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792505_5 | by unreality. Mr. Kristol's deeper intellectual journey is conventionally Straussian. Leo Strauss, an immigrant philosopher who taught political theory at the University of Chicago, influenced a whole generation of American conservatives with his often challenging readings of classical texts. Mr. Kristol typically seems less interested in the texts than in what he believes were the political lessons Strauss drew from them. So: modern liberalism is no substitute for the ancient goal of a noble political life; but it is the best we have. Machiavelli unbared this awful truth; Hobbes, Locke and Adam Smith helped dress it up (this collection contains two elegant, Straussian dissections, of Smith and of Machiavelli). In the modern era, however . . . well, Mr. Kristol is unsurpassed at this sort of journalism, so let him continue: "Today, in our academic and intellectual circles, Nietzsche and his disciple, the Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger, are almost unanimously regarded as the two philosophical giants of the modern era. It is important to understand that their teachings are subversive not only of bourgeois society and the Judeo-Christian tradition but also of secular humanism, secular rationalism, bourgeois morality -- and, in the end, of Western civilization itself." What's interesting here is not simply the conventional Straussianism, but the absence of any burning interest in Nietzsche and Heidegger. The same wasn't true of Strauss -- indeed, he was one of the most prominent voices in heralding these two as the "philosophical giants of the modern era." For Mr. Kristol, however, these ideas threaten the bourgeois temperament and its political achievement, most especially in the United States, and so are to be opposed. The instinct is political and very rarely intellectual. For Mr. Kristol, the battle of ideas is instrumental; there is no doubt which ideas he supports (and has always supported), and little doubt that he would ever question their fundamental validity. Hence that awful phrase, "the Judeo-Christian tradition," which manages to insult both faiths at once, and reduce them unforgivably to a question of political expediency. Which brings us to the issue that hovers precariously over this book. To what extent was neoconservatism a genuine intellectual shift, and to what extent was it a rationalization of already strong political currents? The obvious answer is a little bit of both; but insofar as Mr. Kristol was central to it, clearly the latter was more dominant. Which is why it is no | The Right Stuff |
791882_5 | by unreality. Mr. Kristol's deeper intellectual journey is conventionally Straussian. Leo Strauss, an immigrant philosopher who taught political theory at the University of Chicago, influenced a whole generation of American conservatives with his often challenging readings of classical texts. Mr. Kristol typically seems less interested in the texts than in what he believes were the political lessons Strauss drew from them. So: modern liberalism is no substitute for the ancient goal of a noble political life; but it is the best we have. Machiavelli unbared this awful truth; Hobbes, Locke and Adam Smith helped dress it up (this collection contains two elegant, Straussian dissections, of Smith and of Machiavelli). In the modern era, however . . . well, Mr. Kristol is unsurpassed at this sort of journalism, so let him continue: "Today, in our academic and intellectual circles, Nietzsche and his disciple, the Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger, are almost unanimously regarded as the two philosophical giants of the modern era. It is important to understand that their teachings are subversive not only of bourgeois society and the Judeo-Christian tradition but also of secular humanism, secular rationalism, bourgeois morality -- and, in the end, of Western civilization itself." What's interesting here is not simply the conventional Straussianism, but the absence of any burning interest in Nietzsche and Heidegger. The same wasn't true of Strauss -- indeed, he was one of the most prominent voices in heralding these two as the "philosophical giants of the modern era." For Mr. Kristol, however, these ideas threaten the bourgeois temperament and its political achievement, most especially in the United States, and so are to be opposed. The instinct is political and very rarely intellectual. For Mr. Kristol, the battle of ideas is instrumental; there is no doubt which ideas he supports (and has always supported), and little doubt that he would ever question their fundamental validity. Hence that awful phrase, "the Judeo-Christian tradition," which manages to insult both faiths at once, and reduce them unforgivably to a question of political expediency. Which brings us to the issue that hovers precariously over this book. To what extent was neoconservatism a genuine intellectual shift, and to what extent was it a rationalization of already strong political currents? The obvious answer is a little bit of both; but insofar as Mr. Kristol was central to it, clearly the latter was more dominant. Which is why it is no | The Right Stuff |
792377_1 | issues. But given China's strategic and economic significance it would be a calamity for Washington and Beijing to become adversaries again. The Clinton Administration managed the crisis skillfully, with Secretary of State Warren Christopher leading the way. The quarrel erupted last spring after the Administration, bowing to Congressional pressure, issued a visa to Taiwan's President, Lee Teng-hui, so he could visit Cornell University, his alma mater. But the Administration resisted Beijing's contentions that the visa was the only issue between the two countries and that the United States was clearly at fault. The roots of recent tensions go back to China's crushing of its democracy movement at Tiananmen Square, its sales of missiles and other advanced weapons in violation of understandings with the United States, and its offensive trade practices regarding prison labor and copyright piracy. For the past year or more, these problems have been aggravated by political maneuvering in Beijing anticipating the death of Deng Xiaoping. On Taiwan, the original joint communiques and accompanying American legislation governing this issue do not clearly preclude private visits by top Taiwanese officials. Thus the Administration was right to hold its ground on Taiwan, neither apologizing nor promising not to issue a repeat visa to President Lee. Instead, Washington again acknowledged that the issue was a sensitive one for China and affirmed that America's policy as embodied in the joint communiques remains unchanged. China, realizing it had pushed things to a dangerous brink, stepped back. In return, Beijing hopes President Jiang will be invited for a state visit to Washington. The Administration understands, however, that what is needed now is not pomp and ceremony but working talks. These talks need to deal with reports of recent Chinese missile sales to Pakistan and to review enforcement of recent agreements on copyright and prison labor. Washington must also convey its concern over menacing Chinese military exercises in the South China Sea and near Taiwan. The Administration should also continue to speak out in support of the human rights of Chinese citizens, as First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton did at last month's Beijing women's conference. In the past, China suggested that if human rights discussions were not linked to threats of retaliatory sanctions, it might pay them more heed. Relations between Washington and Beijing are still delicate. The Clinton Administration managed to stabilize them without yielding on important principles, not a simple piece of diplomacy. | China: The Squall Passes |
791997_1 | 4,101 clients last year and of those, 700 received job training at Guidance Center Industries. Clients are referred to the Guidance Center Industries by New York State Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilites, from hospitals, schools and doctors. Guidance Center has a budget of $7 million a year financed by the State Department of Mental Health, State Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilites, United Way, private donors and fund-raising efforts. Last year Guidance Center Industries, which has its headquarters at 363 Huguenot Street in New Rochelle, was named the "outstanding rehabilitation program" in New York State in recognition of its pioneering of vocational programs, which were designed for individuals with mental and physical difficulties, and its success in preparing them for jobs in outside businesses. "The changes in our programs in two and a half years have led to 82 outside job placements in 1994, which represents an increase of 105 percent compared to 1993 and a 925 percent increase compared to 1992," Mr. Levine said. "I feel that our success in training and placing the disabled shows that given opportunities, people with mental disabilities don't have to be limited. With the proper training, encouragement and support, they can move into the competitive workplace. And it also instills a new awareness and sensitivity in the general public, when they realize that people with mental disabilities can do a real day's work." One of the Guidance Center Industries' programs is a clerical program, run jointly with Monroe Business College. It covers word processing, office skills and office practices. Former graduates of this program have been placed at the Bank of New York, Ciba and Monroe Business College, Mr. Levine said. Another program, called LAMP (for Landscaping and Maintenance Procedures), placed 17 people in jobs last year. Another program, sponsored by New York State Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilites, is called Fast Pace. "It is actually a departure from the typical programming found in most agencies, and the way it works is similar to an employment agency," Mr. Levine said, adding that under the Fast Pace program Guidance Center Industries only gets a fee from an employer after a client has been on the job for 60 days. "But we offer placement assistance only to people who are disabled in the county." Fast Pace clients represent a diverse group. "We work with individuals who have | Jobs Beyond Piecework for Mentally Disabled |
792420_0 | The "Sunday" pages on Sept. 17 omitted a picture credit with the report about microscope images. The photographs were from a book, "Journeys in Microspace: The Art of the Electron Microscope," by Dee Berger, copyright $; 1995 Columbia University Press, to be published this month. | Correction |
792590_1 | 4,101 clients last year and of those, 700 received job training at Guidance Center Industries. Clients are referred to the Guidance Center Industries by New York State Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilites, from hospitals, schools and doctors. Guidance Center has a budget of $7 million a year financed by the State Department of Mental Health, State Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilites, United Way, private donors and fund-raising efforts. Last year Guidance Center Industries, which has its headquarters at 363 Huguenot Street in New Rochelle, was named the "outstanding rehabilitation program" in New York State in recognition of its pioneering of vocational programs, which were designed for individuals with mental and physical difficulties, and its success in preparing them for jobs in outside businesses. "The changes in our programs in two and a half years have led to 82 outside job placements in 1994, which represents an increase of 105 percent compared to 1993 and a 925 percent increase compared to 1992," Mr. Levine said. "I feel that our success in training and placing the disabled shows that given opportunities, people with mental disabilities don't have to be limited. With the proper training, encouragement and support, they can move into the competitive workplace. And it also instills a new awareness and sensitivity in the general public, when they realize that people with mental disabilities can do a real day's work." One of the Guidance Center Industries' programs is a clerical program, run jointly with Monroe Business College. It covers word processing, office skills and office practices. Former graduates of this program have been placed at the Bank of New York, Ciba and Monroe Business College, Mr. Levine said. Another program, called LAMP (for Landscaping and Maintenance Procedures), placed 17 people in jobs last year. Another program, sponsored by New York State Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilites, is called Fast Pace. "It is actually a departure from the typical programming found in most agencies, and the way it works is similar to an employment agency," Mr. Levine said, adding that under the Fast Pace program Guidance Center Industries only gets a fee from an employer after a client has been on the job for 60 days. "But we offer placement assistance only to people who are disabled in the county." Fast Pace clients represent a diverse group. "We work with individuals who have | Jobs Beyond Piecework for Mentally Disabled |
792539_1 | Town of Harrison is now involved in similar litigation. It has imposed a 90-day moratorium as it tries to write new zoning. Greenburgh decided to take pre-emptive action and craft an ordinance with no court case looming. "I wanted to get the community involved in drafting a new law with the support of the phone company," said Paul J. Feiner, Greenburgh's supervisor. "This approach, as far as I know, is unique. Hopefully we'll be able to meet the needs of the technology companies and not upset residents about the placement of these antennas." Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile Communications and AT&T Wireless, the two licensed providers of cellular telephone service in the county, were both invited to participate in writing the new law. Greg Meese, a lawyer who is rpresenting Nynex, was a member of the committee that drafted the ordinance. Lawyers for AT&T Wireless are now reviewing the latest draft. On Sept. 13, the proposed law was forwarded to the planning board for review. It will then pass it on to the Town Board, along with proposed changes, for approval. The document attempts to regulate the whole spectrum of antennas, including ones used for cellular telephones, radio broadcasts and satellite television. It is based on laws enacted by the cities of Seattle and Portland. It makes a distinction between antennas that only receive and those that transmit, as well as receive, radio waves. Transmitting antennas are usually used for commercial purposes and produce a stronger electromagnetic field. One concern of the communities is the perceived health risk associated with these antennas. They emit electromagnetic radiation, and in some studies the emissions have been associated with childhood leukemia, although no definitive threat to human health has yet been established. "We had to be very careful how we dealt with that," said Catherine Lederer-Plaskett, a resident who helped write Greenburgh's ordinance. "I happen to believe that a health risk will be established someday. But at the same time the technology is getting smaller and more precise all the time, that it may eventually level itself out." When the Town of Mamaroneck amended its zoning to deal with this issue, it scrupulously avoided the health question. "We didn't say there was a health risk," said Supervisor Elaine Price, "just that the emission levels should be within acceptable levels." Greenburgh's proposed law tries to minimize the risk by restricting transmitting antennas to nonresidential zones, | In the Region: Westchester; Greenburgh Drafting a Cellular-Antenna Ordinance |
792208_1 | issues. But given China's strategic and economic significance it would be a calamity for Washington and Beijing to become adversaries again. The Clinton Administration managed the crisis skillfully, with Secretary of State Warren Christopher leading the way. The quarrel erupted last spring after the Administration, bowing to Congressional pressure, issued a visa to Taiwan's President, Lee Teng-hui, so he could visit Cornell University, his alma mater. But the Administration resisted Beijing's contentions that the visa was the only issue between the two countries and that the United States was clearly at fault. The roots of recent tensions go back to China's crushing of its democracy movement at Tiananmen Square, its sales of missiles and other advanced weapons in violation of understandings with the United States, and its offensive trade practices regarding prison labor and copyright piracy. For the past year or more, these problems have been aggravated by political maneuvering in Beijing anticipating the death of Deng Xiaoping. On Taiwan, the original joint communiques and accompanying American legislation governing this issue do not clearly preclude private visits by top Taiwanese officials. Thus the Administration was right to hold its ground on Taiwan, neither apologizing nor promising not to issue a repeat visa to President Lee. Instead, Washington again acknowledged that the issue was a sensitive one for China and affirmed that America's policy as embodied in the joint communiques remains unchanged. China, realizing it had pushed things to a dangerous brink, stepped back. In return, Beijing hopes President Jiang will be invited for a state visit to Washington. The Administration understands, however, that what is needed now is not pomp and ceremony but working talks. These talks need to deal with reports of recent Chinese missile sales to Pakistan and to review enforcement of recent agreements on copyright and prison labor. Washington must also convey its concern over menacing Chinese military exercises in the South China Sea and near Taiwan. The Administration should also continue to speak out in support of the human rights of Chinese citizens, as First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton did at last month's Beijing women's conference. In the past, China suggested that if human rights discussions were not linked to threats of retaliatory sanctions, it might pay them more heed. Relations between Washington and Beijing are still delicate. The Clinton Administration managed to stabilize them without yielding on important principles, not a simple piece of diplomacy. | China: The Squall Passes |
792138_0 | Episcopal bishops voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to compel four of their colleagues to permit the ordination of female priests in their dioceses. At a conference here, the bishops voted 121 to 15 to force the four bishops to accept female priests; 20 bishops, including Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning, abstained. The six-day conference ended on Thursday. One of the four reluctant bishops, William C. Wantland of Eau Claire, Wis., threatened to resign if the action was formalized at the church's convention in 1997 in Philadelphia. "I will become a thorn in the flesh of this Protestant sect," he said. The 2.5 million-member church has allowed female priests since 1976, but individual bishops were allowed to set the policies in their dioceses. Four bishops, including Bishop Wantland, have refused to ordain women or take communion from them. The other three are Jack Iker of Fort Worth; John-David Schofield of the San Joaquin diocese, based in Fresno, Calif., and Keith Ackerman of the Quincy diocese, based in Peoria, Ill. The conference's action would not require the bishops to ordain female priests themselves or to receive communion from them, but they would have to find another bishop to ordain women within their dioceses and let female priests lead parishes. Until now, the dissenters have allowed women to receive some training in their dioceses and then transferred them elsewhere. Bishop Wantland said he would not change his policy. "I cannot in good conscience do what this canon would require me to do," he said. Most bishops believe the dissenters are entitled to their personal beliefs, but many also say they are causing undue hardship for the women in their dioceses. Critics note that female priests are ordained in every diocese in Canada and England. One of three female bishops in the church, Suffragan Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon, of Washington, welcomed the action as "a statement of hope." A suffragan bishop is similar to an assistant bishop. The Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, who became the church's first female suffragan bishop in 1989, said, "For some of us, the issue was settled in 1976," when the ordination of women was allowed. | Vote Compels Episcopal Bishops To Permit Ordination of Women |
792011_0 | The "Sunday" pages on Sept. 17 omitted a picture credit with the report about microscope images. The photographs were from a book, "Journeys in Microspace: University Press, to be published this month. | Correction |
794178_2 | span this century's American Catholic experience for women. Beneath a crucifix sat a high school senior; a nun who nurses the poor; a mother of eight, and Sister Mary Loyola, who is 87. She is about to commemorate her 65th year working with the lame, the poor, the dying -- and her 20th year challenging the papacy to extend equal rights to women. She and her three colleagues belong to the Women's Ordination Conference, an organization seeking to gain women the right to be ordained as priests. "The gifts of women have not been recognized in the church, and the church has been deprived of that for many years," Sister Mary Loyola said, with a smile that failed to mask the depth of her feeling. "Women have a great many contributions to make, and have not been able to." The four women said they were devoted to their Catholic faith. Colleen Scully, 17, teaches catechism; Joan Salamack, 69, the mother of eight, is a daily communicant; Theresa Graff, 58, has been a Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor for 39 years. But they are just as devoted to fighting the stands of Pope John Paul II that they say oppress women. When asked whether she planned to see the 75-year-old Pope -- who was a child when she first entered the convent -- Sister Mary Loyola gave another sweet smile, and shook her head no. Mr. Durante, Sister Mary Loyola, and others find the Vatican's policies disturbing, even catastrophic, as the church grapples with a continuing decline in the number of men entering the priesthood. They cited several surveys indicating that most American Catholics support the ordination of women and optional celibacy among priests. In addition, debates among Catholics continue to rage over the Vatican's bans on abortion, artificial insemination, birth control and remarriage after divorce. "We have a church in major crisis," said Tom McCabe, 61, who resigned from the active priesthood to marry and who now lives in Haverstraw, N.Y. As for the Pope, he said: "He doesn't listen. He doesn't consult. He excludes people." Mr. McCabe is a member of the Renewal Coordination Committee, one of many groups that take issue with one or more of the Vatican's stands. They include Corpus, which lobbies for optional celibacy; Dignity, an organization for gay and lesbian Catholics; Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church; Call to Action; | For Some Disaffected Catholics, Visit Is Just Another Day |
793836_2 | span this century's American Catholic experience for women. Beneath a crucifix sat a high school senior; a nun who nurses the poor; a mother of eight, and Sister Mary Loyola, who is 87. She is about to commemorate her 65th year working with the lame, the poor, the dying -- and her 20th year challenging the papacy to extend equal rights to women. She and her three colleagues belong to the Women's Ordination Conference, an organization seeking to gain women the right to be ordained as priests. "The gifts of women have not been recognized in the church, and the church has been deprived of that for many years," Sister Mary Loyola said, with a smile that failed to mask the depth of her feeling. "Women have a great many contributions to make, and have not been able to." The four women said they were devoted to their Catholic faith. Colleen Scully, 17, teaches catechism; Joan Salamack, 69, the mother of eight, is a daily communicant; Theresa Graff, 58, has been a Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor for 39 years. But they are just as devoted to fighting the stands of Pope John Paul II that they say oppress women. When asked whether she planned to see the 75-year-old Pope -- who was a child when she first entered the convent -- Sister Mary Loyola gave another sweet smile, and shook her head no. Mr. Durante, Sister Mary Loyola, and others find the Vatican's policies disturbing, even catastrophic, as the church grapples with a continuing decline in the number of men entering the priesthood. They cited several surveys indicating that most American Catholics support the ordination of women and optional celibacy among priests. In addition, debates among Catholics continue to rage over the Vatican's bans on abortion, artificial insemination, birth control and remarriage after divorce. "We have a church in major crisis," said Tom McCabe, 61, who resigned from the active priesthood to marry and who now lives in Haverstraw, N.Y. As for the Pope, he said: "He doesn't listen. He doesn't consult. He excludes people." Mr. McCabe is a member of the Renewal Coordination Committee, one of many groups that take issue with one or more of the Vatican's stands. They include Corpus, which lobbies for optional celibacy; Dignity, an organization for gay and lesbian Catholics; Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church; Call to Action; | For Some Disaffected Catholics, Visit Is Just Another Day |
793850_7 | I pray that -- in the words of Saint Paul -- God will make you worthy of his call, and fulfill by his power every honest intention and work of faith. To the seminarians -- and how heartening it is to know that your number is increasing! -- I offer a special word of encouragement. The new evangelization of America calls for a great spiritual maturity on your part. The gift of the priesthood demands that you follow Christ even unto death on a cross. Without the virtues of self-discipline, diligent contemplation of the truth, simplicity of life and joyful dedication to others, you will not have the inner strength to combat the culture of death which is threatening the modern world. I urge you to pray each day: "O good Jesus, make a priest like unto your own heart." Christ himself is your inheritance. He will never abandon you or disappoint you! With profound gratitude for your immense contribution to the church's life, I embrace all the men and women religious. Whether your life is hidden with Christ in God in solitude, penance and contemplation, or whether you are actively engaged in the world, the whole ecclesial community looks to you to see what it means to love the Lord with an undivided heart. The recognition of the genius of woman and of the specifically feminine charisms which women religious bring to the church's life and mission is a providential sign of our times. If in the past these gifts were sometimes insufficiently esteemed or thwarted in their legitimate expression, now is the time for all of us to work together to follow where the Lord leads, in love and fidelity. May the Holy Spirit strengthen your hearts, making them blameless and holy before our God and Father, so that you may serve his people with ever greater joy! To the whole church in Newark and New Jersey I repeat the words of encouragement found in the First Letter of Peter: "There is cause for rejoicing here . . . because you are achieving faith's goal, your salvation." Dear friends in Christ, the First Letter of Peter exhorts us to be clothed with humility in our dealings with one another; we read: "Bow humbly under God's mighty hand, so that in due time he may lift you high." This lowliness and humility is explained as abandoning ourselves into the | Texts of Speeches at the Airport and Sacred Heart Cathedral |
