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1062717_5 | at sea is difficult, agents routinely wait until a ship returns to port, and jurisdictional questions often arise, law-enforcement authorities said. And not all crimes are reported. Cruise ships are required to report only crimes and other incidents that result in serious physical injury, which does not necessarily include rape. ''Unless otherwise required to do so, Carnival leaves it to the individual to decide whether to report to authorities,'' said Curtis J. Mase, a lawyer for Carnival. Complaints are frequent enough, however, that Lloyd A. Lipkey, the agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Miami squad that deals with crimes on the high seas, offered a warning to passengers: ''Go on a cruise just like you go anywhere else, with your eyes open.'' The Culture Aboard Ship, Rules Bar Fraternizing Today's huge cruise ships carry 1,800 to 2,200 passengers and 700 to 800 crew members drawn from 50 or more countries, many of them poor nations. While some crew members are highly trained, particularly the officers, many are unskilled young men who work long hours seven days a week. Pay can be as little as $500 a month; many send their wages home to support families. Ships have rules barring fraternizing with passengers. Carnival, Mr. Gallagher said, prohibits crew members from fraternizing but encourages officers to be friendly. ''The guests like it,'' he said. And romance, of course, has long been one of the attractions of cruises. ''Sex between crew and passengers happens all the time,'' said Dennis Hypolite, a musician who worked for Carnival and Royal Caribbean for three years until he quit on Nov. 1. ''Every cruise, every day. Crew go into guest cabins and guests go to crew cabins. Both seek it out, passengers and crew.'' Mr. Harris, the former Carnival security chief, who now investigates shipboard crimes for lawyers of victims and insurance companies, said crew members and officers often pursue sex with female passengers. Carnival's lawyers said Mr. Harris was a disgruntled former employee who earns his living testifying against cruise lines. Michael D. Eriksen, a lawyer in Lake Worth, Fla., has handled more than a dozen cases of sexual assault on ships. ''Typically it starts out with an opportunity for a crew member to observe and sometimes interact with a passenger,'' he said. ''A lot of times it will be a waiter or someone who works in room service or behind a bar.'' The Oregon | SOVEREIGN ISLANDS: A special report.; On Cruise Ships, Silence Shrouds Crimes |
1059706_2 | to have draftees doing alternative service who helped with administrative work and insured security, but the draft ended this year and we don't have them any more.'' So one of the student demands, here as at other schools around the country, was for more supervisory workers and better safety. The Education Minister, Claude Allegre, promised to increase school staffs with part-time students as part of the Socialist Government's national youth employment program. Another complaint of students here was academic schedules that had scheduled some of them right out of lunch, a problem Mr. Bach laid to computer foul-ups that have since been solved. He discusses problems like these regularly with student representatives who, like Mr. Benammar, tend to be older than their American counterparts. Students commonly repeat years before passing the national examination thresholds to higher levels of education, and the examinations, particularly for the ''bac,'' are so rigorous that there is little stigma attached to staying back a year or more to prepare for them. ''One of the strains on the system is that nowadays 60 to 65 percent of all students want to go on to university,'' Mr. Bach said. ''It used to be 30 percent. So it's no longer just an elite that wants to continue.'' In a country where until a decade or so ago schools were run by a huge bureaucracy centralized in Paris, and providing education is still seen by almost everybody as a state responsibility, students are as apt as their parents to take to the streets to demand solutions to their problems. Last month, the high-school protests in Paris turned violent when unemployed youths joined student marches and started breaking windows, looting stores and setting cars on fire in scenes reminiscent of the student revolution in the Latin Quarter in 1968. But the violence this time was an aberration, agreed these students, who seem more preoccupied with fitting into today's global economy and their increasingly competitive society than with changing it. When Mr. Allegre responded to last month's strikes by promising to lighten the weekly class workload, which keeps many students on the campus here from 8:15 A.M. to 5:15 P.M., at least some of them thought he had missed the point. ''If they cut back the workload too much, we could find that we aren't prepared when we get to university,'' Miss Devannes said. ''They could assume we know math we | French Youths Strike for the Right to Study Hard |
1035617_0 | SUGAR RISES 3.8 PERCENT. After languishing near 11-year lows, sugar rallied when Indonesia said it would buy 700,000 tons, helped by an international aid package. The October contract rose 0.32 cent, to 8.84 cents a pound. | THE MARKETS: COMMODITIES |
1030454_10 | remains in remission. ''Information may not save us all, but it will give more of us a chance,'' she said. Mr. Jordan said the Internet had played an important role in his willingness to help a stranger. The search took him 10 minutes. ''If I'd had to get in the car and drive to a university library, left to my own devices, I'm not sure I would have done it,'' he said. Some doctors, still a distinct minority, are going well beyond simply welcoming their patients' input. More doctors and nurses are logging on as moderators of, or participants in, on-line health discussions. Dr. John Mangiardi, chief of neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said he had had no inkling that his patients were so upset about unsightly incision scars until a few years ago, when he began logging onto discussion groups and heard patients complain among themselves. Since then, he has tried to keep incisions less noticeable, even making them behind patients' eyebrows. More doctors and nurses are communicating with patients through E-mail. ''It creates greater intimacy in a bounded relationship,'' said Dr. Beverley Kane, chairwoman-elect of the American Medical Informatics Association Internet Working Group, who has helped establish the association's guidelines for such E-mail. ''But the main problem is that it adds uncompensated time to the doctor's day, and it's hard to know whether it requires more time than it saves.'' Experts estimate that just 1 percent of doctors use E-mail to talk with patients, and still fewer participate in on-line discussion and chat groups, but Dr. Kane and others expect that number to increase as a generation of doctors weaned on computers supplants its elders. Most doctors are careful not to offer E-mail diagnoses, but Dr. Renner, of the National Council for Reliable Health Information, said he was surprised by the number of doctors verging on giving specific medical advice to individuals, not just general information, via E-mail. ''I thought physicians would be a lot more cautious than what some of them have turned out to be,'' he said. Despite the problems, reliable medical information is becoming easier to find on the Net, as the bad is filtered from the good. Many commercial Web sites now help guide people to accurate health information. ''Right now the Internet is a huge gusher of an oil well,'' Dr. Rockefeller said. ''We're just beginning to build the refineries.'' | Can the Internet Cure the Common Cold? |
1030514_0 | In the daylight hours life follows its usual rhythms in Northern Ireland. In a spell of surprisingly sunny weather, people go to work, shop or sip $3 cups of Viennese cappuccino at cafes like Roscoff on Fountain Street. Shops and deparment stores have plenty of customers. Buses crowd the streets. But at nightfall the towns of this predominantly Protestant British province, especially Belfast, become urban war zones. Protestants vent their anger over a parade by the Protestant Orange Order that was blocked on Sunday by the police and the British Army from marching through a Roman Catholic area along Garvaghy Road, Drumcree, in Portadown, west of here. For four nights gangs of Protestants have thrown blazing gasoline bombs at police officers, who respond by firing plastic bullets. The demonstrators, mostly young men, hijack and burn cars, block roads with burning barricades and have caused cancellations and interruptions of buses and trains. Official police summaries from Tuesday night and early this morning were terse and grim: ''0100 hours. A car was driven through the outer gates of Holy Cross Girls' Primary School at Ardoyne Road, driven against the front-door shutters and set alight. Scorch damage and structural damage was caused to the doorway. A number of windows were broken and petrol poured into a broken window though not ignited. ''2159 hours. A mob attacked a hostel in Castlereagh Street with stones, breaking up to 14 windows. The occupants were evacuated. ''2350 hours. A police patrol was attacked with four petrol bombs in the Ballycraigy estate, Antrim. Minutes later they foiled a hijacking and arrested one male. Approximately 20 minutes later two blast bombs were thrown at police in the estate. There were no injuries.'' Political leaders and security officials said they expected at least several more violent nights, raising fears that the turmoil will damage or destroy the peace accord, approved in the spring, that is supposed to end sectarian killing between Catholics and Protestants in the province. On Tuesday night the vicious mood of many in the province was reflected at a meeting in Portadown. A prominent moderate Catholic, Seamus Mallon, a member of the British Parliament and Deputy First Minister of the New Northern Ireland Assembly, went to Garvaghy Road to discuss solutions with Catholics opposed to the march. About 100 of the 6,000 Catholic residents of the area shouted insults at him, saying he was selling out his | At Night Ulster Becomes a War Zone |
1029120_1 | is found to have injured genitals or a sexually transmitted disease. But advocates for children have tried to codify the telltale signs of sexual abuse in a 12-page pamphlet distributed to city social workers, Board of Education employees, foster parents and others. Called ''Child Abuse Alert: A Desk Reference,'' it is intended to guide adults in the dicey matter of deciding whether to make an abuse complaint to the state emergency phone line. It is also meant to help those mandated by law to report any suspicion of abuse. The checklist is divided into physical and behavioral signs in the child and behavioral and biographical signs in the adult caregiver. What follows are some of the most obvious indicators in children: *A child who has difficulty walking, sitting or going to the bathroom. *A child with bruises or bleeding in the genital or anal area or with venereal disease. *A child with extreme interest in sexual organs: his or her own, other childrens' or parents'. *A child who behaves seductively or promiscuously. *A child who is overly suspicious or watchful and who either avoids or inappropriately invites physical contact. According to Dr. Linda Cahill, the medical director of the child protection center at Montefiore Medical Center, the best of these gauges are the ones that indicate sexual knowledge beyond a child's age. When interviewing the adult, Dr. Cahill said, the most revealing information is historical: whether the adult was abused as a child or has a prior record of sexual offenses. The guidelines on adults mention those factors and also the following behaviors: *Hypervigilance or repressive attitudes about sexual issues. *Taking a child to many medical centers rather than remaining with one. *Acting as if the child is much older or much younger. *Isolating the child from social contact. There are other symptoms listed in the guidebook, but they are also common to a variety of problems. Among them, in the child, are regressive behavior, withdrawing into fantasy or performing poorly in school. In the parent, professionals are urged to be wary of substance abuse, divorce, a family history of mental illness, or social isolation. ''None of these are a direct correlation,'' said Nanete Schrandt, head of the juvenile social work division of the Legal Aid Society. ''It's not like if there are five of these, you know. But it gives you a better picture. These are the red flags.'' | A Guidebook Lists the Warning Signs of Sexual Abuse |
1029127_0 | Arsonists believed to be members of a dissident Protestant group set fire to 10 Roman Catholic churches in Northern Ireland late Wednesday and early today, causing fears that wider sectarian violence could return to the British province. The police said the fires were probably the work of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, a Protestant group opposed to the peace effort, which has produced cooperation between Protestants and Catholics in a new provincial assembly. Three churches were completely destroyed. In a highly unusual move for a British Prime Minister, Tony Blair flew here today to try to dispel rising tension in the mostly Protestant province. Prime Ministers normally avoid Ulster at such times, leaving the problems to local officials and the 30,000-member security force. Mr. Blair, standing today in front of a charred and gutted church north of Belfast, said, ''I think the act of destruction that we see behind me here -- that is the past of Northern Ireland, and we are trying to give people a future that leaves acts of barbarism behind us.'' After consoling parishioners of the church, St. James, in the hamlet of Aldergrove, Mr. Blair spent the day with Protestant and Catholic leaders of the Northern Ireland Assembly to work out a compromise in a dispute that seemed to provoke the burnings. The arsonists were apparently retaliating against Catholics for a British Government decision on Monday forbidding Protestant marchers next Sunday to pass through a Catholic area. The dispute threatens more violence, possibly retaliation by Catholics against Protestant churches and against meeting halls of the Orange Order, which runs some 3,000 parades in the province. Both Catholics and Protestants fear Sunday's parade in the Drumcree district of Portadown, west of Belfast, could cause violence across the province, as it has for the last three years. The officials are trying to arrange a compromise that would provide for a quiet, token march by the Orangemen through the Catholic enclave, without the traditional martial airs, loud drums, bugles and fifes. That way, the Government ban could be rescinded and both Orange and Catholic militants could save face. If the Protestant marchers insist on sticking to their traditional route, they risk clashes with the police and with angry Catholics. The Protestants say their marches are a matter of freedom of assembly, a basic democratic right. Many Catholics resent the marches as triumphalist: they celebrate the decisive victory of William | Arsonists Burn 10 Catholic Churches in Ulster |
1033576_2 | dashboards built at other G.M. factories. The nation's only Saturn factory began producing cars eight years ago. The U.A.W. contract with G.M. here calls for substantial participation by workers in everything from how work stations on the assembly line are laid out to the long-range strategy of the Saturn division. The factory quickly attracted hundreds of delegations each year from companies and unions around the world. Visitors marveled at how Saturn workers could be so productive and get along so well with management in an industry and a corporation known for fractious labor relations. Workers had hoped that the success of the Saturn brand would prompt General Motors to build more models here and even produce most of the parts here, thus preserving the Spring Hill factory's unusual self-reliance. Saturn workers voted by a two-thirds majority in March to keep their innovative labor contract, which has given workers a large say, until now, in many business decisions. But relations with management have deteriorated considerably since that referendum was held, partly because of G.M.'s plans to build the Saturn-brand sport utility vehicle with relatively few parts from the factory here. G.M. is also paying workers a second-quarter bonus of $390 apiece when the union says $1,400 is owed. Though many workers are particularly upset by their bonuses, their leaders are more worried about the planned sport utility vehicle. Though there has been no suggestion that G.M. will close the 7,300-employee factory here, employment will decline if less work is done inside, Michael Bennett, the local union chairman, warned. ''They are looking at just basically outsourcing everything they can, and run it through a lean assembly and still call it a Saturn,'' he said. Donald Hudler, Saturn's chairman and president, began meeting here today with local union officials in an effort to reconcile differences. But having created one of the nation's most successful brands, G.M. is determined to put the Saturn name on more models, and not just models produced by the workers here. G.M. is currently expanding the Spring Hill factory and wants to use its equipment to full capacity, so job losses are unlikely regardless of what vehicle models or parts are produced here, one company official added. G.M. executives have made no secret of their desire to improve the auto maker's economies of scale by building just a few vehicle underbodies, engines and transmissions and then varying the sheet | Labor's Peace With G.M. Unraveling at Saturn |
1033628_0 | Read It And Eat It The creaky floors, overstuffed armchairs and dark woodwork give the Housing Works Used Books Cafe, 126 Crosby Street (Houston Street), the look of decades past. It's fitting enough, considering that the shelves lining the walls and balcony of this cool oasis are filled with old books for sale, including cookbooks. Among the cookbooks, at least, you won't find rare collectibles here, but the cooking section sometimes yields treasures, like the complete Time-Life ''Foods of the World'' series that was published nearly 30 years ago, or both volumes of ''Mastering the Art of French Cooking'' ($18 and in excellent condition), the book that put Julia Child on the map. Though many of the cookbooks were published in the 1980's, I discovered a trip down memory lane with the 1960 ''Great Restaurants of America'' by Ted Patrick and Silas Spitzer, for $3. It described some places, like La Maisonette in Cincinnati and Galatoire's in New Orleans, that are still going strong, but also fed the appetite for nostalgia with Luchow's, the Brussels and Le Pavillon in Manhattan. The cookbook section is located behind the cafe, which serves light food, including soups like a fine gazpacho ($2.75 or $4.25), wrap sandwiches ($5.95), excellent home-baked fruit tarts and pies ($2.75 to $4.25 a portion) and refreshing lemonade, iced tea, iced coffee and tart Jamaican sorrel ($1.50). Housing Works is the nonprofit organization that helps people with AIDS find living quarters. And as cozy as the cafe is in the cold of winter, on a hot and humid day it is comfortable as can be. Yellow Canned Tomatoes How long ago was it that yellow tomatoes started to be widely sold, first at farm stands and then in fancy produce markets? Ten years perhaps? Fifteen? Now, for the first time, they are available canned. D'Oro diced yellow tomatoes were developed, the Austin, Tex., company says, at the request of chefs. These are meaty Roma-style tomatoes that have a confetti look because the pieces range in color from pale yellow to deep orange. The flavor is surprisingly fresh and beautifully intense, with a note of lush sweetness. Though there is some salt added to the tomatoes, they provide only 50 milligrams of sodium in a half-cup, considerably less than in many popular brands of canned tomatoes. Yellow tomatoes are naturally less acidic than red ones. These diced yellow tomatoes would be | FOOD STUFF |
1033562_0 | To the Editor: The growth and vulnerability of Internet communication (Business Day, July 17) creates new concerns about security and privacy. Indeed, since the beginning of the information age, Americans have lost a degree of privacy, a right protected under Article IV of the Constitution. Privacy ought to be better safeguarded. Encryption technology will not only protect financial transactions from prying eyes but will also make E-mail more private. If Congress outlawed encryption, it would abridge Americans' right to freedom of speech and privacy. SCOTT W. BOREN Silver Spring, Md., July 17, 1998 | Better Health Care, Or Big Brother? |
1033647_0 | SUGAR FALLS 5.4 PERCENT. Sugar tumbled on speculation that a planned increase in import taxes by Russia would curtail demand from the leading importer of sugar. October contracts fell 0.49 cent, to 8.51 cents a pound. | THE MARKETS: COMMODITIES |
1034912_0 | THE NAVY, after years of delay, has agreed to let civilian scientists routinely use its ''deep ears,'' which were built at a cost of $16 billion in the cold war to pinpoint the locations of enemy ships and submarines by tracking their machinery noises. Now, the global network of deep underwater microphones is ready to help reveal the natural secrets of the sea, which covers more than 70 percent of the planet and is considered the Earth's largest and most mysterious environment. The surveillance microphones can hear natural sounds like whales singing, seals barking, fish schooling, ice cracking, seabeds shaking, undersea volcanoes erupting and storms lashing the sea's surface. Remarkably, they can do so over distances of hundreds and even thousands of miles, as sound readily travels in water. Their sensitivity is such that they once tracked the movements of a blue whale for weeks as it sang. The Navy moved slowly to share the system. Before doing so, it wanted to make certain that released data would never give away the locations of American submarines, which still prowl the depths armed with missiles and nuclear warheads. Eventually, it found a way to keep their locations secret, clearing the way for the peace dividend. On June 4, the Navy agreed to share retired parts of its global network with the Scientific Environmental Research Foundation, a private group in Alexandria, Va. Its president is Duane A. Cox, a retired naval officer who for 16 years helped track warships with the microphones. Since 1995, he has campaigned to open the surveillance system to civilians, including scientists at universities and educators at other schools and museums. Vice President Al Gore announced the step June 11 at the National Ocean Conference in Monterey, Calif. The next day, President Clinton said the opening would help scientists ''track marine mammals, predict deadly storms, detect illegal fishing and gain new insights into the complexities of climate change.'' Periodically, a few scientists have gained access to the listening system. But now, Mr. Cox said in an interview, the way has been cleared for wide and routine access to hundreds of retired microphones that still dot the darkness throughout the depths of the global sea. ''It's a great opportunity,'' he said of the burgeoning effort. ''We need to save this national treasure.'' The Navy is still keeping the exact locations of the retired microphones secret, as well as their | Scientists Gain Access to the Navy's 'Deep Ears' on the Oceans |
1035009_2 | me that they want to save the rain forest, but their jobs were also endangered species. If I wanted to save the rain forest, I had to help deliver jobs for them.'' So Mr. Alger became an environmental entrepreneur. With one hand he and his Brazilian team fought the loggers in a seven-year battle that ended two months ago with the Brazilian Government finally banning all logging in this rain forest. With the other hand he worked with the Mayor of Una, himself a logger, to create jobs -- through eco-tourism projects like the canopy walk (which is near a five-star hotel that now employs 600 people), by increasing farming within the rain forest with crops like cocoa and coffee that can be harvested in the shade of the trees, and by helping the local government line up farm loans and computer equipment. This effort led him to George St. Laurent, an American entrepreneur-turned-environmentalist who opened a factory in Bahia state, where Una is situated. His company, Vitech, manufactures personal computers for the Brazilian market in an old cocoa factory. Mr. St. Laurent got tax incentives from the Governor of Bahia to open his high-tech factory here. But he told the Governor he needed more than tax breaks if he was going to attract computer engineers from Sao Paulo and Silicon Valley to move to Bahia. ''I told him we need a nice environment,'' said Mr. St. Laurent. ''I told him computer engineers can live anywhere. They want a high quality of life and places they can go on weekends. If they happen to live next to one of the most exciting biodiversity systems, they would rather be part of it than watch it destroyed.'' Eventually, this brought around the Mayor of Una, Dejair Birschner. The Mayor clearly understands now that the rain forest has to be protected, even though it has put him out of business. But practically, he has hundreds of people out of work, and loggers are threatening him personally. ''Some 40 percent of our people live in wooden shacks,'' said the Mayor, ''and since the cocoa industry collapsed, things have gotten really bad here. I don't blame Keith for telling us the truth -- that logging was not sustainable. But if people can't eat, they will cut trees, and no one can stop them. We will have to produce jobs ourselves. But Keith will have to | Foreign Affairs; The Little Rain Forest That Could |
