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1417971_0 | The Bush administration kicked off a vital two-year investigation this week of the factors that caused the World Trade Center towers to collapse last Sept. 11. It is a necessary follow-up to the initial six-month inquiry into the structural collapse, which was hobbled by a lack of resources and legal authority. The only missing element now is subpoena power for the federal investigators so that they can compel testimony and the production of documents. The House has passed a bill granting that power, and the Senate needs to do likewise. The initial investigation determined that neither the impact of the huge airliners nor the fireball of jet fuel was enough to bring the towers down. The crucial factor was the extremely hot fires that the jet fuel ignited in the flammable contents of the towers, which softened the structural steel and triggered the collapse. But just which parts of the buildings were critical in the failure has not been determined. The new investigation, scheduled to last two years and cost some $23 million, will be headed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency with expertise in building performance and structural failures. It will examine such issues as the strength of the steel, how well fireproofing materials worked, why people were trapped on the upper floors and how well firefighters responded. That, in turn, could trigger revisions in building codes and performance standards to make all high-rise buildings safer. One disturbing finding of the initial investigation was that an extremely fierce fire alone could be sufficient to bring down a 47-story building that had not been hit by the planes. It is unfortunate that the new study is starting so late, when memories have faded and some of the structural evidence has been lost. But the administration is to be commended for putting substantial resources into the inquiry, which could expand into a five-year effort costing more than $50 million for a series of related studies. The construction industry -- and the public -- need to understand the dynamics of these traumatic collapses. | Examining How the Towers Collapsed |
1417932_3 | a business can make it. Three bars, Captain Hook's Bait and Tackle Shop and the Genoa State Bank are making it. With its jumble of old desks, the clatter of old calculators and no protective glass in sight, the bank seems an artifact of the typewriter age. That has its virtues, said Geri Fox, vice president. ''In personal service, we're still kind of World War II,'' Ms. Fox said. In addition to the attention customers get, the bank survives through diversification. With no real estate broker in town, it sells property. With no insurance agency, it sells insurance. ''You have to cover more things when you're a small town,'' she said. At the other end of Genoa's Main Street is Captain Hook's Bait and Tackle Shop. Its owner, Byron Clements, 71, is a Coast Guard-licensed riverboat captain. Mr. Clements inherited his father's business renting places on fixed barges on the Mississippi so customers who do not have boats can sit and fish. He can accommodate 200 people on seven barges and charges them $12 a day. Fishermen need bait and tackle, Mr. Clements observed, so with his son Mark, also a riverboat captain, he diversified by starting a bait and tackle shop. The shop needed tackle to sell to the fishermen, so he diversified again, buying two companies that make tackle and putting his daughter-in-law in charge of them. ''We've got three corporations running out of this building,'' Mr. Clements said. ''We're not just sitting here in a small town.'' Service and diversification have worked elsewhere. On Georgia Avenue, the main commercial strip in Louisiana, Mo., Casey's General Store has shut down. But Candy Burnett said her office supply shop was prospering. She allows charge accounts. She carries typewriter ribbons, ledger books and Zip disks. ''We have a girl who does outside sales to towns in the area,'' she said. ''We do deliveries.'' In McGregor, Iowa, a spiffed up river town of nearly 900 people, Daniel Bickel sells insurance and real estate, prepares tax returns and makes personal loans. ''In McGregor,'' Mr. Bickel said, ''you can't do one thing and make a good living. You have to do several things.'' Here in Hickman, Mr. Laster has inspired others. Nelson's Jewelry Store has added a flower market. A fitness center has opened. A cap factory has taken over the abandoned movie theater. ''He's kind of livened things up,'' Ms. Johnson said. | Newcomers' Businesses Restore Old Towns to Life |
1418100_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Killed by a Bear'' (editorial, Aug. 21): It is true that ''the best way for humans to keep bears away is to keep food and garbage locked up.'' But your suggestion that hunting bears would prevent conflicts between humans and bears may in fact exacerbate such problems. Sport hunters tend to take large, adult male bears from populations, leaving the juvenile males more room to expand their range. These younger male bears, like the one that killed a baby in the Catskills, are much more likely to cause problems by searching for alternate food sources near human areas. Hunting bears is not a solution to a problem, but a commitment to a permanent problem. What's needed is more public education about living and recreating safely in bear habitat, and less recreational trophy hunting. MICHAEL MARKARIAN Exec. V.P., Fund for Animals Silver Spring, Md., Aug. 21, 2002 | Keeping Bears at Bay |
1418135_1 | in Hubei and Anhui Provinces, were bracing for an oncoming rush of waters, China Central Television reported. Officials and the Chinese news organizations have given wildly varying accounts of the scale of evacuations required so far around the lake, which is surrounded by a lattice of dikes protecting low-lying farms and millions of villagers. Two provincial officials said today that up to 270,000 people had been forced to leave their homes this month in Hunan, including many around the lake and others in vulnerable mountain areas. They discounted reports that 600,000 had been evacuated in the last week. Dongting Lake adjoins the Yangtze and serves as a natural spillover for the mighty river during flood season. But over the last 50 years, the lake and surrounding wetlands have shrunk by 40 percent as fertile soils have been taken by needy farmers. This made the region more vulnerable to floods. This year, more than 900 people have died from an unusual series of localized floods and mudslides -- first in central and southeastern provinces and most recently in Hunan, where 200 have died. But the Yangtze and other major river basins have not had wholesale floods, as in 1998, experts say, and are not likely to at this late stage in the season. In that year, when several stretches of the Yangtze, as well as Dongting Lake, overflowed, more than 4,000 people died. After those floods, the government promised to restore the lake's natural functions and to resettle more than two million people. The plan is partly carried out, though in most cases villages have been moved to adjacent high grounds and residents still farm the same vulnerable lands. These relocations, along with major investments to strengthen dikes over the last four years, have reduced casualties and destruction this summer, experts said. Waters have been allowed to flow into some of the relocation zones, but the current flood has not reached the stage at which officials must open dikes and divert water into large inhabited areas to prevent catastrophe in downstream cities. Much of the worst damage in 1998 involved such decisions by officials who were forced to choose between evils. Here in Changsha, the Xiang Jiang River -- a major feeder of Dongting Lake and a focal point of this month's floods -- dropped by several feet today, belying predictions of a peak surge. Four residents of a suburban village | Chinese Hold Their Breath as a Swollen Lake Recedes |
1413709_6 | blood coming in, it's starting to die,'' said George Alexiou, former president of the Greek-American Homeowners Association. For the newer residents, however, the mood is expansive. On a two-block stretch of Steinway between 28th Avenue and Astoria Boulevard, there are 25 Middle Eastern shops -- selling halal meat, Syrian pastries, airplane tickets to Morocco, driving lessons in Arabic. The strip rivals the city's most famous Middle Eastern thoroughfare, Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue. In the new cafes and restaurants, television shows from Cairo and news from Qatar-based Al Jazeera are beamed in on big-screen televisions. A common street sight is women in ankle-length jalabas and head scarves surrounded by small children. ''You don't feel homesick,'' said Noureddine Daouaou, a Moroccan taxi driver who has lived in Astoria for six years. George Delis, district manager of Community Board 1 and an immigrant from the area around Salonika, said, ''I get complaints from Greeks that the streets are dirtier, the properties not as well kept. I say to them, 'When you came to this country, the Italians and Irish were saying there goes the neighborhood.' And that's how I feel. This is a nation of immigrants, a community of immigrants.'' Mr. Oumous, the Moroccan computer programmer, said that, for the most part, the Greeks greeted the newcomers without hostility, even though there was some suspiciousness after Sept. 11 and landlords were likely to inquire more scrupulously into newcomers' backgrounds. Although 2000 census figures on the neighborhood's nationalities are not out yet, Ali El Sayed, a broad-shouldered Alexandrian with a shaved head who is Steinway's Sidney Greenstreet, the man aware of this mini-Casablanca's secrets, estimates there are now up to 4,000 Middle Easterners and North Africans. Mr. Sayed was a pioneer, moving from Egypt to Steinway Street 13 years ago to open the Kabab Cafe, a narrow six-table cranny that sells a tasty hummus and falafel plate. He said that many younger Middle Easterners were marrying non-Middle Easterners. He is married to an Argentinian, and his 7-year-old son, Esmaeel, speaks Spanish, not Arabic. ''There are lots of fears that their culture is getting destroyed,'' Mr. Sayed said. That statement suggests that the Middle Easterners are already adopting their Greek neighbors' stoicism. ''In New York everything turns around,'' said Peter Figetakis, 48, a film director who left Greece at 6 and has lived in Astoria since the 1970's. ''Now the Hindus and Arabs, it's their time.'' | A Time of Flux For City's Core Of Greek Life; Others Discover Astoria As Longtime Citizens Exit |
1413708_0 | Last month, Brazil inaugurated a high-tech radar system to keep watch on its two million square miles of Amazon jungle. The American-financed $1.4 billion Amazon Vigilance System will help catch drug smugglers and detect incursions by Colombia's guerrillas. But it was originally conceived and designed for environmental protection, and can still be a key tool in combating deforestation and illegal mining. The system, however, is only as good as Brazil's willingness to use the information it provides -- and there the record is worrisome. An average of more than 7,500 square miles of the Amazon go up in smoke every year as ranchers and farmers clear land. The deforestation destroys biodiversity and, by robbing the landscape of its ability to retain water, contributes to drought and erosion. The new radar system can help. The state of Mato Grosso, for example, requires approval to burn land, and now officials can check that they are burning only the approved land. It would help if this law were in use in every state. In truth, the problem in much of the Amazon is not that the authorities do not know about illegal deforestation, but that they are indifferent or in league with it. A major battleground today is 600 miles of road through the state of Pará that the government is promising to pave. Entirely predictably, ranchers and big soy farmers are seizing land along the Pará corridor in anticipation that its value will rise. The American group Environmental Defense says that if no measures are taken, the road will result in new deforestation of an area larger than West Virginia. In addition, at least seven rural union leaders fighting the illegal seizures of land in Pará have been murdered in the last year. One prominent leader of a regional coalition, Ademir Alfeu Federicci, was shot last August. Local police called his killing part of an ordinary robbery, a theory so preposterous that prosecutors handed them back the case. But the lack of progress since has signaled the government's indifference to these crimes, and last month another union leader, Bartolomeu Morais da Silva, was tortured and murdered. The new system could be a major step forward for environmental protection, but the eye on the Amazon will be of limited use if Brazil's authorities continue to watch illegal behavior -- and blink. | Brazil's Eye on the Amazon |
1414115_1 | gilding this once-humble slice of northwest Arkansas where Sam Walton, the company's founder, first made it his business to cater to rural, cost-conscious shoppers largely ignored by other retailers. The result is not just a population boom, but also a shift from the simple country style that once defined Wal-Mart and Bentonville to something sleeker, spiffier and more, well, suburban. The outsiders come because they believe they must, especially since Wal-Mart began adding supermarkets onto its discount stores a few years ago. ''You can think of it almost like the lobbyists in D.C.,'' said Michael Porter, a retail analyst for Morningstar in Chicago. ''It just makes sense to be where the decision makers are, and in this case, the decision makers are the heads of the largest company in the world.'' As the migration has accelerated, the newcomers have caused a decided shift here to the upscale: to gated neighborhoods with names like Avignon, to restaurants serving sushi, to specialty stores and gourmet shops that are clearly worlds apart from Wal-Mart. It is the kind of thing that runs counter to the mentality held by the folksy Mr. Sam, who died in 1992. ''I don't believe a big showy lifestyle is appropriate for anywhere,'' Mr. Walton wrote in his autobiography, ''least of all here in Bentonville, where folks work hard for their money and where we all know that everyone puts on their trousers one leg at a time.'' Lately, however, it has become a lot showier with people living in trophy houses along the golf course at the Pinnacle Country Club, with cast-iron lions flanking the front door. ''We used to have a one-tiered system -- northwest Arkansas was hillbilly country,'' said Jeff Collins, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the Sam M. Walton College of Business, part of the University of Arkansas. Now there is upward pressure on wages, and farmland is being snapped up for mansions. ''Things have definitely changed.'' It is not clear what effect all this will have on Wal-Mart itself, traditionally a company not given to lavish pay or perks of any kind. Then again, Wal-Mart has already been pushed in new directions by its relentless growth. ''Much of what has taken place since Mr. Sam's death has been a little bit different than what he would have done,'' said Tom Ginn, vice president for business development for the Rogers-Lowell | From Down-Home to Upmarket: Sam Walton's Town Gets Sleeker |
1418814_1 | to pay for. Those who provide some of the sites that many people object to say they have nothing to hide. ''Obviously, there's a want for this stuff, because there's billions of dollars spent on it every year,'' said David Marchlak, who has brought the world sites like Voyeur Dorm, a Web precursor to the ''Big Brother'' television show that watches a Florida house shared by a cast of young women. ''We're not forcing it on anybody.'' Yet these days, Internet users complain of a proliferation of Web sites that offer a peek up Anna Kournikova's skirt or that hawk pills to increase the size of their sex organs. The Internet was supposed to make people's brains bigger. People now talk about wasting too much of their time sifting through e-mail invitations to view photographs of nymphets or unspeakable acts with farm animals, as well as requests to send money to people who say they are relatives of Jonas Savimbi of Angola or Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire so they can release their stolen African millions. Cyberspace is ''debasing itself in front of our eyes,'' said Bruce Sterling, a science fiction author. Mr. Sterling, who sees the Internet becoming a pit of spam and swindles, pornography, corporate advertising and government surveillance, warns, ''We will lose the Internet if we don't save it.'' Why is so much high technology so lowbrow, with abominably written prose, horrific images like the beheading of the journalist Daniel Pearl and the sweaty sensibility of a tromp through the febrile fantasies of adolescent boys and middle-aged men? One answer is that the Internet businesses that thrive most readily are the kinds that do well in every medium -- including those selling titillation and cheating their customers. ''Every industry has its charlatans, and e-commerce is getting its share,'' said Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. ''I don't see evidence that it is more than you would expect, especially in a new industry.'' Not everyone who hangs out a shingle in the grimy quarters of the online world becomes rich. Maria, a woman who runs adult Web sites and a telephone sex service, said that dreams of quick riches are quickly dashed, especially for those entrepreneurs who spend thousands of dollars for pornography-site-in-a-box kits that are sold online, which often include stockpiles of images that are already in wide circulation. ''I don't see people getting | From Unseemly to Lowbrow, the Web's Real Money Is in the Gutter |
1415841_2 | burst of interest in reform pedagogy in the early years of the last century was hardly the first time such ideas were put into practice. The ancient Greeks, notably Socrates, believed in education by interrogating rather than by propounding. That idea faded in the Middle Ages, when teachers were expected to hand down the truth from on high, but interest in it was revived in the late 18th century, when the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau argued that students learn by doing rather than by having their minds stuffed with abstract principles. Rousseau's ideas gradually took hold. By the late 19th century, the educational reformer John Dewey, who was deeply influenced by ''Emile,'' Rousseau's classic work on education, was arguing that the ''set lecture'' was destined to be displaced by ''readings, reports, discussions, etc., with the teacher guiding the study by questions, references, printed helps, etc.'' Today, such concepts are clearly growing in popularity. Judith Rodin, president of the University of Pennsylvania, spoke for a new generation of academic leaders when she said in an interview: ''In the next 10 years, there will be much more flexibility in teaching modalities. The standard college lecture will be pretty much a thing of the past. The teacher of the future will be more of a mentor and less of a didactic lecturer.'' Dr. Rodin talked of the computerization of intellectual life. In speeding up communication, and in making huge amounts of information accessible, technology has, to a degree, obviated the lecture, which after all came into being to impart knowledge. Now that knowledge is at one's fingertips, pedagogy has focused on how to use that knowledge. To be sure, the mass lecture, sometimes derided as ''hog calling,'' is still the dominant form of instruction at most major universities. Harvard routinely crams more than 500 students into ''Social Analysis 10,'' where Prof. Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Reagan administration, holds forth. Lectures have long been considered the most effective form of instruction especially at the introductory level, where large amounts of information must be poured into young minds. But that's changing. William Tierney, a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, said pedagogical reform was sure to be ''pretty dramatic'' in the next few years. In the Internet age, he said, ''no aspect of teaching will change more rapidly.'' Richard Rothstein is on vacation. | Whither College Lectures? Maybe Right Out the Door |
1417142_1 | younger men with medical conditions that rob them of testosterone, such symptoms disappear when they get the drug. So, some doctors ask, why not give it to older men too? But testosterone can fuel the growth of prostate cancer, and it increases red blood cell production, possibly increasing the risk of clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes. Those risks, with concerns about the cost, prompted the government in late June to scuttle a proposed six-year study of testosterone replacement. In the absence of such a study, answers about testosterone's risks and benefits may be a long time coming. ''The only thing we ever learn from medical history is that we never learn,'' said Dr. John B. McKinlay of the New England Research Institutes in Watertown, Mass. Dr. McKinlay is the director of the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, a federally supported study that follows more than 1,700 men as they age. ''On the slimmest of evidence we introduced estrogen to women,'' he said, ''and the public was whipped up to ask for it.'' Referring to the large clinical trial of hormone therapy in women that was halted last month, Dr. McKinlay added: ''We ended up, finally, after everyone was getting it, with 45 million prescriptions in the U.S. each year. And suddenly we find that not only does it not do what it is supposed to do but there are these untoward consequences. ''We are about to repeat that debacle. We have the slimmest evidence on testosterone replacement. Five men here, 10 men there. Six rats and a partridge in a pear tree. The physiology is not there but the industry, the industry is there.'' Dr. Richard Hodis, director of the National Institute on Aging, also expressed concern. ''We recognize this as a potentially important public health issue,'' Dr. Hodis said. ''In understanding the role of testosterone replacement, we are in many ways where we were decades ago with estrogen replacement with women. It is clear that we do not know enough to inform men and their doctors on the potential advantages or risks of hormone replacement.'' Nevertheless, some doctors say testosterone deficiency is a real medical condition that needs treatment. ''To say it doesn't exist is to put your head in the sand,'' said Dr. Larry Lipshultz, a professor of urology at Baylor College of Medicine. ''The question on the table is, Can we prescribe this medication enthusiastically | Male Hormone Therapy Popular but Untested |
1417557_0 | Although there is no evidence that cows, sheep and other animals reproduced through cloning are unsafe to eat, more caution is needed on animals engineered to contain genes from other species, a panel of scientists said today. The National Research Council committee, asked by the Food and Drug Administration to examine the safety concerns of applying biotechnology to animal products used for food, said it had reservations about food from some gene-altered animals. However, the committee said, there also appear to be many benefits if the technology is applied and regulated carefully. ''We were asked to focus on safety concerns, but we don't want to inhibit the progress of biotechnology, because of its many potential benefits,'' said Dr. John G. Vandenbergh of North Carolina State University, chairman of the panel. ''We are saying, If you use this technology, do it in a safe manner.'' The 12-member committee of scientists, doctors and other experts said its biggest concern about the new technology was the potential of certain genetically engineered organisms to escape and reproduce in the natural environment. Modified insects, fish, shellfish and other animals could easily escape and threaten their natural counterparts. For example, the panel said, gene-altered salmon given the ability to grow at an accelerated rate might compete more successfully for food and mates than natural varieties, causing wild salmon to die out. The food and drug agency asked for the review as it prepared to rule on the safety of selling food products from animals manipulated through biotechnology, particularly cloned cattle. With techniques similar to those used to clone Dolly the sheep, scientists can create almost an identical copy of an adult animal with certain desirable traits. Owners of hundreds of cows cloned this way want to sell milk or meat from them but have been warned to wait for regulatory approval. The panel said it found no data indicating the products of cloned animals were unsafe, nor did it identify a way something was likely to go wrong to make such cloned animals the source of unsafe food. But the committee said it had reservations about food from transgenic animals, those that are changed by adding genes of other species or by having existing genes removed or deactivated. Such animals could produce meat with less fat or more protein, eggs with less cholesterol, or milk that contains drugs or vaccines that could fight disease. One potential | Panel Urges Caution in Producing Gene-Altered Animals |
1417508_1 | baby, who died while being taken to the hospital. The bear was shot and killed by a Fallsburg police officer as it tried to climb a tree. In the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg yesterday, dozens of friends and relatives filed into a second-floor apartment to console the girl's parents, Pincus and Rachel Schwimmer. Several people said they were shocked that the mauling had taken place in a popular bungalow colony frequented by Williamsburg families for decades. ''This is a tragedy, we take it and pray that this shouldn't happen again,'' said Rabbi Hertz Frankel, a family friend. ''You're afraid to drive, you might have an accident. A fire in the house, that could happen. But a bear, that is never heard of.'' There are between 5,000 and 6,000 black bears living primarily around the Adirondacks, the Catskills and the Alleghenies in New York State, a number that has remained steady in recent years largely because of bear hunting. In 2001, 801 bears were killed during the fall hunting season, and an average of 722 bears have been killed each year during the past decade. In New Jersey and Connecticut -- states that do not allow bear hunting -- the black bear population has been increasing drastically. There are about 1,900 bears in New Jersey, or nearly double the number from two years ago, state wildlife officials said. In Connecticut, where bears all but disappeared from the mid-1800's to the 1960's, the population has rebounded to more than 100, said Paul Rego, a state wildlife biologist. But along with the growing bear population has come a sharp increase in bear sightings in residential areas and frequent complaints about bears rummaging through garbage cans and wandering boldly into homes in search of food. In 1997, a 195-pound black bear even prowled the strip malls along Central Avenue in Westchester County for a time before being tranquilized and relocated to the Catskills. This year, New York environmental officials have already received 170 complaints about bears in the lower Hudson Valley, which includes the town of Fallsburg, compared to 114 for the entire year of 2001. Similarly, Connecticut has recorded close to 500 bear sightings so far this year compared to 400 for all of last year. In April, state officials there had to put down a bear that ventured near homes repeatedly and broke into at least one of them. In New | A Recipe for a Run-In: More Bears, and More People in Their Path |