794186_7 | I pray that -- in the words of Saint Paul -- God will make you worthy of his call, and fulfill by his power every honest intention and work of faith. To the seminarians -- and how heartening it is to know that your number is increasing! -- I offer a special word of encouragement. The new evangelization of America calls for a great spiritual maturity on your part. The gift of the priesthood demands that you follow Christ even unto death on a cross. Without the virtues of self-discipline, diligent contemplation of the truth, simplicity of life and joyful dedication to others, you will not have the inner strength to combat the culture of death which is threatening the modern world. I urge you to pray each day: "O good Jesus, make a priest like unto your own heart." Christ himself is your inheritance. He will never abandon you or disappoint you! With profound gratitude for your immense contribution to the church's life, I embrace all the men and women religious. Whether your life is hidden with Christ in God in solitude, penance and contemplation, or whether you are actively engaged in the world, the whole ecclesial community looks to you to see what it means to love the Lord with an undivided heart. The recognition of the genius of woman and of the specifically feminine charisms which women religious bring to the church's life and mission is a providential sign of our times. If in the past these gifts were sometimes insufficiently esteemed or thwarted in their legitimate expression, now is the time for all of us to work together to follow where the Lord leads, in love and fidelity. May the Holy Spirit strengthen your hearts, making them blameless and holy before our God and Father, so that you may serve his people with ever greater joy! To the whole church in Newark and New Jersey I repeat the words of encouragement found in the First Letter of Peter: "There is cause for rejoicing here . . . because you are achieving faith's goal, your salvation." Dear friends in Christ, the First Letter of Peter exhorts us to be clothed with humility in our dealings with one another; we read: "Bow humbly under God's mighty hand, so that in due time he may lift you high." This lowliness and humility is explained as abandoning ourselves into the | Texts of Speeches at the Airport and Sacred Heart Cathedral |
798852_2 | it with food aid. The issue is too much dependency versus rebuilding the livestock base." The Turkana population has tripled in the last 40 years, reaching an estimated 350,000. It has outstripped the increase of the herds and the capacity of the land, said Nigel Pavitt, a historian and author of "Turkana," a book to be published this year. Mr. Pavitt, who came to Turkana in 1957 as a British Army officer, has studied the tribe for years. Growing insecurity has become a major problem in a region where spears have been replaced by AK-47 assault weapons. Each Turkana family owns at least one assault rifle. The Turkana District borders Ethiopia, the Sudan and Uganda, countries where recent civil wars have made weapons easily available and have put the Turkana at a disadvantage with eight neighboring hostile nomadic tribes. Raids are necessary to replenish herds after droughts and to acquire cattle for marriages, funerals and important ceremonies. The greenest pastures are in the hilly border areas, and the young men follow the cattle herds with AK-47's slung on their shoulders. Every year hundreds of people are killed and thousands of animals stolen. "The future is bleak," Mr. Pavitt said. "Twenty or 30 percent of the Turkana will become miserably poor. There are only three solutions. People die but that will not happen because food aid keeps them alive. People migrate. But to where? Or there has to be conflict." The British kept Turkana as a closed district, forbidding entry to non-Turkana, until independence in 1963. In World War I, British maps of Turkana read: "Nomad Tribes -- Treacherous." Roman Catholic missionaries came soon after, converting the Turkana, building schools and opening clinics. Even though the Turkana live a harsh life, they rarely slaughter their animals, which are their pride and prestige, instead surviving on berries, palm nuts, termites and blood from the bleeding of goats and cattle. The Turkana language, Aketer, has more than 20 words to describe the shape of an animal's horns and dozens for the colors and markings of an animal's skin, Mr. Pavitt said. There is no word for "thank you." Few Turkana live in Nairobi. Emekwi (Sammy) Nalukoowi, whose family herds cattle at Lokitaung near the Sudanese border, was put in a missionary boarding school at age 10. He now works at the National Museum in Nairobi. An avid follower of the O. J. Simpson | Loporot Journal;Fiercest of Warriors, Crushed by a Savage Land |
799032_2 | it with food aid. The issue is too much dependency versus rebuilding the livestock base." The Turkana population has tripled in the last 40 years, reaching an estimated 350,000. It has outstripped the increase of the herds and the capacity of the land, said Nigel Pavitt, a historian and author of "Turkana," a book to be published this year. Mr. Pavitt, who came to Turkana in 1957 as a British Army officer, has studied the tribe for years. Growing insecurity has become a major problem in a region where spears have been replaced by AK-47 assault weapons. Each Turkana family owns at least one assault rifle. The Turkana District borders Ethiopia, the Sudan and Uganda, countries where recent civil wars have made weapons easily available and have put the Turkana at a disadvantage with eight neighboring hostile nomadic tribes. Raids are necessary to replenish herds after droughts and to acquire cattle for marriages, funerals and important ceremonies. The greenest pastures are in the hilly border areas, and the young men follow the cattle herds with AK-47's slung on their shoulders. Every year hundreds of people are killed and thousands of animals stolen. "The future is bleak," Mr. Pavitt said. "Twenty or 30 percent of the Turkana will become miserably poor. There are only three solutions. People die but that will not happen because food aid keeps them alive. People migrate. But to where? Or there has to be conflict." The British kept Turkana as a closed district, forbidding entry to non-Turkana, until independence in 1963. In World War I, British maps of Turkana read: "Nomad Tribes -- Treacherous." Roman Catholic missionaries came soon after, converting the Turkana, building schools and opening clinics. Even though the Turkana live a harsh life, they rarely slaughter their animals, which are their pride and prestige, instead surviving on berries, palm nuts, termites and blood from the bleeding of goats and cattle. The Turkana language, Aketer, has more than 20 words to describe the shape of an animal's horns and dozens for the colors and markings of an animal's skin, Mr. Pavitt said. There is no word for "thank you." Few Turkana live in Nairobi. Emekwi (Sammy) Nalukoowi, whose family herds cattle at Lokitaung near the Sudanese border, was put in a missionary boarding school at age 10. He now works at the National Museum in Nairobi. An avid follower of the O. J. Simpson | Loporot Journal; Fiercest of Warriors, Crushed by a Savage Land |
802672_1 | undergo detailed questioning about their luggage. At a number of airports, parking is no longer available at or immediately next to terminal buildings. Cars left unattended at the curb are much more likely to be quickly towed away. And some airport managers have gone even further. Earlier this month, for example, airport officials at Boise, Idaho, erected an eight-foot-high concrete block wall about 100 yards in length in a bid to protect the passenger terminal against explosives. All in all, the nation's airports are now operating under the most stringent security measures since the Persian Gulf war of 1991. And aviation officials and security experts say there is little likelihood that they will return anytime soon to the relatively relaxed procedures of just two months ago. The beefed-up security measures -- introduced so quietly that many passengers were unaware of them -- can add more time and yet another hassle to traveling. And in some cases, they are costing companies and business travelers money. That's because passengers are being caught using tickets issued to another person. While a few travelers have been found using stolen tickets, the more common problem arises with advance purchase tickets exchanged within a company when business travel plans change suddenly. Such ticket trading violates airline regulations. If a ticket is confiscated, the would-be passenger faces the choice between remaining behind or buying a last-minute ticket at full-fare prices. In the last few weeks, said Joe Hopkins, a spokesman for UAL's United Airlines, "We made revenues in six figures just from passengers who elected to buy new tickets." Despite the added inconvenience to passengers -- who are requested to arrive at the airport more than an hour before scheduled departures -- travel agents and airline personnel say few have complained so far. "They say it's probably a good thing because they like the security aspects," said David S. Stempler, a passenger advocate and the former executive director of the International Airline Passengers Association. "Some passengers have even asked why this wasn't being done before." Clara Walters, a travel agent at Adventure Travel in Charleston, S.C., said that security at the Charleston Airport had resulted in lots of delays. But, "people are very understanding," she said, "because it's for their security." Last Monday, Michael Bryan Herlihy was waiting to fly from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport back home to Columbus, Ohio, where he is a brewmaster with Ecolab | Clamping Down On Airport Security |
802723_0 | Satellite Yields First Full Map of Sea Floor: C7 | |
802933_3 | were the monument for what should not have been. Fifty years after the formation of the United Nations, we meet to affirm our commitment with the founding idea and the common desire to better the life of all human beings. . . . We come from Africa and South Africa on this historic occasion to pay tribute to that founding idea and to thank the United Nations for challenging, with us, a system that defined fellow humans as lesser beings. The youth at whom we have directed most of our awareness campaign on this golden jubilee should marvel at the nobility of our intentions. They are also bound to wonder why it should be that poverty still prevails the greater part of the globe, that wars continue to rage and that many in positions of power and privilege pursue cold-hearted philosophies which terrifyingly proclaim, "I am not your brother's keeper." For no one in the north or the south can escape the cold fact that we are a single humanity. A Pledge to End Nuclear Testing Jacques Chirac President of France France has always been a leader in the search for peaceful solutions to the crises of our times. From Cambodia to Bosnia, it has become the leading contributor of United Nations troops. Commitment also in the search for genuine disarmament: No one disputes France's major role in the negotiations to ban chemical weapons, to eliminate anti-personnel mines and to extend indefinitely the nonproliferation treaty. Let no one doubt France's determination to insure the success of the negotiation on the definitive comprehensive and verifiable ban on nuclear testing in 1996. It was the first to speak out for the zero option. Today I wish to confirm that once its final series of tests is completed next spring, France will sign the protocols to the Rarotonga Treaty establishing a denuclearized zone in the South Pacific. . . . Let us help the United Nations to adapt to this new world and effectively to play its role there. Let us make the Security Council more representative by enlarging the circle of its permanent members to include Germany, Japan and some large states from the south. Let us learn from our successes, as from our failures, by developing preventive diplomacy at the regional level and also by increasing the rapid-reaction capability of our organization in the humanitarian and military spheres. From Those Who | At the Lectern: Defining the Challenges, Reaffirming the Commitment |
802973_1 | undergo detailed questioning about their luggage. At a number of airports, parking is no longer available at or immediately next to terminal buildings. Cars left unattended at the curb are much more likely to be quickly towed away. And some airport managers have gone even further. Earlier this month, for example, airport officials at Boise, Idaho, erected an eight-foot-high concrete block wall about 100 yards in length in a bid to protect the passenger terminal against explosives. All in all, the nation's airports are now operating under the most stringent security measures since the Persian Gulf war of 1991. And aviation officials and security experts say there is little likelihood that they will return anytime soon to the relatively relaxed procedures of just two months ago. The beefed-up security measures -- introduced so quietly that many passengers were unaware of them -- can add more time and yet another hassle to traveling. And in some cases, they are costing companies and business travelers money. That's because passengers are being caught using tickets issued to another person. While a few travelers have been found using stolen tickets, the more common problem arises with advance purchase tickets exchanged within a company when business travel plans change suddenly. Such ticket trading violates airline regulations. If a ticket is confiscated, the would-be passenger faces the choice between remaining behind or buying a last-minute ticket at full-fare prices. In the last few weeks, said Joe Hopkins, a spokesman for UAL's United Airlines, "We made revenues in six figures just from passengers who elected to buy new tickets." Despite the added inconvenience to passengers -- who are requested to arrive at the airport more than an hour before scheduled departures -- travel agents and airline personnel say few have complained so far. "They say it's probably a good thing because they like the security aspects," said David S. Stempler, a passenger advocate and the former executive director of the International Airline Passengers Association. "Some passengers have even asked why this wasn't being done before." Clara Walters, a travel agent at Adventure Travel in Charleston, S.C., said that security at the Charleston Airport had resulted in lots of delays. But, "people are very understanding," she said, "because it's for their security." Last Monday, Michael Bryan Herlihy was waiting to fly from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport back home to Columbus, Ohio, where he is a brewmaster with Ecolab | Clamping Down On Airport Security |
802907_1 | terms, and confidently and very specifically, using many numbers, of Cuba's newly diversified economy. During a question-and-answer session, Mr. Castro acknowledged that he might have missed a golden opportunity when Henry Kissinger offered to consider opening up the economic embargo. At the time, Mr. Castro said, he did not realize it was a serious offer, so entrenched was he in his own cold war thinking. Last night, Mr. Castro, dressed in a dark suit, walked into Jimmy's Bronx Cafe, on Fordham Road near Yankee Stadium, and joked about his love for baseball and about the mixed welcome he has received in New York. Presented with flowers and a pair of oversized boxing gloves, he basked in the audience's warm reception. "It's important to know we have so many brothers here," he told about 200 members of the Puerto Rican Business Council. The Protest in the Sky It was neither bird, plane nor Superman that appeared suddenly in the skies above the United Nations building around 11:30 A.M. yesterday, drawing confused stares and three police helicopters. It was a man the police identified as Kai Britt, 33, a German member of Greenpeace, and he was staging the most eye-catching of many protests around the city by using a jet-powered parachute to sail into the air and unfurl a banner that read, "Stop Nuclear Testing." It was a quiet day, security-wise. Mr. Britt's daredevil demonstration broke the calm. It came as close to a security breach as anything since more than 140 heads of government and state descended on Manhattan during the weekend. The act was timed to coincide with the speech at the United Nations by the French President, Jacques Chirac, and was intended to draw attention to nuclear testing by France in the South Pacific. Greenpeace has repeatedly sent ships into the testing area as an expression of protest. Mr. Britt took off from the Queens side of the East River, and soared within 100 yards of the United Nations before he was forced to land on Roosevelt Island. He spent 22 minutes in the air, said Paul Clarke, a spokesman for Greenpeace. The police booked him on charges of reckless endangerment, obstructing governmental administration, disorderly conduct and unlawful flight over water. Mr. Clarke said that just as Mr. Britt took off from the Queens shoreline, Greenpeace members radioed United Nations security officials to tell them that it was a | Castro at Lunch: The Usual Fare |
802625_3 | were the monument for what should not have been. Fifty years after the formation of the United Nations, we meet to affirm our commitment with the founding idea and the common desire to better the life of all human beings. . . . We come from Africa and South Africa on this historic occasion to pay tribute to that founding idea and to thank the United Nations for challenging, with us, a system that defined fellow humans as lesser beings. The youth at whom we have directed most of our awareness campaign on this golden jubilee should marvel at the nobility of our intentions. They are also bound to wonder why it should be that poverty still prevails the greater part of the globe, that wars continue to rage and that many in positions of power and privilege pursue cold-hearted philosophies which terrifyingly proclaim, "I am not your brother's keeper." For no one in the north or the south can escape the cold fact that we are a single humanity. A Pledge to End Nuclear Testing Jacques Chirac President of France France has always been a leader in the search for peaceful solutions to the crises of our times. From Cambodia to Bosnia, it has become the leading contributor of United Nations troops. Commitment also in the search for genuine disarmament: No one disputes France's major role in the negotiations to ban chemical weapons, to eliminate anti-personnel mines and to extend indefinitely the nonproliferation treaty. Let no one doubt France's determination to insure the success of the negotiation on the definitive comprehensive and verifiable ban on nuclear testing in 1996. It was the first to speak out for the zero option. Today I wish to confirm that once its final series of tests is completed next spring, France will sign the protocols to the Rarotonga Treaty establishing a denuclearized zone in the South Pacific. . . . Let us help the United Nations to adapt to this new world and effectively to play its role there. Let us make the Security Council more representative by enlarging the circle of its permanent members to include Germany, Japan and some large states from the south. Let us learn from our successes, as from our failures, by developing preventive diplomacy at the regional level and also by increasing the rapid-reaction capability of our organization in the humanitarian and military spheres. From Those Who | At the Lectern: Defining the Challenges, Reaffirming the Commitment |
802812_2 | up of a dozen or so plates that float on a sea of molten rock and grind past one another in earthquake spasms. The intersections of those plates that are now being found sometimes look quite different from what had been envisioned. Dr. Jian Lin, a geophysicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, said the new data "will almost certainly change our thinking about the active geological processes in the world's deep ocean basins." So too, the new map is seen as important for climate studies and investigations of global warming, since mountain chains and other seabed features play important but poorly understood roles in regulating currents and circulatory patterns in the deep ocean. Dr. Gregory Neumann, an earth scientist at Johns Hopkins University, said the new map "brings us one step closer to understanding the processes that drive our planet." The glimmer of a new approach to mapping ocean floors came in 1978 with the space agency's launching of Seasat, a satellite that worked three months before it unexpectedly failed. The craft had a radar altimeter that fired short pulses of microwaves at the ocean's surface and picked up reflected signals. The time of the round trip gave the satellite's altitude and a very precise reading of the sea's height down to a few inches. Close examination of such readings showed that seabed features like mountains produced swells at the surface and trenches produced dips, mimicking the topography of the seafloor. Moreover, the features were fairly big, often several feet high. What caused them was the skewing of Earth's gravitational field. In March 1985, the Navy launched an improved mapper, Geosat, and used it to measure the pull of gravity on the sea until October 1986. Its findings of sea-surface height were accurate to about one inch and were classified secret because they could be used to improve the accuracy of missiles fired from submarines. In 1990, with the cold war ending, the Navy declassified Geosat gravity data below 60 degrees south latitude, mostly around the Antarctic seas. In 1992, it publicly released all data below 30 degrees south, still a small slice of the Southern Hemisphere. Finally, last July the Navy released all the remaining Geosat data. The ocean agency then combined it with readings from the European ERS-1 satellite, which had finished a similar gravity-mapping mission in April. The new map not only reveals | Map Makes Ocean Floors as Knowable as Venus |
802930_4 | was Prime Minister at Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's death in 1993, Alassane D. Ouattara. Mr. Ouattara, who Mr. Bedie insists is of foreign extraction, is deputy director of the International Monetary Fund in Washington and was widely seen here as the politician with the best chance of unseating the President in a fair election. "President Bedie has tolerated irregularities that do not honor our country," said Diegou Bailly, editor of Le Jour, an independent newspaper. "Politics are intimately linked to economics, and the 'African elephant' that the Ivory Coast seeks to build must first be built on the basis of confidence, right here at home." If early in this decade many African countries briefly felt pressure from the West to apply widely recognized standards of democracy, African human rights advocates and Government opponents say that more recently, the West has quietly dropped these standards. Experts from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a nongovernmental group in Washington, canceled its election observer mission to the Ivory Coast after the Government's refusal to accept proposals by local church and human rights groups on a legal framework to restore confidence in the elections. The United States Embassy here has declined to comment on the elections. Many Africans say that nowhere has the shrinking Western commitment to democracy in the continent been greater than in France, however. African intellectuals liken Paris's political attachment to its former colonies here, no matter how corrupt or undemocratic, to Washington's support for Central American dictatorships during the cold war. The only difference, they say, is that where Washington saw a Communist under every bed, France imagines foreign plotting to usurp its role in a region it has long dominated. In the Ivory Coast, the cornerstone of France's former holdings in West Africa, on a day when security forces shot dead two demonstrators during the campaign earlier this month, the French Minister for Cooperation, Jacques Godfrain, gave a speech in which he said of Mr. Bedie, "France will be by your side, Mr. President, for the long period that lies ahead of you." Abou Dramane Sangare, a leader of the Ivoirian Popular Front, one of two main opposition groups that boycotted the elections, said, "France does not play the game of democracy in Africa." "De Gaulle said France has no friends, only interests," he added. "Now we have Chirac, who believes that democracy is a luxury that Africa cannot afford." | Before Africans Vote, Men in Charge Rewrite Rules |
802814_0 | Satellite Yields First Full Map of Sea Floor: C7 | |
802621_4 | was Prime Minister at Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's death in 1993, Alassane D. Ouattara. Mr. Ouattara, who Mr. Bedie insists is of foreign extraction, is deputy director of the International Monetary Fund in Washington and was widely seen here as the politician with the best chance of unseating the President in a fair election. "President Bedie has tolerated irregularities that do not honor our country," said Diegou Bailly, editor of Le Jour, an independent newspaper. "Politics are intimately linked to economics, and the 'African elephant' that the Ivory Coast seeks to build must first be built on the basis of confidence, right here at home." If early in this decade many African countries briefly felt pressure from the West to apply widely recognized standards of democracy, African human rights advocates and Government opponents say that more recently, the West has quietly dropped these standards. Experts from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a nongovernmental group in Washington, canceled its election observer mission to the Ivory Coast after the Government's refusal to accept proposals by local church and human rights groups on a legal framework to restore confidence in the elections. The United States Embassy here has declined to comment on the elections. Many Africans say that nowhere has the shrinking Western commitment to democracy in the continent been greater than in France, however. African intellectuals liken Paris's political attachment to its former colonies here, no matter how corrupt or undemocratic, to Washington's support for Central American dictatorships during the cold war. The only difference, they say, is that where Washington saw a Communist under every bed, France imagines foreign plotting to usurp its role in a region it has long dominated. In the Ivory Coast, the cornerstone of France's former holdings in West Africa, on a day when security forces shot dead two demonstrators during the campaign earlier this month, the French Minister for Cooperation, Jacques Godfrain, gave a speech in which he said of Mr. Bedie, "France will be by your side, Mr. President, for the long period that lies ahead of you." Abou Dramane Sangare, a leader of the Ivoirian Popular Front, one of two main opposition groups that boycotted the elections, said, "France does not play the game of democracy in Africa." "De Gaulle said France has no friends, only interests," he added. "Now we have Chirac, who believes that democracy is a luxury that Africa cannot afford." | Before Africans Vote, Men in Charge Rewrite Rules |