1034922_4 | is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease for both men and women in the general population, independent of HDL.'' Missing from this impressive set of data is a large long-term study showing that reducing triglyceride levels that are above 100 or even 200 milligrams can prevent serious heart problems. It took studies like this to convince physicians and the public that it was worth the money and effort to lower cholesterol levels. Small studies indicate that lowering high triglycerides may be as effective in preventing coronary artery disease as lowering the level of heart-damaging cholesterol. In the Meantime . . . Some people with extremely high triglyceride levels do not get heart disease because their triglyceride complexes are too large to damage arterial cells, whereas others with much lower levels are in danger because their triglyceride complexes are small. Triglyceride levels in the blood reach their peak about four hours after a meal; the more caloric the meal, the higher the peak and the longer it takes the body to clear excess triglycerides from the blood. And, since triglycerides raise the risk of clotting, having too much in the blood for too long could precipitate a heart attack. Diets high in saturated fats (from meats and dairy foods), sugars (including natural sugars in fruit), alcohol and refined carbohydrates (white bread, white rice, etc.) can raise blood levels of triglycerides. If people on a very low-fat diet replace fats with sugars and refined starches, triglyceride levels may rise and protective HDL's fall. Some experts say that if weight is not a problem, it may be better to replace artery-clogging saturated fats with heart-healthy olive and canola oils and to eat more fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids like mackerel, sardines, herring, bluefish and salmon. Being overweight (particularly fat around the middle) and sedentary also contribute to high levels of triglycerides. The treatment here is obvious: eat fewer calories and burn more through exercise. It is also better both for reducing triglyceride levels and weight to consume many small nutritious meals a day instead of a few large ones. Triglyceride levels may also rise somewhat in postmenopausal women who take estrogen by mouth and in people who take bile acid sequestrants, a common medication for lowering cholesterol. If changes in diet, weight loss and exercise fail to bring elevated triglycerides down to a safe level, effective drug treatment is available. PERSONAL HEALTH | Yet Another Reason to Fight the Fat |
1034911_0 | The Ice Mass Goeth? THE reason water does not slosh through the streets of Manhattan and Miami is that it is safely locked up as ice in the West Antarctic ice sheet. Whether the ice sheet will forever stay that way no longer seems such a bed-rock certainty. Pine Island Glacier, a major ice stream that flows into the Amundsen Sea, has been in retreat for the last four years, according to a report in this week's Science by Dr. E. J. Rignot of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The glacier has a hinge line, the point at which its projecting tongue leaves the sea bed and starts to float. The floating tongue is lifted slightly by the ocean tides, and these small heaves and swells can be detected by radar satellites. Dr. Rignot calculates that the hinge line retreated by three-fourths of a mile a year from 1992 to 1996, the period for which data are available. Because glaciers behave erratically, a four-year record is insufficient to predict a trend. But Dr. Rignot's observations may send a shiver through climatologists: Pine Island Glacier has been identified as an Achilles heel of the West Antarctic ice sheet and a possible trigger for its disintegration. The melting of the ice sheet might cause an estimated 15-foot rise in sea level. But that could seem a mere inconvenience compared with climatic shifts of the past, such as the Grand Coupure (the Big Cut) that hit Europe 34 million years ago. The inhabitants of Europe were then mostly perissodactyls, the order of mammals that includes the rhino and the extinct brontothere or thunderbeast. During the Grand Coupure, the entire fauna of Europe changed as the thunderbeasts and their kind succumbed to a sharp cold phase in the world's climate. An Unkind Cut in Mongolia A counterpart to the Big Cut has now been documented in Mongolia. With the transition from warm humid conditions to a cold, arid climate, the Mongolian brontotheres also disappeared and were succeeded by rodents and hares, according to a fossil survey reported in this week's Nature by Jin Meng of the University of Massachusetts and Malcolm C. McKenna of the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Meng and Dr. McKenna propose that this dramatic makeover of Asian fauna be called the Mongolian Remodeling. The forces that drove the Grand Coupure and the Mongolian Remodeling would also have | SCIENCE WATCH |
1030794_0 | ''What is happening now has simply never happened before in the history of the world. This is terra incognita. If these trends continue, in a generation or two there may be countries where most people's only blood relatives will be their parents.'' NICHOLAS EBERSTADT, a demographer, on declining birth rates. [A6] | QUOTATION OF THE DAY |
1030796_2 | of 20. This year Germany, Greece and Spain will probably all cross the same eerie divide. ''You can look at this in a philosophical way,'' said Jean-Claude Chesnais, director of research at France's National Institute for the Study of Demography. No country has worried more, or more publicly, about the implications of a low birth rate (which is the rate not for individual mothers but of whole societies). Like so many other European nations, uneasy officials in France see in current trends a world where populations of color -- in Africa, India, Asia -- are still growing, while their own is struggling to keep from shrinking. ''Europe is old and rigid,'' Mr. Chesnais said. ''So it is fading. You can see that as the natural cycle of civilization, perhaps something inevitable. And in many ways low population growth is wonderful. Certainly to control fertility in China, Bangladesh, much of Africa -- that is an absolute triumph. Yet we must look beyond simple numbers. And here I think Europe may be in the vanguard of a very profound trend. Because you cannot have a successful world without children in it.'' The Outlook Worldwide Drop Confounds Experts The effects of the shift will resonate far beyond Europe. Last year Japan's fertility rate -- the number of children born on average to a woman -- fell to 1.39, the lowest level it has ever reached. In the United States, where a large pool of new immigrants help keep the fertility rate higher than in any other prosperous country, the figure is still slightly below an average of 2.1 children per woman -- the magic number needed to keep the population from starting to shrink. Even in the developing world, where overcrowding remains a major cause of desperation and disease, the pace of growth has slowed almost everywhere. Since 1965, according to United Nations population data, the fertility rate in the third world has been cut in half -- from 6 children per woman to 3. In the last decade alone, for example, the figure in Bangladesh has fallen from 6.2 children per woman to 3.4. That's a bigger drop than in the previous two centuries. Little more than 25 years have passed since a famous set of computer studies sponsored by the Club of Rome, the global think tank, showed that population pressures would devastate the world by the mid-1990's. Nothing of the | THE BABY BUST: A special report.; Population Implosion Worries a Graying Europe |
1030711_1 | they were still willing to agree to a small, token parade without the military fife-and-drum music that Catholics find offensive. Officials continued to try to persuade the Catholics to accept a token march. But the Catholics insist on direct talks with the Orangemen, which they need to save face and gain Orange recognition before they make a deal. The Orangemen, also needing to save face, refuse to talk to the Catholic leader, Breandan MacCionnaith, who served time in a British prison for his role in the Irish Republican Army's bombing of a Protestant meeting hall in Portadown in 1981. Prospects for an end to the crisis were not improved when four Orange Order leaders, who met in London for 90 minutes with Mr. Blair, were told that the ban on the parade must be enforced, but that the Prime Minister would be talking to them in the coming days. Political and security officials fear that if there is no compromise the violence -- attacks on the police, blocked roads, attacks on Catholic schools and churches -- will increase this weekend. The parades celebrate the victory at the Battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690, of the Protestant William of Orange over his Catholic father-in-law, King James II. The violence today included the first attempt by Protestants to break through the security cordon erected by Royal Ulster Constabulary officers and British troops around Drumcree, along the Garvaghy Road. The cordon includes four-foot-high coils of barbed wire to prevent Protestants from descending Drumcree Hill to the Catholic area. This morning several Protestant men felled a tree and used the trunk as a bridge across the wire. The police responded by firing plastic bullets. The protesters retreated, but responded with their own missiles, a shower of fireworks rockets. There were no injuries, but the scenes, repeated on television all day, raised fears that the violence, which began Sunday when the parade was blocked, would increase. The violence threatens the viability of the peace agreement, approved in the spring, which is supposed to end sectarian violence. At Portadown, where several hundred Orangemen have been camping overnight, David McNarry, the head of the order's strategy committee, said: ''If Her Majesty's Government is quite prepared to say those people who are suffering at Drumcree, who are staying out at night, who are there because they firmly believe in their civil and religious liberties, if they | A Fear of Violence Hovers Over Ulster's Parade Standoff |
1032311_2 | not, there is no doubt that the Arno project existed. It came in the context of a long war between Florence and Pisa that occupied the Florentine leadership and drained its treasury between 1494 and 1509. In 1503 and 1504, a long military campaign against Pisa having failed, Florence embarked on a plan devised by Leonardo and supported by Machiavelli to change the Arno's course. The military objective was to deprive Pisa of water and thereby force the city into submission. But Mr. Masters finds strong circumstantial evidence that the idea, at least as it existed in the minds of Leonardo and Machiavelli, was bolder than that. ''The diversion of the Arno was not an isolated military action to defeat Pisa, but merely the first step in Leonardo's grandiose plan to create a seaport for Florence,'' Mr. Masters writes. Indeed, he finds that the Arno diversion plan links several other important elements of the epoch, most notably the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci to South America and Leonardo's conception of the Mona Lisa. The South America journey, and the realization that the lands discovered by Columbus were not part of Asia but a vast and separate continent, stimulated Machiavelli's dream of making Florence a major seaport. As for the Mona Lisa, Mr. Masters speculates that its famous iconography grew out of Leonardo's immersion in the Arno project. ''The background of 'La Gioconda' has been described as a surrealistic landscape, in part because it is seen from a point in the sky, high above the ground,'' Mr. Masters notes. In fact, he argues, the background resembles the bird's-eye views of the Tuscan hills and mountains that Leonardo drew in preparation for the Arno project. The actual Arno project takes up a relatively minor portion of Mr. Masters's book, the rest of which is devoted to biographies of its two main characters, an interpretation of their roles in history, and descriptions of Renaissance politics in which both men were enmeshed. Mr. Masters's description of the failed effort to divert the Arno's flow is so succinct as to be a bit confusing on the technical details. A modern-day chart would have been helpful. Still, the concept behind the project is clear, and so are Mr. Masters's interpretations of the project's influence on the subsequent careers of both of his protagonists. Leonardo, he argues, saw its failure as a lesson in the twin necessities of | A River Ran Through Their Dreams |
1034223_0 | To the Editor: You say (Arts & Ideas, July 18) that the partnership of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the mid-19th century won American women the right to vote. I wonder if it was not the example of other countries that won American women that right. Before the United States granted the vote to women in 1920, New Zealand did so in 1893; Australia, 1902; Norway, 1913; Denmark, 1915; Canada, 1918; Britain (women over 30), 1918, and Germany, 1919. PATRICK LYNDON Vancouver, Canada, July 20, 1998 | Religion Led to Rift Among Mothers of Feminism |
1034201_0 | Investigators looking into the causes of the buckling of a giant construction scaffold in Times Square on Tuesday are focusing on whether critical support beams at the 21st floor were disconnected by workers just days before the accident. Because the scaffolding is so unstable, investigators have been able to look at it only from a distance, and so they have yet to determine the status of the beams. But they say their absence, coupled with the stress from a rising construction elevator, could have caused the buckling of a section of the 48-story scaffold at the Conde Nast building. The collapse of that section sent part of a steel elevator tower across West 43d Street and through the roof of a nearby hotel, killing an elderly woman. Although it is not unusual for such beams to be disconnected to allow access to a building's facade, they must be replaced before the elevator can be used at their level. The collapse, which city officials have called the worst construction accident in more than a decade, has led to the closing of several streets and numerous buildings around Times Square, forcing out businesses, residents and tourists. Yesterday evening, emergency workers were trying to install a heavy nylon curtain around the 700-foot-high scaffold on 43d Street and binding the broken elevator tower to the building. As the curtain goes up, said New York's Buildings Commissioner, Gaston Silva, the city will start to reopen the area bounded by 42d and 44th Streets and Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue. Broadway and Seventh Avenue should reopen by midday today, he said, and 44th Street by the end of the day. Mr. Silva said that by early this morning, workers were expected to have stabilized the broken scaffold, removing the danger that all of it would fall. Construction workers inside the building drove steel beams through the open sides of the structure and into the scaffolding. Mr. Silva said the beams would support the latticework. But with the damaged scaffolding hanging 300 feet above the pavement, any mistake could end in disaster. ''It's like pickup sticks,'' said Michael Mazzucca, vice president of the Regional Scaffolding and Hoisting Company. ''Move the wrong stick and maybe the whole thing comes down.'' Mr. Mazzucca was part of a team of experts that the city assembled to recommend how to remove the scaffolding safely. His company operates the concrete | Beams Studied In Collapse At Times Sq. |
1034189_1 | has been rerouted around its center. Most New Yorkers merely suffered a loss of time, the irritations of jammed traffic or clogged crosswalks. For those under the site, however, the deprivations are more tangible. Steve Chang, for example, made the fateful choice two weeks ago of opening a new restaurant in the shadow of the Conde Nast tower. Another victim, who left his apartment for a jog Tuesday morning, has spent the rest of the week borrowing clothes, money and living space. Then there are the pets, left behind in the sealed buildings and surely suffering the limits of survival time without food and water. The city has long since lost the sense of adventure about this Times Square construction Godzilla, but New Yorkers -- not a patient lot anyway -- need to be patient in this case. The dangers from unstable scaffolding will remain until containment netting is fully installed. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, despite a few unfortunate comments about how some people are enjoying the new midtown mall, has done well so far in insuring the safety of the area. He has also prodded the construction companies involved to pay more than the measly $50,000 they first offered for emergency assistance to the area. His staff wisely consulted experts without financial interest in the building to figure out how to work as safely and quickly as possible to restore the area. What was missing was the gentle treatment needed for those ousted from the Woodstock Hotel across the street from the tower, where one resident was killed by falling debris. In the confusion after the accident and because of a slow response by both the Red Cross and the construction companies building the tower, elderly and mentally ill residents were left for 12 or more hours without medicine and late into the night without housing. The city, the insurers for the construction companies and various city charities have opened offices to help those affected by the accident. Veterinary teams are standing by to take care of pets once buildings are deemed safe enough for humans to enter. The event that New York's Buildings Commissioner, Gaston Silva, has called, perhaps somewhat hyperbolically, ''the most serious and dramatic construction failure of this decade'' is settling into city lore. By Monday, if all goes well, most areas in Times Square will return to the glitter and noise that pass there for normal. | Making Times Square Safe |
1033455_0 | To the Editor: Conor Cruise O'Brien (Op-Ed, July 16) and some of his allies in the Unionist leadership have done everything in their power to derail the Irish peace agreement, and so far they have failed. Perhaps it is because the people of Northern Ireland, Protestant and Roman Catholic, see that they offer no other solution of how to end 30 years of sectarian violence. Mr. O'Brien has failed to realize that Northern Ireland has entered into a new era in which the democratic process, not terrorism stemming from sectarian hatred or nationalism, will determine the province's future. He should note that in a democracy, religious minorities have the inalienable right not to live in fear. FRANK COSTELLO Nashville, July 16, 1998 | Who Is to Blame For Irish Deaths? |
1032881_1 | are urged to ''Drop in and philosophize.'' THE BUZZ -- A few minutes before the forum began, Frank Purcell, who looked wise with his gray beard and glasses, sat inside the circle of unfolded chairs that had been set up for participants. ''The last time it got really intense,'' he said. ''One fellow turned purple and fell back in his chair.'' As Mr. Purcell spoke, the seats began to fill. These were people who had a philosopher's natural disdain for fashion; black socks and sneakers were a popular combination. Many were unnerved to find that a three-person video crew from the Lifetime cable channel was on hand, but several consented to be interviewed. Mr. Marinoff arrived. Trim and heavily bearded and wearing a serious expression, he explained the ground rules. ''There are few rules here,'' he said. ''The topics are up for grabs. We will entertain anything as long as it is on a philosophical footing.'' One participant was Al, whose jolly expression belied a dark outlook. ''I'm of the opinion that everything in life is meaningless,'' he said, beaming away. ''Everything we give meaning to in life is superficial.'' ''I think that we all have a reason for being here,'' responded Julia, who had been reading People magazine before the festivities began. ''We have a tendency to be negative at times, but we don't realize that we already have what we need.'' The next 30 minutes were spent trying to separate Al from his nihilism. The effort was fruitless. So the conversation veered off into other topics, including relativism, William James and faith healing. Mr. Marinoff was always ready with a quip. Once he gently reprimanded the speakers for mentioning the names of famous philosophers. ''We think for ourselves,'' he said. Meanwhile, a few onlookers had assembled. ''You mean I could just sit down and talk?'' asked Susan Guercio, 26. ''I would love that, to talk about something I know nothing about.'' The argument wended its way to God. One woman said it offended her that God was often referred to as a man and many in the group, all of them men, became indignant. ''There are so many better things to be worrying about,'' said a fellow named Dean. ''Twenty thousand children died today and we are talking about whether God is a woman?'' The two-hour event was only half over. EDWARD LEWINE NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CHELSEA -- BUZZ | No Hegel: Do-It-Yourself Philosophy |
1032672_2 | cruises aboard sailing vessels in the Caribbean for male-female couples only. She says her October cruise out of Grenada is sold out and she is now well into the 1999 version aboard the Yankee Clipper, a schooner. ''Some people wear all their clothes, some wear a T-shirt, some just pants, some nothing,'' she said. For the '99 cruise, the Yankee Clipper will sail the Southern Grenadines from Oct. 24 to 30; about half of the 64 berths are gone. The price for one person in a cabin with two bunks is $1,195; in a cabin with a lower bunk that will accommodate two people, the price is $1,395 a person. All meals and an open bar, plus tips and port charges are included, but not air fare to Grenada. Ms. Musick books the October date because it includes a Halloween party. Travel au Naturel, Post Office Box 890, Land o' Lakes, Fla. 34639; (800) 728-0185. Sobriety Cruises Steve Abrams and Guy Grand, brothers who own Sober Vacations International in California, have two cruises scheduled for people in recovery programs. Alcoholics Anonymous operates no tours or trips, and does not endorse any, and ''A.A.'' is not supposed to be used in any advertising, according to a spokeswoman for the General Service Office of A.A. in New York. But the words ''recovering'' and ''sober'' are enough to inform potential travelers. Mr. Abrams and Mr. Grand, in recovery from different addictions, say that 12-step meetings are scheduled, with speakers like Clancy I. and Dr. Paul. The brothers have been offering trips for 10 years, and have had particular success working with Club Med to offer Sober Villages. Their first Caribbean cruise, aboard Carnival's Fascination from Jan. 23 to 30, leaves from San Juan, P.R. The price for one of two people in a cabin ranges from $799 to $1,099, plus port taxes of $121.50. Their big coup, Mr. Abrams said, is the chartering of the new American Queen river boat, with a capacity of 400, for a six-day trip in 2000. It will leave the Twin Cities and cruise to St. Louis after the close of the A.A. World Convention in Minneapolis on July 2, 2000. The itinerary is exotic in a different way: Winona, Prairie du Chien, Dubuque and Hannibal, and the trip is already half sold. The prices start at $1,590. Sober Vacation finds that New York and California each contributes | Like Meets Like Aboard Ship |
1032774_3 | history, philosophy, the universe and his own intellectual and creative impulses, will be published later this year by Provincetown Arts Press. Though Stout's seemingly quick, delicate drawings appear to be the inverse of his snail-paced, obsessive paintings, a 1950 journal entry about the sunrise -- a breathtaking visual analysis broken down almost into nanoseconds -- leads one to see his drawings as visual equivalents of the journal entries. Though Stout's work has been identified with Greek classicism and a lifelong fascination with the Greek landscape, Stout did not actually go to Greece until 1970. His pivotal landscape drawings were all done in Provincetown in 1952 and 1953. Several of these are shown at the center, among them some delicate dunescapes, a drawing of a tree and 10 repeated studies of a single bush, from fully foliaged to a fugitive sketch. Like many artists taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, Stout was first lured to Provincetown in 1946 by the summer studio school run by Hans Hofmann. It was the pinnacle of the art colony's moment, largely because Hofmann had attracted most of the New York School by then, including Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and Lee Krasner, who brought along Jackson Pollock. In an unpublished 1984 interview with Robert F. Brown, the director of the Boston office of the Archives of American Art, Stout remembers Hofmann's classes as often being so crowded that people had to be turned away at the door. ''It was very exciting, both for those of us who were working and those just interested in it,'' Stout told Mr. Brown. ''At the Friday afternoon criticisms, you might find Clement Greenberg or Harold Rosenberg, who later coined the phrase Action Painting.'' While Hofmann had a definite influence on him, Stout told Mr. Brown, it was the immediacy of Provincetown's landscape that caused him to move here full time and inspired his mature, biomorphic-abstraction style. In the late 1940's, Stout's paintings were almost entirely gridded, geometric abstractions. By the early 1950's, Cubist -- or neo-plastic, as he called them -- influences were replaced by the inspiration of drawing from nature. In Provincetown, he told Mr. Brown, ''the study of nature brought me back to what was still very deep within me, a very necessary part of me, being back here in the landscape, walking constantly over the dunes and in the woods.'' Stout did not spend all of his | A Provincetown Adjunct Of the New York School |
