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1048628_6 | in gathering data but says the field is too exciting to allow that to be a barrier. ''I get data from private consulting firms or through large pension funds or endowments that provide access to their files,'' Professor Gompers said. ''A lot of it is hand-collected. I'm putting together data on 1,300 firms, collecting a complete financial history, their boards of directors, scales of compensation to study how they operate and grow. I have hired 10 to 15 research assistants during the course of this project over the last two and a half years.'' Meanwhile, much of what goes on at entrepreneurship centers today consists of students going through the motions of setting up new ventures, and sometimes actually doing the ventures. Business school has turned into a kind of laboratory. Business-plan competitions, both local and national, have grown rapidly in scale with students presenting their plans to venture capitalists and competing for donated prize money to help them set up companies. One such winner was Evan Schumacher, a 29-year-old native of Boston who finished at Northwestern this spring. His plan called for setting up a software company that tracks global shipping, freight and customs management for international firms. Mr. Schumacher won the Kellogg competition and took his plan to Austin, Tex., in May for national finals. He was a finalist, and as he walked off the stage after his presentation, his wireless microphone still clipped to his lapel, a man in the audience approached him and asked how much he needed. The man became the company's first angel investor, in for $250,000. The company, Celarix, was born at the end of June in Chicago. So far, it has raised $500,000 from investors and is planning to raise another $1 million to $2 million from venture- capital firms. A third employee will join the company this month. For Teen-Agers, Too, There Are Programs to Get Started COLLEGE isn't the only place where students can study entrepreneurship. In a 1994 Gallup poll, 7 out of 10 American high-school students said they wanted to start their own business. Some are young dreamers who have always believed they would chart their own course. Others have seen parents or relatives lose jobs through downsizing and want to avoid the same fate. There are programs that teach the fundamentals of starting a business, often through practical experience, to young people and their teachers. Among them | Students at B-Schools Flock to the E-Courses |
1048725_0 | In the summer of 1996, an engineer using binoculars and a high-powered camera inspected the brick facade of a 44-story office building in midtown Manhattan and declared it safe, satisfying the requirements of a city law intended to guard against crumbling masonry. But out of the engineer's sight and hidden behind the building's brickwork, critical metal ties that held the bricks to the walls were corroding. Two years later, on Aug. 10 of this year, the ties gave way and a masonry panel the size of a boardroom table came loose from the 40th floor of the building, showering brick shards onto Lexington Avenue and punching a jagged hole through the top of a bus. The collapse is perhaps the most dramatic example -- but only one of many, construction experts say -- of glaring problems with New York City's 18-year-old effort to require inspections and repairs of tall buildings. City officials acknowledge that laws governing facade maintenance have not prevented ineffective, sometimes useless, inspections of buildings. And while the officials have made recent efforts to strengthen the laws, inspection records and interviews with city officials, engineers, architects and landlords indicate that problems persist. The most serious problem, experts say, is that the laws encourage visual inspections, which engineers generally perform with binoculars or cameras with telephoto lenses from the street, from nearby buildings or from ledges on the building itself. They are the least expensive inspections and the most widely used by owners, but they can fail to detect numerous problems that more comprehensive inspections could catch. In addition, the experts say, even when private inspections detect such problems as loose bricks or telltale cracks, there is no strong enforcement mechanism to require owners to make repairs. In some cases, the owner simply accumulates fines, sometimes for more than a year. While the city has the power to seek criminal charges against the owners, it rarely does. Even critics of the inspection system stress that it has been largely successful, leading to repairs of thousands of aging buildings. Before it, the city had no system for regular facade inspections. But the critics add that the laws now in place remain mostly a way of guiding responsible landlords and are ill equipped to deal with those who are not. And when the system fails, the results can be catastrophic. City officials say they are now trying to fix the flaws. | Shower of Bricks Pinpoints Flaws In New York Building Inspections |
1048674_0 | Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland and David Trimble, the First Minister of the new Northern Ireland Assembly, called on the Irish Republican Army tonight to agree to begin a phased disarmament to allow the Northern peace effort to advance. The leaders, after an hourlong meeting here, sought to end the impasse over the I.R.A. refusal to disarm or to say when it might begin to do so. They asked Sinn Fein, the I.R.A. political wing, to provide ''in a credible way'' a disarmament plan in the coming weeks. Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Trimble discussed the problem in Belfast 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 northern province. There was no immediate reaction by Sinn Fein or the I.R.A. The leaders' call was an urgent effort to end a growing sense of crisis in the peace effort caused by the I.R.A. insistence on keeping its arsenal, estimated at 100 tons of weapons. | Two Political Leaders Ask I.R.A. to Disarm |
1050133_0 | YOU may wonder why I would write a Personal Health column about malaria when there is no malaria in the United States. Well, that is only partly true. Malaria is not endemic in this country or to Canada or Europe. But one-third of the world's population lives where the malaria parasite and its carrier mosquitoes thrive, and every year more than one million Americans travel to those areas for business or pleasure. Malaria, it seems, is gaining ground annually as control efforts become more costly and cumbersome. Worldwide there are 300 million to 500 million cases of malaria and 2 million to 3 million deaths from the disease each year. And each year the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta receives reports of 1,000 to 1,200 cases of malaria that were acquired abroad but diagnosed in this country. A malaria expert at the centers, Dr. Trenton Ruebush, estimates that an equal number of unreported cases occur among United States residents. But Dr. Ruebush said that all malaria deaths that occur in the United States, normally four or five a year, are probably reported. Why so many cases, and why should anyone die of a disease that doctors have long known how to cure? Because many people outside the endemic areas do not take malaria seriously and ignore the measures recommended to prevent it or are careless about them. When the flu-like symptoms of malaria develop, they are often not acted on soon enough. In addition, outside of endemic areas, doctors often fail to recognize the symptoms of malaria and thus do not make the correct diagnosis or treat the disease properly or quickly enough to cure it. Complicating matters, preventive measures have gotten trickier and much more costly in recent years, ever since the malaria parasite in most areas developed resistance to chloroquine, the inexpensive and well-tolerated medication that had long been used to prevent and treat malaria. Current options cost a lot more and are associated with potentially more serious side effects. Furthermore, there is currently no effective anti-malarial vaccine, nor is there one on the immediate horizon, despite efforts by scientists in the United States and elsewhere to uncover the parasite's Achilles heel and block its ability to flourish in the human body. A Wily Parasite Malaria is a disease of the tropics and subtropics. Its range extends as far north as the Mediterranean, Middle | Fighting a Stronger and Meaner Strain of Malaria |
1050147_3 | women appear in this play compressed and utterly uncompromising,'' Mr. Leveaux continued. ''There is no time for the walk to the mantelpiece, so what you get is pure argument.'' The actresses involved said they were grateful for roles in which they could be direct and assertive rather than resort to stereotypical machinations and manipulation. ''You absolutely have to find the cleanest possible way of delivering the greatest truths,'' said Ms. Bloom, who plays Clytemnestra in ''Electra.'' ''So that we can't really bring post-Freudian analysis, as one brings to most other plays.'' Anne Dudek, a 23-year-old actress fresh out of Northwestern University who plays the title character in ''The Iphigenia Cycle,'' said she loves Iphigenia's combination of defiance and surrender. In the first play of the cycle, ''Iphigenia at Aulis,'' Iphigenia agrees to die at her father's hand for the sake of the war. In the second, ''Iphigenia in Tauris,'' she is full of bitterness at having been sacrificed. ''The core of the first play is this intense longing for life, which dictates all the decisions she makes,'' Ms. Dudek said. By the end, she added: ''She's this incredibly hardened saddened character. But I think the anger comes out of a hope.'' Because of the depth and pitch of their characters, women in these plays say they find the performances especially taxing. ''By the end of a six-hour rehearsal session,'' Ms. Carroll said, ''I'm ready for two weeks in the south of France.'' Ms. Akalaitis said the material was also draining to direct. ''It's very hard for me to rehearse these plays,'' she said, ''because I actually cry all the time.'' Whether contemporary audiences would go for all this Greek tragedy did not worry the artists involved. Instead, they focused on the timeless themes and suspenseful plots. ''It's a thriller, basically,'' Ms. Wanamaker said of ''Electra.'' ''And it moves like an express train.'' Niketi Kontouri, who is directing ''Medea,'' described the title role as a compelling amalgam of universal characteristics that will resonate with today's audiences. ''She's a witch, she's a barbarian; but at the same time she uses speech as a man -- she uses laws,'' Ms. Kontouri said. ''All people may have a hint of Medea in themselves. All of us.'' Indeed, it is the contradictions of the female characters in Greek tragedy that actresses playing them seem to appreciate most. Ms. Wanamaker described Electra, for example, as being | To Actresses, Greek Tragedy Offers Many Happy Endings |
1045405_1 | came as the head of the Protestant Unionist Party, David Trimble, and the political leader of the Irish Republican Army, Gerry Adams, held private talks for the first time. They met for 45 minutes on the issues that still divide them, mainly the timing of disarmament by the I.R.A. On Monday the two men addressed each other briefly for the first time at a meeting of leaders of the new Northern Ireland Assembly, which is to enact the political reforms of the peace agreement reached last spring. Mr. Trimble is the First Minister of the Assembly and Mr. Adams is a member of it. At today's meeting, the two men, until recently openly bitter enemies, went into a second-floor room at the Parliament Buildings and talked by themselves. ''It was the first time ever that a leader of Irish republicanism sat down face to face with a leader of Ulster unionism,'' said Richard McAuley, an assistant to Mr. Adams. Monica McWilliams, a member of the Assembly representing the Women's Coalition, said, ''After the painful summer we've had, we deserve one of these days.'' ''This is a good message to put out -- that the heads of unionism and republicanism are sitting down together,'' she added. Of the negotiations to come on details of the peace agreement, which are supposed to give Roman Catholics more political power, Ms. McWilliams said: ''There are still enemies. There are still people who hate each other. But still this is an important day, a historic day.'' The withdrawal of British troops to their barracks this weekend was announced by Ronnie Flanagan, the Police Chief of the predominantly Protestant British province, who controls the movements of all security forces. He said the withdrawal was possible because ''we currently have a reduced terrorist threat.'' He said it was a ''distinct possibility'' that some of the 17,500 British troops in Northern Ireland would return to the mainland soon. A reduced British military presence on the streets is seen as a concession to demands by Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A., that the province must be ''demilitarized'' before the I.R.A. can be expected to disarm. Officials said that as many as 12 paramilitary prisoners, Catholic and Protestant, would probably be released in the next few days before the expiration of their terms. The early release of prisoners is a principal demand of both Catholic and Protestant groups. | In a New Sign of Peace in Ulster, Troops Will Halt Belfast Patrols |
1046630_3 | discovered the hard way that it's not always true. We learned we stepped too far back.'' A $59 million contract for Lewis went to TRW Incorporated of Redondo Beach, Calif., calling for a 600-pound satellite with a three-year design life. It would carry two advanced imaging instruments, called hyperspectral imaging radiometers, that would split light reflected from Earth's surface into hundreds of spectral bandwidths or colors. Since all material scatters light differently, scientists said that getting data in hundreds of wavelengths instead of the half-dozen or so measured by earlier Earth-resources satellites would allow monitoring the planet in unprecedented detail. Potential applications of data from Lewis's hyperspectral imager, which has not flown on another craft, and other instruments included monitoring crops for stress, moisture and pests; determining the health and variety of forests; monitoring pollutants, including toxic waste dumping and oil spills, and exploring for minerals from space. A $50 million contract for Clark went to CTA Incorporated of a Rockville, Md., a technology company that was acquired last year by the Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., which designs and makes rockets, satellites and other space-related products. Clark, similar in dimensions to Lewis, was to carry instruments to measure and map global air pollution from space, and an X-ray astronomy experiment. The plans also called for the craft to carry an advanced multispectral stereo imager designed to transmit to ground stations only clear pictures that were not obscured by clouds. Cloud-covered images contain little useful information about ground features, but consume valuable computer resources to process and transmit. Scientists expected Clark to demonstrate the use of satellites for land-use management and possible commercial applications, including measuring the growth patterns and expansion of cities; determining the best sites for airports, power plants and other large projects, and assessing damage from tornadoes, floods and other disasters. Engineers familiar with Clark said the project ran into problems when subcontractors had trouble building and testing some instruments that proved more technically complex than expected. In addition, they said, a number of subcontractors were acquired by other companies during the development period, and personnel changes, combined sometimes with budget cutting or relocating of sites, resulted in schedule delays. Because regular reporting to NASA was not required and each satellite program only had one person at NASA headquarters monitoring it instead of a team, the agency was not aware of many problems with Clark until | NASA's Learns That Faster And Cheaper Isn't Always So |
1046627_0 | MORE than 20 years ago, a doctor who was curious about the effects of long-term oral contraceptive use sent questionnaires to 370,000 registered nurses. The answers he and colleagues received have turned into the largest and longest repeated follow-up study of a group of women, a fountain of information about health, in particular women's health. The project, known as the Harvard Nurses' Health Study, has yielded more than 200 published findings, including these: *Hormone replacement therapy can increase the risk of breast cancer and can decrease the risk of heart disease and osteoporosis. *Margarine can increase the risk of heart disease. *Vitamin E can protect against heart disease. *One or two drinks a day can increase the risk of breast cancer while protecting against heart disease. These findings, and many more, have altered how people eat and drink and live their lives. Some scientists call the study the single greatest contributor to understanding women's health. But this huge scientific effort has only begun to pay its dividends. With many of the original participants now entering their 60's and 70's, the study promises to bequeath an even greater wealth of knowledge, much of it otherwise unattainable, about how a lifetime of choices in food, drink, exercise and medications can translate into protection from or increased risk of deadly and debilitating diseases. ''It was a brilliant idea, a unique idea,'' said Dr. Leslie Bernstein, an epidemiologist at the University of Southern California. ''It's one of the largest studies ever to have been assembled. They were leaders, ahead of their time. Now everybody is trying to emulate what they've done.'' The study began in 1976 when Dr. Frank E. Speizer, the Edward H. Kass professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital, sent the first health questionnaires and received more than 120,000 responses. ''As we began to gather data it became very clear that we could expand the study,'' Dr. Speizer recalled. ''The excellent cooperation of the nurses is the most important part.'' More than 90 percent of the original respondents still answer a questionnaire every other year, telling what they eat, what medicines they take, what illnesses they have had and whether they drink, smoke, exercise or take vitamins -- among other things. The fact that those answering the questions are nurses means their answers are reliable, the researchers say. Plus, the | In Nurses' Lives, a Treasure Trove of Health Data |
1049617_0 | The trucks are still rumbling through the mountains here, laden with big logs carved from the jagged slopes of western Sichuan. But by the end of October, the trucks now crowding these winding roads will be idle as the timber trade that was the lifeblood of a vast region of western China, abutting the Tibetan plateau, comes to a halt. Stunned by this summer's devastating floods along the Yangtze River, which experts said were intensified because slopes far upstream had been stripped bare, China has banned cutting of the old-growth forests that once formed a rich green carpet over these mountains. No trees were to be cut after Sept. 1, and all logs must be trucked to timber yards by Oct. 31. After a half-century of rampant clear-cutting, China's decision to save the remaining forests along the upper reaches of the Yangtze and other major rivers represents a dramatic shift in priorities in favor of environmental protection. Huge tree-planting campaigns have also been promised. But the change is certain to be wrenching for hundreds of thousands of people in Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu provinces, including large numbers of ethnic Tibetans and other minorities, who have built their lives around the logging trade. ''I feel this policy will probably benefit future generations,'' said Luo Erwu, who was driving a load of logs out of the mountains the other day. ''But this generation will have to suffer,'' added Mr. Luo, an ethnic Tibetan who still owes thousands of dollars on the logging truck he bought two years ago. Far up a mountain gorge outside Lixian, where trees felled this summer are still being dragged out, 53-year-old Wang Qunggan brewed tea over a wood fire. ''We'll be putting down our axes and picking up our spades,'' said Mr. Wang, a worried employee of the state-owned logging company that has cleared much of the surrounding county. Actually, what Mr. Wang has put down is not his ax but a pair of scissors. For 27 years, the Western Sichuan Logging Company, which once had thousands of workers, kept Mr. Wang as a full-time barber. Now he finds himself on hillsides planting seedlings. But at least he still has a job and a promise of a small pension when he retires in two years. Not everyone in the region is so lucky. The thousands of former farmers or workers who scraped together as much as $10,000, | Stunned by Floods, China Hastens Logging Curbs |
1049763_2 | solitude, even in July and August, when the more easily accessible beaches close to the harbor are crowded. The meltemi, the wind that whips across the island in July and August, is also a determining factor in the choice of beaches -- beach-goers opting for the rocky Lia or Ganema beaches on windswept days, the sandy Psili Ammos and Ai Sostis on calmer ones. Serifos is one of the smallest of the Cycladic islands, southeast of Athens in the Aegean Sea, and also one of the least known. Although only a four-and-a-half-hour trip by car ferry from Piraeus, the port of Athens, and a two-and-a-half-hour ride on the hydrofoils that began running to the island only in the last two years, Serifos still has the spirit and atmosphere of a much more remote locale. The absence of an airport is a significant factor in keeping it off the tourist track. With the exception of a handful of small hotels and a landscaped camping area where there are rooms to rent, there are few places to stay and accommodations in general tend to be rudimentary. The Greeks and foreigners who come for weekends or summer vacations stay in their own homes or rent from a very small number of available houses (usually for about $100 to $150 a day) that they learn about by word of mouth, since there are no real estate brokers on the island, and no local newspaper. Serifos's reputation as a sleepy backwater existed even in classical times. In the opening pages of Plato's ''Republic,'' Socrates recounts a tale whose moral seems to be that no one coming from Serifos could ever achieve fame or glory. This quiet simplicity is what first drew Yorgos Zaphiriou, a Greek architect who lives in Athens, to the island, about 20 years ago. He was looking for a place to build a weekend house in the Cyclades, he said, ''because of the light that is very strong, very transparent, and very penetrating.'' ''It's all about shadow and light, the strength of the rocks, the color of the sea,'' he explained. Mr. Zaphiriou found what he was looking for. Serifos -- its name, meaning rocky, is thought to be derived from the Greek words steriphos or sterphos, fruitless or barren. Since antiquity, Serifos has been linked to the myth of Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danae, who having killed the terrible | The Simple Pleasures of Serifos |
1049559_2 | the Center for Public Integrity, a highly regarded nonpartisan research organization. The report warned that the privacy of Americans ''is being compromised and invaded from many angles'' and asserted that Congress has not done nearly enough to slow the assault. ''Time and again,'' said Charles Lewis, director of the center, ''Congress has put the economic interests of various privacy invaders ahead of the privacy interests of the American public.'' According to the report, Congress first heard testimony that there were problems keeping medical records confidential in 1971. But it still has not passed legislation designed to curb the abuses. So you still get cases like that of Mark Hudson, a former insurance company employee who told The Times in 1996 that he was shocked to find during his computer training that he could call up the records of any of the company's subscribers, including information about his own psychiatric treatment and the antidepressant medication he was taking. ''I can tell you unequivocally that patient confidentiality is not eroding,'' he said. ''It can't erode because it's simply nonexistent.'' The right to privacy in the workplace is virtually nonexistent as well. ''Most people assume that Federal laws protect Americans from being spied upon in the workplace,'' said the report. ''To the contrary, over the years Congress has rejected legislation spelling out basic privacy protections for employees.'' In addition to the possible monitoring of telephone conversations and E-mail, workers are frequently subjected to the scrutiny of hidden video cameras, can be required to type at computers that monitor the number of errors they make and the number of breaks they take, and often are compelled to provide urine samples and submit to psychological exams. For some jobs, the scrutiny is reasonable. For others, it is not. In all cases it should be properly regulated, and the guidelines should be clear. That is not what is happening. As the center's report noted, Congress has gone out of its way to preserve the right of employers to eavesdrop and otherwise spy upon and collect personal data on their employees. For decades, privacy advocates have called for legislation that would spell out and guarantee a citizen's basic right to privacy. But tremendous amounts of money are being made from the rampant transfer of the most personal types of information. The huge corporate interests and others that benefit from that gold mine do not want it sealed. | In America; What Privacy Rights? |
1049861_6 | violate them so the documents do not become ''just pieces of paper.'' Batterers who do not obey the order issued against them are subject to arrest. ''We're not talking about a slap on the wrist,'' the Commissioner said. To help abusers control their behavior, both the Probation Department and the Mental Health Association of Westchester County run workshops. ''There are a lot of theories about why men batter,'' said Jennifer Brennan, director of outpatient mental health services at the Mental Health Association in Elmsford. ''These are complicated issues.'' Studies show that for the most part men are the abusers, but women sometimes batter their spouses or elderly parents. Dr. Neil Jacobson and Dr. John Gottman, two professors of psychology at the University of Washington who have studied violent marriages, are the authors of ''When Men Batter Women'' (Simon and Schuster). In the book, they say that batterers fall into two categories: pit bulls or cobras. The former tend to be charmers until they enter into an intimate relationship. Then they act out of emotional dependence and a fear of abandonment, becoming stalkers and jealous partners. For example, the book puts O. J. Simpson in the category of a pit bull. Cobras, on the other hand, are often sociopaths who are cold and calculating and demonstrate a high incidence of antisocial and criminal traits and sadistic behavior, the researchers found. A cobra's violence grows out of a pathological need to have one's way, to be the boss and make sure that everyone, particularly their wives and girlfriends, knows it and acts accordingly. Ms. Brennan at the Mental Health Association observed that before 1977 it was not illegal for a man to assault a partner. She said her organization does not report more domestic violence in any particular socio-economic group. ''Very poor and very wealthy women become victims,'' she said. But results of studies distributed by the National Network to End Domestic Violence, a nonprofit advocacy organization in Washington, indicate some differences among ethnic groups. Black women, the Network reported, are more likely to feel protective of the batterer because he may have faced discrimination and other difficulties. Also, battered Hispanic women in shelters are more likely to have experienced a longer duration of abuse, be married at a younger age, have larger families and have stayed in relationships longer, the studies revealed. Where to Call When Help Is Needed Following are | A Killing Refocuses War on Abuse |