1417534_1 | military officers accused of atrocities. A4 White House Denies Meeting The White House vigorously denied that President Bush had summoned his senior military advisers to his ranch in Crawford, Tex., to map out a potential effort to topple Saddam Hussein. A8 Iraq Confirms Terrorist's Death A senior Iraqi official confirmed that Abu Nidal, the man responsible for a brutal trail of terrorism through 20 countries, had died in Iraq and that details would be supplied today. The official said that Abu Nidal had committed suicide, but that claim remains doubtful. A8 World Briefing A6 NATIONAL A10-14 Funds Aid 9/11 Victims With Mental Health Care The American Red Cross and the September 11th Fund announced that they would underwrite the expense of mental health treatment for those directly affected by last fall's terrorist attacks. In what may be the most ambitious effort by charitable organizations to address the emotional needs of disaster victims, the program will provide reimbursments for mental health therapy. A1 Israeli's Visit Roils Florida Race Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, will appear at a pro-Israel rally in southern Florida with Gov. Jeb Bush on Sept. 9, the day before the Florida Democratic gubernatorial primary. Florida Democratic leaders denounced the appearance as a White House intervention to help President Bush's brother win re-election. A10 Trial of Drug for West Nile The Food and Drug Administration announced that it had approved a national trial of a drug, alpha interferon, which Schering-Plough sells as Intron A, to determine whether it could become the first specific therapy against the West Nile virus. A13 Report Cites A.T.V.'s Dangers Four-wheel all-terrain vehicles are just as dangerous as the three-wheel versions that were banned by the federal government in the late 1980's, a report from a coalition of consumer and environmental groups has found. A12 Court Seeks Flight 93 Tapes A federal judge ordered prosecutors to provide a copy of the cockpit voice recording from United Airlines Flight 93, in which passengers apparently wrested control from the hijackers, so she could determine whether the tape could be used at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui and possibly be released to the public. A14 New Setback for Amtrak Amtrak faced new problems in efforts to restore full high-speed Acela Express service in the Northeast when hairline cracks were found in shock-absorbing assemblies on four of eight locomotives scheduled for runs. The four were removed from service. | NEWS SUMMARY |
1417533_0 | The Bush administration has floated a succession of possible justifications for war with Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's purported links with international terrorism, Baghdad's membership in a worldwide ''axis of evil,'' Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Few firm facts have been offered in support of any of these claims, but there have been frequent allusions to secret intelligence information that officials are unwilling to make public. This is a troubling pattern, especially now that President Bush has said he will base his decisions about Iraq on the latest intelligence reports. Intelligence findings should guide presidential policy. That is their principal purpose. But the country ought not to be led into war on the basis of information the American people are not allowed to share. That is not how our democracy works. Raw intelligence reports cannot be published without compromising confidential sources and methods. But the basic intelligence evidence that underlies critical national decisions can and must be made public. Past administrations have done that repeatedly, for example, by displaying spy-plane photos of Russian missiles in Cuba in 1962 or releasing cockpit-to-tower conversations recorded during Moscow's downing of a Korean passenger jet in 1983. Before last fall's airstrikes in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain presented a compendium of intelligence findings linking Osama bin Laden and the Taliban to the Sept. 11 attacks. If Mr. Bush means to propose launching a preventive war against Iraq, he must do no less. The case for publicly presenting the evidence is all the more compelling since many of the administration's past claims on Iraq have been challenged by independent experts. Administration officials themselves acknowledge that there is no convincing intelligence evidence linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Although Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concedes that the administration has an obligation to put crucial facts before the American people, he continues to make uncorroborated assertions. Earlier this month on NBC Nightly News Mr. Rumsfeld asserted the presence of Al Qaeda members in Iraq. When asked by Tom Brokaw whether there was hard evidence of that, Mr. Rumsfeld dismissively answered, ''I know that.'' Yesterday Mr. Rumsfeld made essentially the same assertion, but was not ready to make the supporting evidence public. What top national security officials claim to know but refuse to discuss isn't good enough. Americans cannot seriously deliberate issues of war and peace while they are denied the relevant facts. | Sharing the Evidence on Iraq |
1417483_1 | vacation colony in the Catskills this week in broad daylight, grabbed a baby from her stroller and ran into the woods before screaming adults could frighten the bear into dropping the infant, who died from the trauma. The incident, on Monday, left the community in shock -- and observers wondering what to make of this extraordinary event. Such killings are rare. Unlike the ferocious grizzlies, black bears are timid and generally avoid confrontations with people. This is the first time in anyone's memory that a black bear has killed a human in New York State. Just why it happened is a mystery. The young bear may have smelled a milk scent on the baby and thought it was a packet of food. Since black bears are largely vegetarians, experts doubt that the bear intended to eat a human. But that will be little solace to the child's family. The state's black bear population of 5,000 to 6,000 is concentrated in the Adirondacks, but the number of bears has been increasing steadily in the Catskills and along the southern-tier counties that border Pennsylvania. This year there have already been more than 170 complaints about bears in the southern Catskills region, up from 114 in all of 2001. The complaints, and this week's terrible tragedy, suggest that the bear population is getting too large in some populated areas. Hunters killed some 800 bears in New York last year and more than 1,000 the year before. But New Jersey does not allow bear hunting, and bears there often migrate north to the Catskills. New Jersey, whose bear population exceeds that of the Catskills, ought to reconsider hunting or other strategies to hold its bear population in check. New York should also re-examine its strategies for keeping the animals and people from bumping up against one another regularly. Virtually all experts say that the best way for humans to keep bears away is to keep food and garbage locked up. Problems arise chiefly when bears become dependent on food from bird feeders, dog dishes or garbage dumps and lose their fear of humans. An autopsy found that the bear that killed the baby had plastic, aluminum foil and fruit labels in its stomach, and the vacation colony had an open Dumpster nearby. There was no clear evidence that this particular bear had been foraging at the Dumpster, but it had found packaged food somewhere. | Killed by a Bear |
1413260_0 | A FRIEND is thinking of leaving her job in order to spend the next few years caring for her two young children. She has all but decided to do this, but is hesitating over one nagging concern. Not finances, although she certainly worries about that. Not the strain of being with two preschoolers all day long, although she frets about that too. ''I spent years building my résumé,'' she says. ''Now there'll be this empty space when the time comes to return to work.'' Résumés are weighty things -- a single sheet of paper that claims to convey the whole of your professional value. They become all the more intimidating in these unsteady times, and loom even larger for job seekers with gaps, years spent enjoying a buyout, or looking fruitlessly for a new position, or finding oneself in an ashram, or, most often, years spent caring for children at home. They are enough to make you doubt your own worth. ''I know my brain still works,'' says Edith Haynal, who has a degree in education from Harvard and was working for Unicef creating international education programs until she left to care for Gabor, who is nearly 3 and his brother, Miklos, 9 months. ''But my résumé now has a three-year gap with no explanation. How would it look if I specified 'full-time mom'? I know my employer and co-workers will not be interested in the type of experience I bring from being with my children full time,'' she said. Most experts basically agree. ''A résumé is not an alibi,'' says Steven Rothberg, president and founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, a Web site for job seekers. Job hunters shouldn't lie about spending some years at home with their children, he says, but they shouldn't call attention to it either. ''I've seen too many résumés,'' he says, ''where job seekers fill in that gap with a description that is similar to how nannies might describe their employment.'' Instead, he suggests, address the issue in your cover letter. Employers will naturally be interested, he says, ''if for no other reason than they need to know whether you spent the time in prison or had been fired and were unable to find a job because of what you did at your previous position.'' The exception to this rule, Mr. Rothberg says, is ''when you acquired skills during that period that would help the employer.'' Shannon | A Résumé From Beyond the Job Market |
1413600_18 | life both as a private individual and as a citizen.'' What Do Employers Want? Mimi Collins Spokeswoman, National Association of Colleges and Employers ''Employers very consistently cite good communication skills as important, both verbal and written. Honesty and integrity are second, teamwork skills are third, interpersonal skills fourth and strong work ethic fifth. Employers are looking for people who can work together, which is one reason communication is the top skill, year in and year out. They look for all the getting-along skills. ''One of the things that colleges do emphasize is helping students get internships where they can get some going-to-work skills, and that plays into what employers value.'' Thomas M. Thivierge Director of talent acquisition, General Motors ''We do look for ability to learn, because most students don't leave college with the ability to do the jobs initially. They need to show initiative, decision making, even though they may have not made a lot of decisions in their lives. Then we try to measure their results orientation. We want to get a sense of, if given a project, how do you get it done. Teamwork is very influential. This one is really abstract: we call it motivational fit. Are you tenacious? Can you overcome barriers? In large companies, that's important. Diversity comes into that: are you able to work in a diverse environment? There are some hard skills we look for, too. We're making CAD/CAM donations at the universities to make sure students use that technology. We found that students weren't using it enough. ''A lot of students go to college and don't know what they want to be when they grow up. What we're asking is for them to make a choice. Do I want to build products? Do I want to be in information technology? If you want to work in finance, you better be getting a degree in accounting. We don't hire generalists right at the start. Once you've developed that core functional expertise, we'll pay for you to get broadening education. But at first you've got to know what your focus area is.'' Sharman Mailloux Sosa Senior technical recruiter, Microsoft ''We look for students who are strategic thinkers, who can think about the bigger picture, think about long-term challenges. We want people who can jump into ambiguous problem spaces and still be very successful, who don't necessarily need to have a manual to assess | Tests Are Not Just for Kids |
1413364_14 | array themselves around us like points on a clock. Each of us lies quietly, waiting in vain for the viscous sweat lacquered on our flesh to evaporate. Sleep comes in fits and starts, not from fear of the new predators lurking in the jungle but from the old ones -- the cobras, the tigers, the sun bears, the pythons. By day, there was a ''Wild Kingdom''-like thrill upon discovering their scat, finding their paw prints or stepping over their squirming signatures on the trail. But by night, with every odd and startling sound, the iconic images resurface. Do these animals possess even so much as a mouthful of gratitude for all the good work we are doing on their behalf? Just as business has globalized, it was inevitable that environmentalism would, too. WildAid is only one example of the expansion of environmentalism along the same routes (both legal and illegal) that trade has followed. Strange bedfellows have found each other, forming alliances that please both the greens who want to protect habitats and the financiers who are eager to preserve stable markets. Some of these alliances have grown quite intimate. In 1999, Cambodia was one of the worst timber offenders, clear-cutting massive swaths of jungle to undersell abroad. That year, the big donors to Cambodia -- mainly the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank -- insisted that their roughly $1.5 billion in aid be linked to improvements in forest conservation. Part of the deal involved appointing an environmental group known as Global Witness to independently monitor for compliance. The relationship has been dicey. After Global Witness reported this spring that illegal logging was still clearing Cambodia's devastated forests, Eva Galabru, a senior staff member in Phnom Penh, stepped out of her office in June to have a car screech to a halt. Several masked men jumped out, beating and kicking her. They fled without touching her purse. The next day she received a one word e-mail message: QUIT. Cambodia's politics resembles Afghanistan's. Provincial warlords can be ruthless in their abuse of local power. On the other hand, outside groups or N.G.O.'s (nongovernmental organizations) quickly discover they can also wield national power. Because N.G.O.'s donate so much money to the federal government of Cambodia, the country has what one embassy official called ''an N.G.O. economy.'' I saw this up close when I returned to Phnom Penh. | Ecoman |
1413257_2 | at the stern, the black wooden camera platform mounted in the aft rigging. Other hints are less obvious. To give the film crews a little elbow room, the current Bounty is actually one-third larger than the original His Majesty's Armed Vessel Bounty, a 250-ton converted collier that left England in 1787 with a crew of 48 under the command of Lt. William Bligh, bound for Tahiti and the West Indies on what became the most notorious voyage in maritime history. Things went well enough for the original Bounty until it was time to leave Tahiti, where the crew had spent months gathering breadfruit trees to be cultivated in the Caribbean as a food crop. But Bligh's efforts to maintain 18th-century Royal Navy discipline were no match for the prospect of an arduous return voyage, a ship too small for the task, the lack of other officers on board and the attachments formed between crewmen and Tahitian women. The first mate, Fletcher Christian, led a mutiny. Bligh and 18 crewmen were put into the ship's longboat. Bligh and his castaways managed to reach Indonesia in a heroic feat of seamanship; he retired as an admiral. The mutineers returned to Tahiti, picked up their wives and some Tahitian men and settled on remote Pitcairn Island, where they hoped to elude British justice. Infighting among the Pitcairn colonists did most of the hangman's work; by the time they were discovered 18 years later, all but two of the mutineers were dead. This classic tale has been the subject of an estimated 2,500 books, five feature films, several television documentaries and a board game, all addressing the central question: who was right, the severe Bligh or the lovesick Christian? In the 1962 film that was shot on this ship, Trevor Howard's Bligh is arrogant and cruel while Marlon Brando's Christian is a reluctant mutineer acting only under extreme provocation. But a large contingent holds Bligh blameless. Mr. Hansen bought the Bounty from a group of businessmen in Fall River, Mass., two years ago. He wouldn't say how much he paid for the shipworm-riddled boat, but 18 months and $1.5 million later, the ship has a completely new hull below the waterline. Mr. Hansen estimated the Bounty's annual operating budget at $500,000. ''I like challenges,'' he said. The embodiment of his challenge was Lt. Kirsty Codel of the Coast Guard, who was waiting in Greenport | Long Island Has Its Own Tall Ship Again |
1413444_4 | to impose stricter registration of cafe users and recording of their online travels. Beyond blocking access via standard Chinese servers to hundreds, perhaps thousands of ''anti-social'' Web sites, the cyberpolice have also learned how to jam e-mail they deem threatening. In an continuing race of offensive and defensive technologies, dissident groups abroad were flooding the country with e-mailed newsletters, but these have been largely suppressed. The government has also started trying to block e-mailed news reports from the Voice of America, and popular chat rooms, some of which are forums for lively debate on current affairs, must maintain a full-time monitor who can filter out postings that enter vaguely defined forbidden zones. On the grand concourse of the World Wide Web, though, such measures hardly even serve as speed bumps. New site names are limitless, and those who really want to read the Dalai Lama's opinions can often use proxy servers or other methods to evade the official firewall. And the subtler, inherently subversive effects are too numerous to imagine. To take one dramatic example: when two passenger jets crashed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, the state media were at first silent. But a private Chinese user posted the dire news on a chat room run by People's Daily only 17 minutes after it was flashed in the West, said Guo Liang, a researcher on society and the Internet at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In this way, official news services and television are being forced into faster, more accurate reporting about world and national events. And even Chinese journalists, when their reports of corruption are killed by local censors, have sometimes posted their banned articles on the Web, insuring national exposure and public pressure for answers. For liberals like Mr. Liu, who formerly edited a magazine of political philosophy and whose writings have sometimes been banned, the Internet has meant low-cost access to reams of foreign news and research. And during his recently completed stint as a visiting scholar in American universities, the Internet allowed him to monitor the discourse back home in China. ''Most of all,'' he said, ''it has provided a space, although still limited in China, for free thinking and free virtual associating.'' Articles by Chinese scholars on politically touchy subjects may be impossible to publish through customary channels here, he said, but ''they are everywhere on the Internet.'' Taboo Surfing | The World; ... And Click Here For China |
1418608_3 | CARE, one of the largest private aid groups. ''I insist on being cautiously optimistic. But sometimes it gets harder.'' The recovery program was ambitious -- and that, aid officials and diplomats say, is one reason for the disappointment. Pledges for assistance typically outstrip what is delivered, aid officials note. The effort is aimed at three basic goals, each a major undertaking: providing emergency relief to millions of people; reconstructing the nation's devastated infrastructure; and building up the fragile central government. Aid officials, diplomats and government officials acknowledge that only the emergency programs have borne results visible to the Afghan people, and even these programs are beginning to feel the pinch. At least two main United Nations agencies, those that resettle refugees and feed the hungry, have had to scale back because of tens of millions of dollars in unmet pledges. Danger has also curtailed emergency aid programs, with banditry and simmering feuds between armed groups. The Afghan government has expressed appreciation for the emergency aid, but it has been arguing with increasing force that more needs to be done quickly, especially in development projects and financial support for the government. In a recent report to donor countries, Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official, suggested that Afghans needed to see more immediate benefits to maintain their support for the campaign against terrorism. ''There is a growing perception that reconstruction has not started, while the military campaign is ongoing,'' he wrote. Aid officials and diplomats say that money for the government and long-term projects like roads and electrification is coming in more slowly than they would like. Some contend that donor nations have been holding back because they fear a return to chaos. Others say that the immediate priority is to feed and shelter people. ''It's not much use having roads if everybody is dead who is going to use them,'' one Western diplomat said. Still others say that long-term projects, by definition, take more time. Julian Wilson, head of operations for the European Commission in Afghanistan, said it had rebuilt or financed 468 schools, 203 clinics and 3 hospitals -- part of the $140 million in projects already in place. An additional $120 million, he said, is in the works, most of it for improving rural infrastructure and building roads. ''You can see these projects on the ground, but don't expect you will have a major road to | Ready to Rebuild, Afghans Await Promised Aid |
1418660_0 | To the Editor: You report that President Bush wants to ease laws on logging (front page, Aug. 22). This must be viewed in the context of other environmental actions he has taken during his presidency. Since taking office, he has proposed reversing a prohibition on road-building in 58 million acres of national forest, revoked a provision requiring mining companies to clean mine-related pollution and revised regulations so that industrial waste may be dumped in streams. This latest plan is but another example of Mr. Bush's putting the short-term interests of big industry above the preservation of our natural heritage. If President Bush is truly committed to preventing further fires, he should address the global warming that is causing the severe drought conditions that predispose to fire. SAMANTHA AHDOOT Somerville, Mass., Aug. 22, 2002 | The Forest-Fire Excuse for More Logging |
1418561_1 | of health -- and it's rarely comforting. The details may differ but the general contour is strikingly familiar: something in our daily lives -- sunlight, cellphones, coffee, a commonly prescribed drug -- is implicated as a possible cause of cancer, strokes, heart attacks or other maladies. That is, until the following week, when a batch of new medical reports offers up completely contradictory advice about what is good -- or bad -- for us. As Gerald Grob, a historian of medicine at Rutgers University, puts it, ''Taking these clinical studies too seriously may be hazardous to your health.'' In the past few months alone, the medical profession and the public have been wringing their hands over several clinical conundrums once thought resolved. Take the debate over the value of mammograms in diagnosing early cases of breast cancer. And hormone replacement therapies for post-menopausal women probably do not reduce the risks of heart disease, as was believed only a few years ago. Much of the confusion stems from the fact that researchers in many of these cases cannot conduct controlled experiments on humans to prove definitively that harm results from exposure (or lack of exposure) to a given substance. Instead, clinicians rely on epidemiological surveys of a large population in which various aspects of people's lives, including the development of diseases, are followed in aggregate and then statistically analyzed. Most epidemiological surveys, including the vitamin D study, begin with a hypothesis. Researchers then gather loads of patient data and plug them into a computer in search of statistically significant associations between specific groups of people in the study and the incidence of a particular disease. But a critical point that is often drowned out by the doctors eager to see their studies published and the ensuing media hoopla is that mathematical correlations do not necessarily imply a cause-and-effect relationship. The gold standard in epidemiology is the randomized controlled clinical trial. In these studies, large numbers of people are assigned by chance to separate groups to compare different treatments or health conditions objectively. The participants must agree to be part of the study but cannot choose the group to which they are assigned. Neither the participants nor those conducting the study know which treatment is best until it has been completed and the data has been analyzed. Such trials ''are difficult to execute and expensive to complete,'' said Dr. Kenneth Shine, the | Ideas & Trends: Mixed Medical Messages; So What's a Responsible Sun Worshiper to Do? |