1033019_3 | with bombs and missiles every night since the standoff began July 5. Only small numbers of Orangemen will be permitted back, and this year's siege of Drumcree, the fourth in a row to provoke violence across the province, has ended. There is evidence that the religiously polarized politics of the province may be breaking down, presenting new possibilities as the peace effort stumbles ahead. This year's riotous behavior has produced a split in the Protestant ranks, with a number of religious and political figures urging the Portadown Orangemen to leave the hill and abandon their standoff. Among them was David Trimble, the First Minister of the new Assembly, who was an active participant at past Drumcree protests. Significantly, Mr. Trimble made his public appearances about the province with Seamus Mallon, his Catholic deputy in the Assembly leadership, by his side. An arrangement that would be barely noticeable anywhere else in Europe, it was a startling new fashion in the dour and gritty unaccommodating politics of Northern Ireland. Mr. Trimble's next test is the creation of the 10-man Assembly executive in September, the group that will effectively be the cabinet of the new government of Northern Ireland. The vote total for Sinn Fein, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army, entitles the party's president, Gerry Adams, to a place in this new cabinet. Throughout the negotiations, Mr. Trimble refused to speak to Mr. Adams, accusing him of being the leader of a party that has not renounced violence. Members of Mr. Trimble's party have said they will not support him if he agrees to let the Sinn Fein leader take his ministerial position in the absence of any disarmament moves by the I.R.A. The matter is the next hurdle that could bring the whole process crashing down. There have been hints from I.R.A. prisoners in recent weeks that the clandestine group might be thinking of making such a gesture in the fall. The I.R.A. has maintained a cease-fire for nearly a year now, even in the face of provocations like the tumultuous past two weeks during which Catholics have been under assault across the province. There have been arson attempts on more than 130 Catholic homes, and 10 Catholic churches and 13 Catholic schools have been set afire by night-riding Protestant vigilantes. More than 100 Catholic families are being moved by public housing authorities after receiving threats like letters containing | In Ulster, Still Horror, Still Hope |
1032975_5 | several other executives overhears the conversation. She is scandalized. After a time, the manager offers to show her the photographs. She says no thanks, so he removes them from sight. There is more. The administrative assistant knows through the grapevine that the manager belongs to an in-house group whose members exchange bawdy jokes via E-mail. One day, the manager inadvertently sends her such a message. He realizes his mistake and apologizes. Later, he asks her to retrieve a budget report from his in-box, but the top item is a soft-porn video. The administrative assistant tells no one, but avoids working for the manager. She explains to her supervisor that she's not comfortable with him. The supervisor inquires further and she recounts the E-mail and video stories. When asked why she didn't speak up earlier, the administrative assistant says she thought she wouldn't be taken seriously. Resolution: Following the company's sexual harassment policy, an investigator determines that the E-mail message was indeed inadvertent and that the video had been manufactured by the manager's client. But a memo is sent to all employees saying that the use of E-mail for bawdy jokes is inappropriate and must stop. The manager is sent for training to help him develop better judgment. He is also given a new assistant, so that no one need worry about perceived retaliation or the fairness of the woman's job evaluations. Comments: ''Well handled,'' Mr. Salvatore said. ''That's how it should work.'' Had the woman sued, he added, the company had a defense: a viable complaint process and her decision not to use it. But Ms. Garrity and Ms. Klein said the woman's situation needs monitoring since other employees might blame her for the manager's censure and the shutdown of the E-mail exchange. One of the Guys A woman works as a supervisor at a construction company -- a traditionally male environment. She prides herself on being able to deflect the sexual bantering common on the job. There is a problem with one project and the company brings in a new district manager, expressing confidence that he can salvage it. The manager arranges to meet the woman at different times to observe the crews, review the books and, he says, learn from her expertise. Soon he's calling her at home suggesting they meet for breakfast. She senses that something's amiss, but she figures she can handle it. Then she starts | The Nation; Tales From the Front Line of Sexual Harassment |
1033079_0 | A 23-foot-high wave crashed into the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, washing away villages built on beaches, killing nearly 600, most of them old people and schoolchildren, and leaving hundreds of others missing, disaster officials said. Thousands were without food and shelter after the wave hit the southwest Pacific island nation Friday night, following an earthquake of magnitude 7 about 12 miles offshore, the National Disaster Center said. Radio reports quoted Australian Army officials as saying the death toll could rise as high as 2,000, but that figure could not be confirmed by the Government. Scores of injured people had not yet been rescued, and an official said victims were ''scattered all over in the mangroves.'' One senior government official said the 8,000 to 10,000 people in the area were affected by the tsunami. Prime Minister William Skate was expected to arrive in Aitape this afternoon to assess the disaster. Australia said it would provide transport for relief supplies and a mobile hospital to Papua New Guinea. Article, page 10. | At Least 600 Drown In Papua New Guinea |
1032845_1 | Hungary seemed to fare better in adoptive homes than do children from other Eastern European countries, Ms. Nichols said: ''The wonderful part about Hungary is that they keep good records and supply us with accurate information. There are few surprises. We are aware, up front, about the physical and mental health of each Hungarian child put up for adoption.'' And, she said, the physical and mental health of Hungarian children in orphanages and foster care is usually very good. ''Although Hungary is still a poor country, the Government makes certain that the people caring for its children are well educated,'' Ms. Nichols said. ''Take the issue of bonding, for example. A Hungarian caretaker is responsible for a maximum of four children in order to facilitate bonding. And the children have the same caretaker from the time they arrive in an orphanage to the time they leave. Because of this emphasis on the child's well-being early on, Hungarian children are prized.'' Ms. Nichols is aware of only one other adoption lawyer and one agency in the United States that work directly with the Hungarian Government on adoptions. ''When I began working in Hungary almost 10 years ago, it was very slow going,'' she recalled. ''I literally had to prove my worth. It was only after I made three simultaneous adoptions, all successful, that I was given permission by the Government to handle adoptions of Hungarian children.'' Prospective parents seeking international adoption must submit to a home study by a licensed social worker or a representative from a licensed social services agency to determine that they are financially responsible and in good health physically and emotionally. In addition, they are fingerprinted to be sure they have no criminal record. ''Federal fingerprint tests are demanded by the Immigration and Naturalization service,'' Ms. Nichols said, adding that the process takes about 10 to 12 weeks. ''Then as children become available, the Hungarian orphanages we deal with will identify a child for placement with a particular family. Requests for boys or girls are honored. The prospective parents then go to Hungary, where they are met by a Hungarian facilitator who takes charge of them, taking them to the orphanage or foster home where they meet the child.'' With new regulations imposed by the current Hungarian Government, Ms. Nichols said that the procedure, which formerly took two weeks, now requires a 30-day stay in Hungary. All | Lawyer Aids in Adoptions From Hungary |
1032684_7 | Penn translators are intent on their superficial gussying up of these works that they miss out on substantive issues in the texts that really are contemporary and fresh. An example: despite its title, much of Sophocles' ''Philoctetes'' revolves around the moral quandary faced by Achilles' young son, Neoptolemos. Ordered to bring the exiled warrior Philoctetes back to Troy, he must choose whether to follow his inborn nature and deal with the reluctant Philoctetes openly, as his late father might have done, or to follow the example of an alternative father figure, the play's villain, Odysseus, by using trickery. This action pointedly reflects the great philosophical debate that raged at the time of the play's production -- a debate about the difference between nature, physis, and convention, nomos, which was remarkably similar to the nature/nurture controversy currently raging in our own culture. The Penn series' translator, Armand Schwerner, could easily have capitalized on this suggestive resemblance by (among other things) translating with greater faithfulness the play's strikingly frequent references to ''nature.'' When Neoptolemus first declines Odysseus' suggestion that they trick Phil- octetes, on the grounds that it's not in his ''nature'' to do so, the word physis and its variants occur three times in the course of 10 lines. Schwerner's Neoptolemos, however, blandly murmurs, ''That's how I am,'' a line that fails utterly to convey the text's emphasis. Unfortunately, readers seeking illumination of the plays' historical or intellectual background in the translators' prefaces are unlikely to find it. In a press release, the series' other editor, Palmer Bovie, refers optimistically to these prefaces as introductions ''to the thought and style of the original authors''; but with rare exceptions the prefaces are marked less by concern for the texts and their history and meanings than by the kind of self-congratulatory autobiographical effusions you're likely to encounter at the back of a Playbill for ''Cats.'' Donald Junkins waxes eloquent about the birth of his three grandchildren, his participation in the Boston marathon, and how he landed a seven-pound largemouth bass -- all as a preface to Euripides' ''Andromache''; Rachel Hadas manages to include, in her preface to ''Helen,'' a poem she'd written about how hard it was for her to decide what play to translate. (It is not always a good idea to cite your own poetry when Euripides' follows.) Yet even these exercises in vanity are preferable to the introductory remarks of | Brush Up Your Aeschylus |
1031578_4 | the boys' deaths help end the violence that has been spreading in the province or only worsen it? The violence has threatened to undermine the Northern Ireland peace agreement and the new Assembly, which is to enact political reforms to give the province's Catholic minority greater power. At Drumcree, where the Orangemen have been attacking policemen blocking the roads to the Catholic area, a few Orange Protestants said today that the boys' deaths might decrease the number of protesters, particularly on Monday, when about 500 Orange parades are to take place around the province to celebrate the 17th-century Protestant victory over Catholics. But the prevalent view seemed to be that of a 41-year-old civil servant, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals. He said the protests must continue at Drumcree. ''It's a matter of our freedom, our right to walk on the Queen's highway,'' he said. He blamed the killings on British officials, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, who refused to let the march go down the Garvaghy Road in the Catholic area. Catholics view the parades as triumphalist and demeaning to them. But Elizabeth Pollock, an Orange supporter, looked across the field at British soldiers defending a roadblock and said of the demonstrators, ''They shouldn't be stoning our own army. That's the British Army over there.'' She said she was ''totally devastated'' by the boys' deaths. However, she said that the Orangemen are right to stand up to the Catholic community because ''they're taking Northern Ireland away from us. They want a united Ireland, which we don't want.'' Protesters who have attacked the troops and the police at Drumcree are ''just extremists, just a bunch of kids hanging about with nothing to do,'' she said. Still, she conceded, ''There's too much hate and not enough love.'' Today, several hours after the firebombing, a British Government commission denied an appeal by the Orange Order against the ban on the march at Drumcree. The two leaders of the new Northern Ireland Assembly, David Trimble, a Protestant, and Seamus Mallon, a Catholic, urged the Orangemen to give up their protests and go home. Ronnie Flanagan, the chief constable of police for Northern Ireland, said: ''What went on last night was not protest. We believe we are investigating the sectarian murder of three children -- Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn -- asleep in their beds. That's not protest. That's murder.'' | 3 Catholic Brothers Killed in Fire, Stunning Ulster and Raising Fears |
1031832_0 | Tens of thousands of Orange Order Protestants walked peacefully today in several hundred parades throughout Northern Ireland, after a week of Protestant violence over the issue of patriotic marches in Roman Catholic neighborhoods and the death of three young Catholic brothers in an arson attack. In what was taken to be a reaction to the killing of the boys on Sunday, the level of violence in the British province on Sunday night and today was low, the police said. ''It was clear yesterday, after those murders, an awful lot of people did reflect on what is happening, and it is absolutely appalling that it should take that to make some people see where they potentially were heading,'' a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said in London. ''The vast majority are making it clear they will not tolerate violence, that that is the past.'' The violence had threatened the peace pact approved in May. The situation grew tenser after the boys had been killed in a fire that the police said was the work of Protestants in the predominantly Protestant town of Ballymoney, 40 miles north of Belfast. Today, as the boys became virtual martyrs in the eyes of Catholics, and some Protestants, the tension seemed to ebb. But they could rise in nighttime demonstrations. Several thousand people, mostly Protestant sightseers out for a walk on the holiday evening, visited the scene of the clashes beween the security forces and the Orange protesters. But the number was drastically below what Orange officials had predicted before the arson killings. A march that led to violence in the past passed calmly through a Catholic area in Belfast this morning. To honor the dead boys, Catholics did not resist. One leader, John Gormley, said, ''We thought it would be a good tactic, as well as good behavior.'' The Orange parades, held annually to celebrate the victory in 1690 of the Protestant William of Orange over his Catholic father-in-law, King James II, had threatened to cause further disturbances. The Protestant violence began after a British Government commission had forbade Orangemen to march through a Catholic area in Portadown, 35 miles west of here. For a week protesters in the Drumcree area of Portadown attacked with gasoline bombs, rocks and ball-bearings hurled from slingshots. Hundreds of police officers and British troops blocked the Protestants and kept them from Catholic Garvaghy Road. Protesters across the province | Thousands of Protestants March Peacefully in Ulster |
1031746_4 | looking ''on a test basis'' at whether it should use remanufactured parts in printers, a spokesman said. The General Motors Corporation's Saturn division is working with the University of Tennessee to develop a software program that tracks the energy and environmental impact of every part of a car, from manufacture to disposal. One major use for the program: letting designers run ''what if'' scenarios to see whether tinkering with certain parts will make them easier to recycle or remanufacture. ''We want designers to look at the environmental component of all their decisions,'' said William R. Miller 3d, Saturn's manager of environmental affairs. Even chemical companies, which deal with vats of materials rather than discrete parts, are learning to remanufacture. Instead of melting down old polyester film -- which degrades the fiber -- or burning it for fuel, DuPont now ''unzips'' the polyester molecule down to its atoms, and remanufactures the polyester. DuPont is ''scouting around for a similar chemistry for nylon,'' said John B. Carberry, director of environmental technology. ''Billions of pounds of nylon carpeting is going into landfill that we should be able to re-use.'' Collins & Aikman Floor Coverings Inc. has noticed that, too. It has a new technology, which falls between recycling and remanufacturing, for grinding up old carpets and, without any chemical processing, using them as backing for new ones. ''You can do this forever, without the fiber degrading in any way,'' said Lee H. Schilling, senior vice president. Remanufacturing as a separate industry has been around for more than 50 years. Remanufactured parts dominate the aftermarket for cars and trucks. Remanufactured office furniture and printer cartridges have also been available for years. The United States military, the largest remanufacturer in the world, routinely uses remanufactured parts in vehicles and weapons. And ''disposable'' cameras are a misnomer: since the early 1990's, Fuji and Kodak have retrieved them from photofinishers and re-used the flash and other parts in new cameras. ''It didn't take long to realize how much value was left in those so-called throwaways,'' said Stephen C. Rumsey, Kodak's manufacturing manager for single-use cameras. Indeed, remanufacturing is a good-sized industry in its own right. Robert T. Lund, a professor of manufacturing engineering at Boston University, said that in 1996, the last year for which he gathered figures, companies that rebuild parts comprised a $53 billion business employing 480,000 people. But until recently, manufacturers and regulators barely | Second Time Around, and Around; Remanufacturing Is Gaining Ground in Corporate America |
1031766_0 | The Clinton Administration asked Congress today for more flexibility in its dealings with India and Pakistan, saying that current sanctions against the two countries for their nuclear weapons programs are too rigid and limit Washington's ability to halt a South Asian nuclear arms race. The Administration is not calling for an immediate lifting of the sanctions, but only the power to lift them. That power, many officials believe, would enable them to induce India and Pakistan to stop testing or deploying nuclear weapons. After the two countries tested nuclear weapons in May, the Administration was forced under a 1994 law to impose harsh sanctions against them. The law contains no provision that would allow the President to lift sanctions, either in whole or in part. Any changes in sanctions require a new law, passed by both the House and the Senate. ''Our purpose is not to punish for punishment's sake, but to influence the behavior of both Governments,'' Karl F. Inderfurth, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs, said at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian affairs. ''We do not wish for unnecessary harm to fall on the civilian populations of either country,'' he said, ''or on U.S. businesses.'' Last Thursday the Senate voted, 98-0, to exempt wheat and other agricultural exports from the sanctions because farm state legislators said the sales ban hurt only American farmers and would not prevent foreign farmers from profiting instead. A provision attached to that law would have given President Clinton the authority, through March 1999, to waive the other sanctions imposed on India and Pakistan. But it was dropped after protests from Senator John Glenn, an Ohio Democrat, who wrote the original 1994 bill. Other sanctions include a cutoff of trade credits, private bank loans and American support for loans not based on relief needs from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Recently the United States voted for a World Bank loan to India meant for child education and health care. Arms sales and military aid to Pakistan were cut off under separate legislation in 1990, when it was determined that Pakistan had nuclear weapons. ''Right now there's no system to give the executive branch any flexibility,'' said James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman. ''We'd like it to come in the form of Congressionally mandated authority for the executive branch to respond | Clinton Seeks Power to Lift India-Pakistan Sanctions |
1031752_0 | Tens of thousands of Protestants paraded peacefully in Northern Ireland. The marches followed a week of Protestant upheaval over the issue of patriotic marches in Roman Catholic neighborhoods and the death of three young Catholic brothers in an arson attack. In what was taken to be a reaction to the killing of the boys on Sunday, the level of violence in the British province was low, the police said. The conflict had threatened the peace pact approved in May. Article, page A6. | Calm Ulster Marches After Violent Week |
1034679_4 | A Draconian chapter devoted to medical matters features excessive blistering, marathon enema sessions, bloodsucking leeches and a whole lot of castor oil. Regimens traumatic enough, Druett speculates, to pale the original ailment. Women were not necessarily passive players as various sea dramas unfolded. Boredom sent some unconventional women to pull lines with the sailors, and other women acted as unofficial partners in their husbands' command. More frequently, though, women set down their cross-stitching only when the situation required. An industrious Sarah Gray couldn't bear for her newly deceased husband ''to be slid into the sea like an ordinary man,'' so she pickled him in spirits (which seem to have been in no short supply on these ships) until she could transport his body back home for proper internment. Shipwrecks, pirate encounters and good old-fashioned collisions were not uncommon. Capt. Robert K. (Sunrise) Clarke handed his wife two loaded revolvers with instructions to shoot their 5-year-old daughter and herself rather than fall into the hands of pirates. Mrs. Clarke responded, ''By the grace of God I'll do it!'' but instead held off the marauders with both barrels leveled, enabling an escape boat to be launched. As they made their getaway, Sunrise's lung was protruding six inches from his chest, so Mrs. Clarke (who'd already saved her husband's life once that day by preventing a second, and surely deadly, lance thrust) ''pushed the slippery organ back inside and bound the gash with strips of cloth, which she then sewed tightly in place.'' As the 20th century dawned and women were beginning to enter the work force on shore, new generations of women took to the sea not solely for love and duty, as had their mothers and grandmothers, but also for adventure. These travelers had sailing in their blood but were thwarted by steamships, the advent of which eventually sent merchant sailing vessels dockside. Owners of the new shipping lines banned families on board, and thus the age of sail, and women's stories within it, end abruptly, as does ''Hen Frigates.'' But not before leaving in its wake a valuable collective portrait of intrepid seafaring women -- and an image of domestic challenge that would leave even Martha Stewart spinning. Holly Morris, the editor of two collections of writings by women about fishing, ''Uncommon Waters'' and ''A Different Angle,'' is the writer and host of the forthcoming television travel series ''Adventure Divas.'' | First Helpmates |
1034346_4 | says. citing the case of Middletown, where a fuel-burning electrical plant is required to cool the water it uses before discharging it back into the river. Gradually the restoration project workers hope, salmon will become a fish that people can recognize in the Connecticut River. But it will take years. Salmon spend their first few years in the tributaries where they are born. Then they head downstream to the ocean to grow up for a few more years. Many do not survive, however. Right now, about 4 percent of the stocked salmon live long enough to go downstream to the ocean, Mr. Gephard says, and of those just 1 percent come back as adults. Atlantic salmon differ from Pacific salmon in that they can return to the ocean after laying eggs and return again before they die. The river and its tributaries are trying to go back in time -- way back, as in the 17th and 18th centuries. Probate records in towns near the river mouth list barrels of salmon among the riches of people who died back then, according to John Pfeiffer, an archeologist in Old Lyme. He also has seen old documents in which people detailed how they were tired of eating salmon. For some reason, scientists haven't found salmon bones along the Connecticut, but that might not have anything to do with their presence, Mr. Pfeiffer says. ''It was believed, for instance, that you had to take the salmon carcass back to the stream or you would have bad luck,'' Mr. Pfeiffer says. Tom Maloney, the river steward for the Connecticut River Watershed Council, believes there were ''vast runs'' of salmon upstream, in Massachusetts, in the days before dams. But whether the fish will again become numerous enough that they can be harvested and be listed as an asset in someone's estate can't be known. The scientists and environmentalists still are trying to teach the public about these fish. Mr. Gephard says one reason he works with schoolchildren, who raise a few of the salmon fry he releases each year, is he wants to teach them about a fish we recognize only in pictures. In ''Salmon: The World's Most Harassed Fish,'' Anthony Netboy wrote, ''It is not known when the last salmon was taken in the river, but in 1872, when a solitary specimen strayed into a fisherman's net at Old Saybrook, nobody could identify it.'' | Giving Salmon a Helping Hand |