1049566_0 | In the late 19th century, adventurers and explorers were celebrities, hauling in big speaking fees. George Harbo and Frank Samuelson, immi grants from Norway living in the Atlantic Highlands, were making a meager living hauling in claims at Nauvoo (now Sea Bright) and Sandy Hook Bay. So they decided to become adventurers themselves. In 1896, they became the first men to row across the Atlantic, making the voy age of 3,000 miles from New York City to the Scilly Islands in 55 days - no one has bettered that time in a number of attempts since - then on to Le Havre, France, and Paris. De spite a heroic tale of facing storms, fatigue and hunger in a an 18-foot boat with no sail, the two did not achieve fame and riches. David W. Shaw, who lives in Westfield, has put the story of their voyage in a book, ''Daring the Sea,'' published by Car of Publishing Group in Secaucus ($19.95). Mr. Shaw has also written a book about his own four-year voyage through the waterways of the North east. BY THE WAY | Atlantic Crossing |
1049771_2 | sections, Cycladic art and Greek art, and an illustrated booklet describing the annex, the 19th-century Stathatos Mansion, used for temporary exhibitions. The Goulandris collection of Cycladic art, with some 230 objects, is the largest in the world after that of the National Archeological Museum. It was amassed, with the permission of the Greek Government, through purchases in Greece and abroad over 25 years. Most of the works had been removed from their archeological contexts and sold to dealers without any of the respect for their history and origins that is basic to contemporary archeology. It is clear from Dolly Goulandris's preface to the catalogue that she and her husband, a shipowner who died in 1983, considered their efforts a rescue mission, and the collection is presented proudly as having repatriated a part of Greece's cultural heritage. And even though most of the objects in the collection are orphans, modern archeology has -- through comparison with systematically excavated pieces, and careful study of materials and techniques -- reclaimed some context for them. The art world may admire Cycladic sculpture for its ''elemental simplicity'' (Henry Moore's phrase), but the Goulandris Museum exhibits it as evidence of a vanished civilization. The works are organized geographically and chronologically, with informative panels detailing what is now known about Cycladic homes, burials, trade and, when they eventually became necessary, fortifications. The human figures of the earliest period of the Cycladic Bronze Age -- Early Cycladic, or E.C. I (circa 3300 to 2800 B.C.), the Grotta-Pelos Culture, named respectively for a settlement site on Naxos and a cemetery on Melos -- include several violin-shaped stylized female torsos. Mostly of marble, they represent the reproductive function as essential: no head with which to think about it (just a long neck), no legs on which to run away from it. Alongside them are so-called collared vases with broad, tapering necks, and plain marble bowls, which, if placed on a modern Milanese credenza, would evoke the designs of Finland or possibly Japan. There is also a charming container in the form of a pig (I couldn't resist a reproduction of this in the shop) and a striking marble head with protruding ears, fleshy lips, a long aquiline nose and an unnaturally long conical neck. Here too are some examples of the mysterious Cycladic ''frying pans'' -- flat clay vessels (though they can be of marble) of unknown function. The central | In Athens, A Trove of Antiquities |
1044524_0 | China has declared at least a temporary victory against its swollen rivers, but its authorities are facing a problem more daunting than this year's record-breaking floods: millions of refugees whose homes and belongings were literally washed away. They are a sad lot, now camping out in tents, schools, factories or at relatives' homes until they can began rebuilding their lives. It may not be soon. Although the record river levels have now started to recede, many towns will remain submerged for a month or more. In the south, this means thousands could be stuck living on dikes, drinking contaminated Yangtze River water. In the frigid northeast, where night temperatures are approaching freezing, many of the more than two million flood refugees will not have a chance to rebuild their mud-brick homes before winter comes. The provincial government has said that ''home'' this winter for hundreds of thousands of displaced people will be government-provided tents. ELISABETH ROSENTHAL | August 30-Sept. 5; Chinese Stranded by Floods |
1044491_2 | while hauling nets in a small boat at night as part of a research project. Farther afield, accidents on private and commercial craft are also making headlines. Two weeks ago, near the Tappan Zee Bridge, a water taxi that lacked a valid Coast Guard certificate capsized on its way from Nyack to Tarrytown while carrying eight more people than its legal limit. One elderly passenger died, four others were hospitalized and half a dozen children were pulled from the water by frantic parents fighting for their own lives. Since the early 1990's the number of boats on New York State waters has continued to swell, according to the New York State Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, which tracks boating safety. In 1993, there were 442,745 boats registered in New York. In 1997, there were 514,538. In that same period, the number of serious boating accidents reported to the state has risen to 322 in 1997 from 226 in 1993. Coast Guard officials say their spot checks and inspections have helped keep such incidents relatively rare. But in response to the budget cuts, the agency has been encouraging passengers on water taxis and ferries to pitch in by scrutinizing the boats they board -- checking for certificates, licensed captains, the proper number of passengers and well-labeled life jacket bins, among other things -- and calling the authorities if something appears awry. In New York City, spot checks of ferries and pleasure boats by the Coast Guard are backed up by patrols and inspections by the police harbor patrols. But in the city, there are intense demands placed on the harbor. As an illustration of the juggling of activities required by the police, Captain Cassidy described how he persuaded organizers of a swimming race and a powerboat race, scheduled for the same day, Sept. 13, to shift their hours so the powerboaters and swimmers were not in the water at the same time. Captain Cassidy said that three years ago his unit began compiling profiles of every ferry, water taxi, dinner-cruise boat and other commercial vessel in city waters to aid in spotting safety violations. But the Coast Guard and police inspection units are operating with budgets that have not increased for several years. A General Accounting Office report on the Coast Guard last year concluded that budget cuts earmarked by the Office of Management and Budget would require significant | On the Water, an Uneasy Mix; More Boats, but Few Rules, in Harbor and on Hudson |
1044127_1 | sort of authenticity that travelers often seek but only occasionally find. Not far from the Minerva, for example, there is a street called Dagger Lane, and it was not named by the Chamber of Commerce. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe set out from Hull on his star-crossed voyage, and although Crusoe is a figure of romance and fiction, his subsequent career can hardly be described as rollicking good fun. In this, he is a true son of Hull. Hull men served prominently with the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton in the Antarctic, whose ship was crushed by the ice during one of the most benighted of all British adventures. If much of Hull looks new, it is. The city was arguably the most heavily bombed city in England during World War II; 92 percent of the buildings were destroyed or damaged in enemy action -- and Hull, with a population of around 265,000, is not a small place. Meanwhile, Hull seafarers, experienced in northern waters, were heavily represented on the hellish Murmansk Run, the Allied lifeline to Russia during World War II. The seafaring life imposes a certain mateyness on its participants -- and Hull, like many an old seaport, is a very matey kind of town -- but like the certain knowledge of death in two weeks' time (something else the seafaring life resembles) it also focuses the mind wonderfully. This combination can produce interesting results. Only 10 minutes' walk from the Minerva is a picturesque structure called Ye Olde White Harte Inn, a real groaner of a name until you discover that after Richard II first licensed hostelries, many of them were called the White Harte. At the White Harte, the publican, as though discussing the weather or a good catch of cod, talks of his resident ghost, describing the skeleton of the murdered woman he found in one of his walls, whose skull is behind the bar. Upstairs, still available for small dinner parties, is the Plotting Parlour, where in April 1642, the Governor, Sir John Hotham, and the city fathers gathered to discuss probable and immediate events. Charles I and the Puritan Parliament were at loggerheads, and the arsenal in the walled city of Hull was the largest on the island outside London, an invaluable prize. The following day, while the burgesses entertained the King's son at an extremely long lunch, the King and his retinue appeared at | Salt Air Still Lingers In Hull |
1044098_3 | Puritans fashionable among Northeastern intellectuals after World War I. In fact American religious pluralism and social equality owe far more to William Penn's Quaker Pennsylvania than to the police state of Increase Mather. And Southern thinkers in the tradition of the Enlightenment, from Marshall to Calhoun, were more important than New Englanders in shaping American constitutional and legal thought. Some readers may feel that Boorstin devotes too much space to figures like Carlyle, Kierkegaard and Malraux, whose reputations were much higher in the first half of the 20th century (Boorstin was born in 1914). Even more troubling is his neglect of the West's Latin heritage. Cicero and Seneca meant far more to the American Founders than Plato or Aristotle. Boorstin reflects the bias of the Romantics, who idolized the Greeks and despised the allegedly derivative Romans and reduced the Greco-Roman tradition by half. And the Greek philosophical legacy is represented entirely by the Athenians. Surely if room can be found for Bergson, Democritus, whose atomic theory is the basis of our own understanding of reality, belongs among the great seekers. Boorstin's secularism and skepticism inform his truncated treatment of Judaism and Christianity, which seem to have been included to round out his architectonic design. His discussion of the Hebrew tradition ends with the Book of Job, and when it comes to Christian theology he is chiefly interested in the intricacies of Aquinas and other medieval thinkers. Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, meanwhile, are disposed of in three and a half pages. Given his focus on the Euro-American heritage, Boorstin would have been justified in leaving them out altogether; to treat them in such a summary and dismissive fashion can only provide hostages to the critics of his enterprise. As one might expect, Boorstin is at his scholarly and literary best in his section on the ''Liberal Way.'' He gives a sympathetic account of the republican political science of Machiavelli, whose reputation has been blackened in the United States by disciples of Leo Strauss. Boorstin, who shares so much with the Encyclopedists of the French Enlightenment, provides a sparkling description of Voltaire's effort to write a universal history of civilization -- and he cannot suppress his distaste for Rousseau, whom he sees as self-obsessed ''foil for Voltaire.'' Even in this section there are curious omissions. A discussion of modern liberalism which leaves out Benjamin Constant and Toqueville and German national liberals like | Western Civ Fights Back |
1044099_3 | context of the Bible. Measured against Harold Bloom's thesis that the author of the Book of J (one of the textual strands of which the Bible is woven) may have been a woman, the archeologist Carol Meyers, supported by the researches of S. D. Goitein on the poetry of Yemeni women, seems modest but unassailable in claiming that some portion of the vast warehouse of tales, poetry and folk wisdom incorporated into the Bible is likely to have originated with women. Popular press feminism (or antifeminism more commonly), concentrating on discourses on patriarchy and fantasies of goddess-centered religion, gets short shrift from these scholars. But the theologian Tikva Frymer-Kensky explores the complex multifaceted nature of the one God of Israel who combines all the components that went into the making of the human race. She proposes that the God of the Bible sets a standard of unity without sex or class division that should remain an inspiration to his creatures. This feminist monotheism may even have inspired the women, discovered by Bernadette Brooten in inscriptions, who were leaders of synagogues and ornaments of Diaspora communities in the time of Jesus. What uses can women make of the Bible? The second part of the book draws in a group of women who seem more hotly engaged politically than the Old Testament group. They are rarely neutral in the political conflicts that make this book so timely. Women's ordination, the traditional Christian attitudes toward sexuality and similar issues inspire their discussion of the nature and intentions of Jesus and the process of building a church on his preaching. Inevitably the book takes a sharper tone in covering Brooten's defense of Junia as a female apostle, against specious efforts to turn her into a man, and Karen Jo Torjesen's impressive array of evidence for the clerical roles of women in the early church. Altogether, the feminist achievement is a body of scholarship that traditional dogmatists have barely begun to address. Why do we still care? For those of us formed by Western civilization, the Bible is the North Pole of our moral compass. We must know it to know ourselves. The work of the feminists here, and of many more who could not be included in Murphy's slender compass, has gone a long way toward making the Bible accessible to women as well as to men. Opening the Bible is an act of | After the Fall |
1044437_0 | Confidence in a more secure future has unexpectedly come to Northern Ireland scarcely three weeks after the most deadly episode in the conflicted province's bloody history. On Aug. 15, former members of the Irish Republican Army unhappy with the organization's 14-month old cease fire and its apparent tactical shift in favor of a negotiated settlement bombed the town center of Omagh, killing 28 people and wounding more than 200 others. Public revulsion at the bombing converted the act, designed to sink the peace agreement signed last April, into one that gave the accord new buoyancy. Last week Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political ally, condemned the Omagh bombing. He said violence in Northern Ireland was ''a thing of the past, over, done with and gone,'' and committed his party to the effort to plan the gradual disarmament of paramilitary groups. The statements from Mr. Adams were carefully crafted to meet demands that the I.R.A. declare its war over and signal its willingness to talk about dismantling its arsenal of weapons and explosives. Protestant opponents welcomed the moves and hinted strongly that they were prepared to end their snubbing of Sinn Fein and to clear the way for party members to enter fully into the leadership of the new Northern Ireland Assembly and other political institutions set up by the peace accord. On hand to witness this hopeful moment was President Clinton, hailed by the British Prime Minister Tony Blair as an invaluable participant in the forging of the peace settlement. Mr. Clinton's troubles in Washington went unmentioned as adoring crowds cheered him on his one-day visit to Northern Ireland. He told them the peace they had constructed should now become the model for warring communities in other ethnic conflicts around the world. WARREN HOGE | August 30-Sept. 5; Optimism, For Once, in Ulster |
1044123_1 | sent Capt. James Cook to discover Australia. A local skipper invented the crow's nest. In the 18th century Whitby took to whaling with an enthusiasm not surpassed elsewhere outside Nantucket. The Whitby lifeboat is said to have rescued more people on a single day than any other in recorded history when nine ships were driven onto the rocks in 1861. Whitby even supplied Queen Victoria with her favorite jewelry. These days the little port stands huddled and sloping on the banks of the River Esk, which rolls out of the barren North Yorkshire Moors and into the North Sea. The town climbs steeply to the cliffs, the narrow streets lined with fisherman's cottages and pierced by narrow alleys, or ghauts, which lead down to the harborside. Some of these old houses have cellars three floors deep, and many can be approached only on foot. Higher on the cliffs the ruins of the seventh-century abbey and the Norman church, like the elegant Georgian residences on St. Hilda's Terrace, gaze loftily out to sea. Once, no doubt, the occupants kept aloof from the pubs and creels, the sailors' brawls and poverty of the lower port, but yesterday's slums are today's picturesque, and though as late as the 1950's the authorities were gaily demolishing chunks of disreputable old Whitby, these are the very crooked, overcrowded dens that visitors come to see, full of fudge shops and jewelers and secondhand bookstores. You can eat vegetarian here, or buy a Belgian chocolate, or stay in Charles Dickens's bedroom at the White Horse and Griffin inn on Church Street, with a real fire in the grate and a good fish restaurant downstairs. Church Street, old Whitby's main street, is a cobbled lane that ends for all practical purposes in an almost vertical rise to the church and abbey on the cliffs above. The abbey stands gaunt and beautiful, its sandstone walls pocked and rifled by the wind, its lovely Gothic tracery framing a view of the sky. Marauding Vikings destroyed it once; Henry VIII finished it off in the 16th century when he plundered the English Church, selling off its land and institutions to the highest bidders. The Cholmley family built their fine Carolingian banqueting hall nearby in the best classical manner, using stone from the abbey. Look around the hall today though, and you will find that it, too, is only a facade: the rest | The Robust Charms Of a Yorkshire Port |
1043174_0 | The Irish Republican Army, which has observed a cease-fire for 13 months, made a rare public statement today, denying any connection to a bombing that killed 28 people two weeks ago in Omagh, Northern Ireland. The I.R.A. also rejected demands that it disarm soon and declare an end to its war against British sovereignty. The statements, made in an interview with an unidentified I.R.A. leader, were an attempt to improve its image and to help its political wing, Sinn Fein, in the new Northern Ireland Assembly. The Assembly reconvenes in two weeks to try to enact provisions of the Northern Ireland peace settlement approved last spring. The statements also seemed timed to improve the image of the I.R.A. and Sinn Fein before President Clinton arrives in Ireland later this week. Some officials and analysts noted that the interview was released four days before it would normally be published in An Phoblacht, a Republican weekly with I.R.A. contacts that is based in Dublin. Mr. Clinton helped further the Northern Ireland peace effort by supporting Sinn Fein, which continues to need political and financial support from America. Ian Paisley Jr., son of the hard-line Protestant leader and a member of the Assembly, said the statements were ''designed to perpetuate the myth that there are good and bad terrorists, that the good terrorists are telling off the bad ones so we can all sleep easily. ''It is a meaningless statement,'' he said, ''driven by a need to be seen to be doing something hours before President Clinton touches down in Northern Ireland.'' Sinn Fein and its president, Gerry Adams, have been under increasing pressure to persuade the I.R.A. to state categorically that the war is over. Most, but not all, of the pressure has come from Protestant Unionist leaders who insist that Mr. Adams not be given a minister's post in the Assembly unless the I.R.A. declares its cease-fire to be permanent. The interview statements were also an attempt by the I.R.A. to clear itself of charges that it helped a splinter group, called the Real I.R.A., commit the bombing in Omagh. Such speculation led Unionists to insist that because the I.R.A. might have been involved in the Omagh attack, Mr. Adams, by association, should be ejected from the Assembly. If that happened, the I.R.A. would be expected to resume its violence and the five-year-old peace effort could collapse in a new round | I.R.A. Denies Link to Bombing in Northern Ireland and Rejects Calls for Disarmament |
1048117_1 | 48 hours of its release -- reflected a public thirst for instant, unfiltered information driven in part by the technology itself. The sprawling web of chips and fiber strained under its heaviest load ever but did not snap. But as part one of the stampede for the Starr report abates and Webmasters brace for part two -- the expected release of the videotape on Monday -- the real test of the Internet as a tool of citizenship lies in politics beyond scandal and lurid details. ''I don't know if we'll see millions of people downloading Social Security reform legislation, but we could,'' said Jonah Seiger, co-founder of Mindshare Internet Campaigns (www.mindshare.net), a political consulting firm based in Washington. ''This event on the Internet is changing the way people perceive their role in our political system.'' The Internet, invented as a communications network for scientists and academics and financed by the Department of Defense, has had plenty of other milestone moments in the last three years as it evolved into a mass medium and a global platform for everything from electronic commerce to dating. When Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash last year, people the world over convened in cyberspace to mourn. When NASA published Pathfinder's first pictures from Mars last summer, millions logged on for a glimpse of the red planet. And when the stock market took a nosedive last month, traffic surged to record highs at some financial Web sites. Now, for the first time in an unfolding national political crisis, the Internet has become a place to turn both for information and debate. From the rumors of President Clinton's affair with an intern, first reported in January on the Web site of the Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge, to the revelation last week by the on-line magazine Salon of Representative Henry J. Hyde's extramarital affair 30 years ago, the Internet has played a central and controversial role in informing the public about the Presidential sex scandal. And at least for the moment, the medium seems inseparable from that particular message. ''Newspapers go out with the recycling,'' said Jonathan Zittrain, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. ''Once it's on the Web digitally, your sister-in-law can send you the best parts by E-mail. It forces a level of engagement with the primary material there's no way you would have had | Access to Clinton Data Aids E Pluribus Unum in the 90's |
1047906_0 | Overriding months of vehement testimony by Todt Hill residents about a 90-foot radio tower they say is an illegally operated blight on their community, the Board of Standards and Appeals voted last week to grant the business a 10-year special permit for continued operation. The board also approved a plan submitted by the architects for the tower owner, Highpoint Enterprises, to hide a rebuilt version of the tower within a 130-foot lighthouse facade. The lighthouse, which will be visible from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, will have a lightweight skin that will allow radio, cell phone and television waves to penetrate. A cosmetic improvement on the tower, the lighthouse will also let Highpoint install additional antennas. ''When the decision by the board came down, I almost cried,'' said Charles LaGanga, president of the Todt Hill Civic Coalition. Mr. LaGanga felt confident that with Representative Vito Fossella and Borough President Guy V. Molinari testifying against the tower, the permit would be denied. But now he is worried that Robert C. Gunther, the president of Highpoint, will add antennas to the new, larger tower, intensifying what Mr. LaGanga contends is a health risk to his community from electromagnetic radiation. Daniel Master, legal counsel to the Borough President, also expressed disappointment with the decision. Among other things, he said, the tower had been operated for years after its permit expired. But the company is unfazed. As to the health concerns, ''We submitted expert evidence to demonstrate that this tower is in full compliance with Federal Communications Commission health standards,'' said Carole Slater, a lawyer for Highpoint. And while Phil Rampulla, Highpoint's architect, would not say how many antennas might be added, he said that ''engineering restraints'' would almost certainly limit the number. Meanwhile, Mr. Gunther announced that he was proceeding with the project, which will cost $1 million. ''Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,'' Mr. Gunther said. ''The Eiffel Tower is a TV and radio tower, and it's an icon of France.'' But the battle may not be over. Opponents of the tower have until Oct. 13 to challenge the board's vote in state court. JIM O'GRADY NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: TODT HILL | New Coat for Debated Tower |
1048101_0 | OVER the last decade, learning disabilities have moved squarely to the foreground of the education world: more than 5 percent of the nation's students now have diagnosed learning disabilities. Hundreds of thousands of students in elementary schools, colleges and graduate schools get accommodations like extra time on tests, note-takers or quiet rooms to work in. When New York State gave the bar exam in July, more than 300 students received special treatment. And last week, a Federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled that the New York Board of Law Examiners had illegally discriminated against a learning-disabled law school graduate who was refused accommodations on the bar exam in 1993. But with the entry into the professions of the first large wave of learning-disabled students accustomed to accommodations, the impact of the disability laws is still a big unknown. Even as debate continues to rage about affirmative action, learning disabilities present a special conundrum for employers, who are unsure about how far to bend for people whose disabilities might affect their job performance. The law tries to provide a balance: On one hand, the Americans With Disabilities Act, which went into effect in 1992, forbids employers to discriminate against people with disabilities, and requires them to make reasonable accommodations. So a company cannot refuse to hire someone simply because he is blind, and may be required to adapt its workplace to accommodate a blind person. On the other hand, employers are not obliged to hire someone who doesn't meet the qualifications for the job, so no one needs to hire a blind person as a truck driver. But the line is hard to draw in professions that involve a lot of reading and writing -- where precise qualifications are hard to pin down. How important is it that a third-grade teacher spell well? Or that a journalist read quickly? Are there ways to compensate -- if, for example, the teacher has someone proofread her writing, and the journalist reads slowly but thinks fast? The law school graduate at the center of last week's court decision, Marilyn Bartlett, did not mention that she had a reading disorder when she graduated from Vermont Law School in 1991 and got a job at Bower & Gardner, a now-defunct New York City law firm. But Dr. Bartlett, currently an educational administrator at Dowling College on Long Island, succeeded at the firm until she was forced | Ideas & Trends; Shaky Crutch for the Learning-Disabled |