804413_2 | Phuket, the Thai resort island, in 1988, and three others have followed in Bali. Dedicated guests, many of whom proudly call themselves "Amanjunkies," include an assortment of Hollywood stars, Wall Street financiers, Japanese industrialists and European royalty including both the Princess of Wales (who has stayed in the Amanresorts in Bali) and the Duchess of York (who sent British tabloid photographers scurrying across Southeast Asia several years ago when she hid out at the Amanpuri). Amanpulo is set on a private island, Pamalican, in the Cuyo Islands, southwest of the central Philippine island of Luzon. It can be reached only by small plane. There is a scheduled flight from Manila five days a week, although many of the resort's guests are wealthy enough to charter their own. The flight takes about 90 minutes in a propeller-drive plane. MY brief taste of life as an Amanjunkie began at Manila's crumbling Ninoy Aquino International Airport, without doubt the most uncomfortable and inefficient major airport in Southeast Asia -- evidence in rust and mildew of all that has gone wrong in the Philippines in a generation. Even a short wait in this airport is nobody's idea of fun, which is why Amanpulo's owners have built their own small passenger lounge a 10-minute drive away, and guests are whisked to this airy, wood-paneled haven by chauffeured car. Outfitted with a full bar, an espresso machine and a marble-lined bathroom complete with shower, the Amanpulo terminal is a decidedly pleasant place to wait for departure -- and a taste of things to come. "Sir, time for your weigh-in," said Irwin, the ever-smiling attendant in the terminal. "Weigh in?" I asked, noticing the giant scales outside the door to the lounge. While it may be disconcerting to those sensitive about their girth, all passengers and their luggage must be weighed so as not to overload the small plane. There is a strictly enforced luggage allowance of 20 kilograms, or 44 pounds, a person. (Irwin explained that visitors wary about public declarations of their weight should stand on the scale along with their luggage, so that it's impossible to tell how heavy the luggage is, and how heavy the traveler.) After nosing above the dense smog over Manila, the 19-seat propeller plane passed over some of the most spectacular tropical scenery in the Philippines -- waters in several shades of blue, dotted with coral-fringed islands as pristine | PAMPERED IN THE PHILIPPINES |
804860_2 | in many Protestant denominations and as rabbis among Conservative and Reform Jews. Not that this makes a difference in Rome. In May 1994, Pope John Paul II, noting that Jesus had called only men as His disciples, declared the subject of women's ordination within Catholicism closed to discussion. "The Pope is a promoter of women and women's rights," said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. That he stands against women's ordination is based on theological rather than sociological reasons, she said. "It's a matter of church tradition," Sister Walsh said. "And Jesus, who broke a lot of rules of society, did not choose to ordain women. He could have, but he did not." Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church in recent years has allowed women (and lay men) to perform functions once reserved to priests. Increasingly, women, many of them nuns, serve as parish administrators, liturgical readers and eucharistic ministers. It is in that latter role, in which they distribute the bread and wine previously consecrated by a priest, that a woman's presence can have a powerful effect, as Ms. Shaffer acknowledged. A Pennsylvania native and graduate of the School of the Arts at New York University, the 40-year-old playwright has acted, sung and written music professionally. She was a member of a street quartet, "The Steinettes," who were cast by Robert Altman in his movies "Health" (1979) and "Popeye" (1980). Ms. Burstyn's involvement with "Sacrilege" began five and a half years ago when she received a draft of the script, unsolicited, from the playwright. "One of my friends asked me," Ms. Shaffer said, " 'Who in your wildest dreams would you like to play this part?' " She responded immediately that she wanted Ms. Burstyn to be Sister Grace, and then mailed the actress a copy of the script. AMONG HER FILM AND stage roles, Ms. Burstyn has played characters with overt religious dimensions before. In 1980, she starred in the well-received movie "Resurrection," about a woman who is able to heal people after she narrowly escapes death herself. What she had liked about "Sacrilege" from the beginning, Ms. Burstyn said, was Ms. Shaffer's writing. She appreciated, too, that the play did not seem to her to be polemical. "You get caught up in the people and their relationships," she said. Ms. Shaffer noted that she had once left the church to explore | A Homily on Women Priests: 'You See? This Isn't So Bad' |
804909_1 | has not been noted for showing leadership on Somalia, or on any other African nation in trouble. The United Nations pulled its peacekeepers -- though not its relief and development workers -- out of Somalia last year because the faction leaders refused to work for a political settlement. Among the lessons learned in Somalia and elsewhere is that unless there is a willingness to end conflict and strong regional support for peace initiatives, intervention by outsiders is likely to be doomed. President Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire Words: "As regards Africa, with its mosaic of ethnic communities, with its economic lag, with its social handicap, I affirm that both within and outside the continent, we must make solidarity, security and development our watchwords for action and the spearhead of the fight against discord and injustice in the world." Deeds: For more than 30 years, President Mobutu has ruled oppressively, mainly to enrich himself and his inner circle as the lot of ordinary Zaireans has deteriorated. He served notice recently that he would expel hundreds of thousands of refugees from Rwanda by the end of the year if the United Nations did not move them first. He has allowed extremists who threaten renewed civil war in Rwanda and Burundi to operate from his country. In a land where development has been in reverse for years, a presidential palace with an international airport may be his most durable legacy. President Jacques Chirac, France Words: "Let no one doubt France's determination to ensure the success of the negotiations on the definitive comprehensive and verifiable ban on nuclear testing in 1996. It was the first to speak out for the zero option." Deeds: In the month before Mr. Chirac's speech, France carried out two nuclear tests -- and promised more, including another last week -- on distant Pacific atolls far from French soil. The nuclear detonations provoked strong comments from the leaders of Japan and New Zealand, among others, reflecting the outrage of Pacific nations. Only France and China continue nuclear test explosions, after pledging this year at an international conference to phase them out. Gen. Muang Aye, Vice President, Myanmar (formerly Burma) Words: "As responsible members of the United Nations, we pledge ourselves to cooperate with organizations to maintain international peace and security. We recognize that the security of each and every member state is important. Seen from our perspective, security is noninterference in | Word for Word/Incredibility at the U.N.; Forget What I Do, World; Listen to What I Say |
804645_1 | has not been noted for showing leadership on Somalia, or on any other African nation in trouble. The United Nations pulled its peacekeepers -- though not its relief and development workers -- out of Somalia last year because the faction leaders refused to work for a political settlement. Among the lessons learned in Somalia and elsewhere is that unless there is a willingness to end conflict and strong regional support for peace initiatives, intervention by outsiders is likely to be doomed. President Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire Words: "As regards Africa, with its mosaic of ethnic communities, with its economic lag, with its social handicap, I affirm that both within and outside the continent, we must make solidarity, security and development our watchwords for action and the spearhead of the fight against discord and injustice in the world." Deeds: For more than 30 years, President Mobutu has ruled oppressively, mainly to enrich himself and his inner circle as the lot of ordinary Zaireans has deteriorated. He served notice recently that he would expel hundreds of thousands of refugees from Rwanda by the end of the year if the United Nations did not move them first. He has allowed extremists who threaten renewed civil war in Rwanda and Burundi to operate from his country. In a land where development has been in reverse for years, a presidential palace with an international airport may be his most durable legacy. President Jacques Chirac, France Words: "Let no one doubt France's determination to ensure the success of the negotiations on the definitive comprehensive and verifiable ban on nuclear testing in 1996. It was the first to speak out for the zero option." Deeds: In the month before Mr. Chirac's speech, France carried out two nuclear tests -- and promised more, including another last week -- on distant Pacific atolls far from French soil. The nuclear detonations provoked strong comments from the leaders of Japan and New Zealand, among others, reflecting the outrage of Pacific nations. Only France and China continue nuclear test explosions, after pledging this year at an international conference to phase them out. Gen. Muang Aye, Vice President, Myanmar (formerly Burma) Words: "As responsible members of the United Nations, we pledge ourselves to cooperate with organizations to maintain international peace and security. We recognize that the security of each and every member state is important. Seen from our perspective, security is noninterference in | Word for Word/Incredibility at the U.N.;Forget What I Do, World; Listen to What I Say |
804988_2 | Phuket, the Thai resort island, in 1988, and three others have followed in Bali. Dedicated guests, many of whom proudly call themselves "Amanjunkies," include an assortment of Hollywood stars, Wall Street financiers, Japanese industrialists and European royalty including both the Princess of Wales (who has stayed in the Amanresorts in Bali) and the Duchess of York (who sent British tabloid photographers scurrying across Southeast Asia several years ago when she hid out at the Amanpuri). Amanpulo is set on a private island, Pamalican, in the Cuyo Islands, southwest of the central Philippine island of Luzon. It can be reached only by small plane. There is a scheduled flight from Manila five days a week, although many of the resort's guests are wealthy enough to charter their own. The flight takes about 90 minutes in a propeller-drive plane. MY brief taste of life as an Amanjunkie began at Manila's crumbling Ninoy Aquino International Airport, without doubt the most uncomfortable and inefficient major airport in Southeast Asia -- evidence in rust and mildew of all that has gone wrong in the Philippines in a generation. Even a short wait in this airport is nobody's idea of fun, which is why Amanpulo's owners have built their own small passenger lounge a 10-minute drive away, and guests are whisked to this airy, wood-paneled haven by chauffeured car. Outfitted with a full bar, an espresso machine and a marble-lined bathroom complete with shower, the Amanpulo terminal is a decidedly pleasant place to wait for departure -- and a taste of things to come. "Sir, time for your weigh-in," said Irwin, the ever-smiling attendant in the terminal. "Weigh in?" I asked, noticing the giant scales outside the door to the lounge. While it may be disconcerting to those sensitive about their girth, all passengers and their luggage must be weighed so as not to overload the small plane. There is a strictly enforced luggage allowance of 20 kilograms, or 44 pounds, a person. (Irwin explained that visitors wary about public declarations of their weight should stand on the scale along with their luggage, so that it's impossible to tell how heavy the luggage is, and how heavy the traveler.) After nosing above the dense smog over Manila, the 19-seat propeller plane passed over some of the most spectacular tropical scenery in the Philippines -- waters in several shades of blue, dotted with coral-fringed islands as pristine | PAMPERED IN THE PHILIPPINES |
804965_5 | the school a big advantage over local programs for the multiply handicapped like the Northern Westchester BOCES, where only three teachers have such training and split their time among several schools. "The primary medium for working with the retarded child is imitation," says Robert J. Seibold, the Batavia school's longtime superintendent. "Now we take somebody's eyes away, how do we teach them? In many cases, the children would like nothing better than to be left alone. Our job is to get them out of themselves, to give them the message they can make things happen." Critics like Dr. Jerry J. Cicchelli, Superintendent of Mahopac Central School District in Putnam County, say that one of the largely unspoken considerations in the debate is the number of jobs -- 215 -- at the school in Batavia, a town of 16,000. In contrast, the Pines Bridge School of Northern Westchester BOCES makes do with 78 workers for 113 children, though it is only a daytime program. A more important consideration, Mr. Cicchelli says, should be the fact that BOCES programs also teach children to dress themselves, eat with a knife and fork, walk with a cane, sort small objects and, for the most advanced children, read Braille. But he said the determination of where a 12-year-old boy in his district would go was not his district's. Although all handicapped assignments are decided by a local special education committee, a state law passed early this century effectively exempts the Batavia school and the State School for the Deaf in Rome, N.Y., from the process. Parents can apply directly to the State Education Commissioner and obtain an evaluation. If the school's professional committee decides a child would do well, the Commissioner always goes along. Localities did not quarrel with the arrangement, or the jet flights, when the state picked up 90 percent of transportation costs. But in 1993, the state asked districts to assume more of the cost. Mahopac, a onetime summer colony just north of Westchester, is now reimbursed by the state for only 41 percent of that transportation. The new rules the Regents will consider require Batavia's professional team to include hometown representatives at meetings where placement is decided and to hear arguments for alternatives closer to home. The Regents would also move to limit jet flights by asking the state to enlarge Batavia's seven-day residential program, which now accommodates just 16 children. | Debating High Costs of Special Needs; The State Board of Regents Is Reviewing the Expense Of Educating Handicapped Children At an Upstate School |
805096_0 | In four previous election campaigns for an at-large seat on the City Council, Joan Specter never faced more than one other Republican. With registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans by more than 2 to 1 and local regulations guaranteeing two of the seven at-large seats to the minority party, she always won. But Mrs. Specter, the wife of Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican Presidential candidate, is fighting for her political life this year. Four other Republicans, including Frank Rizzo Jr., son of a former Mayor, are competing for the two minority seats in the Nov. 7 election. "It's very unpredictable this year," she said in an interview. "I'm doing a lot of things I've never done before, like doubling the number of people I have out on the street. I'm spending a fortune, and I'm calling all the Democrats I know." She still won easily. In addition to Mr. Rizzo, who is making his first run for public office, the other Republicans running are W. Thacher Longstreth, a longtime member of the City Council; Charlie Dougherty, a State Senator, and Bert Lancaster, a businessman. | Joan Specter's Tough Race |
804385_2 | in many Protestant denominations and as rabbis among Conservative and Reform Jews. Not that this makes a difference in Rome. In May 1994, Pope John Paul II, noting that Jesus had called only men as His disciples, declared the subject of women's ordination within Catholicism closed to discussion. "The Pope is a promoter of women and women's rights," said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. That he stands against women's ordination is based on theological rather than sociological reasons, she said. "It's a matter of church tradition," Sister Walsh said. "And Jesus, who broke a lot of rules of society, did not choose to ordain women. He could have, but he did not." Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church in recent years has allowed women (and lay men) to perform functions once reserved to priests. Increasingly, women, many of them nuns, serve as parish administrators, liturgical readers and eucharistic ministers. It is in that latter role, in which they distribute the bread and wine previously consecrated by a priest, that a woman's presence can have a powerful effect, as Ms. Shaffer acknowledged. A Pennsylvania native and graduate of the School of the Arts at New York University, the 40-year-old playwright has acted, sung and written music professionally. She was a member of a street quartet, "The Steinettes," who were cast by Robert Altman in his movies "Health" (1979) and "Popeye" (1980). Ms. Burstyn's involvement with "Sacrilege" began five and a half years ago when she received a draft of the script, unsolicited, from the playwright. "One of my friends asked me," Ms. Shaffer said, " 'Who in your wildest dreams would you like to play this part?' " She responded immediately that she wanted Ms. Burstyn to be Sister Grace, and then mailed the actress a copy of the script. AMONG HER FILM AND stage roles, Ms. Burstyn has played characters with overt religious dimensions before. In 1980, she starred in the well-received movie "Resurrection," about a woman who is able to heal people after she narrowly escapes death herself. What she had liked about "Sacrilege" from the beginning, Ms. Burstyn said, was Ms. Shaffer's writing. She appreciated, too, that the play did not seem to her to be polemical. "You get caught up in the people and their relationships," she said. Ms. Shaffer noted that she had once left the church to explore | A Homily on Women Priests: 'You See? This Isn't So Bad' |
804679_5 | the school a big advantage over local programs for the multiply handicapped like the Northern Westchester BOCES, where only three teachers have such training and split their time among several schools. "The primary medium for working with the retarded child is imitation," says Robert J. Seibold, the Batavia school's longtime superintendent. "Now we take somebody's eyes away, how do we teach them? In many cases, the children would like nothing better than to be left alone. Our job is to get them out of themselves, to give them the message they can make things happen." Critics like Dr. Jerry J. Cicchelli, Superintendent of Mahopac Central School District in Putnam County, say that one of the largely unspoken considerations in the debate is the number of jobs -- 215 -- at the school in Batavia, a town of 16,000. In contrast, the Pines Bridge School of Northern Westchester BOCES makes do with 78 workers for 113 children, though it is only a daytime program. A more important consideration, Mr. Cicchelli says, should be the fact that BOCES programs also teach children to dress themselves, eat with a knife and fork, walk with a cane, sort small objects and, for the most advanced children, read Braille. But he said the determination of where a 12-year-old boy in his district would go was not his district's. Although all handicapped assignments are decided by a local special education committee, a state law passed early this century effectively exempts the Batavia school and the State School for the Deaf in Rome, N.Y., from the process. Parents can apply directly to the State Education Commissioner and obtain an evaluation. If the school's professional committee decides a child would do well, the Commissioner always goes along. Localities did not quarrel with the arrangement, or the jet flights, when the state picked up 90 percent of transportation costs. But in 1993, the state asked districts to assume more of the cost. Mahopac, a onetime summer colony just north of Westchester, is now reimbursed by the state for only 41 percent of that transportation. The new rules the Regents will consider require Batavia's professional team to include hometown representatives at meetings where placement is decided and to hear arguments for alternatives closer to home. The Regents would also move to limit jet flights by asking the state to enlarge Batavia's seven-day residential program, which now accommodates just 16 children. | Debating High Costs of Special Needs;The State Board of Regents Is Reviewing the Expense Of Educating Handicapped Children At an Upstate School |
802511_0 | LET'S say you've just left work at the end of the day only to find yourself stuck in a traffic jam. You need to know the best alternate route, but even then you're probably going to miss the movie you were going to see. So you've got to find out the time of the next showing and let your husband know he has to pick up the kids. You need gas, too, but you don't know where to find inexpensive stations along your detour. And since this traffic is going to cost you time, you'd like to check your office voice-mail. If you have a car phone, you can accomplish some of this. Or you could just wait and see if a newly patented radio that functions like a computer-cum-personal-organizer becomes common technology in new cars. The system is another example of the multimedia push to exploit traditionally passive electronic equipment. Using computer chips, a combination of broadcast signals and satellite tracking technologies, the system transforms a radio into, among other things, a movie directory, a gas-station locator and an atlas. The Radio Satellite Corporation, a company near Pasadena, Calif., has demonstrated what it calls a "virtual prototype" -- a simulation of its invention on the World Wide Web. Browsers can play around with this futuristic radio at a site called Radiostar (http://www.radiosat.com /radiostar). With it, the inventors imagine your solution to the traffic jam will go something like this: On your radio, a touch-screen display would offer information on travel, weather, road conditions, sports, stocks, and shopping. You would pick road conditions and immediately receive an alert about the traffic jam. Then a map would appear, to pinpoint the bottleneck. You would ask for an alternative route and get another map with a detour defined in color. Next, you would select the travel category and a sub-category of movies. That would tell you where and when the film you want to see is playing and display a map to get you to the theater. Under the sub-category, gas, you could ask for the nearest station. You would get several options, with addresses and prices. The Web site example would say: "0.6 gallons required to get to Arco. You have 0.8 gallons left. You will make it! ETA 13 minutes." Finally, you could choose communications, send your spouse an E-mail message: "I'm late; pick up the kids," and ask to | Patents; Calling all drivers: a car radio that can direct you around traffic jams or keep track of your teen-ager. |
802326_0 | LET'S say you've just left work at the end of the day only to find yourself stuck in a traffic jam. You need to know the best alternate route, but even then you're probably going to miss the movie you were going to see. So you've got to find out the time of the next showing and let your husband know he has to pick up the kids. You need gas, too, but you don't know where to find inexpensive stations along your detour. And since this traffic is going to cost you time, you'd like to check your office voice-mail. If you have a car phone, you can accomplish some of this. Or you could just wait and see if a newly patented radio that functions like a computer-cum-personal-organizer becomes common technology in new cars. The system is another example of the multimedia push to exploit traditionally passive electronic equipment. Using computer chips, a combination of broadcast signals and satellite tracking technologies, the system transforms a radio into, among other things, a movie directory, a gas-station locator and an atlas. The Radio Satellite Corporation, a company near Pasadena, Calif., has demonstrated what it calls a "virtual prototype" -- a simulation of its invention on the World Wide Web. Browsers can play around with this futuristic radio at a site called Radiostar (http://www.radiosat.com /radiostar). With it, the inventors imagine your solution to the traffic jam will go something like this: On your radio, a touch-screen display would offer information on travel, weather, road conditions, sports, stocks, and shopping. You would pick road conditions and immediately receive an alert about the traffic jam. Then a map would appear, to pinpoint the bottleneck. You would ask for an alternative route and get another map with a detour defined in color. Next, you would select the travel category and a sub-category of movies. That would tell you where and when the film you want to see is playing and display a map to get you to the theater. Under the sub-category, gas, you could ask for the nearest station. You would get several options, with addresses and prices. The Web site example would say: "0.6 gallons required to get to Arco. You have 0.8 gallons left. You will make it! ETA 13 minutes." Finally, you could choose communications, send your spouse an E-mail message: "I'm late; pick up the kids," and ask to | Patents;Calling all drivers: a car radio that can direct you around traffic jams or keep track of your teen-ager. |
802328_0 | The space shuttle Columbia's chief scientist jiggled cherry tomato-size drops of water today, as the rest of the crew tiptoed around to avoid spoiling the laboratory experiment. One astronaut, Kathryn Thornton, used sound waves to bounce one drop at a time inside an enclosed chamber. The levitating drops quivered and at times flipped and spun based on the sound volume, alternating between spheres and ovals. It looks beautiful," a ground controller said. The beauty was short-lived. Within an hour or so, the first drop splattered on the interior wall of the chamber. So it was on to a bigger drop, No. 2. "I'm having a lot of fun doing this," Ms. Thornton said on day three of the flight. Scientists want to better understand how liquids behave in weightlessness in order to contribute to medical research on Earth, most notably in developing capsules containing insulin-producing cells for transplantsinto diabetes patients. In another experiment with fluids, scientists working by remote control from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., applied electric charges to silicone oil surrounding steel and sapphire hemispheres aboard Columbia. By creating buoyancy forces similar to those on Earth and other planets or stars, researchers hope to learn more about ocean and atmospheric flows. Earlier today, an unmanned Atlas rocket hurled a military communications satellite into orbit. The satellite is the sixth in a series of 10 ultrahigh frequency communications spacecraft built for the Navy. It eventually will be moved into a 22,300-mile-high orbit and should begin operating by the end of the year, replacing an aging, leased spacecraft. It was the third launching attempt. The first two, last week, were thwarted by high wind and delayed NASA's flight of space shuttle Columbia by nearly a week. | Shuttle Water Experiment Soars and Splats |
