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1407621_0 | To the Editor: I am a 55-year-old woman who has resisted the scam that all women, regardless of symptoms, should take hormones (''Hormone Replacement Study a Shock to the Medical System,'' front page, July 10). It never made any sense to me that mild symptoms, including hot flashes and night sweats, be treated as an illness. It never made any sense to me that aging was a disease that could somehow be controlled by the ingestion of drugs. From time immemorial, women have gone through menopause and have come out at the other end to enjoy many years of healthy and productive lives. Menopause is not a symptom, and aging is not an illness. MIRIAM PICKETT New Milford, N.J., July 10, 2002 | A Cloud Over Hormone Therapy |
1409521_0 | To the Editor: The solution given in ''Trouble With Trash'' (editorial, July 13) looks to the past and not to the future. Technologies exist that can handle all New York City trash, and they do not involve incineration. Gasification takes in trash and sludge and produces only two products: electricity and an inert slag that can be used to make tiles or bricks for construction use. The total emissions from a gasification plant are similar to those from a natural gas-fired plant. No landfills are required, and recycling can be done at the plant for glass and metals. Trash would not have to be sent to other states; cheap power would be produced in the city; each plant would provide 25 to 50 jobs; and the number of trucks on the road would be reduced. DENNIS F. MILLER Washington, July 15, 2002 The writer is chief scientist and vice president, Solena Group Inc., which produces energy from renewable sources. | From Trash to Bricks |
1411316_0 | For as long as Brazil has been a nation, outlaws of every type, from gold smugglers and slave traders to drug traffickers and gun runners, have taken refuge in the Amazon, the world's largest jungle wilderness, secure in the knowledge that they could not be tracked down. As of today, though, that shelter is no longer guaranteed. A new American-financed, $1.4 billion system of radars and sensors has begun monitoring activity in a 1.9-million-square-mile area of trackless rain forest and rivers that is larger than half the continental United States. The system is so sophisticated and comprehensive that Brazilian officials now boast they can hear a twig snap anywhere in the Amazon. The Amazon Surveillance System will allow Brazil to determine for the first time exactly who is flying through the airspace, whether commercial aircraft or drug dealers. It will also enable the authorities to track illegal logging and deforestation more efficiently, detect foreign guerrilla incursions, protect Indian lands and inhibit the smuggling of rare and endangered animal and plant species. ''This is a historic moment for Brazil,'' the minister of defense, Geraldo Quintão, said on Thursday during a ceremony here inaugurating the system, which was officially put into operation today. ''It transcends the simple unveiling of a government project,'' he said, allowing Latin America's largest country to ''protect our land borders, preserve our natural riches and make the state a presence in our most remote areas.'' The system includes 900 listening posts scattered on the ground all over the Amazon. But its backbone consists of 19 radar stations, 5 airborne early-warning jets and 3 remote-sensing aircraft, all of which will feed information via satellite to command centers in this Amazon capital and two others, Belém and Pôrto Velho. ''Because this is a radar system, we will be able to operate day and night, rain or shine,'' said Gen. Teomar Fonseca Quírico, the project director, making a contrast with satellites. From a height of 33,000 feet and a distance of up to 125 miles, he said, the system can track an image of something as small as a human being. When first conceived more than a decade ago, the system was meant to answer growing foreign criticism that Brazil was not doing enough to protect the Amazon's delicate environment. But with cocaine production exploding in surrounding countries and a long war against leftist guerrillas worsening in Colombia, the military and | Brazil Employs Tools of Spying To Guard Itself |
1411289_0 | A devastating sneak attack that killed and wounded more than 3,000 Americans. Revelations of intelligence failures and ineptitude. Outraged demands for an independent investigation. That description applies just as well to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, as it does to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Indeed, even some of the politicians who are now calling for an independent commission to investigate the breakdowns and bungling that may have preceded last year's terrorism have made the connection. Let's ''build on the precedents of history,'' said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Democrat, referring to the various investigations that followed Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet how relevant are these half-century-old investigations to figuring out who knew what and when, and what was done -- and not done -- to try to prevent the 9/11 attacks? In all, there were eight official investigations of the intelligence failure, military unpreparedness and possible political shenanigans that left America vulnerable in the Pacific in 1941. And many of the historians who have studied the Japanese attack would agree that most of the official inquiries were at times plagued by vicious partisanship, a rush to judgment or conflicts of interest. That's not surprising, given the highly charged atmosphere of the period. ''Roosevelt had a major problem,'' said Ernest May, the Charles Warren professor of history at Harvard University. ''The public outcry to hold people responsible after Dec. 7 was much, much greater than what we have seen since Sept. 11.'' Despite the patriotic surge, it was an immensely political and divided time in the life of the nation. ''There were already conspiracy theorists in the isolationist ranks of the Republican Party who alleged that Roosevelt knew of, or invited, the Japanese attacks to draw the U.S. into war,'' Professor May said. Among them was Thomas E. Dewey, who later became a Republican presidential candidate. So just 10 days after the Pearl Harbor bombing, which caused 3,435 casualties and the loss of, or severe damage to, 188 planes and 8 battleships, President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened an investigation into how such an audacious attack could have gone undetected. (The United States did expect an attack from the Japanese, but anticipated it in Southeast Asia.) A small group of high-ranking officials -- led by Roosevelt's friend Justice Owen J. Roberts of the Supreme Court and including Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Secretary | In 1941, Too, a Wounded, Unprepared America Cast About for Blame |
1408507_1 | capable and good men (liberal ones, too) came before Dr. Healy at the N.I.H. But apparently none of them were moved to take action on an urgent public health problem: one of the most widely prescribed medications in America, hormone therapy -- a combination of estrogen and progestin -- had never been subjected to a proper scientific study. The study by the Women's Health Initiative now shows a combined incidence of 0.4 percent for breast cancer, heart attacks, strokes and blood clots among women on the combination hormone therapy. Some experts describe the numbers of these harmful outcomes as minuscule. However, since six million women are currently taking hormone replacement therapy, this translates into almost 25,000 cases of life-threatening (in some cases, life-terminating) side effects. (Millions more women take estrogen alone, for which the data is not yet available.) It also appears that the incidence of side effects from the combined drug increases with the length of treatment. Dr. Healy's stubborn insistence that the N.I.H. concern itself with women's health was not broadly supported at the time. In some quarters the study of women's health was somehow seen as the intrusion of ''special-interest politics'' into the business of science. In 1991, when Dr. Healy was appointed head of the N.I.H., women were usually excluded from clinical trials, a practice that she ended. Now studies sponsored by the N.I.H. must include both genders if the condition being studied affects women as well as men. Had Dr. Healy not championed research on women's health, how much longer would healthy women have been encouraged to take hormone drugs? (There is still speculation that even with convincing data on hormone therapy, many doctors will still take some time to change their recommendations.) Some say that appointing women to leadership positions in fields like medical research will not affect things very much, that the work of major institutions will not change simply because a woman directs the enterprise. But in this case, a very significant and positive change did occur. As an outspoken feminist and Republican, Dr. Healy has had to contend with people from all over the political spectrum. As head of the N.I.H., she was able to see the neglect of gender in medical research when others in her position had not, and she was motivated to fix it. Anne M. Dranginis is an associate professor of biological sciences at St. John's University. | Why the Hormone Study Finally Happened |
1408521_0 | While the music industry scrambles to keep albums off the Internet before they reach stores, one highly successful artist has managed to skirt online piracy with a surprisingly low-technology solution. The artist, Bruce Springsteen -- who has released six CD's of material in the Internet era, with another album on the way this month -- has thwarted prerelease file-sharers not through digital protection or online policing, but with an old-fashioned lock-and-key approach. In the weeks before a release, his albums barely see the light of day, frustrating not only downloaders but even music critics and other industry insiders who cannot put their hands on his work. On July 30, Mr. Springsteen will introduce ''The Rising,'' his much-awaited first studio album with the E Street Band since 1984, on Columbia Records. But even as Mr. Springsteen's camp plans extensive promotions, from premieres of different songs on America Online to a live appearance on ''Today'' from Asbury Park, N.J., few people outside his inner circle have heard the album. Recording labels usually ship dozens or hundreds of albums to radio stations, journalists and others involved in the industry months before they go on sale. Mr. Springsteen's organization, on the other hand, sent out fewer than 10 copies as of early July, and only a handful more will join them 14 days ahead of the store date -- if at all, according to a spokeswoman, Marilyn Laverty of Shore Fire Media. Insiders who do obtain advance copies do not distribute them, said Gary Graff, a music journalist at Reuters who has interviewed Mr. Springsteen on several occasions. He said no one wanted to anger the Springsteen camp. ''That's almost the best weapon they have,'' he added. Mr. Springsteen's success battling online piracy is an outgrowth of his longtime fight for strict control of his work, which has seen him battling bootleggers in court both at home and abroad. As a result, Mr. Springsteen's prerelease work has been conspicuously absent online. In 1998, he issued the four-CD set ''Tracks''; last year, he released the double album ''Live In New York City.'' None of those complete discs were available online before they were available in stores. Indeed, no more than a handful, if that, of the 84 songs on those sets were distributed ahead of time. By contrast, a scan of the WinMX file-trading network last week turned up complete or nearly complete albums by | Springsteen Protects His New CD's Online in an Old-Fashioned Way |
1408477_8 | not been adequately studied,'' Dr. Grossman said. Dr. Richardson said she mostly gives antidepressants or Neurontin to breast cancer patients who have severe symptoms of menopause and are willing to take a chance that the drugs might be safe over the long term. But these are desperate women, she said. ''When you are waking up four times a night soaking wet, you'll take anything.'' ''It is very important for women to understand that there isn't a right answer,'' Dr. Richardson said. Some doctors are finding there are so many answers that each woman who comes into their office will leave with different advice. That happened to Dr. Utian of the North American Menopause Society on Wednesday, the day after the Women's Health Initiative study came to a halt. He saw 10 women who were going through or had gone through menopause. Each wanted to discuss the question: Should she take hormones? Each left his office with a different recommendation. One woman who had been taking the hormones for four years said her biggest worry was heart disease. ''She said: 'I know what it's like to come off it. I'm going to feel terrible,' '' Dr. Utian said. Then she asked him what the actual risks were. He pulled out Table 4 from the publication of the study data in The Journal of the American Medical Association. In Year 4, he told her, 25 women taking hormones had heart attacks, compared with 24 taking a placebo; the risk was low. ''Table 4 is going to be on my desk from now on,'' Dr. Utian said. Another woman had taken the drugs for about the same amount of time. She was at high risk for colon cancer and osteoporosis. ''Her risk-to-benefit ratio turns out to be favorable if I keep her on it,'' he said. A third woman had started taking the drugs to reduce her risk of heart disease. ''I told her I don't see any reason to stay on them,'' he said. Other patients have had very emotional reactions to the drugs. One woman who had come in on Monday afternoon was 70 years old and had been taking hormones for 30 years. The few times she had tried to stop taking them, her menopause symptoms had returned. ''I said, 'Don't you think you've been on it long enough?' '' Dr. Utian said. ''She said: 'Why would I come off | Many Taking Hormone Pills Now Face a Difficult Choice |
1406038_6 | of one era are easily talked about in the sexual categories of another. But it helps focus attention on the themes of desire, virility, solitude and alienation in Nietzsche's work. And it is consistent with Nietzsche's philosophical mythology, which is in part the tale of a Paradise lost that must be regained. Nietzsche's Eden is the world of the ancient Greeks in which Dionysian passion was as highly valued as Apollonian detachment; the greatest of Greek tragedies were shaped by the experience of the orgiastic, an ''overflowing feeling of life and strength.'' But then came the Fall, caused by Western philosophy (beginning with Socrates) and Western religion (particularly Christianity). Philosophy distorted the human by enshrining reason; religion distorted the human by enshrining a moral code suitable only for slaves. This, Nietzsche argued, led to what he called the decadent condition of modern man. But his philosophy heralded the coming of the Übermensch, the superior man whose ideas would usher in a new age and destroy the idols of the old. Decadence would be replaced by vitality; weak sentimentality by vigorous will, repressed instincts by irrepressible orgiastic joy, as he put it. For Nietzsche, this mythology had a personal urgency. But as a philosopher, he said the first step was to demonstrate the illusions of the fallen contemporary world, to show that everything once viewed as truth and light is no more than shadow and misprision, that moral laws have no intrinsic force but arise out of hidden shames and drives. ''I deny morality as I deny alchemy,'' Nietzsche wrote. He was out to save the world by dismantling it. He proclaimed the ''death of God'' and the ''twilight of the idols.'' Much that was presumptuous and meretricious withered under his gaze. But though he claimed to be engaged in a ''re-evaluation of all values,'' his energies mainly went into their devaluation. Destruction, he warned, had to precede creation, an idea that has unfortunately become an unquestioned commonplace. Too many utopian and political movements have had similar ideas. Revolutions and wars and acts of terror can seem to echo the Nietzschean model. The results, with few exceptions, have been other forms of tyranny and idolatry, not a paradise regained. Is it possible, after so long serving as a prophet of dismantlement, that Nietzsche has become just such an idol himself? Are his ideas now entering their own twilight? And don't they | Is There a Gay Basis To Nietzsche's Ideas? |
1406045_3 | etiquette, and will be encouraged to ''demonstrate that they like France.'')Americans have responded to these events -- particularly the outbreak of anti-Semitism -- with a mixture of anger and anxiety. Concern over reports of fire bombings at French synagogues and of physical assaults on French and Belgian Jews prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to issue a travel advisory for France and Belgium this spring -- an unprecedented step. A similar fear led the Pacific-Southwest branch of the American Jewish Congress to urge a boycott of the Cannes Film Festival in April. (The congress mentioned ''L'Effroyable Imposture'' as well as anti-Semitism in its ad campaign promoting the action.) Last month, the congress decided to suspend its tours of France altogether. Mr. Koch said he began his own boycott in December, after the French government failed to reprimand Daniel Bernard, its ambassador to Britain, who used an obscenity to refer to Israel at a dinner party. (Mr. Bernard did not deny making the remark but said his words had been greatly distorted.) . Even the French edition of Saul Bellow's latest novel, ''Ravelstein,'' became grounds for attack when The New York Observer reported in June that the publisher, Gallimard, had selected an image for the book's cover -- a photograph of a large-nosed old man with hornlike tufts of hair -- that verged on anti-Semitic caricature. (Denying that the company had acted with anti-Semitic intent, a Gallimard employee told the Observer that the image had been chosen for its humor.) While many French experts admit that such reactions are understandable, but some fear that genuine political disagreement and legitimate concern over anti-Semitism may also be giving way to crude caricatures of the French. ''This wave of francophobia is accompanied by classic negative stereotypes,'' Mr. Vaisse said. His examples included opinion pieces by the conservative commentators Anne Coulter and Charles Krauthammer and the iconoclastic journalist Michael Kelly , who in defending President Bush's ''axis of evil'' speech from French government criticism in The Washington Post, referred to the ''French foreign minister, whose name is Pétain or Maginot or something.'' He might also have cited ''Saturday Night Live.'' In a spoof of a French tourism commercial that was broadcast on the show in April, a series of iconic images -- the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, a little girl toting a load of baguettes -- flashed by on the screen while a female voice recited | An Old Amour, More Off Than On |
1406057_0 | Scrutinizing passengers and bags more carefully before they are allowed near an airplane has resulted in a new security problem, creating vulnerable crowds outside the secure area, experts said today. ''People say, maybe we should move the security line back to the terminal frontage, or some off-airport location,'' said Richard Marchi, senior vice president of the Airports Council International, a trade association representing airports. ''But you're just going to have a crowd somewhere.'' Faster processing of passengers would help reduce the size of the crowds waiting at ticket counters, Mr. Marchi and others said. They added that more certainty among travelers about how long they are likely to wait before clearing security, so fewer people would arrive hours in advance, would also decrease the number of people milling around terminals. But what the El Al shooting at Los Angeles International Airport points out is ''the need for better intelligence in this mix,'' Mr. Marchi suggested. Some expects predict that the problem is likely to get worse as the Transportation Security Administration increases its screening of checked baggage for bombs, further slowing check-ins. All baggage must be screened for bombs beginning on Dec. 31, and at most airports, most of that screening will be done in the lobbies, especially for the first few months, until machines can be installed in the back-room baggage handling areas. While the Transportation Security Administration has made major changes at the airports since its creation by Congress last winter, few have been outside the security perimeter -- the aprons, runways and concourses inside the security checkpoints. ''We are always looking for ways to enhance security,'' said Deirdre O'Sullivan, a spokeswoman, who added that her agency would be consulting with local police departments. But there are no plans to enlarge the security perimeters, Ms. O'Sullivan said. Congress, too, has been focused on the secure areas of the airports. In the Department of Transportation's list of 92 major provisions demanded by Congress as part of the security law passed last November, none refers to airport actions outside the security perimeter. When the National Guard was turned out to protect the airports, it was employed mostly on the perimeters. Some airports may deploy more officers in nonsecure areas. At Reagan National Airport here, security guards are conspicuously posted on the approach roads, and at all airports, the police prevent cars from idling near the terminal, as was common before | Crowded Airport Terminals Can Lead to Additional Security Problems, Experts Say |
1425300_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Big-Price Screening Machines Are Said to Get Little Use'' (news article, Sept. 18): One reason for the underuse is that people are having trouble getting the machines to work. This is still a fairly new technology, and, as with new computer software, it takes time to get all the bugs out. The old screening machines were designed to stop 20th-century terrorists. We now must learn how to stop 21st-century terrorists. This will take time, but we will eventually succeed. GEOFFREY WEYL Blairstown, N.J., Sept. 18, 2002 | Screening Luggage |
1425422_0 | The State Statistics Committee reported a population decline of 505,900 people in the first six months of 2002, to 143.4 million. The drop was slightly less than in the same period last year but the population continues to fall by about one million people annually. The number of births grew by 50,000 compared with the first half of 2001, but in a sign of the continuing health crisis the number of deaths also increased by nearly 50,000. Sophia Kishkovsky (NYT) | World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Population Still Shrinking |
1423232_2 | of a celebrity hitchhiking. Maybe that celebrity's well-known sexual and material independence is intended as a symbol of what women can achieve. (But if so, why doesn't she have a car?) J. D. Eames's (that's Ms. Eames) ''Intimate ASCII'' is a two-woman play about e-mail. One woman suspects that an electronic pen pal of hers may be her long-estranged, openly homophobic sister. There is an interesting back-and-forth (with the literary license of immediate response time on the Palm Pilot in use) until the playwright throws all her credibility away with a burst of melodramatic discoveries. The schoolgirls who smoke between classes in Corrina Hodgson's ''Recess'' are bathed in authenticity. These are tough-talking junior high school students in their short plaid uniform skirts expressing their individuality with heavy makeup and purple hair, playing psychological games with one another. There are a number of fine performances in Estrogenius, but Leslie Eva Glaser stands out in this work as Jessica, the outsider, who turns to superheroine fantasies to get her through the school day. ''Recess'' does have a meaningful if tentative ending. Overall, this set of plays is a wry observation of just how mean men can be to women, how mean women can be to men, how mean girls and women can be to one another, how both women and men repress women's sexuality, and how hard it is for women to be close. And in the case of Ms. Stolowitz's play, how many characters and funny voices Daryl Boling can do while illustrating the difficulty of recovering missing property in New York. Estrogenius 2002 continues its four-program festival through Sept. 28. Program 1 concluded on Saturday; Program 2 continues through tomorrow. ESTROGENIUS 2002 Sets by Maruti Evans; stage manager, Meagan Lopez; costumes by Adrienne Blount; sound by Giovanna Sgarlata. Presented by Manhattan Theater Source. At Manhattan Theater Source, 177 Macdougal Street, Greenwich Village. ZELDA AND BERNICE, by Carla Johnston; directed by Amantha May. WITH: Jenny Weaver and Gail Thomas. INTIMATE ASCII, by J. D. Eames; directed by Hannah Grannemann. WITH: Rosemary Garrison and Erin Kate Howard. RECESS, by Corrina Hodgson; directed by Karin Bowersock. WITH: Leslie Eva Glaser, Antonia Stout and Jennifer You. HAPPENING TO YOUR BODY, by Mac Rogers; directed by Jordana Davis. WITH: Kathy Gerhardt, Laura Morton and Elizabeth Tidy. THE HANDBAG, by Andrea Stolowitz; directed by Erin Brindley. WITH: Daryl Boling, Ebbe Ebbeson and Kate Hess. THEATER REVIEW | That Potent Hormone Brings Lots of Trouble |
1423347_0 | It will come as no surprise to anyone with an e-mail account that the scourge of spam has reached near-intolerable levels. One new study estimates that this year 7.3 billion e-mail messages will be sent each day, and spam -- bulk, commercial e-mail -- will make up nearly one-third of it. Increasingly, opponents of spam are using federal and state law to fight back. This growing movement is worthwhile, and deserves support from Congress, federal agencies, state legislatures and the courts. Spam is popular with direct marketers for obvious reasons. Junk mail requires U.S. postage, but junk e-mail can be sent almost without cost. Computer time is cheap, and CD's containing millions of e-mail addresses sell online for about $150. For recipients, however, spam is far from free. Businesses report that unwanted e-mail is significantly reducing worker productivity and overloading computer-system capacity. Individuals are spending countless hours, both at the office and at home, sifting through their e-mail queues to weed out spam. Since this is an imperfect science, e-mail users often lose important, non-junk e-mail in the process. This month the Telecommunications Research and Action Center and other consumer groups petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit e-mail that disguises its commercial intent by using a phony subject line or by misrepresenting the sender. They are also asking the agency to require spammers to offer recipients a way to ''unsubscribe'' -- to get themselves removed from a spammers' list -- and to make it illegal to ignore such requests. These proposed rules fall squarely within the F.T.C.'s mandate and deserve prompt action. Other promising anti-spam efforts are under way at the state level. California, for example, now requires spammers to include, at the start of the subject header on every piece of junk e-mail, the abbreviation ADV -- for advertisement. This makes it reasonably easy for recipients not to open -- or better yet, to set their e-mail filters to keep out -- unwanted spam. Morrison & Foerster, a large San Francisco law firm, is suing one commercial e-mailer that it says is flouting the law. Washington state, another leader in the anti-spam cause, has a law on its books making it illegal to use misleading subject headers. The state attorney general is using that law to sue spammers who use subject lines like ''Payment Past Due'' to trick recipients into opening spam. Yet spam has some powerful backers. | Taking On Junk E-Mail |
1423279_1 | a bribe. The corruption is rampant. Senior government officials insist on payoffs, from companies and big-time traders, in exchange for concessions. Military commanders take a cut or even have their own operations. The local policeman demands a payment to allow the trucks, laden with illegally cut logs, on the way to illegal sawmills, to proceed along the road. The upshot is that Indonesia's tropical forests, among the largest in the world, are rapidly disappearing. Vast tracts of once pristine forests have been reduced to barren and scarred wasteland. It is estimated that at least four million acres of forests -- an area roughly the size of Connecticut -- are being stripped of their trees every year, according to government statistics. It is estimated that the lowland natural forests here on the island of Sumatra, home to the endangered orangutan and the rare Sumatran tiger, will be gone within five years; those in Kalimantan, within 10. ''There are lots of reports telling the world about this,'' said Togu Manurung, professor of forestry at Bogor Agricultural University and director of Forest Watch Indonesia, a nongovernmental organization. ''But it is still going on.'' ''Why?'' he asked rhetorically. "Money, power and politics.'' The world's consumers must also share some of the responsibility for the devastation, said Hapsoro, director of research at Telapak, an Indonesian environmental organization. ''It is a matter of fairness,'' Hapsoro said. ''It's not fair for us in Indonesia if people in the United States are consuming a lot of wood products, paper and plywood from Indonesia.'' The secretary general of Indonesia's Ministry of Forestry, Wahjudi Wardojo, said that stopping illegal logging is the agency's top priority. It will not be easy, though. Although they might look like parts of a thriving cottage industry, many of the sawmills are controlled by people who ''have money and power,'' Mr. Wardojo said, and they can be highly profitable ventures. At one unlicensed mill that deals in Kempas, a hardwood used in floors, the company buys logs for $90 a cubic meter, cuts them into boards, sands them on both sides, then sells the wood for $280 a cubic meter. As the owner described his operation, he sells his wares to traders in Singapore and Malaysia who market the wood products mostly in China and Taiwan. In an effort to halt the environmental devastation Indonesia imposed a ban last year on the export of logs. | Indonesia's Forests Go Under the Ax for Flooring |
1423378_0 | The country's Roman Catholic archbishop, the Rev. Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, warned in an appeal to human rights advocates that actions against Catholic priests and parishes in Russia had reached such a peak that they ''to all intents and purposes, throw us back in time to the former regime.'' Five foreign Catholic priests have been stripped of their visas this year, construction of a new cathedral has been blocked in Pskov, and a church in southern Russia was shot at last weekend. ''Don't allow freedom of conscience to be trampled on once again in the country which suffered through the Golgotha of the 20th century,'' the archbishop wrote. Sophia Kishkovsky (NYT) | World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Archbishop Appeals To Rights Groups |
1423502_1 | instead replied en masse to each message? Unlike the authors of viruses, who hide in the shadows of the Internet, senders of spam often leave a trail. Faced with hundreds of thousands of responses, the spammer would have to use substantial resources to store the responses, sift through them and identify those registering genuine interest. Alternatively, people could file a complaint with the sender's service provider or overload the spammer's Web site, grinding it to a halt. With current technology, there are few other options. Some service providers allow users to elect to receive e-mail messages only from pre-approved e-mail addresses. But this can cause problems of its own for those who are sending a legitimate message to a recipient they don't know. And software filters pose the same risk of inadvertently blocking desirable e-mail messages, especially since spammers have found ways to make their messages look ordinary. One of the more promising techniques is the use of puzzles that would distinguish people from programs. Such schemes work as follows: Whenever I receive an e-mail message from an unknown sender, my computer automatically sends a message back politely requesting that the sender solve a simple puzzle -- like ''What's the sum of four and five?'' or ''What word is embedded in the attached image?'' -- to demonstrate that the message comes from a person and not an automated sender. The original e-mail message would be transmitted to me only if the sender replies with a solution to the puzzle. This is a promising development, but the process is awkward, potentially insulting to the sender and far from foolproof. If technology is limited, what about an economic approach? The cost of sending e-mail is close to zero. Increasing that cost, for example by requiring senders to pay recipients of a message, would certainly eliminate much of the spam we receive. But it would be unfair to tax all e-mail messages, even legitimate ones, just to discourage spam. These remedies may seem overly ambitious, since getting rid of spam can be done simply by hitting the delete key. But spam is more than just a nuisance. It costs money in lost work time, burdens computer systems and damages online discourse (by deterring people from posting on message boards and doing research on the Web out of fear of leaving an e-mail trail). Let's send a clear message to the spammers: stop spamming | Fighting the Menace of Unwanted E-Mail |
1423470_4 | too bluntly political (''if we listen to Beethoven and do not hear anything of the revolutionary bourgeoisie . . . we understand Beethoven no better than does one who cannot follow the purely musical content of his pieces.'') But Adorno still succeeded in bringing music back into the world, showing that much was at stake in its sounds. This also helped transform musicology. The first contemporary musical scholar to focus on Adorno was Rose Rosengard Subotnik, professor of music at Brown University, who in the late 1970's began publishing papers on such subjects as Adorno, Kant and Beethoven. Now Adorno's importance is taken for granted, making possible, for example, the work of such scholars as Lawrence Kramer and Lydia Goehr. And his influence extends still more broadly into the more contentious realms of race, gender and class studies. The difficulty, of course, is in knowing when one is discovering ideas in music and when one is imposing ideas upon it. Here, the record is more spotted. I can only point to one problem. As a Marxist, however idiosyncratic, Adorno believed that music should be politically ''progressive.'' That meant, he explained, that it had to speak about suffering and its origins in bourgeois society without lunging into sentimentality or straining at transcendence or seeking distractions. For Adorno, the pained expressionism of Schoenberg's music was truth-telling, while the technologically crisp creations of Stravinsky were not. But why establish that kind of ''progressive'' standard? Why are expressions of suffering and assertions of oppression the primary measures of authenticity? Haven't other aspects of human experience also inspired artistry? And is there only one ''authentic'' way to deal with suffering? In Bach's ''St. Matthew Passion,'' redemption comes through the embrace of suffering -- a retrogressive illusion of a different historical moment, Adorno might say. But there are more possibilities in musical heaven and earth than are dreamed of in Adorno's philosophy. In Adorno, of course, there is frequent recompense -- elaborate and suggestive readings, theories about music history and musical knowledge and the effects of technology. There is even something heroic about his philosophical enterprise. But there is also something perverse. For while with one hand he caresses the 19th- and 20th-century art-music tradition, mourning its marginality and meticulously teasing out its meanings, with the other hand he tries, again and again, to sweep away the contentious, striving, bourgeois world that gave it birth. CONNECTIONS | A Philosopher With New Disciples (in Music, Not Philosophy) |
1423533_3 | place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young.'' At the conclusion of the Dallas meeting, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that while he expected the Vatican would approve the bishops' document, ''I would never go to the Holy See assuming I have a slam dunk.'' He traveled to Rome after the meeting to deliver in person the bishops' new rules, known as norms. Asked this week about the policy's prospects in the Vatican, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: ''I'm hearing that they're looking favorably upon it. Of course, the urge to edit is a basic human need, up there with the urge to eat and breathe, so it wouldn't surprise me if they make changes.'' Some of the norms depart from the Code of Canon Law, the ecclesiastical law governing the Latin Rite Roman Catholic Church worldwide, last revised in 1983. Because of this, the American bishops needed the Holy See's approval, known as a recognitio, of the new norms. The American bishops asked that the norms be made ''particular law,'' applicable only to dioceses in the United States. But the Rev. Kevin E. McKenna, president of the Canon Law Society of America, said: ''It will be difficult for the Holy See to make changes for one particular country without necessarily implying changes that could be adapted to other countries as well, because other countries are going to face these same issues. And then you would have two sets of operating procedures in terms of a penal process -- one for the U.S. and the other for outside the U.S.'' At its meeting next month, the Canon Law Society of America, whose members work in the chanceries of many dioceses, plans to draft guidelines to help bishops distinguish between the American norms and the church's universal laws, Father McKenna said. Sister Euart said that the Holy See had shown concern in the past about keeping church law on sexual abuse consistent from one country to another. In 1994, the American bishops asked the Holy See to extend the church's statute of limitations in cases of child sexual abuse. The Holy See granted the extension for the American church, and then in 1999 made the American standard apply to the entire church. One | Plan on Abuse Is Said to Face Vatican Pitfalls |
1426788_0 | Even as many other colleges and universities have abandoned their core curriculums, Columbia University has held fast. Established more than 80 years ago, the curriculum has remained firmly rooted in the humanities. But university officials say that a sizable change may be in the offing: a new science course is under consideration as a requirement. The course, which does not yet have a name, is meant to introduce students to contemporary topics in science, from the brain to outer space. More important, said David J. Helfand, the Columbia astronomer who is leading the effort, is the need to teach students ''scientific habits of mind.'' ''What struck me when I arrived here 25 years ago,'' he added, ''was how we have this unfashionable but critically important notion that the faculty should specify some of what everyone should know. But I was horrified to find that our students take seven prescribed courses and none are in the sciences.'' Two curriculum committees have expressed interest, and a pilot program will start next month. ''It is still not a done deal that this is going to start next fall,'' said Kathryn B. Yatrakis, dean of academic affairs for Columbia College. ''I'm hoping it will and thinking it will, but we have to see how the evaluations come out.'' Columbia University introduced its first core course -- contemporary civilization -- in 1919 and later added art, music, literature and philosophy, and logic and rhetoric. All undergraduates take these same prescribed courses. Although students are required to take three science courses, they are allowed to choose them from a sizable menu that includes mathematics, computer science, biology, physics and psychology. Until now, the faculty has not tried to define what every educated graduate should know about science; in the humanities, it does. The new course will be different from the core humanities courses, which meet in classes limited to 22 students to foster discussion. The backbone of the science course will be large weekly lectures by leading researchers about current work in fields like cosmology and genetics. In the pilot program this year, six lectures will be given, each accompanied by a small group discussion. No credit will be given. Students will assess the lectures and seminars. | Science May Soon Join Core Courses at Columbia |
1426774_2 | after consulting with their financial advisers, and after having several meetings with United's own advisers. The company had hoped that a proposal would be presented last Friday, but the unions said they would have to work through the weekend. The unions said they had not determined exactly how the cuts would be divided among the labor groups. ''Our discussions with United Airlines will include several cost savings proposals, including tapping United's best asset for ideas on how to save money -- our members,'' said Randy Canale, president of district 141 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents 35,000 United employees. ''Any discussion,'' Mr. Canale said, ''must also include recognition for the substantial sacrifices machinists union members have already made to United's recovery efforts.'' In a written statement, Mr. Canale pointed out that the machinists agreed recently to defer $500 million in retroactive pay owed to them as part of the latest contract agreement. The first payment of that amount becomes due in December. The machinists have repeatedly said this is a significant loan they have made to the airline. Greg Davidowitch, the president of the United chapter of the Association of Flight Attendants, said in a written statement: ''Being a part of the solution that assists United in surviving its near-term financial crisis is central to our goal of ensuring that the flight attendants' long-term interests are represented.'' Mr. Davidowitch added that he hoped that ''United can successfully amend its application for a loan guarantee from the Air Transportation Stabilization Board, get access to near-term financing, avoid bankruptcy and rebuild.'' The transportation board has been reviewing the loan guarantee application from United, which is intended to help the airline get $2 billion in private loans. But federal officials had told United that it needed to get deeper concessions from its employees and suppliers to bolster the application's chances of success. Soon afterward, Mr. Creighton said United would need to get $2.5 billion in annual cost savings, with $1.5 billion of that coming from labor. After Mr. Tilton was named as chief executive early this month, he did not indicate exactly what amount he hoped to get from the unions, but he did not reject Mr. Creighton's number. He has personally met with union leaders in the last week to talk about the concessions. United lost a record $2.1 billion last year, and $341 million last quarter, | United Air's Unions Offer Plan to Save Billion a Year |
1426826_0 | Bombings in Northern Ireland increased 80 percent in the year ended March 31, to 318, according to the first report from the province's Policing Board, an independent oversight body formed under the 1998 peace accord to increase public confidence in the police. Most attacks, by paramilitaries or sectarian rioters, were against residential buildings, and involved small homemade explosives. Shootings increased by 8 percent, to 358, nearly double the rate when the main paramilitary groups declared cease-fires in 1998. The rise in attacks is seen as a sign of grass-roots dissatisfaction with political reforms and heightened tensions between Protestants and Catholics, particularly in Belfast. Brian Lavery (NYT) | World Briefing | Europe: Northern Ireland: Violence On The Rise |
1426784_5 | earning more than $100,000 scored 1123. Large inner-city high schools have neither resources nor time for sophisticated diagnosis and services. One psychologist in private practice who used to work in a Bronx public school guessed that half of the students there might have qualified for remediation but said that ''the city would have gone broke.'' Ms. Hirschhorn, in Armonk, said that an underprivileged youngster was ''not going to look like a child with a disability in a sea of children not doing well, and that's a heartbreak.'' Government statistics show that 2.9 million children in public elementary and secondary schools are learning disabled, or 6 percent of the total. More than a quarter drop out. Of those who succeed in graduating from high school, 13 percent go on to a four-year college. But only 2 percent seek test accommodations. Once in college, 11 percent seek extra help. Access to extra help in college and a true appreciation for a disabled child's efforts could be adversely affected by the unflagging of test scores, some educators say, even as they applaud the anti-discriminatory sentiment behind the move. Without the asterisk on College Board scores, nothing on a standard college application -- including a transcript of courses and grades -- would alert admissions officials to a diagnosis of a learning disability. ''If you use the information in a positive way, it creates a context,'' said Ms. Brown of Mount Holyoke. ''You want to understand all the threads, the whole story, and position a student's accomplishments in light of the difficulties they've faced. And you want to know if you have adequate services for a student you've admitted.'' Others worry that a school that admits a student not knowing about a disability might not even have the necessary services. ''It's one thing to get in,'' said Frank Liana, one of New York City's leading private college counselors. ''It's another thing to get what you need to succeed. Why do you even want them at a school that is biased against them and doesn't feel equipped to help?'' Drs. Luck and Mattis are less concerned with whether scores are flagged than they are with a test that they say consumes and distorts the last years of high school and inspires desperate requests. ''It's not 'Can you help us understand what's wrong with our child?' '' Dr. Luck said. ''It's 'Can you help us document the | Paying for a Disability Diagnosis To Gain Time on College Boards |
1421537_3 | Barry Steinhardt, the director of technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union. And since the courts tend to hand out pen registers like fliers at a subway stop, privacy advocates have long argued that the Internet needed more protection. Mr. Kerr doesn't disagree that standards for getting a pen register should be tougher. ''However, the fact that this section of the Patriot Act could have offered stronger protection shouldn't obscure the fact that as a whole the amendment helped add privacy protections, not reduce them,'' he writes. Without the new rules, he said, e-mail and Internet surveillance would theoretically be totally unregulated by federal privacy laws, allowing anyone to stick his nose into many kinds of private Internet communications without any court oversight. He notes that, at the urging of privacy advocates, the act specifically forbids peeking into ''the contents of any communication.'' What's more, Mr. Kerr argues, the act prohibits people from publishing or leaking the contents of private communications. Mr. Kerr also takes on critics of what is known as Carnivore, the technology developed by the F.B.I. to monitor Internet communications. Carnivore has been attacked by civil libertarians ever since it was first introduced in July 2000 as a frighteningly powerful eavesdropping tool. Mr. Kerr insists that surveillance would be much more intrusive without Carnivore than with it. Think about how you would go about identifying the e-mail messages sent by a particular suspect, he says: one way would be to go through every single e-mail message streaming through the network -- a gross invasion of everyone's privacy. Carnivore, on the other hand, was designed to pick up only the digitally coded symbols that correspond to a specific e-mail address; everyone else's communications are ignored. How well Carnivore accomplishes that task -- not to mention how easiiy the technology could be abused -- is intensely debated. In December 2000, for example, a panel of the country's top computer security experts praised the system but also concluded that ''serious technical questions remain about the ability of Carnivore to satisfy its requirements for security, safety and soundness.'' And Carnivore certainly has the capability of capturing all the Internet traffic that's speeding through a service provider. Yet aside from debates about the technology, Mr. Kerr writes, ''The only provisions of the Patriot Act that directly address Carnivore are pro-privacy provisions that actually restrict the use of Carnivore'' -- | 9/11 Law Means More Snooping? Or Maybe Less? |
1421572_0 | It is tragic that hunger-racked Zambia is rejecting donations of American corn simply because much of it has been genetically modified. Whatever hypothetical risk may exist in genetically modified crops is trivial compared with the very real danger of starvation faced by some 13 million people in six drought-stricken countries of southern Africa, including more than two million in Zambia. The corn shipped by the United States is assumed to be a mix of traditional and modified varieties, given that some 30 percent of all American corn has been genetically modified, mostly to make it resistant to pests. Such modified corn has been eaten by American consumers for years without any evidence of harm. Some African countries have accepted the corn. But others have reservations, and Zambia has refused to distribute it. Zambia fears that some of the kernels might be used as seed, producing genetically modified corn that could cross-contaminate native crops and make them unacceptable in export markets squeamish about genetically engineered products. There are ways around that problem, but Zambia also fears that the corn is dangerous to eat. Zambia's concerns are understandable given the strident campaign against genetically modified foods conducted by activists in Europe and to a lesser extent the United States. But even some of the groups most critical of genetically modified foods have said they don't oppose their use to combat famine. No government should deny food to desperate people based on such ill-defined risks. | Folly in the Face of Famine |
1420691_6 | after three decades outfitting everything from bar mitzvahs and first job interviews to trial lawyers seeking a jury's trust. B3 West Nile Death West Nile virus claimed its first life in New York City this year as a 73-year-old man from Jackson Heights, Queens, died of the disease. B1 SCIENCE TIMES F1-10 Confusion Over Estrogen After its initial approval by the Food and Drug Administration in 1942, estrogen was marketed to counter the annoying and disruptive symptoms of menopause. But since then it has acquired a reputation as an antidote to many of the illnesses and afflictions of aging. Now the focus is on how long a woman can safely stay on hormone replacement and what effects, good or bad, the long-term therapy may have. F1 Health & Fitness F5 FASHION B7 ARTS E1-8 SPORTS D1-8 OBITUARIES A17 BUSINESS DAY C1-14 Bertelsmann Is in Talks With Amazon on Deal for Unit A month after dismissing its technology-minded chief executive, the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann is harshly pruning his Internet ventures. The company plans to shut down or sell its main online book-selling service, BOL.com, and has held exploratory talks with its chief rival, Amazon.com. C1 Fight Over Carriers As major airlines reduce or eliminate service to marginal markets to try to cut their costs, smaller airports are fighting hard to lure the low-fare carriers that still thrive. Many smaller cities are spending millions of dollars to expand their sites, even without a commitment from one of those airlines. C1 UAL Formally Appoints Chief The board of UAL, parent company of United Airlines, chose Glenn F. Tilton as its president and chief executive, giving one of the industry's toughest management jobs to an outsider known for building employee morale. Mr. Tilton, 54, faces challenges he did not encounter in his 32 years in the oil business. C1 Trucker to Cease Operations Consolidated Freightways, the nation's third-largest trucking company, plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and eliminate about 12,400 jobs, or 80 percent of its work force, immediately. Consolidated lost $104.3 million last year, while its larger rivals, Yellow and Roadway, were profitable. C4 Business Digest C1 EDITORIAL A18-19 Editorials: What Congress owes the voters; reviving reform in Iran; in the primary for New York State comptroller; Adam Cohen on Jessica Mitford and corporate venality. Columns: Paul Krugman, Nicholas D. Kristof. Crossword E4 TV Listings E7 Public Lives B2 Weather D8 | NEWS SUMMARY |
1420625_1 | her desk or driving down Main Street, does her body suddenly think it is overheated? The answer is not clear. One basic fact has been known for decades: hot flashes are linked to declining estrogen levels. In women who have their ovaries removed surgically, the effect can be almost immediate. Some actually begin having hot flashes in the recovery room. And regardless of whether flashes are brought on by surgery or natural menopause, estrogen replacement therapy quickly stops them in most women. Hot flashes are common in the United States, Australia and Western Europe, but are said to occur less often in Asian women. But no knows whether Asians really have fewer flashes, or just report them less. If they do have fewer, whether the difference is due to diet, genetics or both is not known. In fundamental ways, hot flashes remain a mystery. They must originate in the brain. Body temperature is regulated there, in a region called the hypothalamus. But no one knows exactly how estrogen, or the lack of it, acts on that region. Nor is it known why one woman sweats through a dozen flashes a day while another, with the same flagging estrogen levels, stays cool. Similarly, doctors do not know why, in most women, the symptoms eventually go away on their own. And if hot flashes have a purpose or a health benefit, scientists have yet to figure out what it might be. The unanswered questions have become more important recently, as mounting evidence has cast doubt on the safety of hormone replacement, especially for long-term use. Hormones are the most effective treatment for hot flashes, but many doctors and patients have begun to question whether taking them just to relieve symptoms is worth the risks, which include slightly increased odds of heart attack, stroke, breast cancer, blood clots and gallbladder disease. Women want safer alternatives, and although a better understanding of hot flashes may lead to better treatments, so far no great breakthroughs have occurred. Dr. Robert R. Freedman has been studying hot flashes for about 20 years at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he is a professor of psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology. The National Institutes of Health has supported his work, he said, but not many other scientists have taken up the cause, and he wishes more would. ''Science gets better with more people working on it,'' he said. Before | Hot Flashes: Exploring the Mystery of Women's Thermal Chaos |
1420666_0 | America West Shifts Baggage-Check Times Flying America West Airlines? Forget about the last-minute dash to the gate with bags to check. Starting tomorrow, passengers need to check bags at least 30 minutes before departure -- and 45 minutes before in Denver and Atlanta. ''We know our customers appreciate our commitment to provide reliable, on-time operational performance,'' said Anthony Mule, the airline's customer-service chief. America West is the eighth largest domestic carrier. Airline analysts expect other airlines to soon begin readjusting checked-baggage schedules, to prepare passengers for the crush expected after the Dec. 31 federal deadline requiring all checked bags to be screened by explosives detection machines that are not yet in place in most airports. Airlines Faulted On Reuse of Tickets Among the voices criticizing airlines' recent moves toward severely restricting the ability to reuse so-called nonrefundable tickets is that of the Business Travel Coalition. Its chairman, Kevin Mitchell, noted that the group's recent survey of 184 companies showed that more than half now depend on nonrefundable fares. These are the cheap tickets that need to be booked well in advance, but formerly could be re-used by paying a $75 or $100 penalty if a trip was canceled. Airlines' moves to block or severely restrict reuse of those tickets, will ''increase the cost of business travel at a time when demand has dropped off considerably,'' Mr. Mitchell said. The airlines' obvious intention ''is to drive business travelers back into fully refundable airfare classes,'' he said. In the last 18 months, airline revenues have suffered sharply from a move among business travelers toward buying cheap nonrefundable fares with restrictions, and away from full-price, unrestricted, fully refundable tickets that could cost five times more for the identical trip. British Airways Makes Some Fare Cuts Meanwhile, air-fare sales continue, even in Europe. British Airways, under heavy pressure from European low-fare competitors, cut fares by up to 80 percent last week on its flights from London to Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Belgium, Czech Republic, Hungary and Luxembourg. JOE SHARKEY BUSINESS TRAVEL | MEMO PAD |
1420645_2 | and tangles in brain and body tissues. In chronic wasting disease, mad cow disease and other so-called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, an errant protein called a prion misfolds. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare fatal disease that occurs in people, is a prion disorder that about 300 Americans develop each year. The version of mad cow disease that spread to people in Britain is a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob. Exactly how misfolded prions spread from one species to another is not yet known. But recent research shows that the prion, like other misfolding proteins, early on forms tiny toxic fibrils, or pores, that can literally poke holes in cells, a finding that may account for the spongy cavities seen in victims' brains. Many researchers believe that a prion disease in sheep called scrapie was transmitted to cattle when British rendering plants that grind up animal wastes for use in feed lowered their processing temperatures to save fuel. From the early 1980's on, millions of head of cattle were fed high protein dregs from rendering plants, and thousands of them developed mad cow disease. In 1996, the human version of mad cow disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, was identified. Since then 135 people, mostly from Britain, have died from the new prion disease. No one knows whether the epidemic has peaked or if it will kill tens of thousands of people. But if sheep spread the disease by eating the dropped placentas of infected ewes, and cows spread the disease by eating feed made from infected cows, how do deer and elk spread it? Wildlife officials do not know. Animal experts in Wisconsin want to estimate how many of the state's 1.8 million white tail deer are infected. To do so, they will perform brain biopsies on 40,000 to 50,000 of the half-million deer that hunters are expected to kill in the hunting season, which begins this month and has been extended to January. Of these, 15,000 to 25,000 will come from a 374-square-mile area 30 miles west of Madison where all the infected animals have been found. All 25,000 deer in this so-called hot spot are to be eradicated. Some experts are testing deer urine for abnormal prions. Dr. Valerius Geist, an emeritus professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Calgary, noted that male deer slurped urine from females during rutting season. ''An actively rutting buck will have had in his mouth the | Brain Disease Rises in Deer, Scaring Hunters |
1420637_6 | example, two physicians wrote that doctors should tell women about new doubts over the therapy's benefits and evidence of its risks. The message -- from Dr. Sally E. McNagny, a former principal health initiative investigator now working in Wellesley, Mass., and Dr. Nanette K. Wenger, a cardiologist at Emory's medical school -- appeared in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine. ''We've learned a lesson the hard way,'' Dr. McNagny said. ''Until a medication is studied long term, it should not be prescribed long term for healthy women.'' But not every expert, and certainly not every physician, is willing to abandon hormone replacement based on the new studies. ''Clinical trials are not the end of the story,'' said Dr. Roger Lobo, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. ''There are still big gaps in our knowledge as to which regimens are safer than others. We need to look at all the available data and not discount the observational studies. Women are different, the regimens are different and the times are different.'' Even the new studies have their weaknesses. For example, the best-designed new studies involved only one or two forms of hormone replacement, either conjugated equine estrogens alone or a combination of these estrogens and a synthetic progesterone (progestin). Some experts believe that other formulations may yield different results, but they have yet to be tested in large randomized clinical trials, and until they are there is no way to know. But Dr. Ettinger and some other experts say further studies will be hard to do. Given the hazards found, new studies are unlikely to be approved by review committees. Getting women to enroll and agree to be randomly assigned to take either a hormone or a placebo for many years may also be hard. So women and their physicians are left to review the best available evidence about the various alternatives. Factored into a woman's decision should be her ability to tolerate menopause, her personal and family health risks and her willingness to adopt other established protective measures like diet and exercise. As Dr. Utian put it, ''We're not paying enough attention to talking about healthy living as a treatment for menopause.'' He added, ''We have to get away from the silver bullet mentality. What's good for one woman is not necessarily good for another.'' Possible Risks HEART DISEASE -- It is | Sorting Through the Confusion Over Estrogen |
1420627_4 | of the hormone is absorbed into the bloodstream. A popular remedy is vaginal insertion of an estrogen cream one to three times a week or use of an estrogen-containing vaginal ring. Vaginally applied estrogen can also counter recurrent urinary tract infections in postmenopausal women. Nonhormonal options for temporary relief of vaginal dryness include gels or creams like Replens, Vagisil, Astroglide and K-Y jelly. BONE LOSS -- The rapid acceleration of bone loss at menopause is most effectively countered by estrogen. One relatively new drug, raloxifene (Evista) acts like estrogen on bone but lacks estrogen's harmful effects on the breast and uterus. In fact, a large national study still in progress strongly suggests that raloxifene protects against breast cancer, much like tamoxifen. But in about 20 percent of users, raloxifene causes hot flashes, which may diminish with time. For older women experiencing significant bone loss, tablets of biphosphonates (Fosamax or Actonel) taken weekly are effective at staving off and treating osteoporosis. Their main side effect is esophageal and gastric irritation, which may preclude their use by women with chronic reflux. Also crucial is to provide your bones with enough building materials -- calcium and vitamin D -- and to create the mechanical stresses needed to rebuild bone through weight-bearing activities like walking or jogging or strength-training exercise like lifting weights. HEART HEALTH -- The very disappointing finding that hormone replacement failed to prevent heart disease and may instead cause it has sent women back to the basics to maintain cardiovascular well-being. Start with a heart-healthy routine -- a diet low in saturated fats and rich in vegetables, fruits, unrefined (fiber-rich) carbohydrates and adequate calcium. Avoid cigarette smoking and engage in daily (or nearly so) moderately intense aerobic exercise like brisk walking, cycling and lap swimming. If other measures are needed to control cardiac risks, take medicines daily to normalize blood pressure or blood sugar or lower high cholesterol, and adopt a balanced diet and exercise program that can help you achieve and maintain a normal weight. BRAIN FUNCTION -- ''Use it or lose it'' seems to be as apt a motto for the brain as it is for muscles. Remaining intellectually and socially involved may not prevent Alzheimer's disease, but it can help to maintain a sharp mind. Experts on aging recommend doing crossword puzzles, playing bridge, attending lectures, reading books and joining discussion groups. Women seeking more information on hormone | The Search for Alternatives to Hormone Replacement Therapy |
1420692_3 | increasing again, with coal consumption rising 5.4 percent last year while the use of oil and natural gas also rose. Growth in Chinese oil consumption has accelerated mainly because of a large-scale transition, still in its early stages, away from bicycles and mass transit and toward private automobiles. Car sales jumped 40 percent in the first seven months of this year compared with the similar period of 2001, although part of the gain reflected the increased affordability of cars as China's entry into the World Trade Organization forced it to reduce tariffs and increase import quotas. In the mid-1990's, state-owned Chinese companies purchased oil fields in Iraq and the Sudan, although international sanctions on Iraq have limited the development of the fields there and Sudanese civil war has periodically slowed production. More recently, China has been pursuing supplies of energy that are as reliable as possible, which usually means as far as possible from the Middle East. While some of the recent flurry of deals were in the works before last September's attacks, the Chinese have lent extra impetus to them lately. On July 4, a consortium of domestic and foreign energy companies announced that it would spend $3.3 billion to develop gas fields in western China and $5.2 billion for a pipeline to carry the gas across the country to Shanghai. On Aug. 8, China concluded an agreement with Australia to buy $11 billion to $13 billion worth of liquefied natural gas over 25 years for Guangdong province, China's most prosperous region in the south, and said it had begun exclusive talks with Indonesia to buy $8 billion to $10 billion of liquefied natural gas for Fujian province. Mark Qiu, the chief financial officer of Cnooc Ltd., a Chinese offshore drilling company, said in an interview here that planning was already under way to double Guangdong's purchases, by buying more gas from Australia or some other country, and possibly to double Fujian's purchases as well. Cnooc also bought half a dozen oil fields in Indonesia early this year and announced plans a week ago to pay $320 million for a 5 percent stake in the Northwest Shelf gas fields of Australia; it is negotiating to buy a stake in Indonesia's gas fields, too. Energy company executives here said that China is also exploring ways to buy more energy from Siberia. An oil pipeline is already being built from near | China Struggles To Cut Reliance On Mideast Oil |
1422300_5 | laid into the concrete that divides the building's office space from public areas, like street-level stores and a subway escalator, a reinforcement of the pure concrete. Lower in the tower, ironworkers have welded heavy steel plates to the original structural columns. ''This serves to stiffen the flange of this column to some unforeseen event,'' said Philip D. Murray, a partner at Gilsanz Murray Steficek, the structural engineering firm for the building. Throughout the tower, an extra set of pipes is being installed that will serve as a backup water supply that would be available to fight fires. The airplane attacks at the World Trade Center severed the only link to the water supply, incapacitating sprinklers and making it impossible for firefighters to use their hoses. Location is not the only factor that can drive a developer to make changes after thinking through the possibility of a terrorist strike. Several media giants, each with global profiles, are building high-rise headquarters in Manhattan, including AOL Time Warner, The New York Times Company and Bloomberg L.P. Despite being at very different stages of their design and construction, the first two companies have made extensive safety modifications to their designs since 9/11. A spokesman for Bloomberg said an analysis showed that the design for its new headquarters at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue was sufficiently safe and that no changes were needed. At $1.7 billion, the AOL Time Warner building on Columbus Circle is the biggest project of its kind in the city in years. Aside from the corporate headquarters, the same building will also hold a television studio, hotel, luxury condominiums and the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. From across Columbus Circle in Central Park, the project, now stretching about 40 stories into the sky, resembles a NASA launch site in its scale and verticality. Gleaming dual-car construction elevators rise along each tower like gantries, and vertigo-inducing cranes with 100-foot booms swing busily above everything else. Amid all this grandeur, thoughts of a possible threat have resonated. The developer is reinforcing some structural columns by encasing them in a concrete cocoon, said Bruce Warwick, president of Columbus Center L.L.C. Perhaps the most ambitious improvements were spurred by the devastating breakdown of communications systems at the World Trade Center. A sophisticated new communications system is being designed to eliminate a problem that any cellphone user will recognize as a nuisance, but that in | 9/11 Prompts New Caution In Design of U.S. Skyscrapers |
1422349_8 | little order are needed to run the affairs of the world. The issue today is to know whether there are any weapons of mass destruction. And to know it, one should go to see. And to see it, the inspectors must be free, without any restrictions or conditions, to visit. . . . This is the objective. If this is fulfilled, then it's over. The Security Council or the international community never wanted to change the regime in Iraq, because there are numerous countries where one wished to see another regime. But if we go down that road, where are we going? . . . Q -- Dick Cheney said last week that the inspectors did not mean anything. A -- Well in this case, it was easier to say that Mr. Cheney was about to go alone to do his war. Because if you say to Saddam Hussein, to the Iraqi leaders, and the people of Iraq. If one says, ''We want to attack you, and the inspectors don't mean anything anyway,'' naturally they will refuse the inspectors, they will say no. . . . Q -- Your foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, has left open the possibility of a military attack against Baghdad if, by chance, the Security Council decides that Iraq A -- But all solutions are possible. I don't want to judge things in advance. Q -- Even military solutions? A -- Nothing is impossible, if it's decided by the international community on the basis of indisputable proof. For the moment, we have neither proof, nor decisions . . . Q -- How do you see the situation in Afghanistan? A -- I am very worried about Afghanistan. There is not yet cohesiveness and the many small warlords are well armed to fight against Al Qaeda. Now they have taken their arms and are not fighting against Al Qaeda and are fighting among themselves. Perspectives This interview is the sixth of a series in which national and world figures reflect on the terrorist attacks and their effect on a year of public life and policy. The articles and interviews are online: nytimes.com/world Excerpts Correction: September 10, 2002, Tuesday An article yesterday about an interview with Jacques Chirac including his perspectives on the Iraqi threat of weapons of mass destruction misstated the timing of Israel's destruction of Iraq's French-supplied nuclear reactor. It occurred in 1981, not 1979. | THREATS AND RESPONSES: PERSPECTIVES/Jacques Chirac; French Leader Offers America Both Friendship and Criticism |
1422324_0 | A city can post extra signs all over advertising the speed limit, and still motorists ignore it. A city can buy more radar-style guns and assign more men and women to operate them, and still motorists zoom heedlessly from place to place. So when police officers spotted Gino Mazzura barreling down one of Venice's major arteries the other morning at an unauthorized clip, they not only pulled him over and gave him a $200 ticket. They also impounded his vehicle. Mr. Mazzura would have to wait a whole week to get his motorboat back. Fed up with reckless navigation on this storied city's canals and other waterways, local officials are cracking down as never before. They have turned Venice into a veritable speed trap, with heightened vigilance, harsher penalties and a twist. Both enforcers and offenders float. That undeniably lowers the stakes of Venice's efforts, which were not, after all, prompted by fatal pileups in front of the Hotel Cipriani. But Venice has its own problems, like the corrosive effect of big waves on historic buildings' foundations and the struggle of humble little gondolas to stay upright in the wakes of engine-revving vaporetti -- Venice's public buses -- and delivery ships. ''The Grand Canal is like if the autostrada had a big truck and a bicycle all riding together,'' said Mayor Paolo Costa, referring to Venice's most famous thoroughfare. The bigger and faster vessels need to be kept in line. So last month, he added several sleek new cruisers to the city's traffic enforcement fleet, which police officials said would soon feature Venice's first unmarked police boat. A few months earlier, Mr. Costa had expanded the range of possible punishments for people caught speeding, and more than 200 boats have subsequently been impounded for at least seven days. The Princess Dubrovnik, a Croatian boat, got a merciful reprieve. It was clocked last month at 19 kilometers an hour -- or 12 miles -- in an 11-kilometer zone, but Capt. Alfonso Garlisi said his police officers could not, in good conscience, leave the 400 Croatian day-trippers on board without a way home. So they let the boat go. Captain Garlisi said the authorities in Croatia had promised to impound it there. Venice has been down this canal before. Well before this summer, local officials came to the conclusion that bad drivers did not need terra firma to drive badly and that | Chilling News for Speeders: Traffic Cops Astern |
1422371_0 | The federal government is trying to meet new deadlines set by Congress to improve the screening of passengers and checked bags, but security experts inside and outside government say that even in the unlikely event that both goals are met this year, they will not make aviation secure enough. The public focus has been on two measures linked to deadlines: by Nov. 19 all screeners at checkpoints are supposed to be federal employees; by Dec. 31 all baggage loaded into cargo holds is supposed to be checked for explosives. Representative John L. Mica, the Florida Republican who is the chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, said the Nov. 19 requirement for federalizing the screeners would probably be met. ''We probably will have the passenger screening army in place,'' Mr. Mica said. The baggage screening deadline may not be met, he said. But, he added, ''Far worse, we're losing sight of the other areas that could have great potential risk, like cargo security and the airport perimeter and general aviation.'' Steve Elson, a former Navy Seal who was a security official in the Federal Aviation Administration but quit in frustration, asked: ''Who is watching the ramps? I guarantee you I can walk onto ramps. So can you, and so can Al Qaeda.'' Another hole is in the integration of intelligence information about possible plotters and the dissemination of that information. In August, the Transportation Department awarded a major contract to build the computers to search databanks for information about travelers and workers to detect possible security risks, selecting, for example, foreign visitors living for long periods without fixed addresses or steady jobs. Measuring how much has been achieved in aviation is difficult, intentionally so. From the number of air marshals on the planes to the fraction of checked bags selected for search, many details are classified. Nobody can say how many pilots will arm themselves if a bill approved by the House and Senate takes effect. The airlines, meanwhile, are losing money at record rates. In the first half of the year they carried 258.6 million passengers, down 11.4 percent from the first half of 2001; the number of takeoffs and landings in that period fell by about 16 percent. No one is sure how much of the falloff is the economy and how much is fear. But despite the federalization of the security work force, security may suffer when the | THREATS AND RESPONSES: DOMESTIC SECURITY -- Aviation; Beyond Screening People and Bags |
1422303_3 | which are five of the seven countries designated by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism. (The other two are Cuba and North Korea.) He said the other visitors who will be checked are those who are considered security risks by the State Department or by the Immigration and Naturalization Service officers, based on intelligence reports of terrorist strategy and behavior. Mr. Martínez said he could not estimate how many people are likely to be checked. The fingerprints will be checked immediately against computerized intelligence and criminal databases already available to immigration agents at the ports. Those selected foreigners would then be required to report to the I.N.S. any changes in where they are staying or what they are doing, and if they fail to report in, their names would be added to the list of federal criminals. Mr. Martínez rejected the criticism from American Muslim groups that the rules broadly discriminate against Muslims and would amount to racial profiling. ''That inspector will have specific criteria based on intelligence reports,'' he said. ''It would not be a profile on race.'' About one in five visitors to the United States already undergoes extra questioning and security checks in what is called secondary inspection at places of entry. Last year, for example, immigration agents took 7.3 million incoming visitors out of the passport lines for further scrutiny, in most cases because the agents suspected they carried false documents. That procedure -- closed to any outside scrutiny -- has long been a matter of concern to civil liberties and immigrants'-rights groups. They have said many foreigners, especially asylum seekers, have been mistreated during secondary inspections. ''What we've experienced in secondary inspection is that it's this black box,'' said the director of the Washington office of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Elisa C. Massimino. ''There are no outside observers, a lot of abusive language and even some physical abuse.'' The immigration service has responded in the past to such claims by saying its inspectors treat foreigners respectfully and only use physical force when necessary to restrain someone in a secondary inspection. The prospect of being fingerprinted and monitored has many potential visitors worried already, she said. ''We've already had calls from our human rights colleagues from other countries, asking 'if I come to your dinner in the fall, is this going to happen to me?' '' Ms. Massimino said. THREATS AND RESPONSES: SECURITY | Government Ready to Fingerprint and Keep Track of Some Foreign Visitors |
1427208_2 | Kentucky. Kentucky hopes to export wood and meat to Cuba through the limited cash-only trade program that the United States allows. Another delegation, from North Carolina, was treated on Wednesday night to shrimp, fish, lamb, potatoes, bonbons and mojitos, a traditional Cuban drink made with rum, sugar, lime and mint. And, of course, more cigars -- those typically illicit, almost always coveted mementoes of Communist Cuba. During the two-hour dinner, Mr. Castro talked about Cuba's education system, tree planting, crop rotation and ''his having quit smoking 17 years ago,'' said Billy Carter, executive vice president of the North Carolina Produce Association. ''He did most of the talking,'' Mr. Carter said. Mr. Carter's delegation gave Mr. Castro a set of baseballs (they were unaware of the Kentuckians' gift). No business was transacted at the dinner, but Mr. Carter said he was optimistic that North Carolina would be sending some cotton Cuba's way. One thing was clear, Mr. Carter said: Mr. Castro is more than eager to do business with the United States. ''He's on a mission,'' Mr. Carter said, alluding to the lavish treatment bestowed on the group. Mr. Castro asked a group of Virginians, who were treated to a large lunch, about how their state was settled during the colonial period. He also talked about soybeans and tobacco, asking his guests where they thought the tobacco industry was headed. ''He very much cared about improving nutrition, that was a very strong focus,'' said Thomas Sleight, who works for the Virginia Department of Agriculture. The Virginians, who presented Mr. Castro with an apothecary jar from Colonial Williamsburg, hope to sell Cuba some soy. The Cuban charm offensive also played out on Thursday evening during a gala performance at the Karl Marx Theater that featured the country's star performers. Chucho Valdes, who recently won a Grammy, played the piano; Cuba's National Ballet performed a scene from ''Swan Lake'' and Omara Portuondo, Ibrahim Ferrer and Compay Segundo, of the Buena Vista Social Club, belted out a few songs. Richard Munoz, a Tampa native who represents several well-known and emerging Cuban entertainers, attended the event and said he was working to persuade major corporations, like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, to sponsor Cuban performers in the United States. ''They want to know how they can help the Cuban people,'' Mr. Munoz said. ''Help the artists. The door is wide open right now.'' Havana Memo | Cuba Treats U.S. Visitors To Cigars and Prime Fidel |
1427204_1 | that the coming changes to special education ''will be more modest.'' While neither the Bush administration nor lawmakers have entirely embraced the presidential commission's report, which was released in July, its suggestions have become the springboard for discussions among policy makers about the future of special education, which serves 6.5 million children nationally at a cost of $78 billion a year. ''We're too focused on the process, and not enough on outcome,'' said Robert H. Pasternack, the federal assistant secretary for special education, echoing the report. The report concluded that while the 1975 special education law succeeded in establishing the right to an education for all disabled children, the quality of the instruction was often poor. Misidentification of children was common, and education plans were largely driven by the fear of lawsuits. The commission proposed treating all but the most severely handicapped children as general education students who need extra services, rather than as a separate category of children altogether. The report builds on last year's education law, which requires disabled students to take the same standardized tests as other students. Schools where most disabled children chronically fail to make adequate progress on those tests face severe penalties that could include closing them down. While teaching handicapped and nondisabled children in the same classrooms, known as mainstreaming, is not new, the current discussions seek to break down other barriers separating the two groups. In Long Beach, Calif., a model of the administration's goals, teachers assigned to handicapped children coach all students who appear to be having trouble. The approach is best summed up by Judy Elliott, who has retooled Long Beach's special education system in her three years as assistant superintendent. ''If you focus on educating the kids,'' Dr. Elliott said, ''compliance will take care of itself.'' Advocacy groups support the report's call for getting help to children earlier, but say they are concerned by some of its other recommendations. They criticized the commission for its silence on what is becoming the thorniest issue among lawmakers and advocates: how to handle handicapped students who act up in class. One proposal in Congress would remove special protections for handicapped children, allowing schools to swiftly expel those who are disruptive. Paul Marchand, head of the national Association for Retarded Citizens, said he was dismayed that the commission did not support full federal financing for special education, but that it did propose a | 'Modest' Changes Seen for Special Education |
1425512_5 | When the rebel commander requested a Scrabble game, it was a clue that the Burnhams were still alive. ''The Abu Sayyaf don't play Scrabble,'' Colonel Sabban said. In late May, Mr. Sabaya dispatched his aide to buy a new backpack -- the one that was outfitted with transponders to help track the rebel. The Americans were also able to intercept Mr. Sabaya's cellular and satellite telephone calls. In June, armed with intelligence from the Philippine informants and American surveillance, Philippine forces focused their rescue efforts in the jungles of Zamboanga del Norte in Mindanao, 500 miles south of here. On June 7, Philippine troops came upon Mr. Sabaya's group and opened fire, apparently killing the two hostages. Most of the rebels, including Mr. Sabaya, escaped. Relieved of the burden of planning around the safety of the hostages, Philippine and American commanders stepped up their efforts to capture the senior Abu Sayyaf leader. Their best chance came two weeks later, when Mr. Sabaya used a cellphone to call the captain of a 30-foot boat, the Kingfisher, that had been bringing him supplies for two months. Mr. Sabaya was unaware that the boat had been bought and registered by the Philippine marines as part of their covert operation. Mr. Sabaya ordered the captain to pick him up at Parang Parang at 3 a.m. the next day, Philippine and American officials said, The Philippine officers had only one boat available for the operation, the Mapun, which had once belonged to Abu Sayyaf. So they turned to the Americans for help. American commanders said that they would provide two inflatable boats, and that Navy Seal squads would go along, Philippine officers said. That evening, when the Kingfisher set out to pick up Mr. Sabaya, it was trailed by the Mapun and the two Seal boats, 35-foot heavy-duty inflatable craft with powerful motors. At 3 a.m., Mr. Sabaya and his men stepped aboard the Kingfisher. The plan was for the Mapun to pull alongside, and for the Philippine marines to seize the Kingfisher and arrest the men on board. But in the darkness and choppy waters the Mapun rammed the Kingfisher, colliding near where Mr. Sabaya was sitting. The rebels started firing, but to little effect; many of them ended up in the water. Most were fished out, but not Mr. Sabaya. His bullet-riddled body disappeared into the shark-infested waters and has never been found. | Philippine Officials Detail the Trap, Set With U.S. Help, That Snared a Rebel Leader |
1425707_0 | Restoring the skyline is a bold stroke, and the right one. All new buildings in Lower Manhattan these past 30 years have been foothills to Yamasaki's minimalist sculpture. The proposed twin towers restrike the balance. And a 2,100-foot broadcast tower could be a spectacular cap and show New York at its finest. David Sokol Peter Stamberg New York | Thinking Big |
1425748_0 | To the Editor: I commend Jonathan Black for taking his sons to Italy. We took our 7- and 3-year-old daughters to Tuscany in 2000 and can report that gelato from Snack Bar L'Angelo on the piazza in Sinalunga, the hill town where we rented an apartment, is something they still talk about. That and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But my elder daughter, Elizabeth, was also fascinated by the Signorelli frescoes depicting the life of St. Benedict in the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore near Asciano, although she found some of the scenes ''scary.'' I wondered if it was a fluke, but a few days later, in a small church in Montepulciano, she lingered behind us to spend more time gazing on the paintings. The lesson? Don't assume you know what your children will appreciate in Italy. DAVID DEKOK Harrisburg, Pa. | A Child's View |
1425951_2 | After Thomas Bailey, who founded Janus in 1969, stepped down as chairman in July, Mr. Whiston helped broker a deal that will eliminate the holding company and combine all of Stilwell's properties, which include the Berger family of mutual funds, into one company called Janus Capital. The changes take effect on Dec. 31. Mr. Whiston says he is convinced that Janus's growth funds and Berger's value offerings will eventually give him the material he needs to compete more effectively with industry leaders. ''The restructuring gives us the ability to truly grow a global franchise,'' he said. The real measure of Mr. Whiston's success, however, will be his ability to restructure the way Janus manages those troubled flagship growth portfolios. That, in turn, will depend on how he manages two Janus veterans: Helen Young Hayes, Janus's managing director of investments, and James Goff, the director of research. Janus has always been a stock picker's fund company. Willful portfolio managers were proud of their research and were encouraged to take outsized bets on companies that appeared to have the most growth potential. In the boom years, the company locked onto stocks like America Online and Cisco Systems, and its funds rode them to dazzling gains. But as technology spending began to dry up in 2000, those big bets turned to big losses in an eye blink. ''We weren't playing enough defense,'' Mr. Whiston conceded. ''We were caught in the mania of the market.'' Ms. Hayes, who made her career managing the Janus Worldwide and Overseas funds, declined to be interviewed. But Mr. Goff said the firm had undergone a major soul-searching. ''Helen and I are thinking hard about what we did wrong and thoughtfully and methodically trying to correct those problems,'' he said. As a first step, the firm is breaking its team of growth-oriented portfolio managers and analysts into smaller groups that can discuss stocks and share information more informally. In the past, Mr. Goff said, group meetings of 30 or more made it difficult to challenge ideas or suggest new ones. Next, Janus is encouraging portfolio managers to be better mentors to young analysts and is bringing in accounting experts to train the research staff to spot trouble in company financial statements. Peg Thompson, the assistant director of research, has come up with a two-sheet checklist of red flags -- like building inventories or changing assumptions about pension liabilities -- | Investing; After the Fall, a Reinvented Janus |
1425507_2 | part of the solution.'' Mexico's government says 500 megawatts represents perhaps 2 percent of its energy needs in the coming decade. If the dam threatened ''a jewel of Mayan culture that must surely be preserved, we'll rethink things,'' Mr. Acosta said. ''If a site can be rescued, we'll figure out how.'' ''This is Mexico's mightiest river,'' he added, and it runs through ''an underdeveloped, impoverished part of the country. If we work together responsibly, we can help the region, not hurt it.'' But Alberto López Wario, director of archeological preservation at the National Institute of Anthropology and History here, said the only plans he had seen from the electricity commission called for a 330-foot-high dam at Boca de Cerro. That is, by international standards, a very big dam, close to half the size of the biggest in the United States, like the Hoover, Grand Coulee and Glen Canyon Dams. Mr. López Wario said plans for the dam would be reviewed by the federal Environmental Ministry and his institute. They could be rejected or modified in the interests of preservation, ecology or politics. ''The possible outcomes include saying no,'' he said. ''If we say no, the project won't happen.'' ''The project will be realized if, in the end, we can preserve the remains'' of Mayan culture along the river, he said. If built, the dam might take as long as nine years to complete, giving archaeologists a chance to salvage what they could. A dam of any size could help the government patrol the Usumacinta, where bandits, smugglers and other outcasts now rule. Many archaeologists, along with outfitters who once took tourists up the Usumacinta, were driven off the river by a series of armed attacks five years ago. The river is a route for migrants from all over Latin American and, increasingly, Asia, who pay smugglers for passage into Mexico and, they hope, the United States. It has also served cocaine traffickers and illegal loggers. The river also marks the eastern edge of territory being claimed in the name of rural rebels, like the Zapatistas, who rose up in Chiapas in 1994 as champions of the area's impoverished indigenous people. The Zapatistas claim that President Vicente Fox wants to turn Chiapas into a kind of amusement park for rich tourists, in which Indians and peasants would be no more than animals in a zoo. Dams provide about one-fifth of the | Mexico Weighs Electricity Against History |
1425521_1 | be based on whether it had been ''demonstrably established'' that the I.R.A. was making ''a real and genuine transition that is proceeding to a conclusion.'' In answer to a question, he explained that the language meant dismantlement and disarmament. The resignation of Mr. Trimble and the other Ulster Unionist ministers would effectively topple the government because it functions under arrangements requiring balanced voting from both Protestant and Catholic parties. Britain would then have the option of scheduling new elections in March or reinstituting direct rule from London. Today's meeting was called by Mr. Donaldson and his hard-line followers in the party who have been opponents of the Northern Ireland peace accord from its beginning in 1998. They contend that Sinn Fein, the largest Catholic party, should not be allowed to participate in the leadership of the Northern Ireland Assembly and other government bodies while its guerrilla force, the Irish Republican Army, remains armed and implicated in military activities. Today's challenge was the ninth such meeting in which Mr. Trimble, each time by narrowing margins, has succeeded in keeping leadership of the party and, by extension, in seeing that the power-sharing government he leads stays up and running. Today was the first time he had to give in so visibly to his critics, many of whom surrounded him at the news conference table that he traditionally has commanded alone. The peace agreement created equal-opportunity arrangements in Northern Ireland's political, institutional and professional life to try to halt a cycle of sectarian violence that had cost more than 3,600 lives over the preceding three decades. It balanced promises for Catholics, who are known as nationalists and republicans because of their wish to see Northern Ireland become part of the Irish Republic, with guarantees to Protestants, who are known as loyalists or unionists because of their desire to keep their land part of the United Kingdom. Unionist support for the agreement has been waning, however, with grass roots Protestants saying that the peace deal has disproportionately benefited Catholics and sold out their interests. In most of the confrontations, the Ulster Unionist rebels' complaint has been that Sinn Fein should be expelled because the I.R.A. refused to begin disarming. Now that the I.R.A. has staged two symbolic secret acts of disarmament, the dissidents have moved on to other complaints to justify their hostility to Sinn Fein. They cite the capture of three I.R.A. men | Irish Protestants Threaten to Quit Power-Sharing Government |
1422537_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Sorting Through the Confusion Over Estrogen'' (Sept. 3): One group still being studied in the controversy over hormone replacement therapy consists of women well past menopausal age who have had hysterectomies. (I am in this group.) I have been taking conjugated estrogens for many years, not for relief of symptoms but for the now questionable benefits for heart, bone, Alzheimer's prevention, etc. As a result of the flurry of negative data recently in the news media, I have discontinued the medication, but am not sure that I have done the right thing. It's more confusing than amusing. How's a women to know? PHYLLIS BOGEN Cresskill, N.J. | Mixed Estrogen Signals |
1422590_0 | An article yesterday about an interview with Jacques Chirac including his perspectives on the Iraqi threat of weapons of mass destruction misstated the timing of Israel's destruction of Iraq's French-supplied nuclear reactor. It occurred in 1981, not 1979. | Corrections |
1422499_0 | THREATS AND RESPONSES | For Expressions Large and Small |
1422474_2 | F.B.I. Issues Terror Warning The F.B.I. has issued an advisory to local authorities, warning of possible terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, but senior government officials said they were not based on credible threats. A17 Wiretap Powers In Question A three-judge panel of the nation's most secret appellate court met to consider a request from the Justice Department for broad, new wiretap powers. A12 Committee Suggests New Coins The United States Mint has suggested in a report that the design of the penny, dime, nickel and half dollar be updated, one coin a year, over the next four years. A22 H.M.O.'s to Quit Medicare Health maintenance organizations serving 200,000 elderly and disabled people announced that they would pull out of Medicare next year, raising to 2.4 million the number of beneficiaries who have been dropped by H.M.O.'s since 1998. A22 Abuse Suit Ends in Settlement The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, R.I., said that it had reached a $13.5 million settlement with 36 people who say they were molested as youngsters by members of the clergy. A22 NEW YORK/REGION B1-10 To Prepare or Not For a Possible Attack? Though some people may not want to admit to taking precautions for fear of seeming paranoid, parents and others are weighing the scary possibilities and quietly pursuing a strategy of personal preparedness against bioterrorism or a nuclear attack. Others, whether blasé, fatalistic or simply unsure about what actions to take, see little use in mounting a personal defense. B1 Last-Minute Campaigning H. Carl McCall and Tom Golisano dashed from one corner of New York State to another, one seeking momentum and the other fighting for his political life, in the last day before they compete in their parties' primary elections for governor. B1 Immigrant Charged With Fraud Regina Norman Danson, a West African woman whose plea for political asylum drew national attention in 1997 after she said she feared genital mutilation in Ghana, was arrested in Queens yesterday on charges that she lied under oath and entered the United States with a fraudulent passport. B3 9/11 Victim to Leave Hospital Sadly, wryly, Deborah Mardenfeld describes herself as first in, last out. First in, because she was among the first to be hospitalized on Sept. 11; she was Jane Doe No. 1 at New York University Downtown Hospital. Last out, because she appears to be the last of the gravely injured to leave a | NEWS SUMMARY |
1422449_0 | Many Brazilians have regarded the Amazon jungle as a barrier to progress that should be replaced as quickly as possible with ranches and farms. But in this remote corner of Brazil's most isolated state, people increasingly see the rain forest as a solution to the region's chronic poverty. In one sign of that change, peasants are again being encouraged to cultivate rubber and Brazil nut trees, the twin pillars of the economy here before major deforestation began in the 1970's. Seeking to capitalize on the growing market in Brazil and abroad for environmentally friendly products, forest dwellers have also formed cooperatives that have begun to produce high-end furniture, medicines derived from local plants, and even condoms. ''We're going back to the future,'' said Carlos Vicente, secretary of forestry and extractive activities for the government of Brazil's most isolated state, Acre. ''We recognize that the forest can be a source of wealth if used wisely but that the success of economic activities based on the forest is directly linked to the viability of the forest itself.'' That is exactly the attitude that organizers of the recent United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development would like to see elsewhere in the Amazon, home of the world's largest tropical rain forest, and they are betting heavily on the experiment here. Acre's pilot program has the support of the state government, which signed a $108 million loan agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank in June, and of international organizations like Environmental Defense and the World Wildlife Fund. The program has its critics, though, who contend that it makes no long-term economic sense. The focal point of the effort is a 3,900-square-mile area called an ''extractive reserve'' near the borders with Peru and Bolivia. It is named for Chico Mendes, the environmental leader assassinated in 1988, who was born and raised in this area. Logging within the reserve is tightly controlled in terms of volume as well as species to meet certification standards set by the Forest Stewardship Council, a private environmental monitoring group, which in turn guarantees a higher price when the wood is marketed. The raw tree trunks, along with other products of the jungle, are taken to a ''forest industry'' complex here, which includes a plant that processes 3.5 tons of rubber a day. The Italian tire company Pirelli recently agreed to buy the project's entire rubber output and has begun manufacturing | Discovering Amazon Rain Forest's Silver Lining |
1424358_1 | flee not because he used an alias, Dr. Hermansen said, but because his surname has several legitimate variant spellings. This anecdote and Dr. Hermansen's company are timely right now because of a quiet but forceful undertow in the area of airport security. For a year, business travelers and others have said that the so-called airport security hassle -- especially those additional perp pat-downs and intrusive searches that occur seemingly without reason at the gate after one has already successfully negotiated the regular security checkpoint -- is a real impediment to any robust resumption of business travel by air. Inexorably, and under intense pressure from hard-pressed airlines and business-travel consumer groups, the federal government is signaling a more welcoming attitude toward the idea of a ''trusted traveler'' program that would allow frequent fliers to be profiled in a registry, and to use an identification card to avoid many of the extra security searches. Last Tuesday, Adm. James M. Loy, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, testified before a Senate committee and spoke of his plan ''to bring common sense into the aviation security area'' with ''aggressive steps to reduce the hassle factor at airports.'' Signaling a relaxation of the formerly adamantine federal opposition to passenger profiling, Mr. Loy said that a trusted traveler system like the one proposed by the industry would ''balance the needs of security with common sense for those who agree to register for this program and submit to a detailed background check.'' He added, ''By allowing the registered travelers to pass more quickly into the secured areas, this will ease congestion'' and enable screeners to ''reduce the hassle factor for those registered travelers.'' Currently, Dr. Hermansen's company -- which was once so closely involved with federal intelligence agencies that it avoided publicity -- is working among four corporate teams under contract to the Transportation Security Administration. The plan is to devise a workable trusted traveler system that manages to accommodate the strong objection to any form of ethnic or religious profiling that has been a hallmark of the federal government's approach to airport security. Given the fact that a worldwide network of Islamic religious fanatics are generally acknowledged to pose the major threat to air safety, this is no easy task. One crucial component of a system that depends on registering travelers to essentially vouch for their general trustworthiness, however, will be a need to make | What's in a Name? A Good Bit, Really |
1424347_0 | When OPEC ministers meet in Osaka on Thursday, the world will be reminded not just of the cartel's power on the global stage, but also the group's sway over its Japanese hosts. Despite spending decades developing other sources of energy, Japan, which must import almost all its oil, is more dependent on Middle East crude than it was in 1973, when the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries organized its first worldwide embargo. As this oil shock rippled through Japan's economy, the globe's second largest, prices spiraled upward and panicked consumers hoarded everyday goods like detergent, sugar and toilet paper. Memories of that event, considered ancient history to most Japanese, are returning to the forefront as talk of a new Middle East war grows. Japan's economy, stuck in a decade-long funk, relies heavily on exports of autos, steel and other goods for growth. With OPEC production quotas at 11-year lows, a disruption of the oil flow from the Middle East could idle Japanese factories and throw Japan back into recession. Middle East oil is so crucial to the economy that it heavily colors Japan's role overseas. Reluctant to alienate oil-producing countries, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has, nonetheless, hedged his support for President Bush's campaign to attack Iraq. In the end, though, Japan may offer only moral support, analysts say. Japan remains confident that it can secure enough oil to offset any temporary loss of Middle East crude. The country has a formidable stockpile of fuel, enough to last 171 days. Lawmakers also assume some producers would increase output to make up for losses elsewhere, something the Saudis did during the Persian Gulf war. The spot market is another, more expensive option. Many critics, though, say that counting on such resources offers a false sense of security. Former Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata remembers how oil embargoes in the 1970's brought the global economy to its knees. Recalling the panicked buying in Japan and the long lines at American gas stations, he said policy makers and oil companies had done a poor job finding alternatives to Middle East oil. ''For a country which consumes so much electricity, it's unusual and very dangerous to rely so highly on Mideast oil,'' Mr. Hata said in an interview. The events of 20 years ago so shook Mr. Hata that during the summer he wears business suits with half sleeves as a way to urge citizens | Why Japan Steps Gingerly in the Middle East |
1424308_2 | like the hum of bagpipes that underlies the notes. Dr. Gregory runs samples of speech through equipment that performs a kind of wave analysis known as fast Fourier transform analysis, which detects patterns in waves. In earlier research, Dr. Gregory compared the accommodation patterns of 25 guests on the ''Larry King Live'' television show. In an analysis of 25 interviews recorded between April 1992 and July 1993, the researchers found that Mr. King's voice changed far more with President George Bush and the ''60 Minutes'' host Mike Wallace than with the director and actor Spike Lee and Vice President Dan Quayle. The process of accommodation also works between men and women, Dr. Gregory says: Mr. King was hummed into submission by Elizabeth Taylor. ''People don't know what to make of his work; it's quirky,'' said Dr. Allan Mazur, a professor of public affairs at Syracuse University who has studied nonverbal communication and social status. Praising the discovery of what he called ''a very subtle, subtle clue'' to human interaction, he said, ''It's remarkable how well it seems to work.'' Of course, many seeming correlations are actually coincidences, and odd theories for political success abound, like the idea that the tallest candidate wins the popular vote (true in all elections since 1952 except those in 1972 and 1976). Dr. Ronald N. Bracewell, an expert in Fourier transform and an emeritus professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, said he was not so sure that Fourier wave analysis could be so readily applied to social science. ''It's very interesting,'' he said, but ''experience tells us that when you discover something brand new, it's not always right.'' In the new paper, the researchers took three recorded samples from presidential debates and created a score that described how much each subject's voice varied. The vocal data ''predicted the popular vote outcomes in all eight elections,'' the researchers found. In the 2000 election, Al Gore's voice changed less than that of George W. Bush, and Mr. Gore won the popular vote; the Gregory analysis does not appear to be affected by Florida elections law or the Supreme Court. Dr. Gregory noted that ''the people who hear the debate aren't the only ones who vote.'' But he said that the pattern they found was ''also an absolute aspect of an individual's personality,'' and that the dominant candidates gave off ''a certain charisma and confidence and self-esteem in | Research Brings a New Dimension to 'a Candidate's Voice' |
1424373_0 | David Grene, whose translations of ancient Greek spoke with such clarity that the writer Saul Bellow suggested he was on a first-name basis with Sophocles and Aristophanes, died on Sept. 10 in Chicago. He was 89. Mr. Grene's two residences reflected his seemingly separate lives: for more than 50 years, he spent half his year on a working farm (he did the work) in Ireland and the other half teaching at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought with luminaries like T. S. Eliot, Marc Chagall and Mr. Bellow. To him, the two worlds were one. He said that one reason he was drawn to the Greek historian Herodotus, whose ''History'' he translated, was his shrewd advice on farming. In earlier days, when he owned a farm in the Chicago suburbs, he would show up with mud and manure on his boots to teach classics and literature classes that continued to attract students long after they had received their doctorates. Chances were that he had been on a morning ride on one of the spirited, maverick horses he had bought cheap and then trained himself. But his scholarship was of such quality that ''The Complete Greek Tragedies,'' which he edited with Richmond Lattimore and which was first published in 1954 by the University of Chicago Press, sold more than one million copies over many printings. He did many of the translations. When the Herodotus book was printed by the University of Chicago Press in 1987, Peter Levi in The New York Times Book Review called Mr. Grene ''one of those who have made the classics live for this generation.'' Hannah Arendt, who like another fellow University of Chicago intellectual, Allan Bloom, liked to sit in on Mr. Grene's lectures, said she had known no one with the innate sense of Greek that Mr. Grene had. William David Grene was born in Dublin on April 13, 1913. Half Irish and half English, he said the seemingly odd spelling of his name was the way Chaucer had spelled it in the 14th century. His father, an accountant, ran the Dublin office of an English insurance company. He was a superb student, learning Latin at 8 and Greek at 10. But the joy of his youth was summers spent in County Tipperary on the farm of a distant cousin where he loved to herd cows. He won scholarships and academic medals and | David Grene, Colorful Expert On the Classics, Is Dead at 89 |
1426483_3 | had decided to offer the seminar on evil because he had been thinking about the subject for some time, and he was also writing about it. ''Evil,'' he said. ''Oh, lord. It's a lifetime project.'' He said he had taught similar courses on modernity and the problem of evil to undergraduates and graduate students at Harvard, but not to freshmen only. In the seminar room today, Professor West seemed nurturing, sympathetic, eager for his charges to ask their own questions and find their own way. He did not try to explain the more than 300 pages of Plato's ''Republic'' that the students read this week, so much as to introduce them to Plato as a human being known by his nickname who wrote the classic work partly to make sense of the death of his own mentor and teacher, and he made the students aware of the dialogic or the back-and-forth style that Plato used. ''Plato regarded Socrates as the most just man he knew, the most loving, the most intelligent man he'd ever met,'' he told his class. ''But then he was put to death and Plato is shaken. This particular text is shot through with a sense of loss, indignation and mourning.'' It was an idea the students could relate to, said Rose H. Xu, a seminar participant from Cupertino, Calif., who plans to major in molecular biology and then to attend medical school. ''I can imagine that Socrates's disciples were as taken with him as we are with Professor West,'' she said. ''While Professor West mentioned the molding of individuals and fostering of original ideas, I also thought of how every one of us in the class probably is just waiting to offer something special to the rest of world and that Professor West is the very means to that. Here he is, one of the greatest minds and educators of this day, giving us the tools we need to become strong individuals. Very cool to think about.'' But Plato the person was just the base. Professor West went on to talk about Plato's conception of how philosopher kings should rule the world and how he believed that they also must also return to the cave after they are educated. He tried to get the students to think about that in terms of their own lives. ''For those few persons who make it out of the cave | After Storm, Scholar Starts at Princeton With a Whisper |
1426587_0 | Responding to longstanding requests from families of several hundred people presumed to have been kidnapped and killed during the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985, the Ministry of Justice has agreed to open police records from that era. The government has already paid more than $10 million in indemnities to about 250 victims of official repression. The new policy of ''unrestricted access'' for relatives and human rights groups is intended to help them find clues to the fate of those who disappeared. Larry Rohter (NYT) | World Briefing | Americas: Brazil: Files On The Missing To Be Opened |
1426434_0 | A photographer who captured images of the World Trade Center from its construction more than 30 years ago to the day the towers fell, 11 scientists whose work ranges from self-changing robots to earthquake-resistant buildings, and an economist who explored executive compensation were among the 24 winners of the $500,000 ''genius awards'' announced yesterday. The awards are given annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for creative accomplishment in various fields. The 14 men and 10 women who won this year ranged in age from 29 to 60 and included those in the arts, sciences and academia. The winners will receive an annual check of $100,000 during five years, to be used however they want. The winners, informed by foundation officials by telephone last week, expressed a combination of astonishment, delight and gratitude in later interviews. MacArthur fellows are secretly nominated, so the awards usually come as a complete surprise. Many winners said the money would allow them creative freedom or generate publicity for organization fund-raising. ''I'm just out of breath, out of words,'' said Camilo José Vergara, 58, the photographer. He was out shopping for a mattress on Friday when his cellphone retrieved a message that Jonathan F. Fanton, the MacArthur Foundation's president, had called his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He went home, he said, in dazed anticipation. ''I'll just live with the money,'' Mr. Vergara said. ''I have two kids in college. For the first time I can look at a year and say I have enough to get through the year.'' Mr. Vergara, whose work often chronicles the changes in poor urban neighborhoods, currently has an exhibition of World Trade Center photographs at the New-York Historical Society. He began photographing the towers sometime in 1970, he recalled, with the construction cranes behind them. Including the day they collapsed, he shot the towers over the years, from different vantage points inside and outside the city, at different times of day. The foundation said his work constituted ''a unique visual study.'' Brian Tucker, 56, a seismologist and founder and president of GeoHazards International in Palo Alto, Calif., said his MacArthur money would ''make a huge difference in morale and open doors for us.'' His company goes to poor countries to help local organizations design and construct buildings, especially hospitals and schools, that can withstand earthquakes. Among the three writers who won was | Winners of MacArthur Grants Announced |
1420838_0 | A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences has helped clarify the risks posed to human health and the environment by the genetic manipulation of animals to produce food, medicines or other products. The report makes it clear that one issue of great concern to many consumers -- whether genetically engineered foods are safe to eat or drink -- is no great problem. The greater danger lies in the possibility that genetically modified fish or insects might escape into the environment and disrupt or wipe out existing species. These issues need to be vigorously addressed by federal regulators, whose jurisdiction and authority in such matters is often murky. The report was commissioned by the Food and Drug Administration and prepared by a panel of experts convened by the academy, the nation's most prestigious scientific organization. The panel did not assess the potential benefits of animal biotechnology but rather focused on the risks and their relative importance. The biggest worry was that genetically engineered insects, fish, shellfish or other mobile animals might escape and reproduce in the natural environment, to the detriment of their natural counterparts. The F.D.A. is already considering an application to market transgenic salmon whose genes have been altered to accelerate their growth. Should such supersalmon escape from fish farms into the natural environment, as most experts consider inevitable, they might compete more successfully for food and mates than wild salmon, driving the wild stocks into decline. That danger can be mitigated by rendering the supersalmon sterile and too fragile to flourish in the wild, but such modifications may not be foolproof. The F.D.A., which primarily regulates food and drugs, has little background in such environmental matters, so federal regulators will need to combine their powers and expertise to ensure prudent regulation. Genetically modified foods -- say, meat with more protein and less fat, or eggs with less cholesterol -- seem to pose fewer problems. The panel expressed some concern that genetically modified foods might contain proteins that could trigger allergic reactions in a small percentage of people. The probability of such allergic reactions was deemed low but the impact on susceptible individuals could be comparable to allergic reactions to existing foods, which are sometimes severe. Such reactions might not show up until products are on the market. This may be a risk that has to be accepted if the nation wants genetically improved foods. Labeling such | Ranking Risks of Gene-Altered Animals |
1420829_3 | analysts in the last two years and an additional 95 are due to join the ministry soon. The recruits, all recent graduates, start out by gathering statistics, studying investment regulations, intellectual property rights and antidumping legislation. ''It's a new discipline that never existed before,'' Ms. Spíndola said. ''They learn on the job by supporting negotiators in the field, and after two or three years they're ready to negotiate themselves.'' As times are hard and Brazil does not have a lot of money to throw at the problem, the new posts have been culled from other governmental bodies like those dealing with coffee, sugar and alcohol that are now considered largely obsolete. When their training is over, they are assigned to negotiating teams under Ms. Spíndola's command or at the foreign or agriculture ministries. ''It's still very few people, compared to the rest of the world,'' said Ms. Spíndola. Brazil's negotiating team might be small, but it has already shown itself capable of getting results, sometimes against the odds and particularly on the multilateral battleground of the W.T.O. Last year, Brazil finally won a five-year dispute with Canada over export subsidies to their regional jet manufacturers, Embraer of Brazil and Bombardier of Canada. This month, Brazil filed two complaints at the W.T.O. against United States subsidies to its cotton farmers and against European Union subsidies to its sugar industry, and has already won support from Argentina, Australia, Thailand and several African nations. Even without subsidies, cotton is one of the fastest growing sectors of Brazilian agribusiness, and the country has been the world's largest sugar producer for years. The Foreign Ministry has set up an office to deal solely with such complaints and trade disputes, while the Agriculture Ministry has created a Department for International Trade Negotiations. ''In agriculture, Brazil is already a world player,'' said Pedro Camargo Neto, the department's head. ''Brazil must lead the way for South America in the F.T.A.A. negotiations, and our biggest challenge will be to get all types of agricultural export subsidies abolished at the W.T.O.'' Although not numerous, Brazil's negotiators were not merely ''quixotic dreamers,'' he said. ''We must not compare our team with how many people Brussels or Washington have,'' he said. ''We must compare what we have now with what we had in the past, and, looking at it that way, it's obvious to me that we're headed in the right direction.'' | Brazil Builds Up Its Trade-Talks Team |
1420845_1 | character, they have devised a four-year, $133-million plan, financed by the French state and the European Union, to demolish the causeway and restore the natural flow of currents. This would theoretically reverse the spread of sands that have created salt marsh flats up to about 200 yards from the ramparts that surround the mount. But in making such a change, there are more than just pilgrims' feelings to consider. There are all the merchants -- the latter-day counterparts of those who in the Middle Ages supplied the faithful with food, shelter, religious articles and souvenirs. Today, the restaurateurs, hoteliers and trinket-sellers on and near the mount cater to 3.5 million visitors a year. They don't want to lose their causeway. ''In principle, we agree with the project,'' said Jean-Yves Vételé, president of the company that operates hotels and restaurants in La Caserne, a tourist strip on the mainland side of the causeway. ''But there must first be discussions. They have to undertake something that is suited to the site.'' Philippe Unterreiner, the engineer responsible for the project, explained that the problem lies in the mount's position in a bay that has some of the world's strongest tides, dragging in roughly a million cubic yards of sand from the sea each year. The problem was aggravated in the 1960's by a dam built to prevent the tides from invading the Couesnon, the largest of three rivers that feed into the bay. The idea was to protect local farms from saltwater; a result was that the river no longer balances the effect of the tides by flushing some of the sand and silt back out to sea. In 1995, engineers in Grenoble developed a hydraulic model of the mount and the bay to enable them to test the consequences of human intervention. Government planners want to replace the dam with one that can open at high tide, letting tidal waters enter the river and collect in a reservoir to be built on adjacent farmland. At low tide, the dam will again open, allowing the collected waters to flush the bay of silt. To enable the waters to spread evenly across the bay, the planners want to replace the causeway with a slender bridge for pedestrians and shuttle buses that will ferry visitors to the mount. That would end car and tour bus access to the site (which currently offers causeway parking lots | Battle for the Future Swirls Below Soaring Towers |
1420885_5 | I talked to him.'' Owens has also been dealing with his grandmother's Alzheimer's disease, an illness that struck Mariucci's uncle as well. For two people in need of connecting, this was a sad, but important, coincidence. During the preseason, Owens filmed a public service announcement for the Alzheimer Foundation. Mariucci, seeing a maturing player, then named Owens to the 49ers' players' committee, a group of veterans that Mariucci leans on, a sort of circle of trust that informs him of the goings-on in the locker room. ''Our relationship is fun and it's cordial and it's back to where it should be,'' Mariucci said. ''We needed to get it back.'' York, the 49ers' owner, seems happy with that. ''Both of them want to win football games and they are better off if they are getting along together,'' he said. ''The fact that they've made efforts to do that is no surprise to me. T.O. is going to have a much more enjoyable year if he doesn't have the weight of everything he was carrying around last year. He's just a happier person right now. He ought to get the ball, and hopefully he'll get the ball. He'll be happy, and Steve will be happy about that.'' In the past four seasons, only the Vikings' Randy Moss's 53 touchdown receptions and the Colts' Marvin Harrison's 48 have outpaced Owens's 47. Among nonkickers the past two seasons, only the Rams' Marshall Faulk has scored more points. Owens's frustrations will be minimized, 49ers quarterback Jeff Garcia said, so long as he maintains perspective. ''When we lose it, the game becomes an effort, a chore,'' Garcia said. ''You're not having fun. When everything was brought to the public's attention, he was never able to have that sigh of relief. I'm not saying he didn't show frustration, but part of it was just him knowing how valuable he is on this football team and not always feeling used enough. ''He knows he's a difference-maker. It becomes my job to make sure he's making a difference.'' Owens says he will wait and see this season. He will celebrate as usual when he scores. He will continue to want the ball in his hands, a result he and so many others feel is a key to the 49ers' success. And Owens will freely speak his mind. ''I'm no Michael Jordan or Jerry Rice, but I'm trying to be | The 49ers' Uneasy Truce |
1420905_0 | After a week of intensive negotiations, diplomats here at the World Summit on Sustainable Development arrived at a plan early this morning that is intended to reduce poverty and preserve the earth's natural resources. The breakthrough came after diplomats worked late into the night on Tuesday to resolve a dispute over language in the conference's plan on health care for women. Also on Tuesday, Russia announced that it would ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty intended to ease global warming -- a move virtually ensuring that the treaty would go into effect despite its rejection by the United States. Canada wanted the words ''in conformity with human rights and fundamental freedoms'' linked to health care to avoid condoning practices like female genital mutilation. Representatives of developing countries initially opposed the language, but backed down this morning. ''We're very pleased,'' Kelly Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Canadian delegation, said. ''We are finished.'' The plan is meant to set the global agenda for coming years. It calls on nations to reduce by half the number of poor people who lack sanitation by 2015; to commit to the sound management of chemicals with the goal of minimizing their adverse effects on health and nature by 2020; and to reduce significantly by 2010 the number of animals and plants having endangered status. The plan calls for the reduction of agricultural subsidies in wealthy countries, which, poor nations say, protect farmers in the United States and Europe from competition. It also urges nations to promote renewable energy sources like solar and wind power as well as to expand access to energy services by the poor. Officials from the United States and the United Nations praised the document, but it was sharply assailed by environmentalists and advocates for the poor, who complained that wealthy countries had weakened the language. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell flew in late on Tuesday and will make a speech here today. The United States, along with Canada, Japan and oil-producing countries, blocked an effort by the European Union to set a target and a timetable for the conversion from oil and gas to renewable sources of energy. The Europeans had sought a commitment to ensuring that renewable energy sources would account for 15 percent of the world's total energy production by 2010. But American officials opposed the target, saying they preferred concrete action to goals that might ultimately prove meaningless. | Broad Accord Reached at Global Environment Meeting |
1420859_1 | being earmarked for the region is from the United States, where crops genetically engineered for better production are widely grown and the foods produced from them are widely consumed. The United States says that it is donating the same food Americans eat and that in any case, it has nothing else to offer. Last week, the head of the Agency for International Development visited Zambia to urge the government to distribute the American food already in the country and accept the additional supplies headed there. This week, the world food agency's director, James T. Morris, is flying into the region, seeking to allay the hungry countries' concerns. Genetically modified foods, which entered American commercial markets in the mid-1990's, have been the subject of intense international debate among environmental activists and consumer advocates, particularly in European Union countries. Critics say such foods have not been sufficiently tested. Regulators in the United States, along with many scientists, counter that extensive studies already carried out have not found any reason to believe that the products are not safe to eat. But along with fearing possible health effects, critics have said that planting genetically modified seeds could threaten the diversity of a country's plant and animal life. In Zambia's case, that could complicate and perhaps even jeopardize trade with the European Union. Such food is grown and eaten in parts of the union, but the union has generally been more circumspect. It mandates, for instance, that genetically modified foods be labeled. With its limited capacity for scientific food analysis, Zambia, now nominally free of genetically modified food, would not be able to keep modified crops separate if it did introduce them. Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland have accepted the modified food. Mozambique and Zimbabwe have insisted that corn be milled before being distributed, to eliminate any risk that genetically engineered seeds could cross-pollinate with naturally occurring seeds. But President Mwanawasa and his agriculture minister say that even if the corn were milled, too many questions remain unanswered, namely whether eating such food poses health risks. ''We may be poor and experiencing severe food shortages,'' Mr. Mwanawasa said, ''but we aren't ready to expose our people to ill-defined risks.'' At the invitation of the United States, a team of Zambian scientists will be visiting to meet with American experts on genetically modified organisms, said Mr. Mwanawasa, who added that he remained ''open to conclusive scientific evidence.'' | Zambian Leader Defends Ban On Genetically Altered Foods |
1421374_0 | The 10-day World Summit on Sustainable Development, which concluded on Wednesday in Johannesburg, angered both environmentalists and those who dismiss multilateral accords as so much globaloney. But by any standard -- let alone the often debased one of United Nations-sponsored meetings -- the gathering was honorable and reasonably successful. The agreements that were reached on ways to fight poverty while reducing environmental degradation can make a meaningful difference if the nations of the world work seriously to enforce them. The conference was diminished by the unenthusiastic participation of the United States. President Bush, alone among major world leaders, decided not to go (although he did send Secretary of State Colin Powell for a brief stop and speech). The United States, which emits 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, joined the OPEC oil cartel (in what one critic called an ''axis of oil'') to oppose clear and binding targets to increase the use of solar and wind power. By acting as a spoiler on some issues, Washington missed an opportunity to display the kind of leadership that would help it in its other international pursuits. It's not as if the issues addressed by the conference were marginal ones. The delegates grappled with such basic problems as the fact that more than 13,000 people die each day from water-related diseases, more than 80 countries have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade ago, and some 2.4 billion people live without sanitation. Also on the agenda was the grim reality that land degradation from deforestation, waste disposal and overuse of fertilizers has rendered a third of the earth's soil unfit for growing food. The meeting did not come up with instant solutions, but it did offer a conceptual framework and a series of targets for how to go about reducing health and environmental problems in the coming decade or two while promoting economic growth. In fact, the simple recognition that economic development and environmental protection can work in tandem may be the summit's greatest contribution. Lack of sanitation means not only soiling the environment but increased human disease and poverty. Agreeing to halve the number of people without sanitation by 2015 -- as the meeting did -- makes both environmental and economic sense. Another wise move was the inclusion of corporations and nongovernmental organizations in the discussion. There may be no more efficient way to cut pollution, fight disease and | Keeping Earth Fit for Development |
1421323_0 | BETWEEN reality and fantasy, boat people can manage to spend most of the year on the water. Even with just about a month of recreational boating left in the Northeast, frostbite fisherman, sailors in warmer climates and determinedly intrepid mariners manage to hang in there and out there a good part of the year. Those who do put their boats to bed for the winter manage to stay afloat just by dreaming on. In the off-season, Web sites and stores for boat equipment, both essential and optional, are for boat people what gardening catalogs are for gardeners, virtual reality sources for dreaming, scheming, plotting and spending. And with boats, both the sky and the sea are the limit. Mandatory equipment for a recreational boat, whether it is a power boat, a fishing boat, a cabin cruiser, a yacht or an open-air vessel for pulling wakeboards, is regulated by each state for inner waterways and federally by the Coast Guard. A good source for what is required is the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators, (859) 225-9487; www.nasbla.org. The National Safe Boating Council, a group of 300 American and Canadian organizations dedicated to boat safety and education, can be reached through (740) 666-3009 or www.safeboatingcouncil.org. The Coast Guard constantly updates its Web site (www.uscgboating.org or call 202-267-1060) with alerts like carbon monoxide dangers, equipment recalls, port openings and closings, and vessel safety checks, as well as providing publications on federal requirements and safety. The good news this year is that boating fatalities have been way below average through August, perhaps because of stricter waterway regulations and more sophisticated navigation equipment and lifesaving devices. Cumulative figures compiled by the Coast Guard for the last five years show an average of 136 fatalities in July. This year, July had 38. The five-year average for August is 77. This year, one was reported. Safety and navigation technology and equipment have kept pace with advances in electronics and new materials, and equipment for water sports and fishing keeps diversifying. A good source for water sports equipment, including wakeboards and snorkeling gear, is www.barts.com (800-348-5016). For a wide assortment of boating supplies and fishing gear, shoppers can try www.boatersworld.com (877-690-0004). The self-described ''world's largest marine supplier,'' West Marine, may be just that. Started in 1975 in Sunnyvale, Calif., as a mail-order source for white nylon rope, West Marine now has 220 stores, including one at | Shipping News: Boat Gear For Foul and Fair Weather |
1421323_2 | 12 West 37th Street in Manhattan; a huge paper catalog; and an extremely good Web site for shopping and information (www.westmarine.com; 800-262-8464). These sources carry everything but boats -- all the fun stuff: cooking equipment, clothes, books, videos, hats, wakeboards, clocks and, of course, bells and whistles, as well as a range of electronic navigation devices and safety essentials. Considering the possibilities, the items below, all from West Marine, are just the tip of the iceberg, a winter boating situation that the sources may have an answer for, too. Foul-Weather Gear Explorer foul-weather gear, from West Marine, is made of durable waterproof nylon with a microporous coating that lets moisture inside escape. The Explorer Breathable Jacket, $199.99, has a fleece-lined collar, hand-warmer pockets, cargo pockets for storage and a fluorescent hood with reflective tape. The Explorer Bibs, $149.99, are waterproof pants with front, side and leg cargo pockets; Velcro closures on the cuffs; and Lycra suspenders. Global Positioning System Devices An electronic G.P.S. device has a screen that gives a precise map location, barometric altitude, compass reading, and elevation and bearing information. The devices are equipped with maps of North America, and some have memory for other map information. Considered essential now for serious mariners, they are available in both fixed and hand-held versions. The hand-held Garmin GPSMAP 76, $349.99, has eight megabytes for storing optional CD-ROM information and is preloaded with worldwide cities and navigation aids, as well as with tide data for the United States. It is waterproof, it floats, and it can be used on land as well as on sea. Lifesaving Jackets and Devices Nobody wants to wear big bulky bearlike life jackets when there are newer options, better fitting nylon vests and harnesses in a range qualified for every type of boat and for infants, big children and adults. A Mustang Kid's Life Jacket vest has a collar grab handle and is approved by the Coast Guard. The infant size is $49.99; larger sizes are $54.99, at West Marine. Man, woman or child overboard needs help fast. Traditional buoy rings, thrown from the boat, are not as easy to hold onto as newer Lifeslings and horseshoe buoys. Lifeslings, floating retrieval lines attached to a flotation collar, are made for all types of boats. Horseshoe buoys without retrieval lines are made of closed-cell foam covered with vinyl, and can be used on any kind of boat. | Shipping News: Boat Gear For Foul and Fair Weather |
1421302_0 | Techies know about Bluetooth, a digital system that lets electronic devices communicate with each other without a cord running between them (though only over about 30 feet). That's more than enough for the inside of a car, where increasingly there are a lot of devices joining the buzz -- mobile phones, portable hand-held computers, laptops. Someday cellphones may function as modems in cars, bringing in video signals, for example, to be transferred to an onboard player system. But as DaimlerChrysler begins offering UConnect, a Bluetooth-based communication system, in the 2003 model year, its emphasis is on something needed in the here and now -- hands-free telephoning. Bluetooth is essentially radio, operating on an unlicensed broadcast band. UConnect can use it to let an ordinary hand-held cellphone, laid down casually on the seat, work with systems in the car. The driver dials the phone with voice commands and carries on a conversation by talking into a receiver installed in the car. The answering voice comes through the car's built-in speaker system. UConnect has other tricks -- storing up to 32 numbers in an address book, transferring a call from a built-in car phone to a mobile phone, working with multiple phones. It will be available for the Chrysler PT Cruiser, Dodge trucks and sport utility vehicles, some Jeep models and Chrysler minivans. The suggested retail price is $299. Other automakers, including BMW and Saab, will offer Bluetooth in the next year, and new uses for it are on the drawing board. MICHELLE KREBS DRIVING: BELLS & WHISTLES | Digital Link For Car Talk |
1423640_1 | daughter of an entrepreneurial Greek-American family, only to discover at 14, in the office of a Manhattan physician, that she is a hermaphrodite -- or, more precisely, a pseudohermaphrodite, a sufferer of 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. ''To the extent that fetal hormones affect brain chemistry and histology, I've got a male brain,'' explains Cal, the man Callie decides to become after she learns the truth and the narrator of ''Middlesex,'' Jeffrey Eugenides's expansive and radiantly generous second novel. ''But I was raised as a girl.'' Eugenides's first novel, ''The Virgin Suicides'' (1993), was a dreamy, slender book about the gulf in understanding between the adolescent boys in a Michigan suburb and the five daughters of a strict Roman Catholic couple living in their neighborhood. The boys fill that gulf with romantic obsession, a beast that thrives in a vacuum, and the girls, stricken with a fatal loneliness, die by their own hands like a bevy of unlucky fairy tale princesses. ''Middlesex'' may be an entirely different sort of book -- it's longer, more discursive and funnier, for a start -- but it's equally preoccupied with rifts. There's the gap between male and female, obviously, but also between Greek and WASP, black and white, the old world and the new, the silver spoon and the sluggish sperm. Finally, there is the tug of war between destiny and free will -- an age-old concern of Greek storytellers, as every college freshman learns, reborn in the theories advanced by evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology, at least in its popular incarnation -- which seems to get more popular every day -- keeps chipping away at the garden-variety humanism espoused by most novelists. That's why it's surprising so few of them (at least within the genre of literary fiction) have bothered to take notice of it. Viewed through a sociobiological lens, infidelity, the novel's favorite meat, is transformed from the stuff of betrayal and moral failing to the mere playing out of a Darwinian reproductive imperative; despair springs from an inherited defect in the regulation of neurochemicals, not from an existential apprehension of the absurdity of the human condition. The tangled parks and gardens that have long been the novelist's stamping grounds are being bulldozed to make way for sleek, sterile industrial complexes where, in cataloging each molecule in the human genome, scientists may ultimately be able to tell us which gene caused Anna Karenina to cheat | My Big Fat Greek Gender Identity Crisis |
1423962_3 | of a country where the army was disciplined, the women didn't have to wear headscarves, bills were paid promptly and, as a senior French official said, ''a state was being built.'' Mr. Hussein, in turn, presented himself as an Arab Charles De Gaulle. France developed a closer relationship with Baghdad than any other Western country. It was building an Iraqi nuclear reactor when Israeli warplanes destroyed it in a 1981 raid designed to thwart Mr. Hussein's nuclear ambitions (Mr. Chirac had approved the nuclear cooperation agreement). France, along with Russia, supplied Iraq with the bulk of its weaponry during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 broke the bonds. France sent 10,000 troops to fight in the American-led coalition, along with tanks, combat aircraft and ships. But when the war ended, France struggled to rebuild the relationship with Baghdad, often differing with the United States on how much to punish Iraq. It had billions of dollars invested there, and Iraq owed it billions more. In 1994, when American troops were rushed to the region after Iraq massed two divisions of his elite Republican Guards near the Kuwaiti border, the French Defense Minister, François Leotard, came to Iraq's defense. He , said Iraq had not violated any U.N. resolutions, and he accused the United States of playing election-year politics. In 1995, France pressed the Security Council into allowing Iraq to sell oil to buy food and medicine despite Iraq's lack of cooperation with United Nations weapons inspectors. That same year, France reopened its embassy in Baghdad at the chargé d'affaires level. In 1998, when the arms inspection effort was collapsing, the French (and the Russians) worked to head off an American attack, then denounced an American-British operation when it was staged. Today, French officials are frank in saying they are not so much abandoning their national interests as bending before the inevitable -- in hopes the Americans will bend too, toward accepting the need for multilateral agreement if war is to begin. SO when President Bush told the United Nations on Thursday that it must force Iraq to comply with all existing Security Council resolutions, there were mixed feelings of vindication and anxiety in Paris; vindication because America was seeking international approval for any action against Iraq; anxiety because existing resolutions are so sweeping that French officials admit there is ample legal ground on which to make a | The World: Changing Places; War Talk Hits Its First Target: The Pivotal Ally |
1424050_2 | called the success of the Expos, Minnesota and Oakland an aberration. He would not say whether baseball could survive another year in Montreal. ''I hope this team is moved somewhere,'' Expos third baseman Fernando Tatis said before Friday's game. ''We want to have fans, stability, to stay in one place. You need to realize they need a place where the people like baseball and the people show up to the ballpark. That will make us feel a lot better.'' Manager Frank Robinson, who refused to be interviewed for this article, said two months ago that there was no hope for the Expos to remain in Montreal beyond this season. ''I don't think anything can save it now,'' he said. Speculation about where the Expos might end up is boundless. Portland, Ore., Las Vegas and Charlotte, N.C., have expressed interest in a major league team, and in January, Selig called Washington the prime candidate for relocation. The city has not had a baseball team since the Senators left after the 1971 season to become the Texas Rangers. Peter Angelos, the Baltimore Orioles' owner, has said that moving a team to the Washington area would infringe on his team's territorial rights. But The Washington Post reported this week that baseball was leaning toward delaying relocation and keeping the Expos in Montreal under the current ownership format. Meanwhile, efforts to keep the Expos in Montreal continue, although attendance proves their success has been limited. A group of University of Pennsylvania students began an online drive to purchase the team. Another group, Save the Expos, has its own Web site (www.savetheexpos.com) and organized a rally here in July that sought signatures on a petition to keep the franchise alive. ''Since '98, they've been talking about relocating the Expos and it just hasn't happened,'' catcher Michael Barrett said. ''So I think it's more than likely that we'll be back here. I tend to try to be more positive than anyone else on the team as far as this situation. and I look at it as hey, we did our job. We went out and played our best baseball.'' The 1994 strike is believed to have killed baseball here; the Expos had the major leagues' best record when players walked out that August. Stars like Vladimir Guerrero and Jose Vidro have made the Expos competitive again, and Minaya's trades for Bartolo Colón and Cliff Floyd (since | Expos and Minaya Face Uncertain Future |
1423740_3 | at the school. ''As a parent of a child with autism, you feel pretty alone and you struggle,'' Dr. Forman said. After Robert was diagnosed with autism as a toddler, Dr. Forman and his wife, Laura Carinci, an obstetrician-gynecologist, sought out a program using a much-sought-after method called Applied Behavior Analysis. But the only schools on the Island using the method had long waiting lists. They enrolled Robert in a Suffolk Boces program. He regressed. Along with nine other families, the Formans opened their own school. They brought in Mr. Eskanazy and hired Dr. Shamow, a psychologist and expert in autism who had experience opening a similar school in Levittown, to run it. At first they met in private homes. ''When you have an autistic child, the smallest thing they do is like a miracle,'' Dr. Carinci said. ''He's learning to do math. He learned how to ride a bike and rollerblade and brush his teeth and communicate.'' When the Ascent group formed five years ago, Brandon Malone regularly ran around the house naked because he could not stand the feel of fabric on his skin. He ate only pizza and bacon. He punched himself in the face and urinated on the floor. He threw tantrums and injured himself in frustration. His father, Brian Malone, a partner in a shipping and brokerage business from Glen Cove, said that every aspect of family life was stressed. ''It was a hardship to take him out of the house,'' Mr. Malone said. ''Life was hell for him. We were searching for help and there was none. No proper programs were available.'' Mr. Malone credits Ascent for Brandon's progress. At age 8, Brandon bathes and dresses himself. He is learning to read. He plays games on the computer. He can ask for juice and to play Game Boy. ''What they are doing with these kids is amazing,'' Mr. Malone said. ''This is not about putting up a playground. This is all about getting these kids ready for whatever they have to offer in life, rather than sitting in some institution banging their heads on the wall.'' Two Sides of War ''No fighters,'' Seymour Cohen told Guenter Bier as the military truck dropped them at the B-17 bomber on the tarmac at Republic Airport recently. ''No flak.'' Mr. Bier, 70, of Hicksville, wasn't worried. Not this time. He gazed at the military plane, the same | With Lots of Help, a Special School Opens |
1423759_1 | a discussion on business ethics featuring professors from other departments as panelists. One was Stephen Greenfield, a philosophy instructor, who suggested that Plato and other ancient philosophers had dealt effectively with similar questions about decision making, integrity and fair dealing many centuries ago. ''The discussion veered toward what you might call situational ethics,'' Professor Gupta said. ''I believe people can have a personal moral code that allows for dealing with different situations using different sets of ethics. When you're dealing with law, however, it's more cut and dried.'' Professor Gupta said he believed the discussion introduced many students to a more nuanced approach to the question of values versus morals. ''Someone from Germany or India may have other ways of dealing with moral issues, but that doesn't mean they are less ethical,'' he said. By way of example, Dean Gupta said he encourages classroom debate about the morality of giving (or taking) baksheesh, accepted as a way of doing business in many Eastern countries but categorized as bribery in the United States, and hence illegal. As subjects like off-balance-sheet loans, auditing controls and insider trading have become cocktail party fodder, business professors find that students who in past years sat quietly through their lectures, perhaps discreetly dozing on some occasions, are now scrutinizing every word. Mark Holtzman said that over the summer he prepared to teach his fall semester accounting class at Hofstra by following news coverage as the scandals proliferated, posting some of those accounts on the Web site he maintains as a classroom resource. ''I try to encourage students to look beyond the statements issued by companies and see the potential for earnings manipulation,'' he said. ''I try to focus on the gray area between manipulation and possible fraud.'' Professor Holtzman acknowledged that the subject might seem a little dry. ''Perhaps it is a little specialized,'' he said. ''But when you deal with a company like WorldCom and a situation involving $7 billion in nonexisting assets, the subject suddenly gets more interesting to more people.'' The recent scandals have not yet made it into textbooks. Case studies dealing with the scandals -- articles about business situations written by academics that are reprinted and distributed as study guides -- have just begun to appear. Faculty members at the Island's six graduate business schools said the lack of textbooks was hardly the hindrance it would have been a few years | When the News Serves as a Business Textbook |
1423639_1 | psychoanalytic practice ''keeps every new generation of clinicians blind and deaf to what was originally excluded.'' Her analysis of the ''Caliban syndrome,'' as she calls the psychological condition affecting normal siblings in families with damaged children, is supported with some 60 interviews with siblings of impaired family members. The syndrome, named for the Miranda-Caliban relationship in ''The Tempest,'' has four distinct elements: ''premature maturity,'' ''survivor guilt,'' ''compulsion to achieve'' and ''fear of contagion.'' Normal siblings are characterized this way: ''Cheerful caretakers, mature before their time, they are supposed to consider themselves lucky to be normal. They feel tormented by the compulsion to compensate for their parents' disappointments by having no problems and making no demands, and they are often unaware of the massive external and internal pressure to pretend that nothing is amiss.'' In case after case, the trials of normal siblings are documented: the young woman who could not persuade her parents to protect her from an autistic brother attempting to strangle her; the sister whose bed was made up with a damaged sibling's urine-soaked sheets so that ''the maid wouldn't think badly'' of the 14-year-old bed-wetter; the man whose retarded brother kept the family awake playing loud music all night long. Daily sacrifices and disastrous family gatherings are standard fare, as are stories of parents routinely missing school graduations and performances in order to stay home with an impaired child. ''Home life is a series of little murders of privacy, pleasure, peace of mind,'' Safer writes. ''Beloved possessions get ruined without repercussions -- the carefully constructed train display wrecked, the prom dress bought with a hard-earned paycheck hung back in the closet besmirched with pizza. Either because they could not understand or are exempted by parents, the culprits are rarely punished.'' Safer makes a strong plea for recognizing honestly and working skillfully with the profoundly difficult circumstances affecting siblings in families with damaged children. She is wary of the tendency in our culture to sugarcoat the experience of living with a handicapped family member as ''a blessing,'' no matter how severe the impairment or how traumatic the impact upon the family. Though she does not deny the genuine devotion felt, and practiced, by many of these families, Safer worries about the damage that can be done by false scenarios parents invent, consciously or unconsciously, to cope with the presence of difficult children. ''Contrary to appearances,'' she argues, ''parents' | Problem Children |
1423943_2 | is the well-publicized case of E*Trade, in which the company agreed to reimburse Christos M. Cotsakos, the chief executive, for ''tuition, fees, books, ancillary expenses including the cost of research assistants, travel, hotels and meals related to completion of Ph.D. program or other executive projects such as speech writing, publishing and similar endeavors.'' That perk was part of a 2002 pay package so large that market reaction prompted him to cut some of his benefits and return millions in cash. In every case, the companies have explanations. Anita Britt, an executive at Jones Apparel, said that the apartment used by Mr. Kimmel was ''part of his compensation and he paid taxes on it,'' but that it is now being sold. Nell Minow, editor of The Corporate Library, a corporate governance watchdog, wondered why the company should pay an executive's living expenses on a continuing basis. Todd Sims, a Lumenis spokesman, said that Mr. Maor was relocated from Japan and that such payments are not unusual when companies move executives. But Ms. Minow said ''relocation'' technically refers to the actual cost of moving. ''There is no justification for corporate underwriting of private school tuition,'' she said. Marsha Palmer, a spokeswoman for Pioneer, said that it is not unusual for companies to pay legal fees for executives. But Paul Hodgson, who studies proxy agreements at The Corporate Library, said he did not recall seeing such an arrangement. A HealthSouth spokesman said he does not use any of the security safeguards, but Judy Fischer, the publisher of the Executive Compensation Reports newsletter, who compiled some of these examples, found the benefit very unusual nevertheless. At Dynegy, John Sousa, a spokesman, said that the memberships could be used by other members of the corporate team for business and that they helped build relationships, but Ms. Fischer also found that arrangement unusual. Such arrangements, she said, turn executives into an elitist class, which is not appropriate to American values. Bruce Greenwald, a professor at Columbia Business School, said he believes that the bursting of the market bubble change practices. ''A big constraint on management is not the boards or the analysts,'' he said. ''It is the stock price. We went through a period where every possible investment did well and investors were fat and happy, so there was no discipline on management. But that has changed and these benefits will be scrutinized and will disappear.'' | Perks From Tuition to Bodyguards |
1423955_1 | scurry to tighten security since the Sept. 11 attacks. ''I believe in the human factor,'' said John D. Woodward Jr., a senior analyst who studies security and terrorism issues at the Rand Corporation. ''It can give us bad things like racial profiling. But it can also mean a customs agent at the Canadian border sees someone who is acting suspiciously and pulls them aside and finds bombs intended to blow something up. You don't want full automation, that's for sure.'' Mr. Woodward, who worked in Africa and Asia for the Central Intelligence Agency, said he is an ''unreconstructed operations officer.'' He belongs to the school of thought that human intelligence gathering -- whether in an Algerian casbah or an airport concourse -- produces information that eludes machines. For example, he said, trained plainclothes guards, a security measure not yet adopted at airports, can zero in on someone who stands out in a crowd. Many experts point to the interrogation techniques used by El Al, the Israeli airline, as a perfect example of the kind of human interaction that enhances security. Guards scrutinize each passenger. Backpacks are rifled through, journals are skimmed and every passenger faces a barrage of pointed questions: Where are you coming from? Why do you want to visit Israel? Where will you be staying? Guards are on the lookout for, among other things, a shift in the eyes, a quaver in the voice or a bead of sweat rolling down the forehead. ''This is probably the most important aspect of airport security and security overall that we can institute,'' said Jeff Schlanger, the chief operating officer of security services at Kroll Associates, an international risk-assessment company. ''There is a protocol that can be taught that starts with simple questioning designed to draw out answers which may lead to suspicions. And if a suspicion is aroused, there is a protocol for resolving that suspicion.'' The only questions consistently asked of air travelers in the United States were the ones virtually everyone considered ridiculous: Have your bags been in your possession at all times? Has anyone given you any objects to bring on board? That interrogation was so pro forma that airlines had begun adding the questions to the self-service kiosks, so that someone could reply to them by touching ''yes'' or ''no'' on a screen. As absurdly ineffective as the questions were, though, at least forcing a passenger | The Nation; In Airport Security, Think Low Tech |
1424096_0 | The state last week warned residents of northwestern New Jersey that the summer drought has reduced food supplies for black bears and has advised them to bear-proof their homes. The lack of rain has reduced the number of acorns and other food sources and is partly blamed for bears breaking into 46 homes, mostly in Warren and Sussex Counties, as of the end of last month. Homeowners and campers are warned to keep all food and garbage secured and to remove bird feeders. Information on black bears and how to avoid encounters is at www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw. Karen DeMasters BRIEFING: ENVIRONMENT | Bear Warnings |
1427002_4 | the money only helped prop up Mr. Castro. But opponents won a major concession: the sales must be in cash to protect the United States from Cuba's bad credit rating and its tendency to default on loans to other countries. At first, Mr. Castro opposed the law, saying it was too restrictive. Last year, after a devastating hurricane and a precipitous drop in tourism, he changed his mind. Food and grain trickled into Cuba. In 2000, Cuba rated last among the 228 countries that buy food and agricultural products from the United States. By the end of this year, Cuba is expected to make $165 million in purchases, jumping to 45th place. The show alone is expected to reap $30 million for farmers and agribusiness executives, who are here to sign contracts with Alimport, the Cuban government agency in charge of imports. That food will be distributed to hotels, restaurants, schools, hospitals and the military. ''I hope people take home the message that the Cuban market is a fertile area for American companies to do business,'' said Peter W. Nathan, president of PWN Exhibicon International, which organized the event. As he petted a bull, Mr. Castro talked to a cattle rancher from Minnesota about how much milk his cows produce and how much feed they require. The Cuban leader, he said, came away impressed. ''We could easily increase milk production in Cuba 15 to 20 percent,'' said Ralph Kaehler, of Kaehler's Homedale Farm Enterprises. Later Mr. Castro, ringed by security, ambled past stacks of mustard and grape juice and peas, as he shook hands, sampled wine and ate cheese. In his speech later on, he talked about the cornucopia of American products and said Cubans are more than willing to pay premium prices for them because they come from across the Florida Straits. ''It's a psychological factor,'' he said. The trade show did not roll into Cuba without controversy. Otto J. Reich, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, recently expressed his disappointment with the event, and cautioned Mr. Ventura and others traveling to Cuba to steer clear of the island's ''sexual tourism.'' Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida wrote a personal letter to Mr. Ventura, asking him not to go to Cuba. But Mr. Ventura said the United States is ''not a dictatorship,'' and he is free to travel to Cuba to help boost business for Minnesota companies. | U.S. Agribusiness Peddles To the Proletariat in Cuba |
1426936_0 | WARMING up the car on a cold day won't help it run better. Low mileage isn't the thing to look for in a used car. Permanent antifreeze isn't permanent. A compact disc hanging from the rear-view mirror won't foil police radar guns. If any of these realities comes as a surprise to you, you are not alone. The lore of automobiles, passed from parent to child and car owner to car owner, is filled with archaic maxims, folk wisdom gone slightly askew, and downright urban legends. Mechanics hear it all. ''They'll come in wanting new shocks because the car is sagging, even though it's the springs that control ride height,'' said Rob Maier, who fixes just about any kind of car at Maier's Automotive in Bridgeport, Conn. ''They'll ask me to change the stale air in their tires because the car's been sitting, even though air is air.'' Some of his customers resist changing their ''permanent'' antifreeze, even though their owners' manuals specify that it should be flushed every three to five years. (Permanent, in this case, means only ''longer-lasting.'') Others think that air-conditioning chemicals mix with exhaust gases to become a leading cause of Alzheimer's disease. Mr. Maier tries not to laugh. Andy Wittenborn of Wittenborn Auto in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., said he can't persuade his customers to check the air in their doughnut spares because the thick walls of the tires always feel hard to the touch. ''And they continue to warm up their cars on cold days,'' he said, ''even though I argue that fuel-injected cars will run better in the long run if you just start them up and drive off.'' Many people believe that the best attribute in a used car is low mileage. But Rose and Nicholas Pellegrino, owners of Pellegrino's Saab Service in Ithaca, N.Y., point out that low mileage is likely to mean that a car has never been taken for a long drive. ''Engines that are short-tripped usually exhibit greater wear than those driven more miles on the highway,'' Mrs. Pellegrino said. Habitual speeders have a fascination with shiny objects, which they mistakenly think will confuse radar guns. Those who don't hang CD's from mirrors may wrap Mylar strips around their license plates. And Billy Egloff of Billy's Auto in Ossining, N.Y., had a customer whose hubcaps were filled with crumpled-up aluminum foil. ''When I told him I'd taken it out,'' | Stale Air In the Tires, Auto Myths Roll On |
1425140_1 | the tough new requirements imposed after Sept. 11. That would be a terrible disservice. With a number of deadlines approaching, the government, airport operators and airlines should be concentrating on how to meet the requirements, not how to dodge them. The new head of the Transportation Security Administration, Adm. James Loy, must not yield ground. Since his appointment in July, Mr. Loy has made some minor and reasonable concessions, like allowing passengers to carry drinks through security checkpoints and dropping the ineffectual quiz about whether travelers have packed their own bags. Unlike his predecessor, John Magaw, Mr. Loy favors a ''registered traveler'' program that could expedite scrutiny of passengers who voluntarily undergo background checks. But Mr. Loy cannot allow industry pressure or public impatience to stand in the way of government efforts to upgrade airport security. Industry pressure has already caused a failure of nerve in the House, which voted last July to extend for one year the Dec. 31 deadline by which all checked luggage must be screened for explosives. The Senate Commerce Committee voted yesterday to exempt some 30 airports -- the actual list may not be disclosed -- that would have had a hard time installing the bulky bomb-detection machines by the deadline. While this was not the wholesale extension approved by the House, it was nevertheless a regrettable retreat. Mr. Loy must bring these airports into compliance as early as possible next year. Mr. Loy has said his agency will meet its Nov. 19 deadline for having federal passenger screeners in place at all airports. It would help if Congress dropped the arbitrary cap of 45,000 employees it imposed on the new agency. In addition, beyond raising the overall level of vigilance, smarter and more targeted security is still needed at airports. The Transportation Security Administration is working on a second-generation passenger-profiling computer program designed to link numerous databases to help determine whether passengers need particularly close scrutiny. A successful and timely deployment of this program is as crucial as the agency's efforts to meet its deadlines for general passenger and baggage screening. Aviation security has been improved since last September, even if it is still not as tight as it needs to be. Passengers can expect further disruptions in the weeks ahead as the federal agency completes its takeover of airport security. That is a price well worth paying if the skies are made safer. | Airport Security, a Year Later |
1424577_0 | IN a pre-emptive strike against the newest genetically engineered food, 200 chefs, grocers and seafood distributors across 40 states plan to announce today that they have pledged not to purchase fish that have been altered through biotechnology. The campaign says it is concerned that if genetically engineered salmon are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, they could escape from the pens in which they are raised and interbreed with wild salmon, endangering some species. The F.D.A. is considering an application to market transgenic salmon. If the application is approved, salmon would become the first genetically modified animal allowed onto American dinner plates, where it would sit alongside genetically engineered corn and potatoes, which have been available for several years. The biotech company producing the salmon says they will be better for the environment than current farmed salmon. The boycott is being led by the Center for Food Safety, Clean Water Action and Friends of the Earth, all groups that have been critical of genetically modified, or transgenic, foods. The list of chefs allied with them include high-profile names like Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif.; Michel Richard of Citronelle in Washington; and in New York, Mario Batali at Babbo, Jean-Georges Vongerichten of Jean Georges, David Pasternack at Esca and Eric Ripert at Le Bernardin. The chief concern is environmental -- whether genetically altered fish are dangerous to native species. The groups cite a study requested by the F.D.A. and issued last month by the National Research Council, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, which pointed out that genetically engineered salmon, bred in pens in the sea, could escape, crossbreed with their wild cousins and edge them out for food and mates, thus endangering the already dwindling Atlantic salmon fishery. Opponents say a large body of scientific evidence indicates that genetic and ecological interactions between wild and aquaculture salmon can adversely affect wild populations. One-third of all fish consumed in the United States is farmed. Todd Gray, the chef and an owner of Equinox in Washington, described transgenic fish as ''Frankenfood.'' ''We'd like to keep our food unengineered, un-laboratorized,'' he said. Other environmental groups have signed on to support the boycott, along with 42,000 individuals. Even some salmon farmers say they are worried about transgenic fish. This is the latest skirmish in a war that has been going on for more than a decade between | Chefs Join Campaign Against Altered Fish |
1424628_1 | identified by the computer system as potential risks. The inspector general, Kenneth Mead, on whose data the letter is based, argued that even before the Sept. 11 attacks the airlines were reluctant to put the machines to full use. Today Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary of transportation, said that the problem was that the people who actually moved the bags to the machines and tested them were the same people who did the work when the airlines were in charge, because his department had not yet hired, trained and deployed federal employees to do the work. ''You have to allocate people and physical resources to make it work,'' he said. Mr. Jackson added that the machines were often in the wrong place at airports, requiring a long walk to take the bag to be screened. His department will move machines or baggage-check counters when necessary, and hire the required number of people, he said. The machines resemble medical CAT scanners. Experts say they are used most efficiently when installed on the path of the baggage already placed on conveyer belts. But many airports lack space to do so and are putting them in lobbies for the time being. Airport executives have predicted that as many people wait in lobbies to have their luggage scanned, lines will stretch out the doors. The airlines, meanwhile, have said that the machines often malfunction. An executive of one airline said some newly installed machines promptly broke down. ''We couldn't get the company to fix them,'' the executive said. ''It took three days to get parts. It was pathetic.'' But Transportation Department officials say some start-up problems were as simple as neglecting to use sealer on the concrete floors, so that concrete dust fouled the electronics. Mr. Jackson, however, said, ''We're swarming around that problem and we fully expect to nail it cold.'' There are no ''structural concerns'' about the equipment, Mr. Jackson said. The homeland security bill now before Congress includes a provision that would delay the 100 percent-baggage screening requirement by a year. Asked if his department would meet the current deadline, Mr. Jackson said, ''At 100 percent of the airports, we fully expect there will be a very, very, very high percentage of bags that are being screened, if not 100 percent of bags everywhere.'' He added: ''At more than 90 percent of the airports, this is not a problem; we will | Big-Price Screening Machines Are Said to Get Little Use |
1423004_2 | escorts are necessary. Although America and its allies are helping build an Afghan national army and police force that can one day provide the security needed for economic growth, the growth won't take place for years. Last December, an international military peacekeeping force was deployed to Kabul, under British command, which has been largely successful. The Bush administration has recently dropped its opposition to expanding this force to other major regional centers. But the administration will need to become an active proponent of this expansion if it is to occur. In particular, other nations that may contribute troops will need assurances that they will receive American logistic and intelligence support. Security measures must also be coupled with the delivery of more aid throughout the country. So far, American and European pledges of aid to Afghanistan remain modest by comparison with other recent efforts in post-conflict nation-building. Kosovo, for example, has a population of about 2 million, while Afghanistan has a population of 23 million. But Kosovo received several times more American and European assistance per capita to recover from 13 weeks of conflict than Afghanistan has received to rebuild from 20 years of civil war. In Afghanistan, the United States has taken the lead in providing emergency food aid, but American funding for reconstruction has been quite limited. Since the installation of the Karzai government, for instance, the White House has asked Congress for only $250 million in additional aid dedicated to economic reconstruction. That $250 million works out to a little more than $10 per Afghan -- much less than what the previous administration sought and received in terms of per capita aid for the immediate post-conflict needs in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Even when European and Japanese aid pledges for this year are added, and assuming this money is immediately made available, the assistance currently offered to Afghanistan is not commensurate with the need or the scale of similar efforts. The recent increase in violence should cause neither the Afghans nor the international community to lose heart. Unlike Yugoslavia, which fell apart of its own internal ethnic conflicts, Afghanistan was largely pulled apart by its neighbors. Even today, Afghans accept the need to live together within a multiethnic, multilingual nation. Late last year, as the Taliban regime was driven from power, the United States successfully persuaded Russia, Pakistan, Iran and India -- nations that have played meddlesome roles | Afghanistan's Faltering Reconstruction |
1423125_4 | there. One television channel promoted a report from New York on Tuesday about ''why South Asians still say they're victims, a year after Sept. 11.'' In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who at first professed ''unconditional solidarity'' with the United States, is now fighting for re-election and taking exception to the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Mr. Schröder's position seems to tap into the apprehensions of Germans like Walter Straudenrauss, 37, who said the dialogue in his country has changed since the first weeks after the terrorist attacks. ''There is less sympathy and more rational political attitudes,'' Mr. Straudenrauss said. ''There are many questions now, like where do we stand on Iraq and what it means to have one superpower in the world.'' Concern about what many Europeans perceive as American unilateralism is nothing new: it flared over the Bush administration's repudiation of a treaty on global warming and its reluctance to endorse an international crime tribunal. But that concern is no longer muted in the ways it was 12 or 11 or even 10 months ago. It is sometimes not muted at all. At the Venice Film Festival last week, one of the main events was the screening of a movie about Sept. 11 that included segments from 11 directors of different nationalities, several of whom were sharply critical of the United States. Last week in Ottawa, at a performance of Verdi's Requiem to commemorate Sept. 11, pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the United States dropped atomic bombs there were projected above the stage. Yet they were nonetheless paying homage in Ottawa, just as they did today in Berlin, where Mr. Schröder attended a candlelight religious service; in London, where 3,000 rose petals rained from the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in Paris, where President Jacques Chirac attended a memorial event at the residence of the American ambassador, Howard Leach. ''Today, France remembers,'' Mr. Chirac said. ''France knows what it owes America. Today, French people are side by side wholeheartedly with the American people.'' Many Europeans observed a minute of silence, making clear that a basic human sadness transcended any of their disagreements with Americans and that amity persisted, even when unanimity did not. The evidence of that was everywhere. It was on a gondola that floated slowly down the Grand Canal in Venice with the sign: ''For the victims and heroes of Sept. 11.'' It was also on | Europe Pauses and Grieves, But Takes Issue With U.S. |
1423022_0 | President Vladimir V. Putin threatened today to order military strikes in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, saying that Russia had a right to defend itself from what he called terrorist attacks launched from Georgian territory. In a statement that sounded like an ultimatum, Mr. Putin sharply criticized Georgia for failing to root out hundreds of insurgents from the Russian republic of Chechnya and warned that if Georgia did not do more, Russia would conduct raids in Georgia to crush the fighters' strongholds. Mr. Putin's warning today -- on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- was by far the harshest and most ominous of a series of Russian warnings to Georgia this summer over Chechen rebels based in Georgia. Mr. Putin, who was shown on Russian television reading sternly from note cards at a meeting of his security aides during a Black Sea vacation in Sochi, echoed President Bush's remarks a year ago about moving strongly against terrorists and against countries that harbor them -- in this case, Georgia. ''One of the causes complicating the efficient struggle against terrorism,'' Mr. Putin said, ''is that in some parts of the world there are still territorial enclaves that are beyond the control of national governments, which for different reasons cannot or do not want to resist the terrorist threat.'' Mr. Putin announced that he had ordered military commanders to consider strikes against ''reliably known bases of the terrorists'' along the rugged border between Georgia and Chechnya. Chechen fighters are particularly present in the Pankisi Gorge, northeast of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. Russian aircraft have crossed into Georgia at least five times this summer, launching strikes three times and, in one case on Aug. 23, killing a Georgian civilian near the gorge. Mr. Putin's warning appeared to stun Georgian officials. Last month, under pressure from Russia, Georgia's president, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, ordered 1,000 police officers and security troops into the Pankisi Gorge to establish order over a region that had largely been outside the government's control. ''What is surprising is the fact that the Russian president's statement came at a moment when the Georgian authorities are taking concrete action to restore order in the Pankisi Gorge,'' an adviser to Mr. Shevardnadze, Levan Alexidze, told the Interfax news agency in Tbilisi. In more conciliatory remarks later, however, Mr. Shevardnadze said he believed that Mr. Putin would still give Georgia a chance to | Putin Warns Georgia to Root Out Chechen Rebels Within Its Borders or Face Attacks |
1422957_1 | emergency scenes with land lines, cellular service, wireless Internet, fax and streaming video, and to allow emergency workers from various agencies to talk via radio. ''The InfraLynx mission is to deliver emergency communications right into the hot zone,'' said Chris Herndon, the director of the team that engineered it at the laboratory, a part of the Office of Naval Research. The vehicle looks like an ordinary civilian Hummer with a large box on the back and a few extras not available at your local dealership, including a cellular antenna, police lights and a yawning roof-mounted satellite dish. Most of the InfraLynx's components are available commercially. Similar radio systems are used in many cities, and the video-processing equipment is used by television news trucks. What makes the InfraLynx so unusual is that it crams so much into a single vehicle, one that can race to the scene of a terrorist attack or natural disaster. When phone lines are destroyed, it can become the local telephone service provider for emergency workers. When cellphone networks get saturated, it can turn into a cellular tower. Most important, it allows emergency workers from separate organizations to talk to one another. The InfraLynx acts as a radio switchboard, patching one frequency into another, bridging the signals so that anyone can talk to anyone else. At the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the InfraLynx enabled personnel from the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the National Guard and various police and fire departments to talk to one another, and at one point became a mobile dispatch center for Justice Department agents during a bomb threat at one of the Olympic sites, Park City, Utah. Scott Behunin, the director of the Utah division of emergency services and homeland security, said, ''We had 10,000 security and law enforcement personnel show up, and they all brought their own radio systems, with different frequencies, some digital, some analog. ''We don't all have Motorolas. The InfraLynx allowed us to communicate.'' With its 45-foot telescoping antenna, the InfraLynx can act as a cellphone tower, emulating commercial carriers or creating a private network for law enforcement officers. Unlike the kind of temporary cellular tower -- or cell-on-wheels -- that most wireless carriers deployed on Sept. 11, the InfraLynx's cellular capability does not depend on tying into local land lines. Instead, it gathers consumer cell signals and beams them to a satellite, landing them in another | So That a Disaster Isn't a Communications Disaster |
1422946_0 | It's not true. Despite that promise in the e-mail subject line, the vice president for marketing does not love you. So you won't be fooled again, Symantec has upgraded its Norton Internet Security software suite to intercept more viruses, mass mailers and worms. It also promises to eliminate bandwidth-hogging pop-up ads and reduce spam. If that sounds like a Herculean task, it is. Symantec has cataloged 61,000 threats to your data and program files, and it says there are 10 to 15 new ones appearing daily. Norton Internet Security 2003 adds features that monitor traffic on many instant messaging networks and help make your computer less visible to hackers and more resistant to viruses and to Trojan horses, those malicious programs disguised as friendly or useful software. Should a virus penetrate your system's defenses, the product employs heuristics, or sets of logical rules, to prevent fast-spreading worms like Nimda and script-based threats like the I Love You virus from infecting other computers to which you link through a network or by e-mail. For example, Internet Security will notify Microsoft Outlook users if a program tries to send batched e-mail messages. Its spam-filtering feature works with e-mail applications that work with the POP3 protocol like Outlook, Eudora and Netscape Mail. It excludes MIME-based e-mail applications like those of America Online and MSN. Other filters allow parents to place some restrictions on what children can view on the Internet. Symantec has redesigned Internet Security's user interface, making it easier to install the program and set preferences for cookies and animated ads. Internet Security 2003, which includes Norton AntiVirus 2003, Norton Personal Firewall and Norton Privacy Control, is $69.95 and is expected to become available by the end of the month. Upgrading from an earlier version costs $39.95. Versions are available for Windows 98 through XP operating systems only. Howard Millman NEWS WATCH: SECURITY | From Symantec, a Hybrid Of Firewall and Spam Buster |
1420368_0 | INTERNATIONAL 3-16 Swedes Say Detainee Was Flight Student in U.S. Swedish authorities said that a man arrested with a gun in his carry-on luggage as he tried to board a London-bound flight had studied at an aviation school in the United States and had a criminal record. Swedish officials denied reports attributed to Swedish intelligence and police circles that the man had planned to seize the plane to attack an American embassy in Europe in a conspiracy with four other men. 6 Conflicting Views on Iraq The world is responding to the Bush administration's verbal war against Iraq with statements that contain more skepticism and disapproval than support. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has probably come closest in aligning his government with the United States on Iraq, affirmed earlier statements calling for action against Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader. 16 Helicopter Crash in Chechnya A Russian helicopter gunship crashed in Chechnya, evidently shot down by Chechen fighters, the Ministry of Defense said. The helicopter's two pilots were killed. Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the attack in a message posted on their Web site. 13 Israeli Missiles Kill 5 Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a Palestinian vehicle driving through a West Bank village, killing three men inside and two children who were outside their home. Israelis also arrested the West Bank political leader of the militant Hamas movement in Ramallah. 6 NATIONAL 18-28 Congressional Candidates Trumpet Domestic Issues The fight for control of Congress is revolving more around domestic than foreign concerns, with candidates battling over corporate abuses, prescription drug costs and Social Security rather than the threat of terrorism or the prospect of a war against Iraq. 1 Menopause Drug Substitutes Ever since the government halted a study of a popular hormone therapy used by postmenopausal women, doctors have been deluged by a tide of promotional material for anything and everything that could substitute for the drug used in the study. 1 West Nile-Organ Donor Link? Three of four patients who received organs from one donor have apparently developed encephalitis and tests show that one recipient is infected with the West Nile virus, raising suspicion that the virus can be transmitted through organ transplants, federal health officials said. 18 States Block Gun Lawsuits A spate of government litigation against the nation's gun companies has been stifled in 30 states that have passed laws granting the industry immunity from | NEWS SUMMARY |
1420342_0 | In the eight weeks since the fed eral government announced that it had halted a study of a popular hormone therapy used by postmenopausal women, doctors say they have been deluged by an ever-growing tide of promotional material for anything and everything that could substitute for Prempro, the drug used in the study. The alternatives run the gamut: prescription drugs that consist of slightly different hormone formulations, nutritional supplements made of herbs and vitamins, soy products said to be natural sources of estrogen, and even what might be termed menopause accessories, such as one company's ''cooling comfort towelettes'' to wipe the sweat from hot flashes. But many doctors and scientists say they are alarmed by the profusion of Prempro substitutes. The trouble, they say, is that these drugs and supplements have been studied less than Prempro has. Their benefits and risks are simply unknown. That is especially true for nutritional supplements. Their advertising receives far less government scrutiny than claims for prescription drugs, which the Food and Drug Administration regulates closely. They are also sold without a doctor's guidance. ''Everything you've ever heard of is being marketed,'' said Dr. Wulf Utian, the executive director of the North American Menopause Society, ''and it's being marketed to a confused and vulnerable population.'' Prempro, a combination of estrogens and progestin made by Wyeth, has long dominated the menopause market. Until this summer it was used by six million American women, many of whom assumed they would be taking it for a lifetime to protect against some effects of aging, like brittle bones. But when the federal study, the Women's Health Initiative, found that Prempro carried slight risks (of heart attack, stroke and breast cancer) that outweighed its benefits (a slightly lower risk of colon cancer and hip fracture), the part of the study in which women were taking Prempro was ended. A study in which women take estrogen alone continues. A Wyeth spokesman, Doug Petkus, said sales of Prempro had declined 25 to 30 percent. Many companies appear to have rushed into the opening. ''The Women's Health Initiative Study wasn't out of my fingers before the mailings started coming in,'' said Dr. Nanette Santoro, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. ''It's what you expect in a capitalist economy. You have people with products to sell.'' Prempro, like other estrogen | Rush to Fill Void in Menopause-Drug Market |
1420243_13 | to buy American-made equipment. ''We pounded on this one like hell,'' said Gary Hubbard, a spokesman for the United Steelworkers of America. Still, the bank is considering a $35 million financing to a Mexican company for the purchase of American-made equipment that would increase its automotive crankshaft production by 700,000 units a year; the crankshafts would then be exported to the United States, where American auto workers do the same job, but for higher wages. The bank is also deciding on a $14 million loan guarantee to an American company, which it would not identify, so that a Mexican company, which it also would not identify, can increase output of aluminum engine blocks by 550,000 units a year -- with the output to be shipped to the United States. Bank officials declined to say whether these projects would cause a loss in American automaking jobs. ''Is this the best way to create U.S. jobs?'' asked Representative Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent and one of the few Congressional critics. ''Absolutely not. Export-Import is generous with taxpayer dollars and we get nothing in return. It's vulgar. At a time when we are having a real crisis in this country and are losing jobs, Ex-Im is sending them overseas. Yet these are the most important corporations in the United States and they get what they want in Washington.'' In the debate over the recent Export-Import legislation, an attempt by Representatives Sanders and Paul to deny aid to American companies shifting jobs overseas failed on a vote of 283 to 135. It's no accident that the votes are so lopsided. ''As a staff member for a congressman, you can call up Ex-Im and say, 'My congressman represents District 13 in the state of whatever,' '' said a Treasury official. ''They will spit out a report saying, 'Here are the businesses by name in your district that receive Ex-Im help.' The bank is politically savvy. It's active in promoting its products in each Congressional district.'' The bank also knows how to make individual legislators look good before voters. One of its biggest outreach efforts is seminars throughout the country, about one a week, that bring together local executives and Export-Import officials to promote its programs. Whom does it also invite, to show voters the benefits that Washington brings to Main Street? Each district's local Congressional delegation, which can take credit for what Export-Import has done. | A Guardian of Jobs or a 'Reverse Robin Hood'? |
1420412_0 | DONGTING LAKE, a giant splash of water in central China, plays a critical environmental role that humans only belatedly appreciated. Each summer, as the prodigal flow of the Yangtze River surges, the adjoining lake serves as a vast and vital sponge -- a natural overflow that tempers flooding in the vulnerable, densely populated lands downstream. The lake still provides that service to some degree, as these satellite pictures from April and then August -- when it was approaching critical flood stage -- graphically show. But the lake was crippled by the Maoist zeal to conquer nature. From the 1950's on, huge earthen dikes encroached on it, reclaiming marshes and shallower stretches for fertile cropland. By the 1980's the lake area had shrunk by 46 percent; hundreds of thousands of people lived at the mercy of the dikes and the sponge effect was drastically reduced. This August, heavy rains filled the lake almost to the bursting point and vast armies of villagers and soldiers were called out to patrol and repair the dikes. During higher floods in 1998, some dikes broke and others had to be blown up to relieve the swollen Yangtze; 4,000 died and legions lost everything. This year, the fortifications held, but the government says it will cOntinue plans to return more of the lake area to its natural state. ERIK ECKHOLM Maps of Dongting Lake and Yangtze River, China APRIL 11, 2002 and AUGUST 28, 2002. (Satellite images courtesy Elaine Anderson, Dartmouth Flood Observatory) | The World; Taming a Seasonal Swell |
1420374_1 | embassy in Europe.'' Mr. Chatty underwent training at the North American Institute of Aviation in Conway, S.C., near Myrtle Beach. He was dismissed from the school's pilot program for poor performance, a top school official said tonight. The flight school specializes in training foreign pilots, particularly students from Scandinavia, who arrive with special visas allowing them to attend school and later work in the United States. School officials go to Scandinavia every year to test and recruit potential students, according to the school's Web site. Mr. Chatty was arrested late Thursday as he tried to board a flight operated by Ryanair, a low-cost carrier, out of a small airport in Vaesteraas, 60 miles northeast of Stockholm. He was identified as belonging to a group of about 20 Muslims on board the plane that was heading for a conference in Birmingham, England, arranged by a Muslim sect known as Salafists. The sect describes itself as a purist strand of the Islamic faith. Its spokesman in Birmingham, Abu Khadeejah, said the conference organizers did not know Mr. Chatty. He also said the Salafists reject terrorism and had condemned both Osama bin Laden and the attacks last Sept. 11. The Swedish police said they might hold Mr. Chatty until midday Monday before seeking court action against him. He is being held on suspicion of attempted hijacking and illegal possession of a firearm. Nils Uggla, his defense lawyer, said that Mr. Chatty, a Swedish citizen of Tunisian descent, could explain the presence of a handgun found in his luggage. ''He denies that this has anything at all to do with terrorism or airplane hijacking,'' Mr. Uggla said. Several passengers already aboard the aircraft were evacuated while police officers searched the cabin and luggage compartment. The flight school in South Carolina opened in 1972 and has trained about 3,500 pilots over the past three decades, according to its Web site. The school offers a six-month course that trains students to fly and work as flight instructors, the first step to obtaining a commercial pilot's license. At about $35,000 including housing, the course is considered a bargain compared to comparable European programs. Beginning in 1997, the school was 1 of 21 in an experimental program in the southeastern states that used the Internet to report foreign students who did not show up for classes to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. All schools are required to report | Detainee Had Studied to Be a Pilot in U.S. |
1420040_6 | scantily clothed in a narrow strip of resin-treated cloth. A single buoyant curve insinuates the sail. Sailing the Annie, or teaching drawing and maritime literature on three-month voyages aboard tall ships for Southampton College's Seamester program, Ms. Scott is well acquainted with the exhilaration and terror of seafaring. ''On the ocean even the most brain-dead nincompoop gets the idea that you're not safe anymore, you're totally out of control,'' she says. ''The weather and the water are in total control and you have to work with them to survive. I like that, that edge.'' The edge is patent in her latest piece, the 14-foot-long welded steel ''Long Tack Keeping.'' Its title is taken from ''The Bridge'' by Hart Crane. A boat is a bridge between man and nature, however insubstantial. Ms. Scott's sculptures are always like drawings in space, but in this case the lines are straight and hatched, as in an etching. They delineate a gondola and the way water quilts around it, altering colors, distorting, confusing substance with the reflection of it. The gondola, upright on a striated base, looks capable of holding its course, but there is nothing in the spaces between the steel rods to keep it afloat. ''Long Tack Keeping'' is one of the fruits of a 2001-02 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, which gave Ms. Scott time and money to work big and experiment with bronze and steel. It was the first major grant since her 1981 Guggenheim. In the years since the Guggenheim, she has shown mostly in group shows. Her fortunes began to turn when Glynis Berry, a New York architect with a discerning eye, opened her Greenport gallery, Art Sites, two years ago and gave Ms. Scott a solo show. On board Annie that recent evening, the artist accepts another beer from her husband, Keith McCamy, a mathematician, then tumbles headlong into a story about her adventures the way children do, covering her mouth when she laughs. ''I love boats because they are mysterious,'' she says, as she navigates an obstacle course of vessels and slides effortlessly alongside the dinghy she built out of green oak scraps and leftover roofing. The dinghy is a story-book fantasy, old-fashioned and beguiling without the extra weight of layered meaning. It's a boat, not a sculpture. ''All that matters,'' Ms. Scott says, lifting a bare foot over the rail, ''is that a voyage is going on.'' ART/ARCHITECTURE | Far From Midtown, She's Fallen in Love With the Sea |
1420137_1 | doesn't take long for the gentle rocking aboard our Ranger 22 to turn hypnotic, calming nerves and reducing rivalries. I particularly love the clanking of the halyards against the mast as we bob sideways on our anchor, and if I close my eyes, I'm no longer in New York, but vacationing along the Cape Cod seashore or in a Caribbean cay. The captain, otherwise known to his swabbies as Dad, barks out orders with far more confidence in our ability to hoist a jib or tie an eight-knot than we muster. Everyone is assigned a job, even 5-year-old Tess, who hands up the winch handle to me on deck. Alex and his buddy unfurl the main and Samantha lifts her sunbathing legs out of the way in the nick of time as the lines are rigged and tied off. Andrew wants lunch. It's 10 a.m. Our Saturday sails began with my husband and a Hobie Cat on Long Island Sound many years ago. The fast but precarious catamaran was replaced by our first child and soon, another and finally, following a move to the shores of the Hudson, a sleek and solid sailboat joined the family. Babies were welcomed aboard from the beginning, puffy and buoyant with the help of Mickey Mouse life jackets and sunscreen. Toys, crayons and juice boxes kept them busy below deck until they got their sea legs. In a world of video games and electronic everything, sailing can be a tough sell. It continues to amaze me that children who can sit still for hours glued to a computer screen have difficulty leaning up against the bow for an afternoon outing, watching the clouds or the birds, talking or not talking. But growing up with the boat, they've learned: How to sail. How to sit back and enjoy nature. How to listen to the wind and the lapping water. On a good day, we're laughing together, surfing the wake from a passing motorboat or dangling our legs in the crisp, cool waves. On a not-so-good day, we're still together. I've learned from the boat when to ease up, when to fall off, when to come about. I've learned maritime terms that take time and patience to understand, terms that, in the end, come in handy when we reach the shore and head for home. SOAPBOX Alison Hendrie is a freelance writer who lives in Croton-on-Hudson. | Sailing Lessons |
1421040_2 | just one click. It got a lift in recent months as Hotmail and Yahoo imposed annual fees ($19.95 and $29.99, respectively) for certain services, including e-mail forwarding. In other words, users who want to maintain free accounts will have to do plenty of clicking. EPrompter has evolved to include some e-mail functions like the ability to reply and to set up an address book. It does not, however, save outgoing messages or download attachments, it does not come in a Mac version, and it can slow down computers with insufficient memory. It is free, although a fee may be imposed within a few months. Similar services include AvirMail and @nyMail, which check fewer accounts and do not check AOL. Other programs, like The Bat, check many accounts as part of a more complex e-mail program and can be difficult for beginners. Mr. McAllister said that the typical e-mail user has four accounts: for business use, personal use, online shopping, mailing lists, mindless chat and the like. Jane French, a computer programmer in Herndon, Va., has seven. ''Time is money,'' said Ms. French, who typically spends several weeks at a client's office before moving on to another project. ''If I were to access all my accounts, that takes time from the client. I either don't bill the client or my lunch hour becomes very short.'' Seeking software to lessen the tedium of checking, she found ePrompter and liked it. ''If I had an urgent message, I could get it sooner because I could catch it at work instead of waiting until I got home,'' she said. Speedy checking benefits travelers, too. A notification program on the laptop can minimize the cost of checking from hotels or other places that impose per-minute charges. Just over half of ePrompter users set the program to check at intervals of five minutes or less, Mr. McAllister said. Those with a dial-up modem can use autodial, ''so you can go to sleep, and when you wake up all your mail has been retrieved,'' he said. The urge to check e-mail constantly is a strong one, said David Greenfield, a psychiatry professor at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine who studies Internet addiction. ''It's like gambling -- you don't know what you are going to get, and you might get something interesting or fun,'' he said. ''That kind of intermittent reinforcement is very resistant to extinction.'' | With a Single Click, a Vast E-Mail Harvest |
1421104_1 | poorest communities. ''It's time to end the lofty aspirations and move to action -- to real commitments,'' said one senior American official at the Johannesburg meeting. For nine months leading up to the summit meeting, that official said, government negotiators, private environmental groups, businesses and international agencies sifted for ideas they could put on the table in South Africa as evidence of their resolve. Dozens of proposals have been announced and will be under way soon. One, unveiled on Tuesday at the meeting, would protect 120 million acres of the Amazon River basin over the next 10 years, with money coming from Brazil, Germany, the World Bank, United Nations environmental funds and the World Wildlife Fund, a private group. Others involve commitments by industrial powers to export clean-burning energy technologies to developing countries that might otherwise burn coal, oil or other fuels without regard to pollution. To be sure, the Johannesburg meeting also produced the usual volume of delicately negotiated texts in which rich countries pledged to help poor countries. The declarations are important, providing governments with goals to which the public can hold them accountable. But they are are not binding. Generally, campaigners promoting an end to poverty and environmental damage said the negotiations had resulted in far too many compromises that in most cases did not advance countries' commitments beyond those they already made years earlier in other forums. Some weary environmental campaigners expressed equal grumpiness about what they saw as a lack of leadership on the part of the United States and a tendency of other countries to abandon hard targets for environmental cleanups or new energy technologies and blame the impasse on the United States. Still, there were enough of the new-style agreements to generate at least a modicum of optimism among experts ranging from environmental activists to corporate chiefs. Many of those participants say they are not disappointed that the Johannesburg meeting had no specific treaty or other agreement as a goal. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro produced two major treaties, they note, one on preserving biological diversity and another on preventing harmful climate change. Few experts regard either as effective. The lack of treaties as focal points may be exactly why this meeting could produce some breakthroughs, said several of those taking part. There was less of an impetus for the usual suspects to play their usual prominent adversarial roles. Both | Small World After All |
1424163_2 | the millions of foreign-born people who move each year, for example.) Not only do several of these initiatives place undue burdens on hardworking, law-abiding immigrants, but if they were enforced across the board all would run aground among the vast illegal population -- an estimated eight million people -- who would only clog the enforcement process, draining precious resources that ought to be directed at tracking down terrorists. What's the solution to this dilemma? The quick and dirty answer is profiling: for example, rather than asking that every foreigner who enters the country be registered, fingerprinted and required to report regularly to authorities, we could apply the law only to those from terror-sponsoring nations like Iraq and Syria. (In fact, that's more or less the compromise the Justice Department began implementing last week.) There's an argument that can be made for this kind of discretionary approach -- after all, most immigrants, including the millions who are illegal, pose no threat. But surely, rather than implement the law selectively, it would be preferable to reduce the number of foreigners living here illicitly. And since we can't send them home -- most are doing jobs essential to the economy -- it only makes sense to bring them in out of the shadows with some sort of legalization or regularization process. Not only would legalization eliminate a vast population of second-class noncitizens -- the existence of such a population is an affront to our democratic values -- it would also allow us to identify and keep track of these millions of undocumented immigrants without resort to law enforcement. It would help reduce the market for forged documents -- Social Security cards, driver's licenses and the like -- that make deceit so easy for would-be terrorists. And it would increase the chances that foreign-born workers would cooperate with local police, contributing to the fight against America's enemies. Even in the safest of times, surely there is cause for concern when millions of well-intentioned people are forced by a bad law to view authorities with suspicion and to regard breaking the law as the accepted norm. In times like these, it is arguably suicidal. The changes Mr. Bush and Mr. Fox discussed last year would address this problem and create a legal path for future migrants who will be needed when the economy improves. But in the past 12 months, the administration has largely lost | Immigration Reform and National Security |
1424275_0 | To the Editor: The Direct Marketing Association was the first group to require that e-mail solicitations include an opt-out address, disclosure of the marketer's identity and a clear, honest subject line. Our guidelines even require marketers to provide a physical address for consumers to seek redress. ''Taking On Junk E-Mail'' (editorial, Sept. 13) lauds consumer groups and derides marketers, but does not mention that the solutions proposed by consumer groups could have been lifted directly from documents that were posted on the Direct Marketing Association's own Web site. The association promulgated guidelines that its members are required to follow. Our industry, as much as anyone with Internet access these days, is materially hurt by the proliferation of unsolicited, untargeted and nearly ubiquitous, truly junk e-mail. JIM CONWAY New York, Sept. 13, 2002 The writer is vice president, government relations, Direct Marketing Association. | You've Got Mail: Enough Already! |
1424276_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Taking On Junk E-Mail'' (editorial, Sept. 13): There must be a delineation between business junk e-mail and solicitations from purveyors of pornography and Viagra. The recent daily barrage of the latter is appalling. I pay a flat minimum fee for the pleasure of keeping in touch with friends that allows me 10 minutes of usage a day. It angers me to waste my minutes deleting X-rated materials. Nor do I wish to pay additional money to ban such materials to maintain my privacy. Let these hawkers pay heavily for the privilege of free speech as legitimate businesses do. JUDITH RAICES New York, Sept. 13, 2002 | You've Got Mail: Enough Already! |
1424277_0 | To the Editor: The problems caused by junk e-mail are even worse than you describe in ''Taking On Junk E-Mail'' (editorial, Sept. 13). Sight-impaired people who must have their computers read their e-mail out loud don't have the luxury of being able to visually separate e-mail from spam. For the deaf, spam is a roadblock that makes communicating more difficult than it already is. Spammers target children's e-mail accounts with pornography and scams, just as they do adults. Spam makes it hard for those who use wireless P.D.A.'s and cellphones to read e-mail. Spam makes it even more expensive to check your e-mail while traveling. It's even worse to have to separate the legitimate e-mail from the hundreds of junk e-mails after you return from a vacation. It's time for Congress to enact tough laws to stop spam. BILL ADLER Washington, Sept. 13, 2002 | You've Got Mail: Enough Already! |
1426177_0 | In century-old jars of alcohol on museum shelves in Paris and Washington and off the coasts of Indonesia, Senegal and the Caribbean, zoologists are stumbling upon dozens of species of tiny octopuses once believed to be babies of their larger relatives. Described by their discoverers as Lilliputian, some of the pygmy species are smaller than the hatchlings of the bigger and better known octopus. Each of the pygmies is about the size of a thumbnail, with weights measured in tenths of a gram, making them tiny even compared with the inches-high characters in ''Gulliver's Travels.'' While the researchers are not formally presenting their findings until next year after gathering more data, other top experts in the field who know of their results say these small octopuses are a big deal. These newly recognized pygmies appear to lurk in tropical waters all over the globe, and their diversity is making scientists rethink what they know about octopuses. ''The more we look, the more we find,'' said Dr. Eric Hochberg, the curator of invertebrate zoology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. When octopuses this small are even spotted on expeditions, they are usually tossed in jars and forgotten, Dr. Hochberg said. Over the years, he and his colleague Dr. Mark Norman occasionally received hints that there was more than met the eye with the tiny creatures, from specimens collected during dives or from pictures of the Lilliputians apparently brooding eggs. Then, when they were in the Natural History Museum in Paris last May for a study on tropical octopus diversity, they noticed rows of small, alcohol-preserved specimens, some of which sat unstudied for more than 100 years on the back shelves. Upon dissecting the Marquesan and New Caledonian octopuses, instead of finding infants, Dr. Hochberg and Dr. Norman discovered full-grown adults. Enlisting another cephalopod biologist, Mike Sweeney, they dug through the collections at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington last July. They realized ''there was this hidden universe under our doorstep no one ever even dreamed of,'' Dr. Norman said from the Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Norman believes the jelly-bean-size creatures dwell in the crevices of coral reefs or small holdfasts in giant kelp ''almost like the lions of miniature rain forests,'' devouring tiny shrimps, crabs or snails. These shadowy refuges allow the mostly drab pygmy octopuses | Bottled Baby Octopuses Turn Out to Be Pygmies |
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