1047681_0 | To the Editor: Having visited nearly 90 countries (thanks to work in the airline industry), I know a worthy site when I see it. Joseph Siano missed two in his ''What's Doing in the Finger Lakes'' (Aug. 30). The Cornell University campus in Ithaca, complete with waterfalls, gorges, a suspension bridge and panoramic views of Cayuga Lake, is one of the most sensational educational settings on earth. Nearby, in Robert H. Treman State Park, is Upper Enfield Gorge. A stone path takes you along the edge, past rushing water and sculptured rock formations. Then a series of sharp turns reveals three sudden and scenic surprises -- each larger and more dramatic than the previous. I've seen many beautiful gorges; this was the first that surprised me. ROBERT E. DAVIDSON New York, N.Y. | Ithaca's Gorges |
1047308_0 | SUGAR FALLS 4.9 PERCENT. Prices for raw sugar plunged on rising exports from Brazil and weakening demand in Russia, the leading sugar importer. The October-delivery contract dropped 0.36 cent, to 6.95 cents a pound. | THE MARKETS: COMMODITIES |
1045682_0 | The Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade meeting of the world's Anglican bishops that took place in England earlier this summer, had several themes, not least of which was the opportunity for bishops from places as far apart as Alaska and Zimbabwe to meet and confer. But if there was an issue that seemed to dominate news of the conference, it was what the nearly 800 bishops would say about homosexuality and the church, a question answered when they overwhelmingly voted to reject homosexual practice as ''incompatible with Scripture.'' As soon as the vote was tallied, Bishop Richard F. Grein, spiritual leader of the Episcopal Church's Diocese of New York, knew that the resolution, although advisory, would hit hard in his jurisdiction, where many Episcopal priests and lay people -- some gay and some not -- would sharply disagree with it. ''I think there was an awful lot of anxiety in our diocese and our gay and lesbian community, with regard to the action taken at Lambeth,'' said Bishop Grein, who attended the conference and is a leading prelate in the 2.4 million-member Episcopal Church, which is one of the 37 church provinces within the global Anglican Communion. With that in mind, Bishop Grein and his eventual successor in New York, Bishop Mark S. Sisk, sat down shortly before Labor Day to write a pastoral letter to the 62,000 Episcopalians in their flock, to tell them essentially that nothing had changed. Yes, they acknowledged, the resolution had ''caused much hurt and anger among faithful people,'' but the Bishops added that they wanted it understood that ''the character of our life together'' as New York Episcopalians would remain the same. ''This diocese,'' they wrote, ''has long recognized and treasured the ministry of gay and lesbian Episcopalians in New York, and of course, the ministry of our gay and lesbian clergy.'' Their letter was not the only statement taking issue with the resolution, nor was it the first. The day after the resolution was passed, Episcopal Bishop Ronald Haines of Washington composed a briefer and more general statement, addressed to gay Anglicans, which said, in part, ''We pledge that we will continue to reflect, pray and work for your full inclusion in the life of the church.'' (Although the statement noted that Anglicans worldwide disagreed over what ''full inclusion'' would mean, it called on them to hold a ''prayerful, respectful conversation'' about homosexuality.) As | Religion Journal; Homosexuals Reassured by Bishops |
1045595_14 | said, ''I don't remember a specific gift.''(268) Indeed, unless the President knew that Ms. Lewinsky had not complied with the subpoena, it is unlikely he would have risked lying about the number and nature of the gifts he had given her. In analyzing the evidence on this issue, it also bears mention that President Clinton likely operated no differently with respect to the gifts than he did with respect to testimony. It is clear that he lied under oath and that Ms. Lewinsky filed a false affidavit after the President suggested she file an affidavit. So there is little reason that he would not have attempted to insure (whether directly or subtly) that Ms. Lewinsky conceal the gifts as a corollary to their mutual lies under oath. (Also, it was the President's pattern to use Ms. Currie as an intermediary in dealing with Ms. Lewinsky.(269)) The President's apparent response to all of this is that Ms. Lewinsky on her own contacted Ms. Currie and involved her in this endeavor to hide subpoenaed evidence, and that Ms. Currie complied without checking with the President. Based on the testimony and behavior of both Ms. Currie and Ms. Lewinsky, those inferences fall outside the range of reasonable possibility. There is substantial and credible information, therefore, that the President endeavored to obstruct justice by participating in the concealment of subpoenaed evidence. B. January 5, 1998, Note to the President 1. Evidence Regarding the January 5, 1998 Note On December 16, 1997, the President was served by Ms. Jones's attorneys with a request for production of documents, including documents relating to ''Monica Lewisky'' [sic]. The request placed upon the President a continuing obligation to preserve and produce responsive documents. Notes and letters from Ms. Lewinsky were responsive and relevant. On January 4, 1998, Ms. Lewinsky left a book for the President with Ms. Currie.(270) Ms. Lewinsky had enclosed in the book a romantic note that she had written, inspired by a recent viewing of the movie Titanic.(271) In the note, Ms. Lewinsky told the President that she wanted to have sexual intercourse with him, at least once.(272) On January 5, in the course of discussing her affidavit and possible testimony in a phone conversation with the President, Ms. Lewinsky says she told the President, ''I shouldn't have written some of those things in the note.''(273) According to Ms. Lewinsky, the President said that he agreed | Full Text of Findings Sent to Congress -- Part Eleven of Thirteen |
1045647_0 | To the Editor: In Northern Ireland President Clinton criticized groups seeking to sabotage the peace agreement, but he remained silent about one group's bid to undermine it: the British Parliament this week rushed through repressive measures that contravene the human rights provisions of the agreement (news article, Sept. 4). The new legislation makes it possible to arrest an individual suspected of belonging to an illegal organization on the testimony of a senior police officer. If a suspect elects to remain silent during questioning, the silence alone can be used to corroborate the police's suspicion. These provisions effectively eliminate the right to remain silent, undermine the prohibition against self-incrimination and run contrary to the presumption of innocence by shifting the burden of proof from the prosecution to the accused. JULIA HALL New York, Sept. 4, 1998 The writer is counsel in the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. | New British Law Could Sabotage Irish Peace |
1045600_14 | could not have said, ''I don't remember a specific gift.''(268) Indeed, unless the President knew that Ms. Lewinsky had not complied with the subpoena, it is unlikely he would have risked lying about the number and nature of the gifts he had given her. In analyzing the evidence on this issue, it also bears mention that President Clinton likely operated no differently with respect to the gifts than he did with respect to testimony. It is clear that he lied under oath and that Ms. Lewinsky filed a false affidavit after the President suggested she file an affidavit. So there is little reason that he would not have attempted to insure (whether directly or subtly) that Ms. Lewinsky conceal the gifts as a corollary to their mutual lies under oath. (Also, it was the President's pattern to use Ms. Currie as an intermediary in dealing with Ms. Lewinsky.( 269)) The President's apparent response to all of this is that Ms. Lewinsky on her own contacted Ms. Currie and involved her in this endeavor to hide subpoenaed evidence, and that Ms. Currie complied without checking with the President. Based on the testimony and behavior of both Ms. Currie and Ms. Lewinsky, those inferences fall outside the range of reasonable possibility. There is substantial and credible information, therefore, that the President endeavored to obstruct justice by participating in the concealment of subpoenaed evidence. B. January 5, 1998, Note to the President 1. Evidence Regarding the January 5, 1998 Note On December 16, 1997, the President was served by Ms. Jones's attorneys with a request for production of documents, including documents relating to ''Monica Lewisky'' [sic]. The request placed upon the President a continuing obligation to preserve and produce responsive documents. Notes and letters from Ms. Lewinsky were responsive and relevant. On January 4, 1998, Ms. Lewinsky left a book for the President with Ms. Currie.(270) Ms. Lewinsky had enclosed in the book a romantic note that she had written, inspired by a recent viewing of the movie Titanic.(271) In the note, Ms. Lewinsky told the President that she wanted to have sexual intercourse with him, at least once.(272) On January 5, in the course of discussing her affidavit and possible testimony in a phone conversation with the President, Ms. Lewinsky says she told the President, ''I shouldn't have written some of those things in the note.''(273) According to Ms. Lewinsky, the President | Full Text of Findings Sent to Congress -- Part Eleven of Thirteen |
1045757_14 | said, ''I don't remember a specific gift.''(268) Indeed, unless the President knew that Ms. Lewinsky had not complied with the subpoena, it is unlikely he would have risked lying about the number and nature of the gifts he had given her. In analyzing the evidence on this issue, it also bears mention that President Clinton likely operated no differently with respect to the gifts than he did with respect to testimony. It is clear that he lied under oath and that Ms. Lewinsky filed a false affidavit after the President suggested she file an affidavit. So there is little reason that he would not have attempted to insure (whether directly or subtly) that Ms. Lewinsky conceal the gifts as a corollary to their mutual lies under oath. (Also, it was the President's pattern to use Ms. Currie as an intermediary in dealing with Ms. Lewinsky.(269)) The President's apparent response to all of this is that Ms. Lewinsky on her own contacted Ms. Currie and involved her in this endeavor to hide subpoenaed evidence, and that Ms. Currie complied without checking with the President. Based on the testimony and behavior of both Ms. Currie and Ms. Lewinsky, those inferences fall outside the range of reasonable possibility. There is substantial and credible information, therefore, that the President endeavored to obstruct justice by participating in the concealment of subpoenaed evidence. B. January 5, 1998, Note to the President 1. Evidence Regarding the January 5, 1998 Note On December 16, 1997, the President was served by Ms. Jones's attorneys with a request for production of documents, including documents relating to ''Monica Lewisky'' [sic]. The request placed upon the President a continuing obligation to preserve and produce responsive documents. Notes and letters from Ms. Lewinsky were responsive and relevant. On January 4, 1998, Ms. Lewinsky left a book for the President with Ms. Currie.(270) Ms. Lewinsky had enclosed in the book a romantic note that she had written, inspired by a recent viewing of the movie Titanic.(271) In the note, Ms. Lewinsky told the President that she wanted to have sexual intercourse with him, at least once.(272) On January 5, in the course of discussing her affidavit and possible testimony in a phone conversation with the President, Ms. Lewinsky says she told the President, ''I shouldn't have written some of those things in the note.''(273) According to Ms. Lewinsky, the President said that he agreed | Full Text of Findings Sent to Congress -- Part Eleven of Thirteen |
1045596_14 | could not have said, ''I don't remember a specific gift.''(268) Indeed, unless the President knew that Ms. Lewinsky had not complied with the subpoena, it is unlikely he would have risked lying about the number and nature of the gifts he had given her. In analyzing the evidence on this issue, it also bears mention that President Clinton likely operated no differently with respect to the gifts than he did with respect to testimony. It is clear that he lied under oath and that Ms. Lewinsky filed a false affidavit after the President suggested she file an affidavit. So there is little reason that he would not have attempted to insure (whether directly or subtly) that Ms. Lewinsky conceal the gifts as a corollary to their mutual lies under oath. (Also, it was the President's pattern to use Ms. Currie as an intermediary in dealing with Ms. Lewinsky.( 269)) The President's apparent response to all of this is that Ms. Lewinsky on her own contacted Ms. Currie and involved her in this endeavor to hide subpoenaed evidence, and that Ms. Currie complied without checking with the President. Based on the testimony and behavior of both Ms. Currie and Ms. Lewinsky, those inferences fall outside the range of reasonable possibility. There is substantial and credible information, therefore, that the President endeavored to obstruct justice by participating in the concealment of subpoenaed evidence. B. January 5, 1998, Note to the President 1. Evidence Regarding the January 5, 1998 Note On December 16, 1997, the President was served by Ms. Jones's attorneys with a request for production of documents, including documents relating to ''Monica Lewisky'' [sic]. The request placed upon the President a continuing obligation to preserve and produce responsive documents. Notes and letters from Ms. Lewinsky were responsive and relevant. On January 4, 1998, Ms. Lewinsky left a book for the President with Ms. Currie.(270) Ms. Lewinsky had enclosed in the book a romantic note that she had written, inspired by a recent viewing of the movie Titanic.(271) In the note, Ms. Lewinsky told the President that she wanted to have sexual intercourse with him, at least once.(272) On January 5, in the course of discussing her affidavit and possible testimony in a phone conversation with the President, Ms. Lewinsky says she told the President, ''I shouldn't have written some of those things in the note.''(273) According to Ms. Lewinsky, the President | Full Text of Findings Sent to Congress -- Part Eleven of Thirteen |
1050046_0 | The highest-ranking Roman Catholic in the Northern Ireland Assembly today accused Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, of impeding the peace effort in the British province. In rare criticism of Sinn Fein, Seamus Mallon, the First Deputy Minister of the Assembly, said Sinn Fein was being ''too pat'' in its refusal to help solve a growing dispute over disarmament of the I.R.A. Mr. Mallon also criticized First Minister David Trimble, the head of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party, for failing to compromise on disarmament. Sinn Fein's leader, Gerry Adams, says he cannot guarantee that the I.R.A., which has been observing a cease-fire for 14 months, will begin to disarm before May 2000, when the new peace agreement is to be fully enacted. He discussed the disarmament problem tonight with Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland. But today Mr. Mallon said Sinn Fein should agree to a scheduled I.R.A. disarmament in the coming weeks. ''It is time to give some very substantial confidence building to the unionist community,'' he said. A tentative disarmament schedule is being prepared in the North by Gen. John de Chastelain, former chief of staff of Canada's armed forces and now head of a disarmament commission established in the peace accord approved in the spring. | Top Catholic Leader In North Faults I.R.A. |
1048388_6 | the other. Dr. Thom and his followers proposed that mathematical models based on catastrophe cusps could be used to predict the reproduction of bacteria, the behavior of the stock market, heart attacks, biological evolution and the outbreak of war, among many other things. To some, Dr. Thom's theory seemed to offer an explanation of almost everything, but many others condemned it as useless. Today, Catastrophe Theory is all but forgotten. Predicting life spans in the absence of detailed knowledge has long interested scientists as well as insurance statisticians. A forecast of life expectancy based on the average age at death of a person's four grandparents is a simple example of statistical forecasting. But a much more daring approach was devised a few years ago by Dr. J. Richard Gott 3d, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University. Dr. Gott's scheme is based on the ''Copernican principle,'' which assumes that the odds are overwhelmingly against any particular place or time being ''special.'' From this, Dr. Gott reasoned that the mere knowledge of how long something (or someone) has been around is sufficient to estimate how much longer it could last. Based on this system, and the assumption that Homo sapiens appeared on earth about 200,000 years ago, Dr. Gott calculated that intelligent human beings are 95-percent certain to survive a minimum of 5,128 years more, and a maximum of 7.8 million years more. There are those who contend that predictions like these are so vague that they are scarcely more useful than the prophecies of the Delphic oracle in ancient Greece, which was consulted by Socrates, Oedipus and other luminaries of the day. The oracle (operated by a concealed priest or priestess) was so ambiguous it could nearly never be proved wrong. Scientists will never be able to answer all our questions about future events or to satisfy a deep-seated human yearning to foresee what's coming at us. Some scientific efforts at prediction will always be defeated by the nature of Nature. Mystic oracles have never shed light on future events either, but even 1,398 years after Socrates' suicide, legions of people continue to visit palmists, astrologists and psychics. It's human to prefer something to nothing at all. Correction: September 23, 1998, Wednesday An essay in Science Times yesterday about predictions misstated the time elapsed since the suicide of Socrates, who relied on oracles. It was 2,397 years ago, not 1,398. | Essay; Science Squints at a Future Fogged by Chaotic Uncertainty |
1043625_3 | two days and the presence in Belfast on Thursday of Mr. Clinton, an active party to the Northern Ireland negotiations, there is still only a slim expectation that Mr. Trimble will use the occasion to end his snub of Mr. Adams. What would be a simple gesture in most societies constitutes one of great risk for Mr. Trimble, whose leadership of the Protestant community is subject to challenges from hard-liners who accuse him of being weak. The head of the Democratic Unionists, the Rev. Ian Paisley, said he would not attend the meeting on Monday. ''I am going to give Mr. Trimble no cover to the dirty deed of getting I.R.A.-Sinn Fein into the Government of Northern Ireland,'' Mr. Paisley said. Protestant leaders reacted positively today to the early release from prison of two Scots Guardsmen who had been serving life sentences for shooting dead an unarmed 18-year-old Catholic here in September 1992. ''I am delighted,'' Mr. Maginnis said. ''I have been campaigning with others that they should be released. It is far, far too long.'' Protestant leaders angry over the releases of Catholic prisoners in recent months had cited the case of the soldiers as an example of discrimination. Some 400 Catholic and Protestant prisoners are to begin leaving jail next week under early release provisions in the peace accord. The two soldiers, James Fisher, now 30, and Mark Wright, 25, killed Peter McBride as he fled down an alleyway in the Catholic New Lodge area of North Belfast. The soldiers argued that they feared that he had a weapon. But testimony showed that Mr. McBride had been searched minutes before and found unarmed. Members of the British and Irish Parliaments returned to London and Dublin today for emergency sessions to draw up anti-terrorism legislation. The bills, expected to be rushed to overwhelming passage, are aimed at members of dissident paramilitary groups opposed to the peace settlement and bent on disrupting it with violence. Among the targets is the Real I.R.A., the renegade republican group that bombed Omagh two weeks ago, killing 28 people. [Anti-terrorism bills advanced in the Parliaments in London and Dublin, and could gain their final approvals on Thursday, Reuters reported.] The provisions of the bills under debate include one that would make the opinion of a single police officer admissible in court as evidence of membership in a terrorist group and another that would allow | Sinn Fein Says It Will Try to Halt Arms |
1043563_0 | North Korea is backing itself into a dangerous corner by showing off its ability to make and market advanced weapons. Just two weeks after American intelligence agencies noticed construction work on an underground complex suitable for developing nuclear bombs, North Korea fired a missile into the Pacific beyond Japan. At that range, the missile could reach American bases in the Tokyo and Okinawa regions. North Korea's reckless actions threaten the security of its Asian neighbors and undercut Washington's hopes of providing economic and humanitarian aid as a means to coax the North out of its traditional isolation. The timing of the missile test is probably linked to next week's inauguration of Kim Jong Il as president. But North Korea's secretive decision-making has left American analysts guessing at possible motives. Earlier this year the North signaled that it might halt testing and exporting of missiles in exchange for economic aid from the West, along the lines of the deal it agreed to four years ago to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid. Its test-firing may be an effort to demonstrate the kind of missiles it could sell if no deal were reached -- or a dramatic advertisement courting just such future sales to nations like Iraq, Libya and Pakistan. The North might even be building up its arsenal for confrontation with South Korea, the United States and Japan. If the missile test is part of the North's bargaining strategy, the rest of the world cannot be expected to respond positively. Washington and its allies have delayed signing an agreement on funds for the nuclear deal and Japan also plans to suspend food assistance and talks on diplomatic recognition. Washington has tried to woo North Korea diplomatically for the past several years because there is no attractive alternative. The United States could defeat the North in a military showdown but could not prevent it from killing hundreds of thousands of South Koreans in vulnerable border areas like Seoul. The Clinton Administration reasonably calculates that if North Korean nuclear weapons programs remain frozen, time is on the side of peaceful political evolution toward more moderate policies. Meanwhile, however, the North can make the world a lot more dangerous by developing and selling longer-range missiles. South Korea remains committed to improving relations with the North and sees the missile test as underlining the dangers of keeping North Korea isolated. Keeping the | A Misguided Missile |
1043597_0 | Yesterday was a boon for investors in three makers of cancer drugs. After an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration recommended the approval of taxmoxifen as a means to reduce the risk of breast cancer, the shares of Zeneca Group P.L.C., which makes the drug, and Barr Laboratories, which sells its generic form, both rose sharply. Zeneca's American depository receipts, each of which represents one share of the British company, jumped 13.5 percent, to $43, before retreating in the afternoon. They closed at $38.4375, up 56.25 cents. At the Barr Laboratories headquarters in Pomona, N.Y., executives had other good news. Before the advisory committee gave a thumbs-up to tamoxifen, the F.D.A. itself approved the sale of the company's Preven Emergency Contraceptive Kit. The kit is the first F.D.A.-approved device to prevent pregnancy within 72 hours after sex. Shares of Barr Laboratories soared 36.4 percent, closing at $35.125. ''Some of our projects have been around for a while,'' said Bruce L. Downey, the chairman and chief executive officer of Barr Laboratories. ''What we saw today is the recognition that these projects are here.'' Genentech Inc., which is based in South San Francisco, also received F.D.A. advisory committee approval for Herceptin, the brand name for a biological drug to treat metastatic breast cancer. The company's shares closed at $66.75, up $1.75. The F.D.A. usually follows its committees' recommendations, and analysts usually ponder how new drugs could alter the pharmaceutical playing field. In these cases, tamoxifen and Herceptin are seen as the first of a new spate of cancer drugs that could prove to be enormous sellers. Viren Mehta, a partner at Mehta Partners, a biopharmaceutical investment firm in New York, expects sales of tamoxifen to swell from $320 million in the United States last year to $640 million within three to five years. Tamoxifen has been sold for years to treat breast cancer, and some analysts had thought that its approval as a way to reduce the risk of breast cancer could hurt several other drugs that may enter the market. The most notable casualty would have been Evista, a drug made by Eli Lilly for the prevention of osteoporosis that the company wants to have approved for the prevention of breast cancer, too. Sidney Taurel, the chief executive of Eli Lilly, said that tamoxifen in its new role would actually create a market for breast cancer prevention drugs, thus | For 3 Drug Makers, F.D.A. Makes Their Day |
1043632_3 | directs the breast cancer program at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, said that ''more and more women are calling me,'' about the drug and that other doctors have had the same experience. Cancer experts had long hoped that tamoxifen might prevent breast cancer. Its biochemistry was promising, because it prevented the hormone estrogen from stimulating breast tissue. ''It's holding up across the board -- in any setting where you get reduced exposure to estrogen, you get less breast cancer,'' Dr. Weber said. For example, women who start menstruating late or who reach menopause early are less likely to develop breast cancer. But the notion of testing tamoxifen as a breast cancer preventative in healthy women was controversial because it would mean exposing women to the known risks of the drug to provide a possibly elusive benefit. Nonetheless, the cancer institute went ahead six years ago with a large study involving 13,388 women who had at least double the average risk of breast cancer. Half of the women took tamoxifen and the others took a dummy pill. The institute abruptly halted the trial in April, 14 months before it was scheduled to end, announcing that it was unethical to continue because the data were clear that women who took the drug were less likely to develop breast cancer. Eighty-five women taking tamoxifen had developed breast cancer, compared with 154 women taking a placebo, a 45 percent reduction. But 33 women taking tamoxifen developed cancer of the uterine lining, as opposed to 14 of women taking the placebo; 17 women using tamoxifen had blood clots in their lungs, as against 6 taking the placebo. And the picture was soon further muddied. While the cancer institute's study still awaits publication in a medical journal on Sept. 16, two European groups published results from their own studies in The Lancet in July, and the data were not so encouraging. A British study of 2,471 women and an Italian study of 5,408 women found no reduction in breast cancer risk in women who took tamoxifen. Some at the cancer institute suggested that the European studies were too small to see tamoxifen's benefit. In addition, noted Dr. Ford, who directed the tamoxifen trial for the cancer institute, the women in the European trials were at lower risk of developing breast cancer. But, wrote Dr. Kathleen I. Pritchard of the University of Toronto in an accompanying | Drugs to Fight Breast Cancer Near Approval |