796785_2 | was Deputy Mayor of Paris in charge of supervising city public housing for Mayor Jacques Chirac in the early 1990's. Mr. Chirac became President and appointed Mr. Juppe as Prime Minister in May. Mr. Juppe denied any wrongdoing and dismissed rumors that he planned to resign, but he announced last Friday night that he and his children would soon vacate their bargain apartments. Mr. Juppe announced his plan for a general wage freeze for Government employees on Sept. 1, after rejecting a call by his first Finance Minister, Alain Madelin, to take a look at the pension benefits for public servants, which can amount to up to 96 percent of their basic salaries. The system was breaking even in 1993 and will require $14.2 billion from Government coffers this year. But laying a hand on it has long been taboo and so Mr. Madelin handed in his resignation on Aug. 25 and was replaced by Jean Arthuis. "It's not by deploring social gains that we will bring about conditions for greater solidarity," Mr. Juppe said then. He later proposed a budget that raised general sales taxes on most goods and services to 20.6 percent, and promised to hold the deficit to 5 percent of gross domestic product this year, with a target of less than 3 percent in 1997. The 25-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development commented in a study of the French economy last month: "Additional measures, especially in terms of continuing health care reform, are likely to be needed in order to achieve the assumed expenditure restraint. There is a clear need to pursue reforms of the social security system vigorously." Now, doubts persist whether either Mr. Chirac or Mr. Juppe has the nerve to continue telling the French that they have to wean themselves from what the Government and business leaders call excesses of the comprehensive European welfare state. For a President and a Government who came to office pledging to reduce France's chronically high unemployment rate -- now 11.5 percent -- by cutting back Government spending and reducing the burdens that state-run social security and health insurance systems impose on employers, the power of today's strike and the public reaction to it were not good omens. Advisers to Mr. Chirac say that he is worried about the possibility of an outburst of social unrest like the 1968 riots that doomed his mentor, Charles de Gaulle. | Public-Employee Strike in France Fosters a Day of Discontent |
792775_0 | If Jacques Cousteau could be persuaded to dive into the newly fashionable word of eco-tourism, the famed French oceanographer might want to consider lending his name to just the sort of environmentally friendly beach resort that opened on April 22, World Earth Day, on a honey-colored stretch of sand in the idyllic South Seas islands of Fiji. The staff here includes a marine biologist who offers lectures several times a week on sea-life preservation. The resort has persuaded the local tribal chief to declare a marine sanctuary in its azure coral-filled waters. Fishing is forbidden; powerboats and jet skis are banned as too polluting; the gift shop refuses to carry souvenirs made from seashells, and kitchen garbage is recycled in a compost pile. But in fact Mr. Cousteau did not lend his name to the Cousteau Fiji Islands Resort. Far from pleased about the opening of this venture in an island chain synonymous with paradise, the 85-year-old ocean explorer has gone to court in Fiji to have the name removed, accusing his son of tarnishing the family name. The lawsuit, which was filed in September in the Fiji High Court, reads a bit like a South Seas variation of King Lear, with a powerful father ready to tear apart his family when he perceives the disloyalty of a strong-willed child -- in this case Jean-Michel Cousteau, a respected 57-year-old environmentalist and film maker. The suit demands, among other things, that the name be removed from the resort unless "Jean-Michel" appears in the logo and advertisements in lettering the exact same size and color as "Cousteau." The elder Mr. Cousteau has refused to give interviews. His son, a partner in the resort, describes the lawsuit as "very sad and shocking," and he has vowed to contest it, offering the prospect of a mudslinging father-versus-son legal battle in a Fijian courthouse. "I really hope that we can have a big hug and resolve this over a bottle of wine and put it behind us," the younger Mr. Cousteau said in a telephone interview from his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. "But I was given this name, and I am convinced that I have the right to call myself Cousteau," he said. "There are limits to what I can take -- and I've had to take a lot of punishment from my father and from some of his entourage." The feud between the | Savusavu Journal;Cousteau Sues Son, Churning Fiji Waters |
793009_0 | A few years ago, Orion Letizi, an English major who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, would probably have become a teacher, journalist or graduate student. But just three months after leaving behind Milton and the metaphysical poets, Mr. Letizi is up to his ears in computer software. He has a job offering technical advice to customers of a company that sells access to the Internet. On his own time, he is learning computer programming. And with six other people, he is starting a service to distribute music on the Internet. "Previous to my current experience I really was at sea when it comes to computers," said Mr. Letizi, who is 23 and lives in San Francisco. "I just walked into it." Across the country, a generation of college graduates with no technical training is streaming into the software business, drawn by the industry's image as a generator of personal fortunes and cultural excitement. "There's no doubt that being a computer software company -- people see that as the place to work right now," said Lisa Mars, the vice president of human resources at Computer Associates in Islandia, L.I., the nation's second largest software company. Last spring, recruiters from Computer Associates, who visited more than 75 campuses nationwide, were besieged by applicants with majors ranging from economics to music composition to philosophy. Call it the Netscape effect, after the company that this summer came up with one of the biggest opening days in Wall Street history when it offered shares to the public, making Marc L. Andreessen, its 24-year-old co-founder, worth $58 million overnight. Or perhaps the phenomenon can be credited to popular culture, which has glamorized computer programmers recently in movies ("The Net," starring Sandra Bullock), in novels ("Microserfs" by Douglas Coupland) and on television ("Dweebs," a new sitcom on CBS). All this is a reminder that fads in careers are spurred not only by economic opportunity but also by deeper social and cultural currents. In the 1970's, many bright and ambitious graduates went into journalism, inspired by the Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post. In the 1980's, an era marked by preoccupation with wealth, many of the brightest graduates joined Wall Street. The popularity of software in the mid-90's "is an interesting coming-together of a business that's on the covers of all the business magazines and that's extremely hip and | New Word of Advice for the Graduate: Software |
792780_0 | A few years ago, Orion Letizi, an English major who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, would probably have become a teacher, journalist or graduate student. But just three months after leaving behind Milton and the metaphysical poets, Mr. Letizi is up to his ears in computer software. He has a job offering technical advice to customers of a company that sells access to the Internet. On his own time, he is learning computer programming. And with six other people, he is starting a service to distribute music on the Internet. Previous to my current experience I really was at sea when it comes to computers," said Mr. Letizi, who is 23 and lives in San Francisco. "I just walked into it." Across the country, a generation of college graduates with no technical training is streaming into the software business, drawn by the industry's image as a generator of personal fortunes and cultural excitement. "There's no doubt that being a computer software company -- people see that as the place to work right now," said Lisa Mars, the vice president of human resources at Computer Associates in Islandia, L.I., the nation's second largest software company. Last spring, recruiters from Computer Associates, who visited more than 75 campuses nationwide, were besieged by applicants with majors ranging from economics to music composition to philosophy. Call it the Netscape effect, after the company that this summer came up with one of the biggest opening days in Wall Street history when it offered shares to the public, making Marc L. Andreessen, its 24-year-old co-founder, worth $58 million overnight. Or perhaps the phenomenon can be credited to popular culture, which has glamorized computer programmers recently in movies ("The Net," starring Sandra Bullock), in novels ("Microserfs" by Douglas Coupland) and on television ("Dweebs," a new sitcom on CBS). All this is a reminder that fads in careers are spurred not only by economic opportunity but also by deeper social and cultural currents. In the 1970's, many bright and ambitious graduates went into journalism, inspired by the Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post. In the 1980's, an era marked by preoccupation with wealth, many of the brightest graduates joined Wall Street. The popularity of software in the mid-90's "is an interesting coming-together of a business that's on the covers of all the business magazines and that's extremely hip and | New Word of Advice for the Graduate: Software |
792774_0 | France detonated a nuclear device on Fangataufa Atoll in the South Pacific late Sunday night, the second in a series of tests that have brought international condemnation. The Defense Ministry announced the test early today in Paris, saying the test measured less than 110 kilotons. The first French test on Sept. 5 was 20 kilotons. The Director of the French Atomic Energy Commission had said earlier in Papeete, Tahiti, the capital of French Polynesia, that the second test would be more than three times as powerful as the first one. The first test drew worldwide protest and prompted rioting in Papeete, the staging area for both the nuclear tests and protesters. Protesters from the environmental group Greenpeace have spent much of the last month in boats trying to enter the 12-mile exclusion zone around the two atolls, Mururoa and Fangataufa, which are about 750 miles from Papeete. President Jacques Chirac this summer announced that France planned a series of up to eight tests by the end of May, breaking a three-year moratorium. | France Detonates A Second Atom Test |
792773_3 | machines 24 hours a day. Administration officials said the plan before Mr. Clinton would create a multi-tiered system that would determine the appropriate treatment for a country based on its history, the state of its nuclear and missile programs and the identity of the customer planning to use the computer. Officials said the Clinton Administration planned to maintain the ban on exports of powerful computers to Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya. American intelligence agencies say each of these countries is actively trying to develop nuclear weapons. On the other hand, most remaining restrictions on sales to allies like Britain or France would be lifted. And friendly countries without nuclear arms programs could import machines of up to 10,000 MTOP's for civilian uses. Anything larger would still require an export license. The plan before Mr. Clinton would lift restrictions on exports of American computers of less than 2,000 MTOP's, both civilian and military. A rule that forbids American manufacturers from selling powerful computers to anyone using them to make nuclear weapons would remain in effect, and the Administration intends to give companies additional training in how to recognize suspect users. This change alone is important to manufacturers because it permits companies to sell the more powerful work stations, which are the heart of a modern computing network. Administration officials said the most hotly debated issue among the agencies was how much to loosen controls over sales of powerful computers to Israel, India, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, China and Russia. These countries are classified by American officials as having a nuclear arsenal or having attempted in the past to produce missiles and other weapons of mass destruction. Under a plan advanced by the Pentagon and eventually adopted by the other agencies, civilian customers in these countries could import computers slower than 7,000 MTOP's without Commerce Department review and approval. Officials said the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency had suggested that the Government be given 20 to 30 days to veto such sales, but that option was rejected by other agencies. Military users in those countries could import computers of 2,000 to 7,000 MTOP's, but only after obtaining an export license. Several Administration officials expressed concern that more powerful computers sold to China or other countries in this category might be diverted from civilian to military uses. They said the line between military and civilian uses was hazy in several of these countries, | CLINTON TO EASE COMPUTER SALES |
792823_2 | own words for a similar message. "The poor of the United States and the world are your brothers and sisters in Christ," he recalled the Pope saying in a speech Oct. 2, 1979, in Yankee Stadium. "You must never be content to leave them just the crumbs of the feast. You must take of your substance and not just of your abundance in order to help them." "I think we're still giving the poor crumbs," Father Tos said. Msgr. Harry J. Byrne, pastor of Epiphany Roman Catholic Church on Second Avenue and 22d Street in Manhattan, is delivering a gently pointed appeal to the Pope to spend time listening to the concerns of American bishops. Although Monsignor Byrne did not say so overtly, his message is an oblique call for the Pope to be more open to considering such matters as women's ordination, issues that are more in favor in the United States than in Rome. In his homily, Monsignor Byrne plans to recall historical instances in which popes were persuaded by local appeals, even over the objections of their aides. "Interaction between popes and bishops has always been important, the pope assuring a unity in essential doctrine and the local churches assuring flexibility in nonessential matters," a draft of Monsignor Byrne's sermon reads. Not surprisingly, some members of the clergy are drawing contradictory lessons from the Pope's visit. A sermon by John E. Hiemstra, executive director of the Council of Churches of the City of New York and a pastor of the Reformed Church of Closter, N.J., comments on how Catholics and Protestants have warmed to each other in recent years, drawing nearer on theological and social issues. Mr. Hiemstra, who will be one of many members of the clergy meeting the Pope on Saturday at the home of John Cardinal O'Connor, recalled that four decades ago, Protestant ministers regularly assailed Catholic teachings and Catholic priests refused to attend Protestant services. "He is a leader that stands for the liturgy of the Christian faith and regularly champions salvation in Jesus Christ and affirms the power of the holy spirit," a draft of Mr. Hiemstra's sermon says about the Pope. Yet the Rev. James O. Stallings, regional minister for the American Baptist Churches of Metropolitan New York, said his sermons would lament the Vatican's failure to arrange an explicitly ecumenical event during the current visit. By contrast, Mr. Stallings recalled, | Clergy of All Faiths Find a Message, Social or Spiritual, in the Pope's Visit |
793050_2 | own words for a similar message. "The poor of the United States and the world are your brothers and sisters in Christ," he recalled the Pope saying in a speech Oct. 2, 1979, in Yankee Stadium. "You must never be content to leave them just the crumbs of the feast. You must take of your substance and not just of your abundance in order to help them." "I think we're still giving the poor crumbs," Father Tos said. Msgr. Harry J. Byrne, pastor of Epiphany Roman Catholic Church on Second Avenue and 22d Street in Manhattan, is delivering a gently pointed appeal to the Pope to spend time listening to the concerns of American bishops. Although Monsignor Byrne did not say so overtly, his message is an oblique call for the Pope to be more open to considering such matters as women's ordination, issues that are more in favor in the United States than in Rome. In his homily, Monsignor Byrne plans to recall historical instances in which popes were persuaded by local appeals, even over the objections of their aides. "Interaction between popes and bishops has always been important, the pope assuring a unity in essential doctrine and the local churches assuring flexibility in nonessential matters," a draft of Monsignor Byrne's sermon reads. Not surprisingly, some members of the clergy are drawing contradictory lessons from the Pope's visit. A sermon by John E. Hiemstra, executive director of the Council of Churches of the City of New York and a pastor of the Reformed Church of Closter, N.J., comments on how Catholics and Protestants have warmed to each other in recent years, drawing nearer on theological and social issues. Mr. Hiemstra, who will be one of many members of the clergy meeting the Pope on Saturday at the home of John Cardinal O'Connor, recalled that four decades ago, Protestant ministers regularly assailed Catholic teachings and Catholic priests refused to attend Protestant services. "He is a leader that stands for the liturgy of the Christian faith and regularly champions salvation in Jesus Christ and affirms the power of the holy spirit," a draft of Mr. Hiemstra's sermon says about the Pope. Yet the Rev. James O. Stallings, regional minister for the American Baptist Churches of Metropolitan New York, said his sermons would lament the Vatican's failure to arrange an explicitly ecumenical event during the current visit. By contrast, Mr. Stallings recalled, | Clergy of All Faiths Find a Message, Social or Spiritual, in the Pope's Visit |
793005_0 | If Jacques Cousteau could be persuaded to dive into the newly fashionable word of eco-tourism, the famed French oceanographer might want to consider lending his name to just the sort of environmentally friendly beach resort that opened on April 22, World Earth Day, on a honey-colored stretch of sand in the idyllic South Seas islands of Fiji. The staff here includes a marine biologist who offers lectures several times a week on sea-life preservation. The resort has persuaded the local tribal chief to declare a marine sanctuary in its azure coral-filled waters. Fishing is forbidden; powerboats and jet skis are banned as too polluting; the gift shop refuses to carry souvenirs made from seashells, and kitchen garbage is recycled in a compost pile. But in fact Mr. Cousteau did not lend his name to the Cousteau Fiji Islands Resort. Far from pleased about the opening of this venture in an island chain synonymous with paradise, the 85-year-old ocean explorer has gone to court in Fiji to have the name removed, accusing his son of tarnishing the family name. The lawsuit, which was filed in September in the Fiji High Court, reads a bit like a South Seas variation of King Lear, with a powerful father ready to tear apart his family when he perceives the disloyalty of a strong-willed child -- in this case Jean-Michel Cousteau, a respected 57-year-old environmentalist and film maker. The suit demands, among other things, that the name be removed from the resort unless "Jean-Michel" appears in the logo and advertisements in lettering the exact same size and color as "Cousteau." The elder Mr. Cousteau has refused to give interviews. His son, a partner in the resort, describes the lawsuit as "very sad and shocking," and he has vowed to contest it, offering the prospect of a mudslinging father-versus-son legal battle in a Fijian courthouse. "I really hope that we can have a big hug and resolve this over a bottle of wine and put it behind us," the younger Mr. Cousteau said in a telephone interview from his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. "But I was given this name, and I am convinced that I have the right to call myself Cousteau," he said. "There are limits to what I can take -- and I've had to take a lot of punishment from my father and from some of his entourage." The feud between the | Savusavu Journal; Cousteau Sues Son, Churning Fiji Waters |
793004_3 | machines 24 hours a day. Administration officials said the plan before Mr. Clinton would create a multi-tiered system that would determine the appropriate treatment for a country based on its history, the state of its nuclear and missile programs and the identity of the customer planning to use the computer. Officials said the Clinton Administration planned to maintain the ban on exports of powerful computers to Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya. American intelligence agencies say each of these countries is actively trying to develop nuclear weapons. On the other hand, most remaining restrictions on sales to allies like Britain or France would be lifted. And friendly countries without nuclear arms programs could import machines of up to 10,000 MTOP's for civilian uses. Anything larger would still require an export license. The plan before Mr. Clinton would lift restrictions on exports of American computers of less than 2,000 MTOP's, both civilian and military. A rule that forbids American manufacturers from selling powerful computers to anyone using them to make nuclear weapons would remain in effect, and the Administration intends to give companies additional training in how to recognize suspect users. This change alone is important to manufacturers because it permits companies to sell the more powerful work stations, which are the heart of a modern computing network. Administration officials said the most hotly debated issue among the agencies was how much to loosen controls over sales of powerful computers to Israel, India, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, China and Russia. These countries are classified by American officials as having a nuclear arsenal or having attempted in the past to produce missiles and other weapons of mass destruction. Under a plan advanced by the Pentagon and eventually adopted by the other agencies, civilian customers in these countries could import computers slower than 7,000 MTOP's without Commerce Department review and approval. Officials said the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency had suggested that the Government be given 20 to 30 days to veto such sales, but that option was rejected by other agencies. Military users in those countries could import computers of 2,000 to 7,000 MTOP's, but only after obtaining an export license. Several Administration officials expressed concern that more powerful computers sold to China or other countries in this category might be diverted from civilian to military uses. They said the line between military and civilian uses was hazy in several of these countries, | CLINTON TO EASE COMPUTER SALES |
795498_0 | To the Editor: Last month a member of my staff attended the annual Italian Festival in Scotch Plains. It was an enjoyable outing, but it was marred by a shocking sign posted near a ride: "No pregnant women or mental retards allowed." Fortunately, a member of Unico, one of the festival's sponsors, saw the sign and told the man in charge of the ride to block out the words "mental retards" with masking tape. After years of awareness and education campaigns, not to mention the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, it is disheartening to hear of such an offensive incident. It is my hope, naive as it may be, that in the future there will be no need to use masking tape to silence discriminatory statements against people with developmental disabilities. DEBORAH LORENZETTI Jersey City The writer is executive director of the Hudson Association for Retarded Citizens. | Developmentally Disabled Are People, Nothing Else |
795697_8 | On other stretches we passed boats, some of them spiffy cabin cruisers with gaily colored parasols unfurled on their top decks, some peniches like ours, some small outboard motor craft, and some great, black-hulled transport barges carrying cargo down to the Mediterannean or up to the Benelux countries and the English Channel. All the vacation boats flew their national flags, and we passed Dutch, English, German, Austrian, Belgian and Swiss tourists. I regretted not having come equipped with the standards that our craft was entitled to. My wife is Austrian, my nephew Spanish, my son was born in Brazil, and I am American. We would have handily won the pennant race. Instead we attracted attention by running aground. It happened one evening on a sandbar just downstream from the town of Ray, which boasts a magnificent hillside chateau that the skipper was admiring when he should have been looking at a red and white buoy that warned of a silted-over channel ahead. With no coaxing, fellow boaters who had put in at Ray for the night swam out to where we were stranded and helped us rock our craft off its perch and back into the channel. We also drew shrieks of delight from passing boaters in the river when they spotted the boys riding behind us dolphin-like in the water, clinging to life preservers that they had attached to the aft lines. The shipboard radio proved to be entertaining company. French rap is great traveling music, and so were the American jazz classics played reverently by a French disk jockey one afternoon. Just hearing his pronunciation of Cannonball Adderly and Illinois Jacquet elevated the tone on board. Another day I lucked into a 1957 recital by Charles Trenet, the Parisian singer and songwriter famous for his carnation boutoniere and battered felt hat, and whose recording of "La Mer" had years before provided me with my first encounter with a glory of France. The days passed with idle cruising, frequent swimming pauses and occasional sightseeing in historic towns like Auxonne, where Napoleon spent 1788 and 1789 as an officer cadet in the artillery academy, and Gray, a plucky river community of winding, hilly streets and well-preserved town houses from three centuries, a place that survived the Black Death, the Ten Years' War and three efforts to burn it to the ground. At night we rode our bicycles to nearby towns | IN FRANCE, A BOAT OF ONE'S OWN |
794969_8 | On other stretches we passed boats, some of them spiffy cabin cruisers with gaily colored parasols unfurled on their top decks, some peniches like ours, some small outboard motor craft, and some great, black-hulled transport barges carrying cargo down to the Mediterannean or up to the Benelux countries and the English Channel. All the vacation boats flew their national flags, and we passed Dutch, English, German, Austrian, Belgian and Swiss tourists. I regretted not having come equipped with the standards that our craft was entitled to. My wife is Austrian, my nephew Spanish, my son was born in Brazil, and I am American. We would have handily won the pennant race. Instead we attracted attention by running aground. It happened one evening on a sandbar just downstream from the town of Ray, which boasts a magnificent hillside chateau that the skipper was admiring when he should have been looking at a red and white buoy that warned of a silted-over channel ahead. With no coaxing, fellow boaters who had put in at Ray for the night swam out to where we were stranded and helped us rock our craft off its perch and back into the channel. We also drew shrieks of delight from passing boaters in the river when they spotted the boys riding behind us dolphin-like in the water, clinging to life preservers that they had attached to the aft lines. The shipboard radio proved to be entertaining company. French rap is great traveling music, and so were the American jazz classics played reverently by a French disk jockey one afternoon. Just hearing his pronunciation of Cannonball Adderly and Illinois Jacquet elevated the tone on board. Another day I lucked into a 1957 recital by Charles Trenet, the Parisian singer and songwriter famous for his carnation boutoniere and battered felt hat, and whose recording of "La Mer" had years before provided me with my first encounter with a glory of France. The days passed with idle cruising, frequent swimming pauses and occasional sightseeing in historic towns like Auxonne, where Napoleon spent 1788 and 1789 as an officer cadet in the artillery academy, and Gray, a plucky river community of winding, hilly streets and well-preserved town houses from three centuries, a place that survived the Black Death, the Ten Years' War and three efforts to burn it to the ground. At night we rode our bicycles to nearby towns | IN FRANCE, A BOAT OF ONE'S OWN |