1418442_5 | to catch on in New York? According to Ms. Piesman at the attorney general's office, few marina owners in the state also own the land under the water, and most have only an easement to the property. It is easier, she said, to become a co-op marina, with a corporation owning or leasing a strip of land, obtaining an easement for use of the water and selling shares to use the docks. Even so, there are only about a dozen of those registered in the state. But even when they meet all the criteria to convert to dockominiums or a co-op, not all marina owners consider that a wise business decision. Johanna Giacobbe, who owns the Imperial Yacht Club in New Rochelle, a family-run business with close to 100 slips, said: ''We never wanted to convert because that would mean giving over control to someone else, to an association. For now, we're keeping things the way they are.'' Also, in at least one state, the concept of private ownership of an area on a body of water is illegal. In Wisconsin, state judges halted a proposed dockominium complex on the basis that is would block public access to the water. The Public Trust Doctrine, a legal principle dating to the Roman Empire, guarantees the public access to the water, holding that air, sea and shore belong not to any one person but to the public at large. Waterfront owners have a right to use the shoreline and access the water, and to build docks and piers as long as the structures do not impede navigation of the river or lake. MASSACHUSETTS outlawed the concept of dockominiums in 1990, but the state for now is allowing members-only marinas, where a boater pays a fixed amount to join a marina n return for a guaranteed spot to park his boat for 99 years. No ownership deeds are issued to members. Existing dockominiums have been grandfathered. The future of the dockominium market in New York is difficult to predict, Ms. Piesman said. Clearly, the ability to create new dockominiums will be limited somewhat by the requirement that the land under the water be owned by the individual or company selling the boat slips, she said. ''But anything can happen,'' she added. ''Judging by other creative developments we've seen, real estate can sometimes enter the realm of the surreal.'' In the Region | Westchester | In the Region/Westchester; The Pros and Cons of Owning a Piece of the Dock |
1418294_8 | bears, which delight in their calves, but it is also the aquatic equivalent of the Napoleonic square, about the worst possible way to elude men with guns. The rush for profits led to unchecked killing. Walrus blubber yielded oil, the ivory could be scrimshawed into ornament and the hide could be cut into products as varied as ship rigging or pads on the tips of pool cues. English seamen fell upon herds and shot the animals in the eyes with pea-shot, to blind them, and then swung axes at the flopping beasts to finish them off. Others targeted walruses at night at haul-out sites, forcing them inland with dogs until the exhausted animals could be dispatched at will. One 1861 account described the value of injuring a calf, because when the ''junger begins to utter his plaintive grunting bark'' it would attract adults. By late in the 19th century, the last thousands were restricted to isolated redoubts. Canada passed walrus-protection rules in 1928, and hunting since has almost entirely been limited to aboriginal takes. Conservation has had an uneven effect. In Foxe Basin, where the walrus population estimate is roughly 5,500, the stock appears stable, and a few hundred have been killed most years, providing sustenance and cultural continuity for the Inuit. ''There is no sign that there are any significant problems,'' says Michelle Wheatley, director of wildlife management for the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board. But Foxe Basin is one of a few Atlantic waterways where if you go looking for walruses, you actually find them. Throughout most of their historic range, herds have not returned. Cain stood beside Studwell's dead bull, waiting for his sons to gather the knives. To Cain, walruses have always meant the joy of plenty, and it is as natural to kill a few of them each year as it is to catch char that ascend rivers near his home. He was born in 1954, and he says he participated in his first hunt, with his father, in 1959. When an interpreter asked him in Inuktitut, his native tongue, how many he has killed, he waved a hand at the thought of counting. ''Quite a few walrus,'' he finally said. Since the moment Studwell fired his rifle, possession of the event, and the animal, had shifted to the Inuit elder. Now Cain watched his sons fall to chores. To ready a bull, the Inuit carve | A Big Game |
1416407_0 | To the Editor: Re ''What Causes Cancer: Can Science Find the Missing Link?'' (Week in Review, Aug. 11): Serious omissions were noted in the National Cancer Institute's study of possible environmental causes of breast cancer in Long Island women even before the study began, but the most critical was not addressing exposures to nuclear radiation. Long Island is home to the leaking Brookhaven Lab and downwind from nuclear power reactors in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Residents have been exposed to more than 200 radioactive chemicals emitted during routine operation, including strontium 90, cesium 137 and iodine 131, all demonstrated carcinogens. Many studies have linked nuclear releases with cancer and have shown synergism with chemicals in fine particles like cigarette smoke and diesel exhaust, which have been found to increase the risk of cancer. Radioactive isotopes are easily measured in tissues and the environment, but this research tool was dismissed for the study. JANETTE D. SHERMAN, M.D. Alexandria, Va., Aug. 14, 2002 The writer is an internist and toxicologist. | Breast Cancer Study |
1414720_1 | Bridgestone would probably have to scrap the Firestone brand and spend years slowly building a new identity in the United States. The company did neither. Instead, it reorganized its American operations, retaining Firestone as a mass-market brand but putting greater emphasis on Bridgestone as a premium brand. And as its contracts with Ford expire unrenewed this year, Bridgestone is shifting away from sales to carmakers and concentrating on the consumer market, where it can make more on each sale. (Carmakers typically pay about half the retail price for the tires they buy.) Mr. Gorey said today that Bridgestone's gross margins on American tire sales had jumped by 7 percent, a figure he called ''unbelievably large'' in the tire market, where margins are generally thin. Sales in America recovered somewhat in the first half of 2002 from the depressed levels of 2001, and the company now expects full-year revenues of $7.6 billion and profits of $50 million in the United States, it said today. Mr. Gorey gave credit for the rebound to Bridgestone's dealers and distributors, who praised the company for its candor and vigor in dealing with the Firestone crisis. ''They handled everything as professionally as any company that I've ever seen,'' said Richard P. Johnson, president of American Tire Distributors in Huntersville, N.C. American Tire supplies retail dealers through 62 wholesale outlets and sells about 1.7 million Bridgestone and Firestone tires a year. When the problems with the Firestone tires arose, ''they said, 'We'll take care of it, and we'll take care of you,' '' Mr. Johnson said of Bridgestone. The rebound in the United States was, in turn, crucial to Bridgestone's improved results worldwide, executives said. Bridgestone is dominant in its home market, making two out of every five tires sold in Japan, but growth there has been flattened by the country's extended economic weakness. The company depends on the United States for 40 percent of its sales; it reported a small net loss there of $14 million for the first half, but nothing like the huge recall-related setbacks of past years, so the company as a whole earned 24.5 billion yen ($203 million) in the period ended June 30. With its Ford business falling away, Bridgestone shut a plant in Decatur, Ill., and set a goal of reducing its reliance on sales to carmakers, which accounted for 40 percent of its business before the Firestone recall, to | A Return to Profitability; Big Recall Behind It, Tire Maker Regains Its Footing |
1414776_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Did You Get the Check I Sent?'' (editorial, Aug. 6), about the explosive growth of spam e-mail on the Internet: There's a more serious downside looming that the Net marketeers and junk e-mailers have not yet considered. Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems once mentioned that the beauty of e-mail is that it's asynchronous communication. It occupies a natural place in the communications world right between a letter and a phone call. My 148 unread messages (all spam) are causing me -- and I suppose others -- to lessen e-mail's priority and impact. DOUG GARR New York, Aug. 6, 2002 | Don't Bug Me: When E-Mail Is Junk Mail |
1414778_0 | To the Editor: The costs of spam (editorial, Aug. 6) go far beyond the ''twinge of disappointment'' you feel after realizing you've been had. Spam costs Internet users 10 billion euros a year in increased connection fees, according to a 2001 European Union study. It also costs businesses in lost productivity, and becomes more than a nuisance when important messages get lost amid mountains of junk. We can counter spam by not responding to its dubious offers. If you respond to spam, you encourage spammers to continue harassing others. Spammers pollute our electronic environment and waste its limited resources; let them face the same ostracism as ''traditional'' polluters. ILYA SHLYAKHTER West Roxbury, Mass., Aug. 6, 2002 | Don't Bug Me: When E-Mail Is Junk Mail |
1414797_0 | Mexico's economic minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, said the government would impose a 40 percent tariff on fresh apples imported from the United States because American growers were selling the fruit at unfairly low prices, hurting Mexican growers. Consuming $118 million worth a year, Mexico accounts for about 30 percent of American exports of fresh apples. Mr. Derbez also said that he would ask Congress to pass a law that would give President Vicente Fox a kind of fast-track authority to impose antidumping duties on other products. Ginger Thompson (NYT) | World Business Briefing | Americas: Mexico: Apple Dumping Duties |
1414788_0 | The government has issued a warning to airlines to watch for people in stolen uniforms who might try to gain access to airplanes, an aviation expert confirmed tonight. The warning came after aviation authorities received a series of reports about theft of uniforms and identification cards in recent months. The government warning, which was issued two weeks ago, was first reported in Saturday's Washington Post. Capt. Stephen Luckey, the head of security for the Air Line Pilots Association, said the warning was an advisory, ''kind of a casual thing, to be aware.'' ''People have been stealing from rooms forever,'' he said, but in the past, what was taken was mostly electronic gear or other small valuables, not uniforms. Now, he said, flight bags carried by pilots, baggage and other items had been stolen. He added that cockpit crews and flight attendants had reported being ''shadowed'' in Frankfurt, London and Amsterdam. The crews said they had been followed by ''Middle Eastern males, 21-30,'' he said, but that he and others were not certain how much surveillance had taken place and how much was ''just paranoia.'' He said he would like to have countersurveillance put in place, to see who might be watching the crews. | Airlines Told to Watch for Uniformed Intruders |
1417748_0 | Standing next to mangled pieces of steel from the World Trade Center, federal officials announced that they were beginning a two-year, $23 million investigation into how and why the twin towers and a third skyscraper collapsed in raging fires on Sept. 11. The announcement is the first clear sign that the Bush administration intends to put substantial financing behind its response to criticisms of a previous study. Article, Page B3. | New U.S. Inquiry Set On Towers' Collapse |
1419194_1 | and the government denied that such a plan was in the works. But the vigorous debate focused new attention to the scale of prostitution in Iran's capital and the government's eagerness to find a solution. Before the Islamic revolution of 1979, prostitutes were confined to separate neighborhoods. The one in Tehran was known as Shahr-e-no. But the new religious government demolished the area, and prostitution became punishable by lashing. More than two decades later, prostitutes can be found throughout the country. According to official figures, about 300,000 work on the streets of the capital, which has a population of 12 million. Newspapers reported this month that nearly a dozen brothels had been shut down around the country. One of the few religious leaders to speak out in favor of ''chastity houses'' is Ayatollah Muhammad Moussavi Bojnourdi. ''I would not have supported chastity houses had it not been for the urgency of the situation in our society,'' he was quoted as saying in the newspaper Etemad. ''If we want to be realistic and clear the city of such women, we must use the path that Islam offers us.'' In fact, the notion of such places is borrowed from the practice of temporary marriage, or sigheh, which is permitted in the Shiite branch of Islam, which predominates in Iran. Such marriages, which can last for a few minutes or 99 years, are especially recommended for widows who need financial support. The practice allows a couple to marry for an agreed-on period of time by reciting a verse from the Koran. The oral contract does not need to be registered, and the verse can be read by anyone. Women normally receive money for entering the contract. Temporary marriage has been publicly approved since early 1990's by Iranian officials, particularly Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was president then, as a way to channel young people's sexual urges under the strict sexual segregation of the Islamic republic. But women's rights advocates object to the concept of ''chastity houses.'' ''The plan puts prostitutes and young people together as though they were in the same category,'' said Fatimeh Rakei, a member of Parliament's Commission for Women, who denounced the plan. ''Temporary marriage should be used only for certain cases. It should not be promoted as a way to resolve such social problems'' as prostitution. Still, several recent incidents have forced the authorities to admit that their policies in dealing | To Regulate Prostitution, Iran Ponders Brothels |
1419185_2 | fiscal year -- generally involve properties that are not historic, but the commission reviews them all to evaluate the visual impact. In addition to the windmill, some of the more unusual projects that have been approved include the flagpole at Bridgeport's Beardsley Zoo (listed on the National Register of Historic Places) and a grain silo in Salem, said Susan Chandler, the commission's historical architect. More than a dozen steeple projects have come before the commission. When considering these proposals, the historical integrity of the steeple often does not come into play. ''The reason is that we're not talking about the original steeples on many of these churches,'' Ms. Chandler explained. ''Many steeples were lost in the hurricane of 1955, so they've already been altered.'' In the case of the First Church of Christ in Unionville, she noted, the reconstruction of a spire that was torn down decades ago ''enhanced the building and contributed to its quality and character as a community landmark'' Verizon Wireless used stealthing to rebuild the spire in Unionville, which is part of Farmington. Many common materials, like wood and stone, interfere with the quality of the radio signals. Stealthing generally involves using a fiberglass material that does not degrade a signal and can be molded to replicate a structure's original exterior. Stealthing is not necessarily cheaper than building a tower. According to Mr. Nolan, the stealthing of church steeples to accommodate antennas can cost as much as $500,000, nearly three times the cost of a new tower. The windmill project involves re-covering the crown of the tower with shingles molded to resemble the original wood shingles. Sprint will install the three antennas inside the crown, just below the whirling outside blades. All support equipment will be in an underground vault connected to the windmill's basement. Work is scheduled to begin in early September, and the company hopes to have the antennas operating by the end of the year. Sprint has put antennas in or on more than a dozen historic structures across New England, including a smokestack on a mill site in Massachusetts, according to Adrian Paul, spokesman for Sprint New England. The company much prefers to install antennas on existing structures, he said. Constructing a tower these days is ''a last resort.'' He added, ''All it takes is one unhappy neighbor, and the project can go into litigation for years.'' Commercial Real Estate | Connecticut | COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE: REGIONAL MARKET -- Connecticut; New England Icons Are Serving a Hidden Purpose |
1414450_0 | THE ART OF TRAVEL By Alain de Botton 255 pages. Pantheon Books. $23. With his quirky 1997 book ''How Proust Can Change Your Life,'' Alain de Botton hit upon a formula for talking about art and highbrow concerns in a deliberately lowbrow way: the book playfully proposed to read Proust's great masterwork ''Remembrance of Things Past'' as a self-help book, as a guide to better living. Mr. de Botton's book, which blithely mixed biography and philosophy with literary criticism and Seinfeldian asides, possessed a certain genial charm that sprang from his decidedly tongue-in-cheek tone. He would expand upon that formula three years later with ''The Consolations of Philosophy,'' which sought to find helpful hints on coping in the works of wise men like Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Socrates and Seneca. The book was later turned into a television show in England, where the author became known as Dr. Love for his philosophic advice to the lovelorn. Now, in ''The Art of Travel,'' Mr. de Botton proposes to look at our penchant for traveling as a key to understanding ''what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or 'human flourishing.' '' Though the book is filled with interesting tidbits about famous travelers from the past, its appeal is entirely secondhand: a glib recycling of others' thoughts and observations, tied together by gross generalizations, cloying and not-very-funny commentary and the author's own tiresome accounts of vacations he has taken himself. For readers sick of modern-day tourism and interested in the lost art of travel, Paul Fussell's 1980 book ''Abroad'' offers considerably more in the way of history and genuine insight. Why do people travel? Mr. de Botton comes up with the predictable -- and obvious -- answers. To escape the rut of boredom at home, to indulge their curiosity about distant lands and peoples, to visit faraway places that resonate with their own temperamental or aesthetic tastes. City dwellers sometimes journey to the country to enjoy the restorative and soothing powers of nature, just as Wordsworth advised, while other travelers seek awe-inspiring vistas that might give them intimations of the sublime. As a young man, Flaubert traveled to Egypt, the locus of his boyhood dreams of the exotic and the answer, in his mind, to all the stuffy, bourgeois mores that he detested in France. He reveled in the ''visual and auditory'' chaos of the Egyptian streets, Mr. de Botton writes, ''because of his belief | Examining Why People Go From Here to There |
1413012_0 | Msgr. James M. Ryan, a Roman Catholic missionary from Chicago who was one of the central figures of religious and civic life in the Amazon for more than half a century, died in Chicago on July 12. He was 89 and had lived in Santarém, Brazil, since 1943. The cause of death was cancer, according to church leaders. As the bishop of Santarém for more than 25 years, Bishop Ryan administered the largest diocese in the world, a harsh jungle domain that, at more than 125,000 square miles, was larger than many European countries. Known popularly throughout the Amazon as Dom Tiago, he oversaw the building of clinics, schools, churches and a radio station in a part of Brazil that was often neglected by the central government 2,000 miles away. ''In 60 years as a pioneer, he acted with passion and made those who heard his voice and witnessed his commitment also feel a passion for the region,'' recalled Lucio Flávio Pinto, a native of Santarém who is editor of Amazon Agenda, the leading newsletter in the area. ''In that missionary effort, he gave the maximum of himself and respected positions that diverged from his.'' James Ryan was born in an Irish neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago on Nov. 17, 1912. He was ordained a priest in 1938 and initially taught English, speech and drama at a Roman Catholic seminary in Illinois. But in 1943, he and three other Franciscan friars from the Middle West volunteered to go to Brazil. ''We had no idea where Santarém was,'' he said in an interview last year, ''but it was wartime, we wanted to do something, and it all seemed like a grand adventure.'' At first, he was assigned to Fordlandia, a plantation operated by the Ford Motor Company on the banks of the Tapajós River to supply rubber to the war effort. When the rubber project closed down at the end of World War II, he was asked to stay on by ecclesiastical authorities, who were chronically short of priests willing to minister in the Amazon's exhausting environment. For more than a decade afterward, he preached and provided the sacraments to Catholics at dozens of remote chapels and churches scattered around the region, often traveling by small motorboat or even canoe. Unusually tall, at 6 foot 4, and with a strong American accent to his Portuguese that he never lost, | No Headline |
1413051_3 | worldwide. The administration skirted the Congressional ban that bars contributions to the Indonesian military from the State Department's foreign operations budget by taking the money from a Pentagon account instead. There is growing support on Capitol Hill for broader aid. Last month the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $400,000 for Indonesian military training for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, lifting a previous provision that had limited such funds to civilian training. Congress is expected to approve that as part of the appropriations process this fall, while keeping in place a ban on arms sales. Indonesian officials have complained that the curbs on American military assistance have hurt their ability to combat terrorism in a nation of 17,000 islands. State Department officials emphasized that the bulk of the $50 million, about $47 million, would go to train Indonesia's fledgling national police force. The officials said that more direct aid to the Indonesian military would require action by the Indonesian government to hold accountable the officers responsible for violence in East Timor and elsewhere. The United Nations has estimated that more than 1,000 people died at the hands of pro-Jakarta militias, backed by the Indonesian military, around the 1999 independence vote in East Timor. The Indonesian Army remains the most powerful national institution as the country weathers the turbulent transition to democracy that began in 1998, and its officers also finance their operations through ownership of businesses, from commercial real estate to a domestic airline. After a meeting with senior Indonesian military and security officials, Secretary Powell said he had raised some specific cases, though he declined to give details. Another senior official said, ''We made it clear that results on that path were what was going to matter in terms of how far we would be able to move.'' But Secretary Powell said that after a somewhat shaky start in the wake of Sept. 11, the administration was ''very satisfied and pleased with what Indonesia has been doing,'' to fight militant groups, though he added, ''We think more can be done.'' President Megawati's government has moved cautiously against these groups for fear of alienating the country's overwhelmingly Muslim population before elections in 2004. Malaysia and Singapore have accused Indonesia of allowing Abu Bakar Basyir, the leader of a group with links to Al Qaeda, to roam free. The government maintains there is no evidence that he has committed any crime. | U.S. to Resume Aid to Train Indonesia's Military Forces |
1419876_0 | The search for environmental causes for a supposed breast cancer epidemic on Long Island is beginning to look like a wild goose chase. The cornerstone study in a $30 million federal effort to unravel the contentious issue reported this month that it could find no link between breast cancer and the prime environmental suspects, such as DDT and PCB's. It identified only a modest link, possibly due to chance, to pollutants in car exhaust and cigarette smoke. More results are still to be published, and breast cancer activists are calling for yet more investigations into a wider array of chemicals. But the negative findings suggest it is time to rein in this fruitless quest. There may simply be no significant environmental cause of breast cancer on Long Island, or if there is, it may be undetectable. The large-scale study was pushed by advocates for breast cancer research and was mandated in 1993 by politicians eager to be responsive. Both groups dismissed as superficial an analysis by the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that attributed breast cancer rates on Long Island to heredity and other known risk factors. Now the study the activists demanded is coming up blank on environmental causes and is simply reaffirming many of the established risk factors, such as a family history of breast cancer, having a first child at a late age, never giving birth or doing little or no breast-feeding. Meanwhile the presumed breast cancer epidemic on Long Island, with incidence rates supposedly 30 percent above the national average, has faded into the realm of myth. As Gina Kolata pointed out in The Times on Thursday, the rates on Long Island are only slightly higher than the national average and are typical for the Northeast. | Breast Cancer Mythology on Long Island |
1419928_0 | The government has denied a visa to a Slovak Roman Catholic priest, Catholic officials said, in the latest sign of tensions with the Vatican over the church's activities in Russia. The priest, the Rev. Stanislav Krajniak, had worked in a parish in Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow, for a year before his visa expired this month. In April Russia stripped visas from two other Catholic clergymen. The Russian Orthodox Church has been increasingly critical of the Catholic Church, accusing it of proselytizing among the Orthodox. Steven Lee Myers (NYT) | World Briefing | Europe: Russia: No Visa For Catholic Priest |