1043603_1 | secured the new Northern Ireland peace settlement. ''Wives. Mothers. Sisters. Daughters,'' she told the 450 delegates to the ''Vital Voices: Women in Democracy'' conference. ''Few were household names. But having seen their lives and communities torn apart by violence, women came together as women have always done -- around kitchen tables, at the market, in gatherings like this. It was women whose whispers of 'Enough' became a torrent of voices that could no longer be ignored.'' Mrs. Clinton arrived here today from Moscow a day ahead of President Clinton. The speech was her first since his televised admission on Aug. 17 of an ''inappropriate relationship'' with a White House intern. She strode onto the stage of Waterfront Hall to a burst of applause. With only two fleeting mentions of the President's pending arrival, Mrs. Clinton talked for 40 minutes of the rights and achievements of women and the duty toward the next generation. ''Ultimately, our children are why we are here,'' she said. It was Mrs. Clinton's third trip to Northern Ireland in four years, and she is a known and appreciated figure here, particularly among women. Her defense of her husband, which has raised some questions among women elsewhere, has not diminished enthusiasm for her here. ''My God, where have those women in America been?'' said Monica McWilliams, 44, a professor at the University of Ulster who is a founder of the Women's Coalition political party and a member of the new Northern Ireland Assembly. ''Women have to have survival skills, and people have to put things back in place when mistakes get made, and we know about that only too well in Northern Ireland,'' Ms. McWilliams said in an interview. Ms. McWilliams and her fellow negotiators in the 26-month-long peace talks were called ''silly women,'' ''dogs'' and ''scum'' by their male counterparts from other parties. Some mooed like cows when the women took their seats. Ms. McWilliams said that the President's behavior and Mrs. Clinton's response to it had come up in a meeting before the conference and that the women present had agreed that the most important thing for a woman is to have ''an independent project'' to turn to at such times. ''This is a very traditional male-dominated society and they don't know how to handle a Hillary Clinton,'' she said, adding, ''Oh, do we need this woman here now.'' TESTING OF A PRESIDENT: WOMEN'S VOICES | First Lady Draws Cheers at Women's Conference in Belfast |
1043569_4 | the villagers were up in arms,'' the article said. ''They rushed to the breach, dragging sandbags brimming with sand, shovels and spades with them.'' ''The police again closed in to stop them,'' the newspaper reported, ''holding them back less than three meters from the breach.'' The hardships resulting from this geographical triage are most visible along Sanzhou's major Yangtze dike, where more than 5,000 displaced people inhabit an endless line of makeshift huts, in conditions that worry health officials. From Government relief agencies, the dike dwellers receive their rations of rice and money, plus some charcoal for cooking. They are told to boil the river water and they have been given purification tablets. ''We don't always use the tablets,'' said one mother, ''because the children don't like the taste.'' So far, diarrhea, skin diseases and eye infections have been reported, but no major epidemics. The dike residents assume they will stay there perhaps two more months, until the floods recede and they can return to their plots. While Beijing officials have said that farmlands reclaimed from rivers and lakes should be returned to nature, officials here say they have little choice but to send the displaced people back to rebuild. That frantic day when Zhang Dongmei, her husband and two daughters learned they would have to abandon their home of 20 years in Sanzhou, they were able to muster up a truck. Now, inside a crude lean-to, she sat on a big red bed they salvaged along with her brother's television set, some cabinets and a diesel engine. Their former village, now destroyed, is a 15-minute motorboat trip out into the sea of brown. Here and there protrude shattered rooftops and the upper branches of tall trees, some festooned with chairs lashed on hopefully by fleeing residents. Large water snakes slither through the sunken ruins. Flood officials far away in Wuhan appear divided as to how serious the threat to their city's dikes ever were. But they insist that the sacrifices by the villagers upstream were necessary, if not to save the city and its industry, then to save major dikes guarding millions. They add that in some cases, villagers were imperiled by possible sudden breaches of their own protective dikes. ''It's much better to breach the dikes ourselves than to let it happen,'' said Wu Shiwei, director of flood control in Wuhan. ''Above all, we need to protect people.'' | Rongcheng Journal; As Floods Rage, Bitter Choices Over What to Save |
1043668_0 | YOU log onto the Internet one day, and it's blazingly fast; no more World Wide Wait. Pulling up Web pages is instantaneous. Your E-mail soars by more quickly than you can read it. Information is at your fingertips with hardly a pause. A dream of the future? No, it's telnet, a tool of the Internet of yesterday: no graphics, no fancy software, simply unformatted text in an 80-character-by-24-line window. With a few bits of knowledge in hand, you can gain access to the World Wide Web, your E-mail, terabytes of file archives and other Internet resources using telnet, a piece of Internet technology that has been aged to perfection over the last 30 years. It's fast, efficient and hardly subject to the vagaries of regularly changing bells and whistles. Telnet is a method of typing text on your own computer, which gets sent over the Internet to another computer, whether on the next desk or on the next continent. Through text commands, just like those found in MS-DOS, you can operate this other computer. This can amount to something as simple as listing the files in a directory or as complex as reading E-mail or Web browsing -- all without pictures, buttons or clicking. Working over the Internet, telnet connects a computer using a program that runs on, for example, a PC with Windows 98, to another machine that can handle several users at once, like a mainframe or a server computer. (The server is typically running the Unix operating system, but Microsoft Windows NT and other computer systems can handle telnet as well.) After connecting, you can execute programs on that separate machine, just as if you were typing on a keyboard directly connected to that machine. To run a program, type the command and hit enter; this is why it is called a command-line interface -- as opposed to the graphical user interface, with icons and mouse movements, that describes both the Macintosh and Windows operating systems. The server runs the software you specify and displays the results. There are no images. In real terms, let's say you are on vacation overseas, with your laptop far behind, and you want to read your E-mail. Find any computer with an Internet connection, no matter how slow, and you can connect to your Internet service provider or your company's computer with little fuss. Millions of people still use telnet every | Telnet: Old Friend Offers High Speed |
1045004_1 | gain. Substantial additional benefits accrue to society at large through the leadership and civic participation of the graduates and through the broad contributions that the schools themselves make to the goals of a democratic society. These societal benefits are a major justification for the favored tax treatment that colleges and universities enjoy and for the subsidies provided by public and private donors. . . ... Unfortunately, however, to say that considerations of merit should drive the admissions process is to pose questions, not answer them. There are no magical ways of automatically identifying those who merit admission on the basis of intrinsic qualities that distinguish them from all others. Test scores and grades are useful measures of the ability to do good work, but they are no more than that. They are far from infallible indicators of other qualities some might regard as intrinsic, such as a deep love of learning or a capacity for high academic achievement. . . . [S]electing a class has much broader purposes than simply rewarding students who are thought to have worked especially hard. The job of the admissions staff is not, in any case, to decide who has earned a ''right'' to a place in the class, since we do not think that admission to a selective university is a right possessed by anyone. . . . Race almost always affects an individual's life experiences and perspectives, and thus the person's capacity to contribute to the kinds of learning through diversity that occurs on campuses. This form of learning will be even more important going forward than it has been in the past. . . . Until now, there has been little hard evidence to confirm the belief of educators in the value of diversity. Our survey data throw new light on the extent of interaction occurring on campuses today and of how positively the great majority of students regard opportunities to learn from those with different points of view, backgrounds and experiences. Admissions ''on the merits'' would be short-sighted if admissions officers were precluded from crediting this potential contribution to the education of all students. Imposition of a race-neutral standard would produce very troubling results from this perspective: such a policy would reduce dramatically the proportion of black students on campus -- probably shrinking their numbers to less than 2 percent of all matriculants at the most selective colleges and professional schools. | A View on the Meaning of 'Merit' From 'The Shape of the River' |
1045025_1 | in a liberal counteroffensive to recast the debate over affirmative action, which in the last two years has been rolled back in California and Texas and is under serious challenge in Michigan and Washington. The counteroffensive, involving books, articles and academic conferences, seeks to broaden the notion of merit beyond tests and grades and hails affirmative action less as a means of overcoming past discrimination -- an older argument with decreasing political support -- and more as a way to insure a healthier future for whites and blacks. The Bowen-Bok study limits itself to the practice of race-conscious admissions in elite higher education; that is, to considering the race of applicants to be a critical factor in whether they should be admitted -- as important, say, as where they are from or extracurricular activities. The study begins by documenting the problem: blacks who enter elite institutions do so with lower test scores and grades than those of whites. And as they work their way through colleges like Yale and Princeton and state institutions like the Universities of Michigan and North Carolina, blacks receive lower grades and graduate at a lower rate. But after graduation, the survey found, these students achieve notable successes. They earn advanced degrees at rates identical to those of their white classmates. They are even slightly more likely than whites from the same institutions to obtain professional degrees in law, business and medicine. And they become more active than their white classmates in civic activities. The authors call black graduates of elite institutions ''the backbone of the emergent black middle class'' and say that their influence extends beyond the workplace. ''They can serve as strong threads in a fabric that binds their own community together and binds those communities into the larger social fabric as well,'' the authors say. A striking finding was how much an elite education served as a pathway to success for all races. Blacks graduating from elite colleges earned 70 percent to 85 percent more than did black graduates generally. Blacks and whites reported fairly substantial social interaction at college, which they said helped them relate to members of different racial groups later in life. Finally, the more selective the college, the more likely were blacks who attended it to graduate, obtain advanced degrees and earn high salaries. The authors' focus on selective universities illustrates what they consider an often-ignored point: the debate | Study Strongly Supports Affirmative Action in Admissions to Elite Colleges |
1044980_1 | catalogue about the Armenians, ''a people of diaspora,'' making, in addition to khatchkars, small decorative objects ''which in every war, persecution or exodus could be easily transported and saved from the hands of the infidels.'' And even if she hadn't said so, the inclination would have been to see these works through that lens, simply because the show took place here, meaning not just in Athens but in the arts center called the Megaron, which itself can be regarded as a local political symbol. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. It can be used to serve almost any agenda. Caspar David Friedrich's paintings from the early 19th century came to be linked during the early 20th with a distasteful sort of German nationalism because they were admired by the Nazis. Views of Friedrich changed accordingly. Shakespeare's plays were mainstream entertainment in the 19th century in America, until a new educated class made them into the theatrical equivalent of spinach. Today we regard as highbrow what was once presented in the context of of minstrel shows and magic acts: the perception of Shakespeare's work has changed along with the context in which it is performed. Context often means, more specifically, political context. This being Greece, an obvious example is the Elgin marbles. Tourist dollars aside, the Greeks have long said that they want the marbles back to reunite the Parthenon sculptures on the site where they came from. This is a matter of artistic integrity but, equally, a matter of national identity, the Parthenon being the prime emblem of Greek nationalism. The two ideas, artistic integrity and national identity, are inextricably linked by the Greeks. The British have made a similar argument: they point out not only that they have better preserved the sculptures over the years than the Greeks, but also that the sculptures have reshaped British society since the 18th century, fueling a revival of interest in Classical antiquity that, among other things, even alerted the Greeks to the value of their own past. Hence the marbles are now just as integral to British culture and history as they are to Greek patrimony. With the show of Armenian art, the Megaron, as the site, helped to shape a certain kind of interpretation. It is a place where Greece's recent Spartan past has been replaced by an Athenian present: construction began on the Megaron decades ago, but stopped when a | When Art Becomes A Metaphor For Identity |
1043813_5 | distrust,'' Mr. Trimble said pointedly, ''but deeds will.'' Mr. Clinton, noticeably buoyed by the audience's prolonged ovation and speaking on an issue close to his heart, said Northern Ireland had chosen to break with its anguished past by accepting the April agreement. ''Now you must prove that the passion for reason and moderation can trump the power of extremes,'' he said. ''There will be hard roads ahead. The terror in Omagh was not the last bomb of the troubles; it was the opening shot of a vicious attack on the peace. The question is not whether there will be more bombs and more attempts to undo with violence the verdict of the ballot box. There well may be.'' The test for Ulster's new governing structures will be how they respond to future attacks. Mr. Clinton said successful implementation of the accord required the specific steps that were spelled: disarmament by Protestant and Catholic paramilitary groups; formation of a multiparty executive council to administer the province's laws; an end to police brutality and street justice by armed bands; early release of political prisoners whose organizations forswear violence; protection of human rights. ''To the people of Northern Ireland I say, it is your will for peace, after all, that has brought your country to this moment of hope,'' Mr. Clinton said at Waterfront Hall. ''Do not let it slip away. It will not come again in our lifetime.'' For the most part, the people who turned out to see Mr. Clinton were grateful for his efforts to foster peace and delighted that he returned to Ulster. One skeptic was Gerald Douglas, 68, of Newcastle, Northern Ireland, who came to Armagh to hear Mr. Clinton speak. ''I suppose his intentions are good,'' he said of Mr. Clinton's involvement. But Mr. Douglas said Mr. Clinton's relationship with Ms. Lewinsky undercut his authority. ''Northern Ireland is a fairly religious country and we don't take too kindly to it,'' he said. ''When you become President or King, you have to set an example, and I don't think he set too good an example.'' But most others in the crowd were willing to simply welcome him back to the land he claims as his ancestral home. ''He has a wee thing for Ireland,'' said Josephine Gay of Armagh. ''If everybody's washing were hung out, there would be skeletons in all their closets.'' CLINTON IN ULSTER: THE OVERVIEW | Clinton Promotes Accord In Ulster, With a Warning |
1043814_2 | the victims, said he felt that in a horrible way the Omagh bomb could end up being a ''catalyst for peace.'' He said, ''I have a feeling this was the end of the violence and the beginning of a new era.'' The group that planted the bomb, which calls itself the Real I.R.A., is made up of disaffected members of the Irish Republican Army who left the organization because it adopted a cease-fire 14 months ago and, through Sinn Fein, its political wing, took a role in the peace talks. The Real I.R.A. had vowed to disrupt the peace agreement with violence. But it has found itself isolated by public revulsion, condemned by Sinn Fein and made the target of emergency anti-terror laws passed early this morning by the British and Irish Parliaments. Today representatives of the Real I.R.A. said that in a coordinated 90-minute period earlier this week, senior I.R.A. officials visited the homes of dissidents and ordered them to disband. ''In the last 48 hours, threats have been received from fellow republicans,'' a spokesman said. He complained that the action ''sullies the name of republicanism.'' The ''new era'' that Father Keaveny spoke of picked up particular pace this week with an announcement by the main I.R.A. that it had set up a special unit to find the bodies of people abducted in the 1970's. In addition Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein, again denounced the Omagh bombing, said violence in Northern Ireland was ''a thing of the past, over, done with and gone,'' and committed his party to the effort to disarm paramilitary groups. For his part Mr. Trimble, once a hard-line tribal politician, was showing off his new cross-community colors with a reworking of the notorious comment of the original Northern Ireland Assembly's first speaker 75 years ago: ''This is a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people.'' In Mr. Trimble's version, ''This is a pluralist parliament for a pluralist people.'' Much of the accelerated pace of events had to do with the visit of Mr. Clinton, who was welcomed by Prime Minister Tony Blair as the President who had done more for peace in Northern Ireland than any other. In remarks introducing Mr. Clinton today, Mr. Trimble said he would talk with anyone who had a proven interest in peace, a statement of significance because he has never spoken directly to Mr. Adams in public and has | After 3 Violent Decades, Hope in Northern Ireland |
1043837_0 | North Korea may be preparing to test another missile, American and Japanese officials said today, even as North Korean diplomats met in New York to discuss their missile and nuclear programs with American officials. The United States has detected a flurry of activity at the same military base along North Korea's northeastern coast used to launch a two-stage ballistic missile on Monday, an American Government official said. But, the official added, it appeared that North Korea was making preparations to test one or more of its older missiles, not the advanced missile tested for the first time three days ago by firing it in an arc over Japan. The preparations suggest that North Korea's reclusive Government, led by Kim Jong Il, was brushing aside international protests over Monday's test, which has inflamed tensions in the region. Japan and South Korea, responding to North Korea's preparations at the site about 20 miles north of Kimchaek, placed their militaries on higher states of alert today. Their Foreign Ministers, Masahiko Komura and Hong Soon Young, met in Tokyo to discuss how to respond to North Korea's tests. Japan has withdrawn an offer to begin talks on establishing diplomatic relations with North Korea and suspended a $1 billion payment to the Korean Energy Development Organization, the international agency building reactors in the North in exchange for North Korea's pledge in 1994 to halt construction of nuclear weapons. In New York, North Korea's Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kim Gye Gwan, met into the night with an American delegation led by Charles Kartman, the State Department's special envoy for Korea. The talks broke off, and Administration officials said it was possible they would resume on Friday. Officials declined to give details of what they had discussed in today's talks. While the Clinton Administration has officially voiced concern over North Korea's test, the response has been unusually understated. Some officials have played down the significance of the test, and of the later activity detected at the launch site. ''While there is activity around the launch site, it is not at all certain there is going to be any kind of test,'' an official said. But a senior Japanese official said his Government had been specifically warned by the United States that a second missile launch was likely in the next few days. Even as the launch site buzzed with activity, the European Union today called on | North Koreans May Be Preparing Another Missile Test |
1047116_6 | is also used in paint remover. ''There's no way it promotes muscle growth,'' Dr. LoVecchio said. The chemical depresses the central nervous system by acting on the same parts of the brain as alcohol and the drug Valium, he said. The label on RenewTrient warns that one ounce will induce deep sleep for three to six hours, from which a person may be ''unarousable.'' It also says that excessive doses will cause sweating, muscle spasms, vomiting, bed-wetting and diarrhea, and that the best treatment is to ''sleep it off.'' A spokesman for RenewTrient's manufacturer responded to Dr. LoVecchio's report by saying that the patient had ignored the label and taken an overdose but recovered on his own within a few hours, and that the product is safe. In another article, a team of doctors reported on a mixture of herbs called PC-SPES that many men are taking for prostate cancer. Dr. Robert DiPaola, an oncologist at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick, said that some patients took the herbs on the assumption that they were a nonhormonal alternative to the female hormone estrogen, which has been used to slow the growth of prostate cancer. But the researchers found that PC-SPES had ''incredible estrogenic activity,'' Dr. DiPaola said. Like estrogen, the supplement did slow the progression of prostate tumors. But, also like estrogen, it caused marked adverse effects: sore, swollen breasts, loss of libido and, in one case, a blood clot in the foot. Dr. DiPaola said standard treatments like the drug Lupron were as powerful and less toxic than PC-SPES. Even so, he said, some patients chose to continue taking PC-SPES even after they learned the outcome of the study. ''This is an example of how patients can be taking herbal combinations and be unaware, and even the companies selling them can be unaware, of how they work and how potent and toxic they can potentially be,'' he said. ''There is no such thing as a safe agent just because the word 'natural' is attached to it.'' Correction: September 19, 1998, Saturday Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about the safety of nutritional supplements misstated the outcome of a case involving a 15-year-old patient with Hodgkin's disease who used an herbal product as treatment. The boy's status has not been released for privacy concerns; his doctor, Dr. Max Coppes, did not say he died. | Articles Question Safety Of Dietary Supplements |
1049140_1 | the events could lead to impeachment hearings. ''You're talking about changing presidents,'' said Al Ortiz, the executive producer of the ''Evening News with Dan Rather'' on CBS. ''It's hard to imagine anything more important as that. My intention has been to devote as much time to this story as possible, to explain what's going on behind the scenes.'' Mr. Ortiz added, ''Several important foreign stories -- Kosovo and Russia -- have had to take a little bit of a back seat.'' Ben Bradlee Jr., a deputy managing editor of The Boston Globe, said: ''The possibility of impeachment comes along once a generation. But you still have to be concerned about getting a good mix in the paper.'' The release of the Clinton videotape demanded so much space that The Boston Globe delayed for a day the third part of a series on food safety. At The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, investigative projects ready for publication were also temporarily shelved last weekend. ''What gets delayed might be a series on race or an investigative project in the works that's timely and topical but not urgent,'' said William K. Marimow, The Sun's managing editor. The issue goes beyond where articles are placed. Diversion of resources comes at a price. One test of how excessive coverage is, said James P. Willse, editor of The Newark Star-Ledger, is ''what do the papers look like three and four and five days away.'' ''If in covering the story you've exhausted yourself, and five days out there is nothing in the paper, that's a subtler statement of the kind of price you've paid,'' Mr. Willse said. At The Sun, Mr. Marimow said, state political and government reporters were not called in to the crisis coverage. Instead, he said, ''we took people we consider really talented working on ongoing projects that didn't have the same degree of urgency.'' For instance, a reporter working on a financial investigation, who has special legal expertise, was pulled off the day the Clinton videotape appeared to assess the President's effectiveness as a witness. At The Washington Post, the managing editor, Steve Coll, said pre-primary coverage was not cut back. ''We certainly haven't produced any less journalism about the election this season than we would have otherwise,'' Mr. Coll said. Even on days of peak coverage, the Clinton scandal has not driven all other news off front pages. The Dallas Morning | Presenting News in a Time of Scandal Becomes a Delicate Balancing Act |
1048330_2 | humans. In addition to the investigation of certain childhood cancers in Dover Township and breast cancer on Long Island, there are statewide studies of cancer and chemical use in Connecticut and California, a Federal study of elevated breast cancer deaths in mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, and Federal studies of childhood and adult brain cancers near toxic waste sites in several states. Cancer clusters, a shorthand phrase to describe higher-than-expected concentrations of similar cancers in one discrete area, have been in the national vocabulary for decades. They can be notoriously difficult to document with standard statistical analysis. Sometimes the data involve such small numbers of cases that epidemiologists cannot make a conclusion about whether an anomaly exists. Sometimes, according to the National Cancer Institute, scientists find ''a true excess,'' but cannot explain it. ''There are so many types of cancer and birth defects that just by chance alone you'd expect any one of them to be high in any one little town,'' said Dr. Bruce N. Ames, a biochemist and molecular biologist who directs the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center at the University of California at Berkeley. In a view widely held in the scientific world, he said that the money devoted to research into environmental links to cancer is misspent and that there is ''no convincing evidence'' that synthetic chemicals in the atmosphere are an important cause of cancer in humans. ''I'd put my money into basic research, not into chasing hypothetical risks,'' Dr. Ames said. Like a growing number of lay people who have become advocates, the Gillick family was not willing to have Dover Township's record of childhood cancers written off as a statistical fluke. The township in southern New Jersey has had 90 cases over a 12-year period, compared with the 67 cases that New Jersey health officials said could be expected. ''It's important to look at everything -- the water, the soil, the air, all of it, and try to find an answer,'' said Michael Gillick, who was found to have neuroblastoma, a cancer that affects the nervous system, when he was 3 1/2 months old. Now 19, his growth stunted and his body painfully contorted by the disease, he said he realizes that all the research may never tell him why he, or any other cancer victim, is sick. ''It's too late for me,'' Mr. Gillick said, ''I already have what I have. | Public Clamor Puts Focus on 'Clusters' In Cancer Research |
