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785274_4 | who owns Revlon as well as the Consolidated Cigar Corporation, predicted in a recent interview with the magazine Cigar Aficionado that the embargo would be lifted within five years. "We think it's inevitable," said Thomas J. Polski, a spokesman for Carlson Companies, which owns the Radisson Hotel chain and a Caribbean cruise liner. "We see Cuba as an exciting new opportunity -- the forbidden fruit of the Caribbean." Others question how rapidly change will come. John E. Howard, international policy director at the United States Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the embargo, said American corporations were not yet as active on Cuba as they were in the lobbying campaign that led to the normalization of relations with Vietnam in February. "The time was right, politically, to make that happen on Vietnam," Mr. Howard said. "I question whether the time is right to make it happen on Cuba." But executives cut off from a market they consider potentially lucrative are speaking out anyway. Carlson is one of several companies whose executives have criticized the embargo in Congressional testimony since early last year. Another is Otis Elevator, based in Farmington, Conn., whose executives want the chance to modernize the thousands of Otis elevators in Cuba and have both testified and sent letters to Congress protesting the embargo. At a hearing on American-Cuban relations before the House Ways and Means Committee on June 30, the vice chairman of the U.S.A. Rice Federation, Keith Broussard, said, "The U.S. rice industry views the Cuban market as one of great potential once the embargo is no longer in place." Sandra M. Alfonso, who heads a commission set up by Gov. Edwin Edwards of Louisiana, told Congress at the same hearing that pre-embargo Cuba had been Louisiana's No. 1 trading partner and that the state had lost 6,000 jobs because of the embargo. Louisiana could easily recover those jobs and more, Ms. Alfonso said, but not "if the existing sanctions remain." Although some executives are speaking publicly, Administration officials said more were expressing their views on the embargo in private meetings at the White House and the State Department. "I'm hearing concerns from many U.S. businessmen that they are losing out," said Richard Nuccio, the White House's special adviser on Cuba. "But frankly I don't think it's very true" that American businesses are missing major opportunities, he said. The Europeans, Latin Americans and other foreign competitors investing | COMPANIES PRESS CLINTON TO LIFT EMBARGO ON CUBA |
785234_5 | around for more than a decade, was operated standing up by a single person who needed physical skills to maintain balance and make quick turns. Newer generations like the Yamaha Waverunner are sit-down models carrying as many as three people, requiring no skills other than turning an ignition key and holding on; even a novice would be capable of executing quick, sharp turns without flipping over. Coming into the market are more expensive jet boats using the same technology -- and performance -- in a hulled craft. To counter this edge in speed, the marine police here have started placing officers on land at locations where the most frequent complaints are generated. Dressed as fishermen, they use hand-held radios to report infractions to patrol boats waiting out of sight to pick up the offenders. Other police agencies are turning the tables on reckless operators by using personal watercraft for patrol work. Some 1,000 personal watercraft are on loan this summer from dealers to law enforcement agencies and lifeguard patrols, which find them effective tools in long-distance rescues as well as apprehension of offenders, said Mr. Birkinbine, the trade group representative. Many complaints about personal watercraft concern the noise they make, an incessant drone that carries far over open water especially when two or three are traveling together. But the police agree with manufacturers that an individual craft registers about 70 decibels, the sound level of a garbage disposal unit, well under the violation level of 90 decibels, the noise made by a passing subway train. While irate individuals press for more stringent laws or even a ban of the machines, legislators tend to feel that they are here to stay and that more rigorous training for young operators is the best policy to pursue. Rental agents, who charge $50 or $60 a half-hour, promote watercraft with phrases like "wet and wild water thrills," emphasizing the speed and daring that appeal to adolescents of any age. Terry Hanshar, a ginger-bearded 38-year-old who offers rentals at Normandy Beach, about a mile north of Chadwick Beach, says safety dos and don'ts are stressed before anyone is permitted to operate a watercraft. Yet that instruction may take less than two minutes. And how much sinks in is questionable. "All they want to do is pull the trigger and go," acknowledged Chris DeFrancesco, a partner in the business. Some renters today seemed to typify the | Watercraft Stir a Mix Of Irritation And Thrills |
784875_0 | The percentage of women elected to national legislatures worldwide has dropped by nearly a quarter in the last seven years, the Inter-Parliamentary Union said today in a new study of how political power is distributed. The decline followed the collapse of Communism in Europe and the resurgence of democracy there and in Africa, said Pierre Cornillon, secretary general of the organization, which is based in Geneva. "The socialist systems gave priority to representation of the components of society: the workers, the farmers, the intellectuals and, of course, the women," Mr. Cornillon said in an interview in New York. In many places, quotas as high as 30 percent were established for women, he said, but added: "What we see now is that the somewhat artifical representation did not lead to a real sharing of power by women. When free and fair elections came, the parties did not put up women as candidates." The slack has not been taken up by a growth in female political representation in the older democracies, the survey of 50 years of women in parliaments shows. Only in the Nordic countries, Iceland and South Africa does the percentage of women in parliaments -- 25 percent or higher -- begin to approach the percentage of women in the workforce or in the general population. Of 106 nations with freely elected parliaments, the United States ranks 43d with 10.9 percent of national seats held by women, a lower figure than that of Russia and many Eastern European and Latin American countries. Canada ranks 21st, with 18 percent of seats held by women. Off the scale entirely are Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, which deny women the right to participate in national legislatures and the right to vote for candidates to represent them. Around the world, women now hold 11.3 percent of the seats in legislatures, down from nearly 15 percent in 1988. Today's report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, "Women in Parliaments 1945-1995: A World Statistical Survey," is among many new studies on the status of women being published in advance of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing from Sept. 4 to 15. An unoffical forum of independent organization opens on Wednesday in China to set the stage for the main event. Almost every major international organization and research institute with special interests in the status of women in health, education and law as well as politics | Study Finds Worldwide Decline In Elections of Women to Office |
785223_2 | her off and killed her. Because she was not a Christian, because she had scientific interests and because she lived toward the very end of ancient civilization, she has been portrayed as a defender of science against religion, as a doomed representative of the values of pre-Christian antiquity and as the last candle of free inquiry to be snuffed out before the long night of clerical scholasticism. In his "History of Western Philosophy," Bertrand Russell wrote of "the lynching of Hypatia, a distinguished lady who, in an age of bigotry, adhered to the Neoplatonic philosophy and devoted her talents to mathematics. . . . After this Alexandria was no longer troubled by philosophers." In fact, Hypatia was not the end of anything. Philosophy and science flourished in Alexandria a full century after her death (most notably in the person of John Philoponus, a Christian writer on physics and philosophy who was so astonishingly ahead of his time that he tends to be left out of history in order to keep the story simple). Nor, it seems, was Hypatia a martyr to paganism. Although she was certainly no believer in Christianity, she did not attend pagan temples either, or join those who opposed their conversion into churches. Some of her pupils were Christians, two of whom later became bishops. The conclusion of Ms. Dzielska's meticulous and convincing argument is that Hypatia was assassinated for political reasons. She was caught in the middle of a struggle for power between Cyril and Orestes, the imperial prefect of Alexandria, with whom she was friendly. Cyril feared that such a powerful supporter made Orestes unbeatable, so he encouraged rumors that she was a witch and a troublemaker. A gang of Christian thugs employed by Cyril -- Alexandria was a rough place in those days -- apparently took matters into their own hands and decided to do the boss a favor by getting her out of the way. It seems that friends of Cyril's also beat up Orestes. In short, Hypatia was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong friends. None of Ms. Dzielska's evidence undermines her subject's appeal, unless you insist on having your heroines young. (It emerges that Hypatia was about 60 when she died.) In fact, her stature grows in the course of the author's trawl through letters, near-contemporary documents and the latest scholarship in obscure journals. This | Famous Long Ago |
784910_3 | last remaining canner of fresh, vine-ripened New Jersey tomatoes in the country. Most tomato packers -- including the Redpack plant in not-too-distant Cedarville -- don't even start with tomatoes anymore, but make their products from reconstituted California tomato paste. And as the world is discovering, South Jersey's sandy, loamy soil produces some of the best tomatoes on earth. "It's a sweeter taste than a California tomato," said Fred Waibel, Violet's production manager, "sweet but tomato-y, not that tasteless blah that processing tomatoes tend to have." Mr. Waibel noted that this year's hot, dry summer has been good for New Jersey tomatoes. "The soluble solids are a little higher than usual, so the flavor and the color are a little better," he said. "We've had a moist New Jersey spring and a California-like dry summer, which is perfect." Indeed. A blind taste test between Sclafani crushed tomatoes and two other brands, Redpack and Tuttarossa, proved to be no contest. The Sclafani tomatoes positively danced on the palate, even carrying traces of the zingy smell-taste of the tomato patch. The other two were almost tasteless with a burned undernote, like music with the bass frequencies turned up way too high and everything else inaudible. Most of Violet's sales are to the food service industry, so the products can be hard to find at your local grocer, but Loffredo's Deli in Orange and Zabar's in Manhattan both carry the crushed tomatoes. For the 400 tons of plum tomatoes that arrive in open-topped trucks at Violet's Gloucester County factory every morning from mid-July to early October, the journey from vine to can takes only a few hours. On the mezzanine overlooking the sorting floor, a quality control tester, Rafael Rodriguez, scooped a pitcherful of simmering sauce from a vat and poured a sample into a device that measures consistency. He hit a lever and the sauce flowed down a ramp with a glug, coming to a somewhere between 8 and 10. Mr. Rodriguez flicked a switch on a control board that said "spice" and a green light went on. "It's not quite like grandma's kitchen," Mr. Waibel said, "but it sure tastes like it." Step and a Half Toys, Oldwick Established 1994 Employees: 2 Product: Electronic musical children's products Annual sales: Not yet known. Early last year, Jim Wilcox went shopping for step stools, the kind that youngsters use to reach the bathroom sink, | Made in New Jersey |
782542_4 | of the disturbances with a huge march along the Malecon, the boulevard that runs along the Havana waterfront. Thousands of uniformed and plainclothes police officers were stationed in the area just in case, and the theme of the rally was "Cuba Lives." Even the most upbeat officials do not contend that people on the island are living well. But after five disastrous years that saw the economy contract at least 34 percent according to official figures (some foreign economists estimate the collapse at closer to 50 percent), officials are starting to say for the first time that the worst is over. In 1994, the authorities say, the economy grew 0.7 percent. For the first half of this year, they say the figure was 2 percent. Except for some increases in vegetable production, nearly all of the rebound has come in exports and joint ventures involving foreign companies. Many of the plants, farms and factories where most Cubans work have continued to stagnate, if not to deteriorate further. But the sense of at least a potential recovery has been magnified by palpable changes on the street. Lines of waiting commuters, once endless, have begun to shrink as the Government has reorganized its transportation system, distributed hundreds of thousands of bicycles and taken donations of buses, tires and batteries from cities in Canada and Europe. With steadier fuel supplies and the refurbishing of several big electric generating plants, blackouts have been cut back sharply in the capital. The farmers' markets that were legalized last October have nearly doubled to about 250, and more are being opened around Havana, the country's political tinderbox. Despite tight control over the licensing of self-employed workers, street vendors and garage repair shops have spread. Family-run restaurants, outlawed last year, have been allowed to reopen. For the growing numbers of Cubans who have some access to American dollars or to the foreign-exchange certificates provided as an incentive to state workers, restaurants, nightclubs and stores that sell imported items in dollars have mushroomed. As excess Cuban currency has been soaked up by price increases on items like rum and cigarettes and by cuts in subsidies, the value of the peso has strengthened sharply against the dollar. "For people who have money, this is glorious," said Vladimir Torres, 21, a former mechanic's apprentice who was selling young goats the other day at a bustling agricultural market outside Havana. "The people | A Year After Boat Exodus, Threat to Castro Dissipates |
782578_1 | all nuclear tests. The President turned aside the argument that small-scale testing was needed to assure weapons reliability. By doing so he greatly increased the chances that the world's five declared nuclear powers will be able to negotiate a comprehensive test ban treaty by their declared target date of next year. Nuclear test advocates wanted Washington to reserve the right to conduct extremely low-yield test blasts, and the Republican-controlled Senate voted this month to spend $50 million to prepare for such tests. But days later a senior scientific advisory group to the Energy Department concluded that low-yield testing was unnecessary. The group, which includes some of the main designers of the American nuclear arsenal, found that computer simulations could provide ample assurance that the weapons remained reliable. That finding made it easier for the President to approve an absolute ban. To placate the doubters, he said Washington would reserve the right to waive the treaty on the basis of "supreme national interests," if the safety or reliability of America's arsenal ever came into doubt. Among the nuclear powers, only the United States and Britain, which uses American test facilities, have the technical capacity to conduct extremely low-yield tests. If they had insisted on making such tests, the other three powers, France, Russia and China, would have needed to conduct much larger tests, equivalent to as much as 500 tons of TNT, to keep up. A threshold that high would have been unacceptable to nonnuclear powers, significantly weakening efforts to prevent weapons proliferation. Only one day before Mr. Clinton's announcement, France too came out in favor of a complete ban. China has long supported such a ban, and Britain now has little practical choice but to go along with Mr. Clinton. Thus Russia appears to be the only remaining holdout. But with its financial resources strained and its best nuclear scientists scattering to other employment, Russia has no interest in allowing other nations to upgrade their nuclear arsenals by permitting limited tests. By standing up to America's testing establishment, Mr. Clinton may have made it easier for Boris Yeltsin to stand up to his own. A comprehensive test ban treaty would spare the environment from further nuclear tests, keep today's nuclear powers from developing even more dangerous weapons, and help keep countries without nuclear weapons from acquiring them. Mr. Clinton has asserted welcome American leadership in the fight against nuclear danger. | No Nuclear Tests |
782602_0 | Five activists for the environmental group Greenpeace unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square this morning to protest nuclear testing in China and were promptly taken into custody, witnesses said. After posing for photographs, like tourists, under an enormous portrait of the Chinese leader Mao Zedong, the activists opened an eight-foot-long banner saying "Stop All Nuclear Tests" in Chinese and English. It took about a minute before plain-clothes police confiscated the banner, witnesses said. A few moments later, uniformed officers surrounded the activists and took them into custody, along with at least a half-dozen Western reporters trying to cover the event. Damon Moglen, a Greenpeace coordinator, said the demonstration was intended to draw attention to China's plans to conduct nuclear testing at a time when a comprehensive ban is being negotiated in Geneva. It was the first demonstration Greenpeace has staged in China, he said. China's President, Jiang Zemin, said recently that China would continue nuclear testing in the interests of its national security, Mr. Moglen added. China is expected to detonate a nuclear device at its Lop Nor installation in China's far west in the coming days, he added. "We're very close to negotiating a comprehensive test ban," said Mr. Moglen. "Chinese and French testing threatens those negotiations." He add: "Testing at a time like this shows a real misunderstanding of regional security issues." He said Thilo Bode, executive director of Greenpeace International, was among the five activists detained. They entered China on tourist visas and are likely to be expelled. "It was over in a matter of minutes today," said Mr. Mogden. "But it is worth drawing attention to. The notion that another bomb is going to improve national security is wrong." | 5 Greenpeace Leaders Detained at Beijing Protest |
782532_0 | FROM the ancient Egyptians onward, ship makers have been relatively quick to change the means of powering their vessels to increase speed and range, going from muscle to wind, steam, oil and eventually the atom. But hulls during those propulsion revolutions remained essentially the same. The great arc known as the monohull prevailed by virtue of its simplicity, buoyancy and dynamic lift. For millenniums it ruled the waves. Now, however, a number of upstarts are racing to challenge the leader, perhaps bringing changes as fundamental as those that have marked the history of maritime propulsion. The aim is greater speed and stability than is feasible with monohulls. At an astonishing pace, innovators in places that include Japan, South Korea, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Norway and the United States are hammering out new kinds of hulls and racing them through the sea, making more than a few waves as experts anticipate a major transportation shift. "We'll see a greater variety of ship geometry from now on," Dr. Owen F. Hughes, a naval architect at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, said in an interview. "Some of these designs could revitalize the shipping industry and make it more like the airline industry." Experts say the force behind the changes is not a single advance but rather clusters of technologies that are making radical ideas, in themselves sometimes relatively old, practical and economical for the first time. Factors aiding the revolution include gas turbines, water jets, control systems for fins and stabilizers, and all kinds of computers and miniature electronic devices. "They let you exploit the ideas," said John R. Meyer, a naval architect and author of an article on new hulls in the current issue of The Naval Institute Proceedings, a monthly magazine published in Annapolis, Md. "It's easy to design something new, but you've got to have the technology to make the thing work." Hulls that are exceptionally stable in rough seas are already helping oil and gas explorers work in deeper waters, cruise ships and ferries improve passenger comfort, navies get a military edge and oceanographers probe the sea in more tumultuous states. And the promise of very fast hulls is dazzling the military and cargo transporters, who want to become more competitive with airlines by cutting transoceanic shipping time in half. "We'll be able to carry 100 times more than a 747," boasted Collister Johnson Jr., president of Fastship Atlantic, a company | Calming Stormy Seas With New Kinds of Ship Hulls |
782517_1 | by American Express and the largest ever received by the fund, which was founded in 1965 and, with an annual budget of about $5 million, has completed 120 projects in 35 countries, notably in Venice after the 1966 flood and in Mexico City, where murals by Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco and others were endangered by the 1985 earthquake. The fund, which has its headquarters in New York and field offices in Venice and Paris, has also been involved in restoring temples at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The Monuments Watch program will have two phases. First, a panel of experts led by Mr. Stubbs will draw up a list of 100 monuments that are in immediate danger of collapse or destruction, or that have reached a state of deterioration so advanced that immediate intervention is needed. Nominations will be solicited from the Unesco World Heritage Center, from ministries of culture and from preservation organizations. In the second phase, the fund will award grants to local organizations to support conservation at designated sites from the list. Grants will be awarded for emergency assistance, strategic planning, technical advice, educational programs, local fund raising and conservation treatments. Only some designated sites will receive money, and those that do will receive only a fraction of the money needed to carry out a complete restoration or conservation project. "The $5 million is intended to be seed money to attract other money," said Mr. Stubbs. "We would never dream of being able to perfectly conserve a site, but by leveraging and creative financing, we feel we can make a significant difference in all those sites." In many instances, Mr. Stubbs said, intervention might be aimed at galvanizing public opinion to change a law or a zoning ordinance that posed a threat, or at changing the minds of public officials. Typically, the fund identifies a work or a structure that is in danger, develops a plan to conserve it and then finds sponsors and partners to finance the preservation work. At the earliest opportunity, the fund bows out and moves on to the next project. At the moment, it is managing 18 projects in 14 countries. At Chatillon-sur-Saone, in France, the fund spent $5,000 to put a cyclone fence around a 16th-century stone tower that was in danger of collapsing after a severe storm. "Frequently I have to say, 'Listen, we're not the World Bank, we're a small | A Gift To Help Preserve Cultural Sites |
783232_3 | women, and it was timed for release before the conference on women, which is held once in a decade. "The key finding is that gender gaps in human capabilities -- education, health -- have been halved in the last two decades," Mr. Speth said. "There have been huge increases in the capacity of women, including in the Arab states. But when you go on beyond the preparatory phase of life, women overwhelmingly still lack access to economic and political opportunities. They are effectively shut out of the higher reaches of economic and political leadership and decision-making." The report says that worldwide, women have only 14 percent of top managerial jobs, hold 10 percent of national legislative seats and 6 percent of cabinet-level positions. Only in the Nordic countries, led by Norway, have women reached the level of 40 percent or more in government ministries, in large part because of strong affirmative action policies, the study concludes. The United States, which is given the world's second-highest overall human development ranking in this report, after Canada, falls to fifth place in a recalculation that focuses on income and health disparities between men and women. Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark all move to the top. If the focus is on women's access to political and economic power, the United States falls to eighth place. Two areas of the report's findings are expected to draw special attention in Beijing: the economic undervaluation of women's work and the legal barriers women face. On the economic value of women's work, Mr. Speth said that the report looked at 31 countries at various stages of development and concluded that "if you take into account both the uncompensated work women do and the wage discrimination against women, you come up with a figure of $11 trillion." "The total world economy is about $23 trillion," Mr. Speth said. In studying the way the laws of various countries treat women, the report's findings were somber. Among the examples of legal discrimination mentioned were laws that prohibit women from traveling abroad without male permission. In Botswana, Chile, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, women are under the legal guardianship of husbands and have no property rights. "The starkest reflection of the low status accorded to women in societies everywhere is the discrimination against them in law," the report said. "Unless such legal barriers are removed, no progress can be made toward equal rights." | U.N. Documents Inequities for Women as World Forum Nears |
783115_0 | Women and Power | |
783229_1 | including the fight to win ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement, but it still anticipates charges by Republicans that it has allowed the deficit to balloon at the cost of American jobs. With this no doubt in mind, Mr. Garten distributed to reporters today a chart showing that the trade deficit now amounts to 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product, about half the proportion that prevailed in the late 1980's. The deficit with Japan -- the amount by which American purchases of Japanese goods surpassed American sales to Japan -- declined for the third straight month in June, according to today's report. Still, analysts said they could not yet discern a trend. Among other things, the decline could reflect slack shipments of luxury cars after an early-spring surge intended to beat the threatened imposition of American tariffs; the punitive tariffs were averted by a last-minute agreement. The deficit with Japan narrowed to $5.3 billion, from $5.5 billion, with imports of new cars from Japan falling nearly $400 million. The deficit with Mexico, however, remained at $1.6 billion, bringing the total for the first half of the year to $8.6 billion, in sharp contrast with last year's $1.1 billion surplus. Mexico's economic crisis and peso devaluation last winter has led to higher American imports and left Mexico less able to buy exports from the United States. And the deficit with China, a growing source of trade friction, climbed to $3 billion, from $2.8 billion. Figures for individual countries, unlike the totals, are not adjusted for recurring seasonal variation. Over all, exports of goods and services fell 1.2 percent in June, to $64.48 billion. The largest factor was lower shipments of motor vehicles, parts and engines, mainly to Canada. For merchandise alone, exports moved down 1.6 percent despite a surge for advanced technology products. Exports of capital goods, however, climbed to a record. Imports declined less than exports, by six-tenths of 1 percent, reflecting lower purchases of artwork, gem diamonds and motor vehicles and their components, the department said. "A soft economy would typically lead to a decline in imports," said Larry J. Wipf, an economist at the Norwest Corporation in Minneapolis, referring to the meager American growth rate of five-tenths of 1 percent in the second quarter. He said the continued high level of imports might indicate that the economy was a bit stronger in late spring than | Trade Deficit Grew in June As Exports Fell |