1034554_2 | only pirate ship to come to light in modern times whose authenticity is certain, established by the bell, inscribed ''The Whydah Gally 1716.'' In March 1997, archeologists found what they believe may be the remains of Blackbeard's flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, off North Carolina. But the evidence so far is circumstantial. Scholars say pirates are cloaked in centuries of myths and misconceptions, and relish any facts that shed light on these historical figures and their age. The years from 1650 to 1725 saw an explosion of lawlessness on the high seas. Thousands of men -- and a few women -- devoted themselves to plundering trade ships rich in gold and silver, spices and ivory, fine steels and slaves. Samuel Bellamy, or ''Black Sam Bellamy,'' as the tellers of pirate tales usually put it in their efforts to portray the villainy, was a young English sailor who went on a wild streak. In a little over a year, his gang captured more than 50 ships, contemporary accounts say. Late in the game he captured the Whydah, an African slave ship. Dozens of his 150 or so crewmen were said to be freed slaves. Legend has it that he sailed to Cape Cod to see a lover, Maria Hallet, when disaster struck in a ferocious storm at night. Black Sam Bellamy, 29, was never seen again. After the Whydah grounded on a sandbar, a salvage expert sent by the colonial governor watched helplessly as the remains of the capsized ship broke up off shore in heavy surf. Later, a few pirates who survived the storm were tried in Boston, and some attested to the size of the lost treasure. Mr. Clifford said the sandy seabed within 100 feet of the newly discovered wooden hull had recently produced a wealth of artifacts. Among them is a grinding wheel that the pirates apparently used to sharpen their knives and swords. ''It has a small crack across its face where they'd put in the points to sharpen them,'' he said, adding that the wheel is 18 to 20 inches in diameter and spooky. ''You can almost hear the grindstone working,'' he said. The team also found what appears to be a swivel gun -- a short cannon meant to fire small pellets at people. Such anti-personnel weapons were usually mounted on a vessel's stern, Mr. Clifford said, an area of the Whydah that the team | Searchers Say They Have Found Elusive Hull of Pirate Ship |
1034715_27 | taken nips out of one another). The victim was Hans Hageman, the 40-year-old administrator of a high school in East Harlem who was training to lead students in an expedition to the North Pole commemorating Matthew Henson, the black explorer who accompanied Peary. Hans was careening down a valley covered in slick green ice, riding a sled that was fishtailing wildly as the dogs raced around boulders and over hummocks in the ice. The sled smashed into a boulder, flinging Hans onto the rocks and leaving him with a deep six-inch gash below his knee. In the spirit of Peary, he didn't mention it until we reached the bottom of the pass and camped that evening on a fjord off the island's east coast. We gathered around him on the sea ice, sorry for his injury but excited at the drama, as Charlene Abernethy, a 46-year-old obstetrician from Acme, Mich., prepared to stitch the wound. The anesthetic in her kit was frozen solid, and Hans told her to go ahead without it. ''How much can it hurt?'' he said. ''A lot,'' she replied, and insisted on defrosting the bottle of lidocaine in a pot of boiling water. She injected the anesthetic and stitched him up while we debated how to glamorize the injury once we got back to civilization. I favored blaming a polar bear, but Hans didn't think anyone would believe it. ''I'll just say it happened when I ran out in the middle of the night to protect the dogs from a pack of wolves,'' he said. There were large bear tracks at our campsite that night, and we chained the dogs in a protective perimeter around the camp -- a polar-bear early-warning system. Schurke went to sleep with a flare gun and a rifle propped next to him. In the middle of the night, Per was awakened by the footsteps and heavy breathing of an animal approaching his sleeping bag; his next sensation was of hot breath coming through the opening of the mummy sack. ''I figured that this expedition was over for me,'' he said later, ''until I looked out and saw it was a dog that had slipped off its chain.'' The next day we saw a polar bear and her cub in the distance and came across the crimson remains of a seal they had just finished eating. At the mouth of the fjord, | Going Where A Lot of Other Dudes With Really Great Equipment Have Gone Before |
1034598_0 | Times Square got far more excitement than it bargained for when a temporary elevator tower collapsed at the Conde Nast building construction site, raining down tons of steel on surrounding streets. The accident, in which more than 300 feet of tower fell, killed an 85-year-old woman and created days of chaos. Worried that additional debris would fall, city officials shut down nearby streets, office buildings and theaters, replacing the area's normal bustle with an eerie silence. But some New Yorkers saw a silver lining -- relishing the quiet, many said Times Square should be turned permanently into a pedestrian mall. STEVEN GREENHOUSE | July 19-25; Construction Tower Falls In Times Square |
1034516_0 | Raymond D. Gerwe, a chemist and developer of two United States patents, died July 12 of congestive heart failure. He was 94 and lived in Lakeland, Fla. Mr. Gerwe was born in Cincinnati on May 28, 1904. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry and mathematics from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1927 and a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Cincinnati in 1932. From 1932 to 1938, he was in charge of research and development for the Kroger Company in Cincinnati, where he helped develop formulas for bottled soft drinks, gelatin and mayonnaise, as well as writing Kroger's quality control standards. In 1938, he became director of research for the Florida division of the Food Machinery Corporation, the forerunner of the FMC Corporation, in Dunedin. In 1947, the office moved to Lakeland. In 1950, in conjunction with American Cyanamid, he helped develop FD&C Red No. 2, a color used on oranges. Mr. Gerwe developed two patents on coating preparations used to prolong the freshness of fruits and vegetables and was instrumental in proving that limonene, an extract from citrus, was beneficial. L-carvone, one of seven compounds found in limonene, is one of the principal ingredients in the oil of spearmint. He retired from FMC in 1970. He served as a consultant for citrus processing companies until 1995. Mr. Gerwe is survived by a daughter, Carole Gerwe Cox of Dunwoody, Ga.; a son, Roderick D. Gerwe of Kingsport, Tenn.; a sister, Marie Jonas of Indianapolis, and six grandchildren. Mr. Gerwe's wife, Florence (Sally) Cary Gerwe, died in 1994. | R. Gerwe, 94, Chemist and Food Scientist |
1034629_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Ending Welfare'' (editorial July 21): As a former welfare mother currently pursuing a Ph.D., I know that the best kind of job training is a college education. A college education allows single mothers to buy some time for the important work of mothering. Unlike the American workplace, which is hostile to parents, universities tend to be family friendly; students can schedule classes so that they can care for their children and pursue a degree. But college and parenting are not fully acknowledged as work under welfare reform legislation. The Wellstone amendment, currently before the Senate, permits two years of college to count as work. This enables poor women both to prepare for decent jobs and to give their children two years of attentive care. While two years is not enough, this amendment is certainly a step in the right direction. SANDY SMITH MADSEN Decatur, Ga., July 22, 1998 | Education Ends Welfare |
1034593_0 | In contrast to Americans, European consumers are rejecting genetically altered foods for pragmatic as well as philosophical reasons. Prince Charles gave voice to a common sentiment with his recent announcement that no genetically altered food would ever pass his lips. ''That takes mankind into realms that belong to God, and to God alone,'' he said. Throughout the world last year, more than 30 million acres of commercial farmland were planted with genetically modified seeds, 10 times as much as the year before. | July 19-25; Europe Shuns Altered Food |
1030079_1 | Officials and experts said the decision was a weak, if not disingenuous, attempt to make the Government appear evenhanded, alternating permissions and denials to weaken opposition. In Ulster, pleasing one side usually outrages the other. The decison against the Drumcree Protestants produced Protestant violence; the decision in favor of the Protestants next Monday is also expected to produce demonstrations, this time by Catholics. A spokesman for residents of the Ormeau Road, John Gormley, said the Catholic community would challenge the commission's ruling in court, arguing that it had not met the legal guidelines set down for the Orange marches. The experts said the decision was unlikely to defuse the sitation at Drumcree, or end the fear that the violence endangers the peace effort. Many feel that the most optimistic scenario is that the inevitable public disorder in the next week will fade, permitting the new Northern Ireland Assembly to resume its work when it reconvenes in September. The least optimistic would be Protestant unionist members' resignation from the new assembly, which would vitiate the institution and raise the likelihood of resumed sectarian killing. The Belfast march, which has twice been banned by the commission in the last year, will be one of about 500 parades to celebrate the victory of the Protestant William of Orange over his Catholic father-in-law, King James II, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Most Catholics find the parades offensive and triumphalist. Protestants say they are a matter of freedom of assembly, a basic right. The province was calm today, but tonight Protestants in Belfast continued their violent reaction, the police said. Most of the incidents involved rioters throwing gasoline bombs at the police. There were no injuries. A police spokesman said at midnight, ''It's not as bad as last night, but the night is young.'' People worried about the effects of sustained violence on the peace effort, which nevertheless appeared to be moving ahead last week with the start of work by the new assembly. It is to enact the peace agreement approved in a referendum in May. ''I'm afraid the violence will break up the whole thing,'' said Pauline Hegney, a Catholic mother of four, whose husband was shot dead seven years ago by Protestant paramilitary forces. ''I don't understand it,'' she added. ''Why should people want to march down streets where they have no supporters?'' Referring to a Protestant thoroughfare in | British to Allow March, This One in Belfast |
1030036_9 | were abandoned in the 1600's and the people increasingly had to subsist on the produce of small household gardens. Their numbers diminished. As an example of the struggle to live on an island denuded of vegetation, Dr. Ayres said, one of his graduate students, Joan Wozniak, looked under the rocky landscape and detected evidence that the people had resorted to a kind of lithic mulch gardening. They used rocks as mulch to keep moisture in the soil. Under the rocks, she found a thoroughly mixed soil typical of intensive gardening and traces of rotted tubers, even part of an ancient hoe. Both Dr. Ayres and Dr. Van Tilburg think that the people may not have been entirely to blame for the culture's sad decline. Storms and cyclical climate changes could have had a hand. ''There's a strong possibility that an isolated island like that could have been at the mercy of nature, with no help in reach,'' Dr. Van Tilburg said. ''It's one of the biggest mysteries of the island, and we haven't begun to investigate it.'' Restoration of the island's monuments was begun in the 1960's primarily by Dr. Ayres and Dr. William Mulloy of the University of Wyoming, who had been a member of the Heyerdahl expedition. Several of the toppled statues were put back on their stone platforms, called ahu, and the stone dwellings were reconstructed at Orongo. In the most ambitious project, Dr. Claudio Cristino, a Chilean archeologist, directed the restoration of the 15 imposing moais at Tongariki, completed in 1994. A Japanese company provided a crane for lifting the heavy stones into place. The Present Trying to Preserve, And Save, a Culture While some restorations continue, much of the concern has now shifted to preservation of the monuments and the culture itself. The island has revived from the Peruvian slave raids and disease in the late 19th century that almost wiped out the culture, leaving only 111 people in 1877. ''We were almost extinct,'' Dr. Ramirez said. The people face a new threat because of the island's new-found prominence. The signs of increasing tourism abound in Hanga Roa, the only town, inviting visitors into auto-rental agencies, small hotels, curio shops, a pizza parlor and a disco. Few children are learning the Rapa Nui language, threatening it with extinction in a generation or two. Frustrated by the changes, many of the island's 2,000 people are demanding | If These Stones Could Talk . . . A Polynesian Mystery Tale; Easter Island Giving Up Its Secrets, But Only Grudgingly |
1029779_2 | last 24 hours to calm down the fires in Florida. While the forecast called for more thunderstorms and light rain, officials said shifts in wind also threatened to spread the fires to populated areas as long as drought conditions remained. 1 No Unity on Teachers Merger Supporters of the proposed merger of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have one worry, the hundreds of N.E.A. convention delegates who are urging the 10,000 delegates gathered in New Orleans to vote down the merger, which would create the largest labor union in American history: a colossus of nearly 3.3 million members. 8 No Deal for Starr and Lewinsky One month after Monica S. Lewinsky replaced her legal team, negotiations on a deal with the independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr, to avoid possible prosecution of the former White House intern have stalled, lawyers on both sides of the talks report. 10 NEW YORK 13-19 Newark's Renaissance Real estate investors hungry for new and cheaper territory have begun placing bets on downtown Newark, buying up a dozen buildings over the last 18 months in a sign that the fortunes of New Jersey's largest city may be reversing after decades of decline. 1 A Judicial Mr. Fixit Often when things need to get done in the criminal justice system, both big and little things, a number of judges and lawyers in New York turn to Hillel Bodek. Technically, Mr. Bodek is a freelance clinical social worker, who spends most of his time evaluating the mental state and recommending the appropriate care for indigent mentally and physically impaired defendants. But he is also something of a judicial handyman who is appointed by judges to do almost anything that needs doing to hasten the process of justice. 13 Transit Passes Debut Thousands of riders stood at token booths to buy new versions of the Metrocard that went on sale yesterday. The new cards offer unlimited rides on the city's subways and buses for $17 for 7 days or $63 for 30 days. A transit executive said he was pleasantly surprised at the demand, especially given that it was the middle of a holiday weekend. 13 FRESH AIR FUND 15 OBITUARIES 21 Robert George A retired barber who was Santa Claus to six Presidents and whose year-round Christmas display charmed thousands of children in Southern California. He was 74. 21 Television 20 Weather 19 | NEWS SUMMARY |
1029812_0 | A rash of arson in Northern Ireland provided a reminder of the depth of divisions there despite a historic peace agreement signed in April. There were 10 arson attacks on Catholic churches followed by attacks on Protestant institutions in apparent reprisal. | June 28-July 4; Arson in Ulster |
1029671_0 | BATTERY PARK CITY Sailing With Capt. Cook For Less Than 3 Years Calling old salts, and new ones too. The Endeavour, a three-masted bark weighing in at 550 tons and stretching 109 feet, sailed into New York Harbor last week. The ship, a full-scale replica of Capt. James Cook's 18th-century vessel that circumnavigated the globe, is an interactive floating museum that came from Fremantle, Australia, to visit 16 ports on the Eastern Seaboard. In his three-year voyage, Cook claimed Australia in the name of King George III. And two passengers, Joseph Banks and Dr. Daniel Solander, discovered 2,600 new species of plants during the course of the voyage. Visitors to the replica can climb below deck and meander through the officers' cabins, the mess hall and the sailors' sleeping quarters, some only four feet high. The Endeavour will be open to visitors today and tomorrow before departing for Norwalk, Conn. H.M. Bark Endeavour, today and tomorrow, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M.; North Cove Yacht Harbor, World Financial Center, 393 South End Avenue (at Liberty Street); $10, $8 people 65 or over, $5, people 17 or younger, and a family rate of $25 for two adults and up to three children; (212) 938-9000. MIDTOWN Sacred Choral Music For Summer Sundays Summertime -- and the music is sacred -- at St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue. From today through Sept. 6, the Summer Festival of Sacred Music, featuring the St. Bartholomew's Choir, will be performed under the musical direction of William K. Trafka, who is also the church organist. At each Sunday morning service at the Episcopal church, Mr. Trafka, who also is responsible for the festival's programming, will perform each piece in its original context. ''When combined with the proper liturgy,'' he said, ''the music returns home to its spiritual roots.'' Today's performance will include American choral music by Leonard Bernstein, Anthony Piccolo and Ned Rorem in observance of Independence Day weekend. Sacred Music at St. Bartholomew's Church, 11 A.M. today and Sundays through Sept. 6; 109 Park Avenue (at 51st Street); (212) 378-0200. PROSPECT PARK How the Professionals Keep Their Sea Lions Ever wonder how to care for a baboon? Or incubate a bird's egg? Each weekend this month, Prospect Park will sponsor ''Keeping Up With the Keepers,'' events intended to teach children how zookeepers charm the savage beast and insure animal tranquillity. During Sea Lion Keeper Weekend, which continues | PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD |
1029750_0 | Hillel Bodek hurtled through the interstices of 100 Centre Street, the voluminous State Supreme Court building in Manhattan where criminal cases are heard, muttering to himself his signature refrains, ''It is what it is'' and ''What can I tell you.'' Even at his fleet pace, he never gets far before someone flags him down. Kevin Hynes, a lawyer with a client facing drug charges, buttonholed him. ''Hillel, I want my client to wear a sweater in court instead of a leather jacket,'' he said. ''How do I do that?'' Mr. Bodek gave his standard response: ''I'll take care of it.'' Getting things accomplished in the criminal justice system -- really getting them accomplished -- requires a certain felicitousness. It requires a certain sagacity. It requires an acute knowledge of how creaking bureaucracies work. To some extent, it requires an obnoxiousness. Often when things, both big and little, need to get done, judges and lawyers in New York turn to one particular individual. He is a loquacious, unkempt, quirky man of 45 who proudly wears a pocket protector for his pens. He wears a windbreaker and keeps a black nylon backpack strapped to his back. He looks like someone you might meet at the bowling alley, or who would show up to repair the dishwasher. This is Hillel Bodek. New York is full of people who operate in the shadows to make those in the limelight look better. These are people who get things done. In the maddening world of criminal justice, Hillel Bodek gets things done. He makes the slow wheels of justice turn just a little faster. Technically, Mr. Bodek is a freelance clinical social worker, who spends most of his time evaluating the mental state of and recommending the appropriate care for indigent mentally and physically impaired defendants. But he is also something of a judicial handyman who is appointed by judges to do almost anything that needs doing to hasten the process of justice and see that the system works as it is intended to. He will accelerate the transfer of documents and help assure the protection of witnesses. He will check that a defendant gets dutiful care in jail. Recently, a man named Tirso Salcedo, on trial on drug charges, complained that he couldn't hear the proceedings, and asked that the trial be stopped. Mr. Bodek helped get him treated for an ear infection and fitted | The Courts' Great Expediter; A Social Worker for Hire Solves Problems With Flair |
1029506_3 | is a very good chance you will not come down with yellow fever even if you are bitten by a mosquito that has it. Certain countries require you get this vaccination and carry with you a yellow fever certificate showing you've had this vaccination. Another very important disease -- much more important than yellow fever considering the worldwide impact -- is malaria. There are millions and millions of cases of malaria a year. What we do in travel medicine is we prescribe pills to prevent malaria. The pills are usually started before somebody leaves and have to be continued until someone is home for a month. Q. There have been reports that some formerly effective medicines against mosquito-borne diseases no longer work well because of greater resistance by the mosquitoes. Is that affecting Americans going to those countries? A. I think the medicine is still working in general, but it's an interesting story that the medications that used to be given throughout the whole world -- chloriquine, the brand name is Aralen -- is only effective in selective parts of the world, such as Central America and the Mideast. In most areas you now have to use a medicine called mefloquine, whose brand name is Lariam. It is still effective, although there are areas where malaria that is resistant to mefloquine is arriving, such as in Southeast Asia. And there have been some reports of failure of mefloquine in Africa also. But I don't think it's very common for a United States traveler to have a problem from resistant malaria. But there will probably come a day when mefloquine will not be effective, and we'll have to use something else. Q. Diarrhea is more typically the traveler's bane. Beyond washing fruit and not drinking the water, what should people do? A. Carbonated or alcoholic beverages are safer. Yes, fruit and vegetables should be thoroughly washed and peeled. People shouldn't eat from street vendors; food should be served hot. Q. Are we talking about travelers to Mexico, third world countries or every place? A. Western Europe is O.K., but in Mexico, eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, South America, I would follow those measures. Any place you go there is going to be a wide variation in how safe the food is -- you could be in the most underdeveloped country but yet be at a major resort where everything is done exactly | Q&A/Dr. Jeffrey A. Lederman; How to Travel and Maintain Good Health |
1032101_1 | Greek community here tell us that this campaign only involves a small number of people. It's motivated by a feeling of hatred not only toward Ataturk but toward Turkey in general. I'm very much hoping that we can make him see this, and that we don't get into a situation which undermines freedom of speech and freedom of the arts.'' Notices of Mr. Banderas's intention to play Ataturk began appearing in Greek-American publications several weeks ago. One of them published a letter signed by ''a member of the Greek community of N.Y.'' describing Ataturk as a ''savage maniac'' who was also ''a child molester of both sexes, a mass murderer, a destroyer of Greek civilization and in general a disgrace to human civilization as we know it.'' The announcements were accompanied by appeals to readers to send protest letters to Mr. Banderas and his wife, the actress Melanie Griffith. Mr. Olivier estimated that they might have received as many as 1,000 letters. The campaign has not been universally welcomed by Greek-Americans. An editorial in this week's edition of The Greek American, a weekly newspaper published on Long Island, said it had caused many Greeks ''to cringe in embarrassment.'' ''All-out demonization is not serious,'' the editorial said. ''The end result is to make us look like ethnic hysterics, with these groups' objections usually showing up our own chauvinism and narrow-mindedness more than anything else.'' Efforts to make a film about Ataturk, a military leader who won glory in battle and went on to forge a modern nation on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, have a long history. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Omar Sharif were among actors involved in various projects. This time, however, the project is apparently falling victim to contemporary politics. Some Greek-Americans and Armenian-Americans fear that the film will be reverential, portraying Ataturk as a hero and ignoring what they consider his evil deeds. They fear that such a portrayal might lead to a warming of popular feeling toward Turkey, a historical rival of both Greece and Armenia. Ataturk was responsible for pushing Greek forces from Anatolia after World War I, but then he pursued a peaceful policy toward Greece. His friendship with the Greek Prime Minister of the time, Elevtherios Venizelos, became so strong that Venizelos nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934, praising him as ''a great reformer'' who made ''a precious contribution to | Banderas Quits Ataturk Film After Protests |
1035222_2 | Soviet Union, which retained control over the Baltic republics. Mr. Herbert wrote his first poems during the Nazi occupation of Poland. As Stanislaw Baranczak, a critic who teaches at Harvard University, has observed, ''The image of a city under siege, one of the several symbols that constantly recur in his work, has a historical poignancy that makes it much more than just a figure of speech.'' Mr. Herbert took part in the Polish resistance to the Nazi occupiers. When the war ended, he enrolled at the University of Cracow, where he received a master's degree in economics. Later he earned a law degree from Nicolas Copernicus University and a degree in philosophy from the University of Warsaw. Stalinist restrictions on writers after the war and Mr. Herbert's refusal to bend to Communist dogma and the party functionaries in the Writers' Union impeded the publication of his poetry for 15 years. During that period he developed his distinctive voice, a style, as the author Eva Hoffman has written, ''that functions as a sort of antidote to the dangers of sentimentality or inflation -- restrained, ironic, stripped of punctuation, averse to 'tricks of the imagination' and passionate in its insistence on precision.'' His first three volumes of poetry, ''A String of Light'' (1956), ''Hermes, a Dog and a Star'' (1957) and ''The Study of an Object'' (1961), established him as a dominant figure in Polish literature. His search for moral and humanistic values would make a strong impression on his contemporaries and earn him an international audience. Many poems in those books also appear in the volumes of his poetry available in English: ''Selected Poems,'' translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott (Ecco Press, 1986); ''Selected Poems'' (Oxford Press, 1977), translated by John and Bodgana Carpenter; ''Report From the Besieged City,'' translated by the Carpenters (Ecco Press, 1985), and ''Mr. Cogito,'' also translated by the Carpenters (Ecco Press, 1993). Mr. Herbert was a modernist in that he wrote in free form, without rhyme and meter. He was an antimodernist in that his work frequently jumped off from Greek myth, Shakespeare and the Latin poets, and in his refusal to ape chaos. In an essay in praise of the great Dutch painters of the 17th century, he explained, ''A major part of contemporary art declares itself on the side of chaos, gesticulates in a void, or tells the story of its own | Zbigniew Herbert, 73, a Poet Who Sought Moral Values |