1046234_1 | where families tend to be much larger than in industrial societies, the average life span has risen from 46 to 62 in the last 36 years. Richer nations, on the other hand, are reducing population growth while increasing consumption. The 20 percent of people in high-income countries account for 86 percent of private consumption; the poorest 20 percent of the world's people consume only 1.3 percent of the pie, the report said. The richest fifth buy nine times as much meat, have access to nearly 50 times as many telephones and use more than 80 times the paper products and motorized vehicles than the poorest fifth. The report says that Americans spend more on cosmetics, $8 billion annually, and Europeans on ice cream, $11 billion, than it is estimated it would cost to provide basic education ($6 billion) or water and sanitation ($9 billion) to the more than 2 billion people worldwide who go without schools and toilets. The report only skirts the issue of what role the poorest nations themselves play in this predicament, some independent experts say. ''The presumption there is that refraining from buying ice cream automatically finances immunizations in the third world,'' said Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. This is a fallacy, he said. Often, he added, there has been a ''misuse of public resources in low income countries'' and even if the money were available there is no guarantee that governments would spend it on the poor. In many developing countries, the gaps between rich and poor are far greater than in industrial countries. The rich avoid paying taxes, which could pay for basic services like schools and clinics. Conspicuous consumption is often glaring. ''Even within the social sector,'' Mr. Eberstadt said, ''the tendency is to spend disproportionately on the privileged.'' Military expenditures are often also disproportionately high, experts say. India, for example, now has a nuclear weapons program but not compulsory primary education. Worldwide, countries spend $780 billion on the military and people spend $400 billion on illicit drugs, the report says. The report recommends that to reduce inequalities within as well as among nations, consumption levels among the poor need to be raised to basic levels, while people with little experience in the international marketplace need more information and consumer protection laws and regulations. The reports also suggests that developing countries ''leapfrog'' over old technologies in developing more environmentally | Most Consuming More, and the Rich Much More |
1046097_0 | MORE than 40 classic schooners and yachts will compete in the South Street Seaport Museum's 32d Annual Mayor's Cup Race at noon on Saturday. None of the competition's boats were built after 1970, and some of the classic vessels, including the museum's own schooners, Pioneer and Lettie G. Howard, are more than a century old. The ships, in several different classes, sail from the Battery to the Verazzano-Narrows Bridge and back again, about 15 1/2 nautical miles. (A scene from the 1996 race is shown above.) Previous regattas have lasted four to six hours, with the fastest boats finishing in less than three. The Mayor's Cup is part of the 1998 Wooden Boat Classic Regatta Series, which takes place from Maine to New York each summer. Spectators on Saturday can watch from the Battery Park Promenade or a spectator boat at Pier 16, at Fulton and South Streets. On board, a commentator will provide updates of the race. Mayor's Cup Race, noon Saturday; viewing from Battery Park Promenade (free) or the spectator boat. The boat begins boarding at 11 A.M. and will embark at 11:30 A.M. from Pier 16; $25; (212) 748-8786. PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: NEW YORK HARBOR | A Day When Wooden Boats Rule the Waters Once Again |
1046256_0 | A year after the Brazilian Government dismissed studies warning that parts of the Amazon rain forest were becoming so dry they could burn uncontrollably, fires have become a greater threat than ever to intact rain forest and to indigenous peoples, according to environmental groups that monitor the Amazon. The fires are set by ranchers and farmers to clear land for grazing and planting, but are burning out of control at an alarming rate, environmental groups say, due in large part to the drying effect of El Nino. The number of fires have more than doubled this year over last, according to the Government's own figures. Last year, 7,800 square miles of rain forest caught fire, the Woods Hole Institute in Massachusetts says. Until rains doused flames in Mato Grosso this month, they appeared set to ignite the Xingu National Park, which houses 5,000 indigenous people belonging to 17 tribes. In March, fires burned 2,379 square miles of rain forest in Roraima, including parts of the Yanomami Indian reserve, near the border with Venezuela. In addition, 10 percent of virgin rain forest, covering an area the size of California, is at risk of catching fire this year, according to the Environmental Research Institute on the Amazon, an independent group. Following the fires in Roraima, Government officials reversed their position, acknowledging that fires had indeed become a real threat. They created special teams to monitor burnings and fight fires, but environmental groups contend that the effort was too little too late. On Thursday, the World Bank announced a $15 million emergency project to fight the fires. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has come under blistering criticism from environmentalists for putting off enforcement of Brazil's first Environmental Crimes Law, which was seven years in the making. Steve Schwartzman, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, called the order delaying enforcement ''a betrayal of everything the government negotiated for.'' In July, the Government announced a $30 million plan to monitor burnings and create fire-fighting teams to control the fires during the burning season. But it has freed up only a small share of the money, said Joao Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary of the Socio-Environmental Institute. ''In reality, these projects had a lot of impact in the media, but very little impact on the ground,'' he said. Eduardo Martins, the head of the Government's environmental protection agency, rejected the criticism, accusing the environmentalists of ''climatic | Fires Posing Greater Risk As Amazon Grows Drier |
1047536_1 | In the United States and Western Europe it continued to grow in numbers but, as elsewhere, to shrink slightly as a percentage of the population. Of course, all these numbers are approximations that blend local reports of varying precision. Comparisons are further complicated by the fact that halfway through John Paul's pontificate, the collapse of Communist regimes allowed new statistics where data had been unavailable. And one wonders how meaningful some of the figures are. It may be that 97 percent of the Italian population continues to be baptized as of 1995, the same percentage that the Vatican reported for 1978. But that figure scarcely registers the two decades of secularization that Italy's church officials regularly lament. More reliable indicators of the church's health may be found in the statistics on its ''work force,'' as the yearbook puts it, primarily the numbers of priests and sisters. Here the general impression is that John Paul's papacy has put an end to the hemorrhaging of the church's mid-level leadership, which followed the Second Vatican Council's recasting of church roles in the 1960's and the subsequent debates about celibacy. The numbers tell a more complicated story. From 1978 to 1995, for example, the numbers of priests grew by 42 in Africa and 48 percent in Asia, but the decline in North America (13 percent) and Europe (12 percent) continued. Because North America and Europe still harbor most of the world's Catholic priests, the overall picture for the world remained a decline of 2.8 percent. Those are absolute numbers, however, and because the numbers of Catholics have been growing, the ratio of priests to people has become even more strained. In Africa, there were 3,251 Catholics for every priest at the beginning of this pontificate; in 1995 there were 4,476; in Asia the figure went from 2,223 Catholics per priest to 2,620. (In the United States, the figure went to 1,117 from 833.) The pattern is similar for sisters. The numbers have gone up sharply in Africa and Asia since 1978, but they have gone down so sharply in North America and Europe that by 1995 there were 15 percent fewer nuns worldwide serving a much larger church than at the beginning of John Paul's reign. It is also interesting to compare such statistics under Pope John Paul II with those under Pope Paul VI. Pope Paul's pontificate, from 1963 to 1978, is often | Beliefs |
1047568_0 | President Clinton will probably postpone traveling to India and Pakistan because both countries tested nuclear devices in May and have shown little inclination to defuse their arms race, officials with knowledge of plans for the trip said today. ''A Presidential trip to South Asia remains on hold,'' a White House aide said in response to speculation that the trip, which had been planned for mid-November, is virtually certain to be put off. A State Department official, responding to questions on condition that he not be identified, said he, too, understood the visits had been indefinitely postponed. In May, India exploded five nuclear devices, and the United States imposed sanctions against the country, warning Pakistan not to respond with tests of its own. But at the end of the month the Pakistanis conducted nuclear tests, and the United States imposed sanctions on Pakistan, too. India and Pakistan have been antagonists since 1947 when they became separate, independent nations carved out of British colonial India. Mr. Clinton had hoped to go to India, Pakistan and possibly Bangladesh in November. Promoting trade would have been high on the agenda, as well as encouraging an end to nuclear arms competition. The White House is not expected to announce a final decision until after the President meets with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan next week at the United Nations, but there is a growing consensus among Mr. Clinton's advisers that not enough can be accomplished then to make the trip to South Asia worthwhile. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright; the national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, and Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen are among those who are believed to have told the President that such a trip would be unwise. Late last year, in a wide-ranging interview on his foreign policy plans, President Clinton said he hoped to visit India and Pakistan in 1998 ''if all goes well.'' The most severe economic sanctions imposed against both nations after the tests were soon lifted. American diplomats met with Indian and Pakistani leaders to discuss the arms race, but made little tangible progress. | Clinton Likely To Delay Trip To Pakistan And India |
1044692_0 | Heavy-handed politics at the City University of New York has demoralized both faculty and administrators and led to a legal battle over an initiative that has made CUNY the first university of such historic importance to forbid remedial education on four-year campuses. A court ruling has blocked the plan, scheduled to phase in starting in 1999, pending a trial on whether trustees adopted the policy at a session that violated open-meeting laws. Trustees controlled by Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani could conceivably get around the courts by approving the plan again -- this time in a meeting that complied with the letter of the law. But that would leave unanswered a second, more serious challenge from the State Board of Regents, which has jurisdiction on educational policy throughout the state and has faulted CUNY for rushing into this radical plan without examining its potential impact. The new remedial rule would bar from four-year colleges all entering students who fail any of three skills tests in reading, writing and mathematics. These students would be funneled into community colleges, where space is so short that some students are already chosen by lottery. The community colleges are staffed mainly by part-timers and offer anemic curriculums. Students who begin at these campuses are far less likely to receive four-year degrees than those who go straight to four-year colleges. Students who do not graduate from four-year colleges are far less appealing in the job market. A recent study showed that more than 60 percent of CUNY's graduates -- and 7 in 10 Asians -- started college with at least one remedial course. Anything that discourages these students would be a blow to the city's labor force. The CUNY trustees describe the remedial rule as a way of boosting standards. But some Regents see it as a strategy for subverting open admissions requirements that are etched in state law. They also suspect a stealth plan for shrinking the university at the expense of new immigrants and poor students who make up the bulk of enrollment. Most CUNY managers who share this view are keeping silent for fear of being fired. The Regents' suspicions are spelled out in two letters to CUNY from the Regents' representative, Deputy Education Commissioner Gerald Patton. He asked CUNY to document how it would shift staff, money, facilities and faculty contracts to meet the new demand at community colleges. He | Editorial Observer; The Politics of Remedial Education at CUNY |
1044668_0 | Gerry Adams, the leader of the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, said today that he could not guarantee that the I.R.A. would agree to disarm during the negotiations in the new Northern Ireland Assembly. The I.R.A. said last week, timing its statement for President Clinton's three-day visit to Ireland, that although it found the new Northern Ireland peace agreement a ''significant development,'' it had no plans to disarm. Disarmament will be a major hurdle for the Assembly, a mixture of Roman Catholic and Protestant politicians. The Assembly is charged with putting in effect the accord that was approved by leaders in April and then overwhelmingly approved by voters in the mostly Protestant British province of Northern Ireland and here in the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republic. The hard-line statement today from Mr. Adams, president of Sinn Fein, contrasted with his remarks on the eve of Mr. Clinton's visit, when he emphasized that the sectarian warfare was a thing of the past. But many politicians noted that he had stopped well short of saying that the I.R.A. would never use violence again. Mr. Clinton and Prime Ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Bertie Ahern of Ireland praised his statement last week. But today Mr. Adams returned to the intransigent position of the I.R.A. on disarmament, which has been that it is a matter for the I.R.A. alone to decide. The I.R.A. has an estimated 100 tons of machine guns, mortars and Semtex explosive. The outlawed overwhelmingly Catholic organization has been observing a cease-fire for 14 months. Disarmament is likely to delay the work of the Assembly, even though Mr. Adams is expected to meet this week for the first time with David Trimble, leader of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party and First Minister of the Assembly. Until now Mr. Trimble has declined to talk directly with Mr. Adams, saying he doubts that Sinn Fein and the I.R.A. are serious about working for a lasting peace settlement. The sectarian warfare has killed more than 3,200 people in Northern Ireland in the last 30 years. Today, as Mr. Adams stuck to the I.R.A. hard line, Mr. Trimble made comments that appeared to soften his position, slightly. Mr. Adams, in an interview with Irish national radio, said Sinn Fein's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, would discuss the issue with the disarmament commission created in the April agreement, but that this did not mean that | I.R.A. Cannot Guarantee Disarmament, Adams Says |
1044614_1 | will find evidence -- or whether a Federal court will even permit access to Netscape's archives -- remains to be seen. What is certain is that Netscape's ''Bad Attitude'' files are typical of the level of candor that high-technology employees often are allowed. Netscape adopted the ''Bad Attitude'' concept from Silicon Graphics Inc., which has an internal E-mail list of the same name. Apple Computer's employees, meanwhile, can post to a wide-ranging discussion called Can We Talk, while the At-Home Network has the Attitude, Cnet has Spam, and Starwave lets employees E-mail anonymous suggestions and complaints to the company's president. ''The people are so bright and creative,'' said Kandis Malefyt, Netscape's senior vice president of human relations. ''The worst thing you can do is snuff out their opinions.'' Managers and employees alike say the discussion groups serve two key purposes. Foremost, they are a way to let employees vent frustrations, or as one Bad Attitude veteran put it, ''for catharsis and telling the truth without fear of reprisals.'' They also enable executives to gauge the sentiments of the rank and file -- and, if they choose, to mollify those feelings. For instance, Netscape's Bad Attitude became so inflamed two years ago when the company's chief executive, Jim Barksdale, decreed that employees could not bring dogs to work that the company decided to change its policy. The impact can be more substantive, too: earlier this year, Netscape changed an E-mail feature of its Netcenter portal site after employees complained about it on Bad Attitude. Last Christmas, Cnet announced that employees would be allowed to invite a date to the company holiday party. Days later, the company rescinded the offer, saying that employees would have to pay $45 to bring a guest. ''Everyone went completely up in arms and started ranting about it over Spam,'' said Jan Fleischer, managing editor of Cnet Game Center, a site devoted to video game news and reviews. ''Finally the executive staff stepped in and said: 'We're taking this back. Everyone please come and please bring a guest.' '' Karen Wood, a spokeswoman for Cnet, said that the company paid close attention to Spam, in part to take the company's pulse. This does not mean that any and all commentary is acceptable. During the Christmas party incident at Cnet, one employee sent repeated, angry E-mails not just to Spam but to another company-wide message area. In response, | Technology; At many computer companies, the most candid criticism emerges from employee E-mail forums. |
1046499_0 | In historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem yesterday, the Rev. Calvin O. Butts 3d drew embarrassed titters from his congregation as he urged the men and women in the pews who may be having extramarital affairs to sidle up to their paramours on the sidewalk after services, end the relationship and ask for forgiveness. ''As we watch the President, we see each other, we see ourselves,'' Mr. Butts told his congregation, to growing applause. ''Each one of us suffers from our own blemishes, our own envy, our own backbiting, our own meanspiritedness. Have mercy, oh, God.'' In sermons explicit or indirect, in tones both angry and mournful, members of the clergy across the country this weekend struggled to offer their congregations some guideposts to make sense of the Presidential morality tale unfolding in Washington. In a broad diversity of churches of many denominations, conservative and liberal, large and small, ministers emphasized the theme of forgiveness, saying no one is free of sin, and that only God has the power to judge, to forgive and to redeem. ''God loves Bill Clinton,'' said the Rev. Darrell E. Mount, pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church in downtown Denver. ''And Hillary. And Monica. And Chelsea. God loves each one of those persons caught in this lost situation.'' With a few exceptions, clergy members refrained from calling for the impeachment or the resignation of President Clinton. Most denounced Mr. Clinton for his adultery and for demeaning his family, his office and the nation. But some ministers also chastised the independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr for issuing a sexually salacious report, the public for devouring it, news organizations for circulating it and politicians who appear to be rushing to judgment. ''We pray for the moral discernment of the media that knows sexual details can increase ratings,'' preached the Rev. Brenda Stiers, executive minister of the Riverside Church in Manhattan. ''We ask you to restrain us from having an immediate political reaction and instead take us to the deep recesses of our hearts where moral decisions are made.'' This past weekend happened to fall at a time when both the Christian and Jewish liturgies are focused on themes of repentance and forgiveness. The Roman Catholic lectionary for yesterday took up the story of the wayward Prodigal Son who spends his inheritance on prostitutes and yet is forgiven. Jews on Saturday night celebrated the Selichot service, a midnight | Guidepost From Country's Pulpits: The Power to Judge Belongs to God |
1046508_2 | week, the first time that leaders of the two traditions had done so in more than 75 years. On Monday in Belfast, the Northern Ireland Assembly will sit for the first time, a major step in the fulfillment of the Northern Ireland peace settlement. Structured under a power-sharing formula, the legislature was created by the accord negotiated over 26 months and concluded on Good Friday, April 10. Dundalk is a bustling provincial town with storefronts in lively colors and corner pubs that ring with hearty sounds of blarney. People driving along congested Clanbrassil Street trade friendly banter with passers-by. Towns in the North bear legends and murals celebrating heros of the sectarian struggle, but the banners here say only, ''Dundalk celebrates 40 years of tidy towns -- Beauty dies where litter lies.'' Once a center for brewing, shoe manufacturing and building railway rolling stock, Dundalk has shared in Ireland's new prosperity with multinational firms like Xerox and Panasonic establishing factories here. Dundalk was brutally reminded of its old role in the Northern Ireland struggle by the Omagh killings, though, when responsibility for the bombing was claimed by renegade republican paramilitaries called the Real I.R.A., organized from here. ''Here we go again,'' Mr. O'Neill remembers thinking along with his shock and revulsion. ''Everyone's going to blame Dundalk.'' The Real I.R.A., made up of former members of the Irish Republican Army unhappy with its cease-fire, viewed the peace settlement as a sellout of republican ideals and set out to undermine it with violence. Police officials have identified its military leader as Michael McKevitt, 49, a Dundalk man who once was the quartermaster general in charge of the I.R.A.'s vast arsenal. The deputy chairman of the group's political arm, the 32-County Sovereignty Committee, is his common-law wife, Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, 40, the sister of Bobby Sands, who died in a prison hunger strike that drew international attention and is viewed by many republicans as a martyr. The McKevitts live in Blackrock, three miles out of town on Dundalk Bay, and they run The Print Junction, a photocopying, picture-framing and souvenir shop downtown. In the days following the bombing, people tacked protest notes onto the store door and stood in vigil outside. The couple complained to a local priest that they were being harassed and that they feared for the safety of their three children. They have not been spotted here for the last three | After 29 Die in Bombing, Old Haven Of I.R.A. Turns Its Back on Bloodshed |
1046489_1 | it has a meandering stream, steep gorges and glistening pools -- all intended to give the impression of a walk in the Adirondacks. Like the Ramble in Central Park, the Ravine is the dark, secluded, mysterious counterpoint to adjacent open vistas. All this was fashioned in the 1860's and 1870's from nondescript farmland. ''Though you hate to say it, Olmsted and Vaux might have been the first Walt Disney,'' said Tupper W. Thomas, the administrator of Prospect Park. ''They created an experience of nature that was not natural. Originally, there were just kettle ponds here. They made lakes, rivers and springs. They made a forest.'' But their achievement inexorably deteriorated. Within a few decades their delightful rustic bridges and shelters, built with rough-hewn logs, were battered by overuse; ultimately they were replaced with utilitarian concrete. The steep mountainlike slopes fostered terrible erosion, as hillsides became rock-hard. Some of the exotic plants chosen by Olmsted to give the area a tropical feel proved disastrous. A 1960's policy of removing ground cover and smaller vegetation and planting grass instead hastened the erosion. The restoration has so far involved the planting of 7,000 shrubs, 12,000 trees and 161,000 smaller plants. More intriguingly, steps, waterfalls and streams were painstakingly reconstructed. Since the park's original plans were destroyed in the 1930's, this had to be done on the basis of historical photographs. Each rock, from huge boulders to smaller stones, was numbered. Beyond this, the preservationists read essays and other writings by Olmsted and Vaux, trying to fathom their intentions. ''On the eve of the 21st century, this is bringing the 19th century back to Prospect Park,'' said Henry J. Stern, the Parks Commissioner. ''It's retro, but beautiful.'' Now, nature is being asked to take its course. Since last spring, verdant shrubbery around waterfalls has made them almost exactly resemble 19th-century photographs of the park. This is the landscape people are beginning to visit. Tours will be at 1 and 3 P.M. on Saturdays and Sundays through November, and if the weather is warm, into December. Then, the area will be closed again. Maybe there will be more tours in the spring. The ongoing work is being financed principally by Howard Golden, the Brooklyn Borough President. He suggested the current viewings will build further support. ''Now, after more than two years behind closed fences, the forest has been reopened so the millions of visitors to | Prospect Park's Ravine Inching Closer to Past |
1046512_0 | INTERNATIONAL A3-11 Irish Border Town Finds A New Faith in Peace Dundalk, an Irish town near the border with the North, once harbored so many I.R.A safe houses that the police called it ''El Paso.'' But it is rejecting its violent past and is being cited as an emblem of what is happening throughout the island, where people are daring to put their faith in a political solution to the conflict that has divided Catholics and Protestants for generations. A8 Optimism After Bosnia Election International officials called weekend elections in Bosnia a success and a tribute to the country's progress toward democracy. They said moderate leaders might have done better than expected by Western diplomats, who worried that extreme nationalists blamed for blocking peace efforts were gaining ground. A3 Outlook Brightens for Kohl Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union won a decisive victory over the Social Democrats in statewide elections, raising Chancellor Helmut Kohl's prospects for re-election. The results were a setback for Mr. Kohl's Social Democratic challenger for chancellor. A3 New Tensions in Iran Gunmen unsuccessfully tried to kill a top Iranian official, Mohsen Rafiqdoust. The attempt added to the tensions between Iran and neighboring Afghanistan and was the latest in a series of attacks on prominent Iranians, including the assassination last month of a former prison director, Assadollah Lajevardi. A8 Unrest on Oslo Anniversary The fifth anniversary of the Oslo peace accords was marked with a third day of unrest and Israel's closure of the West Bank and Gaza. The events have complicated efforts by Dennis Ross, the United States envoy, to restart talks, and added to Israeli fears of terrorist attacks. A8 Ritual Protests in Cambodia The rowdy protests that have paralyzed Cambodia's capital for the last week began to take on a ritual flavor as political leaders took up postelection bargaining. More than 10,000 pro-Government demonstrators marched in the morning; thousands of others marched against the Government in the afternoon, until police officers fired automatic weapons in the air to disperse them. A7 Floods Isolate Mexican State The coastline of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas was immersed in turbid brown water and dozens of hungry communities remained cut off from food deliveries after a week of floods fed by the heaviest rainfall in decades. President Ernesto Zedillo said that not since a 1985 earthquake has damage been so bad. A4 Albanians Riot Over Killing Protesters outraged | NEWS SUMMARY |