781809_5 | one-quarter of women in Peru use modern contraception, and adolescents account for 21 percent of all pregnancies in the country. In poor rural areas, it is not uncommon to find many women who have 10 or 12 children. While abortion is illegal in Peru and in many other Latin American countries, family-planning experts estimate that nearly 300,000 abortions a year are performed in Peru, and that it had the highest annual rate of abortion for every 100 women aged 15 to 49 in Latin America. The debate over birth control was highlighted last week when the police announced that a woman had killed two of her six children after deciding she could no longer afford to feed all of them. Some political commentators said the killings demonstrated the need for better family planning among the poor, while others said the deaths underscored the Government's failure to address rampant poverty. More than half of Peru's 23 million people live in poverty, and the combined rate of unemployment and underemployment is estimated at more than 70 percent. While Mr. Fujimori has won international praise for reviving Peru's economy and controlling terrorism, he is coming under pressure to reduce poverty and create jobs. Fujimori Administration officials said the President believed that a first step in reducing poverty was decreasing the size of low-income families. Waiting for an examination at a Lima family-planning center, Maria del Rosario Munoz, a 30-year-old secretary, agreed with the President, saying that her standard of living was much higher than that of many of her friends who had five or six children compared with her one son. "I think that this whole debate will provide a lot of people with good information," Mrs. Munoz said. The tone of Mr. Fujimori's second inaugural address differed greatly from his first five years ago when he focused mainly on slashing hyperinflation and defeating terrorism. This time around, Mr. Fujimori said that Peru had begun "a new era" but that a great challenge lay ahead of integrating a diverse nation to create "opportunities for all." "If we speak of the future we have to speak of planning, of controlling the birth rate," Mr. Fujimori said in his address. "All children are beautiful, they are the symbol of life, but how distressing it is to see children hungry, malnourished, abandoned, living in the street, some like criminals. Is there anything more dramatic than this?" | President's Call for Birth Control Is Dividing Peru |
781946_2 | our nuclear weapons without the ability to test them. These weapons are machines, and will break down despite the intense scrutiny they undergo." On Thursday, France announced that it supported a total ban on nuclear tests and would permanently stop its own testing, once it conducts up to eight tests in the South Pacific; the tests have been heatedly condemned by Japan, Australia and other nations. A senior White House official said there was "absolutely no" coordination with France on the announcement today, although it once again places Mr. Clinton in the uncomfortable position of appearing to follow the lead of President Jacques Chirac. White House officials and arms control experts said that with the United States and France calling this week for a total test ban, the floundering talks in Geneva, which are sponsored by the United Nations, should be given important new momentum. The main stumbling block has been the scope of the treaty -- whether the test ban would be absolute or would allow small tests. "This is a critical development in moving to break the deadlock in Geneva, where the whole process is dead in the water," said Spurgeon M. Keeny Jr., president of the Arms Control Association in Washington, which supports disarmament. "If the President had decided to allow tests of 500 pounds, it would have killed the whole thing." Britain, which conducts its nuclear tests in Nevada, is expected to embrace the French-American position. China also said it backs a total ban on nuclear testing, although occasionally it has called for testing for peaceful purposes. Russia, the other major nuclear power, wants the treaty to allow tests equivalent to 10 tons of TNT or less. Last spring, when representatives from 175 countries met at the United Nations to consider a permanent extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, many third-world diplomats said they would oppose such an extension unless the nuclear powers promised to accelerate efforts to sign a comprehensive test ban treaty. Responding to those concerns, the Administration promised a good-faith effort to negotiate such a treaty by the end of 1996. The conference then approved an indefinite extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations had called for a comprehensive test ban, while reserving the right to conduct small-scale tests, a position that the Clinton Administration embraced until Mr. Clinton endorsed what he called "a true zero-yield" test ban. "American | PRESIDENT URGES A PERMANENT BAN ON ALL ATOM TESTS |
783534_2 | to cut off the lifeblood of foreign money to Castro and thereby speed the fall of the Castro regime," one aide said. The bill's sponsors envision lawsuits in which Bacardi, for example, whose rum distilleries were nationalized, might sue Pernod Ricard, a French liquor company that distributes rum made in those distilleries. They hope the threat of such lawsuits will scare foreigners away from doing business in Cuba. The Administration argues that the provision will undermine the chances that a post-Castro Cuba could create a stable democracy. One senior Administraton official said: "A post-Castro Government will need to resolve the foreign property question and give people confidence there is respect for property in Cuba. This bill virtually guarantees that no government, no matter how well intentioned, will ever get out from under the numerous lawsuits." The House International Relations Committee approved the bill, 28 to 9, and the full House is expected to take up the measure in September or October. While Republican lawmakers say they are confident the bill will pass both houses, Administration officials say it could run into problems in the Senate. The White House, working closely with companies in the United States and in foreign countries, has quietly persuaded Congress to retract other parts of the legislation. One would have prohibited importing sugar or sweetened products from countries with companies that buy sugar from Cuba. Instead, the bill requires foreign companies to certify that none of the sugar in shipments to the United States comes from Cuba. The other would have required aid to Russia to be cut back if Moscow furnishes goods to Cuba at a below-market price or pays Cuba for operating an intelligence facility in Lourdes, Cuba. Russia uses the facility to help monitor American compliance with arms-control treaties. Many of the 5,911 American companies and individuals that already have filed claims against Cuba -- totaling an estimated $6 billion -- oppose the confiscation provision. Robert Muse, a Washington-based lawyer for Amstar, whose sugar mills were confiscated, said the bill would make it harder for those who were American citizens in 1959 to get full payment for their claims from a post-Castro Cuban Government. "Cuba doesn't have infinite resources to meet its claims from U.S. claimants," Mr. Muse said. "Each time you allow another Cuban-American claimant into the system, it's one more bucket taken from the finite well of Cuba's ability to pay." | Bill to Ease Cuba Suits Faces a Veto By Clinton |
783760_2 | although they acknowledge the improvements that have been made in recent months, they do not plan to remove the plant from the watch list for at least another five months, said Richard J. Urban, a project engineer for the N.R.C. Mr. Urban called Indian Point 3 -- which at full capacity can produce 980,000 kilowatts of electricity, enough energy to light 10 million 100-watt light bulbs -- "one of the most troublesome plants in the Northeast." Of 109 operating nuclear plants in the country, only five are on the N.R.C. watch list. Situated 35 miles north of Manhattan, the plant here is owned by the New York Power Authority and employs close to 1,000 workers. But its track record has been poor, and because of a series of problems it has been intermittently shut down for nearly half of its existence. Curtis Cowgill, chief of the Indian Point 3 project for the N.R.C., said that while there had never been the threat of a serious meltdown at the plant, there have been "ongoing problems" with surveillance testing and with the backup system for shutting down the reactor. "They've not been very good at identifying and correcting their problems," he said of the plant management, citing declining performance in emergency preparedness, engineering and technical support and safety assessments, among other things. Mr. Urban, who said it would be "premature" to take Indian Point 3 off the watch list now, explained that Federal regulators wanted "to see a sustained operation there." But Leslie M. Hill, the plant's on-site executive officer, said he was optimistic that Indian Point 3's performance would soon warrant a revision in its status. And while the anti-nuclear groups say they have not lost their faith, Mr. Hill said that neither has he. Workers at the plant had found "nuclear religion," he said. He called management and staff gatherings "prayer meetings," and described himself as "the preacher at Indian Point 3." "We've changed the plant's culture," he said, referring to the turn-around in recent months. Nineteen of 27 former managers at Indian Point 3 have been ousted and other procedural changes have been put in place. James Comiotes, general manager of support services, said even the smallest problems were now addressed quickly "because they could be precursors to bigger problems." "We always think that the plant may be trying to tell us something," he continued. Also, in its capacity | Protesters Undaunted Over Indian Point 3 |
779300_1 | cigarettes." Last Monday, Mr. Waxman also took the floor to read what he called secret, internal tobacco industry documents into the Congressional Record. He read papers showing that Philip Morris studied hyperactive schoolchildren as potentially "natural smokers" and described experiments in which college students were injected with nicotine. Today, he read papers showing that Philip Morris scientists discovered several ways to manipulate the nicotine in cigarettes to give smokers their "optimal" desired doses. Company researchers wrote that they had found an "optimum" level of nicotine to satisfy smokers, which they said was the level at which smokers both satisfied the brain's craving for nicotine and gave smokers the mild high they expected from a cigarette. Company officials have acknowledged that researchers did these studies but said the research work was never put into practice and was never used to change the natural level of nicotine in cigarettes. But today Mr. Waxman described an analysis that he said showed that at least two Philip Morris cigarette brands -- Benson and Hedges and King Size Merit Ultra Light -- did have altered nicotine levels. He said that an analysis by a scientist from the University of Pennsylvania showed that the likelihood of the variations occurring by chance or by natural means was less than 1 in 100,000. Mr. Waxman said, "There is compelling evidence that not long after completing this research, Philip Morris used the research findings to manipulate nicotine levels in cigarette brands sold to the American public." He noted that the nictone-to-tar ratio in the Benson and Hedges 70 millimeter cigarette remained stable from 1968 to 1978 at 0.07, or a little more than 1 part nicotine to 12 parts tar, a level the Philip Morris scientists said in documents made public by The New York Times last month, was roughly the natural ratio in their old cigarettes. But after that, the nicotine increased relative to tar. It went up to 0.2 in 1981 and then settled down to 0.11, about 1 part nicotine to 9 parts tar, in 1983. This final level is the same level that Philip Morris scientists said most smokers found to be the optimum level of nicotine to tar. While the tar levels in the Benson and Hedges cigarettes remained the same during the period, Mr. Waxman said, the level of nicotine was changed. Mr. Waxman said he asked Dr. Lynn Kozlowski of the University | Lawmaker Applies Pressure For Regulation of Nicotine |
779493_1 | Bremner and including Dr. Charney, at the West Haven hospital. And both combat veterans and and survivors of childhood abuse performed at levels averaging 40 percent lower on a test of verbal memory than did people of comparable age and education, Dr. Bremner said in a report to be published later this year in Psychiatry Research. The traumatized veterans with reduced hippocampus volume were compared with other veterans who had similar backgrounds, body size and other characteristics that might affect brain size, but who had no trauma symptoms. The left and right hippocampi, twin seahorse-shaped structures deep on each side of the brain, play a crucial role in memory. The hippocampus is especially vital to short-term memory, the holding in mind of a piece of information for a few moments, after which it either resides in more permanent memory or is immediately forgotten. Learning, the accretion of new data in memory, depends on short-term memory. The finding of shrinkage in the hippocampus suggests a loss of cell mass. Whether the loss is due to the atrophy of dendrites, the long branches that stretch from one brain cell to another, or from the death of such cells, is not yet known. Some researchers caution that it is not yet certain that trauma and stress shrink the hippocampus. "It might be that people with a smaller hippocampus to begin with are the ones most susceptible to post-traumatic stress symptoms," said Dr. Roger Pitman, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Manchester, N.H. "The rule of thumb is that no matter what kind of trauma -- an earthquake, combat, rape -- only about 15 percent of victims will get long-lasting, severe post-trauma symptoms," said Dr. Bremner. Dr. Bremner's finding of hippocampus effects is the first to be published, though confirming preliminary results were reported by other research groups in May at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Miami. Dr. Murray Stein, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Diego, found a 7 percent reduction in hippocampus volume in women who had suffered repeated childhood sexual abuse and who still had post-traumatic symptoms. Another study of Vietnam veterans found that those who saw more intense combat and suffered from more severe post-trauma symptoms had an average shrinkage of 26 percent in the left hippocampus and 22 percent in the right hippocampus, compared with vets who saw combat | Severe Trauma May Damage The Brain as Well as the Psyche |
779494_2 | the representatives of all three nations have indicated a willingness to develop a comprehensive management plan for nongame species of North American migratory and local songbirds, shorebirds and sea birds. The plan would complement an existing agreement among the three nations that governs the 60 million to 100 million ducks and other game birds that can legally be hunted. The commission has assembled a team made up of scientists from all three nations to determine what killed the birds at the reservoir. The researchers are in a race against time: The next migratory season begins in late October or early November. The scientists have limited clues to help them piece together what happened last winter. There are no preserved samples of the dead birds, the reservoir itself has been emptied and earlier investigations produced competing explanations of what went wrong. What the scientists will have to work with are the basic facts of the case. The Silva reservoir was created at the turn of the century to help irrigate agricultural land in the central state of Guanajuato, about 150 miles north of Mexico City. As in most of Mexico, it rains here only from June through September. The rest of the year hardly a drop falls. Compared with the industrial mess in Mexico City, the area around Leon, in the state of Guanajuato, is an airy paradise. But in this century Leon has become the shoemaking capital of Mexico, home to about 800 tanneries that discharge their wastes directly into the Turbio River and small streams that feed the Silva reservoir. Sewage wastes from Leon and other cities also end up in the Silva. Despite that degradation, the 300-acre reservoir has become a major stopover for migratory birds on the Pacific flyway from central and western sections of the United States and Canada. Bird-watchers in the area have documented more than 50 kinds of birds at the reservoir, including the white-faced ibis, green- and blue-winged teals, baldpates, northern shovelers and least sandpipers. All of the scientists who investigated the kill concluded that although the reservoir is badly polluted, it took something more than the normal toxins to trigger the catastrophe. Birds that drank the yellowish water from the reservoir or ate plants and fish that grow in it became sick within two or three days. All evidence points to an extraordinary pollutant discharge, but of what and from where? At | Treaty Partners Study Fate of Birds at Polluted Mexican Lake |
779769_1 | end of the cold war, that arsenal no longer has any obvious military use. France's nuclear security today depends not on deterring Soviet attack but on preventing potential nuclear powers like Iraq and Iran from developing weapons on their own. Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons depends in turn on global efforts against proliferation. Earlier this year, France joined the other nuclear nations in lobbying for an indefinite extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. They persuaded non-nuclear countries to go along by pledging to negotiate a formal ban on nuclear testing by next year. France's decision to test this year does not violate the letter of that pledge. But it surely violates its spirit. Critics of the French tests also worry about the risk, however small, of environmental catastrophe. France has already exploded more than 100 nuclear weapons at its Mururoa Atoll test site. The coral that makes up the atoll sits atop the crater of a submerged volcano. The nuclear explosions take place within a shaft drilled into the underlying volcanic rock. Each blast can cause limited fracturing of nearby rock. As long as the surrounding mass of the volcano remains intact, the radioactive byproducts remain safely contained. But some scientists worry that the combined effects of further testing and natural erosion could cause a slow leak of radioactive material or an abrupt falling away of the volcanic wall, releasing massive radioactive waste. These two concerns -- about proliferation and the environment -- have provoked strenuous international opposition. Polls also show that a majority of people in France itself oppose the tests. The strongest reaction so far has come from Australia, which this week barred a French aerospace concern from bidding on a $547 million jet fighter contract. The government in one Australian state has said that it will no longer entertain French bids on a $9 billion water privatization project. Other regional governments in Australia are also contemplating costly reprisals. Mr. Chirac's response has been to call France's Ambassador home "for consultations." That is a standard form of diplomatic protest. But in this case, real consultations -- not only with Australia but with other critics -- would be a far better idea. Mr. Chirac has badly underestimated the opposition to testing. He has also reacted with more stubbornness than statesmanship to his critics. He still has time to extricate himself and France from a costly and dangerous mistake. | Mr. Chirac's Nuclear Blunder |
779958_4 | well run, with professional oversight by in-house administrators. The Middlemen Weak Spots That Invite Abuse Mutual Financial is one of the growing number of middlemen showing up on the menus. Also known as third-party administrators, these vendors offer a range of savings options to employees, sometimes placing investments directly with numerous mutual funds and insurers and other times using an affiliated registered brokerage firm to handle the transactions. They can simply follow the employee's instructions, for a flat fee, or make their own recommendations, for a commission. While most middlemen perform well -- especially in the 401(k) area, where corporate employers typically keep close tabs -- there are weak spots in the 403(b) universe that invite abuse. Public school systems are among the most vulnerable, experts say, by virtue of their size, tight budgets and lack of financial sophistication. With retirement savings and investing options soaring in recent years, "an extraordinary number of vendors are trying to get public school business," said Thomas J. Bieniek, senior vice president at the Fidelity Investments Tax Exempt Services Company, whose mutual funds are frequently among those offered by school systems. But the schools, he says, are doing "virtually no research" when adding middlemen to the vendor menu, he says. And sometimes things go wrong. The Indianapolis public school system is now embroiled in litigation over $350,000 in missing money from teacher retirement accounts there. The losses involving Mr. Drinkwine appear to be even bigger. "I know of $560,000 missing from just the two people I've spoken to," said John Lawlor, a securities lawyer in Garden City, L.I., who is representing one teacher. "I'll bet there are another 20 out there." And Ross Crawford, a former Mutual Financial salesman who left the firm late last year, says he knows of upward of $1 million in Long Island and Connecticut teachers' money that has disappeared, a figure that he expects will grow as time goes on. "People will be missing 40 grand," he said, "and they are going to find out when they go to retire." Mutual Financial says that any customer who lost money will be made whole by the firm's fidelity bond. But Mr. Devine, the firm's president, would not say how much he thought the teachers had lost or how big a bond Mutual Financial had, and Mr. Lawlor is skeptical that it is big enough to cover everyone's losses. The Missing | The Checks That Got Away |
781252_3 | bananas. Buy them underripe if need be, and never refrigerate them. Though stores are told not to refrigerate tomatoes -- the 25-pound boxes of New Jersey tomatoes are labeled "Do not refrigerate below 55 degrees" -- many do so anyway. Unfortunately, the best clue to whether a tomato has been kept too cold is its mealy texture. Tomatoes shipped long distances often travel in refrigerated trucks with the lettuce and broccoli. T HIS summer's heat and dryness have made for higher yields than usual in New Jersey and other areas in the Northeast. Prices are lowest and supplies are most abundant in August, to the delight of the tomato lover tempted to go on a monthlong all-tomato diet. But the farmers are not so happy. "There is an overabundance right now, and on top of it, we have to compete with backyard gardeners," Mr. Neary said. This month in some markets in Manhattan and elsewhere in the region, New Jersey tomatoes are up against more than a dozen kinds of red, yellow, orange and green tomatoes, some no bigger than currants or grapes. The suddenly popular and exceedingly pretty imported tomatoes sold on the vine are everywhere, even in supermarkets. "It may be an esthetic thing," Mr. Bildner said. It seems that the bioengineered Calgene tomato is not yet a player in this market. At Balducci's, in Greenwich Village, Charles Balducci, the director of the produce department, says the tomatoes on the vine from the Netherlands are outselling all others this year. "I don't understand it," he said, "because the Jerseys are so good now, and they're cheaper." Mr. Balducci said he thought the tomatoes from Holland were not as flavorful as some others. "Tomatoes with many small seed chambers, like the Jersey tomatoes, taste better," he said. "The Holland tomatoes have big pockets of seeds and juice and less flavor." At the Union Square Greenmarket, Dr. Basson was tempted by some chartreuse but ripe Greengage cherry tomatoes that Rick Bishop, the owner of Mountain Sweet Farms in Roscoe, N.Y., said were the sweetest of all. Gourmet Garage, in SoHo, is also selling them. Now is when chefs like Charlie Trotter, the owner of Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, start featuring all-tomato tasting menus. In a week or so, Alfred Portale, the chef-owner of Gotham Bar and Grill, in Greenwich Village, will start serving salads that combine as many as eight | In Supermarkets, a New Kind of Tomato Surprise |
781312_0 | Policyholders in the National Mutual Life Association of Australasia Ltd. brushed aside global politics and agreed to be taken over by Axa S.A. of France for 1.1 billion Australian dollars, or $817 million. The vote drew attention because of friction between Australia and France over French plans to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific. More than 97 percent of policyholders approved the takeover, in which Axa is to gain a controlling stake. Axa wanted a partner with interests in Asia and the Pacific region. National Mutual Life, Australia's second-largest insurer, also has interests in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia. It controls National Mutual Asia Ltd., which is listed in Hong Kong, and is seeking to expand into China. National Mutual Life will be the third pillar in Axa's global operations, which include the Equitable Companies in the United States. (Bloomberg Business News) | International Briefs; Takeover of Insurer By Axa Is Approved |
781374_2 | Brazil either stayed home or flew to Miami. But many corporations remained and sought to raise productivity levels to world standards. They invested in automation, cut payrolls and adopted more efficient manufacturing techniques. Productivity gains have translated into price cuts. Over the last five years, average prices of videocassette recorders have fallen to $300 from $1,000, color television sets to $380 from $780, faxes to $360 from $2,500, and 18-speed bicycles to $180 from $500. "In 1992 we almost closed. Today we are producing twice as much with less than half the number of employees," said Cristovao Marques Pinto, resident director of BASF da Amazonia S.A, a subsidiary of the big German chemical and pharmaceutical group. In the last year, BASF has closed tape factories in Germany and the United States. It now exports tapes from here to Europe, Latin America and the United States. To open the way to international trucking, state governments are paving a 375-mile gap in a road that will link the landlocked Brazilian states of Amazonas and Roraima with Venezuela. Rains now often render this long gravel stretch impassable for weeks. Once that bottleneck in this 1,100-mile international highway is paved, probably at the end of next year, Manaus will be a four-day trip by truck from Venezuela's Caribbean ports. Long cut off from the outside world by hundreds of miles of rain forest, the efficient industrial complex here will be within striking range of Andean, Caribbean and Central American markets. "The highway is going to open the Caribbean market to products from the Free Zone," Amazonino Mendes, the state governor of Amazonas, said in an interview. "It will be the economic redemption of Amazonas." For the moment, about 98 percent of the zone's production is sold in Brazil. Manaus, traditionally isolated from its neighbors, exported twice as much to Singapore last year as to Venezuela. "We are going to save a lot of time," said Nelson Azevedo dos Santos, director of Moto Honda da Amazonia. "We already export to the Caribbean, but we are forced to go through Santos," he said, referring to Sao Paulo's port, now 10 days from here by truck and boat. It costs more to ship a ton of cargo from Manaus to Santos than from Japan. With assembly lines here paying wages on a level with Mexican plants on the Texas border, executives believe that the paved road will | Brazil Looks North From Trade Zone in Amazon |