1419857_4 | ways to protect the lake. The proposal, described by the water authority as ''a monumental step forward,'' has not yet been approved, but it appeared to address the main complaints that have been raised by Imperial Valley farmers and environmental organizations. But it is the Mojave deal, pressed forward by Keith Brackpool, Cadiz's chief executive and a confidant of California's governor, Gray Davis, a Democrat, that has aroused more controversy. One reason is that it would involve heavy reliance on Cadiz, which owns the land above the aquifer, an area the size of Rhode Island in eastern San Bernardino County, but has never turned a profit. The water district would pay the company for each acre foot of water pumped from the aquifer, and with its customers would bear a substantial burden of the initial $150 million in construction costs to link the aquifer to an aqueduct more than 30 miles away. Another reason for controversy is uncertainty about how much so-called native water the aquifer might produce. The water district has said it will not withdraw more than can be naturally recharged, and while estimates have varied widely, some scientists have said the natural recharge rate may be so slow as to render the aquifer all but useless as anything more than a storage site for any excess Colorado River water, which is likely to become increasingly scarce. A third reason is concern about the effect on the desert, where activists led by Elden Hughes, chairman of the California Desert Committee at the Sierra Club, are warning of environmental disaster. Mr. Hughes and others have said that any drawing down of the aquifer could leave bighorn sheep without water, contribute to monumental dust storms and harm the California desert tortoise, a federally protected species. ''The project is a bad project, and it will scar the land and take centuries to heal,'' Mr. Hughes said in a telephone interview today. ''They say that the monitoring and management plan will answer all the concerns, and it doesn't.'' The Interior Department's review of the project, on environmental grounds, was necessary because the connection between the water district's aqueduct and the existing aquifer would cross federal land. In rejecting the environmental challenges, it cited decisions like one issued in April by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which said that the project ''is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence'' of the desert tortoise. | U.S. Approves Water Plan in California, but Environmental Opposition Remains |
1360057_3 | to the obelisk, the people of Aksum maintain that history needs reversing. In the latest flare-up of the saga, Vittorio Sgarbi, Italy's deputy minister for cultural heritages, announced recently that he would resign if the obelisk were returned. In remarks that prompted rage in Aksum, and in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, Mr. Sgarbi said last month that ''Italy cannot give its consent for a monument well kept and restored to be taken to a war zone, and leave it there with the risk of having it destroyed.'' He was referring to the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which for some years has given the Italians pause. Askum lies in Ethiopia's northern highlands, near Eritrea. Mr. Sgarbi suggested instead that Italy send engineers to Ethiopia to repair some of Aksum's fallen obelisks. The Ethiopians scoff at the notion that they cannot keep the obelisk safe. True, the biggest obelisk of them all did collapse long ago when it was being built. The obelisk now in Rome had also probably fallen over before the Italian soldiers arrived. But the people of Aksum say the obelisk is a treasure to them and ought to be returned. ''Our border disputes are none of their business,'' said Fisseha Zibelo, the culture minister of Aksum. ''We have been guarding the stelae for the last 3,000 years. We know how to take care of them. It's safest if it is right here at home.'' If it ever does return, the obelisk would be placed in the burial ground where it used to stand, in between the collapsed giant stele and another that veers slightly off center. All around would be smaller uncarved steles. Last year, Mr. Zibelo helped organize a petition drive to call for the return of the stele. He even visited Rome to get a glimpse of the obelisk. ''I was thinking, it's not supposed to be there,'' he said. ''It doesn't belong to them. I wanted to bring it back with me.'' Meanwhile, the people of Aksum wait, with hope. Negasi Tsehaye, a young merchant, predicts that tourists will follow the obelisk to Ethiopia. ''I'm sitting here in my shop waiting, just like my father waited,'' he said. ''We know that if the obelisk comes, customers will come.'' Mr. Aemayehu said that Italy's occupation of Ethiopia lasted only five years but that it would not really end until the stele came home. ''We | Looted Obelisk Casts a Long Shadow |
1360033_0 | Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said today that the administration would meet a Friday deadline for improved security for checked baggage. But one of his deputies said the new system could cause problems as airlines put into place the process of matching bags with passengers. Speaking of the potential for disruption, the senior transportation department official, who spoke on condition that he not be more specifically identified, said: ''There will be places where it works better than others. We'll just have to see how the new security is deployed, but we're hopeful it will be deployed efficiently and effectively.'' He said he did not know which places would be most likely to have problems. To meet the Friday deadline set by the aviation security law enacted 60 days ago, airlines will rely heavily on what they call ''bag matching,'' which is meant to assure that no bag is loaded onto a plane unless the owner is aboard. But for now, the matching is limited to the beginning of trips, so that if a passenger is booked to change planes, the passenger could skip the second leg and the bag could go on alone. The decision to limit matching to the beginning of a trip was a concession to the airlines, which feared that their flight hubs could grind to a halt. At the Air Transport Association, the trade group of the big airlines, Michael Wascom, a spokesman, said that ''we're hopeful and even cautiously optimistic'' about avoiding widespread delays. But some people in the industry were not satisfied. Pat Friend, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, referred to bombing of the Pan Am jet en route from London to New York that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. ''That was a bag loaded on a connection from Frankfurt,'' Ms. Friend pointed out. The new law requires that some bags be put through the explosive detection machines, some be searched by hand and some sniffed by dogs. But each method, besides bag matching, can handle only a small portion of the one billion bags checked annually. Mr. Mineta and other officials stressed that the deadline on Friday was merely a milestone and that more important milestones lay ahead, notably one that will require that by Dec. 31, each bag will have to be scanned by a machine that detects explosives. Soon after the law was enacted, Mr. Mineta publicly | Optimism on Meeting a Baggage Deadline |
1360090_1 | since the Sept. 11 terror attacks just across the Hudson River. City officials said a malfunction in the crane's computerized operating system about 8:30 a.m. caused the arm of the crane to lean backward, away from the incomplete building's steel framework, where the base is anchored. The lower part of the crane was pulled about 18 inches from the building but did not break free, officials said. No one was injured. The Jersey City Police cordoned off a 1,000-foot-wide circle around the crane, and closed off a four-block stretch of Washington Boulevard, the waterfront's main thoroughfare. Hotel guests were allowed back in by mid-afternoon, Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham said. The crane had not been stabilized by late tonight, the mayor said, and about 800 residents in 257 apartments at Avalon Cove had to stay in hotels or emergency shelters set up at local schools. The crane is owned by Morrow Equipment Company, based in Salem, Ore. Engineers came to the work site from the company's office in Charlotte, N.C., to direct work on stabilizing the crane. Two other cranes on or near the site will be used to help stabilize the weakened one, which will be dismantled, city officials said. Officials of Morrow, as well as of Newport's developer, the Lefrak Organization, based in Queens, did not return calls seeking comment. Gwyneth Cote, regional vice president for Avalon Bay Communities, the developer of the apartment complex, said that if the crane caused any damage, the liability would be Lefrak's. In the parking lot at Avalon Cove, there was confusion as darkness fell. Some residents were escorted into the building by firefighters or the police to retrieve belongings for the night, while some entered unescorted, and others were unsure what to do. A reception center for displaced residents had been set up in another apartment building, the Tower at Avalon Cove, where management officials directed residents to local hotels. One of those residents, Mariann Douggan, 43, was waiting in the Tower lobby. She said she had left early from her job as a human resources manager at a bank in Lower Manhattan in order to fetch her cairn terrier, Toto. Ms. Douggan, who was escorted to her apartment by a firefighter, said she got a room at the new Candlewood Suites hotel a block south of Avalon Cove. Ms. Douggan said she had renters' insurance. ''But crane insurance?'' she added. ''No.'' | Jersey City Apartments Evacuated When Crane Malfunctions |
1360085_1 | by a fuel-laden jetliner would be at risk of catastrophic failure, engineers and fire safety experts say it is still crucial to determine which structures snapped, buckled or otherwise failed and in what order -- all information that could help improve safety in skyscrapers nationwide. Lingering questions about whether the twin towers had any hidden vulnerabilities could also be answered. The precise scale of the new effort has not yet been determined, but officials involved in the discussions said the intent would be to create a federal entity like the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates plane crashes. With the bombing in Oklahoma City and the attack on the World Trade Center, the federal government may indefinitely need to be spending more time examining issues like blast damage, the need to evacuate entire office buildings instead of a few floors, and the combined impact of structural damage and large fires, safety experts and government officials said. Andy Davis, communications director for Senator Ernest F. Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat whose oversight responsibilities include financing for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said officials at the institute had indicated in discussions on Capitol Hill that the work could cost $10 million to $12 million a year. A spokesman for the institute, Michael E. Newman, confirmed that his group was ''taking all steps to prepare to conduct an investigation into the technical, causal factors that led to the World Trade Center collapse.'' The move by the institute to enter the investigation comes as the group of engineers involved in the initial, FEMA-backed inquiry, says that it almost certainly will not be able to explain the structural failures inside the building that led to the fiery collapse. Their more modest goal is to describe data that has been collected and then to list theories of why the buildings collapsed and make recommendations for future research. ''Considering the enormity of the information that needs to be digested now and analyzed, they're not likely to be able to have consensus on the sequence of collapse events,'' said John E. Durrant, a team spokesman at the American Society of Civil Engineers, which is working with FEMA in the study. As to the twin towers, the team is currently considering at least three scenarios, or theories, of what may have taken place in the moments before and during their collapse: that the initial impact was so | U.S. Agency To Take Over Investigation Into Collapse |
1359979_0 | American high-fructose corn syrup has met its death in the Mexican soft drink industry, at least for now. It is survived by its main competitor, Mexican cane sugar. Though corn syrup is much less expensive than sugar on the open market, it is seen here as the main culprit in the decay of Mexico's sugar industry. So on Jan. 1, the Mexican Congress passed a 20 percent tax on soft drinks made with corn syrup. Bottlers began using sugar only, depleting their syrup inventories and canceling orders for more. Nearly all corn syrup used in Mexico -- most of it in soft drinks -- is imported from the United States or made by American ventures in Mexico, a market that accounts for about 4 percent of all United States corn syrup production. Last year, the two largest suppliers -- the Archer Daniels Midland Company and Corn Products International Inc. -- sold a total of 475,000 metric tons of syrup, worth $240 million, to Mexican bottlers. Both had recently invested millions of dollars in plant acquisitions or expansions in Mexico, one of the world's largest soft drink markets. Both companies are dealing with the shock of losing an important market. Corn Products has closed one of its four Mexican plants and canceled plans for a $100 million investment in Mexico this year. ''It's a market we've had for a number of years, and a market temporarily taken away,'' said Larry Cunningham, the spokesman for Archer Daniels Midland. The tax is the latest development in a trade dispute that began more than four years ago. According to Mexico, the United States has reneged on a promise to import Mexico's sugar surplus -- now a 600-ton glut. In 1998, it imposed big antidumping tariffs on imports of American corn syrup, saying such imports were undermining Mexico's sugar market. American trade officials say a so-called side letter to the North American Free Trade Agreement -- an addition Mexico does not recognize -- limits Mexico's export quota to 148,000 metric tons. Mexico, meanwhile, continues to impose the corn syrup tariff, even though the World Trade Organization has ruled it illegal. In December, top trade representatives met and the United States promised it would not retaliate if Mexico agreed to work to solve the dispute. Officials left the meeting in high spirits. Three weeks later, Mexico's Congress unexpectedly entered the fray and destroyed the promise of | U.S. and Mexico Battle Over Sweetening Drinks |
1362252_0 | Continuing a decade-long trend, Russia's population fell by 781,500 people from January through November of last year to a total of 144 million, the government said. Demographers say that the nation could lose another 10 million people in the next 15 years and that the population could fall to 125 million or less by mid-century. A very low birthrate and low male life expectancy are major factors in the decline, which has been partly offset by immigration. Russia's population has dropped by 4.7 million people since it peaked in 1992. Michael Wines (NYT) | World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Population Continues To Shrink |
1362165_1 | is considering blocking $34 million allotted by Congress to the United Nations Population Fund because of allegations that the fund has supported forced abortions and sterilizations in China. The money should be released. The allegations are baseless, and the work of the U.N. fund in crucial areas of women's health around the globe deserves full American support. Family planning aid overseas has long been a source of domestic political controversy. President Reagan and the first President Bush barred American government support for organizations abroad that counseled women regarding abortions. President Clinton overturned that policy; George W. Bush reinstated it but said he remained committed to financing family planning. The U.N. Population Fund, known by the acronym Unfpa, is the world's biggest agency focused on women's reproductive health. Throughout the third world it fights AIDS, provides sterile delivery kits in rural areas, offers guidance on birth control and helps nations develop policies promoting the equality and well-being of girls and women. In his own foreign aid budget, President Bush asked for $25 million for Unfpa. Congress increased the sum to $34 million. That amounts to some 12 or 13 percent of the fund's annual budget and would go a long way to helping pay for services for women in, among other places, Afghanistan. But Representative Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican who is fiercely opposed to abortion, and a number of conservative groups have urged the White House to withhold the money. They say that in China, where forced abortions and sterilizations continue, the agency effectively supports those practices through its cooperation with Chinese officials. Officials of the Population Fund acknowledge that abuses in China go on despite a Chinese effort to end coercive practices but say they have been successfully helping local and national Chinese authorities move toward voluntary policies. A new Chinese law includes language protecting women's rights and forbidding coercion. Mr. Smith says he has heard such assurances from the Unfpa for 20 years and cannot take them seriously. But even if more needs to be done to end coercion in China, taking money away from the U.N. fund is not the way to make that happen. Senators from both parties and State Department officials have all told this to the White House. It is up to President Bush to show that he will not deprive women around the world of necessary aid because of politics at home. | Birth Control Politics |
1356467_6 | a cluster of smaller jars with similar decorations, minus the red. The Greek Challenge A travel advisory: Keep in mind that the Met's galleries of Greek art amount to a museum-within-a-museum, one of several at the Met, and it can devastate your schedule. The entire history of two-dimensional art seems to have been rehearsed on the surfaces of Attic pottery between 800 and 400 B.C. Geometric form and pattern were put through their paces, and what we consider modern drawing was explored, including caricature and cartooning. Fifth- and fourth-century B.C. vase painters all but plotted one-point perspective. After leaving the Egyptian Galleries, cross the Great Hall and take the first right just inside the Robert and Renée Belfer Court; start with a little Cycladic box in crudely textured terra cotta. Then make the exhilarating round of the west and east portions of the court, past the Minoan ceramics, where patterns based on nature -- waves, plants, nautiluses -- prevail. An especially striking Minoan three-handled vase, animated by interlocking S-curves that circle its girth like fast-moving seas, was once owned by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. But nature soon gives way to culture. By the second corner of this gallery, in the vitrines devoted to Helladic (Mycenaean) and Geometric style ceramics, fluidly drawn images -- mostly silhouettes -- of shield-bearing warriors, chariots and horses are being marshaled into careful rows on increasingly monumental kraters. On the second loop, in the vitrines of Etruscan, Euboean, Boeotian and Corinthian pots, nature often returns, but in the form of stylized lions and oxen. Amid such depictions the relaxed, almost painterly blankness of the seventh- and sixth-century B.C. Lydian vases, located in the last vitrine, stands out. On a big jug (oinochoe) terra cotta shows through casually brushed-on black slip; a two-handled drinking cup (skyphos) has an interior of wavy, brushed-on patterns unlike anything else here. Pre-Columbian Treasures The next stop is the western edge of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. There you'll find two large spaces ringed with vitrines of Pre-Columbian ceramics, beginning with examples of Olmec pottery from 1200-900 B.C., which are among the plainest and most beautifully shaped in the museum. But as in the Greek galleries, drawing wins out, reaching one zenith in a large cylindrical vase with a white surface and incised red lines that depict an imperious seated lord. Other | THE MATERIAL WORLD/Ceramics at the Met; Over Time And Space, The Power Of the Pot |
1363697_0 | A CELLPHONE is more than a few chips and a battery. Those things do lurk under the keypad, but most of a phone's insides are taken up by filters, duplexers and resonators -- passive components that sort radio frequencies so that you get your calls and not someone else's. Made from non-silicon materials -- ceramics, in some cases -- these components present a major obstacle to further shrinking of cellphones. Some researchers and manufacturers want to replace these passive components with tiny machines called microelectro mechanical systems, or MEMS. By making components using a variation on the technology that creates microchips, MEMS proponents say they can reduce common annoyances like dropped calls while creating the potential for phones so tiny that they could look like something else. ''In theory, it's possible that wireless phones could become a ring that you put on your finger,'' said Clark T.-C. Nguyen, an associate professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. One of the main functions of passive components in wireless phones is to filter out all radio frequencies -- including broadcast radio and television signals -- that are outside the band assigned to its system. Then additional filters isolate the specific part of the phone system's frequency band, or channel assigned to carry a user's conversation. Regular cellphone users know that that does not always happen. Noise or bursts of someone else's conversation are usually signs of a filtering failure. Currently the frequencies are sorted with surface acoustic wave devices, or SAW's. When it is hit by a specific radio frequency, a SAW will vibrate, as Dr. Nguyen put it, like waves on water do. ''Their performance is not great, but it's better than doing the job with integrated circuits,'' he said. By contrast, a MEMS device has a tiny internal element that is tuned to vibrate in response to a very specific frequency. ''It's just like a guitar string that vibrates only at a certain tone,'' Dr. Nguyen said. To measure the selectivity of filters, designers of wireless phones use a rating they call ''quality factor,'' or Q. The higher a filter's Q, the greater its selectivity in isolating frequencies. Integrated circuit filters have a Q of about 20, Dr. Nguyen said, compared with SAW devices, in which the Q rises to 2,000. And MEMS-based filters are at least five times better than SAW's. | Shrinking the Cellular Phone, One Component at a Time |
1357883_4 | give precision and content to the open-ended phrases of the statute. The law defines disability as ''a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities.'' Disability can also be established by having ''a record of such an impairment'' or ''being regarded as having such an impairment,'' definitions that were not at issue in this case. Justice O'Connor said the law's essential definitional terms -- ''substantially limits'' and ''major life activities'' -- ''need to be interpreted strictly to create a demanding standard for qualifying as disabled.'' Congress made that clear, she said, by its reference in the law's preamble to 43 million Americans who ''have one or more physical or mental disabilities.'' With 100 million people wearing corrective lenses, she said, Congress obviously did not mean to include everyone with some type of limitation. The decision put off until another day answering the question of whether ''working'' can be considered a ''major life activity'' under the statute. Earlier Supreme Court decisions have suggested that it cannot be, but Justice O'Connor said, ''We need not decide this difficult question today.'' Although the court limited its discussion to the activity of ''performing manual tasks,'' disability law specialists agreed that the decision extended beyond that category to create a kind of template for assessing limitations on other ''major life activities'' as well. ''The message is clear that claims of disability status will be looked at very closely,'' said Peter Susser, a lawyer with the firm of Littler Mendelson who filed a brief for the National Association of Manufacturers. Stephen Bokat, executive vice president of the National Chamber Litigation Center, the legal arm of the United States Chamber of Commerce, called the decision a major victory for employers. ''The court understood,'' Mr. Bokat said, ''that the A.D.A. was not meant to create a loophole for people with routine limitations or minor injuries, but was intended for people with significant limitations.'' After Mrs. Williams, who is now 42, developed her repetitive motion injury, Toyota at first accommodated her by assigning her to inspect the paint on finished cars as they moved along a conveyor belt at the rate of one a minute. That job involved minimal use of her arms. But then Toyota required her to use a sponge to wipe oil on the cars. Her physical problems returned. When Toyota refused to change her assignment, she stopped coming | Justices Narrow Breadth of Law On Disabilities |
1357792_2 | airport screening next month, to get behind a new passenger-profiling system that is being proposed as a way to separate the potential non-threats from the potential threats at airport checkpoints. The industry's trade group, the Air Transport Association, has become very candid about the word ''profiling,'' by the way. To improve safety and address service complaints, ''some element of lawful profiling is essential'' at passenger checkpoints, Michael Wascom, a spokesman, said yesterday. A leading national passenger advocacy group, the Air Travelers Association, has said that it wants to work with the airlines and the federal government to develop a voluntary passenger identification-card system, in which prescreened passengers would use so-called smart cards encoded with biometric identifiers to expedite their passage through security checkpoints. Those without the ID cards would receive a more intense level of security. Much of the attention so far has been focused on the proposed technology -- handprint, iris, facial and other identification techniques -- that would underpin the system. But before technology is selected, Mr. Wascom said, the industry wants the federal government to commit itself to a passenger profiling system that employs ''a unified, coordinated database'' to collect passenger profiles from criminal, customs, immigration and federal intelligence records. Passengers with the ID cards would still go through security checks, but those who choose not to enroll in the program, or do not meet the criteria, would be subject to a ''very rigid process before we let them onto one of our planes,'' Mr. Wascom said. He and other proponents say that the new system would allow security resources to be focused more on people whose profiles suggest a potential threat, rather than those whose profiles suggest no threat. ''Right now, the system is designed to, in essence, treat everyone as an equal threat,'' Mr. Wascom said. The industry has proposed that the profiling system be developed under the aegis of the Office of Homeland Security, rather than the Transportation Department. The Transportation Department has signaled a reluctance to support passenger profiling, beyond a current system in place that randomly selects some passengers for extra searches based on criteria that specifically exclude personal and ethnic characteristics. In an interview on ''60 Minutes'' last month, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said, for example, that a 70-year-old woman from Vero Beach, Fla., ideally should receive the same level of security attention as a young Muslim male from Jersey | Pants and profiling: Life on the front lines of checkpoint security at the nation's airports. |