795756_2 | technician who drives 25 miles to work each day, without a cell phone. "I don't see a need for one, myself. Well, O.K., maybe in a snowstorm. But man, not at the risk of getting a brain tumor in 10 years." Concerns about possible health hazards from cellular microwaves are usually a key complaint in the suits against new towers. The industry, discounting these as scare tactics, says cellular microwaves are utterly safe. Furthermore, a general concern for safety is the main reason nearly 9 out of 10 new customers give for buying a cell phone. For example, chances are now good that the driver who just rear-ended you on Route 80 will be able to whip out a cell phone to report the accident. Then again, chances are that the cell phone might have contributed to the accident, in the view of John Violanti, a professor of criminal justice at Rochester Institute of Technology. Dr. Violanti, a former state trooper, is completing a yearlong study on the correlation between accidents and cell phone use. Its preliminary findings, he said, are that "if you have a cellular phone in your vehicle, you have a 34 percent greater risk of having an accident." By way of disclosure, it must be noted here that I myself have a cell phone. My excuse for this extravagance is that I'm often on the road in New Jersey, where many highway pay phones are owned by companies with names like Goober Telecom & Storm Door Inc., to whom it is unwise to entrust a quarter, let alone your calling-card number. The truth is, I seldom use the thing, though I am secretly thrilled whenever I flip open this tiny technological beauty, tap a button and hear a voice. Last spring, when I bought the phone, my wife, who happens to be the daughter of a psychiatrist, said merely: "You're crazy. Don't deny it." Since only 25 percent of cell-phone customers are women, industry figures show, this may still be a male thing. Not long ago, when splashy ads on Route 3 announced that marvelous technological advances made it possible to use your cell phone in a tunnel under the Hudson River, I decided to phone her at work to get her on board. "Guess where I'm calling from?" I gloated. "The middle of the Lincoln Tunnel!" "Why?" she replied, coming through loud and clear. JERSEY | Towers of Power: The Cell Phone Frenzy |
795700_0 | ONE December afternoon in the 1950's four people and a trunk squeezed into a single stateroom on a ship bound for the Caribbean. The trunk was bigger than any of us. My mother and I had crammed it full of cruiseworthy garments. Her evening gowns were modest enough for her role as a doctor's wife; she had also packed new daytime outfits -- wide-legged pants, which at that period still hinted at decadence, and gauzy shirts, naughtier still. I'd stuffed the trunk with dirndl skirts and off-the-shoulder blouses. At 15 I meant to resemble a gypsy whose passions could not be contained. This effect was offset by my glasses, when I wore them; usually I twirled them in my hand like castanets. My sister had refused new clothing -- her camp shorts and T's would be fine, she said. At 11 she was fascinated by the layout of the ship that was briefly to be our home. For weeks its diagrams had been spread out on our dining room table. "Here's where the captain walks alone and thinks of his lost love," I showed my sister one day. She flicked my finger aside. "Here's where the pirates will board," she said. We all knew that male passengers were requested to wear dinner jackets in the evening. So my father had packed his ancient tuxedo. Wearing it he looked as ravishing as a band leader. The disease that claimed him five years later had so far merely given a devilish cast to his handsome features. After a purgatory of rough weather off Cape Hatteras, life aboard ship became paradise. There were seven scheduled meals a day, and snacks on demand. There was dancing and gambling every night; children were not excluded. On the high seas the Captain was Law, my mother explained. He could allow toddlers to drop ten-spots at the tables; he could perform marriages (I smiled my exotic smile); order summary executions (my sister looked appraisingly at me). Early on my father commandeered a particular deck chair and began to work his way through a stack of medical articles. My sister met kids her own age and led them through the ship, searching for captives to rescue or miscreants to be made captive. My mother swished around in her dramatic trousers. "Travesty," my father commented. She raised her eyebrows; but he was merely being learned -- "travesti," he informed | A Sailor, a Gypsy, a Pirate at Sea |
795156_0 | To the Editor: Last month a member of my staff attended the annual Italian Festival in Scotch Plains. It was an enjoyable outing, but it was marred by a shocking sign posted near a ride: "No pregnant women or mental retards allowed." Fortunately, a member of Unico, one of the festival's sponsors, saw the sign and told the man in charge of the ride to block out the words "mental retards" with masking tape. After years of awareness and education campaigns, not to mention the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, it is disheartening to hear of such an offensive incident. It is my hope, naive as it may be, that in the future there will be no need to use masking tape to silence discriminatory statements against people with developmental disabilities. DEBORAH LORENZETTI Jersey City The writer is executive director of the Hudson Association for Retarded Citizens. | Developmentally Disabled Are People, Nothing Else |
794967_0 | THE resumption of French nuclear tests in the South Pacific and the rioting it sparked last month on the French-administered island of Tahiti have frightened away thousands of foreign travelers from French Polynesia. The rioting began on Sept. 6, the day after France conducted the first of a planned series of nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, about 750 miles southeast of Tahiti, the largest of the islands of French Polynesia. Major hotels throughout French Polynesia, which includes the resort islands of Moorea and Bora Bora, say they have been flooded with cancellations from travelers who fear the violence could resume if France continues with the nuclear tests, which it has vowed to do. A local hotel association said that a week after the rioting, its members had already recorded more than 26,000 cancellations. "We have started to register some cancellations -- it's probably the aftershock of what people have been shown on television," said Maeva Salmon, regional director for the Americas for Tahiti Tourisme, the Government tourist agency. She predicted that September would be "a disaster." Antinuclear activists, many of them also leaders of a Polynesian independence movement, have warned of new violence if the tests continue. They are scheduled to last through next May. The tests pose no immediate radiation threat to tourists or to the vast majority of Polynesians -- Mururoa is in a remote corner of Polynesia, far from population centers. Environmentalists say the damage would occur over time, as nuclear material is leaked into the Pacific. During the two days of rioting, scores of foreign passengers at Tahiti's Papeete-Faa'a International Airport found themselves trapped in a crossfire of rocks and tear-gas canisters between Polynesian demonstrators and the French riot police. The demonstrators were able to reach the tarmac of the airport, and several tried to rush aboard a Los Angeles-bound jet that was filled with passengers. They were pushed back by the police. Other travelers had to evacuate hotels in the center of Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, when rioters began to set fires through the city. The fires left several shops and restaurants in ashes. Although no travelers were reported among the dozens of people injured in the violence, many foreigners said they had been terrified by the ordeal. The airport had to be closed for several days to most commercial flights because of serious damage to the runway and the main passenger terminal. | Atomic Tests and Rioting Scare Off Tahiti Tourists |
794960_1 | of movement, the exhilaration of speed, ideas not easily conveyed by a building planted firmly on the ground. Designed by Angiolo Mazzoni, the power plant was built in 1932, long after Futurism had collapsed. Antonio Sant'Elia, the most prominent architect in a movement that embraced painting, sculpture, music and, above all, the modern art of media manipulation, died in 1916, without having built any of his visionary projects. By the 1930's, Italy's most progressive architects had embraced Rationalism, the Italian version of the International Style. But Mazzoni had originally been allied with Sant'Elia; in 1914 he signed Sant'Elia's manifesto for Futurist architecture. His design for the Florence power plant is thus a throwback, an oddly successful blend of Futurist, Rationalist and Art Deco motifs. Mazzoni, a director of special projects for Italy's state railway system, was known primarily for Rationalist buildings, including many train stations. As Richard Etlin writes in his superb "Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890-1940," Mussolini set great store in the design of stations because they were the buildings most seen by foreign tourists: you saw them close-up from the trains that Il Duce made run on time. The Futurist vision of architecture was not, primarily, one of stand-alone buildings. It was an urban vision. Sant'Elia's drawings for la Citta Nuova (the New City) in 1914 envisioned a city in which transportation -- elevators, bridges, roadways -- provided the key architectural elements. Infrastructure became metastructure. Mazzoni's power plant derives much of its impact from the rail viaduct to which it is attached and from its placement just beyond a bend in the tracks. As you look down the street toward the plant, the bend creates the illusion that the building's power has warped the space around it. The plant's most explicitly Futurist element is the steel superstructure, a colonnade of four chimneys, connected by a catwalk overhead and an open stair to one side. You can see how classical Futurism could be: it's an industrial Parthenon atop its own brick pediment, with belching steam for a frieze. Pettena said the building was much more impressive before the power system was converted to gas. It used to run on coal, which was brought in on trains, then hoisted into the building by crane. At night you could see the coal fires glowing, an infernal spectacle of power, steam and speed. It's a dubious distinction to be the only Futurist | In a Bygone Day, This Was the Look Of the Future |
795045_3 | handicapped children in the same schools they would attend if they were not handicapped. While this was perceived by many as a civil-rights victory for the handicapped, it was vehemently opposed by many members of the deaf community. Most had had frustrating experiences in mainstream education and by this point the deaf community was independent and self-supporting with its own university, Gallaudet in Washington. Dr. Robert Davila, the headmaster at Fanwood, is a strong opponent of mandatory mainstream education for the deaf. As the Assistant Secretary for Special Education under President George Bush, he achieved the highest rank in Federal service ever attained by a deaf person. He opposed initiatives to include the deaf in mandates for mainstream education for all handicapped Americans. "I could not come out as a total inclusionist on this issue," said Dr. Davila. "Mainstreaming has hurt the deaf in a lot of ways." At Fanwood there is constant discussion of deaf culture. Like many minority groups, the deaf have their own language and an intense feeling of camaraderie, which comes from common experience and frustration. The week of Sept. 24 was Deaf Awareness Week, and the campus was the center of many activities,ranging from theater to forums on issues within the community. Interpretive services have become a growing occupation as more deaf adults are working in the hearing world. Many interpreters at Fanwood are hearing children of deaf parents who learned sign language as infants so they could communicate with their parents. Technology has expanded the horizons of deaf people over the last 10 years. Closed captioning on television and film, teletype communication and the Internet have alleviated some of the most common frustrations. In the past, deaf people had to go to a foreign movie to take advantage of subtitles or drive to someone's house to find out if the person they wanted to see was home. Technology has also improved early intervention. Custom-made amplification devices with FM communicators used by teachers help focus on individual needs. Computer programs with strong visual emphasis give children cognitive training, which doesn't require spoken communication. Early in the 20th century, Fanwood students were trained to be printers and milliners so they could have a vocation that would not require spoken communication. Now through early intervention the possibilities have greatly expanded. "By using your hand, the highest number that you can count to without speech is the number | New York School for the Deaf Stresses Need for Early Training |
795678_0 | THE resumption of French nuclear tests in the South Pacific and the rioting it sparked last month on the French-administered island of Tahiti have frightened away thousands of foreign travelers from French Polynesia. The rioting began on Sept. 6, the day after France conducted the first of a planned series of nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, about 750 miles southeast of Tahiti, the largest of the islands of French Polynesia. Major hotels throughout French Polynesia, which includes the resort islands of Moorea and Bora Bora, say they have been flooded with cancellations from travelers who fear the violence could resume if France continues with the nuclear tests, which it has vowed to do. A local hotel association said that a week after the rioting, its members had already recorded more than 26,000 cancellations. "We have started to register some cancellations -- it's probably the aftershock of what people have been shown on television," said Maeva Salmon, regional director for the Americas for Tahiti Tourisme, the Government tourist agency. She predicted that September would be "a disaster." Antinuclear activists, many of them also leaders of a Polynesian independence movement, have warned of new violence if the tests continue. They are scheduled to last through next May. The tests pose no immediate radiation threat to tourists or to the vast majority of Polynesians -- Mururoa is in a remote corner of Polynesia, far from population centers. Environmentalists say the damage would occur over time, as nuclear material is leaked into the Pacific. During the two days of rioting, scores of foreign passengers at Tahiti's Papeete-Faa'a International Airport found themselves trapped in a crossfire of rocks and tear-gas canisters between Polynesian demonstrators and the French riot police. The demonstrators were able to reach the tarmac of the airport, and several tried to rush aboard a Los Angeles-bound jet that was filled with passengers. They were pushed back by the police. Other travelers had to evacuate hotels in the center of Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, when rioters began to set fires through the city. The fires left several shops and restaurants in ashes. Although no travelers were reported among the dozens of people injured in the violence, many foreigners said they had been terrified by the ordeal. The airport had to be closed for several days to most commercial flights because of serious damage to the runway and the main passenger terminal. | Atomic Tests and Rioting Scare Off Tahiti Tourists |
794972_0 | Several United States airlines are expanding their use of "ticketless" travel, in an effort to reduce costs, cut down on fraud and improve efficiency and convenience for passengers. With ticketless travel, passengers make reservations as usual, either directly through the airline or with a travel agent who has access to the appropriate reservations systems, and pay with a credit card. Generally, the passenger receives a confirmation number and a written receipt; the itinerary is faxed or mailed. At the airport, boarding passes are obtained either by showing identification to an agent at the gate or from a machine. Last month, United Airlines, which began electronic ticketing on selected flights last November, expanded the option to passengers purchasing travel on all domestic flights. Northwest Airlines expects to begin testing a ticketless travel program early next year and plans to expand it in late 1996. Continental Airlines has been extending its electronic ticketing program, and expects to have its machines in place at 90 percent of the airports it serves by the end of the year. The program, initiated at a few airports in April, was developed by the airline with Electronic Data Systems and AT&T Global Information Solution. Passengers check in and receive their boarding passes by using machines at ticket counters and departure gates. The machines use credit cards, and allow for seat assignment changes, frequent flier upgrades and flight changes. Valujet and Southwest were among the first airlines to use ticketless travel. Southwest, which introduced its ticketless system in August 1994, is testing the use of hand-held computers operated by skycaps to allow curbside luggage check-in for passengers who have chosen the ticketless option. TRAVEL ADVISORY | U.S. Airlines Expand Ticketless Travel |
795687_10 | the United States Coast Guard Choir, the West Point Cadet Choir and the Boy's Choir of Harlem, with solos by Kathy Triccoli and Jon Secada as well as Mr. Domingo, Ms. Flack and Ms. Cole. The altar at the south end of the lawn was huge, perhaps 100 feet across. From a distance, it appeared to be the kind of stage that impresarios set up for rock concerts or evangelists for revival meetings. But this altar had been constructed of marble and wood from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and North and South America, and contained relics of saints from many lands. After the departure of the crowds, the Great Lawn seemed a bad pun, for it was a torn, gouged sea of mud. But the ecological damage was negligible. Starting this week, bulldozers are to roll across the field to begin a two-year, $18 million restoration that had been planned long before the Pope's trip. The Pope's meetings with leaders of other faiths were described as more symbolic than substantive. A Christian group of about 25 included the Rev. Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Charles L. Colson, a Watergate scandal figure who directs Prison Fellowship Ministries. A meeting with 24 Jewish leaders was set for well after their Sabbath ended at sundown. After centuries of distrust, Jewish-Vatican relations have sharply improved in recent years. The Vatican established full diplomatic ties with Israel last year, and the Pope told Jewish leaders at the meeting that he hoped to travel to Jerusalem some day. As the Pope's visit drew to a close, church officials pronounced it a success. They said the Pope had conveyed important messages to the world, to America and to American Catholics and had reasserted his moral visions. He encountered enthusiastic crowds everywhere he went, and minimal protests. Some Vatican observers question the value of the Pope's global travels, contending they are spectacular but expensive, leave few lasting results and in an age of entertainment extravaganzas seem to be little more than the religious equivalent of rock concerts. But others praise the Pope for making arduous journeys, and many theologians say the trips have become a central feature of John Paul's papacy, enabling him to reassert Roman Catholic orthodoxy around the world and giving him, and his Church, the moral high ground in speaking for peace and the world's poor. THE POPE'S VISIT: THE OVERVIEW | 125,000 Join Pope at Mass In Central Park 'Basilica' |
795200_10 | the United States Coast Guard Choir, the West Point Cadet Choir and the Boy's Choir of Harlem, with solos by Kathy Triccoli and Jon Secada as well as Mr. Domingo, Ms. Flack and Ms. Cole. The altar at the south end of the lawn was huge, perhaps 100 feet across. From a distance, it appeared to be the kind of stage that impresarios set up for rock concerts or evangelists for revival meetings. But this altar had been constructed of marble and wood from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and North and South America, and contained relics of saints from many lands. After the departure of the crowds, the Great Lawn seemed a bad pun, for it was a torn, gouged sea of mud. But the ecological damage was negligible. Starting this week, bulldozers are to roll across the field to begin a two-year, $18 million restoration that had been planned long before the Pope's trip. The Pope's meetings with leaders of other faiths were described as more symbolic than substantive. A Christian group of about 25 included the Rev. Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Charles L. Colson, a Watergate scandal figure who directs Prison Fellowship Ministries. A meeting with 24 Jewish leaders was set for well after their Sabbath ended at sundown. After centuries of distrust, Jewish-Vatican relations have sharply improved in recent years. The Vatican established full diplomatic ties with Israel last year, and the Pope told Jewish leaders at the meeting that he hoped to travel to Jerusalem some day. As the Pope's visit drew to a close, church officials pronounced it a success. They said the Pope had conveyed important messages to the world, to America and to American Catholics and had reasserted his moral visions. He encountered enthusiastic crowds everywhere he went, and minimal protests. Some Vatican observers question the value of the Pope's global travels, contending they are spectacular but expensive, leave few lasting results and in an age of entertainment extravaganzas seem to be little more than the religious equivalent of rock concerts. But others praise the Pope for making arduous journeys, and many theologians say the trips have become a central feature of John Paul's papacy, enabling him to reassert Roman Catholic orthodoxy around the world and giving him, and his Church, the moral high ground in speaking for peace and the world's poor. THE POPE'S VISIT: THE OVERVIEW | 125,000 Join Pope at Mass In Central Park 'Basilica' |
794970_0 | ONE December afternoon in the 1950's four people and a trunk squeezed into a single stateroom on a ship bound for the Caribbean. The trunk was bigger than any of us. My mother and I had crammed it full of cruiseworthy garments. Her evening gowns were modest enough for her role as a doctor's wife; she had also packed new daytime outfits -- wide-legged pants, which at that period still hinted at decadence, and gauzy shirts, naughtier still. I'd stuffed the trunk with dirndl skirts and off-the-shoulder blouses. At 15 I meant to resemble a gypsy whose passions could not be contained. This effect was offset by my glasses, when I wore them; usually I twirled them in my hand like castanets. My sister had refused new clothing -- her camp shorts and T's would be fine, she said. At 11 she was fascinated by the layout of the ship that was briefly to be our home. For weeks its diagrams had been spread out on our dining room table. "Here's where the captain walks alone and thinks of his lost love," I showed my sister one day. She flicked my finger aside. "Here's where the pirates will board," she said. We all knew that male passengers were requested to wear dinner jackets in the evening. So my father had packed his ancient tuxedo. Wearing it he looked as ravishing as a band leader. The disease that claimed him five years later had so far merely given a devilish cast to his handsome features. After a purgatory of rough weather off Cape Hatteras, life aboard ship became paradise. There were seven scheduled meals a day, and snacks on demand. There was dancing and gambling every night; children were not excluded. On the high seas the Captain was Law, my mother explained. He could allow toddlers to drop ten-spots at the tables; he could perform marriages (I smiled my exotic smile); order summary executions (my sister looked appraisingly at me). Early on my father commandeered a particular deck chair and began to work his way through a stack of medical articles. My sister met kids her own age and led them through the ship, searching for captives to rescue or miscreants to be made captive. My mother swished around in her dramatic trousers. "Travesty," my father commented. She raised her eyebrows; but he was merely being learned -- "travesti," he informed | A Sailor, a Gypsy, a Pirate at Sea |
795611_1 | of movement, the exhilaration of speed, ideas not easily conveyed by a building planted firmly on the ground. Designed by Angiolo Mazzoni, the power plant was built in 1932, long after Futurism had collapsed. Antonio Sant'Elia, the most prominent architect in a movement that embraced painting, sculpture, music and, above all, the modern art of media manipulation, died in 1916, without having built any of his visionary projects. By the 1930's, Italy's most progressive architects had embraced Rationalism, the Italian version of the International Style. But Mazzoni had originally been allied with Sant'Elia; in 1914 he signed Sant'Elia's manifesto for Futurist architecture. His design for the Florence power plant is thus a throwback, an oddly successful blend of Futurist, Rationalist and Art Deco motifs. Mazzoni, a director of special projects for Italy's state railway system, was known primarily for Rationalist buildings, including many train stations. As Richard Etlin writes in his superb "Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890-1940," Mussolini set great store in the design of stations because they were the buildings most seen by foreign tourists: you saw them close-up from the trains that Il Duce made run on time. The Futurist vision of architecture was not, primarily, one of stand-alone buildings. It was an urban vision. Sant'Elia's drawings for la Citta Nuova (the New City) in 1914 envisioned a city in which transportation -- elevators, bridges, roadways -- provided the key architectural elements. Infrastructure became metastructure. Mazzoni's power plant derives much of its impact from the rail viaduct to which it is attached and from its placement just beyond a bend in the tracks. As you look down the street toward the plant, the bend creates the illusion that the building's power has warped the space around it. The plant's most explicitly Futurist element is the steel superstructure, a colonnade of four chimneys, connected by a catwalk overhead and an open stair to one side. You can see how classical Futurism could be: it's an industrial Parthenon atop its own brick pediment, with belching steam for a frieze. Pettena said the building was much more impressive before the power system was converted to gas. It used to run on coal, which was brought in on trains, then hoisted into the building by crane. At night you could see the coal fires glowing, an infernal spectacle of power, steam and speed. It's a dubious distinction to be the only Futurist | In a Bygone Day, This Was the Look Of the Future |