781374_3 | of videocassette recorders have fallen to $300 from $1,000, color television sets to $380 from $780, faxes to $360 from $2,500, and 18-speed bicycles to $180 from $500. "In 1992 we almost closed. Today we are producing twice as much with less than half the number of employees," said Cristovao Marques Pinto, resident director of BASF da Amazonia S.A, a subsidiary of the big German chemical and pharmaceutical group. In the last year, BASF has closed tape factories in Germany and the United States. It now exports tapes from here to Europe, Latin America and the United States. To open the way to international trucking, state governments are paving a 375-mile gap in a road that will link the landlocked Brazilian states of Amazonas and Roraima with Venezuela. Rains now often render this long gravel stretch impassable for weeks. Once that bottleneck in this 1,100-mile international highway is paved, probably at the end of next year, Manaus will be a four-day trip by truck from Venezuela's Caribbean ports. Long cut off from the outside world by hundreds of miles of rain forest, the efficient industrial complex here will be within striking range of Andean, Caribbean and Central American markets. "The highway is going to open the Caribbean market to products from the Free Zone," Amazonino Mendes, the state governor of Amazonas, said in an interview. "It will be the economic redemption of Amazonas." For the moment, about 98 percent of the zone's production is sold in Brazil. Manaus, traditionally isolated from its neighbors, exported twice as much to Singapore last year as to Venezuela. "We are going to save a lot of time," said Nelson Azevedo dos Santos, director of Moto Honda da Amazonia. "We already export to the Caribbean, but we are forced to go through Santos," he said, referring to Sao Paulo's port, now 10 days from here by truck and boat. It costs more to ship a ton of cargo from Manaus to Santos than from Japan. With assembly lines here paying wages on a level with Mexican plants on the Texas border, executives believe that the paved road will make the industrial zone a strong player in regional trade. Otto Fleck, executive director of a local industry association, said of the state governor's promise to pave the road, "If Amazonino does not come through on this, he will not be elected to anything again." INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS | Brazil Looks North From Trade Zone in Amazon |
785928_0 | A Sri Lankan ferry carrying 128 passengers was riding at anchor off the island's northeast coast today, apparently under the control of Tamil Tiger rebels who hijacked the ferry then sank two Sri Lankan naval gunboats that went to investigate. All 28 of the gunboats' crew members were believed to have been killed. Sri Lankan Defense Ministry officials said they had no information on the condition of the ferry's passengers, mostly ethnic Tamils who boarded the vessel at the east coast port of Trincomalee on Monday for what was to have been an overnight journey to Karaitivu, a Government-held island off the northwest coast. At nightfall on Wednesday, the ship had been at sea for 48 hours, with minimal supplies of food and water. The hijacking marked a new turn in the 12-year-old conflict in Sri Lanka, which has steadily intensified since the rebels broke a three-month truce in April. More than 1,500 people have been killed in the renewed fighting. Earlier this month, the rebels, who are fighting for an independent Tamil state, rejected a Government peace proposal that would create a powerful regional authority for the Tamil minority in the island's north and east, vowing instead to pursue a "protracted conflict." The rebels' aims in seizing the ferry, the Irish Mona, were not clear. On Tuesday, when the vessel was sighted off the east coast settlement of Mullaittivu, 55 miles north of Trincomalee, the Sri Lankan navy sent two 60-foot Israeli-built Dvora gunboats to investigate. Both were sunk by rebel fire after a sea battle in which, the navy said, the rebels lost 10 small craft of their own. Some accounts suggested the incident was a trap set by the rebels, who have often used surprise attacks, including suicide bombings, to offset the advantages in manpower and weapons of the Sri Lankan forces. On this occasion, the rebels targeted a vessel that has routinely plied the route between Trincomalee and Karaitivu without interference. Officials in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, said the first gunboat was sunk after it was lured within range by rebels, acting as distressed passengers, who waved from the ferry's deck. The rebels then sank the gunboat with missiles, possibly fired from the ferry, or with a sea mine, the officials said. The officials attributed their accounts of the battle to radio messages sent by the two gunboats before they sank. The incident underscored the | Rebels Hijack Civilian Ferry In Sri Lanka |
781524_3 | agents in New York said. Last week, Hamas leaders in Damascas and the Gaza strip said the group would attack Americans if Mr. Marzook is deported to Israel to stand trial for conspiracy and murder there. In addition, intelligence officials said yesterday a guilty verdict against Mr. Abdel Rahman and his co-defendants could raise the potential for an attack. Most of the measures imposed under the order from the F.A.A. were familiar to travelers, airport officials said. Some passengers were asked who had packed their bags and whether anyone had given them something to carry. Airport officials across the country said bathrooms and wastebaskets were being checked more often. Unattended cars and suitcases were being searched. The F.A.A. directive told airlines to watch out for passengers using cash to buy one-way tickets to overseas cities. Transportation Department officials were reluctant to spell out the measures in greater detail. But airline officials said the move represented a "Level 2" alert, under the four-stage system established by the F.A.A. after the Persian Gulf War, which was "Level 4." Angel Biasatti, a spokeswoman at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, said passengers were likely to see more police in terminals and bomb sniffing dogs at check-in. Cora L. Fossett, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles International Airport, said the airport had already increased uniformed patrols in terminals and parking lots. At the three airports serving New York City, domestic passengers said they had not noticed any changes in security measures, though some international travelers said the United States Customs agents had been more vigorous than usual in checking luggage. Airport officials declined to comment on the measures. At O'Hare Airport in Chicago, F.A.A. officials seemed to be everywhere, spot checking luggage at the curbside check-in stands. Some even posed as passengers to see if skycaps were following new guidelines prohibiting them from checking bags for passengers who intend to switch flights. "One tried to trick me," said Jack Sabani, a redcap who has worked there 11 years. "F.A.A. guys are walking around and checking luggage." Passengers at O'Hare, the busiest airport in the country, were greeted with a stern annoucement. "They were announcing not to leave your baggage unattended, that if you did, the police would come and pick it up," said Bill Cox, an insurance agent who had just flown in from Dallas. "I travel regularly and I had never heard that before." | Security Is Tightened at Nation's Airports |
784049_1 | more automated, workers' skills have had to increase. And the streamlining of corporate America has cut the number of entry-level office positions, making a good factory job look a lot better. "In this economy, $19-an-hour jobs with good benefits are a lot more desirable than a few years ago" for college-educated workers, said Harley Shaiken, a professor with the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California at Berkeley. Today, many more people with education beyond high school are working on factory floors. Government figures showed that almost 5 percent of production workers last year were college graduates while another 16 percent had some college education. Those figures compare with just 2.8 percent and 11.2 percent, respectively, a decade earlier. And the whole educational level of the factory work force has been upgraded. In 1984, only 40 percent of all production workers had graduated from high school, compared with more than 71 percent last year. Similar, more modest gains have occurred among skilled production and craft workers. Consider the Allegheny Ludlum Corporation, a specialty-steel producer based in Pittsburgh. "Of the last 152 people we have hired for blue-collar jobs, 80 percent had more than a high school diploma," said Robert P. Bozzone, vice chairman. "Of that, 15 have college degrees and 86 have two-year degrees. I'm sort of flabbergasted. Twenty years ago we had to battle to get high school equivalents." Well-educated workers are turning up on assembly lines as well as in steel mills. At the Ford Motor Company, virtually all the plant-floor workers hired in recent years have high school diplomas or more, and the percentage of college graduates has risen sharply, from 1.2 percent in the mid-1980's to 4.7 percent in the last two years. Money is clearly a lure. Mr. Bozzone reported that the average plant-floor worker at Allegheny Ludlum made $42,000 last year, and auto workers' pay is in that range as well. At Gallatin, bonuses for education, production and company profits can lift an engineer's pay above $50,000 in a good year, company officials said. Not that recent graduates foresee whole careers on the plant floor. Many young engineers at Gallatin Steel say they see the mill as a form of graduate school, one that will lift them up the career ladder faster than all those recent graduates stuck in often-boring management trainee programs. "I'm getting exposure to the management of new technology, | First to College, Then the Mill |
784102_1 | independently re-analyzed the raw data from the Lieber study said that his conclusions were invalid. Mr. Sanduleak found no correlation between moon phases and murder when he did a similar study for greater Cleveland, using Cuyahoga County Coroner's Office statistics for 3,370 homicides in the 11 full years from 1971 through 1981, beginning when the Lieber study ended. His results "indicate with a high degree of probability that the day-to-day fluctuations in homicidal assaults are random in nature and are not correlated with lunar phase," he wrote in The Skeptical Inquirer. There was, however, a real and marked increase in homicidal attacks on weekends, which he attributed to increased alcohol intake. He said his review of several similar national studies "found that no conclusive statistical evidence existed for the reality of any kind of lunar effect on human behavior." He suggested a source for full-moon anecdotes. On a busy night in the emergency room, he said, a harried attendant might say, "There must be a full moon," planting the idea in the minds of other workers who might later recall a full-moon connection regardless of the actual phase. Drugs and Hair Loss Q. What causes hair loss in cancer chemotherapy? A. Drugs used to fight cancer cells may also attack healthy cells that share some of their characteristics, explained Dr. Ezra M. Greenspan, clinical professor of medicine (oncology) at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York. "Some chemotherapy drugs, not all by any means, attack other rapidly proliferating cells, including hair cells, which divide relatively fast," he said. "Chemotherapy is also directed to growth factors that happen to be shared by the hair cells at the root, and by epithelial tissues of the tongue and the surface of the intestinal tract." These areas are vulnerable to about 70 percent of the drugs used in chemotherapy, Dr. Greenspan said. The effects on healthy tissue account for some other common side effects of chemotherapy, like nausea and mouth sores. Different anticancer drugs are used in different combinations and doses, and the dose also determines to a great extent the amount of hair loss, he said. The hair loss is always reversible in women when the chemotherapy ends, Dr. Greenspan said. "Women are frequently amazed at how well hair looks when it regrows," he said. "Sometimes gray hair regrows as black and brown, and it is often curlier and stronger." C. CLAIBORNE RAY | Q&A |
784654_0 | Taking a shrewd new tack in its international diplomacy, the Vatican has chosen an American woman, Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor, to lead its delegation to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing next month. The Vatican, which found itself nearly isolated on issues of abortion, contraception and the rights of women at the United Nations Population Conference in Cairo last September, has apparently decided to put a new face on its international team. For the first time its delegation to a major world conference will be led by a woman, in this case an articulate, respected conservative legal scholar. The Vatican has only observer status at the United Nations, but its strong voice has often influenced the course of debate on social issues. Ms. Glendon, one of a handful of female professors at the Harvard Law School, is a prolific writer on comparative family law and social policies and a strong supporter of the Vatican's stand against abortion. In an interview today, she said she could understand the opposition to the church's ban on artificial methods of contraception. But she questioned the use of family planning programs as a primary way to combat poverty in crowded developing nations, which she describes as "getting rid of poverty by getting rid of poor people." The appointment of Ms. Glendon, who favors debt reduction and other economic policies embraced by the developing world, is seen as a political move to build bridges to delegations from poorer countries, whose numbers Pope John Paul II has sought to marshal behind the church's conservative views on women and the family. She is the author of nine books, including "Abortion and Divorce in Western Law," which made her a leading intellectual voice in the American anti-abortion movement and a strong defender of the economic interests of women and children in divorces. The announcement of Ms. Glendon's appointment is expected to be made in Rome on Friday, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington said. The Vatican will then also make public the names of the other members of a 20-member delegation likely to be dominated by laywomen from around the world. The Beijing conference and the parallel forum of independent organizations that opens in China next week will be the largest meeting ever convened on the status of women, and many delegations will be seeking firm committments from governments | Vatican Picks U.S. Woman As Delegate to U.N. Parley |
784694_0 | Several patients at a county-owned nursing home in Westchester have inflicted physical or sexual abuse on at least 10 other patients since December, the State Department of Health has charged. In a report, health officials put the blame on administrators at the Ruth Taylor Geriatric and Rehabilitation Institute in Hawthorne, charging that they did not adequately supervise a locked 33-bed unit for patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease and other dementia. The report paints a chaotic picture of conditions there, with apparent slapping matches breaking out among patients and with several patients wandering out of the unit. "We felt that the home should have been more assertive in identifying the problems, identifying appropriate remedies and implementing those actions," said Wayne M. Osten, assistant director of health care surveillance with the State Health Department. "We did not see that occurring." The most serious allegation -- the only one involving charges of sexual abuse -- centers on a 50-year-old patient, reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's disease and other mental impairments, who the report said was caught at least four times sexually abusing female patients. The man, identified as James Collins of Peekskill, was arrested at the nursing home on Aug. 8 and charged with one count of first-degree sexual assault. A judge has ordered that Mr. Collins undergo an examination to determine whether he is mentally competent to stand trial. He has returned to the nursing home, though an administrator said he was under close supervision. The report, based on interviews with staff members, documents several cases in which residents were said to have punched, slapped, spit at had their hair pulled by other patients. The report said that on June 5, for example, a woman afflicted with dementia punched a fellow patient, pulled her hair, grabbed another patient by the sweater and had a total of five altercations with staff members in 50 minutes. Health officials said they have requested a plan from officials at the 400-bed nursing home by Monday on how they will correct the problems. Lois Uttley, a spokeswoman for Health Commissioner Barbara DeBuono, said the department was demanding three changes: a better system for assessing senile patients and their potential for abusive behavior, better training for employees and improved supervision of employees. The home's administrator, Patrick J. Neville, declined to comment on the problems at the home, except to say that he was cooperating with the state fully to | Patients Abuse Other Patients At Nursing Home, Report Says |
782979_0 | The Clinton Justice Department has joined the effort to move mentally retarded patients out of large institutions and into community facilities. It is a potentially worthy undertaking, putting the Federal Government, once again, behind a policy carried out in many states and supported by experts and advocates for 20 years. But the department should be wary about closing down institutions unless it gets firm assurances that alternative treatment will be available. The practice of closing down large mental hospitals, known as deinstitutionalization, gained momentum in the late 1960's and 1970's. It was inspired partly by horror stories of overcrowded, inhumane institutions and partly by new forms of treatment that allowed many patients to function in smaller community facilities or even at home. Since 1967, the population of mentally retarded people housed in institutions has dropped from about 200,000 to less than 70,000. But in many states, including New York, deinstitutionalization became a cruel hoax, funneling the mentally ill into communities where programs and facilities did not exist. Patients were left to fend for themselves on the streets. Meanwhile politicians and labor leaders kept some large hospitals open to retain local jobs, and state officials were reluctant to commit funds for community treatment. The Reagan and Bush Administrations also resisted expanding community placements. The Justice Department now argues against keeping the mentally retarded in "forced segregation and isolation." It suggests that such actions may amount to discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. It has therefore moved to expand community placements in nine states and the District of Columbia. But there are pitfalls. It is often difficult to make sweeping judgments about who can function in community facilities. Institutional settings might be better for some severely retarded patients. Total deinstitutionalization is not realistic. But neither is wholesale incarceration. As long as communities have places for the mentally retarded to go, the Justice Department's new emphasis on community placement is reasonable social policy. | Community Treatment for the Retarded |
782955_1 | to the test, which was expected. The activists were expelled from China yesterday after long questioning by the police. The tests also occurred during the same week that China conducted a second round of missile tests off the coast of Taiwan, a move widely interpreted as a show of force against the island state after Taiwan's recent efforts to raise its diplomatic status around the world. "China stands for the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons," Mr. Chen said. "Its posession of a small number of nuclear weapons is solely for the purpose of self-defense and poses no threat to any other country." China has repeatedly promised not to use nuclear weapons first in any confrontation, Mr. Chen said. It has also promised not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear state or in any nuclear-free zone. At the same time, Mr. Chen said, China called on other nations posessing nuclear weapons to "respond postitively to China's initiative by starting negotiations immediately, with a view to concluding a treaty on mutual non-first-use of nuclear weapons." Once the treaty banning nuclear tests is fully negotiated and takes effect, Mr. Chen said, China will stop testing. China's most recent nuclear test was conducted at its Lop Nor site in the far west in May, detonating what experts estimated to be a 40-to-150 kiloton explosion underground. Japan cut off aid to China in protest. China's announcement did not include any details about the location or scale of the test. In the past, the United States has responded to China's nuclear tests by expressing regret and calling on China to abandon its teting program. In 1993, the Clinton Administration invested a substantial amount of energy trying to persuade the Chinese leadership to halt its nuclear testing program. At that time, President Clinton even asked Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary to review options about resuming American testing at a test range in Nevada. However, those options were abandonned after the Chinese failed to respond positively, and the White House conceded that such a form of pressure was unlikely to dissuade Beijing from testing. Foreign Minister Qian Qichen later agreed to work with the United States to ban the production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium to prevent proliferation and to eventually halt the production of nuclear material for use in new weapons by the countries that already have nuclear weapons. | China Sets Off Second Underground Nuclear Test in 3 Months |
783088_1 | has become a magnet for facts, fiction, envy, social commentary and politics. "This is not for Egyptians, not for our kind of people," said a 38-year-old taxi driver, who would give only his first name, Khalid. "I think you have to steal to live in there," said Khalid, who lives with his wife and six children in a slum within sight of the project. "I am not envious, but I believe these people will be accountable on Judgment Day." Rose el Youssef, a leftist weekly, spotlighted the project in January. It published a satire suggesting that the helipad on top of the Blue tower -- the smaller one is the Green -- was designed so residents could flee the country when the revolution comes. The stinging article suggested that First Residence would separate "opportunistic small-time millionaires from the seriously rich millionaires." It reminded the "ungrateful" that the project, which occupies the equivalent of two city blocks, would create badly needed jobs. The helipad, the satire said, will ease traffic gridlock by permitting First Residence owners to shuttle above the city to their Red Sea summer resorts. On a recent day, Karim Ghassan, an 18-year-old student, sat on the corniche facing First Residence sipping tea and looking up at the rising floors, where 1,500 workers toil in three shifts to try to finish the building within a year. "I heard it was very, very expensive, and everything in it is very, very automatic and very strange," he said. Well, that is all relative, said Maged Louis Atallah, an engineer working on the project for John Laing International Ltd., which is co-managing the construction with Bechtel, an American company. There is some exaggeration about the prices, but the exclusivity of the project is not at issue, he said. The iron and glass structure will have 120 apartments, including 16 villas at the top, each with about 17,000 square feet of floor space. It will have shopping malls, lavish lobbies, health clubs and a large communal pool. The air-conditioning, security and fire-fighting equipment will be state of the art, he said, adding that the building "is not only a landmark, it's a masterpiece." "This is the kind of project that revives the beauty we used to know in Cairo in the 30's," he said in an interview in his modest apartment nearby. "It echoes the glorious pharaonic period of advancement and leadership. It | Cairo Journal; The 'Tower of Power': Something to Babble About |
780115_1 | of President Jacques Chirac, wrote in Le Figaro today. Mr. Seguin said that with American isolationism growing stronger every day in Congress, relying solely on the United States for security would be illusory. "By developing its nuclear deterrent to a modest but effective level of performance," he wrote, "France is working for all of Europe." Le Figaro, a strong supporter of an independent French nuclear deterrent, promoted the article on its front page this way: "Philippe Seguin Denounces an Anglo-Saxon Operation." Mr. Chirac and Mr. Seguin are latter-day followers of Charles de Gaulle, who in 1963 barred Britain from entering what later became the European Union. He did so, he said, because he believed that Britain was an American Trojan Horse, not a sincere believer in European unity. Some people continue to wonder about that today. Though Britain, which joined Europe a decade later, has carefully refrained from saying anything critical about the decision to resume tests. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, traveling in Southeast Asia, said that the Clinton Administration would continue a moratorium on testing until September 1996, when a test-ban treaty is expected to go into effect. "We regret the decisions by China and France to continue testing during this period," Mr. Christopher said. The strongest Anglo-Saxon denunciations of the French tests have been by New Zealand and Australia. Australia barred Dassault Aviation, the French aeronautical giant, from competing for a $547 million military contract this week, and France recalled its Ambassador in protest. French officials said they had trouble understanding why people in the South Pacific opposed nuclear testing under the Mururoa atoll, given Mr. Chirac's promise to end it once and for all by next May. That would be after seven or eight underground explosions, which France says are needed to establish the reliability of a new submarine warhead. Mr. Chirac, who began a three-week vacation this week, has insisted that his decision to conduct the tests after a three-year moratorium imposed by his predecessor is irrevocable. But a survey of 1,008 voters by the CSA polling organization published on Wednesday by Le Parisien found that 56 percent of the respondents thought that Mr. Chirac was wrong to end the moratorium and that 60 percent said they hoped that he would change his mind. "We have said what we think," Prime Minister Alain Juppe said later. "We will act with clarity and firmness." | France Describes U.S. 'Anglo-Saxons' as Nuclear Test Foes |
