Briefing |
1056403_3 | the edge of Asia. Jason and his Argonauts are said to have passed through the Bosporus in pursuit of the legendary golden fleece. The Byzantine and Ottoman empires were governed from its shores. Four hundred years ago a French historian called it the ''strait that surpasses all straits, because with one key it opens and closes two worlds, two seas.'' Later Napoleon said he would abandon mastery over half his empire rather than surrender it. As the shipping industry has grown in recent decades, the Bosporus has filled with ever larger vessels. Today it is not simply Istanbul's main street, but also a maritime superhighway. By a quirk of history, however, Turkey has almost no power to restrict or control traffic through the Bosporus. The Montreaux Convention of 1936 gives vessels of all nations the right to pass through unimpeded. They are not even required to take on pilots who are familiar with the waterway's sharp turns and treacherous currents. Last year more than 50,000 vessels, among them supertankers longer then three football fields, passed through the Bosporus. Their number is growing by 15 to 20 percent a year. About 1,000 local craft, ranging from vintage ferries to unsteady fishermen's dinghies, also ply the Bosporus each day. They must always keep an eye out for the giants. These giants are hardly the cream of the international tanker fleet. Some are rustbuckets flying the flags of Russia and Ukraine. Others of Greek and Maltese registry look equally unseaworthy. In waterfront neighborhoods, people shudder to see these relics twisting their way along the rocky channel. Accidents on the Bosporus are increasingly frequent, some of them resulting in deaths, oil spills or spectacular fires. In July the waterway had to be closed after a tanker carrying 87,000 tons of crude oil ran aground. Another tanker nearly broke apart in August below the historic Topkapi Palace. Episodes like these, coupled with the prospect of more tankers carrying Caspian oil, have left Turkish leaders in a quandary. They must balance the commitment to free navigation enshrined in the Montreaux Convention against the safety of a vital waterway that runs through the heart of a teeming metropolis. Turkey has proposed tightening its safety regulations to require that every ship traversing the Bosporus carry a pilot and be fully insured. Countries anxious that Caspian oil be exported through the Black Sea, notably Russia, oppose the idea. Framers | Istanbul Journal; Fearless Turks' Big Fear? Oil Tankers |
1054411_13 | immense expansion of humanity's technical capability demands a renewed and sharpened sense of ultimate values. If this technology is not ordered to something greater than a merely utilitarian end, then it could soon prove inhuman and even become potential destroyer of the human race. The word of God reveals the final destiny of men and women and provides a unifying explanation of all that they do in the world. This is why it invites philosophy to engage in the search for the natural foundation of this meaning, which corresponds to the religious impulse innate in every person. A philosophy denying the possibility of an ultimate and overarching meaning would be not only ill adapted to its task, but false. . . . CONCLUSION 104. Philosophical thought is often the only ground for understanding and dialogue with those who do not share our faith. The current ferment in philosophy demands of believing philosophers an attentive and competent commitment, able to discern the expectations, the points of openness and the key issues of this historical moment. Reflecting in the light of reason and in keeping with its rules, and guided always by the deeper understanding given them by the word of God, Christian philosophers can develop a reflection which will be both comprehensible and appealing to those who do not yet grasp the full truth which divine Revelation declares. Such a ground for understanding and dialogue is all the more vital nowadays, since the most pressing issues facing humanity -- ecology, peace and the coexistence of different races and cultures, for instance -- may possibly find a solution if there is a clear and honest collaboration between Christians and the followers of other religions and all those who, while not sharing a religious belief, have at heart the renewal of humanity. The Second Vatican Council said as much: ''For our part, the desire for such dialogue, undertaken solely out of love for the truth and with all due prudence, excludes no one, neither those who cultivate the values of the human spirit while not yet acknowledging their Source, nor those who are hostile to the church and persecute her in various ways.'' A philosophy in which there shines even a glimmer of the truth of Christ, the one definitive answer to humanity's problems, will provide a potent underpinning for the true and planetary ethics which the world now needs. THE POPE'S MESSAGE | John Paul's Words: '2 Modes of Knowledge Lead to Truth in All Its Fullness' |