1046513_2 | any more acts of violence. In some ways, the fire caught many by surprise, offering a reminder that even the most foreign of conflicts can sometimes be felt closer to home. But tonight, it remained a mystery who might have wanted to make a political statement about Northern Ireland in a small, sedate New Jersey gallery that, with its two main exhibition spaces and rear garden, has often been used by the public since its opening in 1990 as an escape from the city. Mr. Schwartz noted that some of the photographs in his exhibition have been shown in public before, either in smaller solo shows or in group shows, and that they had never provoked any protests. The exhibition is the product of 10 years of work, and captures, in beautiful yet disturbing images, children ages 9 to 16 at rest and play in Belfast in the British-ruled territory of Northern Ireland, which has been beleaguered by decades of violence between the Catholic minority and Protestant majority. Irish people in the United States were also puzzled. Niall O'Dowd, the publisher of The Irish Voice, a weekly newspaper, said he could not recall an incident in this country in which an Irish exhibition or event was disrupted for political reasons. ''Considering the tremendous ground swell for peace, when there's more hope than ever,'' he said, ''something like this is completely mystifying.'' Mr. O'Dowd added that he could not imagine how the fire could have been related to the topic, which he said was not particularly controversial. The pictures reflect the complicated reality of a life in Belfast. In one, a child makes an obscene gesture at a British paratrooper; in another, a child smiles at a paratrooper, who smiles back.. In others, youths play with guns and wear ski masks. To accentuate the emotional impact of the photographs, the gallery's window featured empty bullet casings and an assortment of children's toys -- a Lego piece, crayons, sneakers. But like the photographs, those items, too, were damaged. Before the opening reception planned for today, the exhibition had been the subject of articles in several newspapers, including The Daily News, The Star-Ledger of Newark, The Jersey Journal and The Hudson Current, a local weekly. The Schwartz photographs had attracted more attention, perhaps, because they had won the gallery's first-ever national contest, said Stephan Shedrowitz, director of exhibitions and an owner of the | Suspicious Fire Burns Exhibit On Ulster Strife |
1046479_0 | A new study of elite colleges provides striking confirmation of the success of affirmative action in opening opportunities and creating a whole generation of black professionals who are now leaders in their fields and their communities. No study of this magnitude has been attempted before. Its findings provide a strong rationale for opposing current efforts to demolish race-sensitive policies in colleges across the country. The study has been published as a book, ''The Shape of the River'' by William Bowen, former president of Princeton University and now president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard University. It draws on data compiled by the Mellon Foundation that closely tracked the academic records, careers and attitudes of 30,000 students of all races who entered 28 elite public and private colleges and universities in 1976 and 1989. The study looks at very selective colleges because it is primarily at these institutions that race-sensitive admission policies are an issue. ''Race sensitive'' means considering race as one factor among many others, like grades, test scores, extracurricular activities, where a student comes from and alumni connections, in determining admissions. The analysis focuses mostly on black-white comparisons because African-Americans have been at the heart of the debate and because they provide a better data pool than other minority groups. The evidence collected flatly refutes many of the misimpressions of affirmative-action opponents. For example, black students who were admitted to the most selective schools with S.A.T. scores that were lower than those of their white counterparts, instead of becoming more discouraged by keener competition, had higher graduation rates than blacks who had the same test scores but went to less-competitive schools. Instead of spreading racial resentment, diversity-enhancing policies were highly valued by both blacks and whites as being important to their college experience and helpful in their jobs. Even in academic majors, the stereotype of black students is wrong. Less than 3 percent of blacks pursued a major in ethnic studies. Blacks and whites majored in engineering and the hard sciences in the same proportions. Still, the data also showed that black students tended to earn lower grades than whites with the same S.A.T. scores and graduated at a lower rate, gaps that colleges still need to address. Perhaps most impressive is how well the African-American students performed after college. Instead of becoming demoralized by the boost of affirmative action, they | The Facts About Affirmative Action |
755281_1 | expects to know within a few weeks whether the data can be used to reveal global climate conditions. Dr. Michael L. Exner of the atmospheric center, the project manager, said the new satellite would look for G.P.S. satellite radio signals grazing Earth at the moments when the satellites sending and receiving signals were nearly hidden from each other by the planet. The signal will be measured as it slices through the atmosphere from one satellite to the other. The purpose is to use the radio beam as a probe of the atmosphere to measure temperatures at altitudes from the ground to about 80 miles high. If the system works, said Dr. Benjamin M. Herman of the University of Arizona in Tucson, a galaxy of 50 to 100 midget satellites could be launched, providing hundreds of atmospheric measurements each day over every part of the globe, including remote oceans. "During the last 30 years," Dr. Herman said, "mathematical models of the atmosphere have become more and more sophisticated and useful, and the power of the computers needed to explore these models has increased at a staggering rate. What we lack in our study of climate and weather prediction is data -- real measurements of temperature and other conditions all over the world. "As it is," he said, "global air temperatures are measured mostly by balloon-borne instruments or by satellite-borne radiometers, which measure infrared and some other forms of radiation." These measurement methods are spotty, covering only small, widely scattered regions at a time. The basis of the system that may evolve from the G.P.S./MET satellite experiment is a fairly simple physical phenomenon. Light and some other forms of radiation, including microwaves, are refracted, or bent, when they pass at an angle from one medium into another medium of higher or lower density; for example, a light beam is refracted as it passes from air into a glass lens or prism. Similarly, the microwave signals emitted by G.P.S. satellites are refracted when they pass at an angle from the vacuum of space into the dense atmosphere. The amount of bending a beam undergoes when it is refracted by air depends on the air's density, which is mainly a function of pressure, which is highest at the surface of the earth, and temperature. The cooler the air is in a region of atmosphere, the more a beam of microwave radiation from a G.P.S. | Small Satellite May Read Atmospheric Temperature |
758426_1 | of the French presidential election on May 7 has taken a sharp turn to the right. A8 Argentina is trying to come to grips with its tortured past. A5 Hutu refugees in Rwanda expressed hope for the future. A9 Turkey said its military operation in Iraq was a success. A13 La Laguna Journal: A proposed salt plant threatens whales. A4 National A16-23, B6, D24 THE COURT OVERRULES CONGRESS The Supreme Court ruled that Congress acted beyond its authority five years ago when it made possession of a gun within 1,000 feet of a school a Federal crime. A1 NEW ANTI-TERRORISM MEASURES President Clinton proposed easing the ban on military involvement in law enforcement to let it help investigate crimes involving chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. A1 HATRED VIA THE RADIO WAVES In the past decade, shortwave radio has become a vital tool of extremists for organizing and for airing anti-government views. A1 INTERNET BOMB-MAKING RECIPES Weeks before the bombing, human rights groups noticed a surge in communications traffic on the Internet about bomb-making. A22 HOW WAS THE BOMBING FINANCED? Federal agents have begun pursuing a trail of money left by the suspected bombers, law-enforcement officials said. A20 A FORESHADOWING OF VIOLENCE In a letter to a newspaper in 1992, the Oklahoma City bombing suspect suggested that violence might be the only way to change things. A20 A MOMENT OF SILENCE TO MOURN In Oklahoma City and around the nation, one minute of silence was observed to mourn and remember the victims in the bombing. A21 FUTURE DIRECTOR VOWS CHANGE John Deutch, nominated to be the next Director of Central Intelligence, pledged to change the agency "down to the bare bones." A1 A DISPUTED VIAL Lawyers for O. J. Simpson put their microscope on the garbled testimony of a junior evidence collector regarding a vial of Mr. Simpson's blood. A16 SENATE BUDGET TALKS STALLED The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee postponed his first meeting on next year's budget to line up the votes he needs. A18 'WE WERE TERRIBLY WRONG' Robert McNamara, an architect of Vietnam policy under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, apologized for the tragedy of Vietnam. A16 RISKS FOR TEEN-AGE MOTHERS A new study says biological factors may be an important reason that teen-ager girls who become pregnant have a higher risk of premature babies. A23 WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE While 1 in 5 working women holds a | NEWS SUMMARY |
758489_0 | The Toyota Motor Company said yesterday that companies in the Toyota group would increase purchases of tires and batteries from the United States but denied that the decision was made because of pressure from the White House. A spokesman for the company, which is Japan's largest car manufacturer, said 33 of the Toyota group's automobile-component subsidiaries would import tires made by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and batteries made by Delco Delphi Automotive Systems, a unit of the General Motors Corporation, by the end of this year. Eight subsidiaries have been importing Goodyear tires since the end of last year, and more than 20 companies in the group already use batteries made by Delco Delphi, the spokesman said. (Dow Jones) | International Briefs; Toyota to Step Up Purchase of U.S. Parts |
753280_3 | on existing equipment that moves huge volumes of air already. Ms. Nichols of the E.P.A. said it might be possible to paint the catalyst onto the radiators of existing cars, rather than apply it only as new cars are built. To work best, though, it would require some changes in cars. Radiators and compressors come into contact with huge volumes of air when a car is moving or a fan is running. Dr. Terry Poles, an Engelhard engineer, said the best method would be to reprogram a car's fan to run in peak ozone periods, even if the car was parked. Ms. Nichols said home and office air conditioners could be coated, too. But the Federal Government might find it easier to force the change on car makers. The Federal limit for ozone is 120 parts per billion, but in Los Angeles it can hit 200. Violations elsewhere are less severe and less frequent. According to an Engelhard-commissioned study by Science Applications International, in Los Angeles at peak ozone hours about 10 percent of the area's cars are on the road. If all those had the catalyst, the ozone peak would decline by 1.3 parts per billion; if parked cars worked at it too, the ozone peak would decline by 4.5 parts per billion. That pollution reduction is larger than what California would gain from switching to reformulated gasoline, Engelhard said, and compares favorably in cost with other pollution-control methods. The national standard for carbon monoxide is 9 parts per million, but some cities record concentrations around 12 parts. Engelhard said its process could knock off 1 or 1.5 parts per million. The key to the system is the catalyst, a material that encourages a chemical reaction. But in contrast to the catalysts Engelhard already supplies for cars, this one works at a very low temperature. Dr. Poles said the new catalyst would be "easily accepted by the public," since it would hardly be noticed. By contrast, some motorists complain bitterly about reformulated gasoline, and car makers have their doubts that electric cars, another clean-air strategy, will win market approval. Engelhard said that it had discussed the idea with only one domestic car maker and that the manufacturer was not ready to say whether it supported the idea. A spokeswoman for the Ford Motor Company said yesterday that the company did not have enough information on the process to comment. | New Catalytic Process Would Let Cars Eat Ozone |
753351_0 | Hoping to broaden support for the indefinite extension of a treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, the Security Council is expected to adopt a resolution early next week pledging help to countries threatened or attacked by a nuclear power. The five permanent Security Council members want to approve the resolution before the opening on April 17 of a critical conference on the future of the pact, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But the resolution may fall short of security demands made by leading countries of the developing world. The draft now being circulated gives assurances of assistance in case of nuclear attack only to countries that have signed the treaty. That would rule out support for Brazil, India, Chile and Pakistan, for example, because they are among more than a dozen countries refusing to join the pact. In the form now being discussed, the resolution does not bar the use of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear countries. But to allay fears on this point, the resolution will incorporate a reference to statements from the five countries that acknowledge having nuclear weapons -- the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia -- giving a commitment not to use them against a nonnuclear country that has signed the treaty unless that country is involved in attacking in alliance with a nuclear power. The United States, Britain, China and Russia made their assurances public today. The French are expected to make an announcement on Thursday. In Washington, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said in the American statement: "The United States reaffirms that it will not use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear weapon states parties to the treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons except in the case of an invasion or any other attack on the United States, its territories, its armed forces or other troops, its allies, or on a state toward which it has a security commitment, carried out or sustained by such a nonnuclear weapon state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state." The nonproliferation treaty, which came into force in 1970 and which arms control experts regard as the cornerstone of all weapons control efforts, has been signed by 174 countries. Representatives of those countries will be meeting here in a four-week session to decide whether the pact will be unconditionally and indefinitely extended, or whether there will be a limited extension with a provision for future reviews. | U.N. Council Seeks Support for Nuclear Pact |
753356_2 | be equally valid for patients treated with less extensive surgery. The results of both studies, being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, are in line with the findings of other similar investigations. The largest of these, a very large multicenter government-sponsored trial, was found to contain some fraudulent data, and the final results of the reanalysis have not been published. In an editorial accompanying the journal articles, Dr. I. Craig Henderson, chief of medical oncology at the University of California at San Francisco Medical School, wrote: "These data should be reassuring to the many patients with cancer who believe that a diagnosis of breast cancer is a death sentence." Speaking to the value of postoperative chemotherapy, Dr. Henderson said in an interview that "the evidence is unequivocal that chemotherapy prolongs survival even though it may not necessarily cure the disease." Still, the study raised an important question: is postoperative chemotherapy helpful to women whose breast cancers are diagnosed after menopause? The Italian researchers found no survival benefit associated with the kinds and amounts of chemotherapy given to older women in their study. Studies are under way comparing the value of a relatively new drug, tamoxifen. Dr. Dwight Kaufman, deputy directory of the division of cancer treatment at the National Cancer Institute, said the study of breast-conserving therapy "confirms and contributes to the proof that lumpectomy with radiation and mastectomy alone give equivalent long-term results among women with the early stages of breast cancer." Based on these and other findings, he said, "Physicians would be ethically and medically obliged to give women the choice of either procedure and to tell them that whichever they choose it will give them the same odds of being alive years after diagnosis." But there were some differences in the results that might sway a woman to choose one procedure over another. One was in the incidence of cancer recurrence in the conserved breast. In the new study, 18 percent of women had such a recurrence and had to undergo a mastectomy after all. However, their chances of surviving free of disease after the mastectomy were as good as the survival chances for all women in the lumpectomy group, Dr. Jacobson reported. And when compared with women who had a mastectomy initially, those treated with lumpectomy and radiation had half the rate of more ominous recurrences in tissues surrounding the breast, she said. | 2 Studies Equate Treatments Of Early Breast Cancer Cases |
752258_4 | tackle production glitches. Michele Casaril, a 24-year-old machinist, marvels at his mastery of high technology. Mr. Casaril says his boss is nearly as proficient as he is at operating a $125,000 laser device that carves the forms for stamping the Luxottica logo onto the temples of metal frames. Others describe Mr. Del Vecchio as a math whiz. Though he never went to college, he can scan a balance sheet and within seconds spot an error that no one else can find, says Susi Belli, a financial analyst with Luxottica. She adds that he mocks younger workers who use pocket calculators. While the United States remains the biggest market for Luxottica, sales have been growing even faster in Western Europe and the Far East. As a result, the American share of total revenues fell to 44 percent last year from 50 percent four years earlier. That, coupled with the slow but steady expansion of the big optical chains like Lens Crafters, prompted Mr. Del Vecchio's takeover bid. In recent years, Lens Crafters and other chains that stock inexpensive Asian-made frames have managed to capture one-third of the North American market. "We could not let them arrive at a 50 percent share," Mr. Del Vecchio said. "It was a decision to attack." If his takeover bid succeeds, it will thrust Luxottica into retailing for the first time. And this, Mr. Del Vecchio predicted, will increase the company's share of the eyeglass frame market, though he would not disclose his goal. Still, he has had to do some quick damage control among the independent shops that buy most of Luxottica's frames in the United States. Faced with the possibility that their principal supplier, Luxottica, and their main competitor, Lens Crafters, would effectively merge, shop owners revolted. Some canceled orders; others even shipped inventory back to Luxottica. "A lot of people were troubled," said Chris Cannella, the owner of Fairfield Optical in Fairfield, Conn. "It feels like you're feeding the mouth of the guy who is really your competitor." To allay such fears, Luxottica started a big educational effort, shipping materials to its customers to explain what it considered to be the potential advantages of the deal for all concerned. It promised to employ the full weight of the advertising and marketing resources of Lens Crafters to promote sales of Luxottica products everywhere, not just in Lens Crafters stores. Mr. Del Vecchio says he | INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS: An Eyewear King's U.S. Push; In a Hostile Bid, Luxottica's Head Sees Retail Gold |
756484_4 | hiring. Since 1993, Allied Signal Inc. has sought women and minority applicants for 60 percent of the 300 university graduates it hires each year. In the past, the company had no targets, and the number of women and minorities it hired varied greatly from year to year. AT&T Network Systems, meanwhile, has no numerical goals, but managed to hire minority applicants for 8 of its 18 M.B.A. slots in 1993 and 9 of 24 in 1994. "Top-tier minority candidates on leading university campuses are getting more job offers than whites and are receiving higher starting salaries," said Ms. Hanigan, an expert in college recruiting. That is no surprise. In 1991-92, blacks were awarded just 4.7 percent of the master's degrees in business and 2 percent of the advanced engineering degrees. Blacks make up about 12 percent of the population. For jobs above entry level, most big companies routinely instruct executive recruiters to find minority and women candidates. Larry Hollins, whose Chicago-based search firm specializes in minority recruiting for jobs paying at least $70,000, reported that his business was "much stronger than it was five years ago." He added, "The larger the company, the stronger the outreach." These efforts seem to be working. Although no overall statistics exist for hiring by the nation's large companies, the experience of Korn/Ferry International, a search firm that places thousands of senior managers each year, provides some evidence. In the year that ended on March 31, 1993, Korn/Ferry filled 13.3 percent of its United States searches with women and 2 percent with nonwhite men. In the 12 months that ended in March, the tallies will be about 18 percent women and about 4.8 percent nonwhite men. But for both companies and qualified women and minorities, the real problems begin after hiring. Mr. Hollins regularly hears that "the same support systems that exist for white men are not in place" and that "the informal mentoring doesn't take place." Women and minority workers feel isolated and sometimes face blatant discrimination. Dee A. Soder, a psychologist specializing in executive coaching, said that many companies continued to refuse to put women and minority workers in the jobs they needed in order to advance. "They let men take cracks at new and risky things, but they are less likely to do that with women and minorities," she said. As the just-released Federal Glass Ceiling Commission report showed, not many women | Some Action, Little Talk |
756673_4 | exports were up. Trade with the industrialized countries -- Japan and Western Europe -- improved." Mr. Sinai said that normally such strong improvement in trade figures would have produced a sharp rebound in the dollar. But he said that the dollar had been weighed down by fears that a trade crisis could erupt over Washington's demand that Tokyo increase imports of American cars and parts. Exports in February, seasonally adjusted, rose to their second-highest level ever, climbing to $62.4 billion, up 2.4 percent from January. Imports slid 2 percent, to $71.43 billion. The Commerce Department revised downward the trade deficit for January to $11.95 billion, from its original figure of $12.23 billion. That compares with a December deficit of $7.26 billion. Civilian aircraft, a category that is especially volatile, accounted for the biggest jump in exports in February, rising to $1.19 billion from $525 million a month earlier. Exports also increased in telecommunications, consumer goods and food and beverages. Probably the worst news in the February report was the soaring trade deficit with Mexico, which was aggravated by Mexico's new austerity budget and the 43 percent drop of the peso against the dollar since devaluation on Dec. 20. The deficit with Mexico jumped to $1.25 billion in February, from $863 million in January. In December, the United States had a $19 million trade surplus with Mexico. Many economists predict that the trade deficit with Mexico will balloon to $15 billion this year -- a far cry from the positive trade picture depicted by the Clinton Administration when it was campaigned for the North American Free Trade Agreement in the summer and fall of 1993. On the positive side, the trade deficit with China narrowed to $1.91 billion in February, down from $2.72 billion in January. The deficit with the 15-nation European Union shrank to $122 million, from $1.03 billion in January. There was strong improvement in the trade balance with other industrial centers of Asia, including Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore, with the United States recording a $612 million surplus, compared with a $1.5 billion deficit in January. Laurence H. Meyer, who runs a St. Louis-based economics consulting firm, said that as a result of the declining trade deficit and jump in exports, economic growth in the first quarter would turn out to be 3.5 percent to 4 percent, substantially stronger than the 2.8 percent rate he had been forecasting. | Monthly Deficit In U.S. Trade Falls Sharply, Lifting Dollar |
756148_1 | in Western Europe. In Germany, high-wage families earn about 2.5 times as much as low-wage workers; the number has been falling. In America the figure is above 4 times, and rising. Interpreting these trends requires caution. Inequality rose here in the 1980's in part because the United States created far more jobs -- many low-paid -- than did Western Europe. Low-paying jobs are better than no jobs. Rising inequality in the United States has also been caused in substantial part by middle-class families that moved up the income ladder, opening a gap with those below them. About half of Americans move a substantial distance up or down the income ladder over a typical five-year period. In a mobile society, where workers rotate among high- and low-earning jobs, earnings gaps are less frightening because any given job would be less entrapping. But mobility has offset none of the increased inequality in income. Studies at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University show that mobility in America is not higher than in Germany. Nor does mobility here appear to be higher today than it was in the early 1970's. The best guess about the factor behind burgeoning inequality is technology; the wage gap between high- and low-skilled workers in America doubled during the 1980's. College graduates used to earn about 30 percent more than high school graduates, but now earn 60 percent more. Prof. Sheldon Danziger of the University of Michigan estimates that trends in private pay rates explain about 85 percent of recent increases in inequality; Reagan-Bush tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor explain much of the other 15 percent. But even if government is not the main actor, it could be part of the solution. Changes in the Canadian economy during the 1980's also hit hard at low-wage workers. But there the Government stepped in to keep poverty rates on a downward path. In the United States, poverty rose. House Republicans are now pushing the Federal budget in the wrong direction. At a time when employers are crying out for well-educated workers, the G.O.P. proposes to cut back money for training and educational assistance. America needs better Head Start, primary and secondary education. It needs to train high school dropouts and welfare mothers. The G.O.P. policy would leave the untrained stranded. That would harm the nation's long-term productivity -- and further distort an increasingly tilted economy. | The Rich Get Richer Faster |