782183_1 | good books, the idling buses and the fumes they gave off invaded the peace and quiet she had hoped for that week. "Dear Supervisor Cavanaugh," she wrote in her E-mail note, describing the problem and her thwarted plans. "Please explain to me how these buses are allowed to sit along the side of the street (in back of private houses) when this street has signs posted, 'No parking at any time.' " Two days later, she had a response. "Thanks for your E-mail on the bus problem," Mr. Cavanaugh said, explaining that he was bringing the matter to the attention of the county, which runs the bus service. "A copy of my letter to them has been forwarded to you (the old-fashioned way, via U.S. Mail)," the Town Supervisor wrote. "We will continue to monitor the situation." Ms. Gislao and Mr. Cavanaugh have become part of a growing number of constituents and their elected officials who are discovering the joys of electronic mail. Under New York's telecommunications grant, about 250 local governments are expected to have E-mail addresses by the end of the year. Officials taking part in the project will be able to subscribe to professional discussion groups on the Internet with colleagues in other parts of the state. In some cases, those groups and other on-line seminars could replace traditional conferences that are held for the same networking purposes -- saving taxpayer dollars that might have been spent to pay officials' travel and hotel expenses, not to mention the cost of time spent away from the office. Mr. Pascarella said the electronic age could signal a time of reduced spending for government. "Think of the money saved by eliminating the paper, postage and handling of regular mail," he said. "That's just the beginning. The possibilities are endless." In Rye, Town Clerk Frances C. Nugent called the latest developments in electronic communication "mind boggling." Apprehensive at first about the new technology, she said that she has learned quickly "despite being a senior and grandmother" -- although she was put off at first when Mamaroneck's Town Clerk, Patricia A. DiCioccio, sent an E-mail to check if her colleague in Rye was enjoying "surfing the Net." Ms. DiCioccio recalled that Ms. Nugent responded with "a bit of huffiness and wanted to know if I was pulling her leg." "She said that she had never surfed anything in her life," Ms. DiCioccio | E-Mail Puts Officials In Reach |
782142_1 | "guidance" was not prompted by consumer complaints. Overall, he said, advertising provokes less than 2 percent of the complaints the department receives, and complaints about prices in ads would hardly register on the meter. He said that the effort was part of the department's project to help consumers, begun in January. Samuel Podberesky, assistant general counsel for aviation enforcement and proceedings, who signed the letter, said the department wanted the travel industry to "clean up its ads." He said the Government became concerned a few months ago after it collected and studied ads in major newspapers for packages that include air travel -- the Department of Transportation has jurisdiction only where air travel is involved. He said a particular concern was the disparities in the way add-on charges, those not included in the price listed in big type, were described in travel agency ads offering different trips from various suppliers: package tours, special hotel promotions, cruises, air-and-car-rental combinations and the like. Referred to as co-op ads, they are placed by agencies to provide a virtual catalogue of seasonal values or new offerings. The cost of the advertising is shared by the travel agent and the tour operators, airlines, hotels, resorts, car-rental companies and others. Mr. Podberesky said that the department called up some of the larger agencies -- he would not identify them -- to suggest improvements and that the agencies said in effect that they did not want to alter advertising in a way that would put them at a competitive disadvantage. Following up on the conversations, the letter was sent on July 16. Leveling the Field Larry Organ, a lawyer in Mr. Podberesky's department, said in an interview that what the department wants for the consumer is a level playing field. "It doesn't matter if all the extra charges are included in the overall price, or listed separately in the small type," he said, "so long as all the items in the ad do it the same way." To illustrate, he cited one typical ad. "It had 10 packages advertised. The small type on item 1 says: 'Includes all taxes.' On item 2, it says: 'All service charges and air taxes included.' On item 3, it says 'Tips and departure taxes included.' You can't compare these. It gives the idea that a lot of things are included but the reader doesn't know if all the applicable charges are | U.S. Scrutinizes Air-Ticket Ads |
781952_0 | As soon as Lewis Neuman saw it, he fell in love. It was solid and beautifully proportioned, not too tall, not too wide: an air compressor built more than 75 years ago to power industrial equipment. To Mr. Neuman, a mechanical engineer, it was a work of art. Through serendipity, the object belonged to him. Two and a half years ago, Mr. Neuman bought several empty buildings in Garfield and moved his zipper-manufacturing business there after the rent tripled at his Manhattan offices. As he was cleaning out a structure that housed boilers, Mr. Neuman stumbled over the compressor and was dazzled. "This is perfect," he said. He admired the size of the flywheels, the thickness of the spokes, the length of the cylinder, the cast-iron logo plate. "They don't build them like this anymore. This thing will last forever." Mr. Neuman, 52, dug into the history of the machine and found it had been built before 1920 by Chicago Pneumatic Tool Co. and used by American Biltrite Inc. to power air tools that sliced electrical tape at its Garfield plant, which closed in 1989. The more he thought about it, the more Mr. Neuman believed his machine belonged in a museum, perhaps even the Smithsonian Institution. He sent a letter and pictures. "But I really didn't have that high hopes that the Smithsonian would want it," he said. What he didn't know was that William E. Worthington Jr. of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History had been looking for a large air compressor for years. And it is large: 12 feet long, 4,500 pounds. When he received Mr. Neuman's offer, Mr. Worthington, of the Division of the History of Technology, was delighted. "It's an important piece and a good representation of the early 20th-century industrial processes that used compressed air," he said. In a couple of weeks, a fine-arts mover will come to Mr. Neuman's factory and custom-build a crate to fit the 42-inch flywheels, seven-foot frame, pulleys, belts, motor and idler wheel. "If we're going to have a complete record of the past," Mr. Worthington said, "we're going to need to collect air compressors as well as tea cups and tables." NEW JERSEY & CO. | Something New for America's Attic: An Old Machine With a Neat Pedigree |
782161_0 | President Clinton took a big step last week to end a deadlock in talks to create a treaty to prohibit nuclear tests worldwide. Fifty years after the United States dropped the first nuclear bomb, he became the first President to call for a ban on all atomic tests, including the small-scale tests that his and previous Administrations had favored even as they called for a comprehensive test ban. Mr. Clinton rejected the Pentagon's call for a treaty that would allow tests equivalent to 500 tons of TNT to assure the reliability of the nation's nuclear arsenal. To reassure the generals, however, Mr. Clinton said he would be willing to seek a clause allowing the President to invoke America's national interests and carry out tests if he were convinced that the arsenal had become unreliable. The betting among atomic experts is that Mr. Clinton's new stance will end the logjam in the 38-nation test-ban talks in Geneva. Until now, the five acknowledged nuclear powers have been unable to agree on an absolute ban. But this week a consensus appeared to be forming: France announced a day before Mr. Clinton that it favored a total ban, once it conducts several controversial tests in the Pacific. STEVEN GREENHOUSE | Aug. 6-12: Ground Zero; Clinton Endorses A Ban on A-Bomb Tests -- And That Means None |
782159_0 | The Times Square area is about to get a new homeless shelter -- the nine-story, 45,000-square-foot Isaiah House, a former warehouse at 260 West 41st Street. The shelter will accommodate 400 people and includes dining facilities, dormitory-style rooms, two chapels, counseling offices, full laundry facilities and a commercial kitchen. It is being constructed by the Times Square Church, which bought the old warehouse 16 months ago for less than $1 million. The church and its pastor, the Rev. David Wilkerson, also run two other homeless facilities: Timothy House, for men, at 170 East 106th Street and Hannah House, for women, at 343 West 51st Street. The project will cost about $4.5 million (or $98 a square foot) to build, and is being financed with private funds, with no loans or underlying mortgages. Materials, like plumbing, have been donated. Work on the project began in September 1994 and is scheduled for completion in February 1996. David Mandl Associates of Manhattan is the architect. The 5,000-member church is nondenominational and was established eight years ago. Mr. Mandl said the project was expected to to enhance what he believed would be the gentrification coming to the area because of the Walt Disney Company's plans for development on 42d Street. "There are a lot of homeless in the area still," he said, "and the idea is to draw them off the street and bring them inside." | POSTINGS: Former Warehouse on 41st Street Under Renovation; A Homeless Shelter For Times Square |
783389_1 | Ahead for Poorest Nations" (news article, Aug. 10) quotes Ismail Serageldin, vice president for Environmentally Sustainable Development at the World Bank. He is right to sound an alarm over the sorry state of the world's water resources; however, he has left out the significant role of his employer in helping create this situation. The World Bank's lending has promoted expensive, large-scale, publicly subsidized water infrastructure projects at the expense of alternative approaches. According to World Bank annual reports for 1981-90, of the approximately $35 billion (in 1993 dollars) invested in the water sector, almost 70 percent of the bank's loans and credits for this period were for new infrastructure and expansion, while only 2.3 percent were for alternatives like small-scale irrigation. About $12 billion went for large-scale dams, while only $1.2 billion was invested in rural drinking water supply projects. Internal World Bank reviews of dam and water projects document the poor performance of these projects economically, socially and environmentally. Large dams financed by the World Bank, such as the infamous dams on the Narmada River in India, have forced millions of poor people from their homes, destroyed wetlands and fisheries, and had economic rates of return below 10 percent. While there have been improvements -- a new policy directing the bank to focus more on water conservation and improved management, and cancellation of loans for the $1 billion Arun 3 Dam in Nepal (Business Day, Aug. 16) -- the bank continues to invest more of its resources in the same type of projects that have failed in the past. Of the approximately 165 water projects in the bank's pipeline as of June 1994, almost half the funds were allocated to new, large-scale infrastructure projects. Only 5 percent of total resources were for smaller-scale approaches or watershed-management programs. The bank continues to support large-scale dams, such as the Xiaolangdi Dam in China and the Lesotho Highlands water project in southern Africa, which will exacerbate the water crises experienced by poor, rural communities. If countries and communities are to provide sustainable water services, public financial institutions such as the World Bank, regional development banks and United Nations agencies will have to redirect their resources away from expensive engineering schemes toward community-based drinking water and sanitation programs, cost-effective primary sewage treatment, municipal and agricultural water conservation, and smaller-scale infrastructure projects. DEBORAH MOORE Senior Scientist Environmental Defense Fund New York, Aug. 16, 1995 | Giant Projects Don't Conserve World's Water |
783913_2 | wrote Marcy J. Gordon, Esq. "Since I am a highly opinionated individual with many opinions on a diverse range of topics, please feel free to contact me directly if you want any more opinions on anything," added Ms. Gordon, whose Manhattan firm is called Psychic Planner Inc. But it was a close vote, and the no's passionately argued their position. " 'An E-mail' makes me cringe!" wrote Ellen Key Harris, who is an editor at Del Rey Books and the director of on-line projects for Ballantine Books/Random House Inc. "Abusers of the term are usually, in my realm, those who can't deal with electronic messaging unless they envision it is exactly like the United States Postal Service: you compose something, send it, and your physical message travels along the wires." Many other no's also attacked "an E-mail," contending that the usage is a sure sign of the on-line newbie. "It seems to me the phrase would not have been considered acceptable usage among early developers and users of E-mail, and still -- to my ear -- marks the speaker as a relative newcomer," wrote Hank Bromley, who has been an E-mail user since 1979, when he was a computer science undergraduate at the Massachusett Institute of Technology. "I never heard the phrase 'an E-mail' until two or three years ago," added Mr. Bromley, now associate director of the Center for Educational Resources and Technologies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. "I remember clearly who I first heard it from, and the confusion I briefly felt before realizing what this person meant. It's bugged me ever since." It also eats at Jerry Gillman, the former owner and manager of WDST-FM, the community radio station in Woodstock, N.Y. Our poll drove Mr. Gillman to digital doggerel: E-mail ain't acceptable, E-mail just ain't couth. How'd you like Nyok Tymz? You'd hate it; that's the truth. P.S. A recurrent gripe, regardless of the vote being cast, involved The New York Times style for writing "E-mail." "My biggest complaint is the fuddy-duddy spelling 'E-mail,' " wrote Cate Gable of Berkeley, Calif., speaking for many, who wonder why this newspaper uses an uppercase "E" for something that many people and publications write as "e-mail." The Times style for the term is in keeping with T-shirt, A-frame, H-bomb and other analogous words that predate E-mail. For now, at least, it will stay that way. | 'An E-mail' by Any Other Name Might Sound Better |
783968_0 | To the Editor: President Clinton's welcome announcement that the United States will seek a permanent ban on all nuclear tests (news article, Aug. 12) and France's proposal to ban future tests (after seven more under the fragile coral atoll at Mururoa) are reasonable steps toward limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. But the hidden story is what is driving China to continue testing (news article, Aug. 17) and what is motivating France to propose further tests, despite a storm of protest by governments and activists, cancellations of valuable contracts by South Pacific nations and a consumer boycott of French goods. The United States and Russia can develop a third generation of hydrogen weapons, for use in space and on the battlefield, without underground tests. Using virtual-reality simulations, the Dr. Strangeloves in the weapons labs can perfect new technology and, with the unreconstructed cold warriors in the Pentagon, are driving the nuclear arms race. France and China are testing to perfect their ability to rely on laboratory simulations to develop new technology, just as we are now able to do and are indeed doing. Robert Bell, President Clinton's special assistant for defense policy, said we will spend "billions" for laboratory testing as a tradeoff for forgoing further explosions. To stop the testing in China and prevent the proposed tests by France, we need to end our own miniaturized hi-tech nuclear proliferation. ALICE SLATER New York, Aug. 18, 1995 The writer is executive director of Economists Allied for Arms Reduction. | Ban Nuclear Tests, in Virtual Reality Too |
784764_0 | Under Federal pressure, New York City has drawn up ambitious plans and set aside millions of dollars to clean up pollution in the 2,000-square-mile watershed that supplies drinking water to seven million city dwellers and one million suburbanites. Failure to carry out the task will force the city to build a $6 billion filtration plant to meet Federal environmental requirements. But for five years, the city has essentially been running in place -- in part because of fierce resistance from upstate communities whose streets, outmoded sewage treatment plants and cow pastures send pollutants and parasites into the city's 19 reservoirs. There is now evidence that an agreement may be within reach. Gov. George Pataki, who has been brokering peace talks between city officials and the watershed communities, announced last week that a "conceptual agreement" had been reached on 20 contentious issues. A conceptual agreement is not a real agreement, but the Governor's optimism is a positive sign. A more meaningful sign, reflecting real gains rather than hopeful expectations, is the fact that a joint project aimed at reducing polluted runoff from 550 farms in the watershed is now up and running. Under the program, the city has made available nearly $40 million -- about $75,000 per farmer -- to subsidize new farming practices. The program is administered by the farmers themselves. Despite initial hostility, more than 200 farmers have now signed up. Many have begun remedial measures -- fencing off pastures, installing cement liners to keep manure in barnyards, and planting grassy buffers alongside streams to absorb nutrients from animal wastes. Officials say that pollution has already declined. Even more important, the program's success has become a major talking point in the Governor's negotiations, where it is seen as proof that cooperative, locally based efforts, as opposed to top-down regulation, can rebuild trust between the city and the watershed communities. Still, getting the farmers on board may be the easiest part of a complex equation. The city must also assert control over the siting of septic tanks and waste treatment plants, which amounts to de facto control over the pace of commercial and residential development -- an understandably sensitive issue among watershed residents. It must also acquire land to provide buffer zones near the reservoirs and the streams that feed them. The city has set aside $750 million to upgrade sewage systems and to acquire 80,000 acres of land from | Rays of Hope in the Watershed |
784832_0 | Seeking to give new momentum to peace talks in Northern Ireland, the British Government said today that it would grant early release over the next few years to 400 people convicted of terrorist offenses in the embattled province. The decision would mean shortened prison terms for roughly equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants, officials said. But it was clearly intended as a gesture to the Irish Republican Army, which a year ago unilaterally stopped using violence to bring about its goal of forcing a British withdrawal and reuniting the province with the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland. "This new proposal recognizes the change a year of peace has brought," Sir Patrick Mayhew, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, said in a speech in Belfast today. "But it depends on its continuation." Since the I.R.A.'s decision to halt its campaign of bombings and shootings, Protestant paramilitary groups, who want Northern Ireland to remain British, have also honored the cease-fire, and the British and Irish Governments have agreed on a framework for negotiations. But despite the start earlier this year of direct talks between Britain and Sinn Fein, the political arm of the I.R.A., progress toward an overall settlement has slowed in recent months. Among other issues, the talks are bogged down over the I.R.A.'s refusal to give up its arms. In agreeing to an early release of prisoners, the British Government was taking a step that would give both the I.R.A. and the Protestant paramilitaries the satisfaction of welcoming home people they consider prisoners of war. Sir Patrick said the Government would seek legislation allowing prisoners to be released after serving half their sentences, instead of the minimum two-thirds. The practical effect of the change would be to allow 100 prisoners to be released early in the first year after the legislative change, which is expected to be taken up by Parliament in the fall. Roughly 70 to 80 prisoners a year would then benefit from the change over the next three or four years, British officials said. The change would not directly affect the 200 prisoners serving life terms for terrorism. | Britain Offers to Cut Terms for 400 Irish Convicts |
784759_0 | It is hard to believe that the Westway highway and development project, which died 10 years ago next month, was New York City's last grand dream for its future. It was an urban renewal project the likes of which cities have rarely seen. It is high time that we dare to dream again -- of development on Manhattan's West Side overlooking miles of parks lining the Hudson River. Originally, the Federal Government was prepared to foot Westway's $2.3 billion bill. New York planned to build a new highway, much of it underground, along the West Side and to revitalize the Hudson River waterfront with nearly 100 acres of parks and related development. The story of how that breathtaking opportunity was squandered should serve as a hard lesson. An eclectic group of opponents that included environmentalists, New Jersey politicians and West Village residents persuaded a Federal judge to block Westway because it would have demolished already crumbling piers that allegedly served as "rest stops" for striped bass migrating down the Hudson River. By September 1985, with the project still in litigation and Congress poised to strip New York of money for what opponents labeled a "boondoggle," Gov. Mario Cuomo and Mayor Edward Koch decided to abandon Westway and exercise a "trade-in" option that gave the city approximately $1 billion in mass transportation financing instead. The alliance that killed Westway 10 years ago has blocked every alternative proposed since then for the West Side. The efforts of the Hudson River Park Conservancy, a joint city-state entity that is committed to spending $100 million on riverfront park development, have been constantly stymied by litigation. Sadly, the waterfront remains a painful symbol of New York's lack of vision and resolve. During this same period, other places have made substantial progress in realizing their big projects. For example, Boston is proceeding with its Central Artery project, an $8 billion, federally financed highway and downtown development plan. And New Jersey, which has helped developers pursue more than two dozen commercial and residential projects along the Hudson's waterfront, has now committed $1.3 billion to a 21.5-mile light-rail system along the state's northeast shoreline. Here in New York City, we can still realize the dream of urban renewal, if we take the following steps: 1. Adopt a specific, comprehensive plan to address the city's needs on the West Side of Manhattan -- and then stick with the plan. | The Road Not Taken |
784820_0 | Saying it feared the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing next month could result in a "step backward in the field of human rights for women," the Vatican today made a detailed attack on positions endorsed by the United States and other participants in preparatory meetings, saying that they promoted abortion and would undermine the central place of the family. The statement by Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the spokesman for Pope John Paul II, came as the Vatican announced that its 22-member delegation will include 14 women and will be headed by Mary Ann Glendon, an American legal scholar whose appointment had been quietly urged by the Clinton Administration. The appointment of Ms. Glendon, a Harvard law professor who supports the Vatican's stand against abortion but has also a record of advocacy of political steps favoring developing countries, was seen as a conciliatory gesture to avoid driving the Vatican into isolation in Beijing, as occurred last September at the United Nations Population Conference in Cairo. It was the first time that a women was named to head an official Vatican delegation. The attack on positions supported by the United States came despite efforts by the Vatican and the Clinton Administration to search for areas of agreement at the Beijing conference and to reduce attention to the more emotional issues like abortion. The United States Ambassador to the Vatican, Raymond L. Flynn, a former Mayor of Boston, lobbied heavily in recent months in favor of Ms. Glendon's appointment to lead the Vatican delegation. Senior Vatican officials were divided over whether to choose Ms. Glendon or a Norwegian scholar, Janne Haaland Matlary, who is also a delegation member, to lead the group. While Ms. Glendon is a foe of abortion, she is also a champion of the rights of women and children in divorce and supports economic measures to help third-world countries. Mr. Flynn, an ally of Mr. Clinton, has played a crucial role in the Administration's effort to reduce confrontation with the Vatican, undoubtedly with the 1996 elections and the Roman Catholic vote in mind. Mr. Flynn has sought to stress areas of agreement between the Clinton Administration and the Vatican while seeking to avoid open clashes on divisive issues like abortion. At a news conference, Dr. Navarro-Valls said there was "no cause for a pessimistic attitude" about the conference and that the Vatican will go to Beijing "to achieve a consensus." | Vatican Attacks U.S.-Backed Draft for Women's Conference |
784820_2 | agreement between the Clinton Administration and the Vatican while seeking to avoid open clashes on divisive issues like abortion. At a news conference, Dr. Navarro-Valls said there was "no cause for a pessimistic attitude" about the conference and that the Vatican will go to Beijing "to achieve a consensus." But his attacks on specific parts of the preparatory document as well as its use of phrases like "reproductive rights," "safe sex," and "safe abortion," made clear that the Vatican would not seek consensus by surrendering on what it considered central moral issues. The Vatican has only observer status at the United Nations, but it claims to speak for millions of Roman Catholics worldwide and its positions carry moral and political weight at conferences like the one in Beijing as countries search for the broadest possible consensus. As the Vatican outlined its views, a group of three nongovernmental organizations representing women said in Brussels they would challenge the Vatican's right to attend the Beijing conference. The organizations -- the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights, Women in Development-Europe, and the Latin American and Caribbean Health Network -- said in a statement that the Vatican presence in Beijing violated the principle of equal respect for all religions. Moreover, the organizations accused the Vatican of "sacrificing the rights of women to the Church's theological agenda." In recent months, Pope John Paul II has been at pains to stress his support for women's rights. In a special letter addressed to women in July, the Pope gave credit to the women's movement for its achievements and offered an unusual apology for injustices against women committed in the name of the Church. And indeed, today's attacks lacked much of the stridency that marked the debate leading up to the Cairo conference. Specifically, Dr. Navarro-Valls said the Vatican objected to the "almost conscious nonadvertence to the crucial, social importance of the family" in the draft document, and its "imbalanced emphasis" on sexual diseases and illnesses relating to reproduction in chapters dealing with women's health. The Vatican also took issue with proposed passages regarding abortion. Dr. Navarro-Valls said it was "alarming" that more than half the draft text was going to Beijing in brackets, referring to the practice of placing parentheses around contested language. He said the Clinton Administration the sponsor of much of the document's offensive language, adding that chances for bridging differences were "not entirely rosy." | Vatican Attacks U.S.-Backed Draft for Women's Conference |