795031_2 | technician who drives 25 miles to work each day, without a cell phone. "I don't see a need for one, myself. Well, O.K., maybe in a snowstorm. But man, not at the risk of getting a brain tumor in 10 years." Concerns about possible health hazards from cellular microwaves are usually a key complaint in the suits against new towers. The industry, discounting these as scare tactics, says cellular microwaves are utterly safe. Furthermore, a general concern for safety is the main reason nearly 9 out of 10 new customers give for buying a cell phone. For example, chances are now good that the driver who just rear-ended you on Route 80 will be able to whip out a cell phone to report the accident. Then again, chances are that the cell phone might have contributed to the accident, in the view of John Violanti, a professor of criminal justice at Rochester Institute of Technology. Dr. Violanti, a former state trooper, is completing a yearlong study on the correlation between accidents and cell phone use. Its preliminary findings, he said, are that "if you have a cellular phone in your vehicle, you have a 34 percent greater risk of having an accident." By way of disclosure, it must be noted here that I myself have a cell phone. My excuse for this extravagance is that I'm often on the road in New Jersey, where many highway pay phones are owned by companies with names like Goober Telecom & Storm Door Inc., to whom it is unwise to entrust a quarter, let alone your calling-card number. The truth is, I seldom use the thing, though I am secretly thrilled whenever I flip open this tiny technological beauty, tap a button and hear a voice. Last spring, when I bought the phone, my wife, who happens to be the daughter of a psychiatrist, said merely: "You're crazy. Don't deny it." Since only 25 percent of cell-phone customers are women, industry figures show, this may still be a male thing. Not long ago, when splashy ads on Route 3 announced that marvelous technological advances made it possible to use your cell phone in a tunnel under the Hudson River, I decided to phone her at work to get her on board. "Guess where I'm calling from?" I gloated. "The middle of the Lincoln Tunnel!" "Why?" she replied, coming through loud and clear. JERSEY | Towers of Power: The Cell Phone Frenzy |
795702_0 | Several United States airlines are expanding their use of "ticketless" travel, in an effort to reduce costs, cut down on fraud and improve efficiency and convenience for passengers. With ticketless travel, passengers make reservations as usual, either directly through the airline or with a travel agent who has access to the appropriate reservations systems, and pay with a credit card. Generally, the passenger receives a confirmation number and a written receipt; the itinerary is faxed or mailed. At the airport, boarding passes are obtained either by showing identification to an agent at the gate or from a machine. Last month, United Airlines, which began electronic ticketing on selected flights last November, expanded the option to passengers purchasing travel on all domestic flights. Northwest Airlines expects to begin testing a ticketless travel program early next year and plans to expand it in late 1996. Continental Airlines has been extending its electronic ticketing program, and expects to have its machines in place at 90 percent of the airports it serves by the end of the year. The program, initiated at a few airports in April, was developed by the airline with Electronic Data Systems and AT&T Global Information Solution. Passengers check in and receive their boarding passes by using machines at ticket counters and departure gates. The machines use credit cards, and allow for seat assignment changes, frequent flier upgrades and flight changes. Valujet and Southwest were among the first airlines to use ticketless travel. Southwest, which introduced its ticketless system in August 1994, is testing the use of hand-held computers operated by skycaps to allow curbside luggage check-in for passengers who have chosen the ticketless option. TRAVEL ADVISORY | U.S. Airlines Expand Ticketless Travel |
795391_0 | THERE ARE ABOUT -- 57 milion children under 15, about 22 percent of the population. About 79 percent are white, 16 percent blck and 5 percent Asian or Pacific Islander, America Indian, Eskimo or Aleutian. About 12 percent of the population is of Hispanic origin. IN 1994, THERE -- were an estimated 3,949,000 births. This was the first time since 1989 that the total has fallen under four million. The decline indicates an echo effect, as the outsize number of baby-boom mothers start to pass out of their childbearing years. THE NUMBER OF-- children per woman has decreased from 3.6 in 1960 to 2.0; today. Nearly 1 potential mother in 10 now says she never expects to bear a child. THE AVERAGE AGE-- of a first time mother is 23.7, only slightly higher than the average age of first-time mothers in 1940 but nearly two years higher than in 1960. First-time fathers then and now are typically three or four years older. THE INFANT MORTALITY-- rate decreased from 10.6 per 1,000 births in 1985 to 8.5 in 1992. This has been attributed to expanded Medicaid coverage, better nutrition and better medical technology. Even so, a recent report found that the rate is still lower in 22 other developed countries. AMERICA RANKS 31ST-- in the percentage of low-birth-weight babies, behind Turkey, Iran and even Romnia. Washington, D.C., has the highest U.S. concentration of low-birth-weight births, 14.3 percent as of 1991, compared with 10 percent for New York City and 7.1 percent for the country. THE PROPORTION OF--multiple births to all births in America is still very small, 2.4 percet in 1992. Nonetheless, since the early 70's the multiple-birth rate has increased by a third. The increase is attributable to an increase in births to older women, an incease in infertility service seekers and new drugs and treatments. RECENT DATA SHOW-- that 42 percent of families with children under 18 have only one child in the household. In 1960, the figure was only 32 percent. Now, 6 percent have four or more children. Then, the figure was 17 percent. SINCE 1950, THE -- number of American children living in mother-only families has quadrupled , from about 5 million to nearly 20 million, and since 1970 the number of single parents has tripled, from about a million to about 12 million. About 26 percent of households with children under 18 now have only | Portrait of The American Child, 1995 |
794900_3 | handicapped children in the same schools they would attend if they were not handicapped. While this was perceived by many as a civil-rights victory for the handicapped, it was vehemently opposed by many members of the deaf community. Most had had frustrating experiences in mainstream education and by this point the deaf community was independent and self-supporting with its own university, Gallaudet in Washington. Dr. Robert Davila, the headmaster at Fanwood, is a strong opponent of mandatory mainstream education for the deaf. As the Assistant Secretary for Special Education under President George Bush, he achieved the highest rank in Federal service ever attained by a deaf person. He opposed initiatives to include the deaf in mandates for mainstream education for all handicapped Americans. "I could not come out as a total inclusionist on this issue," said Dr. Davila. "Mainstreaming has hurt the deaf in a lot of ways." At Fanwood there is constant discussion of deaf culture. Like many minority groups, the deaf have their own language and an intense feeling of camaraderie, which comes from common experience and frustration. The week of Sept. 24 was Deaf Awareness Week, and the campus was the center of many activities,ranging from theater to forums on issues within the community. Interpretive services have become a growing occupation as more deaf adults are working in the hearing world. Many interpreters at Fanwood are hearing children of deaf parents who learned sign language as infants so they could communicate with their parents. Technology has expanded the horizons of deaf people over the last 10 years. Closed captioning on television and film, teletype communication and the Internet have alleviated some of the most common frustrations. In the past, deaf people had to go to a foreign movie to take advantage of subtitles or drive to someone's house to find out if the person they wanted to see was home. Technology has also improved early intervention. Custom-made amplification devices with FM communicators used by teachers help focus on individual needs. Computer programs with strong visual emphasis give children cognitive training, which doesn't require spoken communication. Early in the 20th century, Fanwood students were trained to be printers and milliners so they could have a vocation that would not require spoken communication. Now through early intervention the possibilities have greatly expanded. "By using your hand, the highest number that you can count to without speech is the number | New York School for the Deaf Stresses Need for Early Training |
784445_4 | ago, Microsoft began placing white, oval-shaped stickers on its boxes. The stickers are treated so that under a special light, a distinctive pattern appears. Microsoft, as the industry leader, has made the most aggressive push to thwart software pirates. The antipiracy team, headed by Mr. Curtis, has doubled in the last two years, to 80 people. The company has also hired a corps of lawyers and outside investigators for its antipiracy efforts in 70 countries. The investigators, Mr. Curtis explains, try to "get in there early to stop counterfeiters before they really get going." Investigations vary, but they can involve an array of cloak-and-dagger techniques, including digging through trash bins, paying locals to spy and posing as crooks to gather evidence. Microsoft and other software companies have also pushed hard for tighter copyright protections for software aboard. Italy is the industry's great success story. In December 1992, the Italian Government passed tough software protection legislation at the urging of American companies and a European Community directive on software. The next year, Italy's tax authorities began enforcing the new law by going into companies and conducting audits of software use. The companies complied, erasing their illegally copied software and replacing it with legal copies purchased from software makers like Microsoft, Lotus and Novell. As a result, Italy's software piracy rate -- illegal copies as a share of total use -- dropped from an estimated 86 percent to 50 percent in a year. "It was the single largest reduction in software piracy that we've seen anywhere in the world," said Robert W. Holleyman 2d, president of the Business Software Alliance. Mr. Holleyman and the antipiracy team at Microsoft should be in business for years to come. The software piracy rate is more than 95 percent in a number of big markets, including China, Russia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines. Many analysts, however, especially in developing countries, view the high percentages with far less alarm than people in the software industry. Skeptics say much of the copying can be seen as a natural stage of economic and technological evolution. In the 19th century, they note, the American publishing industry got a kick-start by printing pirated copies of English novels. An angry Charles Dickens, who came to the United States, just as Microsoft is now venturing abroad, to try to enforce his legal copyright and collect payment, met with little success early on. | Pirates Are Circling the Good Ship Windows 95 |
784475_0 | To the Editor: "Community Treatment of the Retarded" (editorial, Aug. 17) requires clarification. "Total deinstitutionalization is not realistic," you state, based on your assertion that deinstitutionalization "became a cruel hoax" since thousands of people, presumably with retardation, "were left to fend for themselves on the streets." There has been no pattern whatever of deinstitutionalized people with mental retardation dumped into the streets. The charge has been leveled at policies pertaining to people with mental illness. It has never been leveled at policies for people with mental retardation, almost all of whom have been successfully resettled into community-based programs. Mental retardation and mental illness are entirely different conditions, subject to entirely different policy considerations: a distinction completely lost by your editorial and, unfortunately, by almost everyone outside those fields. Total deinstitutionalization of people with mental retardation is completely realistic. The previous Governor endorsed this proposition, when he proclaimed a policy of closing all state institutions by the year 2000. He got close. Under his administration institutions were reduced to about 3,500 from a peak of about 27,000 in the 1970's. That policy achieved recognition as a national model. The new Governor is considering adopting that same policy. People with mental retardation have become productive citizens in the community, justifying the Justice Department's charges that institutionalization is tantamount to "forced isolation and segregation." The Clinton Administration's rejection of institutions is absolutely justified. Institutionalization of people with mental retardation amounts to the imprisonment, without trial, of innocent people. It belongs in the past. MARC N. BRANDT Delmar, N.Y., Aug. 17, 1995 The writer is executive director of Nysarc, formerly the New York State Association for Retarded Children. | The Mentally Retarded Live Productively Outside Institutions |
782737_0 | The World Bank's new president, signaling that the institution is taking a more cautious approach to lending, has withdrawn $175 million in credits promised to a hydroelectric project in Nepal, canceling the $1 billion development. James D. Wolfensohn, who has been the international lending agency's president for about two months, said Nepal was too poor for the power project to succeed. The decision was announced last Friday. The withdrawal of the promised credits from the project, known as Arun 3, was a sign that Mr. Wolfensohn wants the World Bank -- which spent $10.4 billion on development last year -- to become more cautious in financing big infrastructure projects. It also means that a borrowing country's ability to manage a development project, and to profit from it, is likely to become an increasingly important consideration when the World Bank decides whether or not to offer financial backing. "Canceling Arun 3 signals a very rigorous approach to evaluation," said Jan Piercy, the United States representative on the World Bank's executive board. In announcing the cancellation, the bank said that the increase in domestic electricity rates needed for the project's success, along with expensive new social and environmental programs, was "beyond what Nepal could realistically have achieved at present." Bruce Rich of the Environmental Defense Fund said, "We've not previously seen the bank put such public stress on insuring projects are properly implemented." The bank also said it doubted that other donors would provide additional funds after a finding last year by the Federal Audit Office of Germany that Arun 3 "is not ripe for decision at this stage, especially in regard to its economic viability, sustainability and the minimization of risk." The Nepalese project had been opposed for years by many private environmental and antipoverty groups. They saw it as an example of World Bank lending for big projects that in some cases had backfired, increasing poverty and harming the environment instead. Opponents of the power project argued that it was too large and costly for a country whose population, they said, had an average income of only $180 a year. Instead, they favored building many smaller hydroelectric stations. "This was a 200-megawatt plant costing $1 billion, when the rule of thumb is $1 million per megawatt," said Patrick McCully of the International Rivers Network, a California environmental group. "It was too expensive and would have undermined other development priorities." In | World Bank Cancels Nepal Project Loan |
782692_1 | in gene therapy include Bayer, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Baxter International and Merck. By treating disease with the body's own genetic material, gene therapy holds the potential to correct genetic defects and, in theory at least, treat almost every known disease. The therapy, barely five years old, involves the injection of DNA into human cells, with the goal of replacing damaged genes or producing proteins that stimulate the immune system. The larger companies' push into gene therapy "is all about targets for drug development," said Cynthia Robbins-Roth, editor of Bioventure View, an industry newsletter. "It's a great way to leverage your drug discovery effort: you get to use the gene itself as a drug, for gene therapy; the protein that's expressed by that gene as therapy, and, eventually, if you're lucky, you can develop small molecules that act on that protein as drugs," she said. "You get three for the price of one." In return for providing the seed money for Genovo, a company founded by James Wilson and Mariann Grossman, two leading gene- therapy specialists at the University of Pennsylvania, Biogen will receive a significant minority equity position, as well as certain licensing rights. The initial research targets will be diseases of the liver and lungs, cystic fibrosis and familial hypercholesterol. "We believe very strongly that this is going to be one of the most exciting new frontiers in drug development," James Vincent, Biogen's chairman and chief executive, said in a telephone interview. "The impact of gene therapy on the pharmaceutical industry has the potential to equal, and quite possibly to surpass, the advances in diagnosis and treatment that the biotechnology revolution has brought about in its first 25 years," he said. In return for certain rights to gene-therapy treatments for cancer, Bristol-Myers has bought $10 million of Somatix stock at a premium to its market value. After Jan. 1, and subject to approval for Somatix to begin the second of three human trials of its cancer vaccine, Bristol-Myers will purchase an additional $10 million in Somatix stock at a premium. "This is a very good deal for Somatix," said Paul Boni, an analyst with Mehta & Isaly. "What they're getting from Bristol-Myers is commitment, but they're not giving up much at this point," because Somatix is only granting Bristol the right of first refusal in future negotiations. "It shows the value of getting a foothold in gene therapy," he said. | Bristol-Myers and Biogen To Invest in Gene Therapy |
781689_2 | test site is in Nevada. China has supported an absolute ban but said it would go along with a low threshold if the other nuclear powers wanted one. In Washington today, President Clinton said at his news conference that he welcomed a pledge by France that a series of nuclear tests in the South Pacific would be its last, and he said the decision would make it easier to achieve a worldwide nuclear test ban. "We will have a statement about own own policy in the very near future," Mr. Clinton said. The five acknowledged nuclear powers promised in May that they would complete a comprehensive test ban treaty by the end of next year. The promise was part of a package to persuade nations without nuclear weapons to extend indefinitely another pact banning the spread of nuclear arms. The new French position, made public today by France's chief negotiator at the Geneva Disarmament Conference, seemed unlikely to defuse widespread opposition to the tests that are planned before the test ban treaty goes into effect. The Foreign Ministry in Paris said the change reflected Mr. Chirac's determination to eliminate any ambiguity about his willingness to agree to an absolute ban on future testing afterward. Mr. Chirac has insisted that the tests are necessary to build a data base that would allow France to test weapons in the future with computer simulation and to test the design of a new TN-75 submarine missile warhead for its independent nuclear deterrent force. "We have to work very hard regarding the public relations," Yves Doutriaux, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said on a radio interview Wednesday with the Australian Ambassador to Washington, Dr. Don Russell, that anticipated the new French position. Australia has led international protests against the French plan for the tests, barring French companies from competing for Government contracts and boycotting French products. Japanese antinuclear groups have also threatened a boycott of French Beaujolais wine and Cognac there, and after the 50th anniversaries of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there have been effigies by demonstrators in both Japan and France labeling the French President as "Hirochirac." Australia's Prime Minister, Paul Keating, announced today that his Government would contribute $148,000 to a group planning to take Australian and foreign politicians to the waters off Mururoa next month to protest the tests. All the tests will be conducted hundreds of feet | France to Back Ban After Its Atom Tests |
781629_8 | a few twisting miles east along the coast. This was indeed a gem of a town, with Water Street and adjacent lanes lined with attractive shops and pristine Colonial clapboards in a palette of luscious hues. Historical markers identified one house as the birthplace of Capt. Edmund Fanning, a late-18th-century trader and explorer; another as the birthplace of Capt. Nathaniel Palmer, a pioneer explorer of the Antarctic archipelago, described somewhat hyperbolically on the sign as having "discovered" Antarctica in 1820; a third as the home of Whistler's mother. Anna and I tried to outdo each other naming the colors in the fanciful terms of today's sports clothes catalogues. "Butter cream." "Cornflower." "Mint." "Melon." "Periwinkle." "Mocha." "Bone." The restaurant we'd come for, the Skipper's Dock, was prettily situated on the water, but a chill wind and the fiercely setting sun drove us off the deck to the inside dining room, where we feasted on steamers and lobster, mussels, fish and chips, and corn and salad. With a few drinks and dessert, the bill for four came to a little more than $100. More Recent Seafarers On the way home, we stopped at the naval submarine base in Groton, where sinister German, Italian and Japanese submarines flank the entrance to the museum. Inside are World War II battle flags, mementos and trophies of the silent service, and convincingly claustrophobic mock-ups of submarine attack centers with working periscopes. The unquestioned highlight is the decommissioned nuclear submarine Nautilus, which from its launching in 1955 broke all underwater speed and distance records, became the first vessel to cross the North Pole and is now a national landmark, open to visitors. Holding audiotape tour guides to our ears, we inspected the cramped bunks, well-equipped galley and ominous torpedo ports. Our route back took us through New London, where we circled the pier and the historic downtown with its old burial ground, courthouse and railroad station, and 18th- and 19th-century buildings. Deciding to indulge in one last lobster blowout, we took a detour back to Noank to find a popular restaurant called Abbott's Lobster in the Rough. After meandering, lost, in Noank, I eased the car over to ask directions when a man said: "Let me guess. You want Abbott's. Left on High. Left on Spring. Left on Pearl." Three juicy lobsters and $55 later, I was trying to translate the directions backward to find our way | Ships, Old Inns and Seafood: A Family Explores Mystic |
784278_1 | to internal Israeli politics, declaring that the main goal of its present campaign is to defeat Mr. Rabin, the chief sponsor of the peace agreement, in Israel's next national election, scheduled for November 1996. Hamas would rather see power pass to the opposition Likud Bloc, which has consistently opposed the deal with the P.L.O. Likud now points to the 170 Israelis killed by terrorists since peace talks began and calls for breaking off the negotiations. Israel's President, Ezer Weizman, also urges reassessing, and perhaps discarding, the idea of interim Palestinian autonomy. But he also urges accelerating talks on a full, permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians. While Likud and Mr. Weizman raise legitimate questions, their recommendations are seriously flawed. It is now regrettably clear that holding peace talks and initiating the first stages of Palestinian autonomy cannot stop terrorist violence. In the short run, at least, the peace process may even have intensified the violence. There might be a case for accelerating the peace timetable, as Mr. Weizman suggests, to shorten the period in which terrorists can disrupt negotiations. But the present approach, based on interim autonomy arrangements, has allowed the P.L.O. to master the arts of administration and security arrangements. It is hard to see, though, how a return to indefinite occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, as Likud seems to want, will miraculously stop Hamas terrorism or somehow lead to a lasting peace. It is still a reasonable bet that as more ordinary Palestinians begin to benefit from self-rule, they will turn against the apostles of political murder. Once autonomy is extended to West Bank cities, more Palestinians are likely to feel a personal stake in peace and fewer are likely to volunteer for suicidal terror missions. The wisest course is not to break off the autonomy talks but to conclude the present round as rapidly as possible. That is precisely the course Mr. Rabin has been following since the P.L.O. began demonstrating it could move decisively against terrorists operating out of areas it controlled. Despite the frustrating slippage of announced deadlines, substantial progress has been made on plans for greater West Bank autonomy. A formal agreement appears very close, if the talks stay on track. While Likud is certainly entitled to argue for terminating talks, its arguments ring hollow as long as it offers no realistic alternative for halting terror or achieving peace with the Palestinians. | Peace, Terror and Dissent in Israel |
784216_0 | In the city that chocolate built, the news was not even bittersweet. Protesters picketed the port. Editorial writers railed. But, armed with a court order, stevedores here unloaded African cocoa beans, the first since Brazil banned cocoa imports in 1934. Sixty years ago, this tropical version of coals to Newcastle would have been unthinkable. Ilheus cocoa barons built a gambling casino, a palatial Belle Epoque town hall, and a neo-classical cathedral. One native son, Jorge Amado, rubbed shoulders with dancing girls and Turkish shopkeepers, happily collecting material for what became Brazil's best-selling novel, "Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon." Translated into 29 languages, this saga brought the sensuality and spice of Brazil's cocoa lands to millions of readers the world over. The world's craving for Jorge Amado novels -- and for chocolate bars -- remains strong. But Brazil's cocoa crop is only half what it was five years ago as plantation owners, having failed to invest in modern production methods and hammered by drought and crop diseases, walk away from their farms. One recent afternoon at the Vezuvio Bar, the centerpiece of the Gabriela novel, Sandro Valenca da Silva reflected on king cocoa's fall from grace. "We aren't exporting anything this year," said Mr. da Silva, whose company did almost $1 billion a year in cocoa exports in the 1970's. Operating under legal protection from creditors, he confided, with the true anguish of a commodity trader, "We just lost our Reuters wire." Cocoa's demise is part of a wider collapse of traditional plantation agriculture in Brazil's Northeast. As Brazil's oldest region of settlement, the Northeast is saddled with feudal rural elites who invest little in research and production, thinking only about how to extract large profits. Sugar cane cultivation, which began in northeastern Brazil in the late 1500's, has shifted largely to Brazil's center-west, where modern agricultural techniques are used. Sugar cane limps along in the Northeast, largely due to subsidized loans extended by state banks to plantation owners. Coconut imports now threaten coconut plantations, part of the coastal landscape of northeastern Brazil since coconuts were imported from Portuguese India in the 1500's. Five years after import barriers fell, Asian countries now supply about half of Brazil's consumption of grated coconut. In cocoa, Brazil has been a world leader ever since the first bushes were planted here in 1746. Trudy Haegler, the matriarch of a Swiss-Brazilian cocoa farming family, wrote recently about | Ilheus Journal; Where Cocoa Was King, the Weeds Take Over |