1035251_0 | A serious security flaw has been discovered in popular E-mail programs published by the Microsoft Corporation and the Netscape Communications Corporation that would permit a malicious person to send a message containing a virus that could crash a computer and destroy or even steal data. So far, security tests have shown that the flaw exists in three of the four most popular E-mail programs, used by perhaps tens of millions of people around the world: Microsoft's Outlook Express and Outlook 98 and Netscape Mail, part of Netscape's Communicator suite of Internet programs. While Microsoft is already providing fixes, the flaw is particularly worrisome in its Outlook 98 program, which combines E-mail with a scheduler, contact list and other features, because this software allows an illicit program attached to a piece of E-mail to run without any activity on the part of the user. Most computer viruses can only infect a machine when the user opens an infected file or runs an infected program. What is more, Microsoft conceded today that the first fix it offered on its World Wide Web site, on Monday, did not work. Anyone who downloaded and installed that fix must download and install a new version. Microsoft reported today that users of Outlook Express, the E-mail software supplied with Windows 95 and Windows 98, would have to open an attachment before a malicious program could be executed. Netscape officials said today that a user of their Communicator program would also have to open a file before a virus could be run. Microsoft officials said that the flaw was present in versions of the Outlook Express shipped with Internet Explorer 4.0 or 4.01 on Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows NT for DEC Alpha, as well as in versions for Macintosh and Unix machines. Windows 3.1 and Windows NT 3.51 versions are not affected. In all, Microsoft said today that it had distributed about two million copies of the more seriously flawed Outlook 98 program and millions more of Outlook Express. Netscape said that 70 million copies of its browsing programs had been downloaded, but the company could not determine how many people used the suite's E-mail software. Many people use more sophisticated programs than those shipped with their browsers. The most popular of these is Eudora, a mail program published by the Qualcomm Corporation. Security researchers said that Eudora was not vulnerable to | Software Flaw Lets Computer Viruses Arrive Via E-Mail |
1035190_2 | the Chinese to buy everything from medical equipment to water-filtration systems. He predicted that China would be hungry for loans, as it starts a campaign, orchestrated by Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, to spend $750 billion on new roads, bridges, hydroelectric projects and other public works. Mr. Harmon said he also wanted to redress China's trade imbalance with the United States, which ballooned to $20.4 billion in the first five months of this year, compared with $16.9 billion in the similar period last year. An aide to Mr. Harmon said that during meetings in Beijing, senior Chinese officials acknowledged that the trade gap was a problem and pledged to help close it. The Ex-Im Bank also wants to mend relations with Beijing, which were strained in 1996 when it refused to subsidize loans to buy equipment for the huge Three Gorges Dam, saying the $25 billion project did not meet its environmental standards. Mr. Harmon's intense focus on China is in marked contrast to that on Japan, where he spent only a day, despite extensive ties between the Ex-Im Bank and its counterpart in Japan. He said he tried to persuade officials there to consider environmental standards in deciding which countries should get loans. Economists said the Ex-Im Bank's emphasis on China made sense, given that it is one of the few Asian countries still showing growth. ''If you want to save Asia, you'd better save China first,'' said William H. Overholt, the head of research at BankBoston in Singapore. Indeed, the situations in other Asian nations worry the bank. It has lent several billion dollars to troubled economies like those of Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia. Given their suffocating debt and economic turbulence, some of them might have trouble paying back their loans on time. A spokesman for the bank acknowledged that it might have to stretch out the repayment period, particularly with Indonesia. But he said no Asian country had yet signaled it would default on an Ex-Im Bank loan, adding, ''A rescheduling is not a loss; it is a stretching out of a repayment.'' Mr. Harmon, who was a New York investment banker before joining the Ex-Im Bank in 1997, said he believed that Asia would take three to five years to recover from its economic crisis. ''A lot of people in Asia haven't lived through bear markets,'' he said, ''so it's harder for people here.'' INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS | Ex-Im Bank Chief, in Asia, Urges Priority on China Lending |
1033797_2 | Beginning Tuesday night, construction workers and firefighters -- using the building's internal elevators to ascend -- threaded lengths of steel cable around the lacy network of metal pipes and tied them to sturdy perimeter columns on the side of the building itself, floor by floor. That work was completed yesterday. The next protective step, which began yesterday, involved the cantilevering of steel beams every three to five floors. They are to poke out from the building and into the scaffolding like 20-foot-long needles. Should parts of the scaffold break off, Mr. Silva said, they would fall only a few feet before landing on the beams. It is unclear how long the accident will delay completion of the Conde Nast Building. Much will depend on whether work crews will be able to use the building's interior elevators or whether an entirely new exterior elevator will have to be erected. As for dismantling the crumpled scaffold and fallen elevator tower, Mr. Silva said that once the curtain is in place, that operation might take a month. To do that, workers will be lowered in large buckets to cut apart the scaffold and the ill-fated elevator tower. The pieces, as well as the debris and planking from the scaffold, will probably be passed to other workers inside the building and then lowered through the building itself, Mr. Silva said, rather than along the exterior. Until Tuesday morning, the red elevator tower provided a strikingly slender counterpoint to the fat skyscraper it served. It was not much more than a small truss, two or three feet on each side, set on end. Two passenger elevators, known as hoists, ran up and down its length, ferrying workers. A trip on this hoist may have been a routine commute for the construction crew, but for a reporter who visited the job site last month, it was a breathtaking journey. It conjured nothing so much as a ride in the gondola of a hot-air balloon rising slowly -- and noisily -- from Times Square, or the agonizing ascent to the top of the Parachute Jump (only this was two-and-a-half times higher than the one at Coney Island). The hoist would lurch sharply as the operator stopped to pick up workers and drop them off. At those moments, it also seemed as if the whole tower was swaying ever so slightly. Because the building is much narrower at | Giant Net to Enclose Scaffold To Keep Debris From Streets |
1033840_0 | To the Editor: Your July 20 front-page article on genetically engineered food ignores a major reason why Consumers Union and others seek labeling of such food: to address the problem of food allergies. When genes are moved from one species to another, allergens may be moved as well. Potentially life-threatening food allergies affect some 2 percent of adults and up to 8 percent of children. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine in March 1996 confirmed that life-threatening allergens had been unknowingly transferred from Brazil nuts into a soybean when genes were introduced to improve the soybeans' protein content. The product was withdrawn. But Food and Drug Administration premarket review is not mandatory, and many allergens have not been identified. Labeling of genetically engineered food is a matter of protecting consumers' health. MICHAEL K. HANSEN Yonkers, July 21, 1998 The writer is a research associate at Consumers Union. | Can Bioengineers Feed the Planet? |
1033834_0 | To the Editor: While I enjoyed ''In Many a Desk, a Cell Phone Grave'' (July 16) about old cellular phones in the drawer, you overlooked an important recycling program that already exists for the nickel-cadmium batteries that power many cellular phones. Through a program set up by battery or battery-powered-product companies, nickel-cadmium batteries can be returned for recycling to any of a number of major retail chains, like Circuit City and Radio Shack, and service centers of such manufacturers as Black & Decker and Motorola. The program is paid for by a license fee paid by the manufacturers when nickel-cadmium batteries are sold. There is no charge to the consumer for the recycling -- just bring it to the retail store. A national promotional campaign is bringing this program to the attention of people with power tools, camcorders, laptop computers, portable electric shavers and other products powered by nickel-cadmium batteries. In May 1996, the Charge Up to Recycle program received Federal legislative support with passage of the Mercury-Containing and Rechargeable Battery Management Act. The act makes the Universal Waste Rule, promulgated by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency in May 1995, effective in all 50 states and allows the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation, a nonprofit group, to take its recycling program all across the country. You can get information about recycling sites near you from the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation at www.rbrc.com, or you can call (800) 8-BATTERY. SAMUEL A. BLEICHER Washington, July 16, 1998 | A Place for Cell Phones? |
1033838_0 | To the Editor: Europe's decision to block genetically modified food is a lesson in democracy (front page, July 20). Indeed, even though experts and corporations claim that such food is harmless, the public perception is that this may not be true. There are unfortunate precedents: when chlorofluorocarbons, or CFC's, were discovered in the 1940's and became widely used in refrigerators and air conditioners, the scientific consensus was that these molecules were harmless; it was only a few decades later that their destructive effect on the earth's ozone layer was discovered. Until the indisputable proof is brought that genetically modified food has only benefits, Europeans are right to err on the safe side. LIONEL ANCELET Houston, July 20, 1998 | Can Bioengineers Feed the Planet? |
1030887_7 | been spread over most commodity groups, led by softwood lumber. In the first quarter, exports of coal and related products to Japan fell 84 percent. There also have been significant declines in commodity exports to South Korea and Taiwan. Over all, the value of agricultural and fishing exports are down 8.5 percent since April 1997 while energy exports are off 17.5 percent and forestry products are down 2.7 percent. But the biggest impact of all has occurred in the oil markets. Mike Rothman, Merrill Lynch's senior energy analyst, estimates that consumption of oil this year has been cut by as much 300,000 barrels a day in developing Asia and even more by the recession in Japan. There are 25 countries that count on petroleum revenue for 20 percent or more of their foreign exchange earnings, according to the International Monetary Fund. There are also five oil exporters that count on oil revenues for 40 percent or more of their government budgets. In Mexico, oil represents only 12 percent of total exports, but it supports 40 percent of Government spending, according to Merrill Lynch. In Venezuela, oil is a double whammy, accounting for 77 percent of exports and 57 percent of Government spending. The value of the Mexican peso has fallen 10 percent this year. And even though the economy is growing briskly, the Government has just approved a third package of spending cuts, slicing $3.7 billion in all. In Russia, which is a major exporter of commodities from oil to precious metals, the oil price drop hit in two ways. First, oil accounts for more than 20 percent of export earnings, but Russia has had to cut production by 350,000 barrels a day because the cost to extract and transport the oil is now more than the market price. In addition, oil prices have foiled, so far, the sale of Rosneft, the last large state-owned oil company, undermining the Government's effort to raise needed cash. Oil prices have shot up recently on the hope for significant cuts in production. But the two leading commodity indexes, the Commodity Research Bureau/Bridge index of 17 commodities and the Goldman Sachs index of 22 commodities, are only slightly above their recent lows. And Japan, the key to the revival of the rest of Asia, has yet to prove it can get its economy or its currency back on track. So a commodity upturn is | INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS: Swamped by Asia's Wake; Nations That Export Commodities Feel Shock Waves |
1030924_0 | Protestant and Roman Catholic officials agreed today to begin negotiations on Saturday to end the rising Protestant violence over a disputed Protestant parade through a Catholic neighborhood west of here. The talks were proposed by Prime Minister Tony Blair this afternoon in London. He was acting to try to end the violence that has ripped Ulster since Sunday, when his Government blocked an Orange Order parade from passing through Garvaghy Road in a Catholic area of Portadown. Before the agreement to talk, there were fears that the violence would increase this weekend. Because the two sides have refused to meet face to face, they will be in separate rooms for the talks, with ''facilitators'' shuttling back and forth. Politicians and security officials fear that if there is no resolution to the dispute by Saturday night, thousands of Orangemen from all over the province will march on the area and clash with the hundreds of police officers and British troops there. | Ulster Parade Talks Planned |
1035428_0 | The security flaw reported this week in E-mail programs produced by two highly respected software companies points to an industrywide problem -- the danger of programming languages whose greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. Much of the power and flexibility of C and C++, the computer languages most commonly used to build commercial software, derive from the fact that they give professional programmers the ability to write enormously complex programs quickly and efficiently. But they do this, in part, by allowing short cuts that can also lead to disaster. As a result of these short cuts, even the best commercial programs today are riddled with bugs that range from merely annoying to catastrophic. ''C makes it too easy to slice your fingers off, and programmers all over the world are doing so with great regularity,'' said Steven Bellovin, a researcher and computer security specialist at AT&T Laboratories, where the C language was developed in the 1960's. More modern programming languages, like the Java language developed by Sun Microsystems, have built-in safeguards that prevent programmers from making many common types of errors that could result in security loopholes. But there is a price for these safeguards. Although closely related to C and C++, Java runs far more slowly that either of those languages. For that reason, it has met resistance from programmers who are eager to get as much speed as possible from computer hardware. On Monday, both the Microsoft Corporation and the Netscape Communications Corporation said that some of their electronic mail programs contained flaws that would enable a malicious programmer to attach to an E-mail message a rogue program that would run automatically on a computer receiving it. The results could range from simply crashing the computer to stealing passwords or destroying data. Both Microsoft's Outlook E-mail products -- Express and Outlook 98 -- and Netscape Mail contain a flaw known as a buffer overflow error that allows a virus to lock up the E-mail programs and trick an operating system into running illicit software code in their place. Such mistakes are easy to make when using the C language, security researchers said, because it allows programmers tremendous latitude in the way they store information in the computer's memory. Moreover, although C++, a more advanced version of C, offers many protections against errors, it also accepts the older C-style programming conventions. This allows C++ programmers to bypass the | Flaw in E-Mail Programs Points to an Industrywide Problem |
1035350_4 | he said. ''It was finals week at M.I.T. this week, and I still get E-mail from them at 3 in the morning. I look at them and say, 'Why don't I take care of this problem? You go and study.' '' The months before the trip are filled with incessant E-mails, faxes and phone calls. (The translators have the worst of it, they agree, because they have to deal with the 12-hour time difference.) Another first -- setting up a wireless Internet connection to a Chinese high school -- took days. The five-floor high school building did not have telephone wires, so the volunteers used antennae to connect it to a university, and its dedicated line, about a half-mile away. ''We never even saw the buildings -- it was all through E-mail,'' said Roger Hu, who went to Shanghai as a freshman. ''We needed to see what buildings were in the way, if they would interfere with the line of sight. They would go up and on the roof and say, 'Oh, yeah, I can see the building from there.' '' The students' Chinese hosts were eager to help. Some of the schools updated their computers or bought new ones. So many people were interested in their progress that last summer the American students held a conference about the Web in education that drew chief executives, school principals and Chinese Government officials. The China Education Technology Initiative inspired another M.I.T. student, Ameet Ranadive, to start a similar program in India last year. The population there is approaching one billion, but only 100,000 have Internet access. Mr. Ranadive, who will be a graduate student in the fall, said he planned to have the Indian students start pen-pal relationships with the Chinese students using E-mail. ''If you start with small steps like that, at least it's promoting connections with the two sides,'' he said. The interns have concerns about nuclear testing in India, human rights violations in China and civil war in Africa, where yet another M.I.T. student is looking to start a similar program. But they keep their corner of cyberspace apolitical. ''What I heard about China was all very negative things,'' Mr. Seid said. ''You'd hear about issues like Taiwan, you hear about the Dalai Lama and Tibet, you hear about Tiananmen. Then you hear about the people. It's a very different perspective than what you hear about the Government.'' | Internet-Fluent M.I.T. Students Teach Basics in China |
1028887_0 | In another significant step in the peace effort in this British province, Protestant and Roman Catholic members of the Northern Ireland Assembly began today to discuss a new political structure for the province that is designed to give the Catholic minority more power. The daylong debate produced the usual attacks by each side, but there was a generally relaxed atmosphere and several members drew laughs and smiles with humorous zingers at opponents. The ultimate goal of the assembly is to end the sectarian violence that has killed more than 3,200 people since 1969. Most Protestants want the province to remain part of Britain. Most Catholics want closer ties, or even union, with the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republic to the south. Most officials, Catholic and Protestant, said the mere existence of the assembly raised hope for -- but did not guarantee -- a permanent peace. The New Northern Ireland Assembly, as the 108-member body is called, is to enact the peace settlement approved by a referendum on May 22. Elections on June 25 produced a body designed to give Catholics more political power despite the Protestant majority in the province and in the assembly. To achieve this, mainstream Protestants and Catholics are cooperating. In its first act, the assembly's two religious groups, Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists, combined to appoint a Protestant, David Trimble, as First Minister, and a Catholic, Seamus Mallon, as Deputy First Minister. Mr. Mallon was an unexpected choice for the post. ''It's a good day for democracy in Northern Ireland,'' said Monica McWilliams, elected as a member of the Women's Coalition. ''For the first time ever, we began to have dialogue,'' she said. But enthusiasm for the historic event was tempered with widespread fear that more violence could break out this weekend during a Protestant Orange Order parade in a Catholic area. A Government commission has ordered the route of the parade changed so that it will not pass Catholic residences in the city of Portadown, 40 miles southwest of here. Catholics resent the parade as triumphalist. Angry Protestants, insisting that freedom of assembly is a basic democratic right, are threatening to confront the police. The Sunday parade, in the suburb of Drumcree, has fomented violence by both Protestants and Catholics for the last three years. The assembly will have executive and legislative authority in the province, which has been ruled directly from London since 1972. The | Ulster Foes Trade Barbs Instead of Bombs |
1028852_3 | but also a pretentious windbag, which is reason enough to like his series.) Sartre, for example, spent 1933 in Germany studying the ''phenomena'' of existence. That was the year Adolf Hitler came to power, but Sartre was too busy pondering existence to take much notice of reality, a condition that stayed with him for the rest of his life. It is easy to be dismissive of Mr. Strathern's efforts and, indeed, anybody who has more than a half-forgotten undergraduate education in the main currents of Western thought might well find his books elementary. Others less informed may find the summaries of concepts so compressed as to be confusing. There are other questions to ask about his effort, philosophical questions as it were. Is it better to have a smattering of philosophical information than none at all? The old proverb, after all, reminds us of the dangers of a little bit of knowledge, the main danger being that we will forget how ignorant we actually are and form half-baked opinions. Another question has to do with the point of reading philosophy in the first place. Philosophy is different from biography or polemics. One reads Kant or Descartes not merely for their ideas but for the play of great minds engaged in deep thought on torturously vexing questions. In this sense, several of the most satisfying moments in Mr. Strathern's 90 moments per volume come in reading the brief excerpts that he has chosen from the philosophers themselves. ''Since I desired to devote myself wholly to the search for truth, I thought it necessary . . . to reject as if utterly false anything in which I could discover the least grounds for doubt, so that I could find out if I was left with anything at all which was absolutely indubitable. Thus, because our senses sometimes deceive us, I decided to suppose that nothing was really as they led us to believe it was.'' In such fashion does Rene Descartes embark on his quest for the one indubitable truth on which his system was founded: I think, therefore I am. Or, here are a few immortal lines from Kant: ''Time has no objective reality; it is not an accident, not a substance, and not a relation: it is a purely subjective condition, necessary because of the nature of the human mind which coordinates all our sensibilities by a certain law, and | Critic's Notebook; I Think, Therefore I Am, but There's So Little Time |
1030280_3 | tight job market, we have seen a continuing trend of companies worrying about the pipeline of future workers. Given their ongoing anxiety about what high schools are producing, they are realizing that they have to get more involved.'' She added that companies were also motivated to help improve local schools because potential employees being recruited from other cities considered the quality of local schools to be among the most important criteria in deciding whether to accept a job offer. Moreover, employee turnover, especially among young workers, is a source of great concern for businesses. Most transitions from school to work are rocky with wasted time and many mismatches, producing problems for young people and for the national economy. There has been much attention in recent years to school-to-work programs modeled on apprenticeships in Europe. But Professor Zemsky of Pennsylvania said Americans seemed to require a different model. Instead of systems, he said, Americans build informal networks. In Europe, businesses have tended to run apprenticeships through powerful guilds or chambers of commerce. But in this country, there has been little appetite for that. ''What we find works is flexible and non-formulaic,'' Professor Zemsky said. ''We want to make these young people more purposeful and explicitly show them that if they want to work they have to learn.'' Milton Goldberg, executive vice president of the National Alliance of Business, a nonprofit organization supported by the businesses, said he was pleased to hear about the emphasis on high school transcripts. His group has started a campaign to increase the importance of high school transcripts in hiring. ''The early evidence suggests that, as a result of the campaign, course-taking patterns are changing and schools' knowledge of what companies want is improving,'' Mr. Goldberg said. ''We are also trying to change transcripts so they give more information useful to employers, like attitudes and teamwork skills.'' He added that there was growing evidence that when companies sent representatives to schools students were more motivated. ''Suddenly algebra and geometry in constructing a tractor become real,'' Mr. Goldberg said. ''It is clear that when schools and businesses communicate with one another and provide opportunities for one another, it makes learning for youngsters far more relevant to the world outside. Businesses are beginning to understand that the quality of education is strongly related to the quality of life in a community and that, in turn, is crucial for businesses.'' | Benefits of School-Business Alliances |