784794_1 | the Catholic Church did," he said in a telephone interview. Instead, he said, he had succumbed to a "growing unease" about his original decision. "I had simply lost any sense of peace," he said. His unease, Bishop Pope said, lay in his feeling that he could not give up his status as a bishop, which he would have to do to be re-ordained as a Catholic priest. He described the rank of bishop in mystical terms, saying it was "God-given" and not for him to surrender. "I could not shake the image of my consecration," he said, recalling the event at which his spiritual authority was signaled by a laying on of hands by his fellow Episcopalian bishops. "I thought I could lay it aside. I couldn't." He also said he felt a gnawing guilt at having left his role as a leader of Episcopal traditionalists, who oppose the ordination of women as priests. Indeed, when he announced his plans to convert to Catholicism last fall, Bishop Pope described himself as an "Anglo-Catholic" who had become convinced that his hopes for a reunion of the Episcopal and the Roman Catholic Churches had been destroyed by the decision of the Episcopal Church and the related Church of England to ordain women. The latter has its roots in the 16th-century schism that took place when King Henry VIII severed ties to Rome after Pope Clement VII refused to allow the King to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Bishop Pope was welcomed back to the Episcopal Church by its top official, Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning, a longtime friend, who sent a letter announcing the news to all the church's bishops. But some people around Fort Worth have received the news with considerably less enthusiasm, in particular the congregation at St. Mary the Virgin Catholic Church, where Bishop Pope had been a parishioner. Until 1991, that church and its priest, the Rev. Allan Hawkins, had been Episcopal. But that year, partly out of anger over the Episcopal Church's consecration of a female bishop, the approximately 200 parishioners took the highly unusual step of voting to secede, beginning a three-year process in which they were confirmed as Catholics and Father Hawkins, a married man with two adult children, was re-ordained as their priest. Bishop Pope allowed the congregation to keep the church buildings, and in an interview last year, he spoke sympathetically of its decision | Religion Journal; Episcopal Bishop Who Became a Catholic Recants |
780876_0 | The black bear seems to be making a comeback in New Jersey. Naturalists say there are now at least 375 black bears in the state, and possibly as many as 600, the Associated Press reported. New Jersey's bear population had dwindled to fewer than 50 in the early 1970's. State officials have fielded nearly 200 complaints about black bears this year -- more than in all of 1994. Bears have been spotted foraging for food in garbage cans, lurking in garages and taking a dip in a swimming pool. But there have been no reports of attacks on humans. TERRY PRISTIN NEW JERSEY DAILY BRIEFING | The Black Bear Rebounds |
780913_0 | Aboard his 25-foot motor boat, Officer Mack Clark of the Florida Marine Patrol recently scanned these waters as vigilantly as a Customs agent would for drug shipments. But it was not cocaine that Mr. Clark was after, but crustaceans, specifically lobsters. "How are you doing?" he called out as he circled a boat flying a red flag, which indicated someone was diving or snorkeling nearby. "Got any lobster? Got a license? Can you open the cooler?" And so it went during the lobster mini-season, a two-day hunt on the last Wednesday and Thursday of each July that allows recreational divers to catch Florida's spiny lobsters a few days before the commercial fishermen set their traps. In exchange for the jump start on the regular commercial season, the sportsmen must abide by strict rules -- no hooks or spears, no short lobsters, no egg-bearing females, and no wrung tails, in which a lobster tail is kept but the lobster is thrown back. The hunters are subject to frequent spot inspections that can lead to up to $500 in fines and 60 days in jail for violations. The lobster hunters descend upon South Florida in the tens of thousands, some arriving early on reconnaissance missions to scout the best lobster lairs. They spend hundreds of dollars on gear like the "tickle sticks" used to prod the lobsters out of crevasses and into nets and then into coolers where they usually share the room with beer. Veterans of the event say the lobster is easier to find than in the commercial season, from Aug. 6 to March 31. The limit of 12 lobsters a day is also higher than in the commercial season, when recreational divers can only take 6 per person or 24 per boat, whichever is greater. In recent years the mini-season has drawn about 45,000 participants, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said. More than half of them head to the Florida Keys, where the lobster is abundant in shallow water. "It's the thrill of the hunt," said Jim Purgavie, 37, a welder from Pompano Beach who was diving around Fisher Island with two friends when Mr. Clark stopped by for an inspection. The group had 14 lobsters after a few hours of hunting. But considering the expenses involved -- fishing license, hotel room in Miami Beach and parking -- Mr. Purgavie conceded that "it's probably cheaper to buy a | In Florida, a Lobster for Every Pot |
780898_4 | its use of complex Chinese characters, Japanese has always been more difficult to type than Latin-based alphabets, making personal computers less of a convenience here than in Western countries. But PC technology has largely overcome those barriers. People can now type in either English letters or simplified Japanese characters, and the computer will instantly convert them into Chinese ideographs. Still, for most contacts with the rest of the world, English must be used. Even the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, which promotes the development of Japan's telecommunications industry, has a home page on the Web in English, not Japanese. To correct problems like this, some companies are developing the technology to make the Net multilingual. A program by Netscape Communications Corporation, which is used to browse the World Wide Web, will display home pages in Japanese, Chinese and many other languages if the user's computer is equipped with the proper computerized fonts. Some experts say the computer code named Unicode may hold the most promise for making the Internet multilingual. Computers represent information as a series of zeros and ones, or digital bits. Computers now often transfer data using the American Standard Code for Information Exchange, or Ascii, which represents each character by a sequence of seven zeros or ones. Because there are only 128 such sequences, Ascii cannot handle many characters other than those in English. Unicode, on the other hand, represents letters and symbols by a sequence of 16 zeros and ones, allowing for 65,536 different combinations. Within one code, all the characters of all the world's languages can be given their own unique sequence. Translation software, which once ran only on mainframe computers, is now also available for personal computers. In a few years, predicts Seth Thomas Schneider, editor of Multilingual Computing, a magazine published in Sandpoint, Idaho, such technology will be available as modules for a word-processing program, the way spell-checkers are today. Efforts are also being made to provide translation to messages in transit so that an E-mail message sent in English, for example, could arrive at the other end in French. Compuserve, the H.& R. Block unit that is one of the biggest American on-line service providers, uses automatic translation to allow English, French, German and Spanish speakers to participate in forums on international affairs. When a writer posts a message in English, computers translate it into the other three languages in as little | A Cyberspace Front in a Multicultural War |
766534_0 | Thomas Fauss Gould, a scholar of Greek literature and philosophy who was a professor emeritus of classics at Yale University, died on May 13 at the Connecticut Hospice in Branford, Conn. He was 67 and had lived for many years in New Haven. In announcing the death last week, the university reported the cause as a liver ailment. In a career starting in the 50's, he schooled undergraduates in classical Greek and Greek mythology, and he translated classical Greek literature into English. He wrote "Platonic Love" (Free Press of Glencoe, 1963) and "The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy" (Princeton University Press, 1978.) Mr. Gould was born in East Liverpool, Ohio. He received undergraduate and master's degrees, as well as a Ph.D., from Cornell University. Surviving are two brothers, John, of Great Falls, Va., and James, of Encinitas, Calif. | Thomas F. Gould, Classicist, 67 |
767834_2 | legal problems resolved. In 1974, Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Stans were acquitted on charges of conspiring to obstruct justice. One American official said the Administration was certainly happy about Mr. Vesco's arrest, but said he was reluctant to discuss details of the case for fear of spoiling talks with Cuba about the possible return of Mr. Vesco. In return for handing over Mr. Vesco, Fidel Castro might expect a favor from the Administration, especially an easing of the trade embargo that has sapped Cuba's weak economy. But many Cuban-American groups would attack any move to soften the embargo. When Mr. Vesco fled the United States he first went to the Bahamas, but then was granted asylum by Costa Rica. He lived there from 1974 to 1978, but left when a new President threatened to expel him. He then returned to the Bahamas, which expelled him in 1981. He spent a short time in Antigua before moving to Cuba. At the time, Cuban officials insisted that they had not granted entry to Mr. Vesco for him to engage in drug smuggling or to help import American goods in defiance of the trade embargo. They said he was admitted mainly because, in supporting his wife and two daughters, he was pumping a great deal of money into the Cuban economy. Some diplomats suggested that he was paying large sums to Cuban officials in return for allowing him to stay. In an interview in 1985, Mr. Castro said, "If he wants to live here, let him live here. We don't care what he did in the United States." During the 1980's, Mr. Vesco divided his time among three houses at different beach resorts and in a 50-foot yacht, Western diplomats said. He also had two private planes and a high-powered speedboat. Although the swindling charges go back more than 20 years, the statute of limitations does not apply to Mr. Vesco since he has already been indicted. In 1983, a Federal prosecutor in Brownsville, Texas, linked Mr. Vesco to a conspiracy to smuggle Americans goods, including sugar-processing equipment, into Cuba. Toward the end of Jimmy Carter's Presidency, Mr. Vesco was at the center of an investigation involving Billy Carter, the President's brother. The investigators accused Mr. Vesco with seeking to provide more than $10 million in bribes to persuade the Administration to release eight military transport planes that had been destined for Libya. | Robert Vesco, Fugitive Financier, Is Arrested in Cuba, the U.S. Says |
767837_0 | Disturbing the Peace | |
767895_0 | Like many other businesses facing a fiscal crunch, Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., decided this spring that it had to boost sales -- namely the number of students it enrolled. And so the college came up with an audacious incentive system unheard of in academia: it ties the salaries of its professors to their ability to boost enrollment. Like Wall Street investment bankers pushing for annual bonuses, Mercy's professors would receive 7 percent raises if they helped recruit and retain enough students to raise enrollment by about 400. On the other hand, if enrollment remained flat, salaries would fall 7 percent. Since the professors' decision in April to embark on the new incentive program, more faculty members than ever visited high school fairs to trumpet Mercy's virtues and made late-night calls to raise the spirits of students pondering dropping out, the college's president, Jay Sexter, said. Apparently, it has paid off. Based on the numbers of inquiries from high school students, college officials predicted yesterday that enrollment at the school will climb by 675 this fall, nearly 10 percent. Still, the professors' decision to link their salaries to enrollment, prompted by a looming $2.2 million cut in state tuition assistance, has raised questions among national college officials. They worry that such a strategy might spread and eventually make professors think twice about failing students. After all, each time a student drops out, the prospects dim for a faculty raise. "At least since the Middle Ages, institutions have tried to divorce the business side from the academic side," said David R. Merkowitz, a spokesman for the American Council on Education, the umbrella group for the nation's colleges. "The obvious danger is it provides an incentive for a professor not to give a failing grade." Mr. Merkowitz said he had never heard of a plan similar to Mercy's. Nevertheless, he said, all but the most selective and well-endowed private colleges have become aggressively competitive as they try to cope with a dip in the number of high school graduates and decreases in state and federal tuition aid. The University of Rochester, he pointed out, is offering $5,000 scholarships to all New York State residents in an effort to attract more students. Mercy, founded in 1964 by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy but now nonsectarian, is a nonprofit four-year college with strong programs in nursing, occupational therapy, veterinary technology, hotel management | For Mercy College Teachers: Recruit a Student, Get a Raise |
771689_4 | revenue of $5 billion to $6 billion, officials said. Gov. Lawton Chiles, a Democrat, supports the Federal sugar program, as does Florida's Commissioner of Agriculture, Bob Crawford, who argues that it would be "economically suicidal" for the nation to remove protections while other nations continue to subsidize their sugar growers. Sugar companies contend that without the loan program, many farmers would be wiped out, unable to ride out the price fluctuations and that imports would then flood the market because the United State would no longer have a bargaining chip to use as an incentive to other countries to influence them to drop their own subsidies. More than 100 countries produce sugar, and all have some form of Government intervention in the market to insure low prices for domestic consumption, Federal agriculture officials said. Only about 13 percent of the sugar consumed in this country comes from abroad now. "You can't get them to make that kind of adjustment in agriculture if they believe that you will unilaterally disarm in certain industries," Jorge Dominicis, a vice president with Flo-Sun, Florida's largest sugar cane grower with 180,000 acres, said of foreign competitors. But opponents of the sugar program point at Flo-Sun, owned by two brothers, Alfonso and Jose Fanjul of Palm Beach, as the best example of how the sugar program works to enrich a few. The G.A.O. estimated the brothers received $64 million in additional revenue in 1991 because of it. Company spokesmen, however, said the figures were calculated using world market prices without figuring in national subsidies that help bring them down. The industry also argues that the price supports exist at no net cost to the Government because the program is not a direct subsidy. And its officials scoff at the idea that sweetener users like Coca-Cola would pass on their savings to average consumers. But critics like Representative Dan Miller, Republican of Florida, co-sponsor of the bill on crop supports, see the program as an anachronism that makes no economic sense. He said he envisioned a free market where efficient farmers will thrive and sugar prices would drop somewhere from the 22 cents a pound currently charged here to the 14 cents sugar commands in the world market. He added that he did not expect passage of the bill to cause production to decline much or have any cataclysmic change. Sugar growers say they doubt their foes | Congressional Proposal Adds Element of Risk to Sugar-Growing Business |
770452_0 | From crumbling brickwork to rotting windows, many of New York City's public schools are in such disrepair that they pose an immediate safety hazard to students, teachers and staff, an independent panel contended in a report released yesterday. The deterioration of the city's school buildings is so severe, said the panel of 11 prominent New Yorkers -- most of whom are active in real estate, finance or construction -- that a temporary city property tax increase is needed to finance a huge rebuilding program. The commission, created last year by Schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines, did not specify how many of the 1,069 school buildings are in disrepair. Nor did it estimate how much it would cost to put the schools in good repair, as previous reports by school officials have estimated. Rather, the panel seemed intent on creating a sense of crisis to win support for a solution -- increased taxes -- that its members acknowledged would be politically difficult in an era of tax cutting and government retrenchment. "If we fail to act promptly to address the safety risk that is upon us, we believe that it is likely that too soon, some loose school window, brick or parapet will land on a child, a teacher or a principal," the panel wrote in its 38-page report. "And then, cost issues aside, it truly will be too late." The report does not cite any incident in which a student or teacher was injured because of the physical deterioration. But overall, it concluded, New York City's schools are in a "state of imminent calamity." The report recounted how loose bricks and brick gables had fallen from school buildings. It described steel beams that had rusted so badly that they were all but useless, and a 12-foot-by-20-foot window frame that broke free from a school wall during a storm. Just two months ago, the report said, masonry was ripped by a strong wind from the top of the parapet of P.S. 102 in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, tumbling into the schoolyard and just missing students who were leaving school at 3 P.M. It also described how the concrete and steel columns supporting a swimming pool at Thomas Jefferson High School, in the East New York section of Brooklyn, had decayed so badly that the pool was being shored up by wooden two-by-fours. The panel's chairman, Harold O. Levy, a | Panel Says Crumbling Schools Pose Hazard to Students |
770521_1 | Piazza San Marco. The Castello Gardens are about a mile from the piazza, and the salt factory is in the Dorsoduro neighborhood on the Giudecca Canal, about half a mile away. The plan for additional museum sites emerged several weeks ago during previews of the Venice Biennale. "This is a collaboration in the best sense of the word," Mr. Krens said at a news conference two weeks ago at Venice's city hall. "Making a strong link between Italy and the United States is an important theme here." Gianfranco Mosetto, Venice's deputy mayor for culture and tourism, estimated that it would cost the city about $6.7 million to renovate the Italian Pavilion and the Venice Pavilion, which he said would be used to store many works when they are not being exhibited. (The American Pavilion has already been adapted for use in winter and has a climate-control system.) Mr. Mosetto said the renovation figure also included restoring the Castello Gardens themselves, which have fallen into neglect. The cost of transforming the old salt factory would probably come to at least $3 million, he said. Italy's central Government will provide loans to help finance these projects, he added. The museums are part of a master plan devised by the Mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari, to alleviate severe overcrowding in the city's Piazza San Marco area. With its cathedral, hotels, cafes and nearby docking area, the square is a magnet for tourists. "This will give people alternatives," said Mr. Mosetto. "Until now, the gardens have been one of the most underutilized spaces in Venice." The 41 national pavilions in the Castello Gardens, each of which is owned by its respective country, have traditionally been open only from June to mid-October, when the Biennale is in progress. In the years when there is no Biennale, the pavilions are empty and for the most part so are the gardens. The city of Venice has begun a campaign to persuade countries to use the pavilions for exhibitions for at least for six to eight months every year. "At the moment we have the United States, Korea and possibly Japan ready to stay open," Mr. Mosetti said. Angela Rose, director of visual arts for the British Council of the Arts, which oversees the British Pavilion, said the council did not have the money to renovate the pavilion for winter use or to staff it in years when | Guggenheim Hopes to Open Three Branches in Venice |
770928_3 | the Titanic," by Lawrence Beesley, was widely praised as one of the most accurate accounts of the disaster. The shipwreck was a blow to the confidence of the age, and I think it also shook my grandfather's trust in science and technology. In postgraduate research at Cambridge University he had discovered a rare alga, which was named after him, Ulvella beesleyi. He was proud of being a great-great-great-grandson, though through an illegitimate line, of Sir Richard Arkwright, whose invention of the water-powered spinning frame transformed cotton manufacturing in the late 1700's and helped to bring about the industrial revolution. But after his escape from the Titanic, my grandfather dabbled in all kinds of fringe science, as if to hedge his belief in rational inquiry. He practiced Christian Science and attended spiritualist seances. I remember as a child playing with a Ouija board he had, and watching him show off his expertise with a water-divining rod. Even then it seemed to me odd that so many underground torrents should course beneath his suburban garden. His life, in a sense, had been changed by the turbulent forces of technical progress that his ancestor's spinning frame had unleashed. The weavers put out of work by Arkwright's machines tried to destroy his mills, but the decision made then to choose new technology over Luddism has seldom been revisited, at least in open societies. Yet the choice is fraught with dangers. To win backers and foil opponents, the promoters of a new technology often exaggerate its benefits and underplay its risks. The more glamorous a new undertaking, the keener are its advocates to dismiss disaster as unthinkable. HAVING ESCAPED BECOMING A victim of new technology by the narrowest of margins, my grandfather thereafter married my grandmother, led an uneventful life and died in 1967. The Titanic's deep wreck site was not discovered until 1985, and in 1987 a salvage company, R.M.S. Titanic Inc., began with the help of a French submersible to retrieve objects from the debris field. Surprisingly, the cases strewn over the sea bed often contain documents that, after appropriate conservation, can still be read. Some of these cases are Gladstone bags that apparently contain the contents emptied out of the purser's safe as the ship was sinking. Among the documents that emerged recently from the conservation laboratories in France was a property tag bearing the number 208 and the words "This portion | The Great Escape |
771278_3 | wars of the Balkans and the Caucasus for hundreds of years. Two centuries ago, a hostage crisis marred George Washington's second term as pirates operating off the coast of Africa seized more than 100 American sailors. An outraged Congress declined to pay ransom -- the custom at the time for dealing with pirates -- and in 1794 ordered the Administration to create an American Navy to challenge the Barbary pirates. Military procurement, however, proved as cumbersome then as it does today. Two years later, Washington won the captives' release, and peace with the pirates, by paying nearly $1 million, a huge sum for the period. Although the Japanese did put prison camps near some potential military targets, the big wars of this century by and large did not involve the use of the hostage weapon. John Keegan, the British military historian and defense editor of The Daily Telegraph, noted that Hitler's "curious legalistic streak" prompted the Nazis to generally follow the Geneva Convention on their treatment of Western prisoners. The Germans, he said, were also constrained by a fear that the Allies might retaliate in kind. Neither the North Koreans nor the North Vietnamese used prisoners as human shields, though both had ample opportunities. The Munich Olympics in 1972, with the seizing of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists, marked the advent of a new era, in which blanket news coverage of an event was the goal rather than a byproduct. Throughout the 1980's, Islamic groups, the Red Brigades and others took hostages, and turned governments upside down. President Reagan swore he would never negotiate, and then ended up nearly destroying his second term with the covert sale of arms to Iran in a largely failed attempt to free American hostages held in Lebanon. Noel Koch, a former senior counterterrorism official who runs TranSecur, a private security concern, said: "When you're new to this business, it's very easy to swallow this 'no negotiations' thing. I can tell you, the first time you manage one of these things, that goes out the window." Over the years, hostage-takers have learned a lot about how to frustrate the West's counterterrorism commandos. The Bosnian Serbs, for example, made sure to scatter their prisoners at a variety of remote locales, making rescue missions all but impossible. Russian soldiers had little luck in dislodging an enemy that fired weapons while hiding behind civilian captives. So, is the | The World: ...Or Else; Hostage-Taking Is a Weapon Of War Whose Time Is Now |
771168_0 | The Philippines Government has tightened airport security in recent months, resulting in delays for travelers passing through Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Filipino officials said that passengers should arrive at the airport about two hours before their outbound flights and also expect delays when they arrive. The tighter security measures include metal detectors, baggage screening and frisking of passengers at various checkpoints (female and male security personnel will search passengers of the same sex). Airport security in east Asia has been scrutinized more closely after several bomb threats in that region earlier this year. In December, an explosive device that went off aboard a Philippine Airlines flight killed a Japanese tourist and injured several others. Filipino officials said many of the new measures, which have been phased in over several months, were recommended by United States Federal Aviation Administration officials in April. The task of tightening security, however, has been made more difficult by a fact of life in the Philippines -- travelers, both arriving and departing, are typically accompanied or met by at least several well-wishers, overwhelming an already busy security staff. The F.A.A. monitors about 250 foreign airports that serve as final points of departure for flights into the United States. On occasion, it issues recommendations for changes, and then issues warnings -- backed up by threats of canceled access to airports in the United States within 90 days -- if they are not put into effect. ADAM BRYANT TRAVEL ADVISORY | Security Stepped Up At Manila Airport |