754734_1 | project, as Beijing siphoned off virtually all of its earnings. But around the same time Shanghai began work on its subway, the city was permitted to begin spending a large part of its revenue. The city's leaders have responded with a burst of stunningly ambitious projects. In addition to the subway, two river bridges and a major tunnel have been completed and a second tunnel is to be finished by next year. The pace is something akin to building the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges in New York and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels to New Jersey all in five years. A new public library, a modern museum and an indoor stadium are also nearing completion. And those are just the public projects: the thousands of office and residential blocks going up catch the eye of anyone walking around the city. "The speed of it all is amazing," said Roy P. K. Ho, chief representative for Hang Lung (Shanghai) Properties, a developer based in Hong Kong that is building two high-rise office and residential complexes. "In the U.S., there's no way you could get approval in less than a year for a major project like we're doing. No way. But we did that here. It's actually less bureaucratic." One reason is that Shanghai authorities can clear downtown space quickly. They sometimes give residents only a few weeks' notice that they have to move, usually to new housing at the edge of town. More than 200,000 families have been moved since 1990, and city officials say another 200,000 will be moved in the next five years. A second is that the construction projects seem inevitably to benefit a large number of managers in state-run companies and Government officials. While their salaries remain low, and reported cases of corruption are relatively few, their side benefits -- like junkets, cars and banquets -- are ballooning alongside their enormous budgets. Huang Wenzhong, deputy general manager of the Shanghai Construction Group, a state-owned concern with 70,000 employees, said the company's revenues grew by nearly 30 percent last year, to more than $1.2 billion, and should continue at that rate in the coming years. "We need to go even faster," said Mr. Huang, who noted that more than a million laborers are employed in Shanghai building projects. "We were idle for so many years, I don't think many people in Shanghai think we should slow down." Mr. | Shanghai Journal; Free Now to Build, China's Biggest City Binges |
754557_0 | To the Editor: Re your April 4 Science Times article on Terry DeBruyn's work with American black bears: Mr. DeBruyn's decision to hunt black bear with electronic monitoring devices and data collecting equipment, rather than with a lethal weapon, is to be applauded. Game commissions in the North Central states, as well as many game commissions throughout the lower 48, will be anxiously awaiting Mr. DeBruyn's data to help them administer a more successful "black bear management" program. Management of any wild species entails the propagation of a species population by improving its habitat and food resources, collecting thorough sex- and age-ratio data, and determining the extent to which intentional human-inflicted mortality can be tolerated before it hinders a species' breeding population for the following year's hunting season. The day Mr. DeBruyn can effectively communicate to his habituated bear subjects that "humans and a pack of barking dogs are to be feared at all costs -- otherwise, your life will be in grave danger" will complete Mr. DeBruyn's conversion circle and perhaps reconstruct the bond of trust we humans have broken time and again with these magnificent, intelligent, sentient beings. Mr. DeBruyn is doing American black bears a great disservice to teach them to trust him. The data he collected at the expense of their trust will only lead to the increased shedding of their blood in the name of trophy hunting. LESLIE G. PORTER President Delaware Action for Animals Wilmington, Del., April 5, 1995 | Bears Shouldn't Learn to Trust Humans |
755466_2 | to pollute almost at will. Columbus, Ohio, documented how a simple plan to pave a parking lot behind its maintenance garage turned into a more than $2 million toxic waste cleanup after trace levels of antifreeze and other contaminants were found in the soil. Such examples became the fuel for a political freight train to rewrite environmental laws. The most baffling aspect of the Congressional debate has been the virtual silence of the Clinton Administration, which took power at least in part on the popularity of the message in Vice President Al Gore's book, "Earth in the Balance," that rescuing the environment should be "the central organizing principle for civilization." All the Administration's talk of bold steps to raise energy taxes, to reduce damage from mining and grazing on Federal lands and to give environmental improvement equal status with economic gains is only a distant memory now. The White House was slow to put its team into place, and opponents on Capitol Hill sensed its lack of resolve. And the Administration's languor has brought at best only muted protest from the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and other major groups. The leadership vacuum among conservationists in Washington is being filled quickly by local and regional groups, many of them professionally staffed and bursting with ideas at odds with the national groups'. In the Pacific Northwest, the Native Forest Council is calling for an end to timber cutting in the national forests. The Gulf Coast Tenants Organization in Louisiana is fighting pollution problems affecting minority groups in urban centers of the South. The movement of authority and ideas from mainstream environmental groups to regional and local organizations has made for a much richer debate. For instance, conservative free market organizations have joined with liberal policy centers to identify and challenge the tax breaks and subsidies for agriculture, energy, transportation, and construction. These groups assert that any chance of progress is hopelessly gridlocked because of contradictory incentives. While policies for environmental protection are mostly punitive, the Government rolls out billions of dollars to encourage development and industrial activity that add to the deficit and wreak havoc on natural resources. Other groups advocate incentives for environmentally useful ideas, a notion tried in the 1970's and largely ended in the 1980's. Why not pay farmers to grow kenaf, a quick-growing fiber crop, as the raw material for paper? Why not direct more | As Earth Day Turns 25, Life Gets Complicated |
755442_2 | taught that virtue was life's only good, and that all Greeks except the Cynics were immoral and corrupt. To underscore the point, his successor, Diogenes, shunned his house to live in a big tub, and strode around Athens all day holding a lantern and looking for an honest man. He never found one, but of course, that was the point. The legend of his carryings-on inspired Zeno to found the Stoics, who taught from a big porch, or stoa (hence the name). Stoics believed matters were more or less beyond their control, and might as well be accepted calmly. Given such sour tenets, it is easy to see why cynicism has acquired such an aura of potent ugliness. Indeed, it is so potent that Mr. Gingrich advised Republican candidates in a 1990 strategy memo to associate opponents with the "C" word (along with words like "corrupt" and "bizarre") at every chance. Streisand, Too This may help explain why Barbra Steisand, in a recent speech at Harvard University, called the new Republican Congress cynical for opposing Federal funding for the arts. Or why Mr. Clinton, in Georgia, suggested that the Republicans are waging a cynical campaign to divide the country. Or why Republicans branded Democrats and Mr. Clinton as cynics for depicting their welfare legislation as a plot to deprive schoolchildren of lunch. Or why all of them, and scads more, blame the corrosion of the political process on a cynical press. Cynicism is an enormous millstone for an opponent to wear. A committed cynic would argue that this is precisely why politicians are so fond of the term. It is possible, too, that all of them are all right, and that American cynicism is truly destroying democracy as we know it. Certainly Diogenes's root conviction -- that people can't be trusted -- strikes at the underpinnings of modern politics. Zeno's belief that none of it matters anyway weighs down the superstructure. Both are deadly to a politician like Mr. Clinton, who rode in as the man from Hope. Or to Mr. Gingrich, who has silenced his campaign against a corrupt and immoral Congress to preach the gentler virtues of an Opportunity Society. If that proves true, we are all lost. Not to worry, however; you can't believe anything you read in the papers these days. And even if it is true, there's nothing you can do about it. THE NATION | It's a Despicable Attitude. Good Thing It's All Around. |
755653_0 | I would like to commend the well-written, balanced and generally accurate article on March 19 about the Tuckahoe-Dobbs Ferry-Mark Blount incident at the Section 1 Class D basketball finals and its aftermath ("After Star Players Collide, Angry Talk and Lawyers"). However, the claim of the Tuckahoe supporters that the Dobbs Ferry coach, John Costello, recruited players Mark Blount and Dan O'Connor cannot be left unanswered. Quite simply, the claim is preposterous. Anyone familiar with Coach Costello's 30-plus years of coaching knows that he does not recruit. He was as surprised as everyone else in Dobbs Ferry when Blount and O'Connor enrolled at the high school. What is equally clear is that Coach Costello, like other coaches who do not need to win at any and all costs, would never put opposing players, much less his own players, at the risk of serious injury such as that entailed in Coach Marshall Rieff's defensive tactic. Think of it. The tactic involves putting a player in the path of someone running down court at full speed and unaware, virtually guaranteeing a violent collision. Coach Rieff refers to Blount's injury as an "accident." If he means "accidental" from the perspective of intent, that remains to be seen. But, if he means "accidental" from the perspective of predictability, then Mark Blount's "accident" was as inevitable as each morning's sunrise. In other words, the defensive tactics taught by Rieff and put into practice by his players are inherently dangerous, have no meaningful bearing on the game and should therefore be banned from basketball before another serious injury like Mark Blount's, or worse, occurs. Those responsible for high school basketball rule-making should take notice. LAWRENCE F. MCGOVERN Dobbs Ferry | On Recruitment In Basketball |
755529_5 | a comparable relocation? It helped, of course, that in Domenico Fontana the Pope had an engineer of genius. Following some of Pliny's detailed account of the original transportation of the columns, Fontana had a huge wooden cradle constructed, along with an elaborate system of pulleys, to lower and then move the column over a long road of wooden rollers toward its final resting place. The spectacle could not have been better designed to rouse the Roman citizens, notoriously greedy for excitement. Eighty-three feet and 326 tons of masonry trundling through the streets; the four bronze crabs that had ornamented the Roman setting, in the rear, all the way to St. Peter's; a miracle of urban logistics, wholly worthy of the magnitude of Sixtus's ambitions. No wonder that in the superb volume Fontana published to celebrate his work he congratulates himself for living up to his ancient Roman predecessors. On Sept. 26, 1586, the obelisk's conversion was completed when it was surmounted by a cross and Sixtus's own emblem: the holy star. From then on the Pope became a compulsive obelisk-hauler. With Fontana repeating his own mechanical system for transportation, three more columns were re-erected beyween 1587 and 1589. One had stood before the mausoleum of Augustus; a second, lying shattered beneath layers of rubble and masonry debris, had been brought by the son of Constantine to Rome, and had originally stood in the temple of Amun at Thebes. Over 100 feet tall, it was hauled to San Giovanni in Laterano, where it still stands. And the last also lay broken in the Circus Maximus and was set upright in the Piazza del Popolo in the spring of 1589 and can still be seen there today. The obelisk craze in Rome had just begun. After Sixtus, no Baroque papacy was complete without adopting an Egyptian stone and planting it, like a triumphal standard, in the center of a great architectural display. Pope Innocent X made his column bear his dynastic name -- the Obeliscus Pampfilj -- and set it in the heart of the Piazza Navona, in the shadow of the family church. Pope Alexander VII had Bernini put an obelisk on the back of an elephant in the Piazza Della Minerva. No less than 13 such stones remain in present-day Rome, mute witnesses of the passion to consecrate Latin power with Egyptian myth. Copyright $; 1995 by Simon Schama ART | From Egypt to the Vatican: Giving Old Art a New Cast |
755569_4 | that killed 28 people, mostly suspected terrorists, between 1983 and 1987. The scandal over the death squads is reaching high into the Government, with a former top security official, Rafael Vera, who led the Government's campaign against the Basques for nine years, awaiting trial on a variety of charges. E.T.A. has long had fraternal ties with the Irish Republican Army. In some ways, their methods are the same. Both groups collect "revolutionary taxes" from shopkeepers, paint their cause as an anti-colonial struggle and are affiliated with above-ground political parties: Sinn Fein in the case of the Irish Republican Army and Herri Batasuna in the case of E.T.A. In elections, Herri Batasuna usually draws 15 to 17 percent of the vote in the region. But the differences are wide. In Northern Ireland, there is a religious dimension to the conflict, and the Catholics who want to break away from Britain are a minority living among Protestants who do not. In an interview, Prime Minister Gonzalez cited these points and others in asserting that the conflicts are "very different" and that "it's important to remember that the element that they have in common is violence." He said E.T.A. was losing support among the people and collapsing in the face of strong police actions. He said he believed that E.T.A. was turning into a group of gangsters. "The crisis in the Marxist-Leninist ideology is producing a new situation in which probably the activities of E.T.A. are turning into the activities of a mafia and it is destroying itself," Mr. Gonzales said. But similar or not, the idea that the antagonists in Northern Ireland are positioning themselves to sit down at the same table is inspiring to many here. "It's had a tremendous impact, a determining impact," said Jonan Fernandez, founder and spokesman of a peace group called Elkarri, or Together, which grew out of Herri Batasuna over two years ago. "Northern Ireland is not Salvador or South Africa. It's Europe. It's an hour away by plane. We can identify with it. It has a lot of factors in common and it taught us something critical. Mr. Fernandez added: "Here it's always been said that there's nothing to talk about until E.T.A. quits violence. The Irish situation shows there can be dialogue before a total truce. The truce doesn't have to be the starting point. Peace is a process, not just the end result." | Basques Find Inspiration as I.R.A. Talks of Peace |
755722_5 | will write the introduction." The book came into being quietly, in 1965, only to be republished in a 20th-anniversary edition and to have a further revival in 1991, when it excited the attention of the novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, who wrote the foreword for the Italian edition; of the critic Denis Donoghue, who did the afterword (post-Italianate), and of Stephen Jay Gould, the paleontologist, who made it the cause for a long essay, discourse spawning discourse, its subject and result. At 85, Robert Merton speaks quietly. He is in the process of writing 45 papers, which are largely elaborations of ideas in the sociology of science. Over and over again he would refer to his lifelong "amnesia," the fact that his memory is episodic, to what seems to him a distressing extent. I would notice his distress about his memory, even as I myself marveled at its encyclopedic quality, at its marvelous width. But perhaps there was something in the irregular and syncopated way in which he allowed himself to think that made way for what was truly important. I would notice, in the short time that we were talking, that as we spoke he would put a gloss on his thought processes with asides like, "I know I am apparently wandering, but I won't commit infanticide on my thoughts. "I've never felt moved to go to the Sage of Vienna to find out about my amnesia," he remarked. Interestingly, he easily remembers the details of the research on Nobel prize-winning scientists by his wife and colleague, Harriet Zuckerman. With a charm I would come to know as characteristic he tells me that often when he is developing a "new" set of ideas his wife reads over the pages and reminds him that he had written them almost verbatim, sometimes decades ago. And then, sure enough, he will find them, much as he is writing them now -- but at that time unready yet to bear fruit. As I read about the Nobel Prize-winning scientists, there was something that struck me in the patience of the truly great mind to wait for an important problem, a comfort with that period when nothing big had clearly yet imprinted itself on the screen. For it is possible to be waylaid for years, decades even, by problems that are inconsequential. I watch as Robert Merton speaks to me and reasons. He has | A Summation From the Patron Saint of Sociology |
755419_0 | A series of 11 projects -- some planned, some already built -- along the Hudson River waterfront in Hudson County have some environmental activists wondering: Is it a string of local road improvements, or an unannounced "stealth highway"? The activists, including members of the Hoboken Sierra Club, say the road widenings and bypasses add up to a continuous highway from the foot of the Bayonne Bridge to the George Washington Bridge. They fear that a highway could be built without first going through the usual process of obtaining Federal permits and environmental impact studies. State transportation department officials say the road improvements are needed to get people to and from developments in Jersey City and elsewhere. ANDY NEWMAN IN BRIEF | What's in a Road Project: Improvement, or a Highway? |
757668_3 | say they expected nothing less than a strong stance from a church that helped form the national identity and is still an intrinsic part of it. Others argue that the church role in politics belongs to the past and should stay there. All the same, the clergy's activism has not filled empty church services. While 98 percent of Greeks declare themselves to be Orthodox Christians, the majority treat the church as a place for social rituals and go there mainly for baptisms, weddings and funerals. Despite low church attendance, though, a different kind of spiritual interest appears to be growing. Mr. Hajifotis said that in recent years, vocations to the monastic life have started to pick up again, after a long decline. Educated young men are leaving the cities and looking for the contemplative life again, he said, above all in the isolated northern monasteries of Mount Athos. He said precise figures were not available. On another level, there is a broader curiosity, or perhaps nostalgia, for the monasteries. At the Parousia bookstore in Athens, which specializes in ecclesiastical subjects, sales of books on monasticism are up. A biography of Father Paisios, an abbott of Mount Athos who died last year, has become his store's best-seller. "It's young people who buy these books," said George Tsakalos, Parousia's owner. A kind of monastery tourism has sprung up all over the country. Father Timotheos said that a decade ago, perhaps 100 people would stop each weekend at Pendeli to talk to the monks or to attend a service. "Now we have weekends of some 10,000 people," he said. He sees this not as a spiritual revival but as a renewed interest in history. "Of course people now have better cars and buses," he said, laughing. "What we need is a better inner life." At rest in a red velvet chair in the official reception room, Father Timotheos turned his attention again to a favorite topic, eternal Greece. He recalled the recent discussions in the European Union about reducing the number of official languages by dropping tongues like Danish, Dutch and Greek that are spoken by fewer people. He and other priests denounced this as an outrage. "Greek is the mother of European languages," he said. "More than 10 percent of their words are rooted in Greek." And, addressing far-off opponents, he added, "Let them remember that even the word Europe is Greek." | Pendeli Journal; From Greek Church, a Louder Nationalist Voice |
758955_0 | "UNTIL THE FIRST BLOW fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism. . . . We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tin-horn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed." Those words, first published on the editorial page of this newspaper on Oct. 30, 1963, are among the most important written on architecture in this century. Though Penn Station was destroyed, the words mourning its demise have been chiseled into the record of the art they sought to protect. And the spirit behind the words was written into law less than two years later, in April 1965, when the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was created. Now 30 years old, the legislation approving the landmarks commission is itself a landmark, a monument of architecture and urbanism that has endured legal attacks, public grumblings and even the occasionally eccentric excesses of its own advocates. Clearly, the commission has meant more to the city than any building of its time. "New York Saved: 30 Years of Landmarks Preservation," a show on view through July 30 at the Museum of the City of New York, documents a sampling of the nearly 1,000 buildings and 60 historic districts that have received landmark designation in the past three decades. Grand Central Terminal. The Woolworth Building. The Coney Island Parachute Jump. Ellis Island. Ladies Mile. This parade of preservation's greatest hits shows that the movement has been the most influential force toward a civilized urbanism in the past half century. But the importance of the preservation movement extends beyond the fields of urbanism and architectural history. The movement also deserves recognition in the history of ideas. Preservation emerged as a grass-roots movement; it is not usually thought of as a hotbed of sophisticated intellectual discourse. The movement is not, for instance, represented in "Architecture Culture 1943-1968," Joan Ockman's otherwise comprehensive anthology of developments in postwar architecture. Still, preservation gave rise to one of the era's most influential social critiques. It blew an ear-shattering whistle on the ideology of progress. It helped stop the dogma of newer-is-better dead in its tracks. Penn Station was in its last years when I began to explore New York, and I confess that the building did not have the effect on me | Preserving the Shrines of an Age, Not the Spirit |
758964_0 | I have lived in Northport on its harbor since the middle 1960's. Gradually, as time has progressed, we are suffering from more and more pollution. Unfortunately, we can no longer swim in our harbor. I read "Smithtown's Plan for Tires: Incineration" [ April 9 ] and became rather upset. You state that we have a "mountain of tires" that are estimated to be at least two million to four million in number, and as an inexpensive way out they can be shredded and burned by Ogden Martin in the Resource Recovery Plant in East Northport. Further on your article states that it will probably take 6 to 10 years to burn all these tires if they burn five days a week. The plan to remove the tires, as I understand it, is because of the increasing concern of a fire hazard. This would certainly put a massive amount of carcinogenic hydrocarbons in the air for some time. It is felt that the resource recovery plant will be able to burn these tires safely and maintain clear air standards as set by the D.E.C. I have no doubt in my mind that this plant's filtering system will malfunction from time to time. Murphy's Law is universal. This will mean from time to time we will have clouds of cancer-producing hydrocarbons spewed into our air. The estimate of the cost, as it was suggested in the article, for hauling out the tires in 10 months would be a one-time charge of $80 to $100 a taxpayer. This seems to me to be a small price to pay for clean air and safe living. Don't we face enough environmental threats every day? HARRY J. MAYER, M.D. Northport | A Pollution Danger To Burning Tires |
758932_1 | reported to the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates them if serious injury or major damage has occurred. The initial reports are not compiled, according to Nora C. Marshall, a board investigator, because the agency is small, the task would be large and most reports qualify as "incidents" only. Rough figures have been compiled by an independent consultant, Richard L. Gross of Dallas. Mr. Gross, a former pilot who served a year as an investigator on the National Transportation Safety Board, got permission to compile figures from Federal Aviation Administration documents called "Administrator's Daily Alert Bulletin." These bulletins carry a notation: "Information contained herein is based on preliminary reports and is subject to revision." Thus these calculations are based on uncorrected figures. In his compilation, Mr. Gross excluded evacuations in which there were fatalities and evacuations on commuter airlines. He includes only major domestic and foreign airlines. For 1987 through 1993, Mr. Gross found 169 evacuations listed, with the numbers not showing any trend up or down -- 31 was the high, in 1990, and 19 the low, in 1992. In these reports, 16,270 passengers were listed as evacuated, which could represent an average of 96 per evacuation; however, in 46 of the evacuations, the number of passengers was not given. In these seven years' reports, Mr. Gross found 393 minor injuries and 99 major injuries recorded, plus 126 injuries of an unspecified degree, for a total of 618 injuries. However, 44 evacuation reports did not include notation of injuries. As a result of such omissions, Mr. Gross said he considered the figures conservative. "There are a lot of successful evacuations," said Ms. Marshall, an investigator in the survival factors division of the safety board. "Passengers should not feel that everything is going to go wrong when an evacuation is announced." Chuck Leonard of the National Transportation Safety Board office in Parsippany, N.J., said that panic played a role in the recent evacuation; many of the passengers were not fluent in English, and the Spanish-speaking flight attendants may not have been heard. Safety Tips Here are tips for staying safe in the event of an evacuation. Air passengers should dress for comfort and safety. A Federal Aviation Administration leaflet, "Fly Smart," recommends natural fibers -- cotton, wool, denim and leather -- because of the possibility that synthetics may melt in high heat. Clothes should not be too tight or constricting. | Evacuating A Plane Safely |
