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1355806_0 | My new patient was a slim middle-aged woman, elegant in nylons, earrings and a silk suit. But when she sat down, suddenly something was wrong. I looked at her more carefully. Her hands were big. Her feet were big. Her jaw was chiseled. She had a definite 5 o'clock shadow. While she chatted on about her bunions, I leafed through her chart with increasing desperation. It was no help at all. She was a consistent ''she'' throughout the record. But I was pretty sure I knew a man when I saw one. I was also pretty sure that gender is an inarguably germane piece of medical information, and that, in good conscience, I could not examine this person until I had cleared the matter up. I looked at her again. Her stubble gave me strength. I took a breath. ''I have to ask,'' I said. ''Forgive me. But are you a . . . a transgender person?'' She looked crushed and horrified and for a moment my stomach dropped. ''How did you know?'' she said. I pointed to my upper lip. She grimaced. ''I've tried everything,'' she said. ''Is it very bad?'' I shook my head. ''Not too bad.'' ''You're very smart, doctor,'' she said. It was not a compliment. ''Very smart. Now listen to me. You are not to put this in my medical record. I do not want anyone to know. This is my private information, and I want to keep it private. Period. Do you understand?'' I said I understood, although the only thing I really understood was that the remaining 7 of our allotted 20 minutes together were not enough even to frame the necessary discussion, let alone conduct it. I examined her briefly and sent her off with a referral for her bunions. Then I turned to type my note into her record. This all happened many years ago, but I could easily be sitting there still, fingers over the keyboard, considering and rejecting my options, one by one. The medical record is the sacrosanct text of medical care, the repository of all truth -- or at least as much as fallible medical personnel can lay their hands on. Like any text with lofty aspirations, it confers a variety of legal and moral obligations on its custodians. Two predominate: the obligation to keep the record accurate, and the obligation to keep it confidential. Unfortunately, these | On Record: Conflicting Obligations |
1355834_0 | To the Editor: I would recommend against Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's advice (front page, Dec. 28) and, if financially feasible, rebuild the twin towers. Majestic lobbies in each of the towers filled with artifacts, photographs, archival recordings and artistic remembrances should themselves serve as memorials to those lost in the attacks and as museums of heroism, patriotism and reverence. Each lobby should include a memorial area listing those who were lost in the tower previously on that site. This might be the only physical memorial for many who perished. Rebuilding would be the ultimate act of defiance against terrorism. JOE SELLMANSBERGER Memphis, Dec. 28, 2001 | Defiance by Rebuilding |
1355848_2 | terrorist attacks, has cast them in sharp relief. The top priority this year is finding jobs for graduates, most of whom have never seen a market this tough. ''We've reached out beyond the traditional recruiters,'' like consulting firms and investment banks, Mr. Harker said. This year, there is more activity by smaller companies that once might not have thought they could attract Wharton students, he said. Even students at Columbia Business School, which has had very strong relationships with banks and consulting firms because it is in New York, are looking at relatively staid and perhaps more stable employers, like Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Unilever and General Motors, said Meyer Feldberg, the school's dean. The environment is similar to that of 1991-92, Mr. Feldberg said. ''It was very much like this during Desert Storm,'' he said, referring to the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf. This year is likely to be much harder for M.B.A. students at schools that were once considered off the beaten track for many prestigious employers but began attracting their attention during the tight labor market of the late 1990's, said Sidney E. Harris, dean of the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. Many recruiters, under orders to hire very few people, will limit themselves to the most selective and best-known schools, he said. He estimated that the number of employers recruiting at Robinson had fallen by at least 30 percent this semester. In response, many schools are reaching out to their alumni, asking them to try to hire new graduates. ''That network becomes really important,'' said Robert S. Sullivan, dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. He also said that students were searching much more actively: a group of 29 Kenan-Flagler students organized a trip to Texas to visit energy companies, including Exxon Mobil and the El Paso Corporation. (Of course, that was before the collapse of the Enron Corporation, an energy trader, last month.) ''They've now set up a club that focuses on the energy industry,'' Mr. Sullivan said. ''That has been an industry that we haven't looked to.'' Shifts in opportunities have led to changes in what students study. Interest in e-commerce courses, for example, has declined sharply, while interest has increased in biotechnology, as well as in more traditional subjects like finance and marketing. ''We have a basic e-business course that has 90 | M.B.A. Schools Shift Focus to Jobs |
1355816_0 | Women who undergo hormone replacement therapy after menopause appear to enjoy better mental functioning. The gains were noted in a group of women, monitored for three years, who were given the hormone replacements for a variety of problems, including hot flashes and bone loss. The researchers -- from Johns Hopkins, Utah State, Duke and the University of California at San Francisco -- described the improvements in the current issue of Neurology as ''clinically as well as statistically significant.'' Women 85 and older did especially well. ''Our results suggest that the apparent effects of H.R.T. are greatest among the oldest old,'' the researchers wrote. ''In other words, those who stand to lose the most cognitively appear to gain the most from H.R.T. exposure.'' The improvements were seen only in women free from dementia. And the authors cautioned that more study was needed to verify the findings, especially because the group of women studied did not reflect the general population. The research was based on a study of women who live in Cache County, Utah, which is 90 percent Mormon. Mormons are forbidden to use alcohol and tobacco, a prohibition that could affect any study involving their health. In all, more than 2,000 women 65 or older were monitored. Researchers performed periodic evaluations of their cognitive skills and then correlated the findings to the use of hormone replacements. VITAL SIGNS: THERAPIES | A Gain From Hormone Replacement |
1357252_2 | balance the demands of law enforcement and customer service in a new era of increased airport security. Soon, they say, travelers will have the option of enrolling in a national identification program that will expedite check-ins using a high-technology system to essentially vouch for one's trustworthiness as a security risk. Several airlines have been working separately on such systems. But with responsibility for airport security scheduled to shift on Feb. 18 from the airlines to the federal government, it's now considered likely that a unified system will emerge. The Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents the airline industry, has told the federal government that it supports such a plan. One thing is certain: in the future, to get through to the gate faster, you'll need to be on ''the list'' -- a database of travelers who have applied for and received (most likely by paying a fee) a ''smart card'' I.D. that can be used for expedited airport security processing. Basically, said Mr. Stempler, the system would ''separate airline passengers into two groups: the known and the not-known.'' No matter what form such a system eventually takes, most proponents agree that it will have to be voluntary. Using a kind of ''reverse profiling'' technology, travelers will swipe their I.D. cards through A.T.M.-like devices at security checkpoints. As a guard against counterfeiting, encoded biometrics on the card would enable the device to verify a person's identity through fingerprints, handprints, iris-identification or facial recognition scanning. Then the system would check with a central database to verify that the user was designated an acceptable security risk. The I.D. system would ''separate the people we know -- the ones who are not high-risk -- from the people we don't know,'' Mr. Stempler said. ''You get to go to a shorter line for your security check if you're in the known category. We'd still need to inspect what you're carrying, just as we do with everybody else. But everyone else who we don't know, you spend a little more time on, find out where they're going, what they're doing, where they've been.'' Though anyone could enroll in such a system, in practice it would be used mostly by frequent fliers who would be willing to go to the expense and trouble of applying. But in granting more convenience to users, even a voluntary system would exert pressure on regular fliers to join, critics | The Nation; Class Consciousness Comes to Airport Security |
1356995_5 | proposed a separation between philosophy and politics -- inclines towards Jaspers's view, and beyond that toward a more Platonic conception. Philosophers must venture into the political realm: not necessarily to rule but to defend against tyranny, to illuminate ''the shadow realm of public life,'' where reason can too easily be overthrown by the passions. Lilla tries to develop these thoughts into a general explanation in the book's final essay, ''The Lure of Syracuse.'' He evokes the story of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, who consorted for a time with philosophers but ended -- in Plato's word -- merely ''sunburned'' by ideas, and remained a tyrant. Dionysius, Lilla asserts, ''is our contemporary.'' The innovation of the 20th century, he goes on to say, was to have produced -- under the signs of fascism and Communism -- a new social type, for which we need a new name: the philotyrannical intellectual.'' Yet just when we hope for a precise rendition of this figure, for an argument about what exactly is distinctively novel about this social type, Lilla turns elusive and gestural. We read of ''political voyeurs who made carefully choreographed tours of the tyrant's domains with return tickets in hand,'' of how ''distinguished professors, gifted poets and influential journalists summoned their talents to convince all who would listen that modern tyrants were liberators.'' But what exactly makes these people part of a ''general phenomenon'' for which there can be a single explanation? And what makes them different from previous intellectual courtesans to the politically powerful? Lilla can be impressively scrupulous about historical context, but in his effort to impose sense on his material he ends by veering toward a portentous and vague question: ''What is it about the human mind that made the intellectual defense of tyranny possible in the 20th century?'' In the very next sentence he offers a more measured formulation: he asks how ''the Western tradition of political thought'' came to find something good in tyranny -- a far better question, since it isn't clear that there is anything determinate about the ''human mind'' that can supply the answer to Lilla's puzzle. The pursuit of larger and more nebulous game stems in part from Lilla's dissatisfaction with existing explanations, which to his eye are at once too partial and contradictory. Historians of ideas divide between those who blame Enlightenment rationalism and those who cast responsibility upon the force of | When Smart People Get Dumb Ideas |
1357116_3 | hired a consulting firm four months ago to help in amending its code on cellular antennas, said Thelma Neira, a town attorney. Though the Huntington Zoning Board of Appeals can rule on applications for antennas on private property, the town has to deal with requests to put antennas on town-owned land. The placement of cell antennas on municipal property can mean a small windfall for a town. Cellphone companies have been known to pay $20,000 a year to lease a site for an antenna and a 10-by-20-foot modular building for ancillary equipment. After nearly six years of legal wrangling, the Town of Oyster Bay recently approved the construction of seven cell towers, ranging from 125 to 175 feet, on town property by SBA Communications of Boca Raton, Fla. SBA will then lease space on the towers to the cellphone companies. The town will receive $300,000 at the outset and is guaranteed at least $30,000 a year for each tower. ''People want to have seamless coverage, and we want to provide that,'' said Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for Sprint. ''But there are communities who are holding us up. The opposition is usually small but vocal.'' Sometimes the issue raised is exposure to high-frequency radio waves. While cellular antennas can emit a maximum of only 100 watts in all directions, Federal Communications Commission guidelines say that prolonged exposure at close range is not recommended. Cellphone companies are quick to point out that a baby monitor emits more wattage than a cellphone and that the waves produced by cellphone equipment are not any more harmful than television or radio waves. Sometimes the objections to antennas are aesthetic. Michael Haberman, the head of operations for Verizon Wireless in the New York metropolitan area, said: ''Resistance is even more now than in the past. People say they are worried about property values. They don't want to look at a tower.'' Cell companies don't always want a tower either. ''We'd like to minimize towers,'' Mr. Haberman said. ''It would save money.'' But like it or not, the skyrocketing demand for wireless service means there will have to be more antennas. In the meantime, said Mr. Howat of Verizon, newer, more sophisticated cellphones can increase the chances of getting a good connection; so will extending the phone's antenna. And keep moving, he said. A difference of even a few feet will sometimes help get a call through. | As Cell Antennas Rise, So Do New Barriers |
1357080_0 | Q: Your activism -- against a local McDonald's, most famously -- has made you a national hero in France. But it has also gotten you in trouble. Last month you were sentenced to six months in jail for helping to destroy genetically modified rice plants. What are you trying to accomplish? Listen, the best answer I can give you is that when the future of the human race is in jeopardy due to bad decisions -- like the decision to develop genetically modified plants -- and when debate doesn't solve the problem, you're obliged to disobey the law. The example I follow is that of Henry David Thoreau, one of the first to apply the principle of civil disobedience. In your new book, ''The World Is Not for Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food,'' you call genetic modification a ''technique of tyranny.'' What do you mean by that? The moment you have G.M. seeds in a field, the other fields around it are inevitably going to be contaminated. You can't grow conventional corn next to the genetically modified stuff. The same with soybeans. This imposes on all farmers a single kind of agriculture that is contrary to the natural biodiversity. So the technique itself is totalitarian. The press has portrayed your attack on McDonald's as a kind of anti-Americanism. But you dispute that claim. Of course. The same thing that is happening in the United States is happening in France and everywhere else: big conglomerates are trying to standardize food production and consumption to their exclusive advantage. It's not at all a question of the company's national origins. Perhaps Americans just get defensive, because the French always seem to think their culture is so, well, superior. That's one of the problems with the United States. Criticism directed at a particular issue is automatically taken as a global criticism of the United States and its population. There's this impulse to justify and defend everything without realizing that it's through debate that people begin to understand each other. Do you ever eat fast food yourself? Have you ever had a Big Mac? No. It's not the kind of food I like. How do you know it's so bad if you've never had it? I know how the hamburgers are made. I know where the meat comes from. I know what kind of vegetables are used and how they're cultivated. I know how everything | Unhappy Meals |
1357101_1 | A substantial number of industries and professions are either flourishing in, or at least weathering, the post-Sept. 11 recession, economists say. These include pharmaceutical companies, mobile-phone makers, munitions suppliers, security specialists, bankruptcy-related services, secondary education, fast food, public transportation, health care, home entertainment, social workers and physical therapists. The Garden City Group, a legal-administration company in Melville, N.Y., for example, has just opened a reorganization unit to capitalize on the surge in bankruptcies that has taken filings nationwide to a record 1,437,000 in the year ended Sept. 30. The company's bread-and-butter is administering claims for large class-action cases, but it quickly realized that providing Chapter 11 services for law firms and debtors was a natural business extension. So it recruited Karen Shaer, the general counsel of a client company that had been through the class action and Chapter 11 process itself, to run the new unit. As a result of its expansion, Garden City has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in new technology, redeployed several people, cross-trained others and moved into an office with double the space. In its first two months, the new unit has been retained by two clients, and hopes to add 10 to 15 new cases this year. Another sector that usually gets a lift when the economy dips is education, particularly in those fields that job applicants can use to enhance their marketability. This year, applications to law schools and business schools are up, and Princeton Review Inc., a New York-based test-preparation outfit, says its enrollment has skyrocketed. ''Prior to Sept. 11, our G.M.A.T. and LSAT growth were almost double what they were last year, and since Sept. 11, our growth has doubled again,'' said Jaime Bederman, the company's national director for graduate program marketing. Fuller classrooms mean the company has stepped up hiring. Amy Smith, who runs the Long Island office, says the recession has improved the quality of job candidates. ''We've seen people who were running their own businesses, reporters, graduate students and even some high-level people laid off by major corporations,'' she said. Therapists and other calmers of the soul have also enjoyed a surge of business, too. Jonathan Fields opened his Sonic Yoga NYC in Manhattan on Nov. 12 with the slogan, ''Taking back the holiday.'' By the end of the month, he had signed up 100 customers, triple his projection, for 10-session packages costing $150. ''So far so good,'' | Start-Ups Tailored to the Times Thrive |
1357096_0 | SEVERAL weeks ago in this column I wrote about a young executive in Minneapolis who arrived at her office to find a voice mail from her fiancé, breaking off their engagement. Just last week, I received an e-mailed Christmas ''card'' topped by the addresses of 200 other recipients, a list I had to scroll through to find the proffered good wishes at the end. Add to these tales the fact that employees everywhere are being asked to communicate with clients and each other electronically, because of concerns about the Postal Service. Then mix in this: There has been a 650 percent increase over last year in a category that SurfControl, an Internet filtering company, calls ''recirculating holiday-themed e-mails'' (which explains why I've received countless copies of something called the Elf Bowling Ball game). Taken together, all this leads me to believe it's time to brush up on our virtual mail etiquette. Rule No. 1, which cannot be stressed too often: These are not private conversations. They can be forwarded to astronauts on the space shuttle. Your boss can read them. They can be subpoenaed in court. The best-known example of this was the steamy voice mail sent by a woman to her stockbroker boyfriend; it was then forwarded endlessly throughout Wall Street. More common, says Neal Linkon, a veteran of several Fortune 500 companies, are e-mails forwarded throughout companies. He tells of one former workplace where ''the e-mails system was routinely used by employees to vent their frustrations with each other.'' ''Nasty messages would be sent, and with each reply more and more people would be copied in. By the third or fourth volley, the cc: field would have 20 names on it.'' Rule No. 2: If you're going to use e-mail, know what the buttons mean. ''The most destructive use of e-mail is when neophytes reply 'back to all' when their intention is to reply to the sender only,'' says Nancy Tamosaitis, the author of four books on cyberculture. A few years ago, when she was working in publishing, ''one senior person replied back to a very damaging comment about a client, essentially calling her clueless.'' The comment went out in a mass e-mail, she says, and ''naturally, we lost the client.'' Rule No. 3: Edit before you send. This is especially true for e-mails written in anger (which should be looked at as therapy, not correspondence, and never | When Office E-Mail Misfires |
1359428_8 | rare acts of violence are usually triggered by something that makes sense,'' Dr. Weber said. Chimpanzees may like to work themselves into aggressive frenzies just for the fun of it, he said, ''whereas with a gorilla you can find a reason for its aggression -- competition for food, or a serious threat to its well-being.'' Researchers have observed gruesome scenes of a male gorilla taking over a so-called harem of females, and killing the resident infants to put the females into estrus that much sooner, and thus to be available for bearing their young. But Dr. Vedder and Dr. Weber suggest that most cases of infanticide may ultimately be the fault of human intervention, when poachers killed the resident dominant silverback male and thus put the group into an unnatural state of disarray. ''Usually there's another male already in the group that will take over peaceably when the silverback dies,'' Dr. Vedder said. ''It's rare to see an established silverback male get overthrown. They're like kings -- they keep going until they die.'' The long-term prospects for mountain gorillas remain uncertain, as they do for so many endangered species, and they vary from one part of the Virunga volcano chain to another. On the Congolese side of the Virungas, where political turbulence reigns, at least 16 gorillas have been slaughtered in recent years by soldiers and poachers. In Uganda, bands of marauders have infiltrated the Bwindi National Park Mountain, and several gorilla tourists there were recently kidnapped and killed. In Rwanda, by contrast, gorilla numbers are creeping up, and the government is so committed to their protection -- and to the viability of the lucrative eco-tourism trade -- that it has assigned to its Virunga park dozens of well-armed soldiers, who will discreetly trail behind any tourists hiking up the mountainside for their gorilla rendezvous. ''These are the true heroes of the story, the guides and the soldiers who return to the field to do their job,'' said Dr. Weber. ''They're like the firefighters in New York. There may have been a terrible crisis, but they get out there and move forward.'' Dr. Vedder agreed. ''If after what Rwanda went through they could put the pieces back together and even address issues of conservation, well, that's remarkable,'' she said. ''It's a model for the rest of the world to aspire to.'' Scientists at Work / Amy Vedder and Bill Weber | Joy in Rwanda: Signing On With the Gorillas |
1359444_0 | An influential government task force today granted its highest endorsement to the practice of taking aspirin to help people at increased risk of heart attacks. The United States Preventive Services Task Force, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that for many people, the benefits of regular aspirin use clearly outweighed the risks. The recommendation appears in The Annals of Internal Medicine. The task force reported that it ''found good evidence that aspirin decreases the incidence of coronary heart disease in adults who are at increased risk for heart disease.'' But since aspirin can increase the risk of internal bleeding and one type of stroke, the report urged people to discuss the issue with their doctors and not simply start taking the drug on their own. There has long been evidence that aspirin can prolong life for some people by reducing the risk of heart attack and the most common type of stroke. Many heart attack survivors take it, as do those considered at risk. But the recommendation of the task force will likely increase usage. The question of what is the best dosage, though, remains unresolved. Deciding who is at higher risk, and as such would benefit from aspirin, is complex, but the task force pointed to, among other people, men over 40, postmenopausal women and people who smoke or have high blood pressure or diabetes. The recommendation can be found at www.ahrq.gov/clinic/3rduspstf/aspirin. VITAL SIGNS: PREVENTION | Aspirin's Heart Benefits Are Endorsed |
1359516_2 | on to that plane. And, as Norman Y. Mineta, the transportation secretary, observed last month, 100 percent bag matching would do nothing to deter a suicidal terrorist. Transportation officials have been emphasizing that the important deadline is not the 18th, but Dec. 31, 2002, when all bags will have to pass through explosive detection machines. That, too, will be a challenge. Transportation officials have not yet decided what machines, and in what combination, they will buy. As the airlines continued their preparations, the government official in charge of transportation security, John Magaw, making his first public appearance since President Bush installed him, told a transportation conference that he was disappointed in disclosures by security experts after a man with explosives in his shoe was subdued on a trans-Atlantic American Airlines flight. Until recently, Mr. Magaw said, security officials had been comfortable that they knew several characteristics of passengers who merited attention. But after the man was subdued, news reports said those factors included buying a one-way ticket on the day of travel, paying cash, and not checking a bag, drawing a complaint from Mr. Magaw. ''We gave away three or four or five major elements'' of how security officials decide which passengers to scrutinize, Mr. Magaw said in remarks to reporters after speaking at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting here. ''We've got to quit doing that.'' ''You don't stop talking, but you stop being so specific,'' he said. ''Never again will you have a terrorist paying cash for a ticket on the same day, and not checking luggage,'' Mr. Magaw said. In his speech, he said, ''We need to find a way that the American public will find that we're doing what is constitutional and what they would want us to do, but at the same time, not give away all of these things.'' Appearing on the same panel, Michael Jackson, the deputy transportation secretary, said that his department may also have been too free with information about hazardous materials in transit. By federal regulation, each such shipment must carry a placard, indicating its contents. The key for interpreting the placards is publicly available. ''That's an advertisement to the world, that's quite visible, about what's inside those containers,'' Mr. Jackson said. The logic before Sept. 11 was that in case of accident, the police or firefighters would need to know what was inside. But, he added, ''we are looking | Airlines Say They Are Set To Meet Screening Deadline |