770943_0 | To the Editor: Your article on May 7 about the Landmarks Preservation Commission, headed "At Landmarks, a Businesslike Balancing Act," truly reflects the unenlightened and self-interested resistance that continues to be held by the old-line traditionalists in our real-estate industry. I applaud the new chair of the commission, Jennifer Raab, for taking a proactive approach. Ms. Raab correctly assesses the need to educate and change the current marketplace perception of landmarking. I also applaud Carl Weisbrod, the new president of the Downtown Alliance, for his understanding that quality preservation can only enhance and add to marketing opportunities. For the last 20 years, I have developed real estate in the historically designated architectural districts of SoHo in New York City and South Miami Beach with clear and profitable results. Without sensitive and aggressive preservation of architecturally significant buildings and districts we, as a nation, will be robbed of our architectural heritage. Wall Street should be preserved in whole as an architecturally relevant district. If we act prudently and preserve its canyons as a district, we will retain its unique environment and its notable historic character. I support and encourage Tony Wood's position that landmarking a few buildings in Lower Manhattan is only a toe in the water. Let us not be afraid to preserve our precious architectural heritage and cultural roots. If my real estate colleagues will only go with the flow, they will realize that the light at the end of the tunnel will appear quickly and profitably once substantial landmarking in Lower Manhattan is safe and in place. Jump in, the water is fine! TONY GOLDMAN The writer is president of the Goldman Properties Company, based in Manhattan. | A Businesslike Balancing Act |
771272_0 | Standing on the bridge of an 800-foot Norwegian oil tanker that had just pulled out of the Bayway Refinery along the Arthur Kill, Charles White and James Tuthill did not look much like rivals as they chatted about their families and traded maritime anecdotes picked up over years of guiding ships in and out of the harbor. But Mr. White is a federally licensed docking pilot, while Mr. Tuthill is with the Sandy Hook Pilots of New York and New Jersey, whose members are licensed by those states. Their groups are locked in a struggle nearly as old and complicated as the harbor itself: who gets to pilot which ships in which waters. Now, the conflict may finally be nearing resolution -- albeit with all the speed of a tanker making a U-turn -- helped by a new Coast Guard regulation. The protocol for guiding foreign tankers, container ships and passenger liners through the congested, often treacherous shipping lanes of the New York-New Jersey harbor evolved over three centuries. The two states require that the Sandy Hook pilots, members of a group chartered in 1694, board incoming vessels from their pilot boat at the mouth of the harbor off Sandy Hook, and guide them in. Once ships get close enough to land to need tugboats, docking pilots who work with the tug companies board the boats and take over. In 1990, however, a tanker that ran aground off Bayonne and spilled 230,000 gallons of oil into the Kill van Kull put the spotlight on a major hole in the system: neither the state nor the Federal Government requires a licensed pilot on a foreign-flag vessel making moves within the harbor. The situation embarrassed the Coast Guard, which wanted to revoke the Federal license of the docking pilot aboard the tanker but could not because he had not technically been operating under his license. The Coast Guard told the states to close the gap. At the same time, modern shipping had strained relations between the two piloting groups. The advent of containerization in the 1960's meant bigger ships, hence fewer ships, and fewer ships meant less piloting work to go around. "It's like any business in the world," said David Thompson, a Sandy Hook pilot. "Everybody wants to get a bigger chunk of a smaller and smaller pie." One way the 90-member Sandy Hook Pilots' group has coped is to seek | With Coast Guard Help, Peace Threatens the War of the Harbor Pilots |
770908_2 | for sterilizations, their houses would be blown up. It was not the first time such a threat had been made, or carried out, around here. Population Policy: Trickle-Down Terror The story of Tongmuchong is the story of millions of Chinese peasants who have by accident or design slipped the net of a Communist system that seeks to control, by almost any means, the great swell that is occurring in China's population, now 1.2 billion. Tongmuchong is one of thousands of redoubts throughout the country where an inestimable portion of China's 900 million peasants has been evading Beijing's strict birth control policies. Its plight is an especially acute example of the situation being played out across the country, where Communist Party officials in Beijing articulate policies to fight crime, maintain social stability and control population growth. But after the leaders in Beijing assure that dignity and human rights will be protected, orders come down to local officials demanding quotas and setting deadlines to get results. Though Communist Party leaders insist that the enforcement of family-planning laws are not coercive, the evidence from the countryside continues to suggest otherwise. In a week of travel across Hunan, a number of peasants testified to the reality of houses that were blown up and property that was confiscated or destroyed over violations of birth control laws. "I am Chinese and I am shocked by this," said a prominent Hunan businessman in Changsha, the provincial capital. On that day in April when Mrs. Liao of the family-planning office walked into Tongmuchong, she was alarmingly blunt, Mr. Duan, the village chief, recently told a visitor. "The official in charge of family planning was not willing to discuss this matter," Mr. Duan said. "She said all the women must have the operation or else they would use a bomb to blow up our houses. What choice did we have?" Sitting on the concrete slab that serves as the village common, he told the bitter history of the Duan clan that has been farming these hillsides for three centuries. In the 1960's, government officials bulldozed their houses and claimed their farmland for a reservoir. Still the Duans held on, 21 of them living in a shed that first winter, refusing to leave their ancestral home. "There were many hardships, and the people living in these hills called us the wild people," he said. Even today, a cucumber and a | Birth Control in China: Coercion and Evasion |
770908_5 | squalid shantytowns, shifting children among relatives, all part of the human shell game to evade the system. Others take to boats and get "lost" in the labyrinth of riverine China. "They are going back to China's original lifestyle," said Li Shuren, a factory worker in Beijing who lives near a shantytown of migrant workers in the capital. "They are barbarians while the rest of the country is developing, but they prefer to live that way." About 200 miles south of here, for instance, in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong Province, there is something of a huge sanctuary for boat people from neighboring Jiangxi Province who are fleeing the poverty of farmlife and the strictures of population control. Describing their way of life, one local newspaper said: "Most of the boats are mom and pop affairs. Generally they have three to four kids -- some even have seven kids. "The birthing is done on the boat, with the husband's help and the umbilical chord is usually cut with something like a piece of broken china." This influx of migrants has put a burden on delta's marine resources and resulted in clashes with the Guangdong fishery police over the use of illegal nets and rampant overfishing. In Anhui Province, members of a family named Liu, banished to the countryside 20 years ago, returned to their hometown in the late 1980's and, finding no safe refuge because they lacked documentation, pooled funds to buy the boat that is now their home on the Huai River near Bengbu. "We have no census registration, we are with the moving people," Liu Menchen, the mother of seven children, told a reporter who visited her floating home last summer. "The children cannot read, but this is a better life than what we had." Obey the Law Or Lose a Fortune Communist Party leaders, increasingly determined, even desperate, to control the human growth that they believe will sap many of the benefits of China's economic rise, have redoubled efforts to new crack down on China's migrant population. In northern Hunan, on the edge of the vast Dongting Lake, notices have been posted warning boat people and other migrants that the women among them must report four times a year to local clinics for pregnancy checks or face steep fines. The party's grass-roots organizations are under pressure from Beijing to improve their tracking of menstrual cycles among the | Birth Control in China: Coercion and Evasion |
766777_0 | The long-running battle to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over has entered a new phase. Last month workmen poured liquid nitrogen into 178 holes around the 12th-century tower to freeze the ground, helping to prevent vibrations as they begin removing the meter-deep layer of cement and mortar under its base. This layer, part of an early effort to stabilize the 800-year-old tower, was originally placed around the tower in two phases, in the 19th century and again in 1935, but was found only last fall by the 13-member committee that has been working on the tower for the last four years. Given the delicate nature of the operation, the cement mixture will only be removed in small pieces. The next phase of the project calls for the removal of lead counterweights that can now be seen on the outside of the tower and the installation of a huge cement ring below ground around its foundation. Ten steel cables will link the northern side of the ring to firm layers of earth 160 feet below. The experts supervising the restoration believe these measures will allow it to remain stable for at least another 50 years while pulling it back less than an inch from its current angle. This phase of the project should be completed by early in 1996, when the tower may be reopened to a limited number of tourists. Originally built as the belfry for Pisa's cathedral in 1173, the tower began leaning in the 13th century as the ground below slowly gave way. It was closed to the public in 1990 after the 1989 collapse of a tower in Pavia raised new fears about its stability. Since then Pisa's tower has undergone a number of restoration projects, including the installation of a girdle of steel cables around its base and the placement of lead counterweights against the foot of the tower. ELISABETTA POVOLEDO TRAVEL ADVISORY | Work Moves to Keep The Leaning Tower Up |
766668_0 | To the Editor: I returned from a trip to Korea and Hong Kong on April 7 from Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong. I would like people who will be leaving through that airport to be aware that the security people there are rude and offensive. After I went through two X-ray machines and a metal detector, and then a hand-held metal detector, my carry-on luggage was gone through. A young woman took my shampoo, make-up, make-up remover, hair spray, a bottle of Scotch, contact lens solution and a prescription medication. I explained that I needed the medicine and the lens solution, but they would not give them back. Upon entering the plane for my United Airlines flight, I had to ask the flight attendant to get the contact lens fluid back or ask that they replace my lenses. I could not take the lenses out without having the fluid to put them in. The captain had to call a supervisor and have the fluid brought into the plane. All the items taken from people were just put in bags and put on the plane in a box. JOYCE CHAPMAN Port Washington, L.I. Eric Wong, a spokesman for the general manager of Kai Tak Airport, responds: We express our regret for the unpleasant experience Ms. Chapman had. I should explain that in January, due to threats to the safety of flights operated by United States carriers and others flying direct to the United States, the United States Federal Aviation Administraion issued added security directives to all carriers using our airport and others in the region. Such measures include physical searches of passengers and their carry-on baggage. According to the F.A.A., passengers are not allowed to carry on board any container of liquids, gels or aerosols. As to arrangements for allowing passengers to retrieve removed items that are essential to health and comfort, I have asked United Airlines to review its procedures with a view to improving the arrangements. A spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration confirms that enhanced security measures for flights from Asia to the United States specify that particular attention be paid to containers of liquid in carry-on luggage. | Airline Security |
766828_0 | SMART cars cannot prevent dumb driving, but sophisticated new systems may help to keep awkward maneuvers -- and ugly weather conditions -- from causing accidents. Electronic traction control systems -- now common on large cars, and increasingly on midsize models as well -- keep wheels from spinning, help to prevent skids and preserve a driver's control, even during hard acceleration and cornering maneuvers on slippery roads. Stomping on the accelerator taps into only the power that is appropriate for the road conditions. Manufacturers are beginning to offer a new generation of traction control systems that are capable of recognizing conditions that can destabilize a car on curves or corners, then adjusting the brakes and engine power so that the car does not veer out of control. All traction control systems are primarily based on a car's anti-lock brake system. Anti-lock sensors at each wheel detect and transmit the wheel's speed to a microcomputer. With an anti-lock braking system, an electronic control pumps the brakes up to 20 times a second if it finds signs that they are locking up. With a basic traction control system, the same sensors and computer controls, along with an additional software program that calculates differences in wheel speeds, instantaneously determine whether the car is losing traction. Tires have traction only when they are rolling, and not sliding. Under "split friction" road conditions, in which each of the driving wheels does not have the same grip on the road, traction control improves overall handling and stability. (The benefits are much more pronounced in rear-wheel-drive cars, as front-drive vehicles have inherently greater traction, since the engines' weight rests on the driving wheels. And even the best traction-control systems cannot achieve the overall stability of all-wheel drive.) A basic traction control system limits skidding by gently and repeatedly applying the brake to the drive wheel about to spin. The tires are slowed enough so that they do not skid, but there is no interference with the driver's control. Somewhat more advanced traction systems, like those on the Chevrolet Corvette, Ford Contour and all Cadillacs, are linked to the engine-control computer, which can cut back engine power enough to reduce the car's overall speed when slippage is detected. This is accomplished by curbing air flow to the engine, reducing the flow of fuel or retarding the ignition timing. Some systems also shift the automatic transmission to a higher gear, | Traction Control Learns Some New Tricks |
766865_0 | THE French have always been prickly allies good to have on your side in a fight but ready to pick one as well, particularly if you come from an Anglo-Saxon country like Britain or the United States. These days, Britain is on France's side in the European-American disagreement over what to do about the war in Bosnia, but regarding the United States the French are in a disgruntled mood. They were decidedly unimpressed last week, for example, when President Clinton sent an aircraft carrier to the Adriatic and said he might finally, if only temporarily, commit American ground troops to Bosnia in a plan to better protect the French, British and other United Nations troops already there, hundreds of whom were taken hostage by Bosnian Serbs. The daily Liberation said dismissively of the Americans, "Probably they will continue to quietly smuggle arms to the Bosnian Government." So what else is new? is the question likely to be asked by anyone old enough to remember how de Gaulle barred Britain from the European Community and kicked NATO headquarters out of France to Brussels. De Gaulle's political heir, Jacques Chirac, elected to the French presidency on May 7, has fond memories of a summer at Harvard in 1953, and will be able to use his good American English when he sees President Clinton in the White House this month before the world economic summit meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Mr. Chirac will probably tell him then that France, and Europe, cannot tolerate the United States using the value of the dollar on currency markets as a trade weapon against Japan -- and that Europe doesn't think much of American trade sanctions against Japan either. A Threat, Not a Leader While Americans lately are fixated on Japan, the French are still fixated on America, which they see not as a leading trade partner -- far more French trade is with Europe, and in particular Germany, than with the United States -- but as a threat to true European independence. A truly independent Europe has been the goal of French policy ever since de Gaulle, and it goes without saying that the French see an independent Europe as one guided by their ideas. France led the fight two years ago between the European Union and the United States over European subsidies for farm exports, movies and TV, and France now sees itself leading the | The World;French Annoyance At the U.S. Comes In Several Courses |
766699_1 | Statistic Review, published by the National Cancer Institute in 1993. Cancer is now the No. 1 disease killer from late infancy to early adulthood in the U.S. Despite these facts, Dr. Ames calls cancer a degenerative disease of aging and claims that "people don't really start to get cancer until after they are 40," trying to imply that cancer-rate increases are due to the fact that people are living longer and not dying of other causes before cancer has a chance to develop. Study after study has shown associations between exposure to particular classes of chemicals and cancer. A review published in The American Journal of Industrial Medicine in 1991 of 32 studies on parental occupation and childhood cancer showed the preponderance of evidence demonstrates that occupational exposure of parents to chemicals such as pesticides, petroleum products, paints and solvents increases the risk of childhood malignancy. The associations were particularly strong for leukemia and brain cancer. From 1973 to 1990 the incidences of those two cancers have grown more than any other childhood cancer, 24.4 percent and 32.6 percent increases, respectively. Two recent case-control studies, one reported in The Archive of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology in 1993 and the other in The American Journal of Public Health this year, found statistically significant associations between uses of pesticides in the home and yard during pregnancy, infancy and childhood and increases in childhood cancers such as brain cancer and soft-tissue sarcomas. Studies have also demonstrated a strong link between occupational exposure to pesticides and particular cancers. Last year a mortality study of 618 deceased golf-course superintendents found that they had mortality rates from both brain cancer and non-Hodgkins' lymphoma more than double the expected rates. Previous studies have shown higher risks for the same cancers in farmers and other pesticide-exposed groups. Although much emphasis and study has been directed toward cancer risks from pesticides, it is important to realize that there are other more immediate health risks that these chemicals pose. According to an E.P.A. publication released this January, exposure to a neurotoxic pesticide, Dursban, has been reported to cause long-term neurological effects such as visual disturbances, muscle weakness, confusion, short-term memory loss, depression and difficulty concentrating. Dr. Ames attempts to get mileage from pointing out that plants, including vegetables we eat, produce "natural pesticides." This argument, on which he places great emphasis, is his most preposterous, on its face. Common sense | Scientist Should Stop Being an Apologist |
768607_0 | "Currents of Fear" begins where television news-magazine stories tend to end: several mothers in Omaha whose children have cancer blame electric power lines. Tonight's "Frontline" report goes beyond the emotions ("There's too many 17-month-old bald-headed babies in the neighborhood, and we're going to scream until someone figures out what's going on in this neighborhood," declares one mother) to an exploration of the risks of leaping to dire conclusions on the basis of shaky evidence. Suspicions that electromagnetic fields created by America's two million miles of power lines are causing cancer are not confined to the mothers of Omaha. Paul Brodeur, a New Yorker magazine writer who reported on apparent cancer clusters in Connecticut and California, is their main transmitter tonight. He asserts that "millions of unsuspecting men, women and children" are being exposed to power fields that are associated with cancer, and he speaks of a cover-up by government in cahoots with the electric-power industry. Most of this cogent hour is given to debunking such charges. Physicists point out that the suspect electric fields are minute compared with the earth's magnetic fields to which all humans are subject all the time. They say that if you stand under a power line at night, you'll get 10,000 times as much electromagnetic energy from the moon as from the power line. (And there, on screen, is a bright moon seen through some power lines.) A radiation biologist explains that it takes far higher doses of energy, say those from radioactive fallout or medical X-rays, to cause cancer, and laboratories have come up with no evidence of a causal connection between power lines and cancer. Discounting such nonfindings, Mr. Brodeur bases his case on epidemiological studies like those that connect smoking with lung cancer. But even here the data, far weaker and less consistent than the smoking studies, seem to be against him. Clever graphics demonstrate what critics call epidemiology's Texas sharpshooter problem in action: the sharpshooter fires repeatedly at a barn door, then draws a circle around one cluster of shots as evidence of his accuracy, ignoring the many shots that hit elsewhere on the barn. The point is that sheer chance is always present in statistics. "Currents of Fear" offers a short course in statistical methodology as it riddles not only the small, uncontrolled study done by the Omaha mothers but also the more impressive and much-publicized one done in Sweden | Power Lines and Cancer: Is There a Connection? |
768620_0 | PROBING the heavens with a big radar system, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have captured the image of the asteroid Geographos as it recently sped close to Earth. It turns out to be a cigar-shaped rock about three miles long, the most elongated object known in the solar system. Asteroids are usually seen only as distant points of light, even in powerful telescopes. The radar picture of Geographos joins a small gallery of images, including those of the asteroids Gaspra and Toutatis, that are collectively giving scientists their first close-up glimpses of these rocky masses that constantly hurtle through the solar system. Some of the asteroids, including Geographos, have orbits that occasionally cross Earth's, thus threatening the planet with the possibility of cosmic bombardment. The images are revealing scars and shapes suggestive of long and cataclysmic histories. "This object has a very unusual shape," Steven J. Ostro, a senior scientist at the laboratory, and 11 colleagues wrote in the current issue of the journal Nature. Geographos was discovered in 1951 by scientists at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego. In 1969, it passed close to Earth and showed greater variations in brightness than any other observed asteroid. Scientists speculated that it was quite long, with its rotations causing changes in its illumination by sunlight. Last year, when Geographos passed close to Earth, a team of astronomers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used a new radar system at the deep-space tracking station of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the Mojave Desert to obtain several images, revealing the very long shape indicative of a cataclysmic past. Radio waves were bounced off the asteroid daily for a week last August, giving the scientists enough data to form hundreds of images. | Radar Captures Image Of Cigar-Shape Asteroid |
769851_1 | intrepid souls might have second thoughts after seeing such friendly, if not reassuring, advice as "the volcano on the island of Fogo in the Republic of Cape Verde erupted and continues to spew lava, ash, rocks and smoke from its crater," or "conditions are stable under a military government except in remote border areas where longstanding insurgencies persist." Another useful Internet stop is a currency converter. The Koblas Currency Converter lists 54 kinds of money, but travelers to countries suffering rampant inflation might find the weekly updates are not frequent enough. A Canadian site, Xenon Laboratories Universal Currency Converter, handles fewer countries but updates the rates daily and provides a handy calculator. Travel arrangements are nearly impossible to make on the Internet, but many agents and a few airlines have Web sites. Southwest Airlines carries its fun-to-fly image onto the Web with a site that hides considerable substance behind a pithy home page. The route map is clear and concise, and clicking on a city yields information like airport parking fees. The on-line flight schedule and fare finder, both almost singular among airline Web sites, are also easy to use, but sometimes fail to properly link a fare with its corresponding list of available flights. Better to look up scheduled flights first, then find the available fares. American Airlines and its parent, the AMR Corporation, have a site with a polished look and well-organized content. Navigating the maze of pages is generally easy, and deeper exploration will yield a gem called Globetrotter Guide. The guide, which is offered by AMR's Sabre computer reservations subsidiary, provides information for more than 25 nations, including trivia like customary banking hours and airport taxi fares. Neither American nor Southwest offers reservations on the Web. Web travelers can also sample the Subway Navigator, which is based in France but covers transit systems worldwide. Pick a city's subway system -- say, Kiev's -- and the Subway Navigator calculates a route between any two points. Stations are listed alphabetically and several systems have colorful maps. The route descriptions are so specific that even first-time visitors can follow them. The New York City page even shows connections between the Long Island Rail Road and the city's subway. Rail fans from around the world help maintain the Web site. A comprehensive list of travel-related Web sites can be found at Yahoo, which contains thousands of links indexed by subject. | Taking In the Sites; Mapping Out Specific Destinations to Faraway Places |
769848_2 | two would take little away from Chinese companies that manufacture nearly all of the 900 million videocassettes sold in this country every year. Still, Mr. Wischerath pointed out, all those tapes are made with non-recyclable plastics like polystyrene. He emphasized that he did not want to be misleading. "The law says we cannot claim to be recyclable unless more than 50 percent of consumers have access to a recycling center that will take the item," he said. "Since you can't put a videocassette on your curbside to be recycled, we can't yet promote ourselves as recyclable." It's not clear how many videocassettes are discarded each year, but so far, there are not enough recyclable cartridges to make it worthwhile for recycling companies. "This year we'll sell about 38 million," Mr. Wischerath said. "If 10 percent come back for recycling, that's about four million. And they're scattered around the U.S. You can figure the poundage, so the volume is not there yet for any recycler." Global Zero is hoping that will change. Already, the company stamps its cartridges with the recycling symbol of a "5" inside a triangle. It received patents 5,417,379 and 5,417,380. Pizza Box Designed To Keep It Hot About a billion times a year, someone puts a pizza in a delivery or carry-out box. For several months in 1990, Michael Valdman was one of those packers. An immigrant from Moldavia, a southern republic in the former Soviet Union, with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, Mr. Valdman spent his first four months in this country delivering pizzas -- and listening to people complain that their pie arrived cold. So he designed and patented a box he said would keep a pizza hot, dry and crisp for 45 minutes. "I could see the contradictions in the pizza box," Mr. Valdman said. "It should be very thick to keep the pizza hot, but very thin to keep cost down. It should be open to allow vapors out, but closed to keep the pizza hot." So Mr. Valdman, who lives in Philadelphia, and his partner, Michael Schum, from Cherry Hill, N.J., designed a rounded box with a curved bottom and an inserted base made of wedge-like cardboard. "Pizza becomes soggy because water from the heat vapors condenses on the bottom of the box," Mr. Valdman said. "If you can elevate the pizza, the water will stay on the bottom and the pizza | Patents; New Cartridges For Videocassettes Offer Fewer Parts and A Plastic That Can Be Recyled |