1357795_0 | The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. George Carey, leader of 73 million Anglicans in 160 nations, announced today that he would step down this fall, three years before he was due to retire. ''By the end of October I shall have served 11 1/2 years in a demanding yet wonderfully absorbing and rewarding post,'' Archbishop Carey, 66, said in a statement. ''I feel certain this will be the right and proper time to stand down.'' During those years, the archbishop, who is the spiritual head of the Church of England, has experienced a troubled period of declining congregations, failed investments, social upheaval and disputes over the ordination of women as ministers and bans on gay clergy and same-sex marriage. The archbishop, who is considered the first among equals of the heads of the 38 independent provinces of the global Anglican communion, including the 2.4 million-member Episcopal Church in the United States, could have kept the job until the compulsory retirement age of 70. But he had hinted he would not wait that long and was reported to have agreed to remain past his 65th birthday last year only at the urging of Queen Elizabeth II, the supreme governor of the Church of England, who wanted him to preside over her golden jubilee year commemorations this year. Archbishop Carey gave no further reasons for announcing his retirement, but he has called the job ''very wearying'' and was known to be eager to give his successor time to prepare for the next Lambeth Conference in 2008, the often quarrelsome once-a-decade gathering of leaders of the world's Anglican churches. Perhaps his greatest achievement was maintaining unity in the church after a vote in 1992 by the General Synod for women to be ordained to the priesthood. Though the move was to prompt numbers of high-profile church conservatives to convert to Roman Catholicism, Archbishop Carey supported it, arguing that Anglicans would otherwise lose credibility and relevance. But he later sided with conservatives in backing a resolution in 1998 that declared homosexual activity ''incompatible with Scripture'' and advised against the ordination of homosexuals. Archbishop Carey's successor will face tests over a proposal to permit women to become bishops, a suggested Anglican union with the Methodists, and a decision on whether the church should agree to remarry people who have been divorced. The last matter will be given high visibility because both the heir to | Archbishop of Canterbury to Step Down This Fall |
1356185_4 | plate number are more comprehensive. But they are also less reliable, prone to failures caused by poor weather or illumination, dirty plates and variations in plate design. Further, they require other devices like loop sensors to detect when a vehicle is in place to have its plate read. Spatial systems' estimates of traffic flow can be thrown off by what Dr. Rakha calls outliers -- cars that have gone off the road for side trips or rest stops. Therefore ''the algorithm that estimates the travel time has to be sophisticated enough to exclude them,'' he said. ''We've developed filtering algorithms and search windows for this, but we also compare readings for different cars along the same stretch of road.'' Whereas spatial systems infer vehicle progress between monitoring spots, continuous-tracking systems follow specially equipped vehicles wherever they go. This approach is practical for general traffic prediction only when there are many such vehicles in the area, relaying information every 10 seconds or so. But useful data could be harvested from fleets -- emergency services, car-rental agencies, trucking companies -- that already track their drivers' whereabouts with satellite-based position monitoring systems and transmitters. Cabs in cities would be ideal sources were it not for the tendency of tall buildings to block signals from the satellites. Another approach is to track the progress of cars making cellphone calls. (The systems, still in development, uniquely identify each phone but do not monitor what numbers it is connected to or what is being said.) Potentially this technology can track a vast number of cars, with no added cost for in-car equipment. But few phones are on the air continuously enough for long-distance tracking, and the challenge is complicated by the many transmission systems used by American cellphones. As more vehicles carry toll tags, cellphones, telematics systems and other identifying devices, continuous and spatial systems will grow more valuable -- if their proponents can overcome public fears that their use will erode privacy. Useful as all these traffic information systems are in spotting and localizing slowdowns, none of them (except for video cameras on the spot) normally identify what is causing jams or what action is needed to clear them. ''For that,'' said Mr. Smith at Mobility Technologies, ''we check the old-fashioned way: First we monitor police radio transmissions, and if they don't explain it, we send a vehicle out to have a look.'' WHAT'S NEXT | I Hear Your Road Rage: The Sensitive Tracker |
1361337_1 | said in an interview at the cancer center. ''You are seeing things that no one has seen before. Indeed, you see things that no one could have seen before.'' Q. When you were a boy, you read of the lives of the great adventurers and you dreamed of someday being Charles Darwin or Sir Ernest Shackleton. At NASA, are you finally living out your childhood fantasies? A. I would say yes. Because NASA's people and other space scientists do get to see things no one has ever seen before. When I say ''see,'' that includes seeing with newly developed instrumentation: detection instruments, spectrometers, infrared techniques, gamma ray magnetometers. And then there's the reality of our satellites and spaceships that are in space. In the past, we didn't have that high vantage point of actually being in space for our observations, which, of course, opens up so much to us. For instance, measurements of the chemical elements present on a planet around a very distant star were reported by scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope. As for being an explorer, I wouldn't say I'm ''finally'' there. When I was doing work on what turned out to be the hepatitis B virus, we saw things in different ways. It was somewhat less dramatic, but there was this sense of exploration there too. Q. Astrobiology has become the hottest, sexiest part of NASA. Why do you think it has such charisma? A. Because you are probing basic questions and using the scientific method to do so: Are we alone? How did life originate? What is life? And what is the future of human beings in space? Some of these are the questions people have been asking forever. But now, just in the last few decades we have the real possibility of answering them and making observations on planets in our own and other solar systems. Q. Your institute has been looking at the earthbound life forms that exist in extreme environments -- deep in the ocean, within geysers at Yellowstone, under the earth, at the polar ice caps. Why do you send scientists to such weird places? A. Well, first of all, we think it's weird -- they, the life forms, think it's fine. But you don't want to get into discussions of consciousness. So why do we send probes to fissures at the ocean floor? We look at this because it relates | A CONVERSATION WITH/Baruch Blumberg; A Nobel in Medicine, a Second Career in Space |
1361356_4 | activity. Two large studies -- one in men and one in women -- have demonstrated that the higher a person's C-reactive protein level, the greater the risk of a heart attack or stroke. Doctors nationwide are adding the C.R.P. test to cholesterol screening to assess people's risk of atherosclerosis. (President Bush had his C-reactive protein level checked in August; it was low.) ''The things that lower C.R.P. levels include diet, exercise and smoking cessation,'' Dr. Ridker said -- strategies long known to cut heart attack risk. Studies have shown that statin drugs, prescribed to lower cholesterol, can also lower C.R.P. This research raises the tantalizing possibility that statins may be used to prevent heart attacks even in people whose cholesterol levels are normal. But Dr. Ridker cautioned that the evidence was still too preliminary to warrant such use of statins. He said he hoped soon to launch a nationwide study of statins in people with low cholesterol but high C-reactive protein levels. Inflammation may also be important in diabetes. Dr. Ridker and others have found that elevated C.R.P. levels are associated with a higher-than-average risk of developing Type 2 diabetes -- the kind that occurs in adults. In diabetes, excess body fat -- a major risk factor for the disease -- may be part of the inflammatory picture. Fat cells produce cytokines, the proteins that promote inflammation. Studies have shown that people who develop Type 2 diabetes have relatively high levels of these cytokines. Researchers think the cytokines may interfere with the body's ability to use its own insulin, thus bringing on diabetes. In osteoporosis, the same cytokines seem to accelerate the rate at which bone is broken down. The disease often arises in women after menopause, when estrogen levels drop. Dr. Sundeep Khosla, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said estrogen protected against bone loss by decreasing the production of cytokines. When estrogen declines, cytokine levels rise, and bone is lost. In Alzheimer's disease, inflammation happens in and around the protein deposits -- known as amyloid plaques -- that accumulate in the brain. For many years, doctors thought that this inflammation was caused by the plaques. But studies have shown that cytokines help create the plaques in the first place. ''Inflammation is directly damaging neurons,'' said Dr. Paul Aisen, a professor of neurology at Georgetown University Medical Center. Asthma, too, is an inflammatory disease. Doctors have | Body's Defender Goes on the Attack |
1361404_3 | Research, which specializes in microbial genomes, had been determining the sequence of chemical building blocks in the DNA of the anthrax bacterium. The institute, known as TIGR (pronounced tiger), started the project two years ago at the request of a consortium of agencies, including the Office of Naval Research and the British Defense Evaluation and Research Agency. The TIGR scientists used a sample of the Ames strain obtained from the British biodefense laboratory at Porton Down in England, which in turn had received it more than a decade earlier from the Army's biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md. Then, in October, after last fall's mail attacks, TIGR received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to expand its anthrax sequencing and map the bacteria recovered from the Florida strike. TIGR scientists said last week that they might have discovered several points of difference between the Porton Down Ames strain and the Florida Ames strain used in the attacks. The differences include both single unit changes in DNA, known to biologists as Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, or SNP's (pronounced snips), and variable repeats, which are sites where the same small sequence of DNA units is repeated a few times. The variable regions, known as VNTR's, for Variable Number Tandem Repeats, are the type of differences used for human DNA fingerprinting. TIGR scientists said they had communicated their list of DNA differences to Dr. Keim, who is testing the Ames strain samples in his collection to see if he can now distinguish among them. In addition, the F.B.I is giving Dr. Keim new Ames samples to analyze. The more complete a collection of Ames samples Dr. Keim possesses, the better his chances of identifying the exact laboratory from which the attack strain came. But an unknown number of Ames samples remain outside his collection, at least for now. For example, a Canadian government research group that has the Ames strain said it had received no F.B.I. requests. ''We have never been contacted by any law enforcement agency with regard to our Ames strain,'' said Bill Kournikakis, a biologist at the Defense Research Establishment Suffield, in Alberta, Canada. In an interview, the senior law enforcement official said the process of Ames collection was widely under way but sometimes slowed by red tape, especially at private and foreign laboratories. ''The official request has been made,'' he said of the effort to collect an Ames | Scientists Report Genetic Finding That Could Aid Anthrax Inquiry |
1363106_1 | Enron spokesman said the company is cooperating with investigations about the shredded documents. ''It's a good time to let the facts come from the proper authorities investigating this,'' Mark Palmer, a spokesman for Enron, said. ''We are the ones that called the Justice Department.'' The documents were generally shredded horizontally rather than vertically, so it is possible to make out words and even sentence fragments. The shreds include accounting records, and some bear the names of the off-the-balance-sheet partnerships that have been linked to transactions allowing Enron to keep some of its problems hidden. Shareholders' lawyers have said they might eventually try to reassemble the documents, but it is unclear whether government investigators will make a similar effort. Mr. Palmer said he did not know whether Enron usually shredded documents horizontally. The company has said it repeatedly ordered employees not to destroy documents that could be relevant to investigations. It announced on Oct. 31 that the S.E.C. had upgraded its inquiry to a formal investigation. Knowingly destroying records that have the potential to be of interest to government investigators would be a crime. Investigators did not signal that the documents discussed by Ms. Castaneda were definitely of interest until after the shredding took place and became public. Ms. Castaneda made her comments last Monday. The next day, the S.E.C. notified shareholders' lawyers, who have been working with her, that a subpoena had been issued for Ms. Castaneda's appointment books, all documents concerning entities that have had dealings with Enron and all documents related to Enron other than her pay stubs. The F.B.I. agent approached the lawyers for Enron and those for its shareholders in the courthouse last Tuesday to discuss the box of shredded paper that the shareholders' lawyers had put on a table in the courtroom. A lawyer for Arthur Andersen, Enron's accounting firm, suggested in court that the shredded documents should be turned over to the Justice Department. The F.B.I. agent did not take the documents, so they remained in the possession of Milberg Weiss, one of the law firms suing Enron. A spokesman for the firm said it would work with Ms. Castaneda's lawyer to comply with the subpoena. One possible reason the agent may have left the documents alone is that if they were taken for a criminal investigation, they might be subject to grand jury secrecy rules. Such rules would not apply in a civil | Hard-to-Miss Box of Scraps Catches F.B.I. Agent's Eye |
1358035_0 | I AM a freelance writer working from my house, and a high-speed Internet connection over a cable modem is my main link to the world. So word of financial problems last year at Excite@Home, my Internet service provider, worried me. If it died, would I still have my connection? Would I keep my e-mail address? Then, at a New Jersey diner, I overheard some people from Comcast, the cable company through which I had Excite@Home service, discussing the problem. When I asked, they reassured me there would be no interruption in service, come what may. Comcast, which then had three quarters of a million high-speed Internet customers (now 950,000), had been working on its own system since last January. On Nov. 30, a bankruptcy court allowed Excite@Home to cancel or renegotiate its contracts with the cable companies that connected it to four million customers. AT&T Cable's 850,000 customers were cut off -- some for a week -- when negotiations with Excite@Home failed. Comcast and Cox did better, contracting for service until Feb. 28, to ease customers' transitions. Here's how my transition has gone: DEC. 11 -- E-mail from Comcast announced ''a very exciting transition to Comcast High-Speed Internet'' (encouraging, but I'd prefer it unexciting); all customers were to be transferred by Feb. 28 and we'd have access to our @Home e-mail until then. MID-DECEMBER -- A postcard alerted me that a transition kit was coming, that I should call if it didn't arrive by the 21st and that I needed to take action by Dec. 27 to maintain Internet service. The kit included a CD-ROM with installation software, a subscriber agreement, a price list, a form letter and a simple 3-Step Guide to the switch. The letter explained that I would have only one Comcast.net e-mail address until mid-January (I have three @Home addresses) but eventually could have up to seven, and that I'd gain My File Locker (a block of Web space to store personal files like photos) and remote access to my e-mail. But while the 3-Step Guide and letter said my e-mail address would stay the same except for the domain name (comcast.net instead of home.com), the guide also showed my user name as a 15-character string -- nothing that I or my correspondents would be able to remember. I called Comcast's tech support line. It took me many tries, with long waits on hold on each | I.S.P.'s Demise Brings A Bumpy Switchover |
1358069_1 | to the school. ''It's back to lower than Square 1, if that can be possible,'' said the Rev. Aidan Troy, chairman of the school's board of governors. ''It's beyond anything I could have imagined,'' he told a radio interviewer. ''The whole area is in absolute turmoil.'' He said that the school had been able to bus the students past the confrontation and that none had been hurt. But he said they had witnessed the fracas, and he described them as ''too petrified, some of them, even to cry.'' The Catholic parents said they were attacked with no warning at the gates to the school by Protestants who were blocking their children's exit. The Protestants said they had felt provoked after someone removed flowers at a lamppost memorial to a Protestant taxi driver killed on the street two years ago. A 12-week protest at the school in the fall, during which the military had to protect weeping youngsters as adults screamed abuse at them, reflected the sectarian hatreds that have persisted in Northern Ireland even as the province tries to put a 1998 peace agreement in place. The Protestant residents called off their demonstrations in November after an intervention by the leaders of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly. A truce had been in place since, but Father Troy said tensions had been high as classes resumed after the Christmas break. The outbreak of violence came as the government, which had been suspended over an arms dispute, headed for its first sustained function. ''We ended last year hopeful that such incidents were behind us,'' said Martin McGuinness, the chief negotiator for Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, and the education minister for the revived government. Jane Kennedy, Britain's security minister for Northern Ireland, attributed the violence to ''mindless thugs,'' saying, ''Children should not have to pay the price of the failure of adults to live together.'' Richard N. Haass, the Bush administration's chief representative for Northern Ireland, acknowledged that public support for the peace process was dwindling, despite major achievements since the agreement in 1998. ''There has been a failure at all levels in Northern Ireland -- but particularly at the level of political leadership -- to acknowledge that the fates of two communities are tied to one another,'' Mr. Haass said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in New York. | Protestants' Taunts Again Close Catholic Girls' School in Ulster |
1358127_0 | Facing a budget crisis, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday that he planned to significantly reduce the additional patrols that for two years have been financed by a $172 million overtime program in which officers worked on their days off. The department currently has $24 million to pay for the program from January to March. Mr. Kelly said he planned to stretch that money so that the program, known as Operation Condor, could continue into June, effectively halving the amount available for the patrols over the next six months. At its height, the program paid for an additional 1,000 officers on the street each day. Operation Condor, which has been criticized for its cost and sometimes aggressive tactics, was credited by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani with maintaining record crime declines. It was instituted in early 2000 by Howard Safir, then the commissioner, and continued by his successor, Bernard B. Kerik. But yesterday, Mr. Kelly, in a wide-ranging briefing with reporters, said he thought the department of 40,000 officers could keep crime down without the additional overtime spending for Operation Condor. ''I think the resources are adequate in the department to do the job,'' he said. Later, his spokesman, Michael O'Looney, said the department would try to maintain patrol strength through efficiency. Even as he acknowledged the budgetary constraints, Mr. Kelly said there were some things that the department could not do without. Among them, he said, are increased counterterrorism training and new equipment, like protective suits and radiation detectors, which he expects will be paid for by the federal government, and an upgrade for the department's computer systems. In focusing on the department's technology, Mr. Kelly noted that the 55,000-person agency had no systemwide e-mail. ''I don't think you can find an organization in this country that size that doesn't have e-mail,'' he said. Mr. Kelly said he hoped to draw on the expertise of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to improve the department's computer, communications and technology systems, areas in which solutions have long eluded department managers. Mr. Kelly said he would also try to solve some of those problems with outside contractors. The commissioner also said he planned to hire an outside consultant to evaluate the department's response to the World Trade Center attack, to better prepare should the city suffer another terrorist attack. ''What lessons should we learn from Sept. 11?'' he said. ''What did we do | Kelly Plans to Cut Money For Overtime Police Patrols |
1358078_1 | cut back production and offered deals. Sales of the biggest, most expensive yachts, like the one Mr. Fields is buying, continued to rise, though at a slower pace than in 2000. But the industry's outlook is improving, in part because at least some rich Ameri cans consider a new boat a potential haven in the event of another terrorist attack -- a luxurious 21st-century version of a bunker in the backyard. Manufacturers and brokers say there has been a flurry of business in the last six weeks, and the New York National Boat Show, a bellwether for nearly a century, got off to a flying start last weekend at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. Some companies said they sold more boats in the first two days of the show this year than they had in the whole week of last year's show. Another test for the industry will come next month, at the Miami Boat Show, a showcase for the largest yachts. ''We really won't know for three or four weeks if we're out of this, if business is returning,'' said Pete Woods, who leads one of the busiest branches of MarineMax Inc., a national yacht dealer at the Pier 66 Marina here, a floating showroom for new and used yachts and a winter resting place for pleasure craft from around the world. ''But the signs are that we very well could be,'' said Mr. Woods, who has been in the business for more than 30 years. ''Right now, we're extremely encouraged.'' After the September attacks, many in the industry expected the bottom to fall out of the market. Sales of smaller boats did suffer. But Jim Gilbert, the editor in chief of ShowBoats International, a bimonthly magazine devoted to yachts more than 80 feet in length, said he discovered that rather than canceling orders, the wealthiest customers were asking boatyards to speed up production. They wanted the yachts as redoubts for themselves and their families. ''There is nothing more secure in the world than your own floating island,'' Mr. Gilbert said. ''You have your own security. You determine your own schedule.'' Robert Dean, director of marketing and sales at Broward Yachts, another maker of big yachts, said that immediately after the attacks, some South Florida families climbed aboard their yachts more than 100 feet long and headed for the Bahamas. ''They weren't sure what was going | In Rough Times, the Rich Go Yachting |
1359278_0 | Charles Segal, a Harvard classi cist who brought a modern literary critic's approach to the study of Greek and Latin poetry, died on Jan. 1 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 65. The cause was cancer, the univer sity said. In a scholarly career spanning al most four decades, Professor Segal, who held the Walter C. Klein chair of classics at Harvard from 1996 until his death, sought to apply many of the techniques of contemporary lit erary criticism to the classics. His scholarship ranged across vir tually the whole of Greek and Latin poetry. ''There is hardly a Greek or Roman poet about whom he had not thought deeply and to good effect,'' said Richard Thomas, the chairman of Harvard's classics department. When many classicists still felt their primary duty was to perfect ancient texts, Professor Segal tried to bring modern techniques of liter ary analysis to bear on the classics, particularly by placing them in their social and historical contexts. He was influenced at various times in his career by several critical theo ries, including the postwar French structuralist school, as well as by attempts to apply the principals of psychoanalysis and anthropology to the interpretation of literature. Professor Segal was a prolific writer, and many of his books were translated into foreign languages. Among his best-known works are ''Tragedy and Civilization: An Inter pretation of Sophocles,'' ''Poetry and Myth in Ancient Pastoral'' and ''Pin dar's Mythmaking.'' Professor Segal was born in Bos ton on March 19, 1936. He graduated from Boston Latin School and from Harvard, where he also received his doctorate. He taught classics at the University of Pennsylvania from 1964 to 1967, at Brown from 1968 to 1986 and at Princeton from 1987 to 1990 before joining Harvard in 1990. He held visiting professorships at Columbia and Brandeis, the Univer sity of Melbourne and the École des Hautes Études and the École Nor male Supérieure in Paris. He also held fellowships from the Fulbright and Guggenheim Founda tions and from the National Endow ment for the Humanities. He is survived by his second wife, Nancy Jones Segal; their daughter, Cora, of Cambridge, Mass.; and two sons from his first marriage, Joshua, of Santa Rosa, Calif., and Thaddeus, of Alexandria, Va. | Charles Segal, 65, Who Viewed The Classics With a Modern Eye |