759299_1 | violent than the rest of the world. If Americans have tended to view terrorism as a foreign phenomenon, they noted, much of the rest of the world has often seen the United States as a nation that indulged a passion for guns and an addiction to violence. Russians commonly blame the proliferation of American movie violence for the spread of crime and street violence, and American incursions into Grenada and Panama prompted many European commentaries on the tenacity of the "cowboy mentality" in American foreign policy. "The fact is that America is dominated by an excess of violence and that conflicts there are far too often resolved with weapons," Stuttgarter Zeitung in Germany editorialized. From a Third World perspective, Cairo's Al Akhbar el Yom expressed the hope that Oklahoma City would serve as a lesson in humility for the powerful states: "No longer will the great powers be able to reprimand small countries and complain that their measures to contain terrorism violate human rights." Indeed, the central question in the aftermath of the Oklahoma blast was how far the world's leading democracy was prepared to curtail civil liberties to combat terrorism. It was a question many other major democracies had already been forced to confront, and many had responded with legislation that nudged up against, or breached, the canons of civil and human rights, usually with the reluctant consent of their populations. Britain's long struggle with the Irish Republican Army calmed after a cease-fire last Aug. 31, but the legacy is bitter. Since it first sent troops into Northern Ireland to counter the militant nationalists of the I.R.A. in 1969, the British Government has tried a variety of measures, with varying degrees of effectiveness. It made even membership in the I.R.A. a crime, and Northern Irish courts were authorized to dispense with juries and the usual rules of evidence in the trials of terrorists. For several years in the early 1970's, I.R.A. suspects could be interned indefinitely without trial, and after that provision was lifted, they could still be held up to a week without being formally charged. Most of the measures were limited to Northern Ireland, but a large bomb explosion in England in 1974 led to the passage of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which the Government itself described as "Draconian" but necessary. Since then, 35 people have been killed in the 20 most serious attacks, and mainland | Overseas, Oklahoma City Bombing Is Seen Through Prism of Experience |
758933_0 | IT is a scene that would not normally be remarkable. Brett Schaffran, who will celebrate his sixth birthday next week, sits at a small white wooden table in his room, surrounded by dozens of stuffed animals and toys, and carries on a conversation. "What's your name?" he is asked. "My name is Brett," he answers, in a somewhat muffled voice. "Say it better." "My name is Brett," he repeats, more clearly this time. "Good! Where do you like to go?" "Castle Park," Brett mumbles, referring to his favorite playground. "Say it better." "Castle Park!" he says clearly and with a smile. What makes this relatively ordinary dialogue extraordinary is the fact that Brett suffers from autism, a severely incapacitating neurological disorder marked by speech and language impairment and by inappropriate ways of relating to people, objects and events. Only a few years ago, Brett was unable to look at his mother in response to his name being called, let alone converse with anyone. The discussion in his room was not idle chatter but part of an intensive therapeutic behavioral-intervention program that Brett takes part in for eight hours a day. Later in the morning, he would identify colors and animals, practice gross motor skills and even practice phonics -- in a curriculum similar in content to that being taught in kindergarten at the local elementary school. But the critical difference is how that material is taught. "Autism is a language- and communication-based disorder," said Melanie Schaffran, Brett's mother. "These children are not motivated to learn the way other children are. They are either not taking in the world the way we do, or somehow the process is disrupted. You have to intervene at some level because they have to learn differently." For Brett, and for many other autistic children who are being taught through behavioral intervention, that approach means breaking each task down to its simplest components, and slowly -- through imitation, repetition and gradual integration -- building on that knowledge. At every step of the way, there are rewards for the child who is learning. The process is slow, but the results are measurable. The breakthrough has been a godsend to Andrew and Melanie Schaffran, who like thousands of other parents of autistic children spent years in frustration trying to find some kind of therapy that would help them reach their child. Unlike other parents, the Schaffrans and seven | Parents Starting School for the Autistic |
752348_0 | Nobuhiru Yamauchi prefers to be called simply Yama. He likes simplicity -- every day for three years, he has been stepping off his 21-foot sailboat, which is laden with his sculpture and paintings and moored at the 79th Street docks, and walking the 10 feet to his workplace: the lineup of wooden sculptures against the fence. But lately, things have been getting more and more complicated. First, a former dockmaster had 20 of his pieces removed from the boat basin parking garage and dumped. Then, he received a letter dated March 23 in which the Riverside Park administrator, Charles McKinney, gave him two weeks to remove his work -- or see it thrown out. On Thursday -- a full week short of the deadline -- Mr. McKinney and a sheriff, armed with truck and staff, removed the remainder of his works, over 30 of them, to be taken to a Parks Department storage area on 105th Street. "I spoke to him yesterday afternoon," Yama said calmly, in his thick Japanese accent. He was standing on his boat Thursday afternoon, staring at his empty work space. "He didn't say anything about a change in the deadline." Mr. McKinney seems to have acted out of exasperation. "When I spoke to him last night," Mr. McKinney said Thursday evening, "it was apparent that he had not yet arranged to move it himself." When asked why the objects were removed before the deadline, he sighed and said, "I've been cooperative with him, but now he's making it difficult." Yama, who came to the United States in 1980, is no stranger to adversity or adventure. He said he once sailed a 27-foot sailboat alone from New York, through the Panama Canal, to Tahiti using only a compass. He was then featured in the local paper there when his boat shipwrecked off a beach. He has since tried to sail his present home, a 21-foot sailboat, to Portugal. Ten days into the journey, he said, storms pounded his craft and destroyed his rudder. He fashioned a substitute out of one of the boat's hatches and returned, bailing water all the way. "This boat is too slow," he explained. "It only travels 30 miles a day." He is quick to add that his is not a capitalist venture, and he practically discourages anyone who tries to hawk his work to others. 'I am not working for money. | Tinkerer, Bailer, Sculptor, Sailor, And Now What? |
752429_2 | of its military uses, Mr. Napolitano said. The sanctions were intended to punish the Serbs for "ethnic cleansing" and for Yugoslavia's refusal to recognize Croatia and Bosnia. The fuel comes to Albania from Italian and Greek companies and enters Yugoslavia through Montenegro. The border between Albania and Montenegro runs through the lake. It is not known exactly what happens to the fuel after that. But diplomats here say they believe that most of it does not remain in Montenegro, which they note has a border with Serbian-controlled areas of Bosnia, as well as with Serbia. The international sanctions monitoring team in Albania, which includes Americans on loan from the customs agency as well as Italians, Belgians and Swiss, receives praise from American and European diplomats for its work. But it has no mandate to stop the trade, only to monitor and report on it. And it is hampered in doing even that by a lack of cooperation from the Albanian authorities, a report by Mr. Napolitano's office says. President Berisha cited steps that his Government had taken to curb the flow of fuel to Yugoslavia. These include requiring gas stations to be licensed and prohibiting trade in oil products within three miles of the lake. Under another new law, Albanian officials must verify that a shipment is intended for a legitimate user, and then notify officials in the shipping country before the vessel is to be allowed to leave its home port. These measures worked for a while to reduce the trade, but it has been increasing again, the sanctions monitors and diplomats here say. A visit to this city makes it obvious that the measures are not being enforced. At least nine of the gas stations that should have been closed because of the three-mile limit are still pumping gas; most of the other stations lie not more than a few hundred yards outside the limit. During the first two weeks in February, nearly 3.5 million gallons of fuel was imported into Albania, including 1.3 million gallons of Jet Fuel-1, Albanian customs documents indicate. During the last 10 days in February, 100,000 gallons a day was taken into northern Albania by truck, the Albanian police have calculated. Western diplomats say the figure is a gross underestimate. Northern Albania has only 1,583 registered motorized vehicles, according to Albania's Institute of Statistics. This country, the size of Maryland, was kept undeveloped | Embargoed Fuel Sent To Serbs via Albania |
752447_6 | applications stuffed in your bookstore bag or posted on a bulletin board. Sure, a card will make it more convenient to buy that plane ticket home. But it will also make it just too easy to buy more CD's and meals out than you can afford. Many students today wind up graduating with college loan obligations plus unpaid credit card balances at interest rates of at least 15 percent. You should also earn as much as you can manage during your college years. Students have always had to consider whether the benefit from a part-time job was worth giving up extra hours of study, extracurricular activities or the occasional frat party. But given the extra loan burden you might bear today, it's worth working as much as possible now to avoid big payments later. If our prospective engineer, for instance, earned an extra $2,000 in each of three summers from a part-time job, it would reduce that $17,125 indebtedness by more than a third and save $22,800 in interest. That would translate into 12 years of payments at $122 a month -- less than the monthly payment over 30 years on the original amount of the loan. To someone just entering college, with no more work experience than a paper route and a burger-flipping job, it's hard to add up what all these numbers mean. But I can tell you from personal experience that even my $87-a-month loan payment felt like a big bite out of a starting reporter's salary in New York City. And it continues to have an impact today. It's not entirely coincidental that the same month I paid off my student loan I was finally able to get myself much further into debt. I'm taking out my first home mortgage. And that extra $87 a month means that I can borrow $20,000 more than I could have if I still had 20 more years to go on my student loan. ss1 Correction: April 9, 1995, Sunday The quiz in the Education Life supplement last Sunday gave an incomplete answer in some copies to a question about Beethoven's symphonies. To the question, "Which symphony has a choral movement; what is this movement's title?" the complete answer is: Ninth; "Ode to Joy." An article in the supplement about repaying student loans misstated the rate for bank fees. It is 4 percent, the same as a direct Federal loan. | Don't Be Lulled by Easy Loans |
752383_1 | as Greenland halibut, taken by Spanish vessels in the Grand Banks' famous "nose" and "tail," which are in international waters. Under a law passed last May, which no one else recognizes, Canada in early March seized one Spanish trawler and diverted it to St. John's, Newfoundland, and cut the net from another. Spain sent patrol vessels into the area to protect its fishermen, and the rest of the world sat back to await a shootout on the high seas. 'Piracy' What it got instead was a high-stakes public relations battle. Canada labored to offer legal justification for its actions and sought to depict itself, through its telegenic Fisheries Minister, Brian Tobin, as a kind of high-minded conservation vigilante. It displayed nets from the commandeered trawler that it said were too finely meshed to be legal. It claimed evidence of a "double log" and a "secret hold" for illegal fish aboard the craft. It said Spain was mindlessly flouting the law and endangering stocks by pulling in fish not yet mature enough to reproduce. The European Union, of which Spain is a part, leaped to its defense. The Spanish ships had every right to be there, officials argued, adding that the so-called "evidence" did not hold up and there were no minimum-size restrictions on turbot. In fact, far from seizing the moral high ground, they said, the Canadians had broken international law, in what the European Fisheries Commissioner, Emma Bonino, likened to an act of "piracy." Behind the furious faxes, press conferences, threats and a lawsuit filed by Spain at the International Court of Justice at the Hague lies an indisputable fact: fishing is big business and the price of fish goes up as stocks go down. New techniques, using satellite tracking and specially designed nets, are more voracious. Fleets keep getting bigger; 30 percent of ships over 100 gross tons are now fishing vessels. Everyone agrees that conservation is essential, but no one wants to be the first to practice it. As one United Nations official put it: "The rule is: he who catches the most first, wins." Spain's huge fishing industry has a powerful incentive to live by that motto. Most Europeans are content with a fish meal once a week, but a Spaniard insists on three. Per capita consumption (nearly 75 pounds a year) is the largest in Europe and the third largest in the world, after Japan | The World; 2 Feuding Nations With Fish Stories |
752462_3 | taxes, repairs, cash reserves and operating expenses. If a co-op falls behind in mortgage payments, the holder of the underlying mortgage can move to foreclose on the building. Generally, though, co-ops are not foreclosed on, even if they have been in default for months, because they would revert to rent-stabilized status, and few buyers would want to own them, not even the holders of the underlying mortgage. WHAT made Hamilton House an appealing buy -- there were three bidders and more than 30 parties that expressed interest in bidding -- is that it was never a rental before it became a co-op; it was built as a co-op. The prospective new owner, Lennard A. Katz of Manhattan, who runs a family real estate business, the Katz Realty Group, believes that the building will fall under the city's rent-stabilization laws for only one or two years -- and only because the developer accepted a Section 421a tax abatement. After that, he believes he can charge market rents. Even if the building were to remain rent-stabilized, though, he believes that the rents would be high enough to make the building profitable. He believes that at the worst rents would be rolled back to the level of the shareholders' last maintenance payments. Maintenance payments in the building currently run from $650 to $1,100 a month. "I'm in for the long haul," Mr. Katz said. The 421a program was authorized by the State Legislature at New York City's behest in 1972 in an effort to stimulate residential construction at a time of recession. It has been used in the construction of more than 67,000 apartments in the city -- the total includes condominiums, co-ops and rental buildings. Harry G. Ryttenberg, a spokesman for the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal in Albany, which oversees rent stabilization in the city, said he was unsure how long or even if the building would qualify as rent-stabilized. "We would have to examine all the circumstances carefully, and our legal department would render an option," he said. AS it now stands, Mr. Katz is expected to take over the building this week and negotiate rents with the shareholders, many of whom have not only lost their equity in their apartments but also have share loans outstanding. Several lenders, according to Mr. Smith, are also calling in their share loans for immediate payment, citing the lack | A Foreclosed Co-op in Brooklyn Becoming a Rental |
757286_20 | us of the burdens of self. "You get the feeling you're not trapped in your own mistakes -- there are larger things at work," he says. "You can see you are caught in a love story like Eros, or you are being a hero in some terrible myth of cleaning the stables." Unlike Joseph Campbell, who intellectually roamed the globe examining the myths of the world and the universal themes found in them, Hillman is unapologetically specific, insistent on the primacy of Greece: "It's the foundation of everything we do. We use the language. Its politics, ethics, science. We can't help but be partly Greek. To write it off as dead white male patriarchy is just a piece of suicide." He believes that much of current psychological thought has become dogma -- damaging dogma -- such as an obsession with the events of our childhood, which he says helps keep us in a childlike state, more concerned with reliving our pasts than addressing the issues of the world. He also wants us to expand our vision beyond our own world, to reconnect with images and stories of the ancient past. "We live in a secular world where all mysteries are called problems." One old idea he wants revitalized is the belief in animism -- that is, the whole world is alive, and all things are ensouled. It is a belief that strikes at the essence of our Western, scientific world view, a view bequeathed by Descartes and Newton that the world is knowable, and mechanistically reducible to its component parts. He says we fool ourselves if we think human beings have transcended the primitive awareness of the spirit inherent in the world. "We are recovering that through toxicology, through radon, through the anxiety that things are emanating," Hillman says. "We do see everything has a potency -- it will give you cancer. It comes out in the pathology." Around lunchtime Margot McLean arrives. McLean, an artist, is 42, a slim blonde with the bubbly manner of Goldie Hawn. They have been companions for more than six years -- shortly after Hillman's 15-year second marriage to Patricia Berry, an analyst, broke up. (He has four grown children from his first marriage.) I ask if he and McLean are soul mates. "No, I don't want to use that word," he says with some distaste. "She's a good friend." They are also collaborators, | HOW THE SOUL IS SOLD |
757265_3 | experts are watching the meeting carefully for signs of how the South African proposal will be received. The Bandung meeting is one of several events outside the conference that could influence deliberations. Another unpredictable factor is the collapse of talks on Thursday between the United States and North Korea on a plan to replace a dangerous gas and graphite nuclear energy system that the North Koreans have used to produce nuclear material suitable for weapons. The conference is expected to decide in the coming week on the rules that will govern voting on the treaty's extension. Arms control experts believe that a secret ballot, an idea vehemently opposed by the United States, could lead to unexpected vote changes under the cover of anonymity. The voting is to take place before the conference ends on May 12. Not all experts are enthusiastic about the South African proposal because they say it does not go far enough in pressing for an end to the production, especially in nuclear weapons nations, of fissile material that can be used for bombs. The nonproliferation treaty, which was signed in July 1968 and came into force in March 1970, allowed the five original countries with nuclear weapons to join as nuclear nations -- though China and France did not do so until 1992 -- while requiring that all others renounce weapons before signing. Most recently, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine were asked to give up the nuclear weapons they had inherited from the Soviet Union and return them to Russia for dismantling when they signed the treaty. Three other countries known to have nuclear weapons technology -- India, Israel and Pakistan -- have refused to sign the treaty. In Pakistan and India, there have been unofficial suggestions that their Governments declare themselves weapons states and join the pact in that category, which would test the intention of the agreement. But that is not likely to happen. Officially, India refuses to join a pact it says is discriminatory, and Pakistan will not join until India does. At the end of the first week of debate, the Campaign for the Nonproliferation Treaty counted at least 92 countries that have expressed public support for the indefinite extension of the treaty. That is a majority of the 178 signers -- 177 plus Yugoslavia, whose right to take part in international organizations is restricted by sanctions. As more attention gravitates toward South | South Africa Emerges as a Force for Extending Nuclear Arms Pact |
757313_4 | feelings are more important than hers. Actually, I do feel like that archetype of female patience, Penelope, the loyal wife, "wasted with longing," whose lot in "The Odyssey" is to worry, to hope, to tend the home fires and keep the wanderer's place ready. Being a mythic creature and no mere human being, she persevered 20 years until Odysseus returned, keeping a houseful of would-be suitors at bay. She spent the time weaving, telling the crowd she'd pick a new husband when her labor was done. At night, she'd undo what she'd woven. I understand it well, now. When you keep to the home front, you pace and you fret, back and forth, back and forth, weaving and unweaving. Your work comes to nothing. Your work is to wait. Adventuring would be much more dignified, much more cleanly satisfying. Is there any doubt who had the more satisfying days? Odysseus, "skilled in all ways of contending," discovering, deciding, deceiving his wide way through the world, hoarding up tales to tell. Or Penelope, going back and forth, back and forth, her every day like the last, trying hard to put off what must have felt at times like an inevitable choice among her unappealing suitors: Self-Pity, Self-Importance, Horniness, Loneliness. All to be slain with ease by Odysseus, if only Odysseus would keep himself safe, if only Odysseus would ever show up. What choice did she have, though? "Love," writes the French philosopher Georges Bataille, "raises the feeling of one being for another to such a pitch that the threatened loss of the beloved or the loss of his love is felt no less keenly than the threat of death. Hence love is based on a desire to live in anguish in the presence of an object of such high worth that the heart cannot bear to contemplate losing it." I read this as the Road Warrior makes her way among the spent shells and the snipers, and it strikes me as eminently true. And Odysseus' whole heroic journey of wonder and conquest suddenly seems an elaborate, futile effort to avoid what Bataille sees so clearly. How much easier, if anguish is around, to be too damned busy to take its call. Once people bind themselves together, is there any freedom, any glory, any adventure that doesn't come at someone's expense? ABOUT MEN David Berreby is a frequent contributor to the Magazine. | The One Left Behind |
757488_0 | SEA CHANGE A Message of the Oceans. By Sylvia Alice Earle. Illustrated. 361 pp. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $25.95. WHEN Sylvia Earle was 3 years old, she stood on a New Jersey beach and fell in love. Fifty-six years later, glorious encounters like that are still in her dreams: "A monstrous wall of green water races my way, hissing, roaring, towering, inescapable, sweeping me into a cascading aquatic mayhem. I am lifted, tumbled, churned, pushed, and fall, gasping, clawing for air. My toes touch sand; a sweet breeze soothes my lungs. I stand, choking, face the next advancing wall, and leap into it, exhilarated!" The little girl who embraced the waves grew up to become one of the most distinguished of the 20th-century explorers who were drawn to what she calls the "indigo wilderness" of the deep seas. A biologist specializing in the ecology of marine ecosystems, Sylvia Earle has been wreathed in honors. She is also an engineer, and a leader in the invention of technology for deep-sea research. From 1990 to 1992 she was chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the first woman to be appointed to the post; there she made the demoralizing discovery that the United States commitment to marine sanctuaries was $11 million a year, while the national parks were receiving $1.4 billion. Above all, Ms. Earle is a joyful master of the calculated risk. Underwater groupies will not find "Sea Change" a treasure trove of personal revelation. It is a moving plea for the preservation of the oceans. Three children, devoted parents and several husbands flicker like damselfish through "Sea Change," glinting occasionally in the light of Ms. Earle's affection, but the domestic balances required by her career are merely acknowledged, not recounted. Nor does she gossip. I have never read a book that took less advantage of a chance to settle scores, or seen so impressive a resume presented with so little self-importance. An oceanographic expedition, like an astronomical one, requires enormous amounts of money and extraordinary technological expertise. It involves years of preparation and later analysis. Ms. Earle has still managed to spend 6,000 hours actually diving, living in underwater research modules, cartwheeling with dolphins, descending to 13,000 feet. She has written about what she found for publications ranging from Redbook to the Occasional Papers of the Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany. Her role model in the | Troubles Waters |
758743_1 | chests experienced a temporary disruption in the pulse generator of the pacemaker. No such interference was noted with cellular telephones that use conventional analog signals. Patients who used digital cellular telephones but did not place them in close proximity to their pacemakers also did not experience any interference, the studies reported. Dr. Carlo cautioned that the results were only preliminary, and that a larger test was warranted before consumers should draw definitive conclusions. The Mayo Clinic study was performed on 30 volunteers, while the Mount Sinai study involved 59 volunteers. Nevertheless, Dr. Carlo said the results "indicate a problem." And yesterday, he announced plans to conduct a larger test, involving three medical centers and several hundred patients, to determine whether digital cellular telephones pose a danger to people with pacemakers. If the phones are found to interfere with the signals transmitted by pacemakers, Dr. Carlo said the research group might recommend redesigning the phones. The preliminary tests were performed by Dr. David Hayes, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and Dr. Roger Carrillo, a cardiovascular surgeon at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Although their tests were not paid for by Wireless Telecommunications Research, both doctors are participating in the group's coming study. For consumers worried about the potential dangers of cellular telephones, Dr. Hayes put forth a simple rule of thumb: "If I had a pacemaker patient call me today and ask, 'Can I use my digital cellular phone?', I would answer, 'Use an analog phone instead.' " Concerns about the effect of cellular telephones on pacemakers first came to light last year in studies performed in Switzerland and Italy. In 1993, a Florida man prompted health fears of another kind involving cellular telephones when he said on a television talk show that his wife had died of brain cancer after using a hand-held phone. No evidence linking the phones to cancer has ever been documented. Representatives of the cellular telephone industry pointed out that normal use of digital phones has not been shown to cause any interference with pacemakers. "We feel very confident that our cellular telephones are safe," said Robert Ratliffe, a spokesman for McCaw Cellular Communications, a subsidiary of the AT&T Corporation and the nation's largest cellular telephone provider. Although Wireless Technology Research is an independent organization, Dr. Carlo said that cellular telephone companies contributed the bulk of the Washington-based group's $25 million research budget. | Cellular Phones May Affect Pacemakers |
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