770224_1 | and they rejected an amendment that would have weakened Federal legislation requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets and automobile drivers and passengers in private vehicles to wear seat belts. Critics says these laws are intrusive. The bills are part of a package of legislation, the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995, that would allocate $13 billion over two years to upgrade 159,888 miles of Interstate and major state highways into a national highway system. The Senate is expected to vote on the final package on Wednesday. The House of Representatives must still vote on the legislation. But the Senate votes today put the Congress on the way to repealing or easing a set of rules and safety regulations with which a generation of motorists has grown up. Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, argued that the effort to repeal the speed limit "clearly flies in the face of reality, common sense, logic and history." "This has saved lives," said Mr. DeWine, whose 22-year-old daughter was killed last year in an auto accident. "If we raise the speed limit, people will die." Those who argued for the changes countered that the speed limit was widely unpopular with motorists, especially in the sparsely populated West, and that state legislatures should be allowed to decide what is the safe speed for their highways. "The bill does not raise speed limits," said Senator Don Nickles, Republican of Oklahoma. "It allows the states to set speed limits. "I just happen to think that the State of Oklahoma and the State of Virginia are just as concerned about safety as the Federal Government." Proponents of the repeals argued that Federal highway legislation had become burdensome. For example, they cited the requirement that paving materials must contain recycled tire rubber, which adds up to $1 billion a year in compliance costs, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. The amendment to repeal the motorcycle helmet and the seat-belt laws, which failed on a vote of 52 to 45, was offered by Senator Robert C. Smith, Republican of New Hampshire. But a separate amendment on the helmet law is to be debated on Wednesday. When Congress established the national speed limits in 1974, it set maximum speeds of 55 m.p.h. That limit was amended in 1987 to allow speeds of 65 m.p.h. on some rural Interstate highways, while keeping the maximum at 55 elsewhere. In one of | Senate Votes To Let States Set Car Speeds |
770212_0 | A year after its bruising battle over the abortion issue at the United Nations population conference in Cairo, the Roman Catholic Church is gearing up again, this time to defend motherhood at the United Nations conference on women. Without identifying its foes by name, the Vatican clearly considers itself at odds with a strain of Western feminism that it asserts has imposed its views on the draft document prepared for the conference, to be held in September in Beijing. "In this document, the Holy See sees pressure of an ideological nature, which seems to want to impose on women of the entire world a particular social philosophy, belonging to certain sectors within Western countries," said Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican's chief spokesman, at a news conference today. The Vatican announced today that its 20-member delegation at Beijing would be headed by a woman, as yet unidentified, who would marshal the forces of the church to defend the notion that women are equal to, but different from, men. "Perhaps the moment has come to affirm that the struggle for equal dignity among men and women also implies the recognition that a woman is different and needs to be treated in a different manner," Dr. Navarro-Valls said. In particular, the Vatican objects to the short shrift given by the document to mothers and maternity -- mentioned only 10 times in the conference's 120-page draft document, compared with some 100 references to sex and sexuality, and 300 references to gender. "The family is mentioned only five times, and three times in a negative sense," Dr. Navarro-Valls said. "Not to have the family recognized on an international level seems to me to be too much. From this point of view, the document is unbalanced." The contested document has already made its way through a series of regional conferences and working committees, and has emerged heavily laden with objections made from all sides. In all, more than 30 percent of its text has been bracketed, which means that nearly one-third of its contents will be debated at the conference itself. Some of the battles promise to be semantic -- for instance, a proposed condemnation of "prenatal sex selection," which Dr. Navarro-Valls referred to as a euphemism for abortion of female fetuses. The Vatican, for its part, wants to keep a condemnation of "forced pregnancy" from including language that would condone abortions in the case of rape. | Vatican Will Champion Role of Mothers at a U.N. Parley |
770337_1 | The superficial skin cancers -- basal and squamous cell carcinomas -- are the most common of all cancers, with more than one million new cases a year, according to new data from the American Academy of Dermatology. And the more serious and potentially deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma, is now the fastest growing cancer in the United States. Last year, the academy reported a 500 percent increase in the incidence of malignant melanoma in the 35 years from 1950 to 1985. This year, the American Cancer Society estimates that 34,100 cases of melanoma will be diagnosed and that 7,200 people will die of it. However, in a newly published survey, dermatologists estimated that 80,000 new cases of melanoma were diagnosed in 1992 and that the incidence has been increasing by 4.2 percent a year. While many melanomas cannot be attributed to sun exposure and arise in areas not unduly exposed to sun, the greatest increase has occurred in light-skinned people and on sun-exposed parts of the body, such as shoulders, upper backs and legs. Melanoma has also been linked to blistering sunburns suffered in childhood. It usually occurs in or near an existing mole or other dark spot on the skin. The mole may suddenly change -- get scaly, ooze or bleed, itch, become tender or painful, or spread its pigment over a wider area. Though highly curable in its early stages, melanoma can spread and become deadly. More often, sun causes superficial skin cancers, the most common type being basal cell carcinoma, which usually appears as a small, fleshy bump or nodule on the head, neck or hands and occasionally as a flat growth on the trunk of the body. These cancers do not spread quickly and may take many months or years to grow to half an inch in diameter. Although basal cell carcinomas rarely metastasize, they can extend to the underlying bone and cause considerable local damage. Squamous cell carcinomas typically appear as red, scaly patches or nodules, usually on the face, ears and mouth. They can grow quite large and spread to other parts of the body. They cause about 2,300 deaths a year. Actinic keratosis, a precancerous condition that usually appears as a raised, scaly, reddish patch, is a warning of things to come and should be treated by a dermatologist. You should also see a dermatologist if you notice any change in an | Personal Health |
771371_0 | To the Editor: "Does Testosterone Equal Aggression? Maybe Not" (front page, June 20) does a good job of making the point that testosterone is not only a "male" sex hormone and recognizes the beneficial effects on mood of adequate levels of this hormone. But you miss the still-too-little-known fact that testosterone deficiency regularly develops earlier and to a more severe degree in women than in men. Millions of women suffer a compromised quality of life because of unrecognized testosterone deficiency that is a consequence of normal menopause and aging, or following too-often-unnecessary removal of the ovaries with hysterectomy or chemically induced menopause following chemotherapy for cancer. For the past several years I have researched the medical literature, communicated with leading researchers in female androgen deficiency syndrome (testosterone deficiency) and have conducted workshops to educate women suffering from a decrease in the normal, essential levels of this hormone. Since a woman's normal daily production of testosterone is low, a small supplemental amount can produce substantial benefit. Too few women know that low-dose testosterone therapy can restore libido and vital energy and improve mood and sense of well-being without risk of undesirable side effects. SUSAN RAKO, M.D. Newtonville, Mass., June 21, 1995 | When Women Suffer Testosterone Deficit |
768880_2 | improving relations between North and South. Mr. Gallucci said that the implementation of the Geneva accord "will be accompanied, we hope, by a rapprochement between North and South, a dialogue between the two and, ultimately, the reduction of tensions on the Korean peninsula." The provision of the reactor is expected to open North Korea to hundreds or thousands of engineers and technicians from the South. South Korean officials hope this will lead to better relations, which it sees as essential for its long-term goal -- the reunification of the two Koreas. But so far, North Korea has all but ignored a clause in the Geneva text requiring it to begin a dialogue with the South. And the wording of the Kuala Lumpur statement shows that the North sees the Geneva accord not as a way of improving relations with the South, but as a way of improving ties with Washington in order to isolate the South. The latest negotiations also show how arduous it will be to fully carry out the Geneva accord, which could take about 10 years. The decision in Malaysia on the reactor model is something the American officials thought had been agreed to in October in Geneva. The Geneva agreement contained a goal of having a supply contract for the reactors signed within six months, or by April 21. So the project is already two months behind schedule, and only now will the consortium begin negotiating the supply contract with North Korea. There are many potentially difficulty issues still to be dealt with, including the safe storage of spent fuel rods from North Korea's reactor, the establishment of liaison officers in Washington and Pyongyang and the resumption of North-South dialogue. The executive board of the multinational consortium, led by Mr. Gallucci and formed specifically to carry out the North Korean reactor project, met today in Seoul. It decided to supply two 1,000-megawatt reactors of the type now being constructed in Ulchin, a city on South Korea's east coast. The Korea Electric Power Corporation is likely to be chosen as the prime contractor. The Kuala Lumpur statement says that the cost of a site survey and site preparation will be paid for by the consortium. But it in effect postponed discussions about North Korea's demands for electrical power lines, a training simulator and other items that could add as much as $1 billion to the project cost. | North Korea To Get Plants From Rival |
768887_0 | John H. Finley Jr., the classicist who brought ancient Greece alive and taught a generation of Harvard men how to live, died on Sunday at a Exeter Health Care Center in Exeter, N.H. He was 91 and a resident of Tamworth, N.H. There were close to 300 years of Harvard before he came along, and the university has continued for more than a decade since he left. But almost from the moment he joined the faculty in 1933 until 1,000 students, including the university president, gave him two standing ovations at his final lecture in 1976, John H. Finley Jr. was the embodiment of Harvard. He wrote the Harvard book. He taught the Harvard course. He lived the Harvard life. As the principal author of "General Education in a Free Society," in 1946, Professor Finley laid down the principles -- and the handful of required courses -- that governed education at Harvard until the 1980's. None of the courses were more popular than Humanities 103 -- the Great Age of Athens -- in which Professor Finley interpreted Homer, explained Plato and defended Aristotle with a mesmerizing delivery that took wing on unexpected flights of image and notion. "A single three-by-five card," his son, John 3d, said yesterday, "would last him an entire lecture." He was born in New York City at a time when his father, a renowned educator who later became the editorial page editor of The New York Times, was serving as president of City College, and he came to Greek early. As a child he would carry a Greek New Testament to church every Sunday to check on the adequacy of the King James version. A 1925 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard, he continued his studies of Greek literature abroad before obtaining his doctorate from Harvard in 1933, becoming an associate professor that fall and a full professor in 1944. But for all his achievements at the lectern and for all his scholarly accomplishments, including books on Thucydides and other Greek luminaries, it was in the dining hall and sitting rooms of Eliot House, one of Harvard's residential complexes, that Professor Finley put his most lasting imprint on a generation of students. As master of Eliot House from 1941 to 1968, Professor Finley took far more pains that his fellow house masters in evaluating the freshmen who applied to live there for their last three years. | John H. Finley Jr., 91, Classicist At Harvard for 43 Years, Is Dead |
768786_2 | 25-year-old street war. Too many Protestants and Catholics are now enjoying no longer having checkpoints around every corner. Too many are enjoying the fact that the daily bomb scares have been replaced by a "buzz" in the business community from all the foreigners poking around here for investments. And too many are enjoying reading that the air fares to and from Belfast could be cut by 10 percent if the Government approves plans to scale down the number of body searches required for each flight. There are longer-term forces at work as well. Northern Ireland is part of the European Union. Young people here, particularly Catholics, are increasingly working in Europe and seeing themselves as Europeans as well as Catholics or Protestants. They now have a larger identity to meld into. More important, the last decade has seen the birth of a wide and deep Catholic middle class here, which has prompted many to leave the isolated ethnic ghettos for more affluent mixed neighborhoods. Belfast has more BMW's per capita than any city in the U.K. A cease-fire that lasts for a week is just a time-out in an unfinished war. A cease-fire that lasts for almost a year is a new way of life, and that is where Belfast is headed. Something here is over. I took off a morning last week to play golf at Royal County Down, probably the greatest seaside links in the world, just south of Belfast. I was paired with two friends: Seamus, a Catholic, and Gordon, a Protestant. As a gentle breeze blew in off the Irish Sea, and we searched for lost balls among the heather and the dunes, they spoke words I had heard before. They were the words I heard in Beirut and Jerusalem at that critical moment when the people in those cities decided that the war was over -- that they preferred the blurry lines of compromise to the sharp lines of conflict, that they didn't know what the future settlement would be, but they knew they weren't going back to the barricades of old. "The troubles won't start up again," said Seamus. "The gunmen have lost their mandate from the people. I don't know what it will look like, but the compromise is coming. No one wants to go back to living on a knife's edge. The people have spoken, and they've said, 'Enough is enough.' " | Foreign Affairs; Blurring Lines in Belfast |
768898_0 | President Jacques Chirac of France, defying international opposition to resumption of French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, said tonight that France would resume underground weapons tests in September but would stop them once and for all by the end of May 1996. Mr. Chirac's predecessor, Francois Mitterrand, declared a moratorium on nuclear tests in April 1992. "Unfortunately, we stopped a little too early," Mr. Chirac said, on the eve of a trip to Washington and New York to confer with President Clinton and Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of the United Nations. In a news conference in Elysee Palace, Mr. Chirac described his decision as "irrevocable." He said the eight planned tests would have "no ecological consequences" and would complete a series, interrupted three years ago, intended to calibrate equipment that would allow computer simulations in future tests of the reliability of the French independent nuclear deterrent. Mr. Chirac had been telegraphing his decision for some time, but it could influence the debate in the United States. Some military experts in Washington would like the Clinton Administration to make a few more tests before a permanent ban in a treaty that France, the United States and other countries have pledged to sign next year. Adm. Jacques Lanxade, the French armed forces chief of staff, reported to Mr. Mitterrand a year ago that the military needed to make a few more tests to insure the reliability of France's nuclear deterrent, according to Defense Minister Charles Millon. But Mr. Mitterrand declined to lift the moratorium. Mr. Chirac, a conservative who succeeded Mr. Mitterrand on May 7, denounced Mr. Mitterrand's action in 1992 as "a unilateral disarmament decision." France's independent nuclear deterrent, largely submarine-based, has been the keystone of its independent national defense strategy since the early 1960's, when Gen. Charles de Gaulle decided that dependence on the United States nuclear deterrent was unacceptable. | France Planning Nuclear Tests Despite Opposition, Chirac Says |
767453_1 | has uncovered no systematic abuse. Eligibility rules could be tightened to eliminate mistakes. But there is no justification for widespread evictions. The G.O.P. backlash against the program has been triggered by soaring enrollments since 1990. Some of the increase can be traced to a Supreme Court decision that sensibly eased eligibility standards. The Government had in effect based eligibility solely on a checklist of severe physical and mental conditions. But such a checklist could exclude children whose disabilities, though just as impairing, were due to a combination of less severe problems. A dysfunctional child with very low I.Q. (but not meeting the criteria for retarded) and diabetes (but not recently hospitalized) and partial paralysis (but not bound to a wheelchair) could be ineligible because no one condition was on the Government's checklist of severe disabilities. The Court insisted that the Government assess each applicant's ability to function. The House-passed bill would eliminate most cash assistance on the unwarranted assumption that disabled children need only Government-provided services, such as prescription drugs. But disabled children have unusual needs that Federal programs do not address, such as modified living quarters and special utensils and clothing. Many parents of disabled children need to stay at home, thereby losing earnings. The bill before the Senate would continue cash assistance for these needy parents. But it adopts language that threatens to eliminate eligibility through individual assessments. Without studies showing widespread abuse, the Senate bill could kick nearly a third of current enrollees off the program. The Senate should turn instead to a responsible bipartisan bill, sponsored by Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, and John Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island. It would preserve individual assessments but tighten eligibility rules. The bill would, for example, eliminate "maladapive behavior" as a qualification because the diagnosis has allegedly been applied to children who are simply unruly. The Conrad-Chafee bill would also require periodic reviews of enrollees. A study by researchers at George Washington University shows that S.S.I. enrollments are no longer skyrocketing, now that the impact of the court decision and new mental health regulations have taken hold. Major overhaul of the program is unnecessary. According to one study, perhaps between 40,000 and 80,000 children, out of about 900,000, would be ruled ineligible by tough but fair standards. That suggests Congress should tinker with the rules, but not strip S.S.I. support from hundreds of thousands of desperately sick children. | An Attack on Disabled Children |
767149_0 | Acting on a tip from a Western anti-drug agency, Polish officials searched a Greek freighter when it docked at Gdansk on May 28. Lashed to the keel beneath the waterline were watertight bags containing almost 480 poinds of cocaine, worth $30 million on the street. It was the second-largest cocaine seizure in Polish history. Five days earlier, customs officials had searched a fishing cutter and uncovered nine tons of hashish, worth $60 million on the street, secreted beneath a layer of herring. That was the largest seizure of hashish in Poland. And two weeks ago, in the largest drug bust of any kind in neighboring Slovakia, border guards seized 225 pounds of heroin hidden in a panel of a truck crossing from Hungary. These seizures were small victories in the war on drug smuggling in Central and Eastern Europe. It is a war that the former Communist countries say they are losing. They have had little assistance from the West, even though these fledgling democracies are up against sophisticated international criminal syndicates that are better organized, financed and equipped. "It is getting much worse," said Maciek Lubik, a senior Polish customs officer and the regional director of the Customs Cooperation Council, a Brussels-based organization, about drug smuggling in Eastern Europe. "The quantity and variety is growing pretty rapidly. And the big wave is still to come." Officials say that at the moment, they believe that they are seizing only a small fraction of the drugs passing through their countries -- perhaps as little as 5 percent, Mr. Lubik said. Most of the drugs being moved across Central and Eastern Europe are destined for Western Europe, not the United States. But American interests are at stake, analysts say, because criminal elements are undermining the development of democracy in these countries. "We have other concerns besides what amount of drugs reach the streets in the U.S. each year," said Rensselaer W. Lee 3d, an American expert on organized crime in the former Soviet Union, in a telephone interview from Alexandria, Va. "It's not just a drug problem. It's an organized crime problem." Polish officials say the Colombian cartels have established a beachhead here, which does not surprise Mr. Lee. "Colombian traffickers are working very hard to develop ties with traffickers in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe," he said. Polish law enforcement officials said they believed that the cocaine seized at | Drug Smuggling Growing In Ex-Communist Lands |
767051_0 | EVEN if marketing on the Internet ends up a cyberflop, Madison Avenue is downloading dollars another way: making computer screens an advertising medium. Screen savers, the software programs that fill otherwise idle monitors with images, are attracting sponsors and licensers eager for an efficient, inexpensive way to pitch products to, or ingratiate themselves with, computer users. "This gives us an ability to interact with consumers at their workplaces or at home," said Susan McDermott, a spokeswoman for the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, "particularly when many people spend more time looking at computer screens than television or movie screens." Coca-Cola has developed three screen savers since last summer, when 33,000 copies of the first one, titled "Diet Coke Break," were distributed. Robert Levaro, senior vice president for commercial card products at the Visa USA unit of Visa International in Foster City, Calif., said: "A screen saver is an exciting way to reach our key targets: travel managers, purchasing managers and corporate treasurers. These people virtually all have PC's now." "On their desks, in their offices, it's always there," he added, "reiterating our message." Visa has placed an initial order with Hunter Communications, a company that started designing screen savers in 1993, for 5,000 copies of a Visa corporate screen saver to be distributed beginning next month. It features vintage and contemporary Visa advertisements and information about the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, of which Visa is a corporate sponsor. "Our business is based on seeing ourselves as creators of emblematic, brand-specific products that happen to be digital rather than of software products," said Eric Sanders, vice president for marketing at Hunter in New York. Hunter also markets screen savers, at $24.95 each, licensed by 70 colleges and universities. They offer historical vignettes, virtual campus tours and "computer card stunts," re-creating the halftime shows when football fans manipulate cards to form pictures. Hunter is also finishing work on a line of 30 screen savers, to cost $29.95 each, devoted to the teams of the National Football League. "It's a great way for fans to show their passion for the game," said Tom Richardson, senior director for publishing at NFL Properties Inc. in New York, "and part of our overall marketing strategy to bring the game experience to the fans on a regional basis." And because "youth development is very important for us right now," he added, screen savers are "a great way | THE MEDIA BUSINESS: Advertising; Computer screen savers are becoming the new billboards. |
767053_0 | A Call for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms | |
770851_0 | For most of this year, a quiet insurgency has been building among Austrian Catholics, prompted by doctrinal differences with the Vatican and by scandal surrounding Hans Hermann Cardinal Groer, the 75-year-old primate of the Austrian church who was accused of sexual abuse 20 years ago. The results have been startling: In April, more than 5,500 Austrians left the church -- twice as many as in the same month one year earlier -- joining some 350,000 people who have forgone Catholicism in Austria over the last 10 years. In June, a group of protesters began an unprecedented attempt here to gather 100,000 signatures to protest the Vatican's rulings on the celibacy of priests, sexual morality and the ordination of women. Such are the divisions over the petition that some Catholics have refused to deliver parish newsletters to protest what Martha Heizer, an organizer of the campaign here, called "the dictatorship of priests" opposing the petition. Clerics have warned religion teachers that they will lose their jobs if they support the protest. Church newspapers are filled with arguments for and against the petition. [ By late June, some 50,000 signatures had been gathered. ] In part, the turbulence draws on the same questions as beset Catholics in the United States and elsewhere: How does the church reconcile doctrinal conservatism with the challenges that accrue from feminism and from modernity's approach to human sexuality? But here, in a land that traditionally found a huge part of its national identity in the church, the debate is both unsettling and divisive and may even herald a change in the way Austrians perceive themselves. By Austrian law, those wishing to renounce their church membership must do so before a magistrate and pay any outstanding taxes to the church -- usually worth about one percent of net income -- before their decision is marked on their birth certificates. One recent opinion survey showed that more and more Austrians say they feel a need for spiritual renewal, but fewer and fewer of them believe the church can deliver it. Another poll said Austrians place the church just above the politicians in institutions they mistrust. "Austria was once one of those Catholic countries where you could only really call yourself Austrian if you were Catholic," said Paul M. Zulehner, a professor of pastoral theology at Vienna University. "That is starting to disappear now." Some Austrian Catholics say the church | Innsbruck Journal; A National Church Faces a Challenge From Within |