1359310_0 | Dr. Burton I. Edelson, a leader in satellite communications who helped start and oversee some of NASA's most popular science programs, died Jan. 6 in New York, where he was visiting family and friends. He was 75 and lived in Chevy Chase, Md. The cause was a heart attack, said his son Daniel. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Dr. Edelson associate administrator for space science and applications at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In that post he played a central role in beginning and directing several programs, including the Hubble Space Telescope and Mars exploration missions. ''When he came to NASA, the space science budget was at a low,'' said Neil Helm, deputy director of George Washington University's Institute for Applied Space Research, which Dr. Edelson founded after retiring from NASA in 1987. ''But he managed to increase the budget significantly, and established a number of programs that helped reinvigorate space science at NASA. ''There had been some talk about the Hubble telescope project at NASA before he got there, but he was the one that really got it going.'' Dr. Edelson supported international cooperation on space research and communications throughout his career and, while at NASA, worked on a number of technical collaborations with the Soviet Union, Japan and Europe. In the early 1980's, he was a driving force behind the Halley's Comet Intercept, a multinational effort to study the comet. In addition, he managed the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite program, which gained the world's attention in 1992 when it began measuring background radiation from the Big Bang. He also oversaw the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite, which among other tasks is used to link doctors to distant settings so they can perform remote medical procedures. After retiring from NASA, Dr. Edelson directed research and development projects in satellite communications at George Washington University until his death. Burton Irving Edelson was born in New York, graduated from the United States Naval Academy, where he studied engineering, and became interested in satellite communications while at the Navy's research laboratory in Washington in the 1950's. He received his master's degree at Yale in 1954 and his doctorate there in 1960; both degrees were in metallurgy. In 1967, he became deputy director of Comsat Laboratories, created that year with a Congressional charter to perform research and development in support of a global satellite system. At Comsat he led a program that | Burton I. Edelson Dies at 75; NASA Space Science Leader |
1359322_2 | these people come into Cuba?'' Mr. Jiménez asked between sips of a mojito at a bar in the city's El Vedado neighborhood. ''No wonder they don't want them in America.'' According to Granma, the state newspaper, the Cuban government has offered to improve medical and sanitation services in the area around the base and has promised not to erect ''any obstacles'' to America's plan to imprison the suspected terrorists there. ''We are willing to cooperate in any other useful, constructive and humane way that may arise,'' the government said. The naval station at Guantánamo Bay is one of the many points of contention in the two countries' difficult relationship. The United States leases the base under a 1903 agreement that was renewed as a perpetual lease in 1934, nearly three decades before Mr. Castro seized power. The Cuban government objects to what it calls the ''abusive conditions'' imposed by the treaty, but any amendment to the lease agreement requires the consent of the United States as well. In the statement printed this weekend, the Cuban government said an ''elemental sense of dignity and absolute disagreement'' prevents it from cashing the $4,085 checks sent to Cuba as annual lease payments by the United States government. It is unclear what prompted Cuba, which itself is on the United States list of states that sponsor terrorism, to go along with the American activities at Guantánamo. One reason may be a desire to ease its current economic difficulties. Tourism, one of the country's largest earners of foreign currency, has dropped sharply since the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the Cuban peso has lost nearly 20 percent of its value against the dollar. ''We have sugar, we have cigars, but none of them earn as much as tourism,'' said Jorge Rodríguez, a 30-year-old medical technician. ''After Sept. 11, we lost a lot of tourism.'' Although many Cubans echoed Mr. Rodríguez's sentiments, it remains a difficult task to gauge public opinion in a country as tightly controlled as Cuba. In a Havana paladar, one of the many privately run restaurants that have sprung up here, one of the employees began explaining himself. ''I have opinions that I express outside, and those that I express behind closed doors,'' he said. A co-worker pulled the man aside, and after a moment, he returned. ''I am sorry, I cannot speak to you,'' he said. A NATION CHALLENGED: GUANTÁNAMO BAY | In Cuba, Muted Acceptance Greets Presence of Prisoners |
1362332_0 | To the Editor: Re ''In Search of Security'' (photograph, front page, Jan. 19): Why not eliminate the need for baggage screening by sending all baggage on cargo-only flights? This would provide 100 percent safety from baggage bombs, which all the search people, dogs, machines and ''matching'' schemes could never do. FRANCIS MASON Westport, Conn., Jan. 19, 2002 | Fly Baggage Separately |
1362471_0 | Construction has begun on a $550 million dam project on the Nile that will greatly increase electricity in Uganda, where less than 5 percent of the population of 22 million has it. Under consideration since 1994, the plan came under criticism from environmental groups and local residents because it will disturb burial sites and wipe out some white-water rapids. Marc Lacey (NYT) | World Briefing | Africa: Uganda: Disputed Dam Project Begins |
1362380_3 | may help maintain social ties and even spur productivity in a way that collectivization failed abysmally to do. Not that Vietnam's Communist government has been converted to genuine freedom of religion. Conditions for believers are clearly improving, but the United States State Department and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom have amply documented the many restrictions that continue to hamper even officially recognized religious institutions, like Roman Catholicism and the Buddhist umbrella group organized by the government itself in 1981. The government regulates their choice of leaders, limits their recruitment of clergy and keeps a tight rein on their few publications and charitable activities. Groups that are not recognized -- like the Protestant ''house churches'' of ethnic minorities in the mountain areas or the dissident United Buddhist Church of Vietnam -- face harsher forms of suppression, though often more by arbitrary local officials than by the central government. What the Vietnamese Communist Party fears is obviously not personal or familial piety but anything that could become a rival political base or a nucleus of ethnic separatism. Those possibilities seem distant, however, from the hopes that bring women to offer fruit and to light joss sticks at the Quan Su Pagoda in Hanoi or the devotion that packs people into Sunday Mass at nearby St. Joseph's Cathedral. Ms. FitzGerald does not rush to judgment about any of this -- how much reflects a popular religious ''equivalent of insurance policies'' in an unfamiliar, high-risk economy; how much reflects a need for social ballast in a turbulent time; how much reflects a profound search for spiritual meaning and transcendence. But she does challenge the often-assumed simple opposition between religious revival and modernization. ''In Vietnam,'' she writes in the January issue of Smithsonian magazine, in a condensation of her text, ''the revival of the rites does not mean a return to the past. People reconstruct their lineage halls and their dinh ceremonies, but they do not therefore reject public schools, agricultural machinery or the considerable improvements in the status of women.'' ''What we are witnessing is the traditional order reasserting itself in order to deal with what Westerners blithely call modernization,'' she concludes. ''The Vietnamese are going back to tradition and forward at the same time. More precisely, they are reclaiming and refashioning their traditions in order to move on.'' Which in fact sums up a great deal of religious history. Beliefs | A revival of religious traditions sweeps Vietnam. A rejection of modernization? Seemingly not. |
1362369_4 | did not share the idea of original sin, a doctrine that she said she had been unable to accept in her Greek Orthodox church. ''This is what I was looking for,'' she said. ''I found out why I am here on this earth and where I came from and where I will go.'' When she was baptized in 1998 at 18, she was among the first seven Mormons in Timisoara. As of 2000, Romania had 1,770 Mormons. In the island nation of Mauritius, Sister Padmini Coopamah rebuffed two missionaries, a Briton and a Canadian, several times, until they invited her to play volleyball at the church meetinghouse, which as with most meetinghouses was built with space for team sports. She was still leery of the religion until they introduced her to the Mormon teaching that after death families continue living together intact for eternity. Her father, a doctor, had died three years earlier, when she was 16. ''The belief in families being together was something that brought us a lot of happiness,'' said Miss Coopamah, 23, who, like Miss Chen, was baptized at the same time as her mother and brother. In 2000, she left her graduate studies in international relations to be a missionary. In contrast to Christian churches that send missionaries to evangelize among people who have never heard the Gospel, Mormons have succeeded by proselytizing primarily other Christians. Mormons work only where the government has given approval and concentrate not on the poorest of the poor, but on those with some means and education, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said in an interview. There are places where the missionaries do not tread, including most of the Arab world and China, Mr. Holland said. Even in Nigeria and Indonesia, the missionaries confine themselves to predominantly Christian regions. In recent years, the church has reaped the most converts in Roman Catholic nations like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines. The church's future stalwarts abroad will be those who were missionaries, especially those elite women chosen for Temple Square. Sister Chen said she would never leave the church, because she, too, lost a beloved relative, her grandfather, when she was 10. ''We were so close,'' she said. ''We went shopping together. We watched TV together. It's why I want to be a member. I really look forward to seeing my grandfather again.'' | Mormons Project Image As Diverse as Olympics |
1361224_0 | Bridges across the Vltava River have tended not to last long, but the Charles Bridge has been a magnificent exception -- at least throughout its first six centuries. One story goes that the emperor who laid the bridge's cornerstone in 1357, Charles IV, encouraged peasants to donate eggs, to be mixed into the mortar to strengthen it. Unfortunately, they brought the eggs hard-boiled. Now Czechs are being asked to donate again to the well-being of Prague's most famous monument. It is the site of six and a half centuries of markets, executions, battles, statues, and was the central spot in the fresh wreckage of Communism for young Americans to drink beer and holler R.E.M. songs. The problem is that not everyone believes that the bridge is falling down. Jan Kasl, Prague's energetic and media-savvy mayor, who is also an architect, contends that the Charles Bridge needs a $15 million makeover. He has caused a stir by beginning a drive for the public and tourists to pay for it. In March, after years of planning, engineers and archaeologists will begin the first stage of drilling into the bridge's soggy and weakened core -- work that is expected to close large sections of the bridge, one of the city's main tourist sites, for several years. Across the Vltava from the mayor sits the national government, which argues that it cannot afford the project, and wonders whether it is even necessary. The government has been joined in its skepticism by an influential group of politicians and activists, who have varying degrees of hostility to Mr. Kasl and his plans. It is unclear where the dispute is leading, but no one rules out that the reconstruction, scheduled to begin in two months, may be halted somewhere along the line. But the dispute has brought to the surface a long-standing fight over who should pay to preserve the Czech Republic's vast store of historical treasures, and over the legacy of Communism in damaging them. It also points out the perennial shortage of cash in Eastern Europe. Inevitably, each side accuses the other of not having the best interests of the bridge at heart. ''Charles Bridge doesn't deserve to be used as a political tool,'' said Jan Buergermeister, the mayor of Prague 1, the Old Town district where the bridge stretches 1,770 feet across the river. He is an outspoken opponent of Mr. Kasl's plans. No | Arguing Fate of Troubled Bridge Over Czech Water |
1361212_2 | was slow. ''We'd never done this,'' Mr. Cruz said. ''Most of us had just preached from pulpits.'' Lower Manhattan Together pressed the city to fix the park's bathrooms, streetlights and emergency call boxes. It took two years to do it. When the work was done, they set their sights higher, lobbying for a complete renovation of the park, a huge project. To their surprise, they succeeded -- with luck, good timing and the help of the Industrial Areas Foundation, which had a long relationship with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. In the two years that they struggled to get basic repairs for the park, the foundation was feuding with the mayor, but in 1999, Mr. Giuliani agreed to major renovations, said Joe Morris, director of Lower Manhattan Together. ''He said he used to play ball there when he was a kid,'' Mr. Morris said. The city is building new basketball courts, ball fields, a bicycle path and a roller hockey rink in the park. The project design, by George Vellonikas, the landscape architect, includes new landscaping and the restoration of Depression-era ornamental details. In addition, work should start soon on the $42 million repair of the 1.3-mile seawall and the reconstruction of the promenade on top of the crumbling sea wall, which was closed last year for safety reasons. There are also plans to build a recreation center on Pier 42 on the south end of the park, though no money for that has been allotted. The East River Park project got another boost last month when ''Challenge America,'' an ABC television program that gathers volunteers for big civic projects to videotape the work and create a program from it, pitched in to rebuild the amphitheater and eroded soccer field. They recruited architects, engineers, planners, laborers, materials and meals. The volunteers worked around the clock for six days to meet the television show's deadline. The result was a new amphitheater and a reconstructed soccer field with artificial turf. The labor and materials were valued at about $5 million, according to the Parks Department. It is unusual for a neighborhood improvement group to succeed in a project of such scope and expense, though many try. ''There are a lot of citizen's groups out there who are trying to get a lot of things done,'' said Adrian Benepe, the Manhattan parks commissioner. Many neighborhood organizations struggle for years to accomplish much smaller projects, | Gathering at the River To Save an Ailing Park; Ministers Lead East Side Restoration, And Millions of Dollars Follow |
1361227_0 | Gordon J. Stanley, a pioneer in radio astronomy who discovered incredibly powerful sources of radio waves in outer space, died on Dec. 17 in Monterey, Calif. He was 80. The cause of death was complications from progressive supranuclear palsy, his family said. Born in Cambridge, New Zealand, Mr. Stanley, an engineer by training, was among a group of scientists who adapted radar equipment left from World War II for observing radio signals from the skies. Most astronomers presumed, correctly, that most radio noise was generated by hot clouds of gas floating in interstellar space, but they also detected puzzling bright spots. Because their antennas were small compared with the giant dishes of later radio telescopes, they could not identify exactly where the signals were coming from, as if the radio pictures were too blurry. From a former radar station on a cliff overlooking Sydney, Mr. Stanley and his colleague John G. Bolton used a trick to home in on the bright spots that were producing the strong radio waves. Soon after one of the radio sources rose above the horizon, they pointed the antenna at it. The vast expanse of the Pacific to the east acted as a giant mirror, and some of the radio waves bounced off the water before traveling to the antenna. The two beams of radio waves -- one coming directly from the sky, the other reflecting off the water -- produced an interference pattern like the intersecting rings of raindrops hitting a pond. That allowed the scientists to better determine the size and position of the radio source. To their surprise, the source was not diffuse like a gas cloud but small and compact like a star. The universe, it appeared, contained tremendously powerful radio transmitters. ''It is difficult to comprehend the emotional impact of an observation which took us from the partially explicable solar system and galactic radio emission phenomena, into the realms of phenomena with inexplicably high energy outputs,'' Mr. Stanley wrote in 1994, in a tribute to Mr. Bolton, who died in 1993. ''Neither of us ever approached such an emotional high again in our work.'' Later research showed that two of the radio sources were actually distant galaxies, the radio waves generated by gas falling into giant black holes. Another radio source turned out to be the Crab Nebula, the remnants of an exploded star. In 1955, Mr. Stanley followed Mr. | Gordon J. Stanley, 80; Pinpointed Radio Waves From Space |
1360540_2 | call the baggage room for the suitcase to be pulled off the plane, Mr. Larrabee said. ''You have to crawl in the plane and get it,'' he said, declining to say if any bags had been removed from flights this morning. In San Francisco, Ron Wilson, a spokesman for the airport, estimated that the line of passengers waiting to be cleared was 10 percent to 15 percent longer, partly because people got to the airport earlier. Mr. Wilson said two planes that were scheduled to leave from 9 a.m. to noon suffered unusual delays because of new security measures, but he would not identify the flights or the problem. One was delayed for 8 minutes and the other for 10, he said. Arriving in Atlanta on a Delta flight from Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Steve Kenny, a software salesman, said his plane had been scheduled to leave at 11:45 a.m. but waited half an hour at the gate. ''The pilot came on and said: 'We're sorry for the delay, but you've all heard about the new procedures today. We're still waiting for the baggage handlers,' '' Mr. Kenny said. The airlines now have to scan each bag in an explosive detection machine, have a bomb-detecting dog sniff it, search it by hand or perform ''point of origin bag match,'' which means ensuring that on the first leg of a passenger's flight, no bag is loaded unless the passenger is also on board. Overwhelmingly, they are using the last method. Thus if someone checked a bag but decided at the last minute not to board, there would be a delay as baggage handlers crawled into cargo holds to find the suitcase and remove it. The plans for hiring and training screeners came from the Transportation Security Administration, an agency created by law after the Sept. 11 attacks. It has been under fire in recent weeks for not requiring screeners to have high school diplomas once they become employees of the federal government in November. But agency officials have said all along that the new training and testing requirements would upgrade the quality of screeners, and the regimen announced today appeared to be an ambitious plan to educate a large number of people in a new discipline in a very short period of time. ''It's a very intense program, and part of that is intentional in order to serve as a winnowing-out process for | On First Day of New Rules for Bag Checks, Delays Are Slight |
1359150_5 | an educational purpose? ''Much of it can be perfectly legal and yet still be stressing the capacity of the university network,'' said Mark Luker, a vice president at Educause, the largest technology organization in the higher-education community. Large files of software, like Web browsers, need to be downloaded simply so people can get their work done. ''It could just be that someone is downloading the latest upgrade to Internet Explorer,'' he said. The stress on the networks has led officials to ask themselves a range of questions. How much unfettered connectivity should universities supply? Should multimedia files be rationed? As copyright violations and hacking incidents continue to be traced to campus networks, should administrators monitor the millions of files flying through their network lines each second? Complicating those questions are the principles of openness and academic freedom that have long stood as hallmarks of communication on campuses. Most administrators are loath to do anything that would hinder the exchange of ideas among students and professors that is now blossoming because of e-mail and the Web. Still, something had to be done, if only to prevent the crashes and slowdowns that were interrupting the pursuit of educational work. Universities have started to crack down on how their networks are used, even as they try to keep their commitments to openness on their networks. At the University of Oregon, officials are seeking out the top 50 network users to examine the files they exchanged, searching for evidence of copyright violations. At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators have restricted students using dormitory connections to two-thirds of the available bandwidth, with the other one-third reserved for use by faculty members, administrators and those in computer labs. Other institutions have told students that they may share multimedia files only at certain times during the day, or in the middle of the night. The punishment for violating these policies can be a major nuisance, at least as far as heavy computer users are concerned. Usually students face a loss of Internet access for a few days, or in rare cases, for the entire semester. Throughout the fall, college newspapers have been peppered with articles about students who have found themselves without their treasured access to the Internet. There's no more logging on to a file-sharing service and letting online traders upload hundreds of music files from their computers for hours at a time. And no more | Very Big Pipes |
1359046_2 | a train that never left -- has been exhumed and is visible, listing to its side, the sun shining through its windows, waiting to be lifted from its resting place. Inside the deep, wide-open pit that has been dug -- so deep in spots that the bedrock is all that is left -- a pond of greenish water has collected, some of it from rain, some from small leaks in the bathtub walls, some from water percolating up from fissures in the bedrock. Only an effort that has been little short of epic has brought the teams to this underground phase of the cleanup. To date, according to the city's count, 1,036,837 tons of charred steel, smashed concrete, crumpled ductwork and other assorted debris has been removed from the site since Sept. 11. Engineers originally estimated it would be a 1.2 million-ton cleanup job; now, the city says, with a likely wrapup date of June, the total could rise to 1.5 million tons. But those bare numbers do little to describe the radically changing topography. To the north, a ring of partially intact basement floors rises up like battered cliffs, encircling the last visible mass of tangled steel from the collapsed north tower. The mass of debris, which workers here call ''the crater,'' is a raw exhibit, and the final one at the site, of the incomprehensible violence that brought down the towers. To the east is the former shopping concourse, where the last traces of places like Natisse International hair salon, a newsstand and the Kelly Express photo store are being ripped out to make way for trucks and other heavy equipment. At least for now, bottles of nail polish and shampoo are still strewn on the floor at the hair salon, and lottery stubs and Sept. 11 newspapers litter a hallway outside the newsstand. To the southwest is the deepest part of the dig, a spot where virtually all the remains of the 110-story south tower have been lifted up and carried out. Looming above that pit is about 45 feet of slurry wall, which has an ancient look, like an excavated section of a medieval castle. The exquisitely careful step-by-step ordering of tasks in each section of the site is clear to everyone. ''The mantra is, 'Remains recovery, excavation and tiebacks,' '' said Kenneth Holden, commissioner of the city's Department of Design and Construction, which is leading | In the Pit, Dark Relics and Last Obstacles |
1358704_0 | THE long lines afflicting passengers as airlines and airports tighten security seem to pres age a new era of inconvenience as the international war on terrorism intensifies. As ever, the travel industry and regulatory agencies are looking for technology to solve the aviation security riddle. In the past the better mousetraps they sought came in the form of X-ray machines and other devices to detect bombs and weapons; now the technology they are suggesting focuses on the traveler's identity. The key to this new approach is foolproof identity papers, backed up with reliable databanks for tracking travelers as they move across international borders. In this approach, the new buzzword is biometrics, the science of identifying people through biological markers just as reliable as fingerprints, such as quick computerized scans of their faces, their palms, or even the insides of their eyeballs, whose detailed features are unmistakable signatures of self. In the wake of the September hijackings, a consortium of airlines and airports has proposed issuing smart ID cards linked to biometric markers, carried by anyone willing to sacrifice some privacy in order to avoid travel delays. While the carry-on luggage of such participants would still be X-rayed, these travelers could pass through special gates in much the same way that automobiles with E-ZPasses zip through tollbooths. No legislation would be required to put the system into place, as it would be operated entirely by the private sector. All passengers carrying the SkyD card, as the proposed identification card is called, would agree that the industry group could maintain personal profiles of them that would include all available public information -- such things as credit ratings, telephone numbers, addresses, driver's license files, voting registrations. People whose records show a normal, stable life would be presumed to pose little risk as potential terrorists, while those with no credit history, no fixed address and no other evidence that they are who they claim to be would be refused the identity cards. The data about travelers would be kept confidential, although the government could demand to see it in criminal investigations. Privacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union object to the proposal, not so much because the assembled data is especially sensitive but because people who chose not to carry the cards would be subjected to intrusive searches. In effect, that would make participation in the program coerced rather than voluntary. But at | Airlines Seek an E-ZPass For Fast Security Checks |