785609_0 | President Clinton is vacationing this year in western Wyoming, playing golf and reveling in the wonders of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. Last Friday, too late for the evening news shows, he took a crucial first step toward protecting Yellowstone and much of the adjacent wilderness from an environmental catastrophe. This disaster-in-waiting is the proposed New World mine, which a Canadian conglomerate, Noranda, wants to build on land it controls in the upper reaches of Montana's Henderson Mountain, less than three miles from Yellowstone and in the watershed of the irreplaceable Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone River. Conservationists reasonably fear that the 5.5 million tons of waste the company wants to bury in an active earthquake area will ruin this sensitive watershed in America's first and most important conservation zone. Mr. Clinton toured the mine site by helicopter and then declared a moratorium on mining activity on 4,500 acres of Federal land surrounding the site. The moratorium will not affect the actual site, to which the Canadian company has legal title, and will therefore not by itself stop the mine. But it tightens the noose around the company and signals the need for further action to block the mine if the Canadian company does not read this Presidential order as a signal of American resolve to protect its oldest national park. The most controversial aspect of the project is a proposed tailings impoundment -- a deep reservoir the size of 70 football fields -- where the company would store acid wastes. Reputable geologists say that given the region's extreme weather and history of earthquakes, any such structure is bound to crack at some point in the future. The reservoir would be built on 56 acres of wetlands that lie under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers. If the Corps denies a permit to build, the company will have to look elsewhere to store its toxic wastes. Nearly every suitable alternate site is on the 4,500 acres the President has ruled off limits. The company may then be forced to truck its wastes to a site miles away -- an operation that could be prohibitively expensive. This drama is not over. But the President has now ratcheted up the discomfort level. He deserves credit for responding to the rising outrage among the national environmental community over what the miners and some shortsighted Western politicians have tried to portray | Mr. Clinton Acts on Yellowstone |
785501_5 | Chicago, who measured the brains of children killed in car accidents, and on brain images from PET scans that Dr. Chugani performed on infants for health reasons. Concurrent with the explosion in the growth of synapses is a rapid pruning away of those that do not get used, Dr. Chugani said. There seems to be as much synaptic death as there is synaptic profusion. Building a Brain Layers of Tissue And Experience The interplay between genes and experience in building a complex structure like the brain is to be expected, said Dr. Daniel Alkon, chief of the Neural Systems Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. Human DNA does not contain enough information to specify how the brain finally gets wired. Thus the newborn brain comes equipped with a set of genetically based rules for how learning takes place and is then literally shaped by experience, Dr. Alkon said. "This helps explain the power of childhood memories," he said. "Associations in early life help choose which synapses live or die." Dr. Jeff Shrager, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh, says the infant's brain seems to organize itself under the influence of waves of so-called trophic factors -- chemicals that promote the growth and interconnections of nerve cells. These factors are released so that different regions of the brain become connected sequentially, with one layer of tissue maturing before another and so on until the whole brain is mature. Such waves of chemical activity may help determine the timing of critical periods. By the time the brain's production of trophic factors declines in later childhood, its basic architecture would be more or less formed, Dr. Shrager said. The process, since modulated by experience, would create human brains that were similar in their overall structure and interconnections but unique in terms of their fine connections. The same trophic factor chemistry that makes young brains grow so dramatically may still be available in adulthood, particularly in the hippocampus, to help with adult learning and memory, Dr. Shatz said. It is thus possible that brain circuits carved by early experiences may be changed through psychotherapy or other means. While that hope remains, there is a deeper question yet to be answered: Are there narrow windows in early infancy when emotional circuits are permanently established, or do emotional circuits form over many years so that early experiences are not so powerfully | Behind the Veil of Thought: Advances in Brain Research; In Brain's Early Growth,Timetable May Be Crucial |
780973_0 | To the Editor: Re your Aug. 2 news article on how moving to a different country alters a woman's risk of breast cancer: Having lived in rural Taiwan as a lactating housewife during the early 1970's, when modern technology first crept into the lush and welcoming countryside, I feel qualified to comment on environmental factors possibly involved in breast cancer risk. The usual triad of estrogen-related suspects -- diet, exercise and pesticides -- varies considerably among regions, and not necessarily in the expected direction. (In 1972 DDT had been banned in the United States, but the Taiwanese were spraying it on their infants to keep mosquitoes off.) While I can personally attest to the grueling exertional requirements of preindustrial peasant life sans automobile, plumbing or washing machine, I remain more impressed with the difference in interior illumination. Darkness suppresses estrogen levels via the pineal gland's secretion of melatonin; light has the opposite effect. In the United States we think nothing of switching on an unnatural 100-watt bulb to change the baby or go to the bathroom -- the bright, mirrored, tarantula-free bathroom -- thereby interrupting the estrogen-lowering darkness in a manner unthinkable to most of the third world, and to most of our grandparents. Kilowattage in homes, schools and workplaces seems to have increased considerably since I was a child. Could this be a major factor in increasing breast-cancer risk? Until the late 1970's, most of the cross-cultural literature on lactational infertility focused on nutrition and exercise (or, moreaccurately, on perceived nutritional deprivation). Western researchers of the 1960's and early 70's -- whose babies were typically bottle-fed on four-hour schedules -- first ignored, then dismissed, disputed and finally accepted the role of suckling frequency in maintaining subfertile estrogen levels during lactation, via the pituitary hormone prolactin. Perhaps we can learn from that experience and open our minds to the nutty-sounding "light at night" hypothesis. In 20 years it may seem too obvious to have ever been questioned. BARBARA B. HARRELL , M.D. Washington, Aug. 3, 1995 | Caesarean Delivery Can Mark a Child's Psyche; Cancer and Light |
781039_1 | view them as an ally." At the heart of the new policy is an argument that large institutions are inherently more dangerous to residents than smaller settings in the community and that they represent a form of illegal segregation and discrimination against the disabled. Indeed, today an expert on the medical care of the retarded, Dr. Renee C. Wachtel, testified that several Southbury residents had died because of inadequate treatment and that a review of 15 residents' records showed that serious medical problems went unattended. The Clinton Administration's initiative carries some political risk, coming as the Republican Congress is trying to reduce Federal intervention in state programs. But the Justice Department's new approach toward the retarded is part of a more aggressive role by the civil rights division after 12 years of Republican restraint. Civil rights advocates say the division has stepped up its enforcement in areas such as voting rights, housing discrimination and affirmative action, as well as disability rights. In some respects, the policy shift on institutions is not radical. Since horrifying conditions were discovered in many institutions in the 1970's, almost two-thirds of the institutionalized retarded population has been moved into community settings, the result of years of litigation by advocacy groups. But the Justice Department's initiative comes as the drive for deinstitutionalization confronts a difficult hurdle. Many residents who remain in institutions are the most severely disabled and the most challenging to relocate. The Sheltering Role Of Institutions Several states and a network of parents who want their retarded children to stay in institutions have argued that the Justice Department is overstepping its authority. "They think institution is a bad word," said Sarah E. Bondy, president of the Southbury parents' group, the Home and School Association. "But most of the people in institutions today need to be protected -- there's a limit to how much they can improve." So far, the law has not guaranteed the retarded the right to community placement. The Supreme Court in 1982 ruled only that institution residents have a constitutional right to be free from harm and restraint. Since then, lower courts have issued conflicting decisions about when it is appropriate to order expanded community services. Now, the Justice Department is trying to establish a more expansive interpretation of the rights of retarded people, and it has started to use the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 to argue that institutionalization | U.S. Joins Effort to Transfer Retarded Into Group Homes |
780976_2 | the regeneration of nerve fibers called axons in the damaged spinal cords of chickens. The proteins temporarily suppress the formation of myelin, a protective covering on normal nerve fibers that also appears to inhibit the regrowth of nerves and axons, he said. In a report presented last month in Toronto at the Third International Neurotrauma Symposium, Dr. Steeves said his group used an antibody that targeted myelin and attached to it enzymes that disrupted the myelin coat. When the cocktail was injected into the backs of adult chickens whose spinal cords had been cut, he said, there was up to a 19 percent regeneration of spinal axon fibers. Although no animals recovered voluntary movement, the researchers said they were able to set off leg muscle activity with electrical stimulation. Dr. Steeves said in an interview that while it was too early to try similar research on humans, the work points to yet another area where doctors might one day intervene in the complex process of nerve-cell damage and repair. "In the development of the brain and spinal cord, myelin always forms at the end of that process and we believe one of its functions is to stabilize the nerve pattern laid down during development," he said. "This stability inhibits spontaneous nerve growth, which could be harmful under normal situations." Temporarily disrupting or delaying myelination after injury might therefore aid the repair and regrowth of nerve fibers, particularly when used in conjunction with other nerve growth chemicals or stimulants, Dr. Steeves said. "In the end, there won't be one particular therapy that will restore function to the injured brain or spinal cord," he said. "There probably will be a series of therapies applied in the right sequence, and our job is to find what to do and how to intervene in a particular order." An estimated 200,000 Americans suffer partial or total paralysis from spinal cord injuries, experts say. There are more than 10,000 new injuries each year. About 55 percent involve the lower back, resulting in partial paralysis, and the rest occur in the upper spine or neck, often resulting in near total disability. Most of these injuries result from motor vehicle accidents, recreational sporting injuries or acts of violence. Dr. Steeves and others noted that 50 years ago, people normally did not survive severe brain or spinal cord injury, but advances in emergency medicine and neurological treatment have sharply | Animal Studies Hint at Ways To Treat Spinal Cord Injuries |
779586_1 | trying to restructure its society and economy after years of despotic rule. Despite the common belief that the world is overpopulated and that fewer people are usually better, no country can afford a trend in which its most productive citizens die in huge numbers while they are in their prime. But that is just what is happening here. Deaths are now almost twice as common in Russia as births, while infant mortality has risen 15 percent in each of the last two years. While the numbers are bleak, nobody attributes the change to inaccurate or incomplete statistics. Instead, experts here and in the West have in the past routinely written it all off to the fragile state of Russia itself: economically stressed, psychologically damaged, its health care system in ruins. All of that makes sense. But it is not enough, specialists now acknowledge, to explain the demographic catastrophe spreading across the nation. Mortality figures released by the Labor Ministry here last week showed that if current conditions persist, nearly 50 percent of today's Russian youth will not even make it to the retirement age of 55 for women and 60 for men. Last year the death rate reached 15.6 for every 1,000 people, an increase of nearly 10 percent over the previous year and nearly 30 percent since 1992. By contrast the birth rate fell to 9.0 per thousand from 9.4 the year before. In the United States last year the birth rate was 16.1 and the death rate was 9.0. Life expectancy for American men is 72 and for women 79. It is 71 for Russian women. While death rates soar, birth rates here are lower than in any other country. Only 1.4 million children were born in Russia last year, less than half the number of recorded abortions. For the first time last year the population shrank in every one of Russia's 79 regional districts. But what frightens researchers here most is the condition of those children who are born. More than 10 percent have serious birth defects, 50 percent of all school children suffer from chronic illnesses, and these rates are growing every year. Frustrated by explanations that don't quite add up, scientists are looking more closely at the history of Soviet ecological abuse for answers -- decades of open testing of nuclear weapons, chemical plants spewing deadly toxic materials into the country's most important rivers, generations | Plunging Life Expectancy Puzzles Russia |
779614_0 | Following are excerpts from a manuscript sent to The New York Times in June by the suspect in the Unabom case, a 17-year string of bombings. The manuscript, which has been authenticated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is titled "Industrial Society and Its Future" and is attributed on its title page to a group called "FC." The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: there is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy. If the system breaks down, the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL REVOLUTION. Its object will | Excerpts From Manuscript Linked to Suspect in 17-Year Series of Bombings |
779682_0 | It may be something in her diet, or the air and water of her new home, or the vigilance of her doctor, or stress or exhilaration or none of the above. Whatever the cause, when a woman moves to a new country, her risk of dying from breast cancer will either rise or fall to match that of women native to her adopted land, researchers have found. The new study, an examination of changes in the patterns of breast cancer deaths among a broad array of immigrant groups in Australia and Canada, suggests that environmental factors continue to influence a woman's chances of contracting breast cancer throughout adulthood and that the effect can occur over relatively short spans of time. The work thus contradicts current notions that most of a woman's risk of breast cancer is set by puberty or early adulthood. It also suggests that by comparing migrant populations, scientists may get a handle on how women can modify their lives to avoid this hated malignancy. Most of the women in the study moved to Australia or Canada as adults, and yet within 30 years or less their rate of breast cancer deaths often was indistinguishable from that of local residents. For those women who migrated from a country where the breast tumor rate was lower than in her new home, the risk of the cancer rose; but for those coming from nations where breast cancer is even more prevalent than in Australia and Canada, the risk of cancer dropped. The new report, by Dr. Erich V. Kliewer of Australian National University in Canberra and Dr. Ken R. Smith of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, appears today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. In it, the researchers compiled data on nearly 60 groups of immigrants from all parts of the world, calculating what their breast cancer mortality rate would have been in their homelands, what it proved to be in Australia or Canada, and how that compared with the prevailing rate among the native-born population. Previous studies of cancer patterns among migrants have focused on people moving from countries with low cancer rates, like Japan, to those with high cancer rates, like the United States, showing that as a rule the rate of cancer among the transplanted Japanese eventually mounted to Western dimensions. The new study takes the compelling twist of seeing whether the | Moving to Different Country Alters Risk of Breast Cancer |
785665_1 | questions from journalists about when and where the demonstrations are going to begin," she said. The reason for the questions is that many of the women arriving here are angry. The Chinese Government held up some visas; denied visas to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others; separated the nongovernmental forum from the main United Nations conference, which is an hour away in Beijing, and generally treated this convocation of women's advocacy groups as a hostile force invading China. Perhaps because of the mood, the Government tried to impose some last-minute limitations on public expression. At a morning press conference, Tian Qiyu, China's Vice Minister for Public Security, acknowledged the longstanding agreement that women could demonstrate on the land that had been made available to the United Nations. But, he added, referring to the forum site here: "Within the designated area, relevant organizations can have processions and demonstrations, but these activities should not infringe upon the sovereignty of the host country and should not attack or slander the state leaders of the host country, nor shall such activities be allowed in which violence is taking place against other persons." Mr. Tian's statement, made in Beijing, reverberated through Huairou within hours, further agitating many of the women preparing their agenda for the United Nations conference, which runs from Sept. 4 to 15 in Beijing. After all, they say, China actively pursued the opportunity to play host to the conference to begin with. But in recent months China has arrested dissidents, pushed migrant workers out of Beijing, rounded up prostitutes and the homeless and executed dozens of people around the country in what was described as a law and order crackdown. The action was an echo of the kind of rough justice that marked the period when the International Olympic Committee was considering Beijing as a site for the 2000 games. Amnesty International, which was allowed into China for the first time in the history of the human rights group, denounced the campaign of arrests and repression that preceded the conference, including the execution of 16 people. Pierre Sane, the secretary general of the organization, said, "We have heard virtually every excuse from Governments to justify human rights violations, but this is simply unbelievable: to welcome the world to Beijing, people must die?" A Chinese Government spokesman, Chen Jian, retorted later, "Amnesty International is an organization that has always harbored deep prejudices against China, | A Forum on Women Is Vexed By Chinese Security Officials |
785765_0 | Sometimes a government has to totally misread the mood of its own people to fully appreciate where the soul of the nation is on an issue. That was certainly the case here when, after the French announced plans for seven nuclear tests in the South Pacific, the Australian Foreign Minister said the decision was "unfortunate" but could have been worse. The Australian public didn't think so, and it went on a spontaneous rampage against all things French. The Asian Wall Street Journal even reported that Australian prostitutes were charging their French customers double (Sacre bleu!). Since then, the Australian Government has been scrambling to get ahead of the public bandwagon. What's funny is that it was the Australian Government that had built the bandwagon. You see, the Australian public reaction against the French nuclear test is not just a sign of the popularity of environmentalism here. It is also a sign of how successful Australian governments have been in reshaping this country's identity -- from white, English-speaking and Anglo-Saxon to multiracial, multilingual and Asian-Pacific. Think about this: In the 1950's the British tested nuclear weapons, above ground, in Australia's desert. At the time, there was not a peep of protest here. Since Australians thought of themselves as British subjects, they didn't even consider their own backyard their real backyard. They thought their real backyard was back in England. Today the French are testing their nuclear weapons at the Mururoa Atoll, which is 4,000 miles from Australia in the South Pacific. But because Australians now think of themselves as a Pacific nation, they are protesting the French testing as though it were being conducted under the Sydney Opera House. Ever since Australia ended its whites-only immigration policies in 1966, the country has been taking on an Asian-Pacific identity, but particularly under the current Prime Minister, Paul Keating, who has passionately promoted multiculturalism. There are now 140 different ethnic groups here, speaking 90 different languages, and of the 85,000 new immigrants each year the vast majority are from Vietnam and China. The popular Vietnamese family name Nguyen is the sixth-most-common name in the Melbourne phone book today. Goodbye Crocodile Dundee, hello Bruce Lee. No wonder Mr. Keating refers to Australia not as a melting pot but as Asia's great "wok" society, into which all sorts of ethnic groups are being diced and stir-fried for a new Asian-Pacific mix. Go to a pub | Foreign Affairs; Australia Goes Pacific |
785749_1 | part of this strategy because it can produce more plutonium than it consumes in generating electricity. But the United States and some other countries have abandoned breeder programs because they contribute to the spread of plutonium, which can be used to make bombs. France's breeder has had technical problems. Japan's shipment of plutonium from a reprocessing plant in France at the end of 1992 caused an international uproar, with many countries refusing to let the ship pass through their waters. Many more such shipments will be needed in the future if Japan continues with its program. Monju, named after a Buddhist divinity for wisdom, cost 600 billion yen, or about $6 billion, to build. Constructed in Tsuruga on the coast of the Sea of Japan, about 250 miles west of Tokyo, the reactor reached a self-sustaining chain reaction in April 1994. It has been shut down a couple of times this year because of technical problems. Protesters gathered outside the plant gate said they had collected about 1 million signatures on a petition opposing the breeder reactor. "Monju is a Japanese nuclear test," said one poster. It was a reference to the fact that Japan is strongly opposed to the planned French nuclear weapons tests and to recent tests by China. Japan decided today to cut off most foreign aid grants to China because of the nuclear tests. Sanshiro Kume, a retired instructor of nuclear chemistry at Osaka Univeristy and an opponent of Monju, called today's test a meaningless publicity stunt. The test did not involve part of the steam generator that has proven to be a problem in other breeder reactors, he said. For that reason, the plant could generate only a small amount of electricity. Officials of the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation, the Government-funded concern that built Monju, would not say when the reactor would begin full operation. The largest challenge to the breeder program is economic. Uranium is abundant, not scarce as was envisioned when the program was conceived in the 1960's. And with the end of the cold war, plutonium is available from dismantled weapons. The problem of economics could be seen in the decision last week of the Government's Atomic Energy Commission to abandon plans to build the advanced thermal reactor. This is a type of reactor that was being designed to burn a mixture of plutonium and uranium fuel. But unlike | Japan Throws The Switch On Reactor |
785655_0 | ALTHOUGH a decade ago specialists were still insisting that men retain the sex hormone levels reached in young adulthood throughout life, there is now no longer any doubt that starting at about the age of 40 or 50, blood levels of the so-called male sex hormone testosterone gradually fall, dropping to a third to a half of their peak by the age of 80. There is also no question that aging is accompanied by changes that can be signs of insufficient testosterone: muscle size and strength decline, body fat increases, bones slowly lose strength-giving calcium, and sexual performance wanes. But it is still uncertain whether these bodily changes represent a condition in need of treatment or whether the changes are physiologically normal aspects of the aging process that men just have to accept, said Dr. Peter J. Snyder of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Quality of Later Life It is an issue of growing importance as men now living into their 70's, 80's and beyond strive to maintain as high a quality of life as possible. Here is a case where far more is known about women's health than that of men. In women, the hormonal change at menopause is abrupt and its adverse effects on body organs are well documented. In women, both the immediate and the long-term benefits of providing hormonal supplements are also fairly well established, although possible risks are still incompletely explored. But for men it will probably be years before doctors know whether they, too, can profit from hormone replacement and at what price. Well-designed studies of hormone replacement for normal, healthy aging men are just getting under way. For example, in about three years Dr. Snyder and his colleagues will have completed a scientific study of 100 men aged 65 and older who were randomly assigned to be treated with either a testosterone patch or look-alike dummy medication. The researchers are trying to determine whether raising the men's testosterone levels to that of a 40-year-old will result in an enhanced sense of well-being and improved bone calcium, muscle mass and strength. At the start of the study, both groups of men had testosterone levels of about 350 nanograms per deciliter of blood, which is at the low end of normal for a young man. Those being treated daily with a testosterone patch that adheres to the scrotum are reaching hormone levels of | Personal Health |