1030270_0 | PASSENGERS with a gripe about airlines have a new way to complain, courtesy of the American Society of Travel Agents, which has issued an Air Traveler's Bill of Rights and is inviting feedback on flights at a new Web site. The society plans to publish the results of the Web surveys periodically. Among the ''rights'' decreed by the society are the right to truth in advertised prices, schedules and seat availability; equal access to unbiased, comparative travel information and all fare and service options; a comfortable seat, reasonable space for carry-on luggage, healthful meals and clean lavatories; use of all, part or none of the segments of a lawfully purchased ticket, and timely, complete and truthful information regarding delays, cancellations and equipment changes. ''We continue to hear this rising chorus of unhappiness among the traveling public about one of the main products our members sell,'' said Paul M. Ruden, senior vice president for legal and industry affairs of ASTA. ''We decided to set out a set of principles that would address this in the English language in the hope that the airlines would embrace it.'' That hasn't happened yet. The Air Transport Association, the major airlines' trade group, sees ASTA's action as a display of agents' continued anger over carriers' cutting their commissions last year. ''Its motivation has nothing to do with consumers,'' said David Fuscus, a spokesman for the association. ''Planes are fuller than they've ever been, but the system's handling it well,'' he said, citing a survey in May that showed an approval rate of 70 percent for the airlines, with 11 percent of consumers disapproving and the rest having no opinion. Will ASTA be issuing a cruise passenger's bill of rights or a hotel guest's bill of rights in the future? ''We will look at that,'' Mr. Ruden said. ''We wanted to deal first with the most obvious problem, and from the standpoint of the business of the industry, this is the largest segment.'' Travelers can weigh in with a confidential survey rating their flights at the new ASTA Web site (www.astanet.com/travelersrights). Meanwhile, the number of complaints about the airlines filed the old-fashioned way, with the Department of Transportation, jumped in May: there were 914, almost 30 percent more than in April and 25 percent more than in May 1997, according to the department's Air Travel Consumer Report for the month. Rates Up; Occupancy Down The average | Business Travel; The American Society of Travel Agents is giving airline passengers a new avenue for complaints. |
1029874_0 | Some dare call it electronic commerce. A major consumer products company logged 264,000 telephone calls to its customer service center in a recent month and handled 225,000 in what it considered satisfactory fashion -- a ''close'' rate of 85 percent. And during the same period, the center's service representative received about 20,000 customer E-mail messages via the Internet. Just 2,000 -- a measly 10 percent -- received attentive replies, and some not for several weeks. (This data was shared on the condition that the company not be identified.) Say hello to the Web as black hole. E-commerce? One-to-one communication? The promise of these buzzwords is belied by simple reality: many companies, even those with a seemingly sophisticated presence on the World Wide Web, continue to treat customer E-mail as second-class communication. Anecdotal evidence and some limited market research confirm that unless a company is a Web-based business to start with, like the on-line bookseller Amazon.com, the organization is likely to lack the tools and policies to handle the inflow of messages from its Web site. ''When companies go on the Web they tend to immediately get overwhelmed by messages,'' said Donna Hoffman, an associate professor at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. ''But some still don't see handling this E-mail as one of the most important customer service jobs. They haven't created the proper policies or allocated the funds.'' Professor Hoffman, the director of an influential research program that studies the marketing implications of commercializing the Web, finds it disturbing that her own frequent messages to commercial sites almost never result in a response. Web users may lose trust in the medium if their experience is similar, she said. According to a survey earlier this year by First Data Investor Services Group, which supplies transaction services to mutual fund companies, 82 percent of the mutual fund Web sites it tracks advertise themselves as offering customer service via E-mail. Yet when First Data tried to measure how long it took each site to respond to E-mail, it found that about 30 percent of customer messages never got any response. A reporter's unscientific spot check of the consumer-contact E-mail addresses on the Web sites of two dozen well-known, consumer-focused corporations did not fare much better: only seven of the sites responded in less than 24 hours, and five of the companies never replied. One of the companies that did | We Got Your E-Mail; Just Don't Expect a Reply |
1029901_1 | a model for other aquariums around the world, and it is now widely considered one of the top institutions of its kind in the United States. In November 1994, Mr. Prescott retired and set up the Prescott Group for consulting on conservation and aquarium development. He joined the team of scientists that converted the sealed areas of Biosphere 2, near Tucson, Ariz., into public spaces for educational exhibits. Mr. Prescott was also an outspoken advocate of the conservation of large whale and other marine populations, Mr. Kraus said. At the aquarium, Mr. Prescott established one of the first marine animal rescue programs. He assembled a team of veterinarians to care for whales, sea turtles and other creatures and prepare them for return to the ocean. An episode of the public television series ''Nova'' in 1988 documented the work of Mr. Prescott's team at the aquarium in caring for three whale calves who survived after 27 pilot whales had died on the beaches of Cape Cod in 1986. Mr. Prescott developed theories to explain why whales sometimes beach themselves and die. He found that pilot whales, which grow to 22 feet, are highly communal, with ''a cohesive social structure'' that works as a survival strategy at sea but can become a fatal flaw. For example, he found, when one whale becomes disoriented in a storm, others will follow it onto a beach. Mr. Prescott was born in Corona, Calif., and received his bachelor's degree in zoology at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1957. He went on to do graduate work at the University of Southern California and at the Harvard Graduate School of Business. He was assistant curator of fishes and general manager of operations at Marineland of the Pacific in Palos Verdes, Calif., before joining the New England Aquarium. Mr. Prescott was chairman of the committee of scientific advisers to the United States Marine Mammal Commission and head of the National Humpback Whale Recovery Team. He was also a director of the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria and wrote scientific papers about whales, seals, porpoises, dolphins and fishes. He is survived by his wife, Sandra Baker Prescott; a brother, William Prescott of Forest Falls, Calif.; two sons, Craig Prescott Oakes of Tucson and Blane Prescott of Los Angeles; two stepsons, William B. Marsh of Cambridge, Mass., and John B. Marsh of Boston, and one grandson. | John Prescott, 63, Ex-Director Of New England Aquarium |
1029912_0 | The British Government used hundreds of combat-ready army troops and Northern Ireland policemen today to prevent several thousand Protestants from marching, as Protestants have since 1807, through a small Roman Catholic enclave in this town. The Government acted to prevent clashes between the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority in this predominantly Protestant British province. The marchers, members of the patriotic Orange Order wearing black suits and orange sashes, dispersed after one of their leaders walked up to a huge concrete roadblock and spoke a message of protest through a high chain fence blocking the way to the Catholic area, Drumcree, along the Garvaghy Road. But there was no one on the other side to listen, and no violence followed. The Government feared that the march might lead to rioting and vandalism, as it did in the last three annual parades here. Widespread violence could endanger the recently approved peace agreement, which spells out drastic political reforms that will give Catholics more power in the North. The Government was clearly gambling that this year would be different -- that Protestants, many of whom voted for the peace agreement in a referendum in May, would be less angry at Catholics and the Government now than in 1996. Then, a Government ban was announced several days before the march through the Drumcree enclave, but the decision was reversed because Protestant rioters wreaked millions of dollars of property damage. The Protestant violence and the decision to let them march provoked retaliation by Catholics. ''Only God will save us,'' said the parish priest of the Drumcree Protestant Church of Ireland, the Rev. John Pickering. He spoke to the congregation before it left the church to confront British officials. But no officials, not even a soldier or a policeman, were at the roadblock. ''This is a total disgrace,'' said Harold Gracey, head of the local Orange Order. ''We'll stay here until we are allowed our legitimate right to walk on the road.'' An hour after he spoke, most Orangemen had left the area, but some set up a Union Jack and a white Ulster flag on the streamside, facing the security forces 500 yards away. Two men, informally dressed, not wearing Orange Order regalia, were arrested after they tried to cross the barbed wire. Several tents were put up by people who said they intended to stay all night. Tonight, Protestants protesting the ban created | Northern Ireland Relatively Calm as Protestant Marchers Are Kept From Catholic Area |
1031996_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Population Implosion Worries a Graying Europe'' (front page, July 10): Europe is overpopulated. Virtually none of the great European forests survive. Roads, railroad corridors and urban sprawl have fragmented all wildlife populations that cannot fly. Ancient cities are crammed; beaches are jammed. Less is more holds true. A smaller population will allow a higher standard of living and make it possible to achieve an environmentally stable Europe (and planet). If any country's population falls too rapidly, there are plenty of people who would be willing to migrate from Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The world's true population problems are in these underdeveloped areas, where population growth is mostly out of control. GORDON DOUGLAS Pawling, N.Y., July 12, 1998 | A Shrinking Europe Is Good for the Rest of Us |
1031955_0 | An independent group of scientists charged by the British minister of health with reviewing the safety of silicone breast implants reported yesterday that there was no credible evidence that they caused disease. Unlike the United States, which imposed a moratorium on the sale of silicone breast implants in 1992, Britain has never removed implants from the market. But in light of continued concerns raised by women with implants, the health minister called for this review. The seven-member panel, led by Dr. Roger D. Sturrock, a rheumatology professor at the University of Glasgow, heard testimony from scientists, patient groups and lawyers, examined published and unpublished scientific papers and read letters from women with implants as well as news articles and postings on the Internet. Its conclusions were unequivocal: ''Silicone gel breast implants are not associated with any greater health risk than other surgical implants.'' The British panel noted that there had been research reports suggesting links between implants and disease. But it went on, ''The public and the media would not be aware of the lack of scientific rigor,'' in this research. As a result, the panel said, members of the public ''could be persuaded and alarmed by results of what was, in fact, poor science and selective reporting.'' But Dr. Robert F. Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine, who has frequently testified on behalf of women who believe they have been injured by the implants, said his studies and those of others clearly showed that implants leaked and caused toxic immunological reactions. He gave a presentation to the panel in December, he said, but ''it was clear to me that they had already made their minds up and they weren't interested in what I had to say.'' In its report today, the group said there was is no credible evidence that silicone elicits abnormal immune system reactions. The group called for more research on the frequency with which implants rupture and also asked for more data on the incidence of low-grade infections associated with implants. The panel said such infections, if they occur, might account for some of the symptoms reported by women with implants. Correction: July 17, 1998, Friday An article on Wednesday about a British report on the safety of silicone breast implants referred incorrectly to Dr. Robert Garry of Tulane University. He has given a deposition in support of plaintiffs | British Panel Disputes Risks Of Implants Using Silicone |
1032031_0 | Under a court settlement announced yesterday, waivers granted by the state's Department of Education exempting hundreds of school districts from special-education requirements are no longer in effect. At the same time, officials said that sweeping revisions relaxing the requirements mean that many of those same districts no longer need the waivers. The agreement, a consent decree reached on June 24 that took effect July 6, settled a 1997 suit filed against the Education Department by parents of children with disabilities, who argued that the waivers permitted larger class sizes and fewer teachers for special education, said Ellen Boylan, a lawyer for the Newark-based Education Law Center, which represented the families. In 1995, the department began permitting waivers from a variety of regulations, provided districts could show that the waivers would not hurt the district's quality of education. Between June 1995 and December 1997, 90 percent of all waivers involved special education, Ms. Boylan said. The new guidelines raise maximum class sizes for some categories of students and allow greater flexibility in the kind of programs that many districts have sought waivers for, said Barbara Gantwerk, the department's director of special-education programs. METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY | Court Agreement Revises Requirements on Schools |
1033210_5 | breed crops to make sure that the biggest and best survive. It has been more than 500 years since people realized that rennet from calves' stomachs turned milk into cheese. At the time nobody knew why exactly. An enzyme called chymosin does the job. Nevertheless it was a use of biotechnology that prevails today in modern form, an enzyme made through genetic engineering that has replaced the rennet from calves' stomachs. ''What is this 'mad' science?'' asked Joseph Zak, who is paid by the American Soybean Association to try to calm European fears about how soy products are grown. ''It is just another step in the history of agricultural technology. It falls in the same line as when tractors replaced the horse. It's like when fertilizers came into the picture and when we moved to breeding to make a better product.'' But consumers often see it as tampering with their food. And in Europe, where regulatory bodies are not nearly as powerful or as respected as Washington's Food and Drug Administration is in the United States, the fact of manipulation drives people crazy. In addition, Mad Cow Disease, which exposed fundamental flaws in food-safety regulation, reminded people that science is never infallible. ''I am sure all this food is safe and that there might be some promise to it,'' said Lianne Wilier, 31, an accountant in Zurich. ''If it helps poor people somehow, I'm all for it. But I would never feed something to my children that is not natural. It feels wrong to me I guess because if we make a mistake on this level there is no going back. Saying we were wrong isn't going to be good enough.'' What the Vanilla Gene Might Do to Madagascar Despite enormous experience showing that the crops are safe to grow and eat, fundamental questions do exist about the possible uses of such technology. It is now simple, for example, to put the taste of vanilla in almost any food by inserting the right gene into that food. It seems harmless, and physically it is. ''We looked into this carefully,'' said Maria Zimmerman, who is in charge of agricultural research for the sustainable development department of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. ''If we start making fake vanilla we will destroy the lives of thousands of farmers in Madagascar,'' the African island-nation that is home to most of the world's | Europe, Bucking Trend in U.S., Blocks Genetically Altered Food |
1033162_0 | A company with perhaps the most ambitious commercial attempt yet to combat junk E-mail plans to announce on Monday that it has begun distributing a test version of its system, which is intended to intercept unwanted messages as they travel through the Internet. The system has been designed by Bright Light Technologies Inc., a well-financed start-up company based here, which has already won contracts with four major Internet service providers including AT&T Worldnet, Earthlink Networks, Concentric Networks and USA.net. Junk E-mail, often known as spam, is seen as a growing problem by the nation's Internet service providers because of the burden it places on computer disks, network capacity and the staff time of network operators. At some networks the volume of spam, which consists of commercial solicitations ranging from get-rich-quick schemes to pointers to pornographic sites on the World Wide Web, sometimes exceeds 50 percent of all electronic mail. But spam is also reviled by many Internet users as well. ''Most commercial solicitations are viewed as an unwanted nuisance,'' said Don Schutt, vice president of consumer advocacy at Concentric Networks Inc., a network services company based in Cupertino, Calif. ''But when parents see that their children are receiving unwanted pornographic messages, they go ballistic.'' Indeed, Bright Light's founder, Sunil Paul, said that his inspiration for the company came when his wife expressed shock at receiving an unsolicited pornographic message. Finding a solution to the problem of spam was a vital concern, he said, because many businesses are now beginning to run on electronic mail and cannot afford the clutter and distractions posed by spam. Mr. Paul, a co-founder and former executive of Freeloader, an Internet software company, as well as a former executive at America Online., said his new company had raised $5.5 million in venture capital backing from Accel Partners and individual investors who include the author and newsletter publisher Esther Dyson and Benjamin Rosen, the chairman of Compaq Computer. The company, which also has a strategic alliance with Sendmail Inc., which developed and supports the most widely used software for routing E-mail over the Internet, has built a tracking system that will detect spam sent to special decoy addresses established for that purpose. All other copies of those messages can then be blocked with a ''spam wall'' that will be installed on the mail-server computers of Internet service providers and corporate users. Bright Light also has a technology | Testing to Begin on System to Fight 'Spam' |
1033179_1 | they do not contain rBGH. With only a few consumer groups seeking wider labeling, the greatest awareness of genetically engineered food comes from the organic-food industry. Whole Foods Market Inc. of Austin, Tex., which has 91 supermarkets in 18 states, requires its suppliers to guarantee that none of the products that they sell to the company have gene-altered ingredients. Last year, when the Agriculture Department proposed national standards for organic food that included genetically altered food, more than 200,000 comments were received protesting the proposed regulations. The inclusion of genetically modified food was one of the reasons most often cited, and the proposal was withdrawn. On Jan. 1 the Government gave the green light to genetically modified soybeans, cotton, corn, summer squash, potatoes, canola oil, radicchio, papayas and tomatoes. The amount of genetically modified soybeans, cotton and corn on the market is significant. According to one study, the gene-altered corn crop in the United States this summer is estimated to be 32 percent of the total, for soybeans 38 percent and for canola oil, from Canada, 58 percent. There is no estimate for cotton. There are no figures for the smaller crops like papaya and radicchio, and just because a crop has approval does not mean that it is being sold. But within a year or two such crops are quite likely to be available. The Consumers Union, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Center for Science in the Public Interest are among those pushing for labeling. Virtually all the European Union countries want some labeling for gene-altered food. Norway and India are leading the fight to require the strictest labeling on all foods. A senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, Rebecca Goldberg, said the United States might be forced to require some labeling because of trade. ''Many products made abroad,'' Ms. Goldberg said, ''will be labeled, and in order for the United States to sell food products abroad we may have to label them.'' Correction: August 8, 1998, Saturday An article on July 20 about problems consumers face when seeking to determine if food has been genetically modified misstated the practices of one supermarket chain, Whole Foods Market Inc. of Austin, Tex. It does not require suppliers to guarantee that products they sell to the company are free of gene-altered ingredients. The chain asked suppliers for such a restriction, but the suppliers said they were unable to comply. | Shoppers Unaware of Gene Changes |
1031392_0 | Protestant and Roman Catholic officials, refusing to meet face to face, began negotiating through intermediaries today to try to prevent more violence over the insistence by Protestants that they be allowed to march through a Catholic neighborhood in Portadown. The march by the Orange Order, down the Garvaghy Road in the Drumcree neighborhood, was blocked last Sunday by the British Government, which has deployed several thousand police officers and army troops to keep the Protestants away from the Catholic area. The blockade has produced nightly violence by Protestant protesters in Portadown, 25 miles west of here. The violence has also spread to the rest of this predominantly Protestant British province. If there is no agreement over the weekend, politicians and security officials say, the violence will increase on Monday, when more than 500 Orange parades are to take place. Protestants say the marches are a basic democratic right of assembly and an expression of their cultural and historical heritage, as they celebrate a 17th-century military victory of Protestants over Catholics in Ireland. Catholics say the marches are triumphalist and demeaning to them. The negotiators were obeying rules that forbid them to talk to reporters, who learned only that the talks were being held in a local government office in Armagh, west of here. The talks were initiated by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who sent his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, to Belfast arrange them. Two intermediaries, called ''facilitators,'' were to shuttle between the sides, who were in separate rooms. The impasse over the march was largely a matter of face-saving for the Catholic Residents Coalition and the Orange Order. Neither side wanted to be vulnerable to charges that it flinched or backed down. The Catholics insisted that there be ''no Orange feet on the Garvaghy Road,'' that the Government ban on the march must be enforced. Their leader, Breandan MacCionnaith, also insisted that the Orangemen meet him face to face if they wanted to compromise. They rejected his offer to allow a modest parade to pass down the road next year, but not this year. The Orangemen object to meeting Mr. MacCionnaith because they consider him a terrorist. He served three years in a British prison for his role in the bombing of a Protestant meeting hall in Portadown in 1981. He is not a member of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, but | Ulster Foes in Last-Ditch Effort to Avoid a Parade Clash |