1359171_2 | employers in a wide spectrum of industries about their hiring plans for the coming year. In its latest survey, in late December, 20 percent fewer employers said they planned to hire a new college graduate. How to stay in the nest? One way is to go right back in. At times like this, Mr. Fortner says, students go directly to graduate school ''while the economy mends itself.'' (Also, as long as one is still in school, the undergraduate loan is held in abeyance.) Kaplan, the test prep company, reports seeing a 20 percent increase in its course enrollment for graduate students from last January to October: 34 percent more for the Graduate Management Admissions Test, usually required by business schools, and 26 percent more for the Law School Admissions Test. (Medical school, which re-quires substantial long-term planning and commitment, depends less on employment opportunities.) Trudy Steinfeld, director of the Office of Career Services at New York University, says that the uncertain times have encouraged students to reflect more. ''We've had a lot more students coming in and questioning what they're thinking about doing,'' she says. For reasons emotional (''I want to make a difference'') and materialistic (''It's where the jobs are''), a nationwide surge of interest has developed in government work like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Peace Corps. ''When we had a job fair here on 9/25, the biggest table mobbed was the F.B.I.,'' Dr. Steinfeld says. ''That definitely wouldn't have happened last year. Nobody would sign up for their schedules, nobody would come to their tables.'' Since Sept. 11, there has been a sixfold to sevenfold increase in applications for the C.I.A.; 1,100 were received in one day. Well-established nongovernmental organizations like Teach for America, which trains graduates to teach in troubled elementary schools, are doing well, too. ONE recent evening, a Teach for America alumnus held an information session in an N.Y.U. classroom. The room was full of students who revealed with their tough, practical questions (''Can you choose your city?'' ''What about health benefits?'') that they were there for more than free pizza and soft drinks. Mathew Harkins, 21, was typical of the students. A liberal arts major, he was resigned to the fact that no one would be clamoring for his talents this year. Mr. Harkins didn't seem unduly panicked about building a career right away and didn't think | The Abyss Yawns |
1359160_4 | suit the taste of undergraduates. It may also be a sign of poor quality. To maximize their chances of getting into a college, some students might feign interest in, say, rural sociology, classics or German literature. But remember that applicants suspected of lying will be rejected, and that many institutions do not use the proposed field of interest as an admissions criterion anyway. Those that do often make it difficult to switch to another major. Financial Aid In the 1990's, to attract the best and brightest, enrollment managers (the capitalists) pushed to increase merit-based scholarships over the need-based scholarships that were in favor among financial-aid officers (the socialists). At the same time, many institutions chipped away at need-blind admissions by looking for ability to pay in the bottom quartile of the applicant pool, making it harder for the average high school student in need of financial aid and easier for those paying full freight. By in effect discounting tuition for desirable students through merit-based scholarships, institutions have opened up a bidding war and invited families to enter into negotiations. Who can blame them? And yet, excellent students may be tempted to go with the highest bidder, even if it is not the best choice. Permission Marketing With thousands of colleges and universities bombarding high school juniors and seniors with mail, it has become difficult and expensive for messages to be heard. In permission marketing, a consumer gets a gift in exchange for revealing personal data. In the case of higher education, the student might agree to review materials sent by the college; the gift might be free lectures or even whole courses, simulcasts of the college's athletic teams, or online study tips geared to a student's academic profile and interests. Mark Rothschild, senior vice president of FastWeb, a consulting company specializing in college marketing, explains the strategy: ''Once you get their permission and provide communication that is anticipated, personal and relevant, you're on your way in developing a dialogue and relationship that is more likely to lead to enrollment.'' The point, he adds, is ''to entice high school students into a weekly conversation.'' Many colleges and universities, including Cornell, now use permission marketing as a loss-leader, hoping to make a bigger sale later. The best advice to recipients of such largesse is: caveat emptor. The college may not be right, even if the gift is out of sight. Putting It | Tricks of the Trade |
1359160_5 | in the bottom quartile of the applicant pool, making it harder for the average high school student in need of financial aid and easier for those paying full freight. By in effect discounting tuition for desirable students through merit-based scholarships, institutions have opened up a bidding war and invited families to enter into negotiations. Who can blame them? And yet, excellent students may be tempted to go with the highest bidder, even if it is not the best choice. Permission Marketing With thousands of colleges and universities bombarding high school juniors and seniors with mail, it has become difficult and expensive for messages to be heard. In permission marketing, a consumer gets a gift in exchange for revealing personal data. In the case of higher education, the student might agree to review materials sent by the college; the gift might be free lectures or even whole courses, simulcasts of the college's athletic teams, or online study tips geared to a student's academic profile and interests. Mark Rothschild, senior vice president of FastWeb, a consulting company specializing in college marketing, explains the strategy: ''Once you get their permission and provide communication that is anticipated, personal and relevant, you're on your way in developing a dialogue and relationship that is more likely to lead to enrollment.'' The point, he adds, is ''to entice high school students into a weekly conversation.'' Many colleges and universities, including Cornell, now use permission marketing as a loss-leader, hoping to make a bigger sale later. The best advice to recipients of such largesse is: caveat emptor. The college may not be right, even if the gift is out of sight. Putting It Together Finding the best fit requires becoming as systematic in the college search as enrollment managers are in doing their jobs. It means consulting guidance counselors and finding colleges that have the reputation, rigor, curriculum, location and cost that match an applicant's aspirations and qualifications. And then visiting the institution, reading catalogs, talking with students and asking to see the surveys compiled (and sometimes zealously guarded) by enrollment managers. Acceptance by your first choice is exhilarating. Even more important is making the right choice. College Prep Glenn C. Altschuler is dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions and a professor of American studies at Cornell University. His column on negotiating the college experience appears in each issue of this section. E-mail: gca1@cornell.edu. | Tricks of the Trade |
1359164_1 | judged on a 750- to 1,000-word essay describing the positive and negative experiences involved in having a learning disability and detailing scholastic achievement, community involvement and plans. Applicants can submit a videotape or audiotape instead of an essay. ''I was the one who put that in,'' says Ms. Ford, whose 30-year-old daughter, Allegra, is learning disabled. ''I know my daughter would never have been able to write that essay, but she could speak it. All the programs she went to, they first turned her down, but when they met her and spoke to her they took her in.'' The center will make its first selection in March. Deadline for submissions is Jan. 31 (www.ld.org). The Department of Education estimates that 2.8 million public school students receive special education services for learning disabilities. ''I know how hard it is for these students to get from high school to college,'' says Ms. Ford, who is writing a book on raising a child with learning problems. So far, she has had no luck finding a publisher. ''They said I was too successful to have the trouble I've had,'' says Ms. Ford, the great-granddaughter of the founder of the Ford Motor Company. ''But nobody understands the pain you go through.'' Ms. Ford, who will remain on the center's executive committee, got involved in the issue because she could not find help for her daughter, who eventually attended a program at Leslie University aimed at students who are not quite ready for a regular college. ''She was turned down by numerous schools,'' Ms. Ford says. ''I fought the system for 30 years.'' LINDA LEE Other Scholarships FEW scholarships are available specifically for the learning disabled, but some individual colleges and universities offer them, often sponsored by learning disabled graduates or their parents. Other options: Marion Huber Learning Through Listening Award: Three scholarships of $6,000 each for high school seniors who have been registered with Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic for at least a year before the application deadline. Deadline: Feb. 21; (800) 221-4792; www.rfbd.org. Stanley E. Jackson Awards: Four scholarships of $500 each to students with a ''handicapping disability''; administered through the Foundation for Exceptional Students. Deadline: Feb. 1; www.cec.sped.org. California Association on Postsecondary Education and Disability: More than half a dozen scholarships of up to $1,500 for students attending a California institution of higher education. Deadline: Sept. 1; www.caped.net or e-mail shapiro@sbcc.net. BLACKBOARD | For the Learning Disabled Only |
1358899_2 | year ago were consulting and banking, but jobs are now scarce in those areas. At high-tech start-ups, workplace specialists say, they are almost nonexistent. ''Those companies no longer come to campus or place jobs with career centers,'' said Andy Chan, director of the Career Management Center at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. ''Students are saying, 'I need work.' '' Garrett Wilson, a student at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, had a recent fling with small business, but he now thinks bigger companies are better. Mr. Wilson, 31, held a summer internship last year at a medical-device maker that was seeking Food and Drug Administration approval for a potentially lucrative product. If the product had gone to market, he figured at the time, he would have had a good shot at a full-time job. ''There would have been a huge upside to getting in on the ground floor of that,'' he said. But the F.D.A. rejected the application, and the company failed. NOW Mr. Wilson is shopping for a position at a medium-size to large corporation, preferably in consumer products, that will give him a chance to move up through the ranks. ''C.E.O? Maybe someday,'' he said, half-joking. ''But I'd settle for head of marketing.'' That kind of attitude means that names like General Motors and R. J. Reynolds are back in vogue among the estimated 100,000 students who graduate from the nation's business schools every year. It has also created a much larger, and potentially cheaper, pool of talent from which hiring managers can choose. At General Motors, M.B.A.'s who left the company to join dot-coms or start their own companies are returning, according to Thomas Thivierge, director for talent acquisition at G.M.'s North America unit. ''They say, 'Please, can I come back?' because they know we'll be here 100 years from now,'' he said. Mr. Thivierge says a big benefit for him is the new glut of M.B.A. holders with experience as senior information technology executives at smaller companies. His annual recruiting turned up two or three such prizes in 1998, he said, but a choice of 10 candidates last year. Because of the economic slowdown, Mr. Thivierge has cut back slightly on his hiring and on internships for M.B.A. students. But he said, ''We are excited about getting the latest and greatest talent.'' Other companies are more aggressive about offering jobs to | The New M.B.A. Vogue: A Job at a Blue Chip |
1363212_0 | It took a while to get them developed, but the pictures all came out fine. Radar images taken two years ago by the space shuttle Endeavour are being processed into the most detailed three-dimensional maps ever made of the earth's land areas. To inaugurate the release of a flood of elevation data for the whole world, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration last week established high-resolution images of California detailing the ups and downs of its mountains, valleys, hills and flats. A full map of North America is to be released this spring, but information on the entire continent is available now to researchers studying things like earthquake faults and flood plains. Terrain data and maps for the rest of the world should be released by the end of the year, officials said. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, flown during February 2000, took a trillion measurements of surface height variations over 80 percent of the planet's land mass. It is the first reservoir of such information from the same consistent source covering most of the world. Sponsored by NASA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency of the Department of Defense, and the German and Italian space agencies, data from the project will be useful for such diverse applications as urban planning and finding the best spots for cellphone towers. The information can also be used to guide military strategy, and authorities delayed its release out of security concerns after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Pentagon is allowing free use of the project's lower-resolution data, but access to more detailed information, like that used in the California maps, is available only on a case-by-case basis. | Shuttle's Cameras Offer New Views of the World |
1361593_3 | boarding pass. If a passenger does not get on the airplane, the baggage can be quickly located and removed. No passenger, he said proudly, has to wait more than 15 minutes to get through security checks, while in some airports there have been lines lasting for two or three hours. But Terminal 4 does not yet have Mr. van der Chijs's favorite device, iris-identifying equipment that is used in some places in Europe, which uses a person's eyeball to verify identity. It does, however, have illuminated signs picturing things passengers are not allowed to carry on: golf clubs, pool cues, hockey sticks, ski poles and corkscrews. ''This terminal is probably safer than a city,'' said Mr. van der Chijs, who likes to think of airports as small cities in themselves. OF course, the new terminal was designed long before Sept. 11 made fear such a part of flying. A lot of what went into building Terminal 4 came from lessons learned at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, a famously passenger-friendly agglomeration of shops, restaurants, bars and hotels. ''We want to look at it through the eyes of the passenger,'' Mr. van der Chijs said. ''There should be lots of daylight, an open feeling. We have a lot of art. We use our airport knowledge. The airport should be a pleasant place to stay. Especially now, when people may be staying longer.'' So there are glass walls, flooding the building with sunlight. There are wide aisles around the counters of the 40 airlines, from Aer Lingus to World, using the terminal. The concourse with shops and restaurants is before the security checks, so it is open to friends and relatives accompanying passengers, encouraging them to linger. The artwork includes Alexander Calder's ''Flight'' mobile from the old International Arrivals Building, (whose last remnants are still being gobbled up by backhoes outside the windows) and ceramic bas-relief sculptures above the immigration booths depicting New York City street scenes, including Black Israelites haranguing people in Times Square. ''Let me show you something else we learned from Schiphol,'' said Mr. van der Chijs, an impish bad-boy grin breaking his strait-laced demeanor, leading a visitor into the men's room. On each of the urinals, a black fly had been stenciled several inches above the drain. ''This saves you a lot of cleaning,'' he said happily. ''The male nature is to want to aim at something.'' PUBLIC LIVES | A Dutch Touch in Flying (Right Down to the Flies) |
1361554_3 | got to bear in mind that the world has to be divided into those who represent real risk and those who are not a risk,'' he said. High on the list of nonrisk passengers, he said, are frequent business travelers. ''Those people we need to give a quick once-over, but the intensive security needs to be focused on people who actually represent a risk. And in order to do that we need to set aside this nonsense of being unwilling to profile. You have to profile,'' he said. He added: ''I don't care if the word is emotionally or politically loaded. I think we need to be talking about a combination of ethnic profiling and behavioral profiling, but principally behavioral profiling. That is, how do people behave? How do they buy their tickets? When do they get to the airport? ''There are many factors. If you take people who buy tickets for cash; who fly just one way; who show up for a three-week trip with only one piece of hand baggage -- these are among the clues to look for. But some of the clues may additionally be ethnic.'' He also cited travel patterns. ''If I was confronted with a passport of a person who had traveled three times to a hostile state in the last 12 months, I would want to give that person a very attentive security review, whether they were an Arab, an Israeli, an American or whatever.'' As do many security experts, Mr. Crandall says he believes that El Al, the Israeli airline, has already invented the model for the best airport security. That system, besides including intense screening of baggage for bombs and other weapons, is based on having a professional work force of well-trained security personnel, some of whom have the expertise to closely question passengers who are singled out for additional inspection through profiling. ''You can't fail to provide appropriate security for the bags and the cargo that's going into the belly of the plane, and you can't fail to look carefully at everybody's handbags,'' Mr. Crandall said. ''But what we're doing now, selecting people at random for pat-down searches, picking out congressmen and 80-year-old women, that's just foolishness. We're talking about lives here. We're talking about the survival and prosperity of the U.S. economy.'' It is time to get the discussion going publicly, he said. ''It's considered politically incorrect, of course, | A onetime top executive says airline security has often been secondary to not ruffling customers. |
1361566_0 | WE urge young people to get more education, arguing for example that women with college degrees earn 48 percent more than similar women with only high school diplomas. But such advice did not guide the 1996 federal welfare reform. With a time limit of five years for receiving benefits, the law says that only one of those years can be used for education. As a result, many recipients looking immediately for work got jobs in the booming economy of the 1990's -- but these were often low-wage, dead-end jobs. Now, in a recession, the retail, restaurant and hotel industries that hired many welfare recipients are those with the most employment losses. Welfare recipients, the last hired, have been the first fired. In the long run, it might have been wiser for more recipients to improve their skills before going to work. With more education, they might have been able to keep jobs in bad times as well as good. Community colleges can offer the education, but an associate degree takes at least two years, not one. Some of these colleges, however, have gone beyond the limits in federal law, taking advantage of more flexible state and local rules. City College of San Francisco, for example, provides added support services to help single mothers stay in school. It benefits from California's use of state dollars, not federal ones, to allow welfare recipients to add an extra year of education to the one allowed by Congress. And then, when state time limits have also been reached, the college helps students apply for a local scholarship established for welfare recipients by the City of San Francisco. Brandy Orge was a beneficiary. Neglected by her parents, Ms. Orge lived at friends' homes as a teenager, never enrolling in high school. An aunt and uncle eventually sent her to a program that prepares students for a diploma-equivalency exam. In 1999, 24 years old and on welfare, Ms. Orge realized she needed a well-paying career to support her 3-year-old daughter more responsibly than she herself was reared. She met with a City College counselor who reviewed the vocational certificate and two-year academic programs available. Ms. Orge said she decided ''there will always be a need for nurses.'' The counselor guided her choice of classes, organized federal and state financial aid and sent Ms. Orge to a City College center that gives students on welfare help with | Let Education Guide Welfare |
1358278_1 | ''Bloody Sunday'' refers to Sunday, Jan. 30, 1972, when an outburst of political violence erupted in the predominantly Roman Catholic city of Londonderry in British-ruled Northern Ireland. Derry, as Catholics call it, had been a center of political unrest throughout the decades of the so-called Irish Troubles. In the mid-1960's government troops patrolled the streets; a Catholic neighborhood that called itself Free Derry and was guarded by the Irish Republican Army declared its independence from British jurisdiction. Around this time the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was formed, modeled on the nonviolent black civil rights movement in the United States. It organized mass demonstrations to demand equal rights in voting and housing. And in January 1972 it called for a march in Londonderry to protest government internment camps where people suspected of insurgent activities were being held without trial. Thousands of people turned out, from international journalists to local citizens, including women and children, dressed in their Sunday best. A videotape made by one of the participants, William McKinney, suggests the event had a festive, upbeat feeling. To minimize the possibility of violence, the local branch of the I.R.A. had been asked to stay away. The march was monitored, then disrupted by British paratroopers. As the demonstrators approached a barricade, armed soldiers sprayed them with purple dye and tear gas. Suddenly there was gunfire. The crowd scattered, but within minutes 13 men and boys, ages 17 to 59, had been shot dead; another man later died of his wounds. No soldiers were killed or injured. The shots were heard around the world. The killings were front page news in Europe and the United States the next day. In Ireland the repercussions were explosive. Suppressed anger became overt. Violence increased. Families of the victims accused the British government of massacring unarmed citizens and demanded that the crime be acknowledged and punished. Prime Minister Edward Heath responded by establishing a tribunal of inquiry that not only exonerated the soldiers but also suggested that their actions were provoked by demonstrators carrying guns and nail bombs. After the report was filed, families of the dead men campaigned to have the case officially reopened. In 1998, Prime Minister Tony Blair convened a new investigation. It is still in progress. ''Hidden Truths,'' which first appeared in 1998 and has traveled widely since, is an accumulation of forensic material pertinent to the case. Organized by the independent | Is the Camera a Reliable Witness? |
1363635_0 | To reduce the use of ultrasound machines to detect the sex of a fetus -- a practice that has led to widespread abortion of female fetuses -- the Supreme Court ordered states to confiscate ultrasound machines that had not been licensed. The court had earlier ordered manufacturers of the machines to provide names and addresses of purchasing clinics and individuals. Those lists have since been provided to the states for follow-up. In some of India's richest states, where the preference for boys is strongest -- including Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat -- the spread of ultrasound sex determination tests has led to a marked decline in the ratio of girls to boys being born. Celia W. Dugger (NYT) | World Briefing | Asia: India: Curb On Ultrasound Devices |
1363482_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Many Ride Out the Recession in a Graduate School Harbor'' (front page, Jan. 24): While grad school is an ideal place to ride out an economic downturn, it is by no means the only reason that young professionals are returning to school. Most applicants to these kinds of programs are by nature fiercely competitive and ambitious. As professional workloads decrease as a result of cutbacks, young people are naturally channeling their desire to succeed and improve themselves to other avenues, graduate school being only one option. Similar increases in participation are being reported among volunteer and philanthropic organizations around the country. The simple and reassuring fact is that a future generation of leaders is seeking new challenges during challenging times. CAMERON HUDSON Washington, Jan. 24, 2002 The writer is applying to business school. | The Drive to Succeed |