769133_3 | last year. In calculating import market share, the United States calculates imports as a share of all vehicles sold in Japan. Japan, though, counts only passenger cars, excluding commercial vehicles and mini-cars, an extremely small vehicle for urban use, arguing that foreign auto makers do not really compete in those segments. Whatever the figure, how does this compare with other countries? Imports account for between 33 percent of the market in the United States and 55 percent in Italy. Given the paltry 4 percent share held by imports in Japan, that proves that Japan's market is effectively closed, Americans say. Japan begs to differ. The share held by imports in other big car markets around the world ranges from only 5 to 16 percent, Japan says, not 33 to 55 percent. As for the other nations, Japan excludes imports into the United States from Canada and Mexico and imports into one European country from another, arguing that these occur within free-trade areas. That knocks down the share of the market held by imported cars in France, say, from the 38 percent calculated by Washington to only 5 percent. What about the big picture? Can the two sides agree on that? The question of whether the United States deficit in auto-related trade with Japan is getting bigger or smaller simply depends on which currency is used to measure it. In dollar terms, the difference between imports and exports of automobiles and parts rose to $36.7 billion last year from $30.8 billion in 1990. But in Japanese yen, the deficit shrank 13.4 percent in that period, mainly because Japan has been exporting fewer cars to the United States. But because the yen has substantially risen in value against the dollar, the deficit measured in dollars has climbed substantially. As for the huge imbalance in auto parts pouring into the United States and the trickle of American parts flowing to Japan, Washington argues that something must be amiss in Japan because the United States has a surplus in auto-parts trade with the rest of the world. Well, not quite, says Japan. Tokyo contends that the United States imports more parts than it exports with most countries, including Mexico, Germany and France. The overall surplus the United States touts is mainly with Canada, Japan says, where the Big Three have several assembly plants that they supply with parts from the United States. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS | In Trade Talks, a Duel of Statistics |
768105_1 | is geared to the needs of disabled children as well as those without disabilities. "The kids would play in the streets, sit on the stoop and be bored if they were in the city," Yvonne Dunn, Charles's grandmother, said. "Out here, they have a life and can do different things with other children." The weekend was the first time most of the children had been camping, and it offered a chance for their parents to assure themselves that their children would be well taken care of when they attend a longer session later this summer. Parents were concerned mostly about who would be caring for their children during those 11 days, but other worries included what kind of living quarters the children would stay in, whether they would receive proper medical attention and whether the disabled children would get the special attention they needed while they fished, hiked and camped. "I wanted to know if they could deal with my daughter," said Sharon Jackson Bowman, whose daughter, Melissa, is autistic. "I wanted to get to know the counselors." She added: "I wanted to see if the counselors could be firm with her because of her behavioral problem. This will really help her to deal with society; she'll be doing lots of activities and not be on punishment so much." Manuel Rivera brought his 11-year-old son, Jimmy, who has been diagnosed as being hyperactive, to see if the experience might improve the boy's life. "Coming to camp," Mr. Rivera said, "he can be himself and initiate his mind on positive things. He'll be exposed to animals, arts and crafts, and lots of activities. There are counselors everywhere. I'm impressed." The Fresh Air Fund is a nonprofit organization, depending primarily on private contributions. Besides running camps, the fund arranges for volunteer host families from around the country to open their homes to disadvantaged urban children. This year, 10,000 children from New York City will experience the joys of summertime in the country. For Cindy Robertson, director of Camp Hidden Valley, the primary mission of the fund's programs for disabled children is the same as for all the campers the fund sponsors -- to get them out of the city and give them a chance to experience the countryside firsthand. "I want these children to have a fun summer and not be afraid of the dark," she said. "In the city, there are | Children With Disabilities Get a Chance at Camping |
768077_1 | demarcation through presidential decree. Brazil's new President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, depends on votes from Amazon congressional representatives to make free-market changes to Brazil's Constitution. In a Brazilian "sagebrush rebellion," the politicians and the press of Roraima, the nation's northernmost state, are solidly lined up against setting aside the land, halting all new demarcations of reservations here. Outnumbered and outvoted here, Indian supporters are starting an international campaign to back land claims by the Macuxi, Brazil's fourth-largest tribe. "What happens to the Macuxi could happen to other indigenous people," said Zeze Weiss, a Brazilian living in New York who is executive secretary of Amanakaa Amazon Network, an advocacy group. "We are going to send 100,000 postcards to Fernando Henrique," said Ms. Weiss by telephone from New York. She said that 200 other groups in the United States, Europe and Japan would take part in the letter-writing campaign for the Macuxi lands. The brewing struggle is larger than an ethnic fight over real estate. It is over Brazil's vision of itself. For centuries, a central defining myth of Brazil has been that its culture is a blending of the country's three main population groups -- Portuguese settlers, Indian natives and West Africans imported as slaves. Five centuries of intermarriage, assimilation, disease and violence have sharply eroded cultural differences, creating a mass, monolingual national culture. Among the major nations of the Americas, Brazil has the smallest percentage of its population classified as Indian -- two-tenths of one percent. Even with its own brutal history toward its Indians, the United States has 1.6 million Indians out of 258 million people compared with Brazil's 270,000 Indians out of 154 million. But as the 20th century draws to a close, Brazilians find themselves struggling with an unfamiliar, multicultural ethic. Brazilian Indians have registered claims to lands totaling 11 percent of the country's territory. Judging from the oratory that bounced off the whitewashed walls of Roraima's State Assembly hall as the reservation proposal was debated in April, political leaders on one of Brazil's last ethnological frontiers believe that foreigners are trying to change the rules. To appreciative whoops and hollers from ranchers and state assemblymen, Roraima's sandy-haired Deputy Governor, Airton Cascavel, bellowed out his contention that racial mixing had been the foundation of Brazilian society. "In a day of integrating cultures, it is difficult to imagine isolating Indians in the forests," he said. "They want to create | Amazon Indians' Battle for Land Grows Violent |
768111_6 | remained conservative about hiring, and many reported that jobs obtained by college graduates were not guaranteed, according to Career Development and Placement Services of Michigan State University. "On the negative side of the ledger were corporate right sizing, potential layoffs, potential consolidation of business operations, slower employee turnover, cost-cutting measures and increased utilization of technology and automation," a report on recruiting trends from the university said. It added that companies intent on cost saving looked for college graduates "as a cheaper payroll expenditure." At Westchester Community College, Pauline Sonenshine, a placement coordinator, said graduates looking for jobs in the county were "having an especially tough time," because the local economy had been slower to recover from the recession. "It's still a little better than last year," she said. "There are more openings. The pay is better." But the market remained competitive, and the versatile student who had experience in more than one field was most sought after, she said. Using a different terminology to describe a similar phenomenon, Mr. Corbin at the State Department of Labor observed the "promising growth of the hyphenated fields."He said: "Employers are looking for biologists-writers or computer technicians-teachers." Also, he said that with the ranks of middle-management depleted, employers were looking for mature new hires that could work independently and manage themselves. At the high school level, the outlook for well-trained graduates -- even those who were not college bound -- was also improving, said Dr. Joseph Schwartzberg, director of occupational education for the Southern Westchester Board of Cooperative Education Services in Valhalla. By contrast, high school graduates without vocational skills "are lost, they're in trouble -- on the nowhere track," Dr. Schwartzberg said. The job placement success rate for vocational students was especially high this year for paraprofessionals and technicians, he said. Licensed practical nurses, air-conditioning and heating technicians, computer-repair technicians and automobile mechanic were in high demand. Starting salaries for licensed practical nurses ranged from $25,000 to $35,000, Dr. Schwartzberg said. For technicians, starting pay was about $25,000 a year. For those planning to take at least some college courses, the outlook was even brighter. Keith Millar, an 18-year-old vocational student from New Rochelle is in a three-year apprenticeship program as a cabinetmaker with a custom furniture company. He plans to take college-level business courses and go into business for himself someday. "For students like these," Dr. Schwartzberg said, "the opportunities are endless." | For Now, the Job Outlook Is Brighter |
768257_1 | with their reproductive needs. Legions of women and their children have been injured or killed when manufacturers kept dangerous products like DES, the Dalkon Shield and Copper-7 I.U.D.'s on the market. Like Norplant, each of these products was considered cheap, safe and effective when first marketed. Like Norplant, DES also carried F.D.A. approval. Yet, as the DES saga clearly illustrates, F.D.A. approval is no guarantee for safety or efficacy. By addressing the complexities of product liability from a single point of view, your article ignores that these cases provide critical information for consumers, regulatory agencies and the public. It was not until women who were grievously injured sought relief in court that the Federal agencies became aware of the dangers posed by these products. These women whose lives have been dramatically altered deserve the right to legal recourse for suffering devastating losses like the ability to bear children. Therefore, while you keep your eyes firmly fixed on the bottom line, American women must look at the bigger picture. When you tell us that Norplant is capable of causing "a change in menstrual bleeding patterns," we must ask why this is a concern you dismiss. What it means, according to the product's packaging, is that one-third of women currently using Norplant will experience prolonged or irregular bleeding. Do you consider this an "acceptable" side effect? When you assert that "the evidence of danger is lacking," we must not forget crucial scientific data is also lacking. To date, there is no definitive research on the long-term safety of hormonal use in women (although millions of us have been prescribed hormones for decades). And information on the risks of silicone is just beginning to emerge. Norplant users may be in the unfortunate position of facing risk in these categories, as well as enduring complications associated with the necessity of Norplant's surgical removal. If this is your idea of "no-fuss" pregnancy protection, then it's time for you to think long and hard about women's health and safety. If we have learned anything about protecting women's reproductive health, it is that harmful effects are not always apparent. The fact remains that no one knows exactly what price women may have to pay when the long-term effects of Norplant are finally assessed. For now, caution -- not profit -- should be our guide. AMANDA SHERMAN Manhattan, June 3 The writer is vice president of DES Action. | Norplant Complaints: Legitimate or Concocted? |
768080_1 | the signals are in "a state of good repair"; meaning, among other things, that they are no more than 50 years old, according to the engineers who run the system. Modernization is expected to be completed by 2020, but that date is far from certain. "That's provided we get the same level of funding we anticipate, and it keeps up with inflation," said Dr. Nabil N. Ghaly, the head of the signal division. Dr. Ghaly's time scale and caveat apply to many of the subway's crucial components. After 13 years of intensified effort and $20 billion, there is a sense of timelessness to the modernization of the subways, and a planning horizon that is uncommon in government. Dr. Ghaly, who is 49 years old and has spent 26 years at the Transit Authority, is discussing projects that will outlast his career by 10 years or more. For example, in the late 1950's, when Robert F. Wagner was Mayor, the subway system set out to replace its 225 switching towers, each with operators pulling mechanical switches, with 32 remote-controlled master towers. Today, 25 master towers have been built, allowing 173 of the old towers to close. Work continues on the other 7 new towers, so the last 52 old towers can be closed. By the time work is finished, around 2010 or so, it will be time to start replacing the first master towers, which will be 50 years old. Of course, signal system modernization, like most subway projects, could go faster if more money were available, but in an era of budget cuts, planners are now delaying parts of the modernization program. The Transit Authority had $9.6 billion in its capital budget for modernization of the entire system, including buses, from 1992 to 1996, but had to scale back plans when New York City reduced its contribution by $500 million. Most prominently, it has delayed the renovation of 17 stations. Some less visible improvements will also be delayed. Engineers had planned since 1992 to spend $10 million to upgrade the signals on a 4 1/2-mile stretch at the northern end of the No. 5 line, to allow trains to run in either direction on either of the two tracks. Now the job will be delayed 10 years or more. Engineers put off rebuilding the Franklin Avenue Shuttle in Brooklyn. They cut $44 million out of a program to modernize station | Crash Focuses Attention On Equipment Conditions |
768135_2 | Public Enemy, like Ms. Tucker, believes that it perpetuates degrading stereotypes and self-destructive behavior. Meanwhile, a recent article in Billboard magazine showed that rap's popularity is dipping, in part from its predictability. Gangsta rap may have peaked both commercially and creatively, though there's nothing like adult disapproval to spark teen-age interest. Mr. Bennett's organization Empower America and Ms. Tucker's National Political Congress of Black Women are well within their rights to raise hoopla over messages they dislike and to appeal to corporate overseers to exercise some taste. Still, they must be aware that if Time Warner stopped distributing Interscope, the label would find other takers in about 20 seconds. As Mr. Bennett may have discovered during his days as the Bush Administration's drug czar, if there's a market, there's a supply. There are larger inconsistencies in Mr. Dole's broader-based attack. He could find common ground with gangsta rappers, aside from the kind of language they use in public. Rapper extol assault weapons. The Senator wants to end the ban on assault weapons. The drug-dealing gangs that inspire gangsta raps behave sociopathically, but they are in it for the money. AND IN THAT SENSE, THEY ARE entrepreneurs for whom competitiveness is a way of life; they don't like Government restrictions any more than Republicans do. Philosophically, gangsters endorse rampant individualism over class-based or community entitlements. And jobs programs and education, those liberal shibboleths, would be bad for their business, since they might break the cycle of gang membership. Republican reverence for the free market embraces gun manufacturers and companies that want to loosen pollution controls. But a fervor for deregulation apparently extends to everything but the American media business, which dominates the world market. People who are sickened by the content of some entertainment -- for instance, action-adventure films that treat death and dismemberment as knee slappers -- eventually have to face the fact that other people love the stuff. Millions go to the theaters, rent the videos, buy the CDs; some vote too. Politicians can court headlines (while pressure groups battle distribution), but there's no serious way for the Government to regulate the content of entertainment -- not with that pesky First Amendment. A true moral crusade would address the poverty and hopelessness that foster vicious behavior in reality. Failing that, a genuine attack on ugly entertainment would mean changing the market: upgrading audience tastes and providing alternatives to lowest-common-denominator | Rapping and Politicking: Show Time on the Stump |
768190_1 | countries accounted for about 85 percent of the 125 million handmade cigars sold in the United States, with Jamaica and Mexico supplying most of the rest. But domestic demand -- and prices -- have been going through the roof, with no corresponding increase in production. Industry experts say back orders for the most popular imported premium brands are now at more than 20 million cigars. "The squeeze is really on," said Rolando Reyes Jr., the boyish 39-year-old president of Aliados Cigars Inc., a major importer and retailer in Union City, which has a Cuban emigre population second only to South Florida's. Mr. Reyes's father, who brought the family's Aliados brand from Cuba, is now in Honduras, training apprentice cigar makers to meet the demand. It takes two years to train a good one. A few blocks from the Reyes shop, Oneida Garcia stood at the counter of the Galileo Cuban-Style Cigar Company, reluctant at first even to talk for attribution. "I'm afraid we'll get a hundred phone calls," she said. In a back room, her husband, Angel, smiled up from a table where he was making cigars himself. "A craftsman," she said proudly. A craftsman makes perhaps 150 to 200 cigars a day. As for genuine Havana cigars, experts say that even if the trade embargo is lifted, the agricultural and manufacturing situation there has deteriorated so badly in the past few years that their only real advantage over competitors is "the famous brand names," according to Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America. Last year Cuba exported about 55 million handmade cigars to other nations, and is struggling to raise that to 60 million this year, despite shortages of fuel, fertilizer and skilled labor. Experts estimate that about six million Cuban cigars are smuggled in each year by Americans returning from abroad. "By and large, sadly, people are just buying the mystique when the buy cigars from Cuba," said Mr. Reyes, who plans to return one day to re-establish the family cigar business there. "A lot of those $10 Cuban cigars I wouldn't pay $3 for these days." Meanwhile, some smokers are buying the proverbial Brooklyn Bridge. Counterfeiters have flocked to cash in on the mystique. Not long ago, Mr. Reyes recalled, a regular customer came into the shop to ask him to appraise a box of 25 "Havanas" he had bought on the street for $500. | When a Good Cigar Is More Than a Smoke |
770630_0 | "I am just outraged," a young woman said by way of introduction to two people smoking at coffee hour after services at a Paris church recently. "Your smoke is going right upstairs to the nursery and I am simply outraged." "You're outraged," nodded one of the smokers, and kept puffing right along. Tobacco lovers in France are not easily intimidated, even by the signs that designate public spaces like the Metro as no-smoking zones that many Parisians obey about as faithfully as no-parking signs. Most Europeans still smoke practically everywhere, but the battle between smokers and nonsmokers rages here, too, and now people on both sides are demonstrating a new aggressiveness. The French had been dragging on pungent Gauloises balanced sexily on their lower lips since Jean-Paul Belmondo was a boy until governments in the early 1990's made a stab at making people aware of the dangers by declaring the Paris subway (and sections of most restaurants) no-smoking zones. The little German subway system in Bonn politely asks people not to smoke, but it isn't strictly verboten. London's Underground banned smoking throughout the system after a disastrous fire in the King's Cross station in 1987. But the French often tend to regard laws regulating behavior as suggestions rather than commandments. There are regulations requiring dog-owners to clean up after their pets, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the streets of Paris. The municipal authorities finally gave up and now clean the mess themselves, sporadically, with mechanized pooper-scoopers. Attempts to deal with the national predilection for nicotine were made under a Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand. Jacques Chirac, his conservative successor, used to smoke two to three packs of Philip Morris cigarettes a day, and then quit cold in 1988. Asked afterward if he felt better for stopping, he replied, "Ah, these doctors, what nonsense they talk." Though he never took up the habit again, some tobacco companies apparently now see a glimmer of hope that he might take another look at the anti-smoking laws. Philip Morris, in any case, is placing a series of advertisements in newspapers in Britain and on the Continent that criticize such regulations as there are around Europe. One series last week showed large street maps of London and Paris with tiny sections of town marked "Smoking Section" beneath the inscription, "Where Will They Draw the Line?" "Basically, we wish to encourage a debate on | Paris Journal; Is It a Cigarette War, Or Just a Lot of Smoke? |
770589_2 | on June 4 in Zvornik but refused to go. Tensions have been growing between General Smith's headquarters in Sarajevo and those of General Janvier in Zagreb, Croatia. The terms of the deal hammered out by the French generals are now clear. The meeting on June 4 in Zvornik, which took place just over a week after the hostages were seized, was followed by a statement on June 9 in which the United Nations abruptly declared it would strictly abide by peacekeeping principles -- a firm signal that no more NATO air strikes would occur. This was the first demand of General Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs. The officials said the French role in negotiating this guarantee was underscored this week when President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia said he had been assured by President Jacques Chirac of France that air strikes in Bosnia were over. The officials said the meeting on June 17 in Pale between General Janvier and General Mladic established the final details. It allowed the last hostages to be released the next day in exchange for four Serbs captured by French soldiers during a battle for a United Nations position in Sarajevo on May 27. Two French soldiers were killed in that battle. The officials said that in exchange for his flexible attitude, General Janvier received a promise from General Mladic that he would allow United Nations food convoys to travel into Muslim enclaves. -------------------- U.S. Criticizes U.N. Aide WASHINGTON, June 22 (By The New York Times) -- The Administration today criticized Yasushi Akashi, the top United Nations officials in the former Yugoslavia, for promising the Bosnian Serbs that the rapid-reaction force being dispatched to Bosnia would not change the mission of the peacekeepers there. Madeleine K. Albright, the United States delegate to the United Nations, said it was "highly inappropriate" for Mr. Akashi to make such a promise, as he did in a letter to the Bosnian Serb leaders, before the Security Council had completed talks with Britain, France and the Netherlands about the mandate of the new force. "The method, timing and substance of this letter are highly inappropriate," she said. "The Council's advice should have been sought." Ms. Albright suggested that the new force should take a more aggressive role than the one outlined by Mr. Akashi, whom Washington has often criticized for seeking to accommodate the Bosnian Serbs. | France Held Secret Talks With Serbs |
770624_4 | two years ago. When the payroll was computerized last year, there was no record of valid appointments for more than 1,500 of some 7,000 Secretariat employees. Programs Are Born But They Never Die Over the years, the United Nations has accumulated programs that overlap or were devised for an earlier era, but are rarely closed down. Resolutions by member countries spawned much of the duplication, resulting, by one analyst's count, in 29 United Nations agencies and other departments with food and agriculture programs alone. The damage that weak management can do to good intentions was illustrated last month when the United Nations Children's Fund, one of the most respected agencies, disclosed that its Kenya operation had lost as much as $10 million to fraud and mismanagement by employees there. Though outright theft is the exception, some officials say slack financial oversight has become commonplace. One described a crime-prevention institute in Uganda so wasteful that United Nations Development Program officials recommended it no longer be financed. After several African governments complained, the institute was promised another $500,000. The system has taken on the worst attributes of a rigid civil service, designed more to protect employees than foster efficiency. Department supervisors say they can get rid of bad employees only by persuading another department to take them. One manager said that he could lose 15 percent of his staff without affecting its output. Office politics at the United Nations are worsened by national jealousies and rivalries that leave competent employees "angry and bitter," as one manager put it. . "Dedicated staff have learned that it is unwise to criticize malpractice or incompetence because they have no reliable protection from managerial cliques," said a study published last year by a veteran civil servant, Erskin Childers, with Sir Brian Urquhart. A hot line has been set up for what Mr. Paschke called "information and hints and complaints and accusations for things we ought to be investigating." Some employees worry that what they report will not be kept confidential. Mr. Paschke accepts anonymous complaints but does not encourage them. "Where I come from," he said, "you would not take seriously anonymous whistle-blowers." Members' Rivalries Undercut Efficiency Fiefs have sprung up in hidden crannies of the United Nations. For two decades, Conrad S. M. Mselle, a Tanzanian, has been chairman of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, which reviews budget costs for the General | Mismanagement and Waste Erode U.N.'s Best Intentions |
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