780714_0 | Safety sells, and the people who put Morton salt on your table also want to put air bags in your car and maybe even on your motorcycle. "Automobile air bags are now being treated more like a commodity than before," says George Kirchoff, vice president of automotive programs at Morton International, which has sold 40 million bags since 1989. New items now being developed for the 1997 model year include a nonsmoking (it has nothing to do with cigarettes) bag, which eliminates the possibility that a burst of smoke will appear when the bag inflates and make an already terrified passenger think the car is on fire. Also in the works are door-panel bags that inflate during side collisions. "Smart" bags are expected by the turn of the century, with sensors to detect variables (like child seats, whether or not a seat belt is fastened and who is sitting where) before determining if the bag should be activated. Down the line, air bags for motorcyclists are a possibility. How would they work? Where would they go? Well, concedes Kirchoff, they may not be "practical." | SUNDAY, August 6, 1995; SMARTS: Air Bags That Think? |
780552_4 | moss that hangs in tremendous swags like seaweed. A rain forest is a titanic lung. Photosynthesis happens almost palpably; your own blood seems to rise like sap. On the Hall of Mosses trail, one of the rain forest's two loop trails, Ken walked a few paces ahead of me to examine a mushroom -- and vanished. He returned, springing down the soft path. "All this oxygen," he said, "makes me feel like Superman." Here trees become a passion and a bewilderment. Suddenly it seems imperative to view the tallest Sitka spruce, the oldest Douglas fir, the shaggiest big-leaf maple. Trees loom, unavoidable, more present than in most other forests simply because they are older, bigger, draped with club moss, sprouting licorice fern, crusted with lichen, their damp canopies turning what sun fingers through nearly liquid. Trees like Roman columns, like Cyclops' legs, like posts that keep the sky from falling. Trees with flying buttresses; trees with snaky, moss-shrouded branches like tentacles; trees in colonnades -- rooted along a single nurse log, dead for a hundred years. Trees that have just begun, that lie germinating in the moist duff, waiting for a steady fleck of sunlight. Unlike a tropical rain forest, where it's warm and rains all year -- sometimes as much as two inches an hour -- and where broadleaf trees like palms predominate, a temperate rain forest subsists mostly on fog in the summer, which is perhaps the best time to visit. Most of the rain falls between October and April, and in the winter it snows. Conifers like Sitka spruce, Douglas fir and Western hemlock muscle out most broadleaf trees, soaring up to a hundred feet before branching out. These trees hoard an astounding amount of water: one half-century-old Douglas fir might contain 5,000 gallons, according to Ms. Kirk and Mr. Franklin. Where a long dry spell could devastate a tropical rain forest, it might hardly be noticed by the big trees of the Hoh. But what seems most distinctive about a temperate rain forest is its dense, abiding quiet. Instead of Amazonian shrieking, swinging and slithering in the treetops, shy things live here: flying squirrels, pileated woodpeckers, martens, murrelets, tailed frogs and the reclusive spotted owl. Compared to its exuberant equatorial cousin, the temperate rain forest is a solemn place. You might walk for 20 minutes before hearing more than the creak of branches, the subtle dripping | Washington's Ancient Rain Forest |
780380_2 | company was founded in 1983 to commercialize bacteriocins, which are naturally produced weapons one bacterial strain uses against a competitive one. "We developed Nisin technology," Mr. Benoit said. "Nisin is a peptide, which is a naturally occurring small protein that acts as a powerful agent capable of killing a wide variety of bacteria, including those found in many familiar food products." Mr. Benoit, whose responsibilities include expanding the sales of Nisin and marketing new medical food ingredient products, said, "Our lead product, Nisaplin, a natural food preservative, is manufactured and sold as a food preservative that is used in products in more than 40 countries. We also develop Ambican, which is a proprietary formulation of Nisin for use as a pharmaceutical agent against infectious diseases. Nisin works by killing bacteria on contact. In effect, it acts as a peptide boss." Giving an example of the use of Nisin on ulcers, Mr. Benoit said recent scientific evidence has found that ulcers are not caused by stress or food but, he said, "rather by a bacterium called helicobacter pylori." "Ambicin," he continued, "is currently being tested as a possible human therapeutic agent capable of killing a bacteria that's known to cause ulcers and gingivitis and acne and serious infections acquired in hospitals as well." In addition to its own drug research, Applied Microbiology is also pursuing the development and marketing of medical foods like Pansalt, which are going to be promoted as health products by doctors who in turn will prescribe them to their patients. "Technology of developing medical foods is a new concept," Mr. Benoit said. "These are considered ingredients in food that naturally aid in the treatment of disease. We have 14 scientists with specialties in microbiology, biochemistry, along with Ph.D's in pharmacology, working at developing medical food ingredients in our new laboratories in Tarrytown." The company's two immediate goals, he continued, "are to increase market share of our existing food-preservative business and to bring other proprietary medical food technology into the company." Further, he said, "Having a market presence in major countries throughout the world will help us introduce product extensions and new products in a very systematic fashion." He said the company expects to add one new medical food ingredient as a product every year for the next three years. "What are we interested in?" he said. "We're especially interested in food ingredients that reduce fat cholesterol and | Salt Substitute From Tarrytown Company |
780600_6 | a job in Bombay, India, instead, because the domestic offers were either boring or didn't pay enough. "You get hooked," he said. "Going overseas kind of spoils you for regular work." That goes for children, too. After cruising the Nile and doing other exotic things during Mr. Connelly's stint in Saudi Arabia, his three school-age children have the perspective of world travelers. "The Holidome in Omaha," Mr. Connelly says with a chuckle, "just doesn't do it for them anymore." Job Hunting Overseas WILL CANTRELL says there are two types of people who want to work overseas: the dreamers and serious job seekers. The dreamers "expect to be overpaid and live in some exotic foreign capital," says Mr. Cantrell, who publishes The International Employment Hotline, a newsletter. "They are not willing to do what it takes to be qualified in the international job market." For the serious seekers, Mr. Cantrell recommends the same strategies used in getting domestic jobs. Work the phones and network aggressively, for example. If you belong to a professional association, interview members who have worked abroad. Seek out reputable headhunters and other talent-search firms -- especially those active in international placements or with offices worldwide. For example, the Leslie Corporation of Houston is retained by Middle Eastern governments and companies to fill positions in a wide variety of fields. Consult international employment listings. Large-circulation newspapers and periodicals carry them, but also check out specialty sources. Mr. Cantrell's newsletter, which costs $39 a year, lists hundreds of overseas jobs (703 620-1972). Transitions Abroad, published every two months, is geared to entry-level work; it costs $19.95 a year (800 293-0373). Also subscribe to foreign newspapers and periodicals for their job listings, or consult these publications at larger public libraries. If it is practical and if you know where you want to live, visit there and look on-site -- this is always easier than a long-distance search. Browse the many books on foreign employment. A popular one is "The Almanac for International Jobs and Careers," by Ronald L. Krannich and Caryl Rae Krannich (Impact, $19.95). Although the hunt for foreign work is much like any job search, remember that it can take much longer than its stateside counterpart. "Job hunt while you are actively employed," Mr. Cantrell advises. Looking for a job abroad is "not for desperate people who have to put food on the table." ROBERT BRYCE EARNING IT | The American Dream Glitters Still -- in Foreign Countries |
780368_0 | JUST one month after a much publicized study proclaimed that women who had hormone-replacement therapy faced an increased incidence of breast cancer came more front-page news -- this time a new study that revealed no such effect. The conflicting reports only added to women's uncertainty and anxiety as they confronted what medical intervention, if any, they should pursue in their menopausal and post-menopausal years. Estrogen has been much heralded as an elixir of youth that slows the ravages of aging among women. Not only does the hormone decrease menopausal symptoms but it also reduces osteoporosis (bone loss) and lessens the risk of heart disease. But the study connecting estrogen and breast cancer was not the first to associate the hormone with the risk of other illnesses. Other medical reports have shown a link between use of estrogen and escalated growth of fibroid tumors in the uterus, abnormal blood clots and an increased incidence of uterine cancer. But women can navigate their way through what seems like a barrage of contradictory risks and benefits by understanding that decisions about hormone-replacement therapy should be highly individualized ones, based on each patient's health and medical history, said Dr. Harriette R. Mogul, director of the Menopausal Health Program at New York Medical College here. "Women cannot make this decision in a vacuum without the available information," Dr. Mogul said. "You have to evaluate the two major reasons for long-term estrogen use -- osteoporosis and heart disease. But there are definite risks that have to get factored in. There are enormous potential benefits of estrogen for women, but the trick is to find the best way to determine who should and shouldn't be on it." To help women evaluate their need for hormone-replacement therapy, as well as to consider other options that might help them handle the many changes associated with the menopausal years, New York Medical College opened the Menopausal Health Program last fall. It offers a comprehensive analysis of individual risks for osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, breast and uterine cancer and other conditions. Women who come for a consultation are first given an extensive questionnaire concerning their health history and life style. The initial evaluation includes a physical examination, bone-density measurements, breast imaging, cholesterol profile and hormonal studies. Follow-up visits evaluate specific risk factors and consider the benefits of hormone-replacement therapy, as well as alternative strategies. Dr. Mogul described menopause as a "critical health | Navigating The Risks of Estrogen Therapy |
780406_7 | "It's just awesome," said Robert Mirafiore, the owner, "especially the 40-foot ceilings.". The restaurant uses the former vault as a bar and service area. "People go up to the vault to get their drinks," Mr. Mirafiore said. One of the most difficult tasks in retrofitting a bank, particularly an older one, is dealing with the vault. With their thick concrete walls and steel doors, they can weigh several tons. "It can be an obstacle," Mr. Lucia said. "But if it's in the basement, as it often is, then it is less of an obstacle, as the door can usually be taken off and the vault used for storage." Vaults in newer banks are quite different from the old-fashioned round or oval steel-and-brass variety with one or more combination locks and a door handle like a ship's wheel. More modern vaults are modular, meaning they can be dismantled fairly easily. They also tend to have walls reinforced with inch-thick steel rather than the 18 inches of concrete in older banks. "It has the same strength rating," Mr. Lucia said. Some new tenants have found innovative uses for the old decorative vault doors, if not the vaults themselves. At Fidelity Investments in Boston, which is based in an old Shawmut Bank headquarters, two vault doors have been laid on a wooden base for use as a conference table. Sometimes, the entire vault is left in place and used as a marketing tool. In East Hampton, L.I., the Coach Leatherware Factory Outlet, which is housed in a former bank building, uses its vault for a small art gallery featuring local artists. "It was too expensive to have the door removed and the space was odd, so they got creative and put in an art gallery about three years ago," said Amy Pierson, salesperson at the store. At Rothman's, a men's clothing store at 17th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan, the priciest suits are kept in a 20-foot-by-30-foot vault. (The dressing room is the old safety-deposit-box room, but without the boxes.) "A lot of customers come in and say, 'I only shop in the vault,' " said Ken Giddon, president of Rothman's. Mr. Giddon said that to remove just the vault door would have cost at least $10,000; the building was a Chase Manhattan Bank until 1985. "A lot of these vaults were dropped in when the buildings were built, and getting them | Recycling Banks: Some Debits, Some Dividends |
780751_1 | perhaps more than 200,000, and some are still dying of cancer and related illnesses. Three days later, another atomic bomb devastated Nagasaki, killing about 100,000. Mr. Murayama called on nuclear powers to reduce their arsenals and used the occasion to criticize China for conducting nuclear tests and France for announcing that it will resume testing. The loathing of nuclear weapons is deep rooted in Japan, and a boycott of French products is underway to protest the decision by Paris to conduct nuclear tests on a Pacific atoll. The park where the memorial service was held is a pleasant oasis of grass and trees, studded with small stone memorials. Beneath it are the remains of 70,000 or more victims of the atomic bombing. Serenaded by crickets chirping from the foliage, Mr. Murayama expressed his congratulations to the citizens of Hiroshima for rebuilding the city "from among ruins in which not one tree nor one blade of grass remained." The ceremony included the unveiling of an updated (but still incomplete) list of names of the victims of the bombing. Officials released 1,500 doves as a symbol of peace, and survivors offered water to the spirits of the dead, to appease the ferocious thirst that the mortally wounded felt in the hours after the bombing. The Mayor of Hiroshima, Takashi Hiraoka, made an even stronger denunciation of nuclear weapons. In his speech he declared that "the development and possession of nuclear weapons constitutes a crime against humanity." "Nuclear weapons are clearly inhumane weapons in obvious violation of international law," Mr. Hiraoka said. "So long as such weapons exist, it is inevitable that the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be repeated -- somewhere, sometime -- in an unforgivable affront to humanity itself." As a first step toward nuclear disarmament, Mr. Hiraoka called for a nuclear test ban and a nuclear-free zone in the Asia-Pacific region. But the speech did not suggest that Japan withdraw from the American nuclear umbrella, something Mr. Hiraoka called for earlier this month. Although Japanese officials, particularly in Hiroshima, often say that nuclear weapons are immoral and emphasize that their country will not use them, Japan still seeks to be protected by American nuclear warheads. Mr. Hiraoka also offered an apology for Japanese wartime behavior that preceded the bombing, saying, "We want to apologize for the unbearable suffering that Japanese colonial domination and war inflicted on so many people." | Japanese Leaders Call for Bans on Nuclear Arms and Tests |
780776_4 | your first job's salary. Although "Majoring in the Rest of Your Life" is a handy reference guide, Ms. Carter's tips can hardly be called "secrets." Essentially the book is an abridged version of many more detailed, topic-specific books (she also provides a list of additional reading). Still, Ms. Carter provides clear and insightful advice in an easy-to-read tone, and her wisdom is sprinkled with anecdotes about successful people and the strategies they used. DAVIDSON GOLDIN is a 1993 graduate of Cornell University who has written about higher education for The New York Times. The front cover of "College Survival: A Crash Course for Students by Students," by Greg Gottesman (Prentice Hall, $11), is a banner of multiculturalism, featuring a white male, a black male and a white female. The content, however, is perhaps too colorblind. The book's back cover promises "Secrets of College Life Revealed!" -- a powerful boast considering how complex college life can be for freshmen. This tongue-in-cheek book written by the 1992 graduate of Stanford University, however, does offer a lot of good advice for someone leaving home for the first time, even tips on how not to overpack. The section on time management will be particularly useful for students who have never experienced the uncommon freedom of college life (and may be in danger of partying their grades away). One of the author's test-taking tips, however, actually pulled a laugh from this reviewer: "Always Agree: unless you really know your stuff, don't disagree with the professor. Regurgitation, however boring, is your best bet come report card time." Tremble for the future of education, people. But one of the most valuable things about the book is that there are many brief segments written by students that detail their experiences. (Mr. Gottesman is now a Harvard graduate student.) Students who read the book are bound to have a few similar experiences. As for the multiculturalism hinted at on the front cover: Mr. Gottesman briefly mentions the importance of minorities networking with one another, but does not explain why it's important. College is often the first place where a person's values are challenged. It would have been useful to read more of students' attempts to adjust to that reality. To avoid these issues is to risk irrelevance. JASON KEENE is a senior at the University of Maryland at College Park and a copy editing intern at The Times. REVIEW | Self-Help For Students |
785092_0 | AN amusement park is a land of sights and heights. When there is no sight, there is little perception of height. So the park becomes a land of vibrations. "I want to go on rides," Sarah Badillo, 9, said, before entering the Adventureland amusement park in Farmingdale for the first time earlier this month. "But I don't like bumpy things." Sarah is blind. But that doesn't mean she can't experience what other children can. She has just completed her first summer of camp. Every day she journeyed from her home in Flushing to Farmingdale where she swam, played softball, ran relay races, finger-painted and for the grand finale went on a field trip to Adventureland. To other campers, Sarah's blindness mattered not in the least, because everybody attending the camp was legally blind. For the last 25 years, the Helen Keller Summer Camp has brought blind children together on the Farmingdale campus of the State University of New York. For many, it is the first time they spend time with their peers. "These children are all mainstreamed," said Ana Kelly, the director of social services for the Helen Keller Services for the Blind. "They go to regular schools. So the camp gives them a chance to socialize and enjoy sports on an equal plane." Campers, aged 5 to 12, are not coddled. "Our children do what other children do," Carol Feldman, the co-director of the camp, said. " They swim, they bike. We have bicycles built for two and a counselor rides in back. We take the kids to fast-food places for field trips. It's a learning experience. "When they're with their families, parents tend to do things for them, like take the paper off the straw. We say 'Do it yourself.' If they spill something, they spill it. Other children spill things, why can't they?" It's not only the children who learn the lessons of camp. "This is a place for blind children to meet and for their parents to meet," Ms. Kelly said. "Parents often feel their child is the only one experiencing this. They think they are the only ones to protect and advocate. Here they learn they are not alone. The parents support each other." At the Helen Keller camp, friendships blossom in every age bracket. Campers idolize their counselors -- one counselor for every two children. Counselors adore their charges. "Sarah and I are friends," | Land of Thrills and Bounces for Helen Keller Campers |
784868_0 | The 480-passenger Pearl, owned by Costa Crociere of Genoa and currently cruising in the Far East, will change her name to the Costa Playa and begin sailing to Cuba from the Dominican Republic starting Nov. 28. Costa Crociere will advertise the seven-night cruises only in Europe. Treasury Department regulations forbid Americans to spend money in Cuba and therefore to travel there. The ship will depart Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic and is expected to call at Havana, Santiago di Cuba and Baja Nipe, both in Cuba, and Montego Bay. The German-operated Europa and several Russian-operated ships have previously included Cuba calls. TRAVEL ADVISORY | A Pacific Cruise Ship Is Switching to Cuba |
784970_2 | Mr. Chirac says that France, as a self-proclaimed Great Power, must maintain an independent nuclear option, and an independent military identity. Therefore, it will test the newest weapons in its nuclear arsenal, because that is the French national interest. And if the rest of the world doesn't like it, well, all the better. That is the fun of being a Gaullist. I detonate, therefore I exist. What the French, who have no environmental movement, have totally missed is the development elsewhere in the world of a concept of environmental sovereignty. Environmental sovereignty says my home, my space, isn't just limited to my borders on a map. It includes the air I breathe, the water off my shore and the whole extended food chain upon which I rely. Environmental sovereignty is not confined either by conventional borders or by conventional time. That is, the French say there is no danger of the Mururoa Atoll fracturing and leaking the massive radiation that has been trapped in the volcanic rock beneath it from 139 French underground nuclear tests since 1975. Well, maybe there is no leakage today, but what about in 50 years? 200 years? In the Gaullist view of the world, there is France and there is the rest of the world, there is "home" and there is "away," and where you test your nuclear weapons is away -- way, way, away. In the environmentalist view of the world, there is no "away." The whole globe is home, so away is home and home is home. One reason Mr. Chirac has to play out his Gaullist fantasies in the South Pacific is that he can't play them out in Europe anymore. There, French nationalism has been repressed because France has surrendered part of its sovereignty to be a member of the European Union, and a united Europe. France's E.U. partners would never allow it to test in Europe. This clash between France and Australia, observed the Australian writer Paul Sheehan, will be the first real confrontation between a traditional superpower and an ecological superpower. But a clash it will be. Mr. Chirac insists he will plow ahead with his tests. He is wrong. It is a mistake. And, as they say around here, the bomb's gonna boomerang. If the French President had any sense he would heed the message of a popular Australian bumper sticker. It says simply: "Don't Blow It Jacques." | Foreign Affairs; The Bomb and the Boomerang |
785342_5 | by Japanese to Tang Dynasty China, well over 1,000 years ago, and speeds through such events as the arrival of the Black Ships to open up Japan to the rest of the world in 1853. This is not a place where Japan dwells on the dark side of its past. The presentation pretty much ends with the Meiji era at the end of the 19th century, with only images of gunfire to refer obliquely to World War II. Gregory's favorite ride, and probably mine as well, was the Jungle Cruise. Our boat was the Volta Val, but having visited the Volta River in West Africa a decade ago, I can report that this was an improvement over the real thing. Upper Volta, now called Burkina Faso, contains a good deal of desert, and wildlife is not the main attraction. The Volta Val, on the other hand, took us on a cruise through thick green foliage teeming with elephants, lions, zebras and crocodiles. A pair of hippos obligingly opened their jaws as the boat glided by, to reveal an expanse of tongue and teeth. The animals are fakes, but they were realistic enough that Gregory flinched when the crocodile menaced us. The boat's "captain" provides a running commentary -- in Japanese -- of the dangers on both sides. He then pilots the boat behind a waterfall and through some ruins that looked more Laotian than Voltaic (and even more Indiana Jones-ish), but Gregory was impressed. Another big hit was Pirates of the Caribbean, a cruise through various pirate-infested waterways. Everybody ducked when we passed through a free-fire zone between a pirate ship and a fort that were engaged in a huge battle. It seemed unlikely that Disney would give the pirates live ammunition, but you might as well be safe. Gregory didn't understand the signs -- "Take a wench for a bride" was posted next to four women tied up and guarded by a man with a gun -- but he was mightily impressed by the firepower. He wants to be a policeman when he grows up, noting that police have the edge over firefighters because they can carry guns. So the chance to sail right through the kind of scene that his parents try not to let him watch on videos was "suriringu" -- Japanese for "thrilling." Since that trip, my wife and I have had our payback by lugging | DISNEY'S TOKYO KINGDOM |
784984_0 | She has survived a vicious stabbing meant to punish her for being a better tennis player than the rest of the pack. She has been to a place she calls the black hole, and because she failed to figure out what would possess a man she didn't know to plunge a knife in her back and what would possess her peers on the circuit to immediately start jockeying for her No. 1 ranking, for two years Monica Seles wallowed there in the hole. In uncontrollable tears. It was foreign and frightening behavior for a champion, and it sent her to the psychiatrist's couch where, for the first few months of therapy, all she did was blubber, too. But then she started having the tennis dreams again. She saw herself on-court in a white dress and sneakers, flying through the air with Jordan-esque flair. And then, back in the same sort of sideline chair she was sitting in when she was attacked in mid-match 28 months ago, she saw herself strumming a guitar with the untrammeled passion of Jimi Hendrix. The exultation was so intense it woke her up. The illumination was so obvious it sent Seles, at 19 the undisputed queen of her profession when she was attacked by a deranged German fan of Steffi Graf, back to the sport that had not only been her life but, on one gloomy afternoon in Hamburg, Germany, occasioned her premature brush with death. The experience has changed Seles, but it hasn't damaged her tennis. That's what those people she refers to as "the other opponent" found out last week in Toronto, where she throttled every challenger in straight sets and, still invincible after all these years and tears, won a title on her first comeback attempt. "I realized that I had to go ahead and move on with my life or else I would go crazy," she said. Seles was so elated after her victory, her 33d career title but her first in two and a half years, that she jumped aboard the wrong plane at the airport and discovered herself taxiing toward Boston. An understanding crew turned the craft around and deposited her onto the plane that took her home to Sarasota, Fla., where she spent the week decompressing. And dreaming about her return to the United States Open, where it suddenly doesn't seem too outlandish a possibility that Seles, now | Seles Turns a Dark Corner And Heads for Center Court |
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