1356064_0 | Framed by freshly unloaded stacks of Siberian lumber, thousands of used Japanese bicycles were loaded onto a ship here today, their tires flat, their chains rusted and their once-prim plastic shopping baskets cracked and faded. They are headed to North Korea, gifts from Kim Jong Il, the ''Dear Leader,'' to his nation of 23 million people, in honor of his birthday. ''Kim Jong Il's birthday is in six weeks, and he has promised a ration of one bicycle for every household,'' a Japanese dealer of second-hand goods who is of Korean descent said with a wave to the old bicycles that already covered every possible surface of the Su Song Chon, a low and rusting North Korean coastal ship that was pressed into service for foreign trade. When Mr. Kim shopped for the masses to perk up his 60th birthday festivities, on Feb. 16, it was only natural that he would turn to this mist-shrouded port, 500 miles across the Sea of Japan from North Korea. Here, in Maizuru, a lovely natural harbor where glassy waters are cupped by forest-covered mountains, the number of North Korean trading ships has increased fivefold in five years, reaching 295 last year. Recently, a bitter war of words has erupted between Japan and North Korea over a mystery boat that sank after an intense gun battle with Japan Coast Guard ships in the Sea of China on Dec. 22. All 15 crew members of the boat apparently died. North Korea, while denying ownership of what the Japanese news media call ''the spy ship,'' accused Japan of ''brutal piracy.'' But here on Japan's quiet coast, the northwest shore that faces the Korean Peninsula, it was business as usual today, with seven North Korean boats tied up at wharves here. Because Japan and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations, the North Koreans do all their trading without setting foot on land. Standing on a wooden gangplank, a yard from Japanese soil, the leader of one boat's crew was not happy to see visitors. ''No pictures, give me the film, you have no right to take pictures inside the port,'' the North Korean man, who sported a gold watch and designer sunglasses, said as his crew froze in their loading tasks, glaring with suspicion at the unexpected visitors. He ceremoniously dropped the film into the salt water. Much of North Korea's notorious prickliness may come from | Don't Shoot! We're Only Shopping |
1356710_0 | When it comes to proposals for gigantic construction projects, environmentalists have complained for years that the authorities in Thailand never seem to say no. But the government's approval of one disputed project, a natural gas pipeline across southern Thailand, has provoked a rare challenge to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's development plans and signaled that the days of unfettered development here may be over. Thai law requires that an expert panel review the environmental and social effects of big private development projects before the government's Office for Environmental Policy and Planning can approve them. The plan for the Trans Thai-Malaysia Pipeline, a $500 million conduit to carry natural gas from fields in the South China Sea to Malaysia, was held up for more than a year by objections from a review panel and by protests from villagers in the region where the pipeline is to be built. When the policy office gave the project the go-ahead last month, a member of the 12-person expert panel publicly accused the government of railroading it through. The member, Walwipha Burusratanaphand, 49, a senior researcher at Thammasat University in Bangkok, said the policy office had illegally ignored the panel's decision against the pipeline. ''We didn't want to approve this E.I.A.,'' or environmental impact assessment, Ms. Walwipha said. ''We wanted to say no.'' The dispute offers a rare glimpse into a closed-door process that environmentalists have long derided as empty ritual, evidence of the ineffectiveness of laws to protect people and the environment. And it is now a major part of a relatively new debate in Thailand: how to balance the rights of a local community with the needs of the country at large. ''People don't want to accept anything,'' said Chamniern Vorratnchaiphan, director of the Grass-Roots Action Program at the Thailand Environmental Institute, a nonprofit group that seeks to promote sustainable development. ''We don't have the right balance between development and conservation.'' Thailand has a lot riding on the gas pipeline. After more than 20 years of negotiations between Thailand and Malaysia over contested offshore gas reserves, the project is being jointly developed by the two countries' state-controlled oil companies, the Petroleum Authority of Thailand and Petroliam Nasional of Malaysia, known as Petronas. Petronas has already signed contracts to buy gas from the pipeline, and Mr. Thaksin has personally assured his Malaysian counterpart, Mahathir Mohamad, that the project will move ahead. Thailand wants to use | Thailand Development Faces Rare Challenge |
1359733_3 | procedures wouldn't deter a bomber who accepted suicide as part of the deal, as the Sept. 11 killers obviously did. Nor would it stop, say, a cabbie or a bellhop with access to a passenger's bag from planting a bomb, he pointed out. Despite the flaws, the new system is important because of its symbolism, he said. It shows that the airlines, which long resisted comprehensive checked-baggage screening because of its costs and difficulties, are prepared to respond forcefully to meet the first of several federal deadlines for toughening security, he added. It helps that this baggage-matching deadline came in the winter, Mr. Mitchell said. That's the slow season for leisure travelers, who typically carry the most bags. ''Business travelers tend not to have a lot of checked luggage,'' he said. Mr. Mitchell and other passenger advocates say that any kinks in the system can be worked out before heavier travel periods begin in the spring. Hoping for the best, the airlines are generally not advising passengers to expect more check-in delays than usual on Friday. The carriers advise passengers to check their Web sites for advisories. Whether new backups and delays occur starting Friday or not, few in the industry and among passenger advocacy groups actually regard the new baggage-screening system as representing a significant improvement in security. Merely requiring that bags be matched to passengers ''is an ineffective method for determining whether there are bombs on board,'' said David S. Stempler, the president of the Air Travelers Association. ''It's based on the assumption that you don't have a lot of suicide bombers'' threatening air security, he said, adding, ''It's a lot of window dressing, and a lot of trouble, without a big increase in security for the passenger.'' The next major federal deadline for the industry is Dec. 31, when airlines will be required to screen each bag for bombs. To meet that requirement, the airlines ''are going to have to spend enormous amounts of money'' and even redesign terminals to accommodate new bomb-checking machines, said Robert Crandall, the retired chief executive of American Airlines. Like many airline executives, Mr. Crandall says that airline security next needs to move beyond the cargo to ''looking at passengers themselves.'' He added: ''We have to set aside this politically correct nonsense about being unwilling to profile. We have to profile.'' Business Travel The Business Travel column appears each Wednesday. E-mail: jsharkey@nytimes.com. | Fliers could face increased delays starting Friday as the airlines institute new rules for baggage. |
1361967_4 | bubble burst more than a year ago, its effect on professional and graduate school applications was not obvious until this round of applications. When many Internet startups first failed last January, it was already too late to meet the application deadlines for fall 2001 entrance, usually in February or March. But this year, the dot-com refugees, ''disenchanted, disillusioned and disabled to pay rent,'' in the words of a University of Pennsylvania spokeswoman, have shown up as applicants here and elsewhere. Eric Landry is one. After the Texas software company he worked for laid off 350 people last spring, including him, he decided to apply to the master's program in software engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. ''I have always wanted to go back to school and get the software training that I need to go to the next level,'' Mr. Landry said. ''But it was never the right time.'' There was simply too much money and excitement to give up. The largest cost of acquiring a degree, said Edward Snyder, the dean of the business school at the University of Chicago, was to forgo your current earnings, and weak economies lower that cost. Federal and private loans -- averaging $80,000 for a law school student, $50,000 for a business student -- make the graduate school years possible. But while the recession lowers the ante for those prepared to start graduate education, it has tuned up the anxiety for those ready to finish. Even second-year M.B.A. students at Wharton, whose predecessors had often boasted of five, six job offers in previous years, are wringing their hands, wondering what next. The hard times have reoriented the college seniors, too, who grew up during the longest boom in decades. During the 2001-2002 school year, employers are expected to hire 6 percent to 13 percent fewer college graduates than the last school year, according to a report released by Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. The job market for advanced degree holders will shrink by 20 percent, it also said. While applications to graduate school are booming, it will be tougher for college seniors to get into the most selective programs because the number of available places has not grown substantially. The admissions director at Emory's business school, for instance, expects the average Graduate Management Admissions Test score of the new class to go to 670 from last year's 650. | Many Ride Out the Recession In a Graduate School Harbor |
1360773_1 | persons entering any of Nassau County's court facilities remains our highest priority,'' the advisory said. ''Recent events in our nation have led us to adopt a proactive approach utilizing available Internet technology.'' Walter J. Sheridan, supervisor of the mailroom at the state Supreme Court building in Garden City, said the e-mail request has resulted in a drop in the volume of letters. He said that on Mondays, the heaviest mail day, instead of two court officers taking as long as 90 minutes to open all of the mail, the job now averaged 35 minutes. Christopher S. DeCristofaro, secretary of Justice F. Dana Winslow of state Supreme Court in Garden City, said he encouraged the use of e-mails for routine things like adjournments on consent, notifying the judge of a settlement for scheduling purposes, discontinuing a case and setting up conferences. ''It's basically used for scheduling, which is most of what we do,'' he said. E-mail still cannot be used to enter a plea, to settle a dispute or to file court papers. ''I had not thought of it until I received the McCabe memo, and then I contacted most of the calendar clerks at the law firms I deal with and encouraged them to use e-mail,'' he said. ''It has cut down on telephone calls. ''Once you get representation in an e-mail that both sides agree, you can print out the e-mail and put it in the file,'' he said. ''They don't have to forward a letter because an e-mail is considered a letter.'' Alan N. Sutin, chief of information technology practice at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig in Manhattan, said there had been a move to allow electronic filing for a variety of documents with government entities, like license applications to the Motor Vehicle Bureau and other agencies. ''Technology to improve the efficiency of government has been under way for many years,'' he said. ''Lawyers as a general rule are not early adopters of new technology and tend to be very traditional. I would imagine that they would be slow to accept e-mails or faxes.'' Shawn Kelly, chairman of the Nassau-Suffolk Trial Lawyers Association, said that although there has been positive reaction among lawyers to Judge McCabe's request, ''lawyers are slow to react.'' ''But it makes all the sense in the world, and it's easy, fast, inexpensive and efficient,'' he said. Mr. Kelly said all 40 employees at | After Anthrax, the Law Goes Online |
1361069_0 | A wave of protests followed the murder of a 20-year-old Roman Catholic mailman by the Ulster Defence Association, a Protestant paramilitary group. Postal services halted as workers ceased deliveries, and thousands of people staged a half-day walkout. Brian Lavery JANUARY 13-19: INTERNATIONAL | NORTHERN IRELAND PROTESTS |
1360993_0 | The three pros advanced confidently along the V.I.P. security line at O'Hare International Airport, identification in hand, Palm Pilots and cellphones packed away, pockets emptied of change and other miscellaneous items, laptops out and ready for X-ray. ''I was flying out of Philadelphia Wednesday night, and you had people who acted like they'd never seen a metal detector before,'' said one of the three, Stuart Graff, 38, a lawyer for a Chicago consumer products company who racked up more than 100,000 miles on business last year, which with bonus points translated into 400,000 frequent flier miles. ''There was one guy who took about five minutes to unload his pockets. He was taking out coins and keys. It took about 90 minutes to get through security.'' Anthony Sitko, 37, another lawyer, and Roger Palmer, 40, a product engineer, who were with Mr. Graff and who are also experienced business travelers, nodded knowingly. They have no complaints about heightened security. They have adapted. Mr. Sitko pointed to his shoes -- loafers, the perfect new airport shoe. ''You can step out of them for screening,'' he explained. Mr. Graff said: ''They should have separate lines for amateurs and professionals. Those of us who know how to go through airports should be able to go through quickly. Just keep me away from grandma with all her gifts for the grandchildren.'' He has nothing against grandmothers, Mr. Graff said, ''but they're using up all the overhead bin space.'' Since Sept. 11, the class system at airports is more sharply demarcated than ever. But this is not a system that simply divides the first-class travelers with their sleek designer luggage from the masses with their bulky suitcases and canvas backpacks. Money is still a big part of the division, of course, but what also matters in the new world of random screenings, shoe checks, long waits in security lines and at check-in counters -- and the new baggage-matching security measures that began on Friday -- is that some people just know how to do airports. Why shouldn't they? They practically live in them. ''Since the first, I've been, I'm trying to think where I've been,'' Mr. Graff said, whipping out his Palm Pilot. He read from December's electronic calendar: ''Washington, Atlanta, a couple trips to Cleveland, a couple trips to Philadelphia, North Carolina, Madison, Wis.'' Mr. Graff's company spends a lot of money flying him around | As Security Tightens, the Race Goes to the Savviest |
1358606_5 | is a good thing,'' Mr. Clark said ruefully. ''You might as well be beating your head against that wall,'' he said, pointing to a massive face of copper-laced rock. But environmentalists say mining companies have always claimed to have the technology to prevent damage, and have often been proved wrong. The Clark Fork River, which winds through rocky canyons and grassy meadows here, has been affected by mines before. Cadmium, arsenic and other toxic elements from more than a century of mining have polluted it and other rivers in the area, including the Blackfoot, which empties into the Clark Fork and was immortalized in Norman Maclean's ''A River Runs Through It.'' The Clark Fork has been the object of a longstanding cleanup campaign, one that the Rock Creek Mine's opponents, including the Clark Fork Coalition and the Rock Creek Alliance, say makes the idea of introducing new mining waste to the area profoundly objectionable. The opponents plan to wage a legal battle over the scope and intent of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which authorized the wilderness areas. Among the issues is whether that statute trumps the 1872 act, which decreed that mining be considered the best use of public lands. No roads, construction or motor vehicles are ordinarily permitted in wilderness areas. The Wilderness Act allowed existing mining ''patents'' -- claims to the minerals in a given location -- to be exercised in a few wilderness areas. But most of those existing patents involved very small-scale operations. The claims at Rock Creek, on the other hand, were filed afterward, and the courts will probably be asked to determine whether so large an operation is permitted within the meaning of the Wilderness Act. ''The Bush administration and the State of Montana are acting as if there is an absolute right to construct this mine,'' said Roger Flynn, director and managing attorney for the Colorado-based Western Mining Action Project, which is representing a coalition of conservation groups planning to challenge approval of the mine. ''That's simply not the case at all under federal law.'' But Frank Duval, Sterling's president, said the company's patent gave it the right to take the silver and copper that lie buried beneath the wilderness area. ''The opponents say we'll kill all the bears and poison the fish,'' Mr. Duval said. ''That's just ridiculous. This thing has been studied and studied and studied, and the fact is | Wilderness Above, a Mine Below and a Furor |
1358600_3 | monasteries, Mepkin welcomes women as well as men, members of the clergy and nonmembers, Roman Catholics and non-Catholics. It also has a Web site, www.mepkinabbey.org. Up to a dozen guests at a time stay free -- though donations are encouraged -- for a day, a week, sometimes months. Why? Most cite the code of silence, which they try to observe. Eric Hoyle, a 20-year-old Moravian from Winston-Salem, N.C., planned to stay a month when he arrived on Monday. Mr. Hoyle chose to spend a semester away from the University of North Carolina, immersing himself in ''the life,'' as the monks call it. ''I've always defined myself by what I do -- I'm always so busy -- but I wanted to stop doing for a while,'' Mr. Hoyle said. Joan Brown, a 61-year-old retiree who lives nearby, planned to spend a week, just as she did six months ago and six months before that. Reared as a Lutheran, Ms. Brown had not attended church for two decades until a personal crisis two years ago led her to Mepkin. ''The quiet, the no phone, the no TV -- I need that spiritual space,'' she said. Silence is not golden for everyone, though. It can be unnerving at first. ''There's a great deal of fear of silence out there,'' said Tom Vallie, who was director of children's psychiatric services for the State of New York before retiring to Hendersonville, N.C. ''People need their distractions, but they're really just running. I think, with Sept. 11, a lot of people checked up short, and some realized they can't run anymore.'' Mr. Vallie has been coming to Mepkin a week a year for four years, and each time he meets his friend Pete Peterman, a former Navy medic now retired to Brevard, N.C. Mr. Peterman, who once considered becoming a monk, still finds the visits challenging. ''Introspection can be very scary,'' he said. ''You sit out on the river here and start asking yourself, What is important in my life? What is my life about?'' Those are good questions to start with, the monks say. And they hope to incite more, in more visitors, by creating a tourist-attracting botanical garden. ''I won't pretend this is not a tremendous risk,'' Father Kline said of balancing an inward mission and outward reach. ''But our intuition says, This is a good thing, and it must be shared.'' Religion Journal | A Monastery Uniting the Old and New |
1360326_0 | Confronting the Possibility of Confrontation | |
1360321_0 | The aviation security bill passed by Congress in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks set today as an interim deadline for all checked luggage to be scrutinized, by one method or another. This week Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta pronounced the government and the airlines ready to do so. That will make flying safer, but not safe enough. The end of the year is the more important and daunting deadline. By that date, all bags checked in by passengers must go through sophisticated bomb-screening equipment. Until then, security will rely on a patchwork of safeguards, including machines, manual searches, bomb-sniffing dogs and the matching of bags to passengers. Airlines have separately improved their computerized profiling systems to help ensure that the bags of passengers deserving particular scrutiny -- those who pay with cash, for instance -- are checked thoroughly. Bag-matching, already done by airlines on international flights, requires the removal of any bags checked by passengers who then fail to board the aircraft. This should deter many would-be bombers, but not those willing to commit suicide. The new Transportation Security Agency, led by John Magaw, a former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, has yet to indicate how it plans to meet the year-end deadline. Only about 170 of the 2,000 bomb-detection machines that will be needed nationwide are now deployed. These machines, similar to CT-scan medical devices, cost roughly $1 million apiece. They are so heavy and bulky that installing them often requires physical renovations to airport terminals. Only two manufacturers have been certified to build them. The California-based company Invision, the larger of the two, usually builds between 5 and 10 units a month. It says it could produce far more. But it has had little incentive to increase production because it has received only one order, for $16 million, from the F.A.A. since Sept. 11. That is a fraction of the billions needed to do the job. Mr. Magaw's agency, which formally takes control of airport security from the airlines on Feb. 17, has been getting advice from private security and logistics experts on how to meet the deadline, and exploring alternative technologies developed by other companies and defense research labs. It is also hiring security managers for the most important airports, and has to create by November a 30,000-member federal force to replace the screeners hired by the airlines. But Tom Ridge, President | Back on the Homeland Front |
1360329_3 | are cumbersome to use, sometimes sit idle. Speaking about the requirement that bags be matched with passengers before the first takeoff of a trip, Carol B. Hallett, the chief executive of the Air Transport Association, said, ''We are hopeful there really will not be any change from what has been in existence over the last couple of months.'' But in the next breath Ms. Hallett said, ''There have been days when it's been pretty horrific because of security breaches.'' In the past, her organization had lobbied against bag matching, and airlines argued that it would cause delays at their hubs. The airlines appear to have won the argument, in the sense that matching bags will not be required on connections. American Airlines, the nation's largest, said it ''anticipates efficiently processing passengers through security and launching flights on time.'' American said it began 100 percent bag matching on Tuesday. The system's capacity to tolerate disruption has increased somewhat because the skies are less crowded. The Air Transport Association said today that the number of passengers boarding planes in December was 14.2 percent lower than in December 2000. Other security improvements are taking hold; the number of armed undercover air marshals in place is small, but growing, and all major airlines have installed doors that are harder to break down. The next step, already taken by some airlines, is doors that are impenetrable to bullets and bombs. Airlines now have 60 days to propose a training program to the Transportation Department. The details are secret, but Jane F. Garvey, the head of the aviation administration, said, ''This really shifts the strategy from a training program that has been much more passive to one that is much more active.'' The plan does not tell the airlines whether to issue stun guns or other nonlethal weapons, or whether to train pilots to maneuver their airplanes to make hijackers fall over, but it does lay out what kinds of training crews would need if those strategies were adopted. -------------------- Suit Challenges Screeners Rule LOS ANGELES, (AP) Jan. 17 -- The American Civil Liberties union filed a federal lawsuit today challenging the constitutionality of a provision in the new airport security law that requires all baggage screeners to be American citizens. The suit claims that the law discriminates against noncitizens, who represent more than half the screeners at some California airports. A NATION CHALLENGED: AIRPORT SECURITY | Screening of All Checked Airline Bags Is to Start Today, but Safety Concerns Remain |
1355908_2 | and public speaking. He is said to have enforced quality academic standards, while recruiting more black players. He had already turned down his alma mater, Michigan State, and, according to Leland, ''would have been out of here a long time ago'' if money were his primary ambition. So why Notre Dame, where Bob Davie also graduated players and took a 9-3 team to the Fiesta Bowl last season, but was run out following this 5-6 season? Until Willingham explains himself, it's all guesswork, and here is mine: the potential impact on his chosen profession based on his becoming Notre Dame's first black coach is something no other school can offer. Every minority coach I have known, college or pro, has had an acute sense of the industry's traditional hiring practices. They know how difficult it has always been to get the attention of the general manager or athletic director who typically hires from his personalized crony list. According to Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, blacks made up 2.4 percent of college athletic directors this season. Football coaches at a Division I-A level weighed in at a paltry 4.7 percent. In its annual report card grading the sports industry's opportunities for minorities and women, the center said, ''U.S. colleges continue to provide the fewest opportunities for people of color at the top management level.'' The colleges' grade for racial hiring, C-minus, was worse than the B given Major League Baseball, the latter suggesting they're all being graded on the proverbial curve. How we view progress depends on which observation deck we're looking from. Not all that long ago, most fast, strong-armed black kids were turned into receivers and defensive backs. Now the colleges churn out quarterbacks of color, and they go on to become Quincy Carter and Donovan McNabb. The other day in Lexington, Ky., where Adolph Rupp once fought like a pugnacious walk-on against the integration of his famed basketball program, 24,000 Wildcat fans chanted wildly for Tubby Smith, their first black head coach. That almost everyone wearing blue in an arena named for Rupp was white except for Smith and the majority of his players, well, that's another commentary on the complex, contradictory and visually striking world of collegiate sports. This one is about the crying need to jump-start a stalled movement. What better place to begin than Notre Dame? Sports of The Times | The Irish Jump-Start A Movement |
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