1054484_2 | acknowledgment of God. John Paul, who taught moral philosophy at the University of Lublin in Poland and still meets regularly with scholars to debate ideas, has long railed against the ''crisis of rationalism'' in today's culture. He has deplored the advances of science and technology unbound by ethics, and he has also spoken out against the ''sentimentalization'' of belief, modern society's yearning for quick mystical fixes like horoscopes or parapsychology. Before its publication, many Vatican experts had predicted that the encyclical would condemn New Age philosophy. It does, but only in a gentle aside: ''It is an illusion to think that faith, tied to weak reasoning, might be more penetrating; on the contrary, faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition.'' At a Vatican news conference today, Msgr. Jozef Miroslaw Zycinski, the Archbishop of Lublin, filled in the blanks, complaining that the great philosophical questions of history have been replaced by ''a naive faith in U.F.O.'s, astrology and the New Age.'' The Pope focused on reasserting the church's respect for philosophical inquiry. ''I cannot fail to note with surprise and displeasure that this lack of interest in the study of philosophy is shared by not a few theologians,'' he said, blaming ''the distrust of reason found in much contemporary philosophy, which has largely abandoned metaphysical study of the ultimate human questions.'' Many of his past encyclicals have been addressed to Catholics and the world beyond. This one, like ''Veritatis Splendor'' (''The Splendor of Truth''), a 1993 encyclical on morality, is addressed to the church's bishops. ''Fides et Ratio'' was presented by the Vatican as a continuation of ''Veritatis Splendor.'' But it is also a return to the philosophical issues that were last dealt with this authoritatively by the church a century ago, in an 1879 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII. Then the Vatican ordered a return to the Scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, which Leo argued had been under assault from the philosophical trends of his age. John Paul finds that in the 119 years since Leo raised the alarm against the spread of atheistic ideas, things have only got worse. He explains that the humanist tradition, devolving into ''exaggerated rationalism,'' spawned the chief evils of the 20th century, including totalitarianism. Running though a list of philosophical don'ts -- eclecticism, historicism, scientism, pragmatism and postmodernism -- the Pope argued that today the main danger comes | Pope Calls on World to Reunite Faith and Reason |
1052318_3 | of 300 readers in Nanny News, published by Apple Pie for nannies and their employers. Salaries in the New York metropolitan area and in other major cities can reach $800 to $1,000 weekly. Salaries and job standards are well advertised on the more sophisticated sites, which attract college graduates who, like Ms. Johnson, may never have considered the career before. Many candidates view a nanny position as a stop on the way to ''real life,'' allowing them to pay off student loans and figure out what's next. Recruiting on line does have a downside: it's a little too easy. ''Right around college graduation, we get tons of applications from women who don't have jobs yet, and after hours of going through the process with us, decide they don't want to be a nanny after all,'' said Jackie Williams, owner of I Love My Nanny. Once her agency decides that a candidate is serious, the matching process begins. The nannies, and the families seeking them, are screened. The Web makes it easier for agencies to do background checks, too. Digging deeply -- tracing a phone number or address of a reference or verifying a college degree or the length of previous employment -- is simplified. The International Nanny Association warns, however, that background checks of criminal records are limited by state and Federal laws and may not show the whole picture. ''Finding nannies on the Internet is the very beginning,'' said Carol Solomon, owner of the New York Nanny Center (www.nynanny.com). Rigorous screening still involves person-to-person contact, Ms. Solomon said. For qualified candidates, the process doesn't take long. Jennifer Staszewski, a 25-year-old graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Lacrosse, applied with Midwest Nannies (www.mwnanny.com). Her job search lasted one month. Now she works for a family in Short Hills, N.J.; she plans to be with them for a year, then go to graduate school. While many agency owners say most of their clients learn of them by word of mouth, families in need of nannies are also using the Web. Some families are from remote areas where nannies and nanny agencies are nonexistent. Ed Stansfield, the manager of the Merrill Lynch office in Hanover, N.H., and his wife, Amy, administrative director of Dartmouth's Hitchcock Medical Center, started searching for a nanny to care for their 6-year-old son through I Love My Nanny. Mr. Stansfield likes to use the Internet, so | Cyberagencies Match Families With Modern Mary Poppinses |
1052453_0 | To the Editor: These days we read daily that the Internet is the most powerful educational tool the world has ever seen. Yet, the uses on which most people have focused are its massive storage capability and its role as a research tool. These uses will not transform education. To take advantage of its power, the Internet must be more than a larger library or place to put Web pages -- as valuable as these uses are. The power of the Internet is in its human potential. By connecting us as global citizens and local community members, we learn better. We open ourselves to new ideas, and in turn, shape the thinking of others through diverse input. We and our students are empowered to apply learning within our societies and in the global community in ways that can impact positively on lives and environments. EDWIN H. GRAGERT New York, Oct. 1, 1998 The author is director of the International Education and Resource Network. | Potential of the Internet |
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