1359509_3 | collisions. Chunks of tempered safety glass are prone to crash down unexpectedly among the hard hats, fracturing cohesively like slumped Dali watches in a surrealist landscape. Yet the soaring windows facing the Hudson are curiously undamaged except for the odd pane or two. Much of the pedestrian-bridge vestibule atop the staircase, where Sister Joanne Marruso used to set up her folding table of flower prints to raise money for the orchid society each year, has ceased to exist. The North Bridge itself used to carry 80,000 scurrying people to and from 1 World Trade Center on weekdays. It was crushed by what Mr. White said was the top 10 floors of the north tower. In fact, Mr. White said, the Winter Garden narrowly missed being impaled by part of the plummeting television mast from the north tower, which, he said, buried itself outside 2 World Financial Center. The theatrical stage on the Hudson River side of the Winter Garden had featured 2,000 performers since 1988. On Sept. 11 it was set up for the rehearsal of a troupe from the Cirque du Soleil to kick off a Quebec arts festival. The stage will be rebuilt, said Melissa Coley, the World Financial Center's vice president for arts and events. She is optimistic about reviving Winter Garden cultural programming outdoors as early as this summer. The construction team is equally upbeat. ''For the first two weeks we worked on this -- once I got past the tears -- I was saying 'Oy vey,' '' said Mr. White, 42, who works for Turner Construction. ''But this will get done, despite all the challenges.'' After consultation with the original engineers who built the structure, Mr. White's crew is constructing a 300-foot-long, 150-foot-wide work platform atop the atrium to protect the Winter Garden interior from foul weather as crews of workers repair the skylight. Much of the effort will rely on a one-of-a-kind exterior scaffolding system that will place no weight on the fragile structure. Workers will ride trolley platforms suspended from eight 165-foot-tall towers to be built outside the Winter Garden. This reconstruction system alone is expected to cost $1 million. Replacement marble for the stairs and flooring is expected to cost even more, $3 million. The grand staircase reconstruction is especially problematic, because the quarries that provided the Winter Garden's alabaster marble and its glowing coral Roho Alicante marble have long since been | Winter Garden At the Attack Site Looks to Spring; Rebirth for a Skylighted Hall Recovering From Its Scars |
1362587_2 | anybody's guess when and if Cuba will become fully accessible to American travelers, despite sentiment in Congress to lift or relax the embargo -- not so much for the sake of vacationers as to aid the nation's agriculture sector by lifting trade sanctions. ''Until the ban is lifted, we can't plan anything,'' said Michael Norton, Crystal Cruise's director of marketing. Even then, he added, ''we'll have to undertake due diligence to make sure the infrastructure in terms of land programs, shore excursions and hotel properties is up to Crystal's standards.'' Cruise line officials are not the only ones who think that Americans will want to cruise to Cuba. Almost a decade ago, Jay J. Lewis, president of Market Scope, a marketing research company in Miami, estimated that 500,000 American cruise passengers would visit Havana in each of the first three years after cruises to Cuba resumed, rising to 1.8 million passengers and 600,000 ferry visitors by the 10th year. Mr. Lewis has since increased those estimates to at least 750,000 American cruise passengers in each of the first three years, and a minimum of 1.8 million by the 10th year. ''A lot will depend on the size of the ships,'' he said, ''and whether the berths are available to them or whether passengers will have to be tendered from the big ships to shore.'' Mr. Lewis also forecast a bigger increase in visitors to Cuba by ferry, a theme that Mr. Conroy of Radisson also picked up on. ''I'm guessing there is a great potential for substantial ferry operations,'' Mr. Conroy said, ''not unlike those in the Baltic or between the United Kingdom and Europe.'' Mr. Conroy and Mr. Lindblad expressed a similar concern about the ambience of the island if there is a huge influx of tourists. ''Currently, it's hard to do Caribbean or canal itineraries and not end up in the same ports with five other ships,'' Mr. Conroy said. ''But there are two to four Cuban ports that would fit nicely into any Caribbean schedule out of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach or Key West.'' Havana and Santiago de Cuba would be Radisson Seven Seas' primary focus in the beginning, he said. But such an itinerary is probably some time off. Mr. Conroy said a group that recently tried to charter Radisson's Navigator in hopes of sailing to Cuba couldn't get Government authorization. They wound up flying | Cuba, So Close, Remains Distant for Cruise Lines |
1362557_2 | the pictures are about. The abstractions sometimes perversely turn improvisational gestures into deliberate, mechanical-looking, freeze-dried marks. They have the quality of blue ice, pristine and cool. Richter's paintings are disciplined, contradictory, strange, melancholic, even sometimes morbid. And they are among the great works of the postwar era. At a time when art is full of doubt, Richter is the most self-critical of artists, putting painting to the most extravagant tests and taking nothing for granted. In the process, he makes disturbing and often utterly beautiful art. Other artists, like Jasper Johns, ask what is the meaning of a brush stroke. Richter asks what is the value of art itself -- what is its use in the world. In February, the Museum of Modern Art will open a major retrospective of his paintings. Organized by Robert Storr, it is overdue. Richter has never been the subject of a museum retrospective in New York. America's leading modern art museum is only now looking at Europe's most challenging modern painter. Richter's reputation is as a prolific, tricky virtuoso, a deliberately elusive Conceptualist who, it is often said, paints only to prove that painting is dead. The Modern's show should help to alter that view. ''He's not playing hard to get,'' Storr says. ''He's doing something that is hard to get.'' Spending time with Richter, talking to him, you discover that far from being sterile or evasive, he is at heart a traditionalist: in a completely unsentimental, cold-eyed way, he is a true believer in painting. He can even seem old-fashioned when he muses on the decline of modern art and the need for standards. He is a formal man in an informal time. His work asks people to think freshly and not romantically about control versus freedom, austerity versus exuberance, faith versus skepticism: about what we can trust in what we see. It raises questions about contemporary politics and German history, which Richter doesn't presume to answer. Having grown up under the Nazis and then in Communist East Germany, he has had his share of dictators and ideologues, in life and in art. He is a solitary man who rarely grants interviews, aware that his solitude also enhances his aura. In private, he comes across as forthcoming, courtly and driven -- a competitive, sometimes thin-skinned artist who, at the end of the day, just wants to be alone in his immaculate studio, painting. | An Artist Beyond Isms |
1362584_4 | a target for closer scrutiny, he said. ''We need to find a way that the American public will find that we're doing what is constitutional and what they would want us to do, but at the same time, not give away all of these things.'' But other changes are obvious. Already the security personnel, along with pilots and other aviation professionals, seem more assertive. In the last few weeks they have stripped Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, 75, down to his underwear to assure that the metal he was carrying was actually an artificial hip, and denied boarding to a Secret Service agent whom the airline said was presenting inconsistent paperwork. But anecdotes like these do not prove that security or efficiency is better, and how smoothly the government can roll out its own managers and employees is a major concern for the Transportation Department, which is eager to sever its link to with the old security apparatus. The F.A.A. is part of the Transportation Department, but is now widely viewed as having been too accommodating to the airlines, which generally saw security as an ancillary activity with no possibility for profit. In addition, the F.A.A. never regulated the security contractors, only the airlines that employed them. It had proposed new rules to oversee the contractors directly, but had not gotten around to making them final by Sept. 11, after which Congress decided to be more forceful. One difference between the old system and the new may be use of a new technology to keep screeners alert and measure their performance. Testing the system has always been a problem for managers; real guns and knives show up in a tiny proportion of carry-ons, and since managers cannot know what fraction of them are detected, they cannot measure performance. For a while the F.A.A. used undercover agents, or borrowed air traffic controllers or other employees to test the screeners by trying to make it through with a knife or a gun. But the testers eventually became familiar faces to the screeners. SO the aviation agency underwrote new software called Threat Image Projection intended to keep the screeners alert and measure their performance. When installed in X-ray machines at passenger screening checkpoints, it projects a false image of a ''threat object'' into the picture of a carry-on as a test for the screener. Managers can test the screener on every | At Airports, New Watchdog Is Taking Over |
1398006_2 | said that the committee consulted with bishops and experts who ''wanted a lot of wiggle room in all of this so that individual cases would be looked at.'' The draft rules, entitled a ''Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,'' also call for bishops to turn over any new allegation of sexual abuse of minors immediately to civil authorities for investigation. If the allegation is old and the accuser is now an adult, the rules say the bishops should cooperate with the investigation. Under the plan, the bishops' conference would set up a national ''Office for Child and Youth Protection'' to help monitor compliance by the dioceses and issue an annual report. If the proposal is passed by at least two-thirds of the bishops in Dallas, it will be considered by the Vatican, and if approved there would become mandatory. Archbishop Flynn and other church officials said that the committee had taken initiatives that were considered likely to pass muster at the Vatican. The rules would apply only to American bishops. There is no mechanism to enforce a bishop's compliance, other than the threat of bad publicity or Vatican intervention, church officials said. ''I cannot imagine any bishop, for legal or any reasons, saying 'I'm not going to follow that,' '' said Archbishop Flynn. If the proposal passes, he said, ''this will be a mandatory policy for all the bishops in the country.'' Victims of sexual abuse by priests and advocates of those victims said that the bishops had made progress in confronting the issue, but that they were disappointed the church was offering leniency to some abusers. ''It isn't a zero-tolerance policy, and that's what I think everyone had hoped for,'' said Susan M. Archibald of Park City, Utah, a member of The Linkup, an advocacy group for victims of clergy sexual abuse. ''I can't think of any other segment of society that would look at an abuser and say, 'you've only abused once, let's give you another chance.' Isn't one casualty enough?'' The proposal reflects the committee's precarious balancing act between satisfying some bishops who called for an absolutist solution that would reassure Catholics by removing every abuser from the priesthood, and others who wanted more discretion to allow some past abusers who seem to have been rehabilitated to remain in ministry. The committee appears to have disregarded some opinion in the Vatican, where in recent | PANEL RECOMMENDS DISMISSING PRIESTS IN NEW ABUSE CASES |
1398003_4 | and young people, will be clear and well publicized. These standards need to give due consideration to the allegations of sexual misconduct by clergy involving young women and men who have recently attained legal adulthood. ARTICLE 7: Each diocese is to develop a communications policy that reflects a commitment to transparency and openness. Within the confines of respect for privacy of the individuals involved, dioceses are to deal as openly as possible with members of the community. This is especially so with regard to assisting and supporting parish communities directly affected by ministerial misconduct. ARTICLE 8: To assist in the consistent application of these principles and to provide a vehicle of accountability and assistance to dioceses in this matter, we establish an office for child and youth protection at our national headquarters. The tasks of this office will include assisting individual dioceses in the implementation of safe environment programs, assisting provinces and regions in the development of appropriate mechanisms to audit adherence to policies, and to produce annually a public report on the progress made in implementing the standards in this charter. This office is to have staffing sufficient to fulfill its basic purpose. Staff shall consist of persons who are expert in the protection of children and related areas, and will be appointed by the general secretary. ARTICLE 9: The work of the office for child and youth protection shall be assisted and monitored by a review board, including parents, appointed by the conference president and reporting directly to him. The board shall approve the annual report of the implementation of this charter in each of our dioceses and any recommendations that emerge from this review before it is submitted to the president of the conference and published. ARTICLE 10: The membership of the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse shall be reconstituted to include representation from all the episcopal regions of the country. ARTICLE 11: A commission will be established by the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to research how the church in the United States has responded to the problem of sexual abuse of minors by clergy. ARTICLE 12: The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will inform the Holy See of this charter to indicate the manner in which we, the Catholic bishops of the United States, intend to address this present crisis. ARTICLE 13: Dioceses are to establish ''safe environment'' | Excerpt From Recommendation by Bishops' Committee on Sexual Abuse |
1401156_0 | To the Editor: There is no doubt that Hispanic immigrant parents have to deal with many hardships as they and their children become acclimated to our American culture, with navigation of our educational system being a major hurdle. However, parents of preschool children with special needs, such as the family included in your article (''Bridging Cultures and Education,'' June 9), can be reassured that there is a system in place to help find appropriate educational supports. The Committee for Preschool Special Education is a federally mandated program available for all preschoolers in all districts when parents suspect their child may have an educationally handicapping condition. A translator is available to attend meetings as needed. The special education process can be daunting even for those without a language barrier, and the workshops described sound like a welcome addition to the parent supports already available in White Plains. I hope that those who lead the workshops would refer parents with any concerns about special education to our organization. Dr. ELIZABETH ZUCH Committee for Preschool Special Education White Plains | Educational Support Exceeds Language Barrier |
1400873_0 | To the Editor: Regarding ''At Airports, a Search for Better Security,'' by Matthew L. Wald (May 26): A very simple step that would somewhat alleviate the overtaxed security resources at airports would be to avoid searching the same passenger more than once at each leg of a trip. For a recent flight out of La Guardia, I was told at the curbside check-in that I had to go in a single, woefully understaffed line where checked luggage would be examined. After that, I was wanded and had my carry-on bag searched twice: first at the X-ray machine (only one was working at a peak travel time) and then randomly at the gate, with the plane practically ready to leave. It strains credulity that a passenger who clears a checkpoint at the X-ray machine would suddenly become a threat worthy of second inspection at the gate, unless guns, knives or box cutters are sold at duty-free shops. ADAM COHEN Brooklyn, N.Y. | Airport Security |
1401216_0 | At a meeting in Dallas prompted by the pedophilia scandal, America's Roman Catholic bishops adopted a policy on abusive priests: any priest known to have abused a child, no matter when, will not be allowed to dress in clerical garb or say Mass in any public setting, be it in church, school, a nursing home or a hospital. And the bishops, some of whom have been harshly criticized for covering up for predator priests, adopted a broad definition of sexual abuse that includes situations that do not involve force or even physical contact. Catholic reaction included satisfaction, disappointment, and concerns that the measures would pit bishops against priests and that the policy is too harsh for a church built on the concepts of forgiveness and redemption. It is unclear how the bishops' decisions will be received in the Vatican. | June 9-15: NATIONAL; BISHOPS' NEW POLICY |
1401163_3 | the arts and crafts hut, parents joined their children in making candles and shaping multicolored tissue paper into flowers that they ''planted'' in freshly decorated earthenware pots. In the dining hall, games to promote team-building, like hot potato, sparked laughter. Meanwhile, at the camp's model farm, the residential programs coordinator, Tim Stanley, taught families some skills they do not get to practice much in the city: milking cows, grooming horses, holding delicate chicks. ''I liked everything,'' said Lakiya Hubbard, 11, of the Bronx, who has been hearing-impaired since she was 8. But her favorite part of the camp experience, she said, is making new friends. ''The Bronx is O.K.,'' she said. ''There are gangs, but I don't associate with them. At camp, I will be around kids my age and that are going through the same things as me.'' Over the weekend she met Shaquita Moore, 11, also of the Bronx, who has spina bifida, a birth defect, and uses a wheelchair. For Shaquita, camp means independence. ''The roads are flat; I can move around,'' she said. ''The pool has two levels -- 3 feet and 5 feet. In 3 feet, I can swim and don't have to wear a life jacket.'' For the two nights she was at Camp Hidden Valley last month, two families occupied each wood-shingled cabin. During a summer session, the children are divided by age group, never by disability. The 12 cabins are divided into four clusters called villages. The counselors, who represent a range of nationalities, are all carefully screened and attend a weeklong training program before going on duty, said Ms. Lesondak. There are three counselors for every 10 children, and if medical care is needed, two nurses are on hand 24 hours a day, with a doctor always on call. For children like Carolina Munoz, 8, and her brother Juan, potential candidates for the camp who have asthma and learning disabilities, the camp is a place where they can be free to play. For their mother, it is also a place where she does not worry about her children. ''I had my most beautiful influences in the country,'' said Claudia Munoz, who was born in Colombia. ''I loved to run in the grass and spend my whole day there. I want them to have this opportunity. Nature is important. That is why I want them to come here.'' The Fresh Air Fund | Disabled Children Get to Share in the Summer's Fun |
1401032_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Foreigners in Flight Schools Must Undergo New Screening'' (news article, June 12): If fingerprinting and background checks can reduce the risk that terrorists will learn to fly large jets, why restrict these measures to foreigners at United States flight schools? Perhaps the transportation security law passed in November should be broadened to screen Americans as well as foreigners. To prevent terrorists from learning to fly outside this country, the United States may also need to lobby foreign governments to enact similar legislation covering flight schools around the world. WILLIAM HALL Brooklyn, June 12, 2002 | Flight School Screening |
1401123_0 | Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, have ordered emergency talks for this week with the political parties in Northern Ireland over rising violence and deepening political distrust in the province, the British government said today. A spokesman for the Northern Ireland office said the two leaders had acted after David Trimble, head of the Ulster Unionist Party and first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, told them on Friday that the province and its fragile peace accord were ''in crisis'' and undergoing ''a catastrophic loss of confidence.'' There have been nightly outbreaks of firebombing and rioting in parts of Belfast for weeks, and the police believe the violence is being orchestrated by Protestant and Catholic paramilitary groups in violation of their pledges to maintain cease-fires. Concern mounted after the BBC reported on Thursday that the Irish Republican Army was testing new weapons in Colombia and had authorized the activities of three I.R.A. men now awaiting trial in Bogotá on charges of aiding the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The United States has identified the guerrilla group as an international terror organization, and the European Union said last week that it would add the rebel army to its terrorist blacklist. Gerry Kelly of Sinn Fein dismissed the BBC report as ''unfounded allegations.'' In Belfast today, Ulster Unionist officials said the Colombian developments placed the I.R.A. in clear breach of its cease-fire claim, and they urged Mr. Trimble to demand the expulsion of Sinn Fein ministers from Northern Ireland's power-sharing government by July 1. ''You cannot have ministers making law and their terrorist surrogates breaking the law,'' said Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the hard-line Ulster Unionist faction. Mr. Trimble made the request for the emergency talks at a scheduled annual meeting on Friday of the British-Irish Council on the Channel island of Jersey. The council, created by the 1998 peace agreement, brings together representatives of the Republic of Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. | Ulster Violence Prompts a Call For Crisis Talks |
1399705_4 | the world steadies itself. ''Am I more family-oriented or more scared?'' Mr. Morgan wondered. ''I would believe it will wash out.'' He added: ''I really think that 9/11 could depress fertility rates as easily as increase them. If I'm a 23-year-old, I'm going to let this shake out a little bit before I have a kid.'' Demographers like Mr. Morgan point out that there are pivotal events that do alter fertility rates. A study by Ronald Rindfuss, a sociologist, and others determined that a year after the 1954 Supreme Court desegregation ruling Brown v. Board of Education, there was a notable decline in the birth rate among Southern whites. It was conjectured that some of them postponed having children until they could better understand the implications of the decision. Obviously, changes in government regulation of birth control can mean more or less babies. ''In Romania, birth rates doubled when the Communist Party made abortion illegal in 1966,'' Mr. Morgan said. ''Abortion was the major mechanism for birth control.'' In making predictions based on anecdotal evidence, Mr. Morgan said, one must guard against the misleading nature of small samples. He noted that, statistically speaking, 105 boys tend to be born for every 100 girls -- just one of those functions of biology. However, he has three boys, and almost everyone he knows has boys. ''In my small group of acquaintances, there are about twice as many males as females,'' he said. ''But things do average out when the numbers get big enough.'' Not that the boom could not still happen. After all, demographers have never entirely gotten over the fact that they missed the scale and duration of the prolonged baby boom in America after World War II. Given that there had been a steady decline in the fertility rate for decades, followed by a baby bust during the Depression, demographers expected the birth rate after the war would simply pick up from where it had been before the war began. Anytime one ponders the mysteries of human activity, it is always worth putting in a call to a behavioral expert. ''I don't know of any hard data that says how big is this phenomenon, and whether it is a real phenomenon or just an urban legend,'' said Dr. Spencer Eth, a psychiatrist who is the medical director of behavioral health services at St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers. ''I have no | Baby Boom? Nobody Told the Stork; Little Evidence Seen Yet of a Post-9/11 Surge in Births |
1399730_0 | To the Editor: I found it interesting that Cardinal Avery Dulles says a married priesthood ''would bring in'' a host of problems like ''contraception'' (''The Bishops and the Vatican,'' Op-Ed, June 10). Is it possible that the celibate clergy of the church cannot imagine being married without wanting to control the timing and number of their children? It would be interesting for church leaders to reflect on what else they would want and need to serve Christ and his people should they be called to the vocation of married life. Safe places for their children might come to mind. NAN MARIE ASTONE Laurel, Md., June 10, 2002 | Hour of Reckoning in the Church |
1399640_0 | HERE in a sun-dappled realm of gated communities, where security guards see to it that tranquillity reigns, the men and women who run operations at some of the world's airports seemed singularly anxious. Dozens of airport executives had gathered within the serene perimeters of the Boca Raton Resort and Club for an event called the Airport Summit, sponsored by Marcus Evans, an international business-networking company. They could be readily identified among the regular leisure guests by the name tags they wore under conspicuously long faces. The glumness is because the people who run airports believe that for all of the problems passengers have encountered getting through to their planes because of tightened security since last Sept. 11, even bigger ones are on the way -- and just as air traffic and airport fortunes seem to be picking up. The airport security challenge is no longer ''a police problem -- it's an industrial engineering problem,'' said Louis A. Turpen, the president and chief executive of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority. Mr. Turpen was partly referring to a deadline that airport executives in the United States regard with dread: this coming Dec. 31, when the federal government is insisting that expensive, bulky explosive-detection machines be in place to check all luggage at commercial airports. Construction costs to remodel airline terminals and baggage handling systems for the big machines (which are 15 feet long, 7 feet high and weigh 5 tons each) have been estimated at more than $2 billion. Estimates are that airports will ultimately need to acquire 2,000 to 5,000 of the giant machines, which cost about $1 million apiece. Because nowhere near that many of the machines are available, the Transportation Department in April agreed to a stopgap plan intended to install 1,100 bulk machines at the 438 commercial airports, temporarily supplemented by more than 5,000 smaller, cheaper devices called trace machines -- which security experts have criticized for poor operating performance. Airport executives are not sanguine about all this. ''We're all concerned that once all these security measures are in place, passengers will survey these obstacles and barriers to a pleasant traveling experience and simply decide it's not worth it,'' said Diane Vercelli, the senior director of properties and contracts at Tampa International Airport. Surveys of recent patterns of business travelers, who are the airlines' -- and airports' -- best customers, have shown a marked trend toward avoiding commercial | Airports Bracing for Bigger Problems |
1399608_4 | cubic feet per second in any one day. Power revenue fell $30 million a year. The daily pulses of water flattened out, making the river safer for rafting and fishing. A year later Congress passed the Grand Canyon Protection Act. Dr. Gold's research center was formed in 1995. ''We were asked to figure out how to use the dam to protect the river and associated resources, and make recommendations to stakeholders,'' Dr. Gold said. His center convened 25 interested parties, representing state and federal agencies, Indian tribes, environmental groups, recreation interests and power contractors, to discuss proposed solutions. The center found that conditions on the river were deteriorating alarmingly. Whole beaches had disappeared. Four species of native fish had become extinct. An Asian tapeworm appeared; it now infects most native fish that survive. Rainbow trout, now spawning naturally in the wild, increased their numbers sixfold, so that some parts of the river contained 17,000 trout per mile. Steadier flows apparently increased their survival rates but reduced their food resources, so they became smaller and thinner. In the spring of 1996, Mr. Peterson said, researchers tried out their first big experiment using the Glen Canyon Dam. For one week, they released 45,000 cubic feet of water per second, using special spillways. They figured the high water would lift sand stored on the bottom of the river and deposit it onto beaches. While the experiment looked like a huge success at first, it quickly went awry. A year later, most of the sand was gone. ''We made a huge mistake,'' said Dr. Theodore Melis, a sediment expert at the research center. The sand that built the beaches, it turned out, had come not from the river bottom but from existing beaches and eddies. Then fluctuating flows continued to erode sand as before. Two different experiments in 1997 and 2000 also failed to make beaches or retain sand. Meanwhile, the rainbow trout continue to proliferate, said Dr. Lew Coggins, a fisheries biologist at the center. As many as a million rainbow trout are now in the river, eating midges, plants and possibly a native fish called the humpback chub. Ten years ago, some 8,300 adult chub lived in the river; today there are only 2,100 large enough to spawn. Biologists worry that this may not be enough to sustain the population. If each rainbow trout around the mouth of the Little Colorado River | Restoring an Ecosystem Torn Asunder by a Dam |
1402647_2 | Five years is a cut-off that many doctors recommend, because that is when studies start detecting an increased risk of breast cancer. About 80 percent of the women who start taking hormones stop on their own within a few years. How do women who decide to try hormone replacement sort through the bewildering array of prescription drugs available? One early step is clear. Estrogen relieves menopausal symptoms, but taking it alone increases the risk of uterine cancer. So, unless a woman has had her uterus removed, hormone replacement consists of a combination of estrogen and some form of another hormone, progesterone, which lowers the uterine risk. Synthetic versions of progesterone, called progestins, are commonly prescribed in the United States. They are taken either every day, or only for certain weeks each month. The most widely used one is called Provera. The possible side effects of progesterone and progestins include bloating, depression and changes in vaginal bleeding. Estrogen also comes in more than one form. It is not one substance: the word actually refers to a group of hormones, both natural and synthetic. In the body, estrogens are made mostly by the ovaries, with small amounts formed in the adrenal glands; during pregnancy the placenta also contributes. Before menopause, the predominant estrogen is estradiol, which is also the most potent form of the hormone. A weaker estrogen called estrone becomes the predominant form after menopause, when estradiol drops sharply. The body converts estradiol and estrone into one another. Estriol, another weak estrogen, is made mostly by the placenta and is abundant in pregnancy. The most widely prescribed form of estrogen in America is Premarin, which contains estrogens extracted from the urine of pregnant horses. In the body, Premarin is converted into estrone and estradiol. For women who suffer only from vaginal problems, Premarin and other estrogens are made into vaginal creams that work locally -- though if high amounts of the cream are used, they can be absorbed into the bloodstream and have systemic effects. Premarin in pill form is one of the oldest estrogen products and most of the data on hormone replacement is based on it. Many doctors say they would rather prescribe it than other, less studied products. The most common dose is 0.625 milligrams a day, though a 0.3 milligram dose was recently shown to prevent bone loss. Some women with severe symptoms need higher doses. Other | A User's Guide for Those Who Choose Hormone Replacements |
1402611_1 | our research institutions. There the stage was crowded, with stars like Joseph Scaliger, who never lectured or taught but bred a brilliant generation of textual and historical scholars by his example and table talk, and the philologist Justus Lipsius, whose vast explorations of the ancient world led him, almost by chance, to reveal the secrets of Roman military training and strategy to one of his noble pupils, who became the greatest general the Dutch ever had. Not everyone was so lofty. Some savants were crazed, others habitually dirty or drunk. They pass by reeking, vomiting, urinating on churches, sometimes too hung over to lecture, ridiculed and worshiped by students. They could be warriors; intellectual weapons invented for the religious conflicts of the age were powerful tools of learning. The scandal of their disputes was Europe's prime entertainment; none in these pages is more delicious than the uproar over the newfound ''Satyricon'' of Petronius -- even more offensive to linguistic purists than to puritan moralists. Some of these people had soiled hands. In leading printing houses, proofreaders, steeped in Greek and Latin, just to keep their minds alert spoke among themselves only the language of the ancient text they were working on; they, as much as the famous scholars, rescued the classics from centuries of scribal errors. Their inky fingerprints survive on a few working sheets, and a historical sleuth has proved which manuscripts one of them used to produce a definitive printed text simply by matching whorls. The mental price could be high. A French Jesuit, whose command of Greek and Latin was so exquisite he could detect a grammatical flaw at a glance, eventually persuaded himself that, with a handful of exceptions, all of ancient literature -- including the archive of the fathers of the church -- was created by a monkish cabal. This was also the time of Bacon, Descartes and Newton, routinely cited as scientific destroyers of these humanists, but in enticing asides Grafton hints that historical probing might tell us there is really only one culture after all. His passion is for understanding and, as he confronts its pioneers, who are themselves responding sharply to ancient and contemporary writers, the polyphonic conversation becomes a discourse about how we have become who we are. Like the contentious people in his book, he wants to leave behind students who are in love with discovery. May they absorb his | You Get the Ideas |
1402951_5 | professor of politics at Queens University in Belfast. ''But it took a generation to realize that no side was going to win and there was an impetus towards compromise.'' Indeed, said Professor Murray of the Irish Peace Institute, violence itself plays an ambivalent role. If it reaches levels of horror, as in the Balkans and Rwanda, ultimately outsiders may pay attention. But low-level violence can produce the opposite effect. ''It's been argued that Northern Ireland never reached a critical mass where people were slaughtered on the street,'' Professor Murray said. ''If you can keep a conflict at an acceptable level of violence, you are prolonging the conflict.'' Crucially, too, Britain and Ireland provided a completely different environment for the combatants within the province; Dublin and London read from roughly the same peaceful script to put pressure on their protégés. The same is true of outside pressure exerted on India and Pakistan over Kashmir, or of the broad consensus among the United States and its European allies that pushed Serbia to the Dayton accords when Belgrade's backer Russia was too weak to resist. In other words, settlements only come about, said Mr. Mead, when ''all the great powers who were in any way concerned were united in wanting a solution and more or less agreed about what the solution would be.'' But where settlements written on paper do not correspond to the passions at play, they can at best be frames on which to begin hanging complex layers of conciliation and accommodation that some day may point toward peace. After 1945, with the memory of three wars in 74 years, France and Germany started down that road; now they share the same currency, the euro. That striving for coexistence has only just started in Sarajevo and Belfast. And in the Middle East, it is the collapse of such a beginning, at Oslo nearly a decade ago, that defines the moment. Patently, the Middle East defies all the formulas. Despite huge levels of profoundly personal violence, the outside players, from Washington to Cairo to Damascus to Baghdad to Moscow, have pursued different agendas, and those rivalries have been inscribed in blood from Beirut to Ramallah. The Middle East is a hothouse region where divisions of faith magnify all the national and economic passions -- not to mention the victimhood to which both Arabs and Israelis lay historic and current claim. In the | Ideas & Trends: Hand-Me-Downs; When Parents Leave a Bequest of Hatred |
1402614_0 | THE DREAM OF SCIPIO By Iain Pears. 398 pp. New York: Riverhead Books. $25.95. In his essay ''De Republica,'' Cicero digressed to tell the story of the great general Scipio, and the dream he had of being taken up into the heavens to meet his ancestor Africanus, who shows him the machinery of the cosmos and teaches him a lesson about the vanity of fame and the necessity of virtue. This digression is missing from the manuscripts of Cicero's essay that have come down to us; it was preserved only in a long commentary by the Neoplatonic thinker Macrobius, which circulated in several manuscripts in the Middle Ages. In his new novel -- his most recent was ''An Instance of the Fingerpost'' (1998) -- Iain Pears takes his title from a similar commentary on Scipio's dream, written, as Macrobius' was, in the last years of the Roman Empire. The author in this case is a cultivated, philosophically minded aristocrat named Manlius Hippomanes, who faces not only the destruction of everything he cares for by the barbarian armies but also the triumph of what he sees as the equally barbaric religion of Christianity. His manuscript will pass down through the centuries, lost and rediscovered, baffling and intriguing and knitting together men and women caught up in different but equally urgent historical predicaments. Pears's story is like one of those symmetrical, seemingly patent but teasingly complex knots that decorate ancient Celtic manuscripts. Three interwoven stories twine in and out of one another, revealing similarities, creating patterns and connections. All three take place in Provence. There is the story of Manlius, and how despite his continuing contempt for the church he became a bishop and a saint. There is the story of Olivier de Noyen, a Provençal poet, who discovers Manlius' manuscript during the period of the Avignon papacy in the 14th century. And there is the story of Julien Barneuve, a historian and scholar, who during the Nazi occupation learns the secret of Olivier's life and death. Olivier and the Provence of his day, long after the triumph of Christianity, face a different invasion: the Black Death is going to tear at the fabric of medieval society just as the Burgundians and Visigoths destroyed Roman Gaul. Julien, like Manlius, sees the civilization of Europe to which he has devoted a lifetime of study being swept away by a new barbarism, a new | Unsolicited Manuscript |
1402921_3 | Not Tell You About Premenopause: Balance Your Hormones and Your Life From 30 to 50'' (Warner Books, 1999); ''Before the Change: Taking Charge of Your Perimenopause'' (Harper San Francisco, 1999); ''The Change Before the Change: Everything You Need to Know to Stay Healthy in the Decade Before Menopause'' (Bantam 2002); and ''Could It Be . . . Perimenopause? How Women 35 to 50 Can Overcome Forgetfulness, Mood Swings, Insomnia, Weight Gain, Sexual Dysfunction and Other Telltale Signs of Hormonal Imbalance'' (Little Brown, 2000). BEFORE THE CHANGE,'' by Ann Louise Gittleman, lists 48 symptoms in all, including acne, allergies, anxiety, leg cramps and weeping, and even one that would seem anachronistic in a contemporary book about women's health: hysteria. The herbal supplement industry has heeded the call. Trade journals like Food Technology and Grocery Headquarters encourage manufacturers and retailers to market perimenopause-related products like women-only nutrition bars and cereals fortified with vitamins for women. The shelves of General Nutrition Center and Vitamin Shoppe stores are packed with menopause-related supplements that also promote their benefits for perimenopausal women. These include Estroven, a soy-based dietary supplement for the treatment of hot flashes, cramps and insomnia, whose slogan is ''Don't wait for menopause to get Estroven''; EstroSoy; Dong Quai Formula; GNC Soy Isoflavones; Promensil; and Femgest, a topical cream that promises to deliver progesterone to the body ''for women of childbearing years, perimenopausal and menopausal-aged women and postmenopausal-aged women'' -- in short, anyone with two x chromosomes over age 15. In 1999, grocery and drugstore sales of soy isoflavone supplements, a source of phytoestrogen often recommended in the perimenopause books, rose to $21 million, more than three times the previous year's figures, according to the market research firms Spins and A. C. Nielsen. Sales of general menopausal formulas were also up, to $36.2 million in 1999. Some doctors argue that gathering a collection of symptoms of aging under the perimenopause rubric is an example of using women's menstrual cycles to show that they are somehow abnormal. As Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, an assistant clinical professor at the George Washington University Medical School in Washington, put it: '' 'I'm feverish. I am anxious. I have a headache. I forgot something.' Who doesn't experience those things?'' In some cases, she said, women as young as 30 are being told they may be perimenopausal. On the Winfrey segment, the first four women interviewed said they first experienced perimenopausal | Menopause Forever |
1402738_0 | To the Editor: Gary Krist's article on the gardens at Stourhead, ''In England, a Tranquil Landscape by Design'' (June 9), recalled a family visit many years ago. On the one hand, Stourhead's Pantheon, Temple to Apollo, and ''descent to the underworld'' struck us as slightly ersatz; and indeed, as Mr. Krist points out, even Stourhead's landscape is cunningly designed. On the other, the emotions evoked by our walk around the lake, and the delight we experienced as each new vista unfolded, were anything but artificial, and the memories of that day remain vivid. Like a great novel, Stourhead is a fiction that creates its own unique reality. DAVID H. PORTER Saratoga Springs, N.Y. | Stourhead Vistas |
1402930_0 | PUT reason aside, for a moment, and imagine this: American students are taught that the Amazon should be taken away from Brazil and made into an ''international reserve'' under United Nations administration. United States Army special forces are training in Florida to seize control of that zone once it is established. And, to accelerate the process, Harvard University advocates the immediate dismemberment of Brazil. All of this, of course, is pure imagination. The Brazilian imagination. From birth, Brazilians are taught that ''the Amazon is ours.'' But their government has never been able to exercise effective sovereignty over the region, which in any case remains an exotic mystery to most Brazilians. The result is a national paranoia: a conviction that outsiders -- especially the United States, with its checkered history in Latin America -- envy Brazil's ownership of the world's largest tropical forest and want it for themselves. Since late last year, suspicions have been running unusually high because of a spurious map that appeared on Internet sites here and was quickly accepted as real by newspapers and radio talk show hosts. Taken from what was said to be a junior high school textbook used in the United States, the map claims that Americans have a ''special mission'' to wrest the Amazon from the eight ''unintelligent and primitive'' South American nations that control it. Though the text is clearly a forgery (it is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors that no native English speaker would make), the controversy continues. Some Brazilians say the C.I.A. fabricated the map to discredit those who would defend the Amazon from foreign interlopers. Others don't care whether the map is authentic. ''The map may be a falsification, but that the United States covets the Amazon and wants to eliminate Brazil's sovereignty is beyond dispute,'' said Rubim Aquino, a high school history teacher here. He said he emphasizes that message to his students ''whenever the opportunity arises.'' The area the Brazilian government defines as ''Amazonia Legal'' occupies 60 percent of the country's territory. But it is home to fewer than 10 percent of its 175 million people. And most of the population lives south of the river, along the coast, and has never visited the region. ''The southerner doesn't know the Amazon and disdains the region and its people,'' said Lucio Flavio Pinto, a native of the Amazon state of Pará who is editor of ''Amazon Agenda,'' | Ideas & Trends; Deep in Brazil, a Flight of Paranoid Fancy |
1402818_0 | DON PACHNER is clearly the sort of person who is happiest in the woods. A big, loose-limbed man with a purple sweat band holding tufts of reddish hair back from his forehead, he is an e-commerce consultant by profession, but he often spends his weekends leading groups of novice hikers or bird watchers around the Mianus River Gorge Preserve near his home in Bedford. Today he has brought a group of nature photographers to Havemeyer Falls, a lovely cascade in a stand of nearly 400-year-old hemlocks at the southern end of the preserve. The photographers find perches on the rocks and begin snapping pictures, and Mr. Pachner answers a few questions about the history of the preserve. Yet ask him about the hemlocks, 60-foot beauties that surround the falls, and his face darkens. ''It's a tragedy,'' he said. ''I've been coming here for about 10 years, and the devastation of the hemlocks is hard to miss.'' The Mianus River Gorge Preserve hardly looks like a scene of devastation. In April, the forest floor is already covered with a lush ferny carpet, and the streams and waterfalls that dot its 738 acres are at the peak of their spring flow. Bought by the fledgling Nature Conservancy in 1955, Mianus River Gorge was its first project. With its ancient hemlocks and beautiful river views, it was chosen as the nation's first Natural History Landmark in 1964. But national landmark status can do nothing to protect the gorge from its latest enemy. The Mianus River Gorge Preserve is in a state of crisis, say the preserve's managers. The hemlocks for which it is justifiably famous are dying at an unprecedented rate, victims of an insect that was virtually unknown in New York State a decade ago. Since the early 1990's, a type of parasitic insect, a small aphid called the woolly adelgid (pronounced uh-DEL-jid) has been eating its way through the hemlocks at the preserve, systematically destroying the trees, and forever changing the character of the historic forest. HEMLOCKS are lovely trees, with fine, feathery needles and graceful, drooping branches. They can live as long as 600 years (many of the hemlocks at Mianus River Gorge are nearly 400 years old). Hemlocks also play a critical role in the ecology of the forests. Hemlocks typically grow along streams, where their roots filter impurities from the water, and keep it cool enough for trout | Good Bug, Bad Bug |
1402960_0 | Robert C. Stempel spent the bulk of his career selling a very traditional power source: the internal combustion engine. But since his resignation as General Motors' chief executive nearly 10 years ago, his energy has gone into more environmentally friendly alternatives. Tomorrow, he dives even deeper into that realm by inaugurating the world's largest solar panel factory. Energy Conversion Devices -- Robert Stempel, chairman -- is a joint-venture partner in a $55 million plant in Auburn Hills, Mich., that will produce ultra-thin solar panels that can be used to power buildings, boats and lanterns, among other things. This plant alone, established with the Belgian company Bekaert, will increase the nation's solar panel capacity by 20 percent. It features a unique machine, the length of a football field, that can crank out solar panels one and a half miles long. Unlike conventional solar panels, which are hard plastic, the factory's solar panels are made of thin stainless steel onto which coatings are applied. Customers already include ChevronTexaco, which will use the panels to generate energy for its Texas oil fields, and San Francisco's airport, said a spokesman for Energy Conversion Devices, Richard Thompson. Micheline Maynard | Private Sector; From Fossil Fuels to Solar Panels |
1402777_7 | Project, to go forward. The interim project, which was developed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1995, faltered when New York declined to be its required ''local sponsor'' and pay a share of project costs. The Interior Department also opposed dune and beach rebuilding within undeveloped areas of the national seashore. Supporters of the interim project faulted the park service and the Interior Department for not championing the effort. ''Midlevel bureaucrats at the Department of the Interior, together with the state Department of State, blocked the project by sending the ball back and forth between them to keep the Army Corps of Engineers from making a final recommendation to go ahead,'' Mr. Stoddard said. The interim project was to have been part of a still larger Army Corps project, referred to as the reformulation project, which would cover 83 miles of the South Shore from Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point. Under discussion for more than 40 years, that project originally envisioned construction of a massive dune line to bolster the barrier islands as protectors from hurricanes and storm surge. But now, as the Army Corps studies whether and how that project should be performed, new environmental regulations, looming limits on future financing and changing views about coastal management are likely to result in a vastly different approach, or no project at all. Clifford Jones, the project manager for the Army Corps reformulation study, said that a final draft would be completed by 2005. But even if a project is recommended and financed by Congress, he said, work will not begin before 2007. ''There is no plan right now on the table,'' he said. Arrayed against any such plans are a variety of environmental groups. James T. B. Tripp, general counsel of Environmental Defense, said that the reformulation study should advance a policy of no private homes in the dune area. ''Over time the structures there should move back,'' he said. ''And one logical time that could happen would be following big storms when there is destruction.'' Mr. Tripp suggested that from 360 to 900 houses could be affected. There are about 4,000 houses in the private communities. Dune and beach conditions vary widely within the seashore. In the wilderness area, where there are no oceanfront structures, an almost unbroken dune line extends for seven miles. But in Fire Island Pines, oceanfront houses that currently sell for $1 million | Raw Nerves On Fire Island |
1402669_3 | works on the same principle. It can be moved around in a van. The company's Web site says the device can be used after a bomb blast to analyze the explosive used, and has a picture of a site where that was done: the World Trade Center after the 1993 bombing. Such systems have several challenges. One is to run reliably in the field; much of the equipment installed by the airlines and by the new Transportation Security Administration has a tendency to break down, according to airline officials. Another is that at present, there is no performance standard by which the equipment would be certified for use. And some people could set them off for innocent reasons -- after having come from a firing range, for example. But trace detection is promising, according to Dr. Susan F. Hallowell, the manager of the explosives and weapons-detection research and development branch at the Atlantic City lab, because nearly any bomb builder would carry traces of explosives afterward. ''I can make a clean bomb, but I have 27 years' experience,'' she said. A bomb maker who washed his hands afterward would recontaminate his hand when he turned off the water faucet, she said. And people who wash their hands may not have washed their clothes or their wristwatches. Dogs could do the same work, but security officials say that the dogs tire, lose interest and stop working, without indicating that they have done so. Trace detection has the advantage of requiring minimal judgment by the screeners, who can also lose focus on their work. A reliable system would also be embraced by the airlines, which fear that the intrusive searches at checkpoints now are driving away passengers. But some airlines would like even better inspections at the checkpoints. Don Carty, chief executive of American Airlines, said recently that if the universal searches were more thorough, the Transportation Security Administration might be able to skip the second round of searches at the gates. Another technology undergoing tests here is body scanning using backscatter X-ray, in which tiny doses of X-rays are bounced off the person to be scanned, giving a view through the clothing. The Transportation Security Administration does not use the machine, but officials said that the Customs Service offers it in lieu of a strip search. ''There are obviously some issues with deploying this,'' Dr. Hallowell said. TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT | Exotic Options Tested For Airport Screening |
1404319_0 | When a group of Florentine composers invented opera at the turn of the 17th century, they imagined that they were reviving the spirit, if not the letter, of ancient Greek drama. Many of their works had librettos based on Greek myths, and because Greek theater was known to have been sung rather than spoken, the early opera composers developed a style of vocal writing that was meant to convey something (characterization and emotion, for example) beyond the plain text. Today we hear those works as Italian Baroque, not as ancient Greek, and although there have been many credible musicological attempts to resurrect the music of Greek antiquity -- Maurizio Pollini presented examples in an installment of his Perspectives series two years ago -- most listeners probably assume that it is a lost art. Even if musicologists were to guess right about how a surviving musical fragment sounded, we could never be entirely certain that was the case. Still, this hasn't stopped composers and dramatists from reimagining Greek drama, and there's no reason it should. ''Dionysus Filius Dei,'' a dance opera written and directed by Ellen Stewart, with music by Elizabeth Swados, Michael Sirotta and several other composers, is a vital example of what this exercise can yield. The Great Jones Repertory Company, which created the work in 1989, is presenting a revival at La Mama E.T.C. (74a East Fourth Street, East Village). The production, which was seen on Saturday evening, runs through tomorrow. Like early opera, ''Dionysus Filius Dei'' draws on Greek mythology and presents it in a stylized language meant to convey a sense of antiquity. But where Baroque composers conceived this antiquity as elevated, Ms. Stewart and company present it in primitive, otherworldly hues. The instrumental score by Mr. Sirotta with contributions by Ms. Stewart, Yukio Tsjui, Genji Ito, Heather Paauwe and Matt Aiken is heavily percussive but also uses sharp-edged violin figures and exotic and electronic sounds. The vocal writing -- Ms. Swados's contribution -- is mostly for chorus. Its gestures are ritualistic and rhythmic with a Minimalist accent. There is also a difference in scope. Monteverdi and his colleagues tended to build evening-long works out of single episodes. ''Dionysus Filius Dei'' offers a panoramic view of Dionysus's life from his conception by Zeus and Semele to more than a dozen of his exploits around the Mediterranean rim, ending with his adoption as the god of Thebes | Distilling Dionysus from the Ancient Greeks and Bringing His Power to Life |
1404343_4 | produces gas and oil. ''The oil and gas industry should be consulted,'' she told The Austin American-Statesman, a daily newspaper, at the time of last year's board vote. ''We always get a raw deal.'' One Dallas publisher, J. M. LeBel Enterprises, after having Jane L. Person's ''Environmental Science: How the World Works and Your Place in It'' rejected on Nov. 8, spent most of the next night working with state education officials to incorporate a series of changes in this high school textbook suggested by one of the foundation's critiques. These changes resulted in the book's approval. Ms. Venable and other conservative critics insist that they do not want to edit or rewrite textbooks, only to assure that they are stripped of ideology and offer a straightforward, objective statement of facts. But René LeBel, the publishing company's president, deplored the process, even though he maintained that he did not alter the book's fundamental content. ''It was a book burning,'' he said. ''It was 100 percent political.'' At the suggestion of the foundation, the LeBel company rewrote the sentence ''Destruction of the tropical rain forest could affect weather over the entire planet'' so that it now reads, ''Tropical rain forest ecosystems impact weather over the entire planet.'' It also added these sentences: ''In the past, the earth has been much warmer than it is now, and fossils of sea creatures show us that the sea level was much higher than it is today. So does it really matter if the world gets warmer?'' The foundation also succeeded in having this sentence deleted: ''Most experts on global warming feel that immediate action should be taken to curb global warming.'' ''We are now telling them what to write and what not to write,'' Mary Helen Berlanga, a Democratic member of the Board of Education, said of authors. (The board has 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats.) But others say this is simply democracy at work. ''We citizens are truly the clients,'' Ms. Venable said. ''It is our children's education and future at stake, and our tax dollars are paying for the books. If people in Texas are more conservative than people in Massachusetts or New York, so be it.'' Singled out for particular censure at last year's hearings and ultimately rejected by the Board of Education was ''Environmental Science: Creating a Sustainable Future,'' by Daniel D. Chiras, published by Jones & Bartlett, a small | Textbook Publishers Learn: Avoid Messing With Texas |
1404446_0 | Deaths and injuries from guerrilla activity rose sharply last year despite cease-fires by paramilitary groups that have ended the systematic sectarian violence that cost 3,600 lives over three decades before the 1998 peace agreement. Police figures said gunmen killed 18 people compared with 7 in 2000 and so-called punishment beatings nearly doubled to more than 300. A police report said most killings were by Protestant paramilitary groups, while Catholic and Protestant gangs were equally responsible for maimings and beatings by vigilante enforcers. Warren Hoge (NYT) | World Briefing | Europe: Northern Ireland: Sharp Rise In Violence |
1398827_0 | An informal grouping of 33 countries from Europe, the Americas and the Pacific urged new measures to prevent the spread of chemical and biological weapons. Meeting in Paris, the so-called Australia Group, which was formed in 1984 in response to the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war, said the nonbinding measures included new rules covering the export of toxins and technology that could be used to manufacture weapons. Alan Cowell (NYT) | World Briefing | Europe: France: Accord Against Bioweapons |
1397349_0 | A group of Israeli and Palestinian politicians have met for unusual talks in the English Midlands, joined by figures who negotiated Northern Ireland's breakthrough peace accord of 1998. ''We are able to meet here because it is impossible to meet back home with the siege and the checkpoints,'' said Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian minister of information and culture. ''London has become closer to Ramallah for us than Israel is.'' Yossi Beilin, former Israeli justice minister and advocate of the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis that began in Oslo, saw parallels between the Middle East and Northern Ireland. He said he thought progress in the Middle East had been stalled by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's insistence on an end to violence before any talks could begin. In Northern Ireland, he said, the peace process moved forward only once the precondition of full disarmament was removed. ''It tells me, beware of preconditions,'' he said. ''You can become their slaves.'' Much of the conversation at the two days of talks, which were sponsored by the newspaper The Guardian, centered on how the progress in Northern Ireland might inform the stalemated process in the Middle East. But the Israelis attending were not representatives of the Sharon government, or in a position to negotiate with authority. ''It was preaching to believers,'' said Nabeel Kassis, the Palestinian minister without portfolio, who described the sessions here as marked more by agreement than debate. Still, the participants saw merit in resuming contacts. ''The clear message for the Israeli public from the Irish experience and the experience we've had here after many years of talking to each other, and many months of not talking to each other, is that there is a Palestinian partner and a Palestinian peace camp,'' said Avraham Burg, speaker of the Parliament. ''I hope the Palestinians will realize there is an Israeli peace partner and an Israeli peace camp.'' Martin McGuinness, the deputy leader of Sinn Fein, the political party of the Irish Republican Army, recalled that a decade ago South Africa, Northern Ireland and the Middle East led the list of intractable problems and that he would have been skeptical if he had been told that by now, the first two would have become stable societies. David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party, the political wing of the Protestant paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, said, ''Years ago, with all the talent and ability | Ulster Leaders Give Pep Talk To 2 Sides In the Mideast |
1397022_3 | Auctions, one of New England's premier auctioneers. Their sales (others are held in Manchester, N.H.) manage to combine world-class lots with the atmosphere of a country auction. Attendance is scarcely ''shopping,'' in the usual sense of strolling through Portsmouth's many hip boutiques and galleries. I would describe it more as an educational experience. Jefferson does not seem to have visited Portsmouth, but George Washington did, in 1789, and expressed his appreciation of the hospitality he found at Gov. John Langdon's new mansion (now part of the harbor trail tour). Benjamin Franklin visited the town in 1763 and is said to have personally supervised the installation of the lightning rod on the west wall of the Warner House, built of brick in 1716 at tremendous cost. What are probably the oldest Colonial wall paintings still in place in the United States decorate the staircase wall. Two of the five are portraits of two Iroquois chiefs copied from popular portraits of the era of the same chiefs who became famous for visiting Queen Anne in London in 1710. A long time later but still a long time ago, someone must have tired of the chiefs, because in 1863 the family was surprised to discover the paintings under four layers of wallpaper. The Warner House was lived in by the original family until 1930. Standard Oil wanted to buy and demolish it for a gas station in 1931, but the Warner House Association was formed and the house was saved. Almost everything old and wonderful in Portsmouth has been preserved by a combination of historical accident and enlightened determination. As the great trading days declined after the Civil War, the Naval Shipyard kept the town prosperous enough to maintain itself, but no new wave of development came along to completely wipe out the past, as it did in Philadelphia and New York. But by the 1950's, Portsmouth was more notorious navy base than Revolutionary jewel, with hundreds of 19th-century buildings having been destroyed. The miracle is what remains, and the credit goes to residents and the several historical preservation societies that struggled for decades to save the great mansions, Strawbery Banke, the area that became Prescott Park, and even Market Square from the 20-century demons of urban renewal, the automobile and progress. History is a long time telling, and the chapters are not static. At Strawbery Banke, history talks. Created by assembling and | A Historic Gem Hiding in Plain Sight |
1397359_0 | The top officials of 39 airports, which handle most of the nation's air travelers, have warned the secretary of transportation that air travel will be seriously disrupted in January unless Congress delays the Dec. 31 deadline for screening all checked bags, a major defense against terrorism. In a letter dated May 29, the officials said that they did not think the Transportation Department could hire enough screeners to meet its goal of a maximum 10-minute wait, and that if the department failed, ''the result will be an unacceptable level of passenger service further jeopardizing the perilous state of the aviation industry.'' At Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, a spokeswoman predicted ''mass congestion and confusion'' that will make passengers drive. The aviation commissioner in Chicago said he had no idea when O'Hare could meet the deadline because there was still no blueprint for how many machines were needed and where to put them. In San Francisco, a spokesman said that seven months since the deadline was imposed and with seven remaining, construction had not started because ''we're still scratching our heads trying to figure out how to make it work.'' Bruce Baumgartner, the manager of aviation at Denver International Airport, predicted that passengers would be lined up out the terminal door and into the parking building, in the January cold. Officials at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport predicted similar lines. Many of the airport officials said they could smoothly screen all checked bags, but only by adding giant scanning machines into the luggage handling systems in terminal basements. They said that simply preparing the conveyor belts and wiring and making space for the machines would take months. Several executives said that decisions should have been made by March or April at the latest. ''We're now in June and no decisions have been made and it's too late to meet the deadline with the right answer,'' Mr. Baumgartner said. The Transportation Department decided a few weeks ago that it could not obtain enough of the big machines that detect explosives, and that its interim solution for Denver and 428 other airports would be to use hundreds of small machines that do not scan bags, but look for traces of explosives. Those trace detectors, which are already used to screen carry-on bags at many passenger checkpoints, would be put in the lobbies near the check-in counters. But Denver will need 450 people just to run | Airports Urge Delay in New Security Rules |
1397362_1 | in harbor festivals and tall-ship events in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and other ports. This year, the Bat'kivshchyna (pronounced bat-keev-SHIN-a and meaning fatherland) has been sailing since April through the West Indies and the Caribbean. On Friday the captain's son-in-law, Roy Kellogg, a Canadian, reported by e-mail from the ship that it was nearing Curaçao, the starting point for a race to Jamaica that it would compete in. Afterward, he said, the schooner will go through the Panama Canal and up and down the West Coast for tall-ship events. The plan for next year is to cross the Pacific to start a yearlong trip home through the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal. He said expenses had been met through appearance fees at the various events, the sale of souvenirs and donations from Ukrainian-Americans. And the purpose of it all? Aside from the adventure, Mr. Kellogg said, he has made contacts for his business, which includes arranging imports into Ukraine. For Captain Biriukovich, he said, it is simply a desire to help Ukraine by promoting it as a place to visit and to do business. ''He loves to sail and loves his country,'' Mr. Kellogg said. Convict's Release Is Set In '82 Diner Rampage In 1982, five young Brooklyn men went on a notorious crime spree in Nassau County. Invading a house party in Plainview and two diners -- the Sea Crest (above) in Old Westbury and the Jericho Townhouse in Jericho -- the gunmen robbed nearly 100 people, shot and seriously wounded two, raped or sodomized five women, beat other people and, at the Sea Crest, ordered everyone to strip and have sexual contact with one another. Soon arrested, they pleaded guilty to attempted murder and other crimes and received the maximum of 15 to 30 years in prison. Two, later convicted of a 1981 murder, are serving life without parole. The three others have been rejected for parole, but now one, Robert Williams, 39, is scheduled to be freed on June 28 under a provision requiring release for good behavior in prison after service of two-thirds of the maximum in a nonlife sentence. When he sought parole last year, Mr. Williams said he was sickened by his crimes and had committed them while high on drugs. Nicholas Bouloukos, the Sea Crest's owner, who was beaten in the rampage, said on Friday, ''He doesn't deserve to be out.'' Following Up | FOLLOWING UP |
1397341_0 | ''You're never going to see a bigger pile of rubber than this,'' said Jay Harris, a security guard at the closed Gibson Recycling plant in the dense pine forests just south of this East Texas town. With 30 million to 40 million shredded tires and 3 million whole ones, the 150-acre Gibson site is the largest tire graveyard in Texas, and possibly the nation. Tractor tires, motorcycle tires, 18-wheeler tires, bicycle tires, automobile tires and inner tubes -- chipped, shredded or whole -- are piled in about a hundred blocklong mounds up to 25 feet high. ''It's all just stacked up out here, waiting until somebody figures out what to do with it,'' Mr. Harris said. ''That could take a long, long time.'' For nearly a decade, Gibson Recycling operated as a dumping ground for old tires. Bud Gibson, an engineer, began buying used tires and recycling them into other products in 1991, encouraged by a state program that offered financial incentives to clean up tire dumps, which, in addition to being fire hazards, breed mosquitoes and other pests. But the program, financed by a $2 fee on new tires, did not outline disposal methods for the tires, and only a limited commercial market for chipped or shredded tires developed. The state abandoned the effort in 1997, but by then Mr. Gibson had assembled scrapped tires from 220 other dump sites in Texas and surrounding states, state officials said. Gibson Recycling continued operation for three years after the program, but in May 2000 the state's Natural Resource Conservation Commission closed the plant, citing repeated safety violations, and the company went out of business. The state took over the plant and hired a security firm, Horne Enterprises, to guard it around the clock. From ''Fort Horne'' -- a portable building perched on a beachhead of chipped rubber -- Mr. Harris and other guards scan the eerie black mounds with binoculars. ''The biggest danger is fire,'' Mr. Harris said. ''That's what we're always watching for.'' Lightning strikes, oxidation of wires in the shredded rubber, and even summer heat can start fires, he said. Fire lanes have been cut through the hills of rubber chips, fire extinguishers rest by each pile, water trucks and dump trucks are parked at the edge of the site. ''Tire fires can be almost impossible to put out,'' said Dixon McMahen, an environmental clean-up consultant in Austin. ''They | Burned Rubber and Other Not-So-Natural Hazards |
1397029_0 | OUT of the thick fog swirling around Winter Island, a lone brown pelican soared into sight, flew silently past the small sailboats anchored offshore and disappeared back into the mist. Nearby, a solitary fisherman cast his line at the foot of the Fort Pickering Lighthouse as small waves lapped the rocky beach. Winter Island, a five-minute drive from downtown Salem, Mass., is a city park where you can launch a boat or explore the Civil War-era earthworks of Fort Pickering. But just up the shore from the park, there's a coal-fired power plant and a municipal sewage treatment facility. New England has always had a complex relationship with the sea. For centuries the ocean has served as a source of great wealth for merchants and fishermen. Even in today's tourist-driven economy, the sea is as much hardscrabble workplace as playground. In a pair of day trips from our home in Boston last September, my wife, Rose, and I explored the wharves and waterfronts of Salem and Gloucester, Mass., two places where this heritage can still be seen. From the 1640's until the early 19th century, Salem was one of the most important trading ports in America. The Central Wharf of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site is the home of the Friendship, a reproduction of a three-masted East Indiaman that was originally completed in 1797. Construction on the new Friendship began in 1996. Crews of carpenters and riggers are still outfitting the ship, and visitors can go aboard to watch their progress and to get an inkling of what it felt like to sail to China or Russia on a vessel powered by nothing but muscles and wind, hemp rope and canvas sails. The main mast is nearly as tall as a 10-story building, but the cramped spaces of the 'tween-deck seemed like an awfully small place to live with a dozen other souls for months at a time. Park rangers are stationed on the ship to answer questions. The ranger we spoke with was eager to talk about Salem's history of privateers, the government-licensed pirates who operated as a sort of freelance American navy during the Revolutionary War and seized cargo from British ships. The ranger deferred one of our questions about some of the Friendship's ropes -- Kevlar coils thicker than my forearm, dyed black to resemble traditional tar-coated hemp lines -- to the master rigger, who happened | Ports That Reflect a Grand Era |
1397353_0 | As the grizzly approached, taking his sweet time, Abigail Thomas tried to practice good bear etiquette. She stood still as a tree in her dark gray jogging outfit. She did not look the bear in the eye. She silently told herself, as she later recalled, that if the bear did not feel challenged, he would ''leave me alone.'' The bear, though, had other ideas. So it was that last Sunday morning on a parking lot in Yellowstone National Park, Ms. Thomas had a moist and terrifying encounter with a grizzly. The five-minute face-off became painful, she explained in a telephone interview, only after the grizzly released the grip of his jaws, which he had gently clamped on her right thigh. It was the first time in two years that a grizzly had injured a person in Yellowstone, a park that is home to 400 to 600 grizzlies and is visited by three million people a year. Marsha Karle, a spokeswoman for the park, said there are very few contacts between bears and people considering the number of people and the number of bears. If startled, separated from their cubs or hurt, grizzlies can attack and kill humans. In Yellowstone, three people were slightly injured by a grizzly in 2000. Grizzlies have killed five people in the park in the last century, with the most recent death in 1986. Across North America a person is killed by a grizzly about once every two years. In the Rocky Mountain West, the probability of contact between people and grizzlies is rising. An increasing human population is settling in areas where there is a recovering population of grizzlies. Lecturers from the Great Bear Foundation in Missoula, Mont., offer the following advice for anyone encountering a bear: avoid eye contact and sudden movement -- and never run. That is the gospel that Ms. Thomas tried to follow. Ms. Thomas, 30, is a mail sorter in the Lake Station Post Office in Yellowstone. She is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 170 pounds. She has been a veterinary technician in Portland, Ore., and loves animals. Her professional expertise is limited to dogs and cats. The grizzly she encountered is a ''male subadult grizzly,'' the National Park Service said. He is about 3 years old and probably separated from his mother in the spring. Based on his age, the bear is about half the size of | Following All the Rules in a Close Encounter With a Grizzly |
1397390_1 | New Delhi, where diplomats, journalists and business people come to relax, was largely deserted because most everyone was home packing a day after the State Department urged Americans to leave India because of fears of a war between India and Pakistan. 10 Israeli and Palestinians Meet A group of Israelis and Palestinian politicians have met for unusual talks in the English Midlands, joined by figures who negotiated Northern Ireland's breakthrough peace accord of 1998. 4 NATIONAL 18-32 Wary of Risk, the F.B.I. Stumbles in the Terror War Intelligence officials say that the F.B.I., despite efforts to strengthen its counterterrorism programs, has never developed a nimble enough structure, analytic capability or sense of mission to foil terror plots. 1 White-Collar Crime Increases Business fraud and corruption prosecutions and investigations are on the rise. Experts attribute this changing nature of crime to demographic shifts and economic forces. 1 Victims May Address Bishops The nation's Roman Catholic bishops are weighing whether to allow victims of sexual abuse by priests to speak at their annual meeting. 18 Delay Urged in Security Rules The top officials of 39 airports warn that air travel will be disrupted unless Congress delays the deadline for screening checked bags. 24 Debate on Pesticide The E.P.A. is embroiled in legal and scientific debates as it struggles to write rules governing the use of atrazine, a widely used pesticide. 28 SCIENCE/HEALTH Early Sign of Alzheimer's More doctors are making the diagnosis of a disorder that often leads to Alzheimer's disease. 1 EDUCATION Regents Exams Found to Use Doctored Literary Passages The mother of a high school senior inspected 10 New York high school English exams from the past three years and discovered that the vast majority of the passages -- drawn from the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anton Chekhov and William Maxwell, among others -- had been sanitized of virtually any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity. 1 A Theme for Commencements Nearly everyone who worked the commencement speech circuit this spring talked about Sept. 11. 38 OBITUARIES 42-43 Flora Lewis A correspondent and columnist who explained international affairs for nearly 60 years, she was 79.43 NEW YORK/REGION 35-40 Uneasy Feeling in Times Square After weeks of reminders about suitcase bombs, the crossroads of the world feels like the cross hairs. 35 Portraits of Grief 36 Fresh Air Fund 40 Chess 42 Weather 44 | NEWS SUMMARY |
1397282_2 | advertiser desperation abound. Television executives worry about new technologies that allow people to skip commercials, and the Internet is littered with increasingly frantic pop-ups and other sales pitches. As the costs go down, the number of pitches multiplies -- something that Lloyd might have predicted. Every morning, from all over the globe, the e-mail comes pouring in. Never before have cut-rate ink-jet cartridges been so readily available to me, to say nothing of golden investment opportunities, luxury travel and products to enhance the libido. I get a good volume of legitimate e-mail, yet some days the spam (unsolicited commercial speech, if you're squeamish) outweighs it by 10 to 1. Perhaps the most serious sign of desperation is the reincarnation of advertising's ''hidden persuaders,'' this time as a pack of executives and consultants who specialize in Jungian analysis, semiotics and other such recondite arts. These concepts are applied to such questions as how to more effectively sell breakfast cereal and soft drinks. Naturally enough, marketers have burst the bounds of traditional advertising in favor of product placements in movies and the like. Bulgari even paid the writer Fay Weldon to write a novel featuring the company. Even if the boundaries of acceptable advertising expand, the commons of consumer consciousness will not. The more consumers are battered by this ceaseless marketing assault, the less value each advertising dollar will have. One proven approach to better stewardship of the commons is to place a cap on use and to allow users to buy and sell their allocations. This is hard to do, of course, so something like more traditional regulation might make sense. In New York State, the no-calls registry, for those wanting to avoid telemarketers, is a good model. And at the minimum, business should mobilize all the lobbyists at its command for a federal ban on junk e-mail like the one that suppressed junk faxes years ago. But the larger issue may have to resolve itself. Increasingly, the most desirable consumers will opt out by ignoring commercial radio and television and hiding behind technologies that exempt them from the onslaught, until advertisers are left with something like Lloyd's barren commons all over again, applied to consumer consciousness: scrawny companies feeding off overgrazed pasture. It's not a pretty picture for anyone. ON THE CONTRARY Daniel Akst's column tilts at conventional business wisdom and appears the first Sunday of each month. E-mail: culmoney@nytimes.com. | Ubiquitous Ads Devalue All Messages |
1404765_0 | UNTIL now, when the term ''fusion'' was applied to food, it meant culinary creations with multicultural roots -- dim sum marinara, say, or pastrami sushi or ratatouille tacos. The latest fusion trend, however, has more to do with merchandising than with gourmandise. Judging by some recent business reports, licensing agreements and mergers are inspiring the linking of nonfood brand names with packaged foods, indicating that marketers may be replacing chefs as creative forces in the kitchen. If the fit is right, both sides have much to gain. The nonfood brand name lends cachet or sometimes even authority to a comestible that needs re-imaging even as it gains exposure in a new market. Or, as one industry spokeswoman put it, ''Another eyeball is looking at your brand.'' Already on supermarket shelves are successful synergies like Jack Daniels Grilling Sauces and Creamsicle Candy Twists, and more are on the drawing boards. How tame. Where are the marketers' creative juices? Where's the fun? Expanding the notion of what constitutes a good fit, here are a few suggestions that might prompt ideas for other companies anxious to jump on this potentially profitable bandwagon. PRADA PASTA: Prada meets Ronzoni to produce all-black pasta in currently fashionable shapes, like navels, nipples, abs, crescents, hearts, Elsa Peretti kidney beans and, to come full circle, slim strings of shoulder-strap spaghetti. But there is one possible pitfall: If this pasta becomes too popular, no one will fit into Prada! MARLBORO LIQUID SMOKE: A natural tie-in for French's or Tabasco, this product, based on one that already exists, would impart a smoky flavor when real barbecuing is impossible or just too troublesome. Might as well take the easy way out, and at the same time impart a macho outdoor image to the Marlboro man of the house. GETTY'S 4-SEASONS SALAD DRESSING: Two great names would combine for dressings of herb-enhanced oils that are pure and unleaded, with low exhaust emissions. They would be guaranteed to go through your digestive tract no faster than 50 m.p.h. LEGO KRISPIES: A natural for Kellogg's, these cracker-cereals would be baked in the form of Lego pieces. Lego signals fun and play to children, education to parents, and the cereal companies lend an aura of wholesome nutrition. Children could build things with the crackers, and when all fell down they could eat them plain or with milk. CHANEL NO. 5 1/2: Moving along from eau | Marriages Made in Culinary Heaven |
1404762_3 | monthly student loan payment was about 7 percent of a graduate's monthly gross income, just below the 8 percent that many lenders use as a threshold for manageability. A separate study conducted last March by the State Public Interest Research Groups, however, estimated that 39 percent of student-loan payers exceeded the 8 percent limit. ''The debt burden becomes a ball and chain for too many student borrowers,'' said Ellynne Bannon, a higher-education advocate for the group. The federal Education Department is expected to complete at year-end its own study of students' debt burden. What is clear, however, is that the job climate for recent college graduates has changed for the worse. Only two years ago, many new graduates were deluged with job offers. But a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 79 percent of colleges reported a decrease in the number of companies recruiting on their campuses this year, compared with last year. The unemployment rate for people aged 20 to 24, meanwhile, was 8.9 percent in May, after reaching an eight-year high of 10.3 percent in March. The rate in May 2001 was 7.9 percent. The tight employment market has caused many new graduates to rethink career plans. Ms. Bittner, who had originally hoped to land a job at a newspaper, will instead become a volunteer health care worker in West Africa. ''I'm going to ride out the job market and join the Peace Corps,'' she said. As an added benefit of her volunteering, a portion of her debt will be forgiven. More than $9,500 of Ms. Bittner's debt is in the form of federal Perkins loans; the government forgives from 15 percent to 70 percent of Perkins debt for Peace Corps volunteers, depending on the length of service. PUBLIC service is not the only option for those who want to reduce the sting of loan obligations. Individuals may claim an annual tax deduction on up to $2,500 of interest payments on their student loans. Until this year, the deduction was available only for the first five years of interest payments. Starting this year, borrowers may take the deduction for the life of the loan. The income limits for the deduction have also been increased -- single filers with adjusted gross incomes of less than $65,000, or married couples filing jointly with incomes of less than $130,000, will be eligible for at least | Personal Business; Learn Now, Pay Back (Somewhat Less) Later |
1404868_2 | ''A violation of children's privacy has most certainly occurred,'' Mr. Sawyer said, adding that he planned to meet with school officials on Monday to discuss the matter. Police officials were contacted by The New York Times early yesterday after neighborhood residents called the newspaper to report the presence of the records. The police officials said that they had no jurisdiction to confiscate, remove or discard them. A police spokesman, Officer George Jensen, said that the documents were ''not our records, not our jurisdiction,'' and that if school officials ''put something out, they deemed it to be trash.'' The records were still on the sidewalk as of early yesterday. But Mr. Sawyer said that sanitation workers had removed most of them by the afternoon. One box included letters that students had written to one another to be included in a time capsule; another included records about special education students, most of whom were identified as having cerebral palsy. Many documents are what are known in educational circles as I.E.P.'s, or individualized educational programs. Those records document each special education student's eligibility for special accommodations and services, and outline the school's plan to guarantee that student an education that meets his or her needs. ''This is simply outrageous and unprofessional,'' said a parent of a special education student whose records were left outside the school. ''It's unbelievable,'' said a man who identified himself only as a neighborhood resident. ''It has everything there. Someone could take on the kids' identity. It's just so crazy that they could do this; it's mind-baffling.'' With 3,000 students, Martin Luther King Jr. High School is large even by New York City standards. Enid F. Margolies, a former director of educational safety, development and support for the school system, was recently appointed interim principal, succeeding Steve Gutman, a 36-year veteran of the school system. Mr. Gutman retired in September 2001 but returned in February after the removal of Ronald Williams Wells, during whose tenure there was a spate of violence involving weapons at the school, including a January shooting. Board of Education officials who toured the school at the time complained that some people who were in the building were not enrolled in courses but were carrying photo identification cards. Mr. Sawyer has said that Dr. Margolies will oversee efforts to improve the school's security and curriculum as well as its transformation into two smaller academies next year. | Students' Private Records Found Outside City School |
1404656_2 | conference on this topic, sponsored by the center, drew about 100 engineers last week to the CUNY Graduate Center in mid-Manhattan. Specifically, Dr. Bruneau referred to dampers that absorb and reduce damaging vibrations and to structures in which surviving columns take up the additional load if other columns are lost or damaged. ''We witnessed the effects of a very large-scale attack on Sept. 11,'' he said. ''But what's more likely to happen in the future is the explosion of a car bomb parked near a building or a bridge. Such an explosion pushes structural elements to their load-bearing limits, to the point where they fail. This is very similar to what happens in an earthquake.'' The goal is not that structures ride out a trauma unscathed but that they remain standing, even in a damaged state, and allow people inside to get out safely. Ductility and redundancy are the watchwords; buildings that bend but do not break, with enough structural elements that no one failure causes a catastrophic collapse. ''What we have to do is make sure there are no singular weak links in the chain,'' said Guy J. P. Nordenson of Guy Nordenson & Associates, a structural engineer and a leading advocate of the seismic code, Local Law 17 of 1995. He said the law may help improve buildings' resistance to attack by requiring that all masonry walls be reinforced, that facade elements be securely anchored and that connections between beams and columns be ductile. That said, however, there are critical differences between earthquakes and explosions, beginning with the force itself, which is almost entirely lateral in one case and spherical in the other. The forces are exerted in different ways across buildings (more uniformly in an earthquake, more locally in the case of a blast) and over different periods of time (minutes in one case, seconds in the other). There is another important difference. Ask an engineer how safe a building is and the engineer is likely to ask under what circumstance. ''When we speak about earthquakes, one can actually calculate a certain probability,'' said Franz-Josef Ulm, associate professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ''We have no mathematical tools to evaluate the probability of a terrorist event.'' Rather than trying to anticipate every possible assault on structural integrity, some engineers favor a multihazard approach. ''You don't try to pick only one threat and design for | Designing Buildings To Resist Earthquakes |
1398284_0 | This need to balance tolerance and vigilance applies also to immigration policy. It is important that the country police its borders and enforce its immigration laws in a way that is both fair and effective. Unfortunately Mr. Ashcroft announced a plan yesterday that seems to lead in the wrong direction. He proposed to fingerprint tens of thousands of visitors from Muslim and Middle Eastern countries as they enter the United States. His plan would also require them to register with the government if they stay 30 days or longer. This is a poorly conceived and inadequate substitute for the serious overhaul of the immigration system that should be among Washington's most urgent priorities. The United States can no longer afford a broken immigration system. There are four obvious points of weakness. Applicants are insufficiently screened when they apply for a visa. They are not carefully monitored while they are here to make sure they are living up to the purposes they claimed when they applied for the visa. They are allowed to overstay visas without penalty, as was the case with three of the Sept. 11 hijackers. And they depart largely unnoticed. Congress recently passed legislation to address these weaknesses, but past Congressional mandates have paid few dividends. Border security remains porous, and there has been little effort, despite repeated promises, to provide consular officials around the world who make the crucial rulings on visa applications with access to law enforcement and intelligence databases. State Department officers overseas, for instance, did not know that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers had overstayed previous visas to America, let alone that the C.I.A. knew one of them had connections to Al Qaeda. Similarly, the immigration service's desire to keep better track of foreign students studying in the United States has been thwarted by delays over the years and by objections from universities. The values and practices of American universities need not be undermined by reforms in the way they maintain records about foreign students. These and other lapses will not be remedied by the wholesale fingerprinting of tens of thousands of Muslim and Middle Eastern visa holders. Indeed, set against the immigration service's fundamental needs, this seems like a desperation move by a Justice Department that has failed through both Democratic and Republican administrations to manage the I.N.S. adequately and fix its chronic problems. There is nothing wrong with asking long-term foreign | Handling Foreign Visitors |
1398170_1 | mice can also be prone to cat woes, so if you are experiencing erratic mouse behavior, clean the rollerball or optical lens on the bottom of the mouse as well. Finally, if you find that Kitty is tromping across your keys and accidentally editing your documents while you are away from the computer, a $20 shareware program for Windows might help: PawSense is available at bitboost.com/pawsense. Q. Before I register at a Web site, how can I tell what kind of information the site might keep on file or share with other sites? A. If you want to know what kind of information about its registered users a Web site might be keeping in its database, check the bottom of the site's home page for a link called Privacy Policy or Notice. Most established service or e-commerce Web sites that require you to register or create a profile, like eBay and Expedia.com, will have the privacy policy posted. Many sites claim they do not sell your personal data to other Web sites or marketing outlets but will occasionally make the information available to their affiliates and business partners. If you have read the site's specific statement and still have questions, there is usually a link available within the privacy statement for sending e-mail to a company representative. If you do not see any contact information, try sending a message to the site's customer service address. Q. How can I tell if an e-mail address has been forged? A. A careful reading of the mail headers can usually indicate that the message is not really from where it says it's from. E-mail message headers are often forged by junk mailers trying to disguise the origin of the message or by e-mail worms like Klez that can go through the address book on an infected machine and send itself to new victims under a false address. If your e-mail program allows you to view the message's header fields (check the manual or Help information to find out how to do it), look at the address in the Received line closest to the bottom of the header (which is actually the first Received line in the message's travels) to see if it matches the domain name in the sender's address. If they are vastly different, the address may have been forged. Received lines can partly be faked as well, though, and headers in | The Cat, the Mouse And the Keyboard |
1398200_4 | be reading the message, refrain from sending group e-mail on which other recipients are listed, establish with patients what method of communication they prefer and archive the messages. The demand among patients for e-mail contact with their doctors is pronounced. According to the recent Harris Interactive survey, 90 percent of patients with access to e-mail said they would like the ability to communicate with their physicians online, and more than a third said they would be willing to pay for it. Patients want their doctors to spend more time communicating with them, Dr. Sands said. Further, he said, when patients know there is an open line of communication with a physician, the need for constant communication diminishes. ''It's a calming thing,'' Dr. Sands said. ''People get stressed out when they don't have access to their physician.'' Such reassurances are not enough to convince Dr. Harold Weinberg, a 50-year-old neurologist in New York. Dr. Weinberg uses instant messaging throughout the day to keep in touch with family members, but he shuns e-mail with patients. ''All the questions require me to ask them more questions,'' Dr. Weinberg said. ''The doctor-patient interaction is so dynamic that e-mail is like a fossil. It's too slow.'' Still, physicians like Dr. Parker say e-mail can occasionally eliminate the need for an office visit. Two months ago, Carol Butt, a 59-year-old retired nurse who lives in Winchester, Mass., and is a patient of Dr. Parker's, developed a large bruise on her arm. She decided not to drive 30 minutes into Boston to see him. Instead, she had her husband take digital photos of the bruise and send them by e-mail. ''I thought it would be ever so much easier to take a picture of what it was, and I figured he could get a good enough idea of what was going on,'' Ms. Butt said. Dr. Parker ended up sending her to a dermatologist, a step he would have taken had she driven to his office. ''It saved me five or six hours,'' she said. Many doctors who are reluctant to send e-mail also point to liability as a major concern. But that is another unfounded fear, e-mail partisans say. ''It's well documented that those who communicate a lot with their physicians are less likely to sue,'' said Dr. Sands, who also has a private practice in Boston. Dr. Sands said he knew of no malpractice lawsuits | 'Dear Doctor' Meets 'Return To Sender' |
1398274_0 | The Vatican had no formal reaction to the American bishops' proposals for dealing with sexual abuse by clergy members, saying the text presented on Tuesday was a working draft. But church officials here and in other European countries indicated today that at least some of the proposals were expected to be viewed critically here, including requirements that bishops inform law enforcement officials and that the pope be called upon to defrock priests who abuse minors. The officials said the proposals would be carefully studied by the Vatican. National church leaders in Europe and elsewhere are reviewing procedures for dealing with sexual abuse by members of the clergy, and the American proposals could have an impact on the process, they said. A papal spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, declined to comment on the proposals, saying they represented a ''preliminary draft.'' But two key procedures have prompted discussion in the past in the Vatican and in other church bodies. They involve the requirement that the bishops turn over any new accusations to the civil authorities and another obligating the bishops to ask the pope to defrock any priest who abuses a minor in the future. While other national churches, including those in Britain and France, have studied procedures for dealing with sexual abuse without the direct involvement of the Vatican, the American bishops have said they would present the final draft to the Vatican, and would make the procedures mandatory if approved. Perhaps most controversial is the proposed requirement calling for the bishops to turn over new accusations to civil authorities. In recent weeks, several Vatican officials, including some from developing countries with tense relations between government and clergy, have said they would not approve such a plan. Vatican officials have also voiced resistance to what they consider extreme measures, like defrocking. They cite the case, among others, of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, who was accused of sexually abusing a minor. His accuser later retracted the accusation. Some officials cited traditions of Christian compassion, not only for the victim but also for the perpetrator. The Rev. Giovanni Marchesi, a professor of dogmatic theology at the papal Gregorian University and an editor of the authoritative Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, suggested that defrocking shared the finality of execution. ''A priest, victim of an unjust condemnation,'' Father Marchesi said, ''is condemned to death.'' Indeed, such requirements have not obtained universal approval in European | Some European Catholics Find Fault With U.S. Bishops' Proposal on Abuse Problem |
1403811_1 | the breast enhancement,'' announces another. Spammers are like fruit flies. They multiply. They are elusive. Worst of all, they evolve quickly. The most aggressive spammers have become very sophisticated, constantly varying subject lines, ''from'' addresses and body text. Joe Long, a war room employee, remembers when times -- and spam -- were simpler. Two years ago, he and his colleagues would sometimes be able to parry all the attacks and clear their to-do list. ''That never happens now,'' Mr. Long said. For in addition to becoming more sophisticated, spammers have become more prolific. These days, more and more junk e-mail is finding its way into In boxes. Brightmail says the volume of spam it encounters has almost tripled in the last nine months. The company adds that 12 to 15 percent of total e-mail traffic is spam; a year ago, that figure was closer to 7 percent. Brightmail, which maintains a network of In boxes to attract spam, now records 140,000 spam attacks a day, each potentially involving thousands of messages, if not millions. Statistics like these are supported by anecdotal evidence from computer users, who report that they are seeing more unwanted e-mail every time they log on. Hounded by spam, some computer users have simply abandoned e-mail addresses. No one knows precisely why spamming has increased so much. One reason may be that it is an inexpensive form of marketing favored in a slumping economy. Another may be that it is relatively simple to do -- it is not much harder to send one million e-mail messages than it is to send one. But some analysts say that the increase may also result, paradoxically, from the efforts to curb spam. A kind of arms race may have developed, those analysts say: the more efforts are made to block unwanted e-mail, the more messages spammers send to be sure that some will get through. Whatever the reasons, individual complaints about e-mail are echoed by Internet service providers, some of which say that 50 percent of incoming e-mail traffic is spam. Consumer advocates and politicians are complaining too, and proposing new laws to fight spam. Governmental agencies are also announcing new initiatives in the battle. Clearly, spam is a part of electronic communications that everyone loves to hate. But it is also something that no one, it seems, can do much about. Here are the reasons. Regulation The Federal Trade | Spam: An Escalating Attack of the Clones |
1403816_0 | Internet service providers and filtering companies like Brightmail are on the front lines of fighting spam. But there are many things that consumers can do on their own. Prevention * Set up multiple e-mail addresses. Use one for personal e-mail and one or more disposable ones -- those you would not mind abandoning if need be -- when registering at Web sites, posting to news groups or taking part in chat sessions. * Do not allow your e-mail address to be included in any online membership directories; if it is already listed, ask for it to be removed. * Review a Web site's privacy policy when you submit your address to it. Check whether the company says it will sell or give your address or others. You may want to ''opt out'' of this provision, which usually involves checking a box that denies the site permission to sell or give away your address. Or use a ''disposable'' e-mail address instead. * Try using a complex e-mail address. Spammers use ''dictionary attacks'' to sort through possible name combinations at large Internet service providers and e-mail services in the hope of finding valid addresses. Yourname@email.com, for example, is an easy target; your2name4 @email.com is harder for a spammer to happen upon. Blocking * Some I.S.P.'s and free e-mail services offer junk-mail filtering. Be aware, however, that these services often end up filtering out desirable bulk e-mail (from interest-group mailing lists, for example) along with spam. * E-mail programs can be set up manually with filters to catch spam. This works best with spam messages that you receive repeatedly. You can set a filter to catch e-mail by subject line or sender, but it requires constant updating as spammers work their way around the filters. * Filtering programs like Spam Interceptor, MailSifter and Spam Detective, available for less than $100, can run defensively between your actual mailbox on a server and your desktop e-mail program. This can slow down mail retrieval as each piece of e-mail is examined while you pull in the incoming mail. Frequent updating is also required. * Services like Spamfire (www .spamfire.com) and Clean My Mailbox (www.cleanmymailbox.com) work directly with your e-mail server for $10 to $30 a month. Software periodically probes your In box, examining each message and using algorithms to determine the probability of its being junk mail, and then removes those it considers spam. The main | From Filters to Forwarding: Ways to Fight Junk E-Mail |
1403970_0 | Britain's Northern Ireland secretary, John Reid, left, and Ireland's foreign minister, Brian Cowen, met with leaders of Northern Ireland's political parties for six hours outside Belfast to try to calm rising tensions in the province that have produced rioting and charges of violations of the peace agreement under which the majority Protestants share power with the Catholic minority. Catholics allege collusion between the largely Protestant police force and Protestant paramilitary guerrillas; Protestants say Catholics are orchestrating the nightly violence in city streets. Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, are expected to hold crisis talks with Ulster's politicians next week. Warren Hoge (NYT) | World Briefing | Europe: Northern Ireland: Effort To Ease Tensions |
1403842_0 | The ports are quiet in the remote Russian island of Sakhalin, just north of Japan. Fishing boats return home empty. Most canneries stopped operating years ago. But further out in the waters off the narrow, green island off Russia's eastern coast, boats jockey for position to catch the region's valuable crabs and fish. The catches are destined for Japan, avoiding Russian ports, taxes and fishing quotas. Vitaly Gamov, a career military man and commander in Russia's border guards, came here in November 2000 to fight that illegal fishing. His mission cost him his life. In late May, attackers threw three flaming jars of gasoline through his kitchen window. He died from the burns a week later. His wife, Larisa, recently regained consciousness after five skin grafts in a hospital in Japan. Their 14-year old son, Ivan, escaped unharmed. General Gamov died trying to change the rules in a system that is built on the corrupt compromises between business and the government that have taken hold in Russia in the chaotic decade since the fall of the Soviet Union. President Vladimir V. Putin says he wants to break those links, but the roots run deep. Last year Mr. Putin's economics minister insisted on the sale of fishing rights at auctions to get more revenue from the industry and move control of it to Moscow. That infuriated regional governors and fishing companies that until then had fished virtually free. ''Sakhalin has very big poaching problems,'' said Sergei Darkin, governor of the neighboring Primorsky region. ''Gamov fought hard against poaching.'' After the fire, Mr. Putin intervened to send a severely burned General Gamov to a hospital in Japan. Local clinics were not well enough equipped to treat his injuries. In recent years Russia has lost control of the fishing industry here, as it has of much else. When the government imposed fishing quotas and tried to levy taxes on the profits of Russian fishermen, the fishermen responded by falsifying their records and delivering their catches directly to Japan and South Korea, where the buyers asked no questions. A 2001 study by the World Wildlife Fund of illegal fishing in the Russian portion of the Bering Sea found evidence of illegal activities at ''virtually all levels'' of the industry. The report estimates that fishing firms illegally strip $4 billion from the waters each year, ''putting numerous marine species at risk and contributing to the | A Violent Death Exposes Fish Piracy in Russia |
1400650_10 | general secretary of the conference. ARTICLE 9. The work of the Office for Child and Youth Protection will be assisted and monitored by a review board, including parents, appointed by the conference president and reporting directly to him. The board will approve the annual report of the implementation of this charter in each of our dioceses/eparchies, as well as any recommendations that emerge from this review, before the report is submitted to the president of the conference and published. To understand the problem more fully and to enhance the effectiveness of our future response, the national review board will commission a comprehensive study of the causes and context of the current crisis. The board will also commission a descriptive study, with the full cooperation of our dioceses/eparchies, of the nature and scope of the problem within the Catholic Church in the United States, including such data as statistics on perpetrators and victims. ARTICLE 10. The membership of the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse will be reconstituted to include representation from all the episcopal regions of the country. ARTICLE 11. The president of the conference will inform the Holy See of this charter to indicate the manner in which we, the Catholic bishops, together with the entire church in the United States, intend to address this present crisis. ARTICLE 12. Dioceses/eparchies will establish ''safe environment'' programs. They will cooperate with parents, civil authorities, educators, and community organizations to provide education and training for children, youth, parents, ministers, educators, and others about ways to make and maintain a safe environment for children. Dioceses/eparchies will make clear to clergy and all members of the community the standards of conduct for clergy and other persons in positions of trust with regard to sexual abuse. ARTICLE 13. Dioceses/eparchies will evaluate the background of all diocesan/eparchial and parish personnel who have regular contact with minors. Specifically, they will utilize the resources of law enforcement and other community agencies. In addition, they will employ adequate screening and evaluative techniques in deciding the fitness of candidates for ordination. ARTICLE 14. When a cleric is proposed for a new assignment, transfer, residence in another diocese/eparchy or diocese/eparchy in a country other than the United States, or residence in the local community of a religious institute, the sending bishop or major superior will forward and the receiving bishop or major superior will review -- before assignment -- an accurate | SCANDALS IN THE CHURCH: The Bishops' Decisions; The Bishops' Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People |
1401536_3 | Hyatt International, are moving to burnish their image abroad. Hyatt International has been opening its top-level Hyatt Grand hotels in world ''gateway cities,'' especially in Asia, while at the same time opening more boutique-like Hyatt Park hotels in other prime locations, said John Wallis, Hyatt International's senior vice president for marketing. Hyatt International, which now has 60 hotels and 22 resorts in 38 countries, has another 17 hotels in development, including a 122-room Hyatt Park hotel scheduled to open in July at the Place Vendôme in Paris. Another high-end hotel company, Wyndham International, has been aggressively promoting its brand to frequent business travelers through a customer-loyalty program that allows repeat customers to choose various personal services and amenities, and another program that encourages the growing number of female business travelers to regard Wyndham as women-friendly. Recently, Wyndham also began offering free, unlimited long-distance telephone calls to members of its ByRequest program, responding to what it said was severe dissatisfaction about hotel phone fees among travelers. Next, responding to widespread dissatisfaction about sky-high prices for food and drink items in many hotel minibars, Wyndham is considering a drive to promote in-room minibars with reasonable prices, said Fred Kleisner, the chairman and chief executive. ''I just don't think you should have to pay $15 for a can of peanuts,'' Mr. Kleisner said. Across the board, hotels are becoming ever more rigidly segmented by class. Besides the activity in the high-end scrum, dozens of brands compete furiously in several levels of the highway motel business, from the cheapest motel to the all-suites properties with extensive workstation amenities in rooms that appeal to business travelers who usually go by car. Others compete for the lucrative convention and meetings business. All of these market niches were rattled by the souring of the economy last year and by the terrorist attacks that curtailed business travel for a time and prompted a shift to trains and cars from planes for shorter trips. As a result of the changes in business-travel behavior, big hotel chains have been scrambling to negotiate long-term contracts with corporate buyers based on the chains' abilities to offer volume discounts over a wide range of brands. All of this busy marketing comes against a gloomy backdrop. While hotel fortunes have been slowly improving since the winter, last year was by all accounts a disaster. In the United States, average hotel profits were off 19.4 | Hotels Learn the Importance of the Expectations Built Into a Brand Name |
1401620_1 | provide Cambodia with about $500 million in assistance each year. In 1993, a decree by King Norodom Sihanouk gave some protection to the western and eastern ends of the range, but the central mountains have remained open to development. Now the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, and his council of ministers are considering a decree of protection for the one-million-acre region. But the ministers are under pressure not just from the international lenders that want to preserve the land but also from Asian timber companies, some of which already hold logging concessions in the mountain range. If the preserve is created, the adjacent protected areas would form a 2.44-million-acre path for wildlife in a part of Asia where rain forests have largely been diced into ever-shrinking fragments. The biological bounty in the Cardamoms became evident in 2000, after Flora and Fauna International, a private conservation group in London, conducted surveys that turned up dozens of threatened plants and animals, including Siamese crocodiles, tigers and a rare gibbon species. But the mountains are important to more than wildlife. The steep slopes of the Cardamoms drain into the Tonlé Sap, a lake and river system that supplies perhaps half the annual fish catch in Cambodia, said David Mead, Conservation International's project manager for Cambodia. The private group, based in Washington, partly paid for the survey in 2000 and Mr. Mead is running a program conducting patrols against poaching and illegal logging. Significant clearing of the slopes, combined with the region's enormous rainfall, would result in severe erosion, Mr. Mead said. ''If you silt that lake up, you'll have a real problem on your hands,'' he said. ''Just the watershed factor alone should be enough to say that logging shouldn't occur there.'' In fact, all of the protected areas -- those created in 1993 and the new one -- exist mainly on paper. The cash-poor country is rife with illegal cutting of valuable hardwood trees and poaching of wildlife. Conservation International started helping to organize and equip forest patrols in 2001, and will continue providing $500,000 a year for the effort, group officials said. ''You can't just create these areas and say thanks and take off,'' said Dr. Russell A. Mittermeier, a biologist and president of Conservation International. ''If you're not in there with patrols, in five years it'll be sucked dry of wildlife and chopped in pieces like the rest of Indochina.'' | On Minefields of Khmer Rouge, Wilderness Is Preserved |
1399946_0 | The Justice Department announced a new screening program today for international students who want to learn to fly large jets in the United States, and it will require fingerprinting and background checks before they can climb into a cockpit. The program had been required by Congress as part of the transportation security law passed in November after investigators learned that many of the Sept. 11 hijackers had learned to maneuver planes at American flight schools and simulators. The White House held up the rules for months to conduct further study, leading to complaints from flight instructors that they were losing business as foreign students were refused permission to study. The rules announced today apply to foreigners seeking instruction for jets larger than 12,500 pounds, which includes many popular business aircraft and all jetliners. Those students would have to submit fingerprints and a good deal of personal information on a new Web site set up by the Justice Department at www.flightschoolcandidates.gov. Their names would then be checked against a large database of terrorist information set up by a new government agency, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, which combines information from the Defense Department and intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The Justice Department said this Internet-based system for checking foreigners was the first of its kind in the federal government. ''Carefully screening individuals who come to the United States to learn to fly large aircraft is a safeguard needed to prevent future acts of terrorism,'' Attorney General John Ashcroft said. ''This screening system, when fully implemented, will enhance air safety by denying would-be terrorists the keys to the cockpit.'' The increased scrutiny of foreign students has led thousands of such students to get flight instruction outside the United States, many in new flight schools in Europe, Australia and the Far East. The United States has traditionally been the global leader in flight instruction, and industry officials have been pressuring the federal government to develop the new regulations so they can regain their international business. TRACES OF TERROR: AIRLINE SAFETY | Foreigners in Flight Schools Must Undergo New Screening |
1399895_0 | One stone at a time. Day by day, for more than a month now, this has been the meticulous response of Bobby Power and Tom Teaman to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Marble craftsmen by trade, they are working in the first building construction at the World Trade Center void, reviving the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center. They and their colleagues have become agents of regeneration. They check the blueprint. Set up the stone. Mallet it down. Then do it again. Talk to them, and they will make it very clear that their meticulous effort is more than just a job. It is payback, a response to the enduring ruin wrought by terrorists during those brief unimaginable moments when the towers came down. Mr. Teaman, 45, said that he wished he could grab Osama bin Laden ''by the neck.'' Instead, he grasped a perfectly honed chunk of grayish Fior de Pesco marble from a quarry in Italy. ''You know, there's a lot of pride here -- doing all this over again.'' This is the second time that he, Mr. Power and many of the other stone workers have installed the grand staircase in the Winter Garden. They first did it in 1988. ''Now it's déjà vu all over again,'' said Mr. Power, 44. ''You want to make it as good now as it once was.'' And it once was quite extraordinary. The ceremonial staircase was the cynosure of the celebrated 10-story atrium, which opened in 1988 as a public centerpiece of the Financial Center as well as a conduit to the North Bridge, now vanished, that connected to the north tower of the trade center. Wedding photographers found the steps an irresistible backdrop. Children's choirs sang there. Audiences sprawled on the treads when the Winter Garden became an amphitheater. ''It's been so heart-wrenching,'' said Elizabeth Williams Borri, a court illustrator who has lived downtown since 1991 and whose children, Paul and Samantha, are now 10 and 6, respectively. ''On a winter's day, where else would you go with your children but to the Winter Garden? My children learned how to walk up stairs on that marble.'' After the attacks severely damaged the atrium, the stairs were chipped, broken and caked with grime; some were sheared away. One 40-foot section buckled as if stomped by a giant. The damage to the Winter Garden marble was all the more poignant, | Resilience, Reflected in Marble; At Winter Garden, Workers Answer Terror by Rebuilding |
1402055_0 | ''We've been waiting 16 years for an answer,'' said Mark Kauffman, an Amish farmer whose four profoundly handicapped children thrashed spasmodically in wheelchairs and a crib before the watchful gaze of the visiting physician. As Dr. Heng Wang tended to his helpless patients, their mother, Esther Kauffman, hovered lovingly, translating the sudden cackle of one son as a cry of joy at the visit. ''We've gone through so many things that at this point we don't let our hopes get too high,'' the mother said, looking to the doctor. Dr. Wang's frequent house calls to the Kauffman farm's gravely incapacitated children are a singular moment in the quiet history of the Old Order Amish here in northeast Ohio. Dr. Wang is the director of a new research clinic that the Amish have organized to deal with hereditary disorders that haunt children in Amish and Mennonite communities, often with fatal results. Inspired by recent medical breakthroughs pioneered among Mennonite and Amish children in Pennsylvania, the new Deutsch Center for Special Needs Children in nearby Middlefield does not yet have a permanent home, but Dr. Wang is already making house calls. ''We have no time to lose,'' Dr. Wang said amid farmland visits that will eventually take in at least 250 children identified as suffering mental and physical handicaps among a population of 45,000 Amish. The Amish are 12 percent of the local population, but their children represent close to half of the area's most severe cases of mental and physical retardation. The nonprofit Deutsch center will specialize in deciphering and treating dozens of obscure genetic and biochemical disorders the children suffer. Many of these are still unnamed but are considered the result of the ''founder effect'' -- a reference to genetic disorders that become unusually common in an insular population descended, like the Amish, from a small group of progenitors. For years, affected Amish children who seemed healthy at birth soon suffered brain damage and other forms of retardation. But the Amish here are intent on using innovations proven at the Amish Clinic for Special Children in Lancaster County, Pa. A classic brain disorder known as maple syrup disease (because of the sweet odor of a victim's urine) went untreated 20 years ago as a mystery scourge of the Amish. But now, traced to an enzyme deficiency, it can be controlled like diabetes, Dr. Holmes Morton, medical director of the Lancaster | Research Clinic Opens in Ohio for Genetic Maladies That Haunt Amish Families |
1402074_1 | employees' identity cards to their handprints, facial features or retinas. *Computer software and closed-circuit cameras in airport passageways that match the faces of known terrorists and other criminals to travelers arriving and departing from Logan. *Wireless handheld computers that allow state troopers patrolling terminals and parking garages to immediately check a vehicle's license plate or the criminal history, outstanding arrest warrants or immigration status of anyone they consider suspicious. *''Smart'' alarm systems that can pinpoint a security breach inside a terminal to avoid needless evacuations of parked airplanes or entire terminals. Experts in aviation security, including Mr. Ron, have long said technology alone cannot prevent terrorism completely. To be effective, a network must integrate technology and human expertise and must be layered to prevent one slip-up from compromising the entire system. For that reason, Logan has also begun building what Thomas J. Kinton, its director of aviation, called a ''human screening network'' that goes well beyond the random bag searches and computerized profiling software that comprised most passenger scrutiny before Sept. 11. ''Developing layers is our best chance of combating terrorism,'' Mr. Kinton said in a recent interview, reiterating one of Mr. Ron's themes. ''We need to develop skills. We need to look at the person, not just search the person. You got to get training to identify behavioral patterns.'' It will take months, perhaps longer, to fully develop the corps of professional screeners Mr. Ron and Mr. Kinton seek. A few weeks ago, Massport deployed a new counterterrorism unit of the state police trained to recognize suspicious behavior in certain passengers, not just search their gym and cosmetic bags. It has also hired a former soldier from the Army's Delta Force to instruct airport and contract employees, down to the shuttle-bus drivers, how to identify suspicious passengers. ''The main conclusion of 9/11 is that airplanes are hijacked by people, not necessarily weapons,'' Mr. Ron said. He recounted how, in 1986, security officials at Ben-Gurion Airport stopped a young pregnant Irish woman who was unwittingly carrying a bomb in a suitcase that had been packed by her Palestinian boyfriend. ''We detected the bomb from a conversation,'' Mr. Ron said. The job now, he said, is to make Logan's security equally trenchant. Such techniques are not without controversy. Mr. Ron used to refer to his methods as ''profiling'' to prevent potentially dangerous passengers from boarding a jet. But in a society | Boston Airport, Sept. 11 to Live Down, Aspires to Big Changes |
1401950_3 | said. ''The blog serves as a footnote, essentially. ''In an ideal world, everyone would be reading the cartoon on an interactive tablet and the links would be right there.'' But ''that's not really an ideal,'' he added. ''I like newspapers.'' Among widely distributed cartoonists, Bill Amend, the writer and illustrator of ''Foxtrot,'' is rare in having decided to build his own Web site (homepage.mac.com/billamend). ''Foxtrot'' appears in more than 1,000 newspapers, and Mr. Amend has no assistants. Still, he decided last year that the site was a worthwhile means of speaking directly to readers. ''My strip is very personal, and I think a lot of my personality does creep through my characters,'' Mr. Amend said. ''But it's very rarely my direct voice.'' He said he had created his Web site ''out of a fondness for my readers,'' noting that he had many young readers who often sent e-mail to him. At the opposite extreme, Chris Baldwin offers his observations to a tiny but loyal group of readers at his ''Bruno'' comic strip's Web site (www.brunostrip.com /bruno.html). Mr. Baldwin produces ''Bruno'' on a daily basis, with a blog alongside the strip. Mr. Baldwin said the strip was read by about 900 visitors each day. Although ''Bruno'' has no newspaper distribution, the personal tone of Mr. Baldwin's blog and his continuous involvement with those who read the strip has allowed him to sell more than 2,000 copies of the six collections he has published himself. Mr. Baldwin has used his blog to appeal for patronage to continue creating the strip and publishing the collections. He said that he has received more than $3,000 in donations, as well as the occasional sofa to sleep on during trips from his home in Portland, Ore. The blog is just one tool in Mr. Jantze's arsenal of reader interaction and merchandising, as well. His site also offers a free e-mail newspaper, which has about 3,800 subscribers; a free archive of strips and other features on the site, which draws a combined 5,000 visitors a day; and a voluntary paid subscription to support the site and receive the strip enclosed in an e-mail message each day. Mr. Jantze declined to provide numbers for paid subscribers or their donations, but said that subscriptions have covered his minimal costs in running the Web site and hiring programmers. Mr. Jantze also publishes print-on-demand collections of his strips and sells his | For Fans, Wry Footnotes to the Funny Page |
1402063_2 | Waksal, who resigned from the company last month. Lewis D. Lowenfels, a New York lawyer and expert on securities law, called the possible charges ''a serious black mark'' against the company. He said that the government would most likely seek an injunction against the company barring it from violating securities laws but that regulators might also seek fines against the company and penalties against directors. The information that the S.E.C. unearths could be very helpful for private lawsuits against the company, he said. At least a dozen shareholder lawsuits have already been filed against ImClone, mainly contending that the company misled investors about the extent of the F.D.A.'s concerns about the Erbitux application. ImClone's executives and spokesmen have continued to maintain that the company's description of the F.D.A.'s stance was accurate. But evidence introduced at a Congressional hearing last week indicated that even Bristol-Myers Squibb, ImClone's partner in developing the drug, had qualms about the statements made in the Dec. 31 conference call by Dr. Waksal and his brother Harlan W. Waksal, who was then the chief operating officer and is now chief executive. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating ImClone, released portions of a memorandum that a Bristol-Myers executive wrote on Dec. 30, reviewing the draft of what ImClone was going to tell investors the next day. ''These draft documents leave me most uncomfortable,'' the memo, whose author was not identified, said. ''They gloss over the seriousness of the RTF letter and make it appear that the integrity of the study results is not in question, when in fact it is.'' RTF stands for refusal to file, the type of notification ImClone received from the F.D.A. The House committee also released memorandums showing that Bristol-Myers and ImClone had discussed making the news release about the F.D.A. rejection as vague as possible. A person close to the committee said yesterday that it planned to ask for all ImClone trades made by Merrill and wanted to interview Mr. Bacanovic, the broker. ''Merrill Lynch has not provided us with an accounting of what this guy knew, when he knew it and who he told directly or indirectly,'' this person said. The charges issued last week against Dr. Waksal say that a family member, identified by others as Dr. Waksal's daughter Aliza, sold all her shares through Merrill Lynch on the morning of Dec. 27, the day before the F.D.A. | ImClone Is Told That Charges May Be Filed Against It |
1396804_0 | To the Editor: In ''Protecting Forests'' (letter, May 25), Mark Rey of the Department of Agriculture says the Bush administration deserves applause for its plan for the Chugach forest in Alaska. But only 1.4 million acres would be permanently protected, which doesn't even match the low standard set by the Reagan administration, which recommended protecting 1.6 million acres. This forest covers 5.5 million acres and contains valuable ecological and recreational treasures. The Chugach includes renowned areas like the Copper River Delta, but the plan recommends protection in only one region, Prince William Sound. Of more than 30,000 public comments, most sought increased protection in all three regions. The administration should start listening to the voice of the people, not the pleadings of the special interests. NICOLE WHITTINGTON-EVANS Anchorage, May 29, 2002 The writer is the Wilderness Society's assistant regional director, Alaska. | Keeping a Forest Safe |
1399218_5 | program, meanwhile, has developed rockets that could be converted into missile launchers. Japan's mastery of these two technologies already makes it a ''virtual nuclear power,'' arms control experts say. Japanese conservatives have long been frustrated by a Constitution that was written by the United States during the postwar occupation, from 1945 to 1952. The Constitution prohibits Japan from having an army or using force to settle disputes. Revising this clause would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Parliament. Such backing would be difficult to achieve because pacifism enjoys continuing popular support. Rather than try to revise the Constitution, Mr. Koizumi has simply decided to reinterpret it liberally. With little opposition, he dispatched warships overseas for the first time in the postwar period, to the Indian Ocean in support of the American campaign in Afghanistan. This month, he is pushing a bill before Parliament that would give Japan's armed forces much broader powers in an emergency. ''During the 1990's we had almost constant cabinet changes, and you could describe the process as one of drifting or being carried by the currents,'' said Yasuhiro Nakasone, a former prime minister who has supported a more assertive defensive posture for Japan. ''What the Koizumi cabinet has been doing is trying to recover the lost ground.'' North Korea, an ally of China, first set off reappraisals of Japan's defense needs when it test fired a ballistic missile over Japan in 1998. That missile launching also served to renew doubts here about American guarantees of Japanese security under a longstanding mutual defense treaty. Japanese complained bitterly that Washington failed to share its reconnaissance intelligence and gave the country no warning of the North Korean launching. In response, Japan accelerated development of its own costly spy satellite program, and politicians began discussing the need for something beyond American guarantees to defend their country. ''Simply put, we doubt that the United States would sacrifice Los Angeles for Tokyo,'' said Taro Kono, a member of Parliament. Mr. Kono does not support nuclear armament, but he is one of a growing number of young Liberal Democratic politicians who favor constitutional reform to allow Japan to defend itself with conventional arms. Bush administration officials said they did not yet see any substantial shift in Japan. ''We see no change in Japan's policy,'' said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council. ''The U.S.-Japan alliance has never been stronger.'' | Taboo Against Nuclear Arms Is Being Challenged in Japan |
1399001_6 | An additional 2,000 people were hired for trash pickup, to help build tents and bleachers, to help direct traffic and to wait tables or tend bar. And even though many of the companies providing services at the event are from out of town, plenty of business is done right here. ''We buy everything locally,'' said Susan Lacz Niemann, chief executive of Ridgewells, the Bethesda, Md., company that will cater the Open. Ms. Niemann said her company had hired around 800 people for the event, most of them from the Island. Fred Heffel, a New York City fireman from Farmingdale, was hired along with several of his firefighter buddies to set up the hospitality tents with refrigerators, ice machines and other food service equipment. Mr. Heffel, who described himself as ''a big golf addict,'' was a spectator at Shinnecock in 1995, but for this Open he has volunteered as a marshal. Michael Rogers of Manhasset was hired to distribute beverages from tent to tent via golf cart. A recent graduate of Hofstra University, where he studied sports management, Mr. Rogers now works for the National Hockey League. He worked at Shinnecock in 1995. ''I enjoyed the experience so I went for it again,'' said Mr. Rogers. About 350 people, mostly college students and retirees, have been hired for parking lot duty by Country Club Services of Springfield, N.J. Charles Yeates, from Freeport, is a parking manager in charge of hiring and organizing the yellow-safety-vested attendants who will be directing traffic for $8 an hour. Marie Kupfer, general manager of the Huntington Hilton, said she expected food and beverage sales to be at least 20 percent higher than a normal June week, when the hotel is usually only 80 percent full. ''The bigger picture is Long Island getting international exposure,'' Ms. Kupfer said. ''Maybe it will help convince some people to move their businesses here.'' Six years ago, when the U.S.G.A. first announced that the Black would be the site of the Open, experts estimated the tournament would pump at least $25 million into the local economy. Now Mr. Hollander said the figure should be closer to $85 million, with more in years to come. ''After the U.S. Open leaves, there will be people who will want to play a U.S. Open course,'' Mr. Hollander said. ''This will get tourists coming out here from Manhattan. The repetitive business will be very substantial.'' | Almost Everyone Gets a Piece Of the U.S. Open Business Pie |
1399219_1 | delicacy of a grizzly bear. Inefficient searches are driving customers away and slowing operations, they said. The new department could smooth that out and coordinate security efforts by all government agencies operating at airports, including the Customs Service and the I.N.S., the airlines said. ''Bringing these scattered agencies together under one centralized department is a wise decision that I expect will enjoy widespread support,'' said Michael Wascom, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, an industry trade group in Washington. ''More sophisticated coordination, intelligence gathering and information exchange is essential to ensuring true homeland security. The president's plan takes a major step in that direction.'' The proposed reorganization will most likely affect airlines, airports, shipping companies and border areas. Federally supervised searches have become customary within the transportation industry, and the efficiency of the procedures has been criticized widely. In some cases, old women are pulled aside to be swiped with magnetometers, baby strollers are run through X-ray machines and airline pilots are asked whether they have access to plane cockpits. ''The Port Authority supports and endorses measures that strengthen security,'' said Pasquale DiFulco, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the three major airports in the New York area, in addition to various bridges and tunnels. ''We look forward to reviewing the details of this important initiative.'' From January to March, almost 17 million passengers passed through the three airports, and virtually all of those taking departing flights had to go through security. Travelers arriving into the country have to deal with immigration and customs agents. The United Parcel Service, which handles 12.4 million packages and letters within the country each day, said it intended ''to take a thorough look at any legislation that is introduced.'' The company makes 1,062 domestic flights each day and has 88,000 delivery cars, vans, tractors and motorcycles worldwide. It said it did not have many complaints about the way the government has handled security so far, if only because it has tried to work closely with federal officials after the Sept. 11 attacks. ''We want to make sure there's a streamlined transition between any department or agency,'' said David A. Bolger, a company spokesman. Mr. Bolger said his company was also waiting to see whether all the responsibilities of the various agencies fell under the proposed department, or only security duties. Officials at the largest ports | Hopes and Doubts Over Bush Plan |
1399077_0 | WHEN a 608-pound black bear was struck by a minivan in Warren County two months ago, it was more than an abrupt death for New Jersey's largest recorded bruin. The accident signaled an even messier collision in the making -- that of a soaring bear population and rising complaints from residents set against the state's seeming lack of a long-term strategy to deal with them. The number of bears has nearly doubled in the past three years, from a total of about 1,000 animals to 1,900, and may soon rise still higher, to 2,400, if the trend continues, say state biologists. Two years ago, a proposed bear season intended to thin that population met a bloody defeat after former Gov. Christie Whitman, under pressure from animal-rights groups, canceled it just days before the season was to begin. In place of hunting, New Jersey introduced a management program to train the police to answer complaints about backyard forays and destroy only the most unruly of bears. State wildlife officials said the program was basically a compromise, and never designed to cope with a surge in bear numbers. ''We now have bears breeding at 2 years of age,'' said Patrick Carr, a biologist who leads the states bear response team. ''That's unheard of in the rest of the country. There has to be some method of control. We have bears in places where we've never had a bear since the 1900's.'' In Trenton, the politics of bears is as intriguing as the biology. Governor McGreevey's proposed budget would eliminate $1.1 million in financing for the bear management program, even as state lawmakers also consider bills to ban the hunting of bears outright. ''The activists don't know what it's like to live with these animals,'' said Christine Peraino, a Vernon Township resident who watched a bear approach her yard last week. In past years, bears have reached her back porch. ''Without a bear management program,'' Ms. Peraino said, ''they leave us no recourse. It frightens me to think of that.'' Granted, New Jersey's problems are small by Western standards, where brushes with grizzlies have led to attacks and, last fall, the death of one man. In fact, there have been few incidents and no fatal attacks on humans by black bears in New Jersey. Animal-rights groups questioned the bear census, and said that division of fish and wildlife biologists were inflating the count | The Politics of Bears, As Tricky as the Biology |
1399083_0 | FACING one of the worst job markets in years, many recent college graduates are heading directly to graduate school or biding their time with volunteer work or temporary jobs outside their fields. An increasing number, though, are discovering another fallback: post-graduate internships. The arrangement seems to make sense for all parties involved, at least on paper. The graduates get their feet in the doors of potential employers while building professional résumés. The employers, meanwhile, can supplement their work forces, many of which have been reduced, while building a pool of candidates for future hiring. But not everyone is happy with the trend. Some employment agencies complain that the postgraduate interns may be butting heads with temporary workers and professionals with one or two years of experience. ''In taking these internships, they could be taking away work from these other two groups,'' said John A. Challenger, the chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the outplacement firm. ''Companies are definitely exploiting the situation; they're getting good-quality work for very low pay.'' Some internships are unpaid, while many others provide only small salaries or stipends, without benefits. The highest salaries, experts say, are usually from larger companies, particularly in financial services. John Gramer, branch director for the New York office of Spherion, a professional recruiting firm, says financial services companies have been stepping up their use of interns. Many of them, he said, have cut jobs because of weakness in the economy and on Wall Street. He estimates that large accounting firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers typically hire one out of every 10 interns they employ. THE hope for permanent work -- not the money -- prompted Rona Cooper, 23, an honors student who received a bachelor's degree in communications from George Washington University in May 2001, to accept an internship recently at the Bohle Company, a public relations firm in the Century City section of Los Angeles. She is paid about $1,200 a month and receives no benefits. But Ms. Cooper is grateful for the opportunity to work. She sent dozens of résumés and had many job interviews over the last year, but to no avail. The internship is her fifth; she had four as an undergraduate. ''Everybody is teasing me because I still don't have a real job,'' said Ms. Cooper, who lives in Beverly Hills, Calif., with her parents. Forty-eight percent of college students graduating this spring said they did not | Personal Business; First the College Diploma, Then the Internship |
1398915_3 | postcard Alaskan wilderness. We hiked 800 vertical feet down to the valley floor, a wasteland of sand, ash and pumice gouged into unlikely shapes by the glacial waters of the Ukak River. In 1912, the Novarupta Volcano exploded in one of the most powerful eruptions in recorded history, 10 times more violent than Mount St. Helens. The blast buried 40 square miles of greenery under as much as 700 feet of volcanic material. Four years after the eruption, when a National Geographic Society team arrived, smoke and steam still rose from thousands of fissures in the valley floor. There was speculation that the Katmai would surpass Yellowstone as a geological marvel. The ''smokes'' didn't last, but the valley is ringed by 15 active volcanoes, some of which still puff steam, a reminder that in Katmai the earth's crust continues to be a work in progress. Clouds were building up over the mountains, so I was eager to do some serious bear watching at Brooks Falls. On the way back, the driver had to stop abruptly when a male bear charged us head-on. His quarry was a smaller bear standing on the road directly behind us. The combatants raced around the van like a pair of overgrown dogs and then disappeared down a trail bordering a grassy swamp, the very trail I had to take to get to Brooks Falls, only on foot. I was slightly reassured when the park ranger who had accompanied us on the bus trip told me that there never had been a bear-induced fatality in Katmai. There has only been one injury of note, she said, and that occurred 35 years ago. A fisherman fell asleep outside his tent in the same clothes he'd worn to catch, clean, fry and eat a salmon. A bear devoured the remains of the salmon and then bit the fisherman on the buttocks. Brooks Falls Trail passed through a spruce forest crisscrossed by well-trampled bear paths. Putting self-preservation ahead of self-consciousness, I chatted loudly to myself and to any grizzlies within earshot. I was relieved to reach the raised, bear-proof walkway. Katmai takes many similar protective measures, but the park's safety record is mainly attributable to the dispositions of the bears. The animals are habituated to having what one warden called a ''no punishment, no reward'' relationship with humans. So they ignore people, focusing instead on Job 1: gorging on | In Alaska's Bear Country |
1398874_1 | The normal thing would have been to dispatch regular reports from the field -- unreadable papers published in fashionable zines like Physical Review Letters or Physica D. Instead, Wolfram decided to do what Darwin did (and he would not shun the comparison). He is springing loose his vision all at once, in a book intended for nonscientists and scientists alike. From the very beginning of this meticulously constructed manifesto, the reader is presented with a stunning proposal: all the science we know will be demolished and reassembled. An ancient error will be corrected, one so profoundly misguided that it has led science down the wrong avenue, until it is approaching a cul-de-sac. The mistake (as everyone who hated calculus will be happy to hear) is trying to capture the richness of the universe with mathematical equations -- Newton's, Maxwell's, Einstein's. All are based on an abstract, perhaps dubious idea -- that time and space form a seamless continuum. Whether dealing with an inch or a second, you can chop it in half and the half in half, ad infinitum. Thus things can be described with unlimited, infinitesimal precision. This conceit works fine for simple phenomena like a planet's trajectory around the sun or a weight falling from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But as scientists try to explain systems of greater complexity -- a hurricane, the economy of Portugal, a human or even a reptilian brain -- the calculations become ever more elaborate until one is left with an unwieldy array of symbols that do not explain much at all. Wolfram believes that even his own field, theoretical physics (he got a Ph.D. from Caltech when he was 20), suffers from the problem. Equations can capture characteristics of individual particles with breathtaking precision. But put three or four particles together and the complications begin to overwhelm. The problem, he proposes, is that equations are the wrong tool for the job. They should be replaced with computer programs -- more specifically, the little snippets of software called algorithms. That sounds absolutely ridiculous. Programs are just human inventions, marching orders for a machine. They serve well as a quick and dirty means of tricking a computer into approximating the smoothness of nature, roughing out reasonably good facsimiles of a scientist's perfect equations. But computers understand nothing but 1 or 0, with no gradations in between. Algorithms can mimic reality's grain as finely | You Know That Space-Time Thing? Never Mind |
1399208_3 | result can sound an alarm over harmless materials. Airports like bulk detectors because they can process hundreds of bags per hour, compared with 20 or 30 an hour using the trace method. Another problem for the Transportation Security Administration is that it is supposed to use certified machines. A certification standard is being written for the trace machines. Then there is effectiveness. One way to improve that under a 40-40-20 protocol would be to combine trace detection with a program developed before Sept. 11 called the computer-assisted passenger profiling system. It was intended to identify passengers whose bags should be examined, based on their travel history and other characteristics, while other bags were loaded onto planes without analysis. Now it could be used to choose the passengers whose bags would get the Coke-can treatment. The problem is that lawmakers and others lack confidence that the system can reliably identify travelers whose bags should be examined. The level of disruption to airports will depend on how thoroughly each bag is swabbed. At Salt Lake City International Airport, which used trace detection during the Olympics last year, Tim Campbell, the executive director, said it had not slowed passenger processing. But trace detection was used only on the outsides of bags and on passengers' hands and was done while passengers waited to see airline check-in agents. Mr. Campbell said that he believed there would not be much disruption in airports that had enough space for the operation. Inadequate space will be a problem at many airports, airport executives say. Bruce Baumgartner, the manager of aviation at Denver International Airport, was even less optimistic. Processing will take a minute a bag if the outside is done and significantly longer if the bag is opened, Mr. Baumgartner said. ''We know the proper procedure is to open every bag and swab all items in the bag that meet a certain characteristic,'' he said. For security reasons, he would not say what that characteristic was. ''If you do it properly, the flow rate is going to be even slower and the effect even more significant,'' Mr. Baumgartner said. He compared the likely effect to the actions taken by the Federal Aviation Administration right after Sept. 11, when the flow rate through passenger checkpoints was cut by three-quarters, producing waits of two to three hours. But it is not clear what options exist. The British use high-capacity X-ray | Baggage Bomb Detector Is Unreliable, Experts Say |
1399060_0 | Jennifer Laura Heyman, a daughter of Ronnie F. Heyman and Samuel J. Heyman of New York, is to be married today at her parents' weekend house in Greens Farms, Conn., to David James Millstone, a son of Margaret A. Cotter of Potomac, Md., and Robert J. Millstone of Chicago. Rabbi Haskel Lookstein is to officiate. The bride and bridegroom graduated from Yale, he cum laude, and in August they plan to attend Harvard Law School. The bride, 23, was until May a senior analyst at Kroll Associates, private investigators in New York. Her parents are partners in Heyman Properties in Westport, Conn., a company that develops and manages shopping centers. Her father is also chairman of International Specialty Products, a chemical manufacturer in Wayne, N.J. Her mother is a member of the National Council on the Arts. The bridegroom, 25, is a financial analyst at Bear, Stearns & Company, the New York investment bank. His mother, a lawyer, is a consulting counsel at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, working on programs directed against terrorist financing and money laundering. His father is the general counsel of Philip Services Corporation in Chicago, an industrial-cleaning company. The bridegroom is a stepson of Susan Millstone and of Robert Kanchuger. WEDDINGS | Jennifer Heyman, David Millstone |
1399246_2 | a plan for mobilizing the Christian grass roots. Although Rabbi Eckstein half-jokingly described Stand for Israel as ''the Christian Aipac'' -- referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the principal lobbying organization in Washington for Israel -- the group's charitable tax status will not allow it to lobby Congress or the White House. Instead, using the Internet and Mr. Reed's familiar direct-mail techniques, the group will give churches and individuals an outlet to protest or praise. For example, the group's Web site, www.standforisrael.org, will provide a way for Christians to e-mail officials in Washington. Mr. Reed said the group will start with a mailing list of 100,000 churches and 250,000 people, which he hopes will grow to more than a million people. The group plans to run newspaper advertisements next week, along with commercials on conservative radio talk shows, urging Jews and Christians to see past their historical differences and come together at a time of crisis for Israel. It will also bring together about 50 prominent evangelical leaders at the Capitol on June 18, where they will meet with Congressional leaders and hear an address from the former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Evangelicals, driven by a mixture of biblical prophecy and ideology, have long been among Israel's closest friends in America, but political differences have often kept them and mainstream Jewish groups at arm's length. Their relationship was not helped when the news broke this year that the Rev. Billy Graham had joined with President Richard M. Nixon in making private anti-Semitic comments in 1972, strengthening the sense among many Jews that evangelicals may admire Israel more than they do the Jewish people. But the leaders of Stand for Israel said the atmosphere of crisis in Israel may provide an opportunity for members of the two faiths to bridge that gap, and Howard Kohr, the executive director of Aipac, said he welcomed any organized effort of support for Israel. One political consultant said the organization could strengthen an uneasy alliance. ''The American Jewish community has traditionally not been comfortable with many of the domestic social positions taken by evangelical groups, but recent events have moved the Jewish community to the right,'' said Zev Furst, a New Jersey pollster and strategist who has worked with several Israeli politicians. ''At this point, I think Israel would appreciate any effort that enlarges its support base in the United States.'' | Evangelical Christians And Jews Unite for Israel |
1399528_1 | Ramallah before dawn today, surrounding Yasir Arafat's headquarters and putting the whole city under curfew. Israeli tanks moved through the streets with loudspeakers warning people that anyone who left their homes would be shot. House-to-house searches were under way and the army reported that it had arrested suspected terrorists. The Israeli move came just hours before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel was to meet with President Bush. A1 Chemical Traces on U.S. Base Traces of nerve agents and mustard gas have been found in three locations at a United States military base in Uzbekistan. No soldier has reported symptoms of exposure to the contaminants. The traces are suspected to have come from chemical weapons once stored by Soviet troops at the base. A10 Soccer Riot in Russia An outdoor broadcast of a World Cup soccer match outside the Kremlin gates turned into a drunken rampage after the Russian team lost to Japan, with hundreds of rioters destroying dozens of autos and scores of storefronts and injuring perhaps 100 people. Eleven law enforcement officers were wounded. A6 French Voters Swing Right French voters showed strong support for President Jacques Chirac's center-right alliance in a first-round parliamentary vote that pushed the left toward eclipse and repulsed a challenge from the extreme-right National Front, according to computer projections and partial results. A3 NATIONAL A14-20 Military Uses Hollywood To Put Best Foot Forward The military establishment has been cooperating with Hollywood for nearly a century. But the Defense Department's contribution -- and thus the American taxpayer's -- has grown ever bigger and more elaborate, and seems to have reached a new high with ''The Sum of All Fears.'' Besides huge amounts of hardware, the government also provided access to its inner sanctums. A1 Latinos and Secession Latinos are among those in the San Fernando Valley leading the drives for and against secession from Los Angeles. Earlier secession movements were led by whites. A14 Bible Collector's Quartet Copies of the first four printed editions of the Bible have come under the ownership of a single person for the first time in more than 150 years. The owner, a wealthy 88-year-old collector named William Hurd Scheide, keeps them in his private library at Princeton University. A1 Search for Girl Grows Volunteers continued to search for Elizabeth Ann Smart, the 14-year-old Utahan who has been missing since someone pointed a gun at her in the bedroom | NEWS SUMMARY |
1404118_0 | The drug tamoxifen, widely prescribed for women with breast cancer or at high risk for it, may cause a rare but aggressive cancer of the uterus, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday. The labeling of tamoxifen will be changed to add a ''black box'' warning about the newly identified risk for uterine sarcoma, the drug agency said. Black boxes are used to draw attention to problems that are serious and potentially life-threatening. Letters advising doctors of the new warning were sent out last month, but the information was not posted on the agency Web site until yesterday. Doctors emphasized that the new warning was directed only at women who have not had breast cancer but are at high risk. The warning does not tell those women to avoid tamoxifen, but it does urge them to talk to their doctors about its benefits and risks. The warning does not apply to women who have already had breast cancer and who take tamoxifen to prevent a recurrence. For those women, the drug agency said, the benefits far outweigh its risks. Tamoxifen was already known to increase the risk of another, less dangerous type of uterine cancer, endometrial adenocarcinoma, which is usually detected at an early, curable stage. Women taking the drug were advised to have regular gynecological examinations and to see a doctor immediately if they had symptoms like abnormal vaginal bleeding and abdominal pain and pressure. But the risk of the more dangerous type of cancer had not been recognized previously. More than 4.5 million prescriptions for tamoxifen were written in the last year, according to IMS Health, a company that tracks the drug industry. Most users are women who have had breast cancer and who take tamoxifen to prevent recurrences. Other users, an unknown but small percentage, are women who have not had breast cancer but who are at high risk for it because of their personal or family medical histories. In that group, tamoxifen has been found to reduce the risk of breast cancer by 45 percent. Women usually take the drug for five years. It works by blocking the effects of estrogen, which can spur the growth of some breast tumors. In women who have had breast cancer, the benefits of tamoxifen in preventing a recurrence are well established. Dr. Worta McCaskill-Stevens, a medical oncologist at the National Cancer Institute, said a 1998 analysis of 55 studies | Breast Cancer Drug Is a Uterus Cancer Risk |
1404118_3 | that the new warning would not come as a surprise to cancer specialists. He said studies were under way to compare tamoxifen and another drug, raloxifene, which is now approved to prevent bone loss but is being tested to see if it can also prevent breast cancer, without causing uterine cancer. Besides women who have not had breast cancer but are at high risk, the warning is aimed at women who have had a very early form of breast cancer that is still confined to the milk ducts, called ductal carcinoma in situ, or D.C.I.S. In those two groups, unlike those who have had invasive breast cancer, it has not been proved that tamoxifen prolongs life, even though it does lower the risk of breast cancer. Uterine sarcoma is very rare, and is estimated to occur in 0.17 women per 1,000 per year who take tamoxifen. In women not taking the drug, there are far fewer cases, only 0.01 to 0.02 cases per 1,000 women. Since 1978, when tamoxifen was first marketed in the United States, there have been 159 cases of uterine sarcoma reported in women taking the drug here and in other countries. About a quarter of the women have died from the uterine cancer. Dr. Susan Honig, a medical reviewer in the division of oncology drug products at the F.D.A., said the agency began looking into the problem after it received reports about uterine sarcoma in women taking tamoxifen. She said the agency worked with the drug company AstraZeneca, which sells tamoxifen under the name Nolvadex. Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, a patient advocacy group, said: ''You have to balance the risks and benefits very carefully in that situation. Are you trading off one life-threatening disease for another?'' Ms. Visco added that in healthy women at high risk, studies had shown that a five-year course of tamoxifen could reduce the incidence of breast cancer. But she went on: ''We don't know if it truly prevents breast cancer or reduces mortality from breast cancer. We don't know the answers to what we think are the most important questions.'' Carla Burigatto, a spokeswoman for AstraZeneca, said: ''AstraZeneca believes there is a clear benefit of therapy for many women at high risk and with D.C.I.S. We urge patients and physicians to have this dialogue and decide what the best course of treatment is for each patient.'' | Breast Cancer Drug Is a Uterus Cancer Risk |
1402474_0 | American servicewomen overseas would be able to pay for abortions at military hospitals under a proposal approved today by the Senate. By a vote of 52 to 40, the Senate voted to repeal the current ban on such payments as part of a defense spending bill, putting it in opposition with the House, which last month rejected a similar effort to change the policy, which has been in place since 1996. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and sponsor of the abortion amendment, said the legislation was needed to make certain that the estimated 100,000 American servicewomen serving in foreign countries had access to safe and legal abortions. Under the provision, the woman undergoing the procedure would use personal money to pay any associated costs, and military medical personnel could not be compelled to perform an abortion. ''These women are committed to protecting our rights as free citizens, yet they are denied one of the most basic rights afforded all women in this country,'' said Ms. Murray, who has sponsored similar amendments in the past. The Senate last considered the issue in 2000, when it rejected repealing the ban. Supporters of the amendment said that under the present system, women must ask their commanding officer for permission to return to the United States to seek an abortion. ''I can only imagine how difficult it would be for a female officer or enlisted person to have to go to her commander and ask for time off to travel to the United States to get an abortion,'' said Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Mr. Levin said military personnel who did not want to make such a request were faced with the ''unacceptable'' alternative of getting an abortion in the host country, where medical personnel might not be trained to American standards or speak English. Opponents of the provision said it would unnecessarily tie up the $393 billion defense measure. Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, said the proposal ''attempts to turn taxpayer-funded Department of Defense medical treatment facilities into, unfortunately, abortion clinics.'' Supporting the amendment were 46 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 1 independent; 2 Democrats and 38 Republicans rejected it. | Senate Votes To Let Soldiers Overseas Pay For Abortion |
1403324_0 | Osteoporosis has been linked to the loss of teeth as well as broken hips. But a study published yesterday has found that calcium and vitamin D supplements can bolster bone density in the jaws of postmenopausal women, and that hormone replacement therapy can increase it even more. Dr. Roberto Civitelli of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the lead author of the study, said its findings showed that improving oral health is an additional benefit for women taking hormone therapy for other reasons. He also suggested that a combination of calcium and vitamin D supplements be recommended generally for postmenopausal women. Several studies have linked low bone density with tooth loss, and other studies have indicated that postmenopausal women who take hormone replacement therapy are less likely to lose bone mass. In this study, which was published in The Archives of Internal Medicine and financed in part by Wyeth Pharmaceutical, the maker of the two estrogen substitutes used, researchers gave all of a group 135 postmenopausal women with healthy teeth the calcium and vitamin D supplements. In addition, half of them were given an estrogen substitute and the others a placebo. After three years, the researchers found that all of the women had significantly increased the density of their alveola bone, the part of the jaw that surrounds the tooth sockets, and had smaller increases in the height of the bone in the sockets, another measure of oral health. The increase in bone density was almost twice as great among women given the hormone substitute, although the two groups lost teeth at the same low rate. Dr. Civitelli said that while either approach should protect women from bone loss, hormone replacement might be more likely to help women restore bone density already lost. VITAL SIGNS: OUTCOMES | Bolstering Women's Bones |
1403333_1 | the world's most visible monuments to climate change. On the Kenai, nearly 95 percent of spruce trees have fallen to the beetle. Now, conditions are ripe for a large fire and could lead to bigger changes in the ecosystem, affecting moose, bear, salmon and other creatures that have made the peninsula, just a few hours' drive from Anchorage, a tourist mecca. ''The chief reason why the beetle outbreak has been the largest and the longest is that we have had an unprecedented run of warm summers,'' said Dr. Berg, 62, a soft-spoken man in suspenders and running shoes. Temperatures in Alaska have risen sharply in the last 30 years, causing sea ice to break up off the northern coastlines, some glaciers to recede and permafrost to melt. But until Dr. Berg began matching rising temperatures to the number of trees killed by beetles, no one had tied the death of a forest nearly twice the size of Yellowstone National Park to warming temperatures. Dr. Berg believes the larger culprit is global warming, brought on by increased emissions of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere. But that is a bigger debate, one which Dr. Berg is normally not a part of. The implication of Dr. Berg's findings for other forests vulnerable to bugs is that as climate warms in the north, some species of evergreen trees that cover vast acreage could be mowed down by an ever-expanding population of beetles. The dead spruce forest of Alaska is also a lesson, to some ecologists, of how warmer temperatures present intractable problems for living things anchored to a certain area. People can adapt, or even move, but trees that have been growing in one area for 8,000 years cannot -- at least not quickly enough. Other scientists who work on global warming issues are now looking at Dr. Berg's findings. ''His work is very convincing; I would even say unimpeachable,'' said Dr. Glenn Juday, a forest ecologist at the University of Alaska. ''For the first time, I now think beetle infestation is related to climate change.'' While Dr. Juday did not collaborate on Dr. Berg's spruce studies, he relayed some of the findings at a recent conference on climate change in Oslo, as part of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Project, a study by scientists from several nations. It was also presented by Dr. Berg himself in a speech at an | On Hot Trail Of Tiny Killer In Alaska |
1403327_4 | of eggs,'' he said. ''Then she went north again and took up residence off New Jersey and Delaware. She was off North Carolina in November when her transmitter went dead.'' Whatever the cause of the failure, a corrodible link on the harness would eventually break, freeing the turtle from it, he said. In spring 2001, with more grant money, the team outfitted five more leatherbacks with transmitters. That produced several surprises, Dr. Eckert said. Swimming independently of each other, two leatherbacks went to Nova Scotia and began a long southward movement far out in the Atlantic, with one approaching South America by January. A third got all the way to the African coast by this March before transmissions ended. The other two, like China Girl the previous year, surprised their observers by hugging the Florida coast to feed in the rich shrimping zone until their signals ended somewhat abruptly. ''We got six leatherbacks heading in three entirely different directions,'' Dr. Eckert said, ''which suggests they return to Florida from broadly different areas.'' The revelation that two of the leatherbacks favored the northern Florida coast was troubling, Dr. Ehrhart noted: though shrimp boats are equipped with devices that allow turtles to escape the nets, they are designed for turtles smaller than the huge leatherback. The research team had looked forward to the return of the six leatherbacks by the end of the nesting season in July. They were prepared to refit them with new transmitters and were eager to learn if they followed the individual ocean tracks observed on their maiden voyages. But by mid-June none had appeared at the refuge's beaches despite nightly vigils by the team and volunteers. In fact, reports of leatherback nestings on Florida beaches this spring had fallen drastically from the previous year, a worrisome dip that Dr. Ehrhart said he hoped was caused by changing weather patterns and not more calamitous events. Meanwhile, four new nesting leatherbacks had transmitters attached and were released. Dr. Eckert is working on improved transmitter designs, aiming for models that can transmit for two years without interruption. Researchers want to perfect a way to crack the central enigma of all species of sea turtles: where do surviving turtles go in the first years of life? No one has yet come up with a tracking device that can be attached to a scrambling hatchling that weighs a few ounces at birth. | Biologists Try to Follow Well-Traveled Turtles' Journeys |
1401400_0 | For the past week some 1,600 delegates from across Afghanistan have been meeting in an air-conditioned tent in Kabul, debating their country's future and shaping a new transitional government. This re-creation of a traditional grand council, or loya jirga, has had some conspicuous problems, including a clumsy American effort to make sure that Hamid Karzai, who has performed capably as interim leader, was elected president. Strong disagreements surfaced yesterday over how to elect a new legislature. Still, the gathering represents solid progress for a nation that seven months ago was still being terrorized by the Taliban. The sessions are supposed to conclude today but may be extended. The loya jirga was not a democratically elected body. Roughly two-thirds of the delegates were chosen by local councils, with most of the other seats reserved for specific groups, like women. The loya jirga also included unreconstructed warlords. A rule banning participation by those who had committed wartime atrocities excluded former Taliban commanders but otherwise was largely ignored. Also troubling was Washington's embarrassingly visible effort to squelch an ill-considered campaign to choose Afghanistan's former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, rather than the better-qualified Mr. Karzai, as head of state. The elderly ex-king agreed instead to accept the more appropriate symbolic title of ''father of the nation.'' But Mr. Karzai, already criticized by some Afghans as too much Washington's man, was left looking even more so. Despite these flaws, the loya jirga has been notable for the impassioned speeches of many delegates. It was as if years of pent-up political yearnings were finally bursting forth. Besides resolving the legislature issue, delegates hope to approve a restructured government and a more ethnically balanced cabinet. The first challenge the new transitional government emerging from these sessions will face is enforcing its authority outside Kabul. That would have been easier had the United Nations expanded its international security force from the capital to the rest of the country. Regrettably, no outside military power was willing to provide troops for such a mission. Instead, the United States has agreed to lead efforts to train a new Afghan national army, while Germany has taken lead responsibility for creating a new police force. Until these forces are ready, probably next year, the new government will rely mainly on America and British combat forces. It will also have to win the loyalty of the warlords who now control several provinces. The Pentagon, | Lessons of the Loya Jirga |
1397685_4 | All this is leading up to the Terrestrial Planet Finder, planned for 2015, whose goal is to detect distant planets directly, using an occulting disk or interference techniques to separate the planet's dim light from that of its much brighter parent star. Dr. Beichman compared the challenge to ''finding a firefly next to a searchlight on a foggy night.'' (The European Space Agency has its own planet finders, Eddington and Corot, in the works, culminating in a mission called Darwin, which may be combined with T.P.F.) At best, a distant planet would appear as a faint dot, a single pixel, in such instruments. What to do with those precious photons has become a cottage industry among astrobiologists. Dr. Turner of Princeton invited audience members to imagine what they could learn from Earth were it shrunk to a point. As Earth rotated, geography and weather would cause its brightness to vary. The more complex a planet's so-called light curve, he said, ''the more interesting'' the planet. Another tool astrobiologists could use to sense life on that dot is spectroscopy, breaking down the light into its component wavelengths where the signatures of individual elements and molecules in the planet's atmosphere can be seen. Atmospheric oxygen, which on Earth was produced and maintained by photosynthesis of plants and bacteria, would be the ''most reliable'' indicator, Dr. Beichman said. Another is plant leaves, whose cell structure produces a spectral feature known as ''the red edge,'' said Dr. Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Dr. Seager said that Galileo spacecraft had detected the ''red edge'' effect during a 1990 flyby of Earth on its way to Jupiter. In a 1993 Nature paper, a group of scientists led by the Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan concluded that the red edge combined with abundant atmospheric oxygen and radio signals constituted ''evidence of life on Earth without any a priori assumptions about its chemistry.'' The red edge also shows up strongly in spectral measurements of Earthshine reflected off the dark parts of a crescent Moon by Dr. Neville J. Woolf of the University of Arizona, reported Dr. Wesley Traub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In planning their search, scientists think they can rule out at least parts of the galaxy and focus on so-called habitable zones. For one thing the elements like iron, oxygen and carbon, which form terrestrial planets and creatures, | NASA Presses Its Search for Extraterrestrial Life |
1397670_0 | Ants' Demolition Derby A community can be at its most vulnerable when its members quarrel among themselves, allowing an enemy to exploit the infighting to its own advantage. (There is a reason, after all, that the aphorism ''United we stand'' starts springing up everywhere in times of trouble.) What is true for people is also true for ants, apparently, according to a study by researchers in Britain and Japan. Only with ants, the same enemy that exploits the infighting is causing it. The researchers studied a convoluted relationship among two parasitic species, a wasp and a blue butterfly, and a European ant, Myrmica schencki. The ants serve as hosts to the butterfly larvae, protecting them in their final development stages, fooled by similarities in behavior and chemistry between the caterpillars and the ants' own larvae. But the caterpillar itself can be a host to the wasp, which given the chance will lay its eggs in it. How does the wasp get that chance? The researchers, whose work was reported in the journal Nature, found that the wasps secrete chemicals on the caterpillar. These chemicals, which had previously been unknown, make the ants more aggressive, first attracting them to the caterpillar and then repelling them. After being repelled, they turn on each other as a wave of panic travels through the colony. Distracted, the ants then cannot defend against the egg-laying wasp. The researchers found that the chemicals are long-lasting, creating an aggressive response among ants for nearly two months after being secreted. The chemicals may provide an alternative to poisons and repellents as a method of controlling ants, the researchers suggest. Elk Snowmobile Syndrome The issue of whether snowmobiles should be allowed in national parks often focuses on noise and pollution and how they affect other people who use the parks for quieter forms of winter recreation like cross-country skiing. But the effects on wildlife are a concern, too. Since wolves and elk do not attend public hearings, however, it has been difficult to gauge their reaction to snowmobiling in places like Yellowstone. Now, researchers from Montana State and Michigan Technological Universities have provided some measure of the effects on wildlife. Writing in the journal Conservation Biology, they show that elk and wolves exposed to snowmobiles have higher levels of hormones caused by stress. The researchers measured the hormones, called glucocorticoids, in elk feces from Yellowstone and wolf feces from | OBSERVATORY |
1397669_0 | ''The Hormone Solution,'' by Dr. Erika Schwartz, Warner Books, $13.95. When the author was in medical school, she was led to believe that estrogen replacement in menopause consisted exclusively of the synthetic version. Now, she specializes in a treatment that many doctors do not offer: natural hormone supplementation. The natural hormones she discusses can be obtained only by prescription and are not to be confused with over-the-counter products with low concentrations of hormone. Dr. Schwartz contends that natural hormones, including progesterone and estrogen, seem to be the best substances to treat imbalances without creating side effects. She covers their use in PMS, mood swings, postpartum depression, hot flashes and loss of libido. And since hormone imbalance is not limited to menopausal women, she discusses hormones' value in women of all ages and in men. The downside here is that natural hormones, made from plants, are available only through a limited number of pharmacies, usually those that can do their own compounding. But Dr. Schwartz provides a helpful resource list and adds, ''The first step is to open the lines of communication with your doctor.'' BOOKS ON HEALTH | Standing Up for Nature |
1397671_0 | The soft-spoken woman shaking off a monumental case of jet lag at a Manhattan apartment one recent morning was Dr. Ruth Kiew, 56, the keeper of the herbarium and library of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, and one of the world's great experts on tropical begonias. Dr. Kiew had traveled to the United States to speak on the fate of South Asia's endangered tropical forests and also to accept the botanic equivalent of the Nobel Prize: the David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration from the National Tropical Botanical Gardens, an American group dedicated to plant preservation and discovery. Dr. Kiew (pronounced cue) was being honored in part for her many explorations into remote areas of Malaysia, where she searched for new species of begonias and African violets. While rain and mud and leeches had never deterred her, Ruth Kiew, at first glance, seemed somewhat overwhelmed by the rigors of her trip from Singapore. ''People always say that the jet lag from Asia to North America is serious,'' she said in an accent of her native Britain, ''but this was formidable!'' Over coffee, Dr. Kiew regained her equilibrium and chatted about the plants and flowers that are her passion. Q. Martin Wells, the British zoologist, once said that his area of study had become obsolete because most biology students were so focused on cells and proteins that they couldn't recognize a whole animal if they encountered one. Is there a similar problem in botany? A. It's a problem at European universities. Not so much in the tropics. At European universities, the cutting edge tends to be more in the laboratory and on the technical side, more into molecular biology. At the same time there, my specialty, taxonomy, has come to be considered very old-fashioned. What a taxonomist does is to classify and name new species. Somehow, there's the impression that taxonomy is an old subject, that there's nothing interesting there to do anymore. Yet in the developing part of the world, there aren't enough trained taxonomists to identify all the plants we are discovering. As you know, we don't yet have an inventory of all the species. Q. Why is taxonomy an important part of getting an inventory of all the world's species? A. Because the scientific name is the key to everything we know about a plant. It's like databasing. After you find something, you just go into your computer, call | Begonias and Beyond: A Voice For the Tropical Forests |
1397763_1 | homes and buildings. People don't realize it, but New York is the most historic place in the country. It's the oldest major city -- more happened here than anywhere else.'' Shortly after Sept. 11, there were calls to rebuild the towers exactly as they were and to preserve the financial services industry downtown. There were also proposals to preserve the whole 16 acres at ground zero as a memorial park. But the city's traditional instincts for change are winning out. The footprints of the twin towers may be preserved for a memorial park, but the rest of the site will almost certainly end up with buildings and businesses quite different from the old ones. The financial services industry was leaving downtown even before Sept. 11. As Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said last week in assessing the commercial possibilities for the site, ''You have to see not what we would like but what the marketplace wants.'' It's tricky to predict the marketplace, but there might be a precedent from the days when the windmill dominated the skyline. At that time, in the early 1690's, New York was briefly known as Flour City because it had a legal monopoly on the processing of flour. Grain was unloaded on the East River and carted across Maiden Lane to be processed by the windmill near the Hudson River. The downtown economy then was even more dependent on flour than it was in the 1990's on financial services. It was estimated that the flour industry supported two-thirds of Manhattan's population: barrel makers, bakers, millworkers, cart-men, sailors, merchants. But in 1696, after the industry lost its monopoly, New Yorkers had to quickly turn to a new source of income. The city became the capital of piracy. ''Once New York lost the flour monopoly, the city became much more open to pirates and they made it their port of choice for about a decade,'' said Richard Zacks, the author of ''The Pirate Hunter'' (Hyperion/Theia), a new book about the most famous New York pirate of that (or any) era, Captain Kidd. ''New Yorkers invested in pirates' voyages by buying shares and trading them,'' Mr. Zacks said. ''Merchants supplied pirates with gunpowder, knives, combs, hats, shoes and lots and lots of liquor. Manhattan was a great tavern town for pirates, and they patronized a place called Petticoat Lane -- it's now Marketfield Street -- because there were so | In New York, Change Is Traditional |
1397858_0 | Nearly two-thirds of special education teachers in the state said they plan to stop teaching handicapped students in the next five years, according to a survey by the state branch of the National Education Association, the teacher's union. The teachers complained of massive paperwork requirements, staff meetings and uncompensated overtime; a third said they had been assaulted by students. Three of four teachers planning to leave special education said they would reconsider if the job entailed less paperwork. Diana Jean Schemo (NYT) | National Briefing | Northwest: Washington: A Concern For Special Education |
1400082_1 | 8MB, and most have expansion slots, too.) You can find many city guide programs and other travel-themed software at most of the big Palm shareware sites on the Web. PalmGear has a good selection in its Travel category at www.palmgear.com/software, and Handango (wwwhandango.com) has a wealth of information about Palm hardware and software as well as programs for the Pocket PC and other hand-held platforms. Q. Do any of those mobile e-mail devices work with America Online's unique e-mail system? A. Most pocket-size e-mail gadgets, including the BlackBerry by Research in Motion, the Nokia Communicator and the Handspring Treo, allow users to download copies of messages sent to their e-mail accounts -- provided that the account uses a corporate system like Lotus Domino or an Internet provider relying on a mail standard like POP3. America Online's e-mail system does not work with most portable mail devices, but some do allow you to retrieve your AOL mail when you are away from your PC. For those in search of a BlackBerry-like gadget, America Online sells its own version of the device called the AOL Mobile Communicator, developed in tandem with the Research in Motion company. AOL members can use the Mobile Communicator to send and receive both e-mail and instant messages. The device costs $99.95 plus $29.95 a month for service (in addition to the regular monthly AOL membership fee). More details can be found at AOL. Keyword: My AOL MC. Some companies, including AT&T and Sprint PCS, allow AOL members to send and receive e-mail on Internet-enabled wireless phones. Unlike AOL mail of the old days, which could only be retrieved or sent on a computer with AOL's software installed, you can gain access to your account on any computer with a Web browser and an Internet connection. You can check your AOL e-mail at www.aol.com. Other ways of reading AOL mail are explained at www.aol.com/anywhere/index.html. Q. I find the built-in pointing device on my laptop hard to use, but my laptop does not appear to have a mouse port on the back. Are there any alternatives? A. In an effort to slim down, many ultralight laptop designs dispense with elements like internal CD-ROM and floppy drives and nonessential connection ports. Even though your laptop may lack the PS/2 port common to many computer mice, most lightweight laptops will have at least one U.S.B. port. Most major mouse manufacturers, including | Room for a Travel Guide? Sizing Up Palm Memory |
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