1031099_1 | ''because it is absorbed transdermally through a route to the blood stream that avoids absorption by the liver and several unwanted side effects.'' Dr. Robbins's interest in bone loss was piqued when he found that older bone density X-rays taken vertically showed only a partial view of the bone. Newer machines, which also take a lateral view of bones in various parts of the body (heel, spine and hip), indicated significant loss of bone in some patients, which was not visible in the original vertical shots. ''We recognized a serious problem in some young as well as older women that we felt compelled to address, and our study should not only give us the answers but increase the health and well-being of our test subjects and the women that benefit from the expected results.'' Mr. Altman said: ''It has been a long time coming, but doctors are learning to combine holistic treatment and natural products with conventional medicine with an eye to integrating the healing process for their patients.'' Mr. Altman has been a proponent of complementary medicine for many years. As the owner of the Liggett Rexall Pharmacy in Ardsley, he knew how conventional medicine could heal his customers, but he was also intrigued by the results he noted among his family and friends when they used various homeopathic treatments. ''I started to go to seminars and conventions that featured the leaders in the field, and I read their books, newsletters and listened to their tapes,'' Mr. Altman said. ''A lot of what they had to say had important applications to my work as a pharmacist. Nutritional supplements, natural vitamins and proven homeopathic remedies could help me to provide an up-to-date approach to health care -- especially preventive medicine -- to my clientele. Taking a prescribed dose of vitamins every day is actually less expensive than a cup of premium franchise coffee, and guess which one does the most amount of good?'' Still, Mr. Altman said, very few medical practitioners are receptive to using complementary medicine along with the tried and true treatments. ''Only 5 to 10 percent throughout the country are actively working with homeopaths to help their patients, and the reason is that most doctors have no formal training in the field. The percentage is somewhat higher on both coasts. Our belief, however, is that as patients ask for more homeopathic options in their treatment, the doctors | Study Links Bone Loss to Progesterone Use |
1031034_3 | on Crete that distort a 1944 commando raid by British forces into the glorious exploit of a local bandit. On the ruins of such Platonic castles in the air, the modern Atlanteans have sited their imaginary city and then proceeded to search for it in geological and archeological records. Had they instead read more Plato, they would have learned that Atlantis belongs to the category of Platonic myth -- tales the philosopher told to convey truths his logic could not contain. For example: in the ''Symposium,'' the Siamese twins who were the original form of human beings, or the chariot of the soul in the ''Phaedrus.'' There is truth of a sort in all these myths, often laced with irony, but they would lead no one seriously to search for a race of fossilized Siamese twins or to do CAT scans for chariot-shaped patterns in the brain. The language of myth came naturally to Plato, but he had no interest in the sort of hardheaded history his elder contemporary Thucydides practiced. To presume that because Plato told the story it must be based on fact is more naive than the medieval presumption that because Aristotle said the earth was flat, it must be. There is a certain personality type, intelligent but warped by a strain of connivance, that reads a few old books and, in the hope of fame, spins repetitious references to their supposed sources into a mirage of erudition and keys to conundrums that have foiled the experts. Of course some amateurs have solved classical riddles: the industrialist Heinrich Schliemann discovered Troy, and the architect Michael Ventris deciphered the Bronze Age Minoan syllabary Linear B as Greek. But blatant cooking of the evidence can be justified only if it results in a tasty paella -- say, Robert Graves's ''White Goddess.'' All we get from the Atlantean crackpots is the mystery meat of the cafeteria steam table. Since Sir Francis Bacon's ''New Atlantis'' (1627), a utopian scenario influenced as much by the discovery of alternative societies in the New World as by Plato, there has been a nearly unbroken string of proposals for the location of Atlantis: off Nigeria, near Casablanca, in the Bahamas, the Sargasso Sea, the Bermuda triangle, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Mediterranean. You might as soon find the location of Thomas More's ''Utopia'' or Samuel Butler's ''Erewhon'' (''nowhere,'' a translation of the Greek ''utopia,'' turned into | Fantasy Island |
1031324_0 | THE potential nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan is an uneasy and unwelcome test of how to get along in a world where non-proliferation appears to have failed. When the United States and the Soviet Union confronted one another at the beginning of the nuclear age, they faced a similar test. With time, they stumbled into a doctrine of ''mutual assured destruction,'' and it became their best guarantee of security. They never used the ultimate weapon against one another. In fact, they never fought directly in a hot war of any kind. So MAD -- the doctrine that two adversaries armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons won't go to war because they know they can't win one -- became as good a theory as the world had for how to make a nuclear standoff stable. Can it work just as well between India and Pakistan as it did between the United States and the Soviet Union? A Sense of Gloom Most of those in Washington who worry about such questions are, unfortunately, gloomy. Like the Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, they are working -- and hoping against hope -- to convince the Indians and Pakistanis to stop where they are, halt testing and refrain from turning their nuclear knowledge into weapons. That hope was not bolstered last week when Congress, out of deference to American farmers, voted to lift sanctions on grain sales to India and Pakistan that had been intended to punish them for their nuclear tests. Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment, says that every time the Pentagon has conducted a war game between a nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, the result is a nuclear exchange, something that does not happen between Iran and the United States or Russia and the United States. ''I'm sorry to say it, but South Asia is fundamentally different than the United States and the Soviet Union,'' Mr. Cirincione said. ''If both India and Pakistan deployed nuclear weapons, I think it would almost certainly lead to a nuclear exchange in combat.'' The problem, say senior American officials and analysts, is not India, per se, nor even the smaller and altogether more fragile nation of Pakistan, but their history, proximity and relatively primitive technology. All of these factors, they say, argue against South Asia achieving the kind of stability that allowed Russians and Americans to survive the | Ideas & Trends; India's Arms Race Isn't Safe Like the Cold War |
1031149_4 | little personal watercraft that they wouldn't dream of doing in a car.'' Of course, boaters get in trouble, too. The harbor police deal with everything from tiny kayaks to huge cabin cruisers; they intervene when people are going too fast or too close to other boats, when they run out of gas or when they've had an accident. Last year, they encountered a total of four fatalities. Usually people are polite -- ''Our mission is to educate as well as enforce,'' Sergeant Heine said, explaining that his men give the State Boaters Guide booklet to anyone they stop on the seas. But sometimes they get an argument from resentful boaters. ''We call it the old salt mentality, the 30-year syndrome,'' Sergeant Heine said. ''Thirty is always the magic number. They say, 'I've been doing this 30 years. I know what I'm doing.' We've got this crusty lobster guy. Now, I know lobstering is the hardest way to make a living on planet Earth, and I respect that. But this guy is my age, 40. We went to high school together. So he tells me, 'I've been doing this 30 years.' Does that mean he became a commercial lobsterman when he was 10?'' The arguments are not always of the old salt variety. One man in a large outboard motor dinghy, when pulled over for a safety check and given a summons because of a discrepancy in registration numbers, frostily told the officers he would see them in court. Then there was the personal watercraft rider who swore he was simply answering nature's call. He had moored his Jet Ski on the shore of Davids Island and was walking along the narrow strip of sand. It is illegal to be in this spot, and Sergeant Heine warned him. Ten minutes later, he was still there. ''I was just going to the bathroom,'' the man said. ''I didn't want to, you know, do it in the water.'' Sergeant Heine replied: ''That's not our problem. We told you, You're not allowed on Davids Island.'' Then he asked to see the man's license and registration. Sure enough, they were there, in a little waterproof compartment -- along with a packet of condoms. After Sergeant Heine dismissed the Jet Ski rider with a warning, Mr. Terranova laughed and said, ''Maybe he thought he was going to get lucky with a mermaid.'' THE VIEW FROM/NEW ROCHELLE | For Police Officers on the Water, It's More Than Sun and Surf |
1031316_0 | To the Editor: It is easy for Pope John Paul II to urge Roman Catholics to attend Sunday Mass (news article, July 8), especially in Rome, where one can be surrounded by hundreds of priests. Out here in the real world there is a serious shortage of male priests; those who remain increasingly preside over lackluster liturgies. This situation could be alleviated by allowing married priests into the active ministry and by the Catholic church's recognition of female priests. MARY LOUISE HARTMAN Princeton, N.J., July 8, 1998 | Too Few Priests |
1032533_0 | When a television interviewer asked Chrissie Quinn yesterday if she thought the firebombing that killed three of her sons last weekend in Northern Ireland would change anything there, her answer was no. Her pessimism is understandable but unwarranted. The death of her sons, for which seven Protestants have so far been arrested, may help transform Northern Ireland, and for the better. The reason is not just the horror of the murders, but also that the peace process is working, giving the region and its leaders an alternative to violence. The firebombing came during the tense season of Protestant marches, some of which go through neighborhoods now heavily Catholic. Britain's new parades commission, made up of Protestants and Catholics, barred the Orange Order from taking its July 5 Portadown march through a Catholic area, the scene of clashes in the past. When police blocked the road, the Order refused to retreat, and young Protestant militants attacked the police. After the Order's eviction, police found weapons caches that included homemade submachine guns and chemicals for use in bombs. Last year a similar ban ignited five days of Protestant riots. Protestant political leaders supported the Orange Order, and the British gave in, which touched off two days of Catholic rioting. This year the ban and bombing could have sparked a similar wildfire. They did not, because important parties saw political advantage in calming emotions rather than inflaming them. The British Government, relying on the endorsement Protestants gave the peace process in the May referendum, defied the extremists -- and broke a longstanding myth of the power of the Orange Order. The Irish Republican Army, given strong Catholic support for the peace agreement, chose restraint. The police responded prudently where in the past they had used excessive force. Most important, the Protestant leadership started to unravel its strong ties to the radicals. In 1995 David Trimble won the leadership of Northern Ireland's largest party after marching defiantly in the Orange Order parade, which he led the next year. This year Mr. Trimble, the new First Minister of Northern Ireland, instead traveled around Portadown with his deputy, Seamus Mallon, a Catholic. After the bombing, Mr. Trimble called for the group to go home, and a rally supporting the Order fizzled. If the death of the Quinn children becomes a turning point for the political culture of Northern Ireland, it will be because the peace effort | Peace Prevails in Northern Ireland |
1032544_3 | the dilemma in New York City is not that its colleges fail to produce enough qualified teachers -- the state graduates more teachers than it hires each year -- but rather it is who those teachers are and where they choose to teach. The Board of Regents and the Department of Education recognize that in the near term, at least, their changes could reduce the number of teachers who want to work in New York City. Moreover, it could shrink the pool of minority teachers, who largely attend New York City colleges. The Regents Task Force on Teaching, which proposed the changes passed by the board this week, specifically cited the need to diversify the teaching force. ''Minority teachers serve as role models for all students, and often bring critical understandings and perspectives to the classroom,'' the task force said. But minority students have had the most difficulty passing the state tests, and therefore are most vulnerable to rejection by the colleges. So far this year, 88 percent of the white students statewide passed the liberal arts and sciences test, one of the state certification exams, but only 39 percent of Hispanics and 46 percent of blacks. Results were similar on the teaching skills examination. State education officials say that the passing rates are a reflection partly of the colleges and the programs they offer but also of the preparation of their entering students. The State University campuses, for example, have the highest passing rates on the teacher certification tests. Last year, 95 percent of SUNY graduates passed the liberal arts test, compared with 87 percent of graduates of private, independent colleges and 64 percent of City University graduates. Mr. Patton said that as the new Regents policy takes effect, his department is looking for ways to increase the number of minority teachers, including wider recruitment across the country. In New York City, however, the question is whether any of these approaches will bear fruit quickly enough to provide qualified teachers in the immediate future. And if they do not, the city will be forced to continue hiring any teachers it can find -- certified or not -- particularly in areas like bilingual education, special education, and math and science. ''What are they going to do, close down the schools because we don't have any teachers?'' Ms. Coletti asked. ''The question is how many teeth this new policy really has.'' | New Standards May Worsen New York Teacher Shortage |
1028689_1 | Are there adequate life jackets?' Then -- if it's not an emergency situation and they don't have insurance: 'This is commercial marine assistance. You have to be billed for this service.' '' The waves lap gently against the boats of the weekend sailors; the sky is blue and life is good -- though not as good as it was years ago, when the Coast Guard would tow for nothing. ''Sometimes they start screaming, 'That's a rip-off!' '' Captain Cavaluzzi says. ''I always say, 'Sir, if you like, I can call the Coast Guard.' They assume the Coast Guard is going to drop out of the sky in three minutes. Meanwhile the boat is still pounding on the rocks.'' Smiling broadly, the captain does an eerie imitation of a prow grinding against rock. ''Caaaa-runk, caaaa-runk!'' he growls. ''Then the wife or girlfriend starts hollering. A couple more slams on the rock settles it.'' Looking for a hard-drinking, hard-living old salt who lives on his weathered boat accompanied by a one-eared cat and a can opener so rusted you could contract tetanus just looking at it? Go to a movie. Captain Cavaluzzi, except for his pleasure in the misfortunes of obnoxious sailors, has the aspect of a seafaring Boy Scout. A cleaning lady comes in every Monday to tidy up the boat. If you remark, on a perfect Sunday as sailboats skim Long Island Sound, that all one needs is a martini, Captain Cavaluzzi quickly invokes duty. ''No drinking from May to November,'' he says. ''You never know when you'll get a call.'' Likewise, he is a stickler for proper names. He seems to have a lot of ropes, a visitor notes. ''On board, we call them lines,'' Captain Cavaluzzi says. Do so many boaters get into trouble because they don't read their maps? ''We call them charts,'' Captain Cavaluzzi says. A short history of aid at sea: In June 1983, the Coast Guard began referring nonemergency calls to private towing operators. TowBoat/U.S., a division of the Boat Owners Association of America, one of the major private companies, provides unlimited towing for an annual fee of $85. A short history of Captain Cavaluzzi: Born Dec. 4, 1955, in the Bronx, near Pelham Bay -- ''three blocks from the water'' -- to a New York City bus driver who would put four sons through college. Graduated from Bronx Community College with a degree | Belying the Legend of the Crusty Old Salt |
1028743_3 | a profession of faith and a short reconciliation statement. In 1989, the Vatican added a category of fundamental truths like the ban on contraception and on the marriage of priests. At the same time, it broadened the doctrine to require theologians teaching in church-sponsored schools and universities to pledge that they would follow it. Many American Catholics viewed the development as a blow to academic freedom. Now there is a fear that canon law could be used to further clamp down on dissent. ''The obvious purpose could be to unite the church, but the real consequence could be to divide it,'' said the Rev. Richard McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. ''The last thing the Catholic Church needs is heresy-hunting or demands for oath-taking or any finger-pointing.'' Many American theologians were already troubled by a papal apostolic letter in 1994 forbidding the ordination of women. The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith issued a document in 1995 insisting that the Pope's ruling on the matter was ''infallibly taught.'' Last year, the Catholic Theological Society of America challenged that interpretation and asked the Vatican for further study of the question. Today, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which published a ''doctrinal commentary'' alongside the papal decree, cited the ban on women becoming priests as an example of doctrine that is ''infallibly taught.'' That doctrine, among others, was enshrined in canon law by today's decree. And that is likely to disappoint many American theologians. ''Church documents have to be read very carefully, but on the face of it, this appears to be quite troubling,'' said Dr. Jon Nilson, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago, and a member of the Catholic Theological Society of America. ''Women's ordination is at the forefront of issues in the process of reconciliation with other Christian churches. If you are serious about unity within the churches, you have to keep open discussion of women's ordination.'' There were other signs that reconciliation with Protestant faiths was not paramount in Cardindal Ratzinger's mind. In his list of articles of faith that are ''definitively held'' by the church and therefore ''infallibly taught,'' the Cardinal included the declaration by Pope Leo XIII on the ''invalidity of Anglican ordinations.'' While the Catholic Church does not recognize Anglican ordinations, it has made huge strides at ecumenical reconciliation with its sister church. The timing of the reference was | JOHN PAUL MOVES TO STIFLE DISSENT ON HEATED ISSUES |
1046914_1 | large wave of students diagnosed with learning disabilities moved beyond college and into the professions, those who administer the law, medical and accounting examinations have become mired in the same murky legal questions that high schools and colleges grapple with when faced with claims of learning disabilities. In West Virginia last year, three medical students with attention deficit disorder lost their lawsuit seeking accommodations. And in California, those with learning disabilities have a pending class action against the state bar examiners. Nationwide, thousands of students with attention deficit disorder, dyslexia or other learning disabilities receive extra time on their school exams, and standardized exams like the Scholastic Assessment Test or Graduate Record Examination. While extra time is the most commonly granted accommodation, school and professional examining boards often grant other modifications like testing in a separate quiet room, oral examinations or use of a computer. In the case before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Dr. Bartlett, who now teaches at Dowling College on Long Island, had asked for extended time on the bar exam, permission to tape-record her essays and the opportunity to circle multiple-choice answers in the test booklet rather than use the computerized answer sheet. At Vermont Law School, she received several accommodations during exams, including extra time, a quiet room and the use of a computer. The number of such requests has mushroomed in recent years. Among the 8,791 applicants who took the New York bar exam in July 1998, 402 had requested accommodations, and 332 had received them. Five years ago, when Dr. Bartlett last took the examination, there were 181 such requests, of which 155 were granted. Richard J. Bartlett, the chairman of the New York State Board of Law Examiners, said it was too soon to say whether the case would be appealed or whether the bar examiners would change their evaluation procedures. The New York bar examiners refused Dr. Bartlett's request for accommodations based on the opinion of their outside expert, who said her test results did not indicate any reading disorder. The board's outside expert, Dr. Frank Vellutino, said Dr. Bartlett's scores on two parts of a reading test commonly used to assess learning disabilities were above the 30th percentile -- too high, he said, for her to have a genuine reading disorder. Based on the lengthy trial record, however, the Federal appeals court said the cutoff was arbitrary, | U.S. Court Upholds Aid for the Disabled On State Bar Exams |
1048966_2 | all hooked up through an Amsterdam-based list-serve for fans of the team,'' he wrote via E-mail. ''I started a Web page called Ajax USA (www.ajax-usa.com/ajax), and that quickly turned into more of a supporters' club.'' He added, ''It was amazing how many people joined our club, even though we offered no real benefits and had no official association with AFC Ajax. People were just desperate to 'belong' to Ajax in some way.'' His club now has more than 1,000 members in about 20 countries. Mr. McGough sends E-mail messages to the members after every game with the score and a summary, and, relying on the Ajax list-serve, he posts news and gossip daily. ''The second time I went to Amsterdam, I stayed with some friends whom I had never met before, and whom I only knew through Ajax USA and the Ajax list-serve,'' Mr. McGough wrote. ''I simply sent E-mail asking if they would put me up for two weeks, arrange for match tickets and show me the sights, and they agreed. It worked out great, and they have since been to stay with us here in California.'' Jane White, a Tottenham Hotspur fan, runs one of several E-mail lists dedicated to that team, based in London. At her job at the Columbia University Center for the Humanities, she follows the team on the site for Soccernet (www.soccernet.com), which updates scores throughout games. For the World Cup, she added to her desktop a soccer-only news feed from www.worldsoccernews. com. In London, Gonzalo San Martin carries on a love affair with Real Madrid that he inherited from his father and grandfather. He has an elegant Web site, in Spanish and English, on the legendary team (www.yrl.co.uk./gonzalo/ rm/rm.html). ''I regularly get E-mails from all around the world because of my Web page,'' he wrote in an E-mail note. ''They write from places like Thailand, Morocco, Israel and Russia, not to mention most of the rest of Europe, the States and South America.'' Many teams have made their radio broadcasts available on the Internet through Real Audio technology. The Web site Soccer on the Radio (sefl.satelnet.org/philsoc/socrad) is devoted to listing and linking to several dozen other on-line broadcasting sites, and it also tells where to find conventional radio broadcasts of the game. Fans of teams whose match broadcasts are not found on the Internet can find some solace in the existence of I.R.C., | Soccer Fans Find New Ways To Root for Faraway Favorites |
1048831_2 | falling growth rate -- which declined to 7 percent in the first half of this year from 8.8 percent in 1997 and is the slowest since 1991 -- Chinese leaders plan to expand highway and railroad construction, build bridges, upgrade electricity service in the provinces and start water-conservation projects that are needed after the summer's severe floods. For example, Beijing recently announced plans to spend at least 60 billion yuan to rebuild the country's rural power grid over the next three years, making electricity cheaper and more available to consumers who are starting to buy electrical appliances they never had before. On Sunday, officials also announced that they will build five large hydroelectric power stations over the next 12 years, at a cost exceeding $7 billion. Although some provinces have ample electricity, hydroelectric power will allow planners to reduce China's reliance on coal-fired stations. In the first eight months of the year, this spending for large public projects rose 17.4 percent, to 894.3 billion yuan, or $107.75 billion. In all of 1997, such spending increased by 10.1 percent, while the broad economy grew 8.8 percent. Mr. Zeng also pointed to a recent bond issue of 100 billion yuan as a signal that Beijing is pursuing several avenues to increase public spending. Explaining why China has no plans to devalue the yuan, he said the most important reason was that roughly half of exports required imported parts. Therefore, a devaluation would have only a limited effect on making Chinese exports more competitive in price. In another sign that China is seeking to maintain stable exchange rates, the central bank ordered commercial banks to cut interest rates on United States dollar deposits today. That move will likely take pressure off the exchange rate by discouraging demand for dollars. The yuan, which is only traded on a limited basis, closed slightly higher, at 8.2784 to the dollar, compared with 8.2788 on Tuesday. The reduction decreased one- and two-year fixed deposit rates by five-eighths of a percentage point, making them 4.25 percent and 4.75 percent, respectively. Chinese officials have also announced plans to crack down on illegal currency trading, penalizing banks that violate foreign-exchange regulations. Flooding in northeastern and central China this summer, which caused more than $20 billion in damage and killed more than 3,000 people, will likely affect economic growth by four-tenths to five-tenths of a percent, Mr. Zeng said. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS | China Plans to Spend $1 Trillion on Big Public Projects |
1049006_0 | Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland and Mo Mowlam, the highest British official in Northern Ireland, tried but failed today to devise a compromise in the growing dispute over disarming the Irish Republican Army. After an 80-minute meeting this morning Mr. Ahern and Ms. Mowlam, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said they were making progress on a number of other issues, however. In recent days the disarmament dispute has accelerated, creating a sense of growing crisis as officials work to carry out the mandates of the Northern Ireland peace agreement reached in the spring. The I.R.A. has observed a cease-fire for 14 months, but has repeatedly said it will not give up its arsenal, which is estimated at 100 tons of weapons, including explosives. That has led to problems for its political wing, Sinn Fein, whose members are seeking important posts in the new Northern Ireland Assembly. Ms. Mowlam said she was sure that the I.R.A. would eventually disarm. But other officials pointed out that she declined to address the pivotal point of the dispute, exactly when disarmament might begin. Mr. Ahern told Ms. Mowlam that the announcement on Tuesday that Britain was withdrawing 500 of its 17,500 troops in the North was helpful. Officials and experts said the Prime Minister meant the withdrawal to be seen as a concession to the I.R.A. and Sinn Fein. On Tuesday night Mr. Ahern and the First Minister of the new Northern Ireland Assembly, David Trimble, called on the I.R.A. to say when it might begin to disarm and asked Sinn Fein to try to find out. Also on Tuesday, Mr. Trimble met with Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president. Mr. Adams's position has been that disarmament would come only as part of an overall enactment of the political provisions of the new peace accord that is to give Roman Catholics added power in the predominantly Protestant British province. All requirements of the peace agreement have to be carried out by May 2000, and Sinn Fein has indicated that it will not disarm before then. The atmosphere became more tense this afternoon as Mr. Trimble and Mr. Adams, who had been cooperating in private meetings in recent weeks, accused each other of reneging on the provisions of the peace agreement. The disarmament issue has repeatedly impeded efforts to make peace between the province's Protestants and Catholic minority. The Assembly, which is to take over | Meeting Fails to Reach a Compromise on Disarming the I.R.A. |
1044012_0 | The Personal Health column on Aug. 18 about unfounded health scares referred incompletely to Government action on Alar, a chemical once used to make apples ripen uniformly. In May 1989, the Environmental Protection Agency announced steps to prohibit the use of Alar on apples and other foods, but allowed the chemical to stay on the market for at least 15 months. In the announcement, the agency said the chemical might pose an unacceptable risk of cancer in humans. Before the ban could take effect, the chemical's maker, Uniroyal, voluntarily removed it from the market. It is no longer used on food in the United States. The article also omitted a description of the finances of the American Council on Science and Health, which has criticized the furor over Alar. It is a nonprofit organization that receives 60 percent of its financing from private foundations, individual contributions and sales. The rest of its support comes from corporations, including food manufacturers. This year Uniroyal contributed $10,000, which is slightly more than one-half of 1 percent of the council's $1.6 million budget. | Corrections |
1050429_1 | Underlying France's concern is fear that it may have difficulty steering the Germans on a European course of French design. A4 Clinton Meets With Arafat President Clinton met with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and emphasized the work that the Palestinians need to do to combat terrorism as the Israelis withdraw from an additional 13 percent of the West Bank, senior American officials said. A10 The mood in Israel was restrained skepticism following President Clinton's intervention in the stalemated peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. A10 Nigeria Anti-Corruption Move Nigeria's leaders voted to disclose their personal assets in an effort to end a long history of corruption, a senior military officer said. The action was approved by the 31 members of the military junta, headed by General Abdulsalami Abubakar, and all 36 state administrators. (Agence France-Presse) Refugee Official Re-Elected The United Nations General Assembly re-elected Sadako Ogata, 71, High Commissioner for Refugees. She has held the post since January 1991. She did not want another full five-year term, and was nominated for two years, to Dec. 31, 2000. (Reuters) Antarctic Hole Growing The ozone hole over Antarctica that lets dangerous ultraviolet light reach the Earth is bigger than ever this year, scientists said. The government agency Antarctica New Zealand said that preliminary satellite data from NASA found that the hole encompassed 10.4 million square miles, 5 percent more than in 1996. (AP) NATIONAL A11-15 Joint Chiefs Say Congress Is Weakening U.S. Defense The Joint Chiefs of Staff said at a Senate hearing that pet projects sought by Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Trent Lott, the majority leader, and Congress' refusal to close unnecessary bases were weakening the nation's defense. A1 Bipartisan Views on Evidence Republican investigators said that grand jury evidence to be made public on Friday would bolster charges that the White House had tried to cover up President Clinton's relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky. Democratic lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee said the new evidence would, on balance, help the President's cause. Both sides agreed the material held no bombshell. A15 The White House distanced Mr. Clinton from a declaration of ''war'' on Mr. Gingrich by James Carville, a longtime political adviser. A15 Lawyers for Paula Corbin Jones asked a Federal appeals court to reinstate her sexual misconduct suit against Mr. Clinton because, they said, he lied under oath when he testified that he had not | NEWS SUMMARY |
1050348_2 | all'ortolana with vegetables, and slightly sharper capricciosa are each $7.99 for 26 ounces at Citarella, 2135 Broadway (75th Street) and 1313 Third Avenue (75th Street). They are also sold at Kings Super Markets in New Jersey. From Spain comes Ferrer Catalonian-style fried-tomato sauce: silken and ruddy, on the thin side but with great depth of complex, nutty flavor, thanks to finely pulverized almonds and hazelnuts. It's the perfect sauce for angel-hair pasta. At Fairway, 2127 Broadway (74th Street) and 2328 Twelfth Avenue (132d Street), a 12-ounce jar is $2.49. Luxe Italian Sandwiches Terramare, 152 East 79th Street, may have the look of a typical sandwich shop and cafe, but this new branch of the original Terramare, 22 East 65th Street, sells more than mozzarella and tomatoes on focaccia. The menu includes luxurious combinations like truffled cheese and ham; smoked tuna with tomatoes, and bresaola with arugula and truffle oil, $5.50 to $7.75. And like its parent to the south, it sells caviar, smoked fish and truffle products. Ecce Panis Plans The original Ecce Panis bakery has closed and has been replaced by a shop just a few doors north, at 1126 Third Avenue (66th Street). There is also a new branch of Ecce Panis at 434 Avenue of the Americas (10th Street), and in about a week another one is to open at 5 World Trade Center. The chain has also introduced some new items, including a decadent streusel-topped raisin bun ($1.75), dense low-fat spelt bread ($8) and bread crumbs ($3 for 12 ounces) in three flavors: rustic with salt and pepper, Tuscan with herbs and garlic, and Provencal with garlic, herbs, salt and pepper. Tasty Coffeecakes Buttery, moist, lightly spiced coffeecakes from My Grandma's Coffee Cake of Boston are now being sold at several D'Agostino supermarkets. And there are two new flavors: excellent New England blueberry made with maple syrup, and banana walnut. At some D'Agostino markets, the original cinnamon with or without walnuts is $13.95; the new flavors and the Granny Smith apple and golden raspberry flavors are $15.95. The coffeecakes are available in Manhattan at 1031 First Avenue (56th Street), 966 First Avenue (53d Street), 1233 Lexington Avenue (83d Street), 1074 Lexington Avenue (75th Street) and 790 Greenwich Street (Bethune Street), and in Westchester County, N.Y., in the Rye Brook Plaza, Rye Brook. The cakes are also sold in Manhattan at Oppenheimer Meats, 2606 Broadway (99th Street). | FOOD STUFF |
1044789_4 | writer can be turned off completely when boarding aircraft (required by Federal law) and can be set to receive-only mode for hospitals, clinics and other environments in which radio transmissions can interfere with sensitive equipment. When the Pagewriter is turned off or is unable to receive signals, the Pagenet system stores incoming messages, then delivers them as soon as the pager is turned back on or its signal is restored. The price for this convenience is relatively high. The Pagewriter 2000 costs about $360, although it can also be leased to own for $19 a month for two years. The Pagenet service plans are based on the number of characters sent and received. They range from $24.95 a month, which includes 8,000 characters (a little longer than this column) plus 12 cents for every character over that limit, to $129.95, which includes 60,000 characters plus 4 cents per 10 characters. This is more expensive than it seems because all messages are rounded up to the nearest 10 characters; thus, sending a simple ''yes'' counts as 10 characters against the monthly limit. Because this product is built around paging technology, each user's E-mail address is his paging number -- minus the 800 -- plus ''pagenet.net.'' This is a convenience in terms of remembering one's own address but is generally annoying to other people, since it is typically easier to remember an address built around a person's name than around a seemingly random seven-digit number. This is exacerbated by a major drawback to the Flex E-mail system -- its inability to use any identification other than the E-mail address of the user in the ''From'' field of the message header. Thus, instead of getting a message from, say, Fred Klein, the recipient gets a message from someone identified only as 5551234@pagenet.net. Nor can the user send a ''subject'' line, which might be used to note his or her identity. In a corporation that adopts this system, employees are going to find themselves staring at in-boxes full of messages from senders identified only as numbers. Still, that is a relatively minor flaw. Of greater concern is that on two occasions E-mail sent to the device bounced back to the sender with a notice that no such E-mail account existed. For all the convenience this system offers, reliability is far more crucial to business users, especially at the price of this service. PERSONAL COMPUTERS | A New Twist on Air Mail For Unplugged Travelers |
1044799_0 | MAKING an informed decision about whether to take replacement hormones during and after menopause is hard enough for women with no prior health problems. It is far more difficult for a woman who has had breast cancer or who has a strong family history of this most common cancer in women. Because estrogen can stimulate the growth of a breast cancer, women and their doctors are understandably reluctant to consider hormone replacement for someone at high risk of developing a new or recurrent cancer. But this means that such women may miss important health benefits of estrogen after menopause, among them a reduced risk of heart disease, osteoporosis and Alzheimer's disease as well as diminished menopausal symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal dryness. Last week's announcement that an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration is recommending approval of the drug tamoxifen to reduce the risk of developing breast cancer provides another, though imperfect, hormone replacement option for high-risk women. Though it has drawbacks, this so-called ''designer estrogen'' also offers women who take it an opportunity to glean some of the benefits of estrogen replacement, such as reduced risk of cardiovascular disease But these questions remain: Can some former breast cancer patients safely take hormone replacements, and if so, which ones? Are there reasonable alternatives that will grant women at least some benefits of estrogen without adding to their concerns about developing a new or recurrent cancer? The answers concern 2.4 million American women, and millions more worldwide, who have survived breast cancer, as well as those at high risk of the disease. At a consensus conference last fall sponsored by The Hormone Foundation, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and others, experts and patient advocates concluded that treating menopausal symptoms and long-term health risks in breast cancer patients should be ''tailored to individual patients' needs'' and employ strategies that ''would avoid the use of estrogen while providing its benefits.'' Why Worry About Estrogen? Estrogen plays a critical role in the initiation and promotion of breast cancer. Many studies have shown that the longer a woman's breast is exposed to high levels of estrogen, the greater the chances of eventually getting breast cancer. The cells of most breast cancers have receptors for estrogen and respond to the hormone's growth-stimulating effects. Patients with these cancers are typically given treatments to block the effects of their own estrogens. | Personal Health; Weighing the Pros and Cons of Hormone Therapy |
1044860_2 | Sinn Fein and the disarmament issue. Essentially, Mr. Trimble, as chairman of the Assembly, is insisting that there be some I.R.A. disarmament before the next step is taken. That is the creation of a Cabinet to enact the provisions of the peace agreement that party leaders and referendums here and in the Irish Republic approved in the spring. Mr. Adams says disarmament should not be a precondition for Sinn Fein's gaining ministerial posts in the new provincial executive body to be created by the Assembly. The executive Cabinet is to create cross-border institutions in which politicians from both sides of the border cooperate in areas like tourism and agriculture. The I.R.A. said last week that it had no plans to disarm. Just before President Clinton's visit here last week Mr. Adams said that he thought that the I.R.A. campaign of violence was a thing of the past. But Protestant leaders were quick to point out that he did not state that the I.R.A. had permanently abandoned violence. Mr. Trimble has been slow to deal directly with Mr. Adams and Sinn Fein, because that would leave him open to attacks by dissident members of his party and the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party of the Rev. Ian Paisley, who boycotted the meeting today in Parliament Buildings, the former site of the provincial legislature that Britain dissolved in 1972, at the height of the sectarian violence. ''We are not negotiating the future of our province with them,'' Mr. Paisley said of Sinn Fein. ''Nor are we taking part in acts of government with them.'' -------------------- Dissidents Call Cease-Fire 'Complete' DUBLIN, Ireland, Tuesday, Sept. 8 (AP) The Irish Republican Army dissidents responsible for Northern Ireland's worst-ever terrorist atrocity called a ''complete'' cease-fire today but did not apologize for their actions. Unwilling to accept the I.R.A.'s July 1997 cease-fire, the splinter group, known as the Real I.R.A., committed the Aug. 15 car bombing that killed 29 civilians and wounded more than 330 in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh. On Aug. 19 the dissidents declared a ''suspension'' of what it called their ''military operations,'' a step short of today's decision to call a formal cease-fire. In its statement issued to the Irish state broadcasters RTE, the dissidents -- calling themselves simply I.R.A. or its traditional Gaelic sister label, or ''Soldiers of Ireland'' -- said they had decided on ''a complete cessation of all military activity.'' | Two Old Foes in Ulster Wars Speak Directly in First Meeting |
1044785_0 | Flying Solo, Minus One IT has taken seven decades, but the aviation world has at last done Charles Lindbergh one better: An airplane has flown nonstop across the Atlantic, not with just one person on board, but with no one. The airplane in question is a 29-pound propeller-driven pixie, with a 10-foot wing span and a gas-powered engine that is far tinier than the average car's. Its 1,900-mile flight last month, from Newfoundland to the Outer Hebrides, was the first Atlantic crossing by a civilian robotic aircraft. After being launched from the roof of a moving car, it made the trip in about 26 hours, flying well below commercial air traffic lanes. The plane, called an Aerosonde, was developed by Australian and American companies with assistance from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and researchers at the University of Washington. The developers hope robotic planes can be used as a relatively low-cost means of gathering weather data over remote areas like oceans. The flight was a major test of the Aerosonde's ability to function solo. It was out of radio contact for most of the journey, relying instead on a satellite's Global Positioning System to keep it on track. The developers acknowledge that the planes still have a few bugs; indeed, they launched four Aerosondes, fully expecting that not all would make it. And that's what happened: one crashed on takeoff and two, like Amelia Earhart, just disappeared. Tagging the Tuna Under the Atlantic, bluefin tuna are sporting a bit of satellite technology of their own these days. Scientists from Stanford University, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California and the National Marine Fisheries Service have been using new ''pop-up'' tags since 1996 to track movements of giant tuna. The tags, which contain microprocessors to record water temperature and other data, pop free of the fish at a set time, float to the surface and send data to a satellite. The transmission also pinpoints the tag's location. Conventional tags are recovered only if a fish is caught and a tag is turned in by the fisherman. With bluefin tuna, only about one in eight conventional tags are ever recovered. By contrast, of 37 fish tagged off Cape Hatteras, N.C., with the new devices, data was collected from 35. The researchers, who plan to tag at least 600 tuna over the next two years, will use the information to help increase the tuna | Science Watch |
1043325_1 | wines are made by stopping fermentation before all the sugar has been converted. What's left is called residual sugar. In this country, some inexpensive dry table wines are permitted to retain a small amount of residual sugar because of the wine industry's belief that Americans, raised on soft drinks and fruit juice, ''talk dry but drink sweet.'' Some sweet wines are called fortified wines because alcohol is added to stop fermentation and to retain a certain amount of residual sugar in the finished wine. In port, the added spirits can amount to a third of the wine's volume and bring its alcohol level up to as much as 21 percent. In other fortified wines -- Madeira, Marsala and sherry, for example -- less alcohol is added. The most famous sweet wines -- Sauternes from Bordeaux, Hungarian Tokay and wines like them from Germany, Alsace and California -- need no added sugar. The grapes for them are picked late, when they are overripe and, ideally, shriveled by botrytis cinerea, a beneficial mold, which concentrates their sweetness. When their supersweet juice is fermented, not all of it turns into alcohol, and the result is an intense, naturally sweet wine. The botrytis, which does not appear in the vineyards every year, adds a much-prized honey flavor to the wine. The taste of the best of these wines is almost indescribable. They offer layers of flavors of exotic fruits and rare spices with delicious aromas that can fill a room like bouquets of flowers. The rarest of these naturally sweet wines are the trockenbeerenausleses from the Rheingau and Mosel regions of Germany. Because of the severe weather in these northern vineyards, ideal growing conditions occur infrequently, sometimes only once in 10 years. ''Trocken,'' meaning dry, refers to grapes left on the vine until completely shriveled. ''Beeren'' means individual grapes, and ''auslese'' means special selection. For obvious reasons, English-speaking folks usually call these wines T.B.A.'s. In Sauternes, the principal grape is semillon, often blended with some sauvignon blanc. In Germany, the grape of choice is the riesling, although in recent years, fine T.B.A.'s have been made from the scheurebe grape, a cross between sylvaner and riesling. In Alsace, on the west bank of the Rhine, where late-harvest wines are known as vendange tardive, the most important grape is the gewurztraminer. California, as might be expected, offers a variety of sweet wines, made from a variety | How Sweet It Is: A Moderate Indulgence |
1043361_0 | Gerry Adams said today that his party, Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, now considered violence in Northern Ireland to be ''a thing of the past.'' In a statement promptly welcomed by the British and Irish Governments and timed to precede the visit here on Thursday by President Clinton, Mr. Adams said, ''Sinn Fein believe the violence we have seen must be for all of us now a thing of the past, over, done with and gone.'' Mr. Clinton, who has been actively engaged in the Northern Ireland peace settlement, told guests at a private dinner in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., on Friday night that he had had an hour's telephone conversation with Mr. Adams from his vacation retreat about the party's need to convince doubters of its peaceful intentions. Mr. Adams's statement, issued by the party's press center in Belfast, appeared to be the republican group's response to demands that it declare that ''the war is over'' without using the precise words urged upon it by its political opponents. It was left to an ally, John Hume, leader of the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party, to connect the dots. ''I particularly welcome the fact that Sinn Fein have underlined their total commitment to exclusively peaceful and democratic methods,'' Mr. Hume said, ''stating in other words that as far as the republican movement is concerned, the so-called war is over.'' The next step in the process created by the April 10 peace settlement is the convening of the new Northern Ireland Assembly on Sept. 14 and the appointing of members of the 10-person executive that will run it. Sinn Fein is entitled to at least one of the positions, and pressure has been rising on its military wing, the I.R.A., to say its ''war'' is ended and to begin dismantling its arsenal. Protestant politicians are threatening to contest Sinn Fein's taking up of its ministerial positions unless it meets the two conditions. The I.R.A. has maintained a cease-fire for 14 months and in a rare public statement in Dublin yesterday condemned the bombing in Omagh two weeks ago by a renegade Republican group called the Real I.R.A. that killed 28 people. Mr. Adams said nothing today altering the I.R.A.'s refusal thus far to say it will turn in arms, and opponents seized on that to dismiss the statement's value. Peter Robinson, deputy leader of the | Sinn Fein Calls Violence in Northern Ireland 'a Thing of the Past' |
1043328_1 | loaf shapes and serve at least six, are $45. Mr. Le Gac says that, refrigerated, they will keep for two to three days. In the cafe, slices of the cakes and other pastries, like macaroons, are $5. The shop also has ice creams and sorbets. Another confectioner, Black Hound, formerly at Ninth Street and First Avenue, has also moved to larger quarters, at 170 Second Avenue (11th Street). Its line of pastries and chocolates are now on display in an elegant shop trimmed in burnished wood. A coffee and tea bar has been added for beverages to go, and there are a few tables in front. A new line of chocolate truffles flavored with herbs like mint and basil ($32 a pound) is being introduced. The shop will also deliver. Yogurts of Two Continents Yogurt as food of the gods? If the thick, delicious Total yogurts (above), imported from Greece by Likitsakos Market, 1174 Lexington Avenue (81st Street), aren't heavenly enough, the store also makes its own, in 10 creamy fruit flavors, including fig, blackberry and applesauce with honey. The fig, mellowed with honey, is especially good. Total also makes tzatziki, a dip with cucumber, garlic, olive oil and herbs. The Total yogurts cost $1.49 for 8 ounces; the tzatziki is $1.99. The store's yogurts, in 16-ounce containers, are $2.99 to $4.99 New Kind of Chicken Burger The thought of frozen chicken burgers may not send connoisseurs into paroxysms of anticipatory delight. But don't sell Natures Kitchen Chicken Burguettes short. This new product is made from Murray's chicken that has been coarsely chopped and sliced rather than ground; it is juicier than the average boneless chicken breast. The patties are excellent in sandwiches or on a plate with a topping of sauteed onions or peppers, perhaps, or even baked with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. They come in four flavors -- plain, portobello mushroom, chili spice and garlic pesto with sun-dried tomato -- and can be cooked straight from the freezer in a pan, under a broiler or on a grill. They have only 150 to 180 calories each, are relatively low in fat and sodium and contain no additives. A package of four four-ounce patties is about $4.79 and is now in A.&P., Food Emporium, Waldbaum's and Morton Williams Associated supermarkets; Fairway, 2127 Broadway (74th Street) and 2328 12th Avenue (132d Street), and a number of fancy food shops. | FOOD